The Middle of the Road

Herdin' Cats

2009-01-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

It's Super Bowl time, y'all and so I thought I'd embed my all time favorite greatest TV commercial ever. I'm reading Lonesome Dove right now so it is particularly pertinent. I think even Capt. Woodrow F. Call might let out a chuckle after gazin upon this gem...

Watch CBS Videos Online

Bill Ayers: Unrepentant Terrorist, Union Man, New Waver

2008-10-11T14:50:00.000-07:00

Helloooo again! I am a *terrible* blogger. I don't post a damn thing so I don't think of myself as one of the Elite, the Few, the Proud: The Digitalluminati, most of whom write crap (there! see? I think like a blogger writes!). I, of course, do NOT write crap....because I don't write. But, oooh, the times we live in. Perhaps another voice is needed, amid the din. I dunno. But, in many ways, things have been looking up for me and I'm tired of thinking of stuff to say and I am really tired of ignoring this medium as a way to rant out loud instead of grumbling to the polite and busy folks around me everyday. Obviously, if you are a reader and/or writer of blogs you are neither, so you are a natural audience. Howdy, and thanks for reading!

FIRST UP-- my buddy Bill Ayers. What an interesting cat this dude is. The radical 60's personified, if the 60's were about rebellion and sex and Marxism and wildness and youth and never having to apologize and never not having a cause greater than yourself. And fun. Bill, you're all that. I disagree with most of your specific ideas and find the Weather Underground's rhetoric ridiculous and the violence repugnant. Yet I love the spirit. Damn, you're hard to pin down. When he was visiting my UPS route a few years ago for summer break, I got to know Professor Charm a little bit. Bill was getting FedEx packages sent to him nearly every day from his gig at UIC. I mentioned that hey, did ya know FedEx isn't unionized and UPS is? And we'll give you the same great service or better. Within a couple of days his overnights were all UPS Next Day Air and stayed that way for good, university brass be damned. Now that's a rebellion I can get behind! There's a lot more I could say about Bill and his amazing charisma & energy & crazy notions and his equally (if not more) amazing partner Bernadine (the "Poster Girl of The Radical Left") but I gotta go to Nevada on business in a couple of hours (hey, don't ask, I'm a Teamster...) so I'll leave you with this: I don't know the full extent of Bill Ayers' connection/friendship/mind-control over Barack H. Obama but I think I've found out what Bill was doing while underground in the late 1970's. Dig this video of the song :"Video Killed The Radio Star" from 1979; famous for being the first video played on MTV (the oncoming video revolution being what prob drove Bill & Bernie out of hiding once and for all--when the Whole World Is Watching Something Insipid it's probably time to get a real job):
Check out the lead singer.

Then look at this clip of Bill and Bernadine from the early 80's on a recent CBS news program (its about 18 seconds in, past the commercial for some capitalist pigs):

Watch CBS Videos Online

Check out Bill's get-up. Hmmm?! Huh? Ya hear me talkin'? Gotcha you old radical! heh heh, nice hairdo, pal (like mine was any better!). Well, they may have wished they had done more, but at least they ushered in the New Wave. We went from quiet sit-ins to a million people in the street in just a few years, thanks to 2 things: the Draft and Videotape. Now we got no draft and video ever damn place ya look. And a billion people on the couch. Medium Cool, indeed.

Cheer Up!

2007-09-23T17:26:00.000-07:00

Out of turmoil comes perspective, enlightenment, growth, and...more turmoil! But it ain't all bad, not at all. It's been a heck of a year so far since my last post, very busy (yeah, yeah, we're ALL "busy"), and I've let my goal of doing a little writing & ranting fall by the wayside. Today I read one of the best columns ever by one of the masters of simplicity. I thought I'd dust of the ole blogging machinery by borrowing Garrison Keillor's current post, which moved me to tears... and a little more smiling. And if you read this, Jin, ole buddy, it's for you. I know why you chose Emerson for the yearbook quote while the rest of us dorks chose rock lyrics.

SEPTEMBER: TIME TO LIGHTEN UP AND GET A GRIP

By Garrison Keillor

That crisp, clean, dry smell of autumn is in the air, so stunning and surprising every year, a smell forever connected to bright colors and fresh apples and cool grass with beads of dew and the eagerness of a boy, pencil box and tablet in hand, wending his way toward Benson School and Mrs. Moehlenbrock's sunny classroom. The pencil box is new. Mr. Truman is president, the neighbor's son Jack is fighting the communists in Korea, and every Saturday we yearn for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team to be triumphant, which sometimes they are.

I loved school, where I excelled for a short time, and now my golden-haired gap-toothed daughter, who is 9, loves it, too. She tolerates weekends pretty well but on Monday she is all eagerness, leaning forward on tiptoes with that heightened sense of possibility that is the basic component of cheerfulness, which is the secret of the good life. She expresses this by clenching her fist in the air and jerking it down and saying, YES. Sometimes twice.

Cheerfulness isn't the same as happiness. You can't always be happy. Or satisfied. But a cheerful outlook is always possible. Ancient people in wheelchairs in nursing homes, their minds in ruins like the Parthenon, nonetheless beam at the stranger out of lifelong habit, putting the best possible face on things, even during great vacancy.

I turned 65 last month, which is about as festive as walking into a brick wall, but I'm okay now. And when I look back on my messy life with all the wrong turns and failures and days I wish I could rewrite, and then I think of the shining child whose picture is on my cellphone, the door to the past closes. You cannot possibly regret anything in a chain of events that led to her existence. So you turn to the future.

The philosopher of cheerful purpose was Emerson, and for some reason my generation preferred the puritanical Thoreau, a sorehead and loner whose clunky line about marching to your own drummer has found its way into a million graduation speeches. Thoreau tried to make a virtue out of lack of rhythm. He said that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Okay, but how did he know? He didn't talk to that many people. He wrote elegantly about independence and forgot to thank his mom for doing his laundry.

Emerson was a mover and shaker. He said, "Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm ... this is the one remedy for all ills, the panacea of nature. We must be lovers and at once the impossible becomes possible." He said this while he was out on the road plying his trade as a lecturer, peddling his books, earning the money he would use to buy the land for Thoreau to build his little cabin on and pay Thoreau's fine and get him out of jail. Oh well. Never mind.

These autumn days are so golden, if there was a whole month of them, your mailman would feel triumphant enthusiasm and start his own dance company called Deliverance and the woman who cleans your teeth would write haiku -

Into the gorge of

Enamel and spit I thrust

My slim silver pick.

- and you would have to tell them how much you liked their work, even though you didn't, but bravo for them. Nothing is so cheerful as the urge to commit art. The purpose of all great art is to give courage and thereby cheer us, just as the purpose of education is fundamentally cheerful - to draw us out of gloomy solitude and into a conversation with other scholars.

Lighten up. Get a grip. Leave morose silence to teenagers; it's too dramatic for you and me. We have passed the great test of a republic, to survive the most incompetent leadership, and now we can anticipate a new era, one with no Bushes. As Emerson said, "This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. ... Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

In other words, cheer up.

(c) 2007 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved.

Distributed by Tribune Media Services, INC.

And I also dedicate that to my kids. Yeah, you guys.

Stolen Car by Bruce Springsteen

2006-11-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

I met a little girl and I settled down
In a pretty little house in a pretty little town
We got married, and swore we'd never part
Then little by little we drifted from each other's heart

At first I thought it was just restlessness
That would fade as time went by and our love grew deep
In the end it was something more I guess
That tore us apart and made us weep

And I'm driving a stolen car
Down on Eldridge Avenue
Each night I wait to get caught
But I never do

She asked if I remembered the letters I wrote
When our love was young and bold
She said last night she read those letters
And they made her feel one hundred years old

And I'm driving a stolen car
On a pitch black night
And I'm telling myself I'm gonna be alright
But I ride by night and I travel in fear
That in this darkness I will disappear

Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

Postscript

2006-01-10T07:30:00.000-08:00

Long before the towers and the bridges, the subways and the suburbs, New york began to assimilate the first great immigrant wave and in the process struggled to find a way to make the American ideal relevant amid the disorder and disruption of so many varying peoples brought face to face. In the 1840's a frank and honest young poet named Walt Whitman, born in Brooklyn, walked the streets and absorbed the city deep into his soul. Street after street he found not only slums and misery, the babble of strangers, the mutterings of the insecure, and the depravity of indifference; he found a city of courage, hospitality, openness, and friendship. His city. A dream he made real with his words. A city he saw becoming real before his eyes, amid the turmoil. The crowds and noise that grew each day, the bumping up of cultures, did not frighten him, it excited him. On his sliver of land between the sparkling waters no one group represented the city; it was in the mix that the spirit of the place was found. The democratic mix. He saw (as quoted from Ric Burns' magnificent documentary of NY) "an endless river of people, each pursuing his or her own destiny. Where some saw the classes of races, religions, and nationalities he saw a daily sharing..." The city yearned for more than what was; he sensed that longing and loved it. Whitman, gazing at the multitude that crossed the East River ferries each day, sharing the ride that took them to their labors and then home again, felt a kinship with every individual. He saw each one and loved them. He felt his city and his heart merge. He saw the future and found hope.

The poem that follows is a celebration of the moment and an embrace of the future. The immense American experiment was weaving what he believed would be a new reality for the world. Now, with no place too remote to affect us, it is an optimism I hope all of us will share. It is an ancient hope, of course, but along the banks of these New York rivers, the wide ports, welcoming the ships (and planes) that brought so many, it is a hope that found its legs and began to wander, finding a home among the hearts of the citizens of the world. Our people.

Flood tide below me I see you face to face

On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose;

And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose

It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not;

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;

Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d;

Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried;

Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the thick-stem’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you;

I project myself a moment to tell you—also I return.

I loved well those cities;

I loved well the stately and rapid river;

The men and women I saw were all near to me;

Others the same—others who look back on me, because I look’d forward to them;

What is it, then, between us?

What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not.

--- "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry",

from Leaves of Grass,

Walt Whitman

Annual Letter: Conclusion

2006-01-02T02:01:00.000-08:00

"Imagine there's no countries,
It isn’t hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people living life in peace..."

“You know what my least favorite John Lennon song is? Imagine. At the root of it is some rigorous thinking about the way things could be, but people have stolen the idea and made it an anthem for wishful thinking. I’m against wishful thinking. I hate it.”
--- Bono, 2005

We probably all wish we had the kind of courage displayed in “The Lord of the Rings”, but the deeper question for us is can we find similar strength & inner fortitude to overcome the challenges of every day? To rise above the mundane and live lives not of avoidance and mendacity but of nobility and purpose…to be more selfless and less selfish. “Nobility & Purpose”…is that even possible? Once, long ago yet sometimes not far away, I only wanted my MTV. Now I have so much, yet find myself still wanting more. Are these things among them? Or are they too much to hope for in this shrill and crowded world? I look for it in others and have too long expected failure and weakness, but I'm starting to see that those who find a little faith in themselves can surprise you, given the chance. And giving them a chance can build up that faith in both of you; others around you will start to see hope as well. To live only to serve the petty daily concerns of yourself, or your family, or your tribe or town, is to deny the full potential and expression of the best part of human nature. And to sit only and dream, while others work, is a sin. We need to accomplish, as best we can, what we can, with humility, tenacity, and faith that others will join us.

Thank you for reading this; I hope it made some sense for you and provided some enjoyment. It means a great deal to know that even one person is sharing in our story. Thanks also to those who encouraged and were patient while I knitted this together in my own slow way. Your support is treasured always.

Let me leave you with a quote from the best biography written in many years about a man you all have heard of may not know well. He confronted, in person, the most powerful man in the world, George III; and he founded, as much as any other man, with sweat and great sacrifice, the nation we still so easily take for granted. He is not on the money, few statues exist of him, and he was unceremoniously voted out of office; an office (the presidency) he helped create, by the common people he so well served over his very long life:

'It was among the children of his children that Adams and his words to the wise would live longest in memory. "The Lord deliver us all from family pride," he had written to John Quincy's son John, for example. "No pride, John, no pride."

"You are not singular in your suspicions that you know but little," he had told Caroline, in response to her quandary over the riddles of life. "The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know... Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough... So questions and so answers your affectionate grandfather."

Adams had, however, arrived at certain bedrock conclusions before the end came. He believed, with all his heart, as he had written to Jefferson, that no effort in favor of virtue was lost.
He felt he had lived in the greatest of times, that the eighteenth century, as he also told Jefferson, was for all its errors and vices "the most honorable" to human nature. "Knowledge and virtues were increased and diffused; arts, sciences useful to man, ameliorating their condition, were improved, more than in any period."

His faith in God and the hereafter remained unshaken. His fundamental creed, he had reduced to a single sentence: "He who loves the Workman and his work, and does what he can to preserve and improve it, shall be accepted of Him."
His confidence in the future of the country he had served so long and dutifully was, in the final years of his life, greater than ever.

Human nature had not changed, however, for all the improvements. Nor would it, he was sure. Nor did he love life any the less for its pain and terrible uncertainties. He remained as he had been, clear-eyed about the paradoxes of life and in his own nature. Once, in a letter to [an] old friend he had written, "Griefs upon griefs! Disappointments upon disappointments. What then? This is a gay, merry world notwithstanding."

-- from David McCullough's "John Adams" (2001)

I hope for a better world, one in which we believe in powerful, realistic dreams, ones we are able to discuss with healthy skepticism but without cynicism, fear, and weakness diminishing the possibilities and darkening the hope. A society in which there is more to love than be disappointed with; one with nobility and purpose, not just security and performance. A place where someone can look in the rear view and see not just where they came from, but how far they have come, and be a bit more sure of where they are going… a place with prospects and far less shadows and doubt. So back to the road I go; I’ll be heading out there each day, hands a bit tighter on the wheel, looking ahead and looking for that place. I hope to find you there, my friends. All of us are hoping to find you there.

I will provide for you
And I'll stand by your side
You'll need a good companion
For this part of the ride
Leave behind your sorrows
Let this day be the last
Tomorrow there'll be sunshine
And all this darkness past
Big wheels roll through fields
Where sunlight streams
Meet me in a land of hope and dreams
--- Bruce Springsteen

Ann. Letter: From the Wild Lands

2006-01-02T01:50:00.000-08:00

There’s a bumper sticker around my town that says, “Talkeetna: Where the Road Ends and Life Begins”. That’s the jumping off place for the heart of the Alaska Wilderness. 2001 was my Talkeetna, the time when the training ended and the living a life of meaning, purpose, and perspective began. Where I left behind the comfortable, routine wanderings of youth, those roads paved and well-traveled, and tried to really find my own way through the thicket of conflicting ideas, endless challenges, and uncertain peril. There is a place and time when everyone must face the wilderness, to wade into the raging rivers, the arid landscapes, the swampy bogs in order to transform into who your heart calls you to be. If it calls you to sort out the missteps and clarify your purpose; not just yearn to be better, than you have been, but to be it; better in a way that only you can truly judge, out of 6 billion potential critics, then you have to not just face the wild, not just roll past it with the windows open and take some snapshots of it from the comfort of the highway. You have to put boots to dirt and venture in. Some people become crazy or perhaps just ridiculous, but crazy isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, nor that common, really. For every real crazy there are a thousand who fear it, and so do nothing. And for every sojourner who emerges back onto pavement, surer in step and firmer in purpose, there are many who long to hear what it’s like. You can show them.

The interesting thing is that so many of us are already wandering in our wild lands, ready to reemerge. The way out is usually the hardest part, you’re tired, you’re weak, you’re tempted to take shortcuts, you may be asked to turn stones to bread, or bow down to something truly dark in exchange for an earthly dream. Who will you then become? Who will you lead by your example? They say the road is the destination and I don’t dispute that the journey matters and that life is a trip, but it ain’t always Interstate 5, easy and straight…yet isn’t that a boring, crowded road anyway?

I look forward, as always, to what awaits us, both with anticipation and foreboding. I've lived long enough to see that not all change is progress. The old folks may have been disorientated by the gadgets and trends but they usually became savvy about human behavior. They warned me about a lot of things and now that they are passing, I'm seeing more often how right they were. But at the same time, I see that most of them weren't trying to depress me about the future, but to guide me, and all of us, to keep a tight rein on some of those trends. It's easy to admit that granny was right, harder to admit that a parent was right, but now that we understand what they struggled with (us!) we can find some sympathy and confidence when we confront the unbridled desires of our own tiny babies that stand on the edge of this new century. The new stuff is cool but there are a lot of old ideas that are worth hanging on to, even crucial. Remember the Mokan villagers by the Indian Ocean? The younger men wouldn’t listen to the elders who saw the changes in the birds and the sea and knew a tsunami was fast approaching and refused to evacuate at first. Who listens to old men anymore? But someone did, the villagers ran to higher ground, and everyone was saved, unlike so many others…

I spent four decades hearing about “the year 2000” and all the terrible, wonderful things that awaited us, everything from flying cars to the end of the world. The year arrives and civilization holds; 1-1-2000 turns out to be just another day, as are the days after that. There were so many promises made, by family, by friends, by society, by God; how many were delivered? How many ever will be? Lives come to a close and you’re not sure if in them satisfaction was ever found. The excitement of youth, the zeal with which we look forward to independence and freedom is soon beset by the demands of responsibility, a day to day struggle between optimism and obligation. Love can endure and grow, but what was once all promise, even at its best, requires sacrifice and effort. It is also such with the arrival of a baby; the promise and hope of a new life becomes another human, flawed and needy. Life turns into experience, and living becomes a strategy. Along the way joy turns into a guerrilla warrior, elusive and cagey, quietly surrounding you, dangerous if you pursue it too hard, calling out to you if you give up, but apt to strike when you least expect it, because it is always out there. Are we too busy to welcome it? Are we too preoccupied with fear to give joy to others?

SO much of life is spent just enduring the days, weeks, months, and so little is just spent on adventure. In between we take too many little pleasures to keep us occupied & help us get through the days: rich food, daydreaming, bad TV. We console ourselves about the fact that we aren’t rock stars by pointing to the fact that lives of excess lead to their own unique & acute suffering, but there must be a happy medium between rock star and mundane futility. That, I believe, is the most common American Dream, the one that drives us and reigns in our worst impulses. The middle road between too much and too little.

Jackson Brown’s old classic “Running on Empty”is the perfect song for the thirtysomething age.... now I’m starting to notice all the people trying to move past “empty”, trying fill themselves with real fuel for the next leg of the trip. The journey ahead has so much at stake: older kids so complex, and anxious, aging relatives trying to find serenity. All around us are younger co-workers & people in the community, looking for guidance, some subtle leadership, and encouragement that their own long journeys are worth the ride. And I see people our own age trying to get it together and make life count, rather than moan any longer about what they can’t count on. They, we, are ready to try and face the losses we can’t possibly avoid, and accept the rewards we can’t even imagine. Didn’t all of us budding geezers learn so much the hard way? We could be turning our bitterness into resolve, our experience into instruction and comfort for so many that are following. We could be learning to read the sea and give comfort, instruction, joy, and peace.

“I’m ready-
I’m ready for the laughing gas,
I’m ready for what’s next
I’m ready to duck,
I’m ready to dive,
I’m ready to say I’m glad to be alive,
I’m ready,
I’m ready for the push…”
---U2, Zoo Station

...to be continued...

Ann. Letter: A Late Summer's Day

2006-01-01T14:36:00.000-08:00

Oh I can't believe the news today
I can't close my eyes and make it go away
How long, how long must we sing this song...
--- U2

In the summer of 2004 we took the kids to New York City, my hometown, and the trip of a lifetime. We visited impressive museums, ate wonderful food, met interesting people, and had a great time. And we went walking...

We went left the towers of Midtown and the vast greenery of Central Park to go downtown, past the tenements of the Lower East Side and the cluttered alleys of Chinatown. We wound our way through history, along three hundred year old streets; past the Civic Center where slaves were once hung, through the ghost neighborhood of Five Points with its Irish gangs long descended into respectability (like the city itself), past the Old City Hall, built at what was once thought would be the northern limit of a teeming town. Down Broadway, past the church where Washington prayed, asking the Almighty for strength to lead an experiment in democracy far from certain of success, past the graveyard of patriots and humble citizens, people, like ourselves, who made this republic succeed and thrive, despite our conflicting passions and ideals, despite our fear and greed. We headed west along close streets packed with bike messengers and bureaucrats, food vendors and bond traders; streets just three years before made dark with an opaque cloud of death and destruction. We arrived at a wide open space, now filled with light and construction, at that place I’d visited when I was only four. Where I had once peeked through a fence, held up high by my uncle, to gaze into a great, deep pit…. I stood again with my own family. The pit had returned: Ground Zero.

In many ways it was the same in 2004 as it had been in 1967; a great open space in the dense city, people going about their business, the river flowing nearby, sailboats enjoying the breeze. No longer the place, however, where the sky met the city. Instead, a place where heaven seemed too close and too far, at the same time.

A friend told us that on 9-11-01 she was sitting on the couch in a mental illness facility, waiting to be released. “They told me I was ready to go back into the world,” she related, “but there I was watching planes slam into the towers and thinking maybe the world was crazier than me.”

In Greenwich Village, where I spent 7 summers, we had crossed a wide and familiar intersection. The neighborhood was as I remembered from childhood except for one expected difference; where two huge buildings had overlooked all, I saw the dreaded and utterly shocking emptiness. How do people who live there ever get used to that void? To work, to celebrate, to stroll around while that malignant vacancy looms overhead, a constant reminder of their insecurity. And insecure they are, even on Orange Alert (as it was in the city while we were there) we saw less security than at a Dodgers-Giants game. Somehow, I guess, they must have found ways to look at that empty sky and feel the fullness of life a little more. Those that live near the grim spectacle have no choice but to feel themselves bound to those who’ve been lost, not just here, but everywhere, and therefore make more of the lives they still have to live rather than give in to despair and anxiety. It has to be nerve-wracking to depend more than the average person on faith and hope as tools for living, but you don’t see New York emptying out.

On that early Tuesday morning in September, four years ago, I remember waking to warm sunshine and the quiet sound of NPR. Groggy, I began listening to a quavering voice talk of unfolding horror, then cutting away to somber string music until more could be reported. And, oh God, there was more coming. I lay there for a few moments trying to understand if what I had just heard was true. I looked at the blank TV screen on our dresser and then to the remote nearby. If I turned it on and there was some cheerful newsperson gabbing with a celebrity then I would know it was just some snippet of nightmare as I came awake. But if it was the dark vision I thought I heard, then what? I lay there for a few minutes more, the last minutes of an old world about to vanish. A world I knew deep in my heart was not completely real, too safe, too removed from the world as it is. Dark ravens coming home to roost… I wanted to roll over, hold tight to my love, and pull the covers over my head... but instead I turned on the TV and watched...

I watched my hometown, my capital, my nation, my beliefs attacked. I saw the lovers of death trying to destroy those who embrace life. Evil existed in plain view, on a warm, sunny late-summer day. Evil, so prevalent in our world, had come winging down the river I once sailed, riding our technology (and our freedoms), and created a global-scale carnival of fear. In the place I used to ride my bike and gaze skyward in awe.

I wanted (and still want) to go out and lay waste to those who would do such things to any and all. I wanted to topple their precarious dictatorships, destroy their traditions of cruelty and death, I wanted to shake their foundations with shock and awe, I wanted to pull them from their spider-holes, slit their throats, rip out their black hearts, and feast on their despair. I wanted to scream in anger and wail in anguish and fall to the ground and surrender to all the desolation... no…NO, I wanted to pull back from the brink and find the better angels even as I grimace in rage.

Besides... our kids had woken up and like the many millions, they too were watching the horror unfold, in real time. I had to be careful, I needed to hold it together. I had to find a way to tell them about what next. We explained and reassured as best as possible, leaning too little on hope and too much on the fact that Eureka is too far away to ever be a target (what kind of reassurance is that in the long run?). It's so hard to calm children when there is nothing to calm yourself (and how that must be a similar problem for so many parents around the world, in places that are very much targets). They were very quiet for a long time, which was the worst part of it. When Kayleigh was small she was nervous in the dark before sleep. We would stay in her bedroom for a while and she would pepper us with questions about things, especially her fears but lots of other things, too, and so we would talk until she was relaxed and ready to sleep. Three months after 9-11 Kay broke down and cried and asked me why it happened, “why does the world have to be like this?!” Evil? Illness? Greed? I held her as she sobbed but I had no real answer this time to another question out of the darkness, another childhood coming to an end.

For a while we all talked about it. I remember my neighbor saying 2001 was the worst year ever, "first Dale Earnhardt dies, then this!" Old heroes fall, new ones rise up, some in the most unlikely places, like Flight 93. A Eureka game warden was on that flight, flying back from his Grandmother's 100th birthday celebration. He was one of the brave who stormed the cockpit. Or the cops and firefighters we all took for granted. We talked about how small a world it really, frightfully, is. The son of a woman in our church had finished cooking school and just obtained a job on the breakfast shift at the Windows on the World Restaurant on top of the WTC. Tuesday was his day off. I recalled how I had bumped into a friend from my HSU dorm during my only visit ever to the roof of WTC. Neither of us had known the other was visiting NY. What are the odds? We all talked about it for a short while after it happened, but then clammed up. It was just too horrifying to contemplate; perhaps, also, we felt some deep collective guilt for whatever it was that our country has actually done to engender such hatred.

Throughout our history there have been passionate & articulate defenses of causes vast numbers of Americans thought just, such as Jim Crow or Isolationism, but we look back now and are dumbfounded that so many could believe in such things. The world seems solidly against much of what we do now and indeed, we may look back someday well within our lifetimes and be struck again by our folly. So what path should we take? I hear much condemnation coming from the same places in the world that look to us for answers but I hear few solutions that stand the test of absolute reality. Most people in the world aren’t interested in concrete solutions but only in opportunities to vent their own frustrations. Eventually, someone has to wade in and try to cut out a cancer with the scalpel of invasive transformation. Terribly risky, yes, and crucial that it be done with caution, but to bemoan the cutting this entails denies the reality of the growing tumor lurking beneath.

I’m not wearing the big cowboy hat and waving the huge foam “#1” finger. America isn’t the best at everything and our problems are many, but for humanity we offer the best overall package of opportunities and with diligence, discipline, and compassion we can improve on that. Walk those streets of New York with me, not just Manhattan but into the boroughs, filled with Jamaicans, Nigerians, Mexicans, Lithuanians, Saudis, Malaysians, Koreans. They didn’t just come here for a job or to get rich, they came for a deeper lungful of oxygen for the spirit with breath of sweaty effort. They didn’t come to be surrounded by Gap or Wal-Mart but to be amid confidence, imagination, hope. Something better, and most wish it would come to the homes and people they left behind. Some, in fact, will try to bring it to them. The opposite of futility, that’s what we have around us; that is what we seek to protect. It’s not swagger or bullying, though some could warp it into that, it’s optimism, the thing most feared by the fanatical enemies of free will and the individual.

FRODO: I can’t do this, Sam.

SAM: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

FRODO: What are we holding on to, Sam?

SAM: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

--- From “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”

Many of us don’t realize the true unchanging nature of man; it is volatile and fickle. The best systems of civilization tried to recognize this and seek a way that encouraged the best nature of humanity, instead of denying or recreating it. I think America has made mistakes, some brutally stupid, many selfish, but we are still a place and an idea of hope. A beacon not just of power and might, but a beacon because we call out in invitation to every single person to join the dream, the dream of creating a nation and a world that is not only comfortable but just, open, and noble for every single person. A place where the future matters more than past, and every person can matter more than they think they can. From that vision comes our power, despite all the mistakes that capricious human nature can cause. We believe not in cynicism, but look to the better days to come, and once embraced by the individual, that belief changes his possibilities; once embraced by a society, that belief is protected for the individual, and he or she can thrive.

When we set out to remake a region, and not just by war, we are feared by the locals. Our power makes our higher motives victimized by our own success, and our future success held hostage to our global image. We come and are held to a higher standard because that is what we set for ourselves and what our nation believes can be set for humanity. It’s one we too often fail to achieve, because it is a high standard, and that failure is watched closely by all, though not all are wishing for that failure… indeed more are hoping for our success than most of us know. When we make the inevitable mistakes, such as abusing prisoners, even though that may be routine for the region, there is double outrage at our responsibility, and the locals lose hope, hope they may already be afraid to articulate, let alone act upon, but now become afraid even to consider, because we may turn out to be like everyone else and let them down. It's terribly hard to hold to a higher standard. Ask Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, human beings who called upon the individual to renew hope by living it. Or FDR who saved hope by molding a directionless, despairing nation into action around it. Ask those that sacrificed everything they have so that other might see the future as something to believe in. It’s hard.

All my college studies in history, politics, geography, and all the writing in such subjects I’ve enjoyed since my formal schooling ended ( I’ve actually been a better student since then!) have really helped me gain some grasp of what’s happening in the world, and what might come, and what needs to be done. I’ve never been more grateful for my education, such as it was. But it is a difficult world to understand, with thorny, complex solutions, and no guarantees, of course. Most of us wanted a smaller, freer world, with cheap shoes, big cars, and easy credit. Most of us also want it to be liberal in justice and safe for the planet. The revolution was not televised because we didn’t really want a socialist paradise with walls to keep in dissidents. But consequences come with everything and one of dangers of comfort is ignorance and apathy. You may think it’s ok to just work for yer stuff and not care about much else, but somebody out there cares enough about something bigger and darker, and he’s coming for you. Hopefully there are enough of us around the world to stop him, maybe even change him, eventually. Maybe what motivates him will change us, too. Right now, we have to understand why and how to make that change for the good. Evil always results in changes; good requires more sacrifice for a little transformation. Answers have to be found in our hearts amid the psychic chaos, choices for what to believe and what to learn more about and, hardest of all, solutions for how to make the world a better place for all.

All of this leaves most of us nearly paralyzed by the conflicting notions of what to do, who to believe, and how we got here. And time is passing swiftly… A lot of folks are partly right, some are more correct, but ultimately, of course, the truth must be decided by you, and it must come by looking directly at what’s genuine. So in 2004 we came to the World Trade Center, to pay our respects, and to confront a little more of the truth of our world. To look and not turn away or pretend it isn’t there. This is where all your sympathies have to be confronted, all your doubts & confusion. This is not a place for ambiguity. To cling too dearly to moral relativism in this place is to finally admit your own delusion. This is stark and blunt and real. Absolute reality. Ground Zero.

On 11-9-1989, as Tom Friedman of the NY Times pointed out, young hopeful people broke through a seemingly impenetrable wall of despair and repression, without any violence:

“As I thought about those two dates, it struck me that they each represent a powerful form of imagination at work in the world today. 11-9, the fall of the Berlin Wall, was brought about by people daring to imagine a different and more open world, one where every human being would be free to realize his or her full potential and then summoning the courage to act on that imagination. The imagination of 9-11, of course, is a pessimistic imagination, one that seeks to divide people, one that seeks to erect walls and borders, one that seeks to make the world into a danger zone and America into a ghetto. As a result of it, the world that was your oyster seemed to close up a bit like an oyster's shell."

Friedman goes on to point out that whatever we do, protecting the openness of the ever smaller world, the community of the planet, from those that would seek to rebuild those grey walls of oppression and fear, is our most pressing task. Cooperation, in trade, in health care, in the environment, in justice and democratic principles, and learning to understand each other and our needs and dreams, is the way back from this darkness… Cooperation as the true Center of the World and, sadly, protection against those who reject it and would destroy it. To deny they exist is to deny safety for billions and ultimately, yourself. It is to walk toward the Pit and deny you would fall in. We must stand up to them and their ideology and hunt them down to the ends of the earth.

“Hold your ground, hold your ground. Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day. This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand!” ---- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

And for those in the ends of the earth who have "cast off the old dogmas of socialism and protectionism" and rejected hatred and terror, those who are willing to try to join the world community, we need to pour out all the help we can. Our brethren around the world, not just in Europe, but many of our brave neighbors in Latin America, Aids-ravaged Africa, and, especially right now, the stricken shores of Asia, have given up much, torn down their walls, removed their economic protections, disbanded their juntas, diluted their cultures, and tightened their belts, agreeing to find peace, stability, and comfort on the winding free market road. We need to respect, help, and honor those among them who are building nations based on law and democracy. We can forgive their debts, forget the past trespasses, help them earn their daily bread, and more, and walk with them in deliverance from evil. We can't just expect them to do it all alone because “it's the best system in the world!” any more than they should expect us to do it all for them. But we do have the advantages and the blessings of liberty more secure, and so we can risk more. We need to.

So we spent our time in that place in Lower Manhattan and prayed for answers. Then we headed home, back through the crowded streets filled with riches and no small amount of shadows. Among the thousands of towers that still stand, with new ones underway. Home through the International Airport, past the customs gate unloading the hopeful, the dreamers, the anxious. Home, to what lay next. Our prayers answered with the instruction to go out and remake the world, hoping for the best, with faith in our ability and in those who would join us. Faith in the brighter side of the human spirit.

Frodo: I wish none of this had ever happened…
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world beside the will of evil….
--- Lord of the Rings, 2001

...to be continued...

Annual Letter: The Loganator

2005-12-26T10:11:00.000-08:00

Logan turned 13 this summer, our last baby, our last teenager, our only son. His whole life has been spent as an oppressed midget: He Who Has Been Most Denied (“you’re too young for that!”; “stop acting so silly!”). Yet he’s also the kid who lived the least during the years when we considered it a luxury to pay the utility bill on time. He has no memory of the days of 5 of us in a small apartment and few memories of one bathroom (all our homes seemed large to him). He is the Watcher, learning what he needs to know through observation of his older sisters’ battles with us, and as his parents have gotten better at parenting, he has gotten better, too, at maneuvering around the system. While we only grow older and more tired, he grows bigger and stronger, in the flesh and in his unbending will. He knows how to please and he knows how to finagle. Like one of the complicated PS2 games he is so fond of playing, life is filled with intricate detail and many calculations of varying worth. He gathers the tools, fights the ogres (that would be me), and gains strength. Kayleigh takes us on frontally, he battles us through disappointed looks, dragged feet, bitter prophecy (“I guess I’ll NEVER get to have fun!”), and just plain ignoring by remaining in his distant consciousness. But he also knows best how to please us, and for some reason, whatever the motivation, he does want to, so we’re grateful, and glad to part of his plan for world domination.

He is finally in the middle of a growth spurt, in a funny age where so many of those squeaky little boys of birthday parties past are still squeaky, while others have stretched into lanky baritones, galumphing and tripping around like big pups. The ridiculously endearing silliness of Mad Libs made him laugh his head off, which is a real pleasure to watch, but he is quickly becoming a fan of inane Conan O’Brien and the smarmy John Stewart. He’s also enjoying a big box full of my old MAD magazines from the 1970’s; obviously he’s become a huge fan of satire but how he finds a parody of Maude entertaining is beyond me. Knowing how much the middle school experience is lingering innocence, jitterbugging among the coarse and vulgar, while struggling with growing responsibility, it’s great to see he still gets so much joy out of things so ridiculously simple. It’s sad and worrisome to know what he is exposed to daily, but he seems to be holding out against incivility by being a decent, well liked character. His aptitude tests are near the top of the chart, but we keep trying to turn his B’s into more A’s by pushing him to organize and find all that homework mashed down at the bottom of his enormous backpack. Still no ideas about what he wants to do with his life other than survive high school, but we’re steering him into thinking about it.

After chores, homework, and band practice, in addition to the ubiquitous sim-type games, he relaxes by shooting up complex alien landscapes, following a rigorous set of rules and challenges. I come up and watch him play these fantastically complex games and my jaw hangs slack. We used to play “Crash Bandicoot” together, which featured a goofy looking marsupial that ran around jungle mazes, collecting fruit and avoiding penguins and armadillos. We were all pretty close in skill levels and had a blast playing as a family. When Crash came out with a race car version, things started getting too fast and furious for Mom & Dad, whose 20th century digits weren’t meant to have complete mastery of the Playstation controller pad. Draped casually over his couch, he tries to train me for “Star Wars: Battlefront” explaining the 500 various options for weapons and moves. He is a mighty Jedi Warrior laying waste to the evil Empire’s minions, while his trusty Padawan apprentice (me) is stuck against a wall, about to blow myself up with my own weapon, or being pickpocketed by the local Jawas. Where is “Crash” when ya need him?? Kayleigh found music, Andie disappeared into Role Playing Games, so Logan became the master of the digitally enhanced explosion and left us all in the dust. He and his friends spend hours discussing the endless permutations of their games. Yeah, I know, we were going to stay violence free, no toy guns, etc. but he’s a boy! Many trees suffered loss of limbs so he could fashion a club or something to “shoot” with over the years, not to mention the drawers of misplaced kitchen implements. At least his videos are “Teen” rated only; no bloody car-jackings or consorting with trollops.

Logan does regularly shut off the TV and obtain fresh air. Last summer he spent a week at a surfing camp as well as our annual church camp (with Kayleigh). Our course, he went to Colorado with us and hiked to the top of the third highest peak in the state (ok—there was a road up to the top, so he only walked the last 400 yards, but it’s a start!). He and his sister also hiked enormous sand dunes in Death Valley and Great Sand Dunes Nat. Park. The best outdoor moment of the past few years was the long awaited day I finally took him fishing on the Trinity River. We hired a guide and caught a few little guys but Logan capped the day by hauling in, by himself, the only thing that even nibbled his line: a huge 10 pound, 25 inch steelhead. He was so worked up we had to pull him off before he ate it raw in the boat.

His impressive new challenge is the Humboldt Bay Rowing Association, which he practices with three times a week in anticipation of competitive regattas throughout Northern California this coming spring. He is finally losing the fleshy kid body and building a set of muscles even Dad must be wary of. It’s really a treat to see him down on the Bay, rain or shine, cold or…cool (this is Eureka—great rowing weather!); we are real proud of his diligence. He and his friends have discovered the wonder of do-it-yourself medieval armor and have the occasional battle in the big redwood forest down the block. Duct tape, foam, and pvc-pipe can win empires for this knight, apprenticed by many years of reading fantasy and sci-fi such as Xenosaga, Eragon, and The Lord of the Rings (not to mention, of course, tales of a certain bespectacled limey wizard). We have a large armory of mop handles, curtain rods, and spare kindling that have been fashioned into crude versions of Anduril, the Flame of the West, Sword of Aragorn, with which he goes outside and practices all sorts of swordplay with imagined adversaries. He’s also is an avid reader, a big science fiction and fantasy fan (thanks to Lucas, Tolkien, and Rowling), and devours his books. He has quite an active mind and keeps his deepest feelings guarded, but is not withdrawn. He asks some real smart questions, is becoming a smart critic of human behavior, and when he gets going on a subject he likes he can really fill you in. He’s a big aficionado of the info-mcnugget collection such as “The Bathroom Reader” (also a hit with his sisters). I think it reflects on our society that these sorts of books are irresistible for so many people: we read tons of cheeky, useless fun facts and come away entertained and feeling a bit smarter. But what of critical thinking? That’s the tough one. We try to encourage and discipline our kids to think for themselves and view the world with independence, intelligence, and a strong passion for understanding, compassion, and doing right. The endless pull of entertainment-as-meaning in life, the millions of “facts” masquerading as truth and their accompanying theories, conspiracy or otherwise, cloaked as intelligence, that tend to seduce people into feeling protected from life’s complexities, makes real thinking a chore rather than the life-affirming exploration it should be. In a world where a lack of good hard thinking can lead to disaster, both personal and societal, we take great comfort from knowing seeing that our kids are developing beliefs rather than just collecting opinions. And they aren’t afraid to voice them, which isn’t always easy for the parent!

Things get crazy at times with these kids, their needs, and our flopping around trying to do right. It’s always an uphill struggle but when I reflected on this passing horror-show of a year around the world, our problems are but a few droplets in the mist. We are more than safe, we are blessed, and our kids thrive. Being a parent has given me some better understanding of why God treats our world as if He’s gone fishing and abandoned us to our fates…

For so long I was the “god” in my son’s life. I know that sounds silly but I remember the way my wee little boy used to stare at me, with love, longing, awe, and fear. And he would contemplate it all. To teach him I tried to simplify my words so he could learn about life with its demands and its wonder. Sometimes he isn’t ready, especially for the “demands” part, and often he doesn’t listen. I am left disappointed and feel my power diminished. Occasionally he is angry, petulant, and selfish (and I have been, too). I swore to be there for him and I have been a constant presence in his life, but too often it is a remote one, an aloof one. Many times he has wished me to be with him and I am not. Sometimes he has wished me gone and yet I stay right by him, my presence all too uncomfortable. He has come to me for answers and I have had none, or some he is not ready to understand or accept. Since we first brought him into the world I have wanted to protect him and delight him, to make him laugh and give him comfort, yet so strong is my desire to see him grow and experience that I have sometimes had to step back and allow experience to teach him, though that often makes me deeply anxious. I want to protect him from bullies & viruses & crossing the street & bad food & terrible notions & horrible images. I know so much about this world and what it can do…what it will do, to harm and corrupt. I know so much more than him, yet I know he will come to know more than I could simply tell him about, and much of it will be unique, and all his own.

I’ve wanted to shield him from so much of life and to sacrifice for him, anything, that he might not fail, yet I know his life would be false, and not his own. I helped give him life and so that is what I must always be doing. A couple of springs ago Logan sat with his 6th grade band members in the year-end recital, his school-issued trombone at the ready. We had pushed him toward music, though we are not musicians. Life had sent a great, great teacher to his school who encouraged him to join the band and taught him well. We pushed him endlessly, tediously (as always) to practice at home. Now he blatted out his big, uneven notes; the band sounded…good enough…and everyone smiled. Even our boy, who is often too hard on himself, smiled. He was on his way, knowing lots of hard work lay ahead to make those notes ripe and full, but he saw they were his own. We had pushed, and other influences joined us, and in doing so he found a joy we could not directly give him, and he brought us a joy we could find in no other place. He asked us for his own trombone that Christmas, something we wouldn’t do until we were sure he was going to stick with it. He’s stuck with the regular band through 7th & 8th grades, and also joined the jazz band, which requires showing up at school at 715am. As I see him trudge off to school in the predawn gloom, I know it’s worth it. He’s making it his own thing. He listens to jazz, which I never got (but now I do) and, without lessons, sits at the piano just for fun and plinks around, considering. This was why we let him cross the street alone at some point, why we let him out of our protection each day to try the world on for size, with all its myriad potential disappointments and dangers. If I had been his all powerful protector, would he have learned this joy? Every note he plays is his own, and I revel in the sound of it. It’s the music of my own growing spirit, too, even as my god-like powers diminish.

For those who don’t have children (and we‘ve known several great, effective, caring people who are not parents), or whose children have grown up, there is always some else we can affect with our spirit, even as we allow them to find their own way. Dealing with kids, people, and society -- the whole maddening bunch can make ya crazy. But, like Tom Hanks’ character in “Cast Away”, not dealing with them can make ya crazier. Still, you have to pull back when necessary and let them find their way, even when you are almost sure they are going to fall on their face. Grab the fishing pole and take some time out to test your faith. People, big and little, will pleasantly surprise you if they know you are rooting for them somewhere in the crowd.

...to be continued...

Ann. Letter: Kayleigh Rising

2005-12-24T14:19:00.000-08:00

Kayleigh will spend 20 long minutes regaling me with all the intricate reasons why some band I’ve never heard of is incredibly cool, but look bored and irritated by my own dusty recollections of treasured musical moments from the “Old Days”. She has become a teenager in full flight: unsure of nearly everything but sure it is all hers to decide, with all the insecurity and arrogance that goes along with that.

She turned sweet sixteen in November ‘04 and celebrated with a big dinner party at a local restaurant. We went along but clung to the outer edge of the long table, just enjoying the spectacle of her and her interesting friends carrying on. High School (she’s now in the 11th grade) has proved to be an ordeal both socially and academically. She is fortunate to have a few good friends to cling to as she negotiates the turbulent waters of a huge student body coming of age in a morally challenged time. Like her parents before her (and her siblings for that matter) she is “not working to her potential” but unlike everybody else she has a pretty strong sense of certitude once she makes the risky and/or difficult choice. We just gotta work hard to get her there...which means conflict, confrontation, and lots of running our hands through our thinning hair. When she listens, however, I can see the desire to please in her eyes, 17 becomes 5 again, for a moment, and it melts my cold, dark, frustrated heart. Some days she will reveal that she does pay attention in class, talking about World War I or the French language with detail and interest that makes us hope and we just listen with big dopey grins, already calculating the coming scholarship money. Then the grade report comes back and we return to the daily battle of how to turn interest into action.

Kayleigh likes to point out that she does excellent work on pressure comps, which sounds frightening but it’s a good thing. She can be an excellent writer and we think she has lots of possibilities with that skill…push, push, push. She wants to please but hates to be told to do it. We’ll all get along fine but in a moment’s notice her mom or I can return to being the dictatorial obstructionists that make her life so haaaard, always demanding she study, or critiquing her hanger-less, closet-less clothing storage system, or displaying our obnoxious insistence on always switching the car radio to the oldies station (are they “oldies” already???). It’s a roller coaster, has been for awhile, and will be for years to come. But it can be fun, in a masochistic way. Speaking of masochism, she just had a full set of braces embedded on her teeth until 2007, when she will journey to Seattle to have her jaw broken and surgically enhanced for a better smile. Yeouch.

Kayleigh has, besides her huge interest in music, a love of anime, still attends Saturday art classes (over ten years now), and tries to play guitar with her small, delicate fingers. She is part of the Eureka High Choir and works on the school newspaper. She is in the Soroptimist's Club and the Red Cross Club (vice-president!). She writes quite well, and has written a few short stories for her own enjoyment that we hope she’ll greatly expand upon. She loves to play “The Sims”, a computer game in which the user gets to create people and manipulate their lives in challenging ways, something Anna & I like to call “parenting”. She keeps quite current with politics, marrying that with her growing knowledge of history to help her understand the world. She loves movies and good TV, of course, and reading (unless a paper is due). She just finished reading Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons, which I read first and it almost scared us out of sending her off to college! I’m working overtime to afford a bodyguard to fend off depredatious frat boys. She’s currently reading a book about an Iraqi female political dissident’s life under Saddam. We would like her to get more interested in sports – she played soccer for a while, along with her siblings, but unfortunately, we aren’t a big sports family, so as goes the parents often goes the child, I guess.

Tragedy struck Kayleigh and all of us as her beloved, wonderful, joyous cat, Buttons, met an untimely demise on our way-too-busy street. He was her big surprise birthday gift just 3 years ago. I dug the grave and bawled like a baby, but this isn't about me (damn, i loved that cat). It hurts so much to see your child suffer pain even over something as relatively simple and everyday as the loss of a pet. One more slip away from innocence, but one she took stoically and with grace.

Kayleigh was the most excited and least overwhelmed by our visit to New York City last year. Our small town girl drank it all in and announced, in the middle of the intersection of Madison Ave and 49th St., “I want to live in a big city!!” Now, camping trips are dull for her unless we throw in some sort of big urban diversion along the way. She’s already compiled a list of American cities to inspect and she also can’t wait to get to FRANCE, despite the smelly cheese (and politicians). It looks like she will soon get that latter dream; she has been accepted in a three week student ambassador program for next summer. Her group will immerse in the culture of Britain, Italy, and France, and she will spend a week in the latter nation living with a family and, hopefully, speaking their language she is working so hard to learn. We look forward to her and her siblings making it to all of those places and more. There is so much more to offer for their minds. I love living here but I do miss the opportunities I ignored when I lived in LA: museums, nightlife, festivals. I was into the outdoors and wilderness; city life was obnoxious, dangerous, and expensive. Well, that hasn’t changed but it looks like adventure to our kids and we hope they manage to find their place in it if that does their spirits well, despite losing their nearby presence. When Kayleigh was small she used to often say, “I’m going to live with you forever!” Later, at about 8 or 9 years old, when we’d remind her of that vow, she would smile and say, “well, I’ll live next door to you!” Seeing her and her siblings gazing from the towers, walking the streets amid a mass of purposeful humanity, studying the paintings and sculptures of the greats, wading, however tentatively, into the energy and color of 10 million strangers’ lives and dreams, was a powerful sight. We’re biased, of course, and even though none of them still have any idea what they want to do with their lives, we absolutely believe they can all be significant additions to that tapestry and perhaps Kayleigh will be the trailblazer in that direction. If only life were as simple as the The Sims…well, I guess we’d all lose interest in playing after a while, so it’s just as well.

...to be continued...

Ann. Letter: Andie On Her Own

2005-12-24T13:32:00.000-08:00

As I grabbed a butter knife to eat cereal, I thought of all the distracting ways our life is spent trying to get three people to figure out how to live a decent productive life without us hovering around, constantly haranguing, or hugging them until they can’t breath. “You turn around and they are gone, so love them now!” How true that warning turned out to be (and so many other words of wisdom). Somehow, we managed to raise one to “adulthood“. Driving a car, paying taxes, choosing a president, getting herself up in the morning (we think)... she has now becoming another young American citizen probably wondering why she ever wished she could grow up.

Six years ago our firstborn, Andrea, was a struggling jr. high kid. She was diagnosed with a touch of ADD, so despite an almost supernatural ability to consume books, she tends to find the everyday coursework grind a bit too overwhelming. We thrashed around a bit, trying to help her. School has always been an organizational challenge for our kids (hmmm! where’d they get that?!) so we put her in Independent Study for 2 years and that seemed to help. By her choice she returned to regular school in 9th grade and graduated from Eureka High School in 2003 with a wide and colorful variety of grades.

Andie’s bumpy teen years were spent drifting from interest to interest, while battling with her noisy younger siblings. Too often she’d futilely try to mother-hen them, rolling her eyes in exasperation, then retreat to the dim recesses of her room. She became deeply interested in role playing games, both video and real-human variety, but especially the latter. Twice a week, for years now, she spends hours in the back of a comic-store, dwelling in mythical made up worlds, battling all kinds of weird stuff in fantasy play with groups of bright, odd-looking folks. Yeah, it's weird and I don't really get it but I'm a Star Wars & Lord of the Rings fan so who am I to criticize? It ain't drugs. She has a wide variety of other tastes and interests. She knits, loves movies (though rarely watches TV), introduced her Dad & Mom to Yoga, enjoys drawing, especially anime, and calligraphy. She studied Japanese for 2 years and for a while was quite a fan of all their goofy animated culture. She also has a great underused dramatic gift. We hope she becomes more willing to develop that. She has a keen sense of justice and has wed herself (often at behest of others) to causes with a passion we hope she will build upon in years to come…once she learns how to master follow-through. She has accomplished some things we are very proud of. In the summer of 2001 she got a passport and malaria shots & spent 2 weeks in Honduras with our church, building houses for victims of Hurricane Mitch and getting to know a bit about that country and life in the world beyond the US. As the only member of our family with calluses from doing anything to directly better the poor, we were deeply impressed, and very glad to see her so awed by the beauty, the people, and the very sad poverty. The following summer her then current boyfriend at the time was taken gravely ill and spent 7 weeks in intensive care; she was at his side every day, learning all about his rare condition and amazing the medical staff not only with her comprehension but her dedication. For a summer we flirted with the notion that our eldest might pursue a lucrative medical career, but she shows no signs of interest and we continue to contribute to our 401k.

As the eldest we hold our breath in trepidation as she experiences the first of everything that scares and thrills a parent (why so many more, it seems, of the former than the latter??): dating, driving, graduating, getting a job. After a brief stint as a janitor at mom's work (laid off due to budget cuts; where is the Socialist Revolution now that we need it?!?) and a Xmas job at a dept. store , she spent MANY months of 2004 looking for "just the right job", i.e. no fast-food, heavy-lifting, organizational challenges, early start times, or too many hours. Finally she found work at our brand new Target store which, in delicious irony, contains nearly all the aspects she was trying to avoid, but seems to like it anyway. So much, in fact, that she decided (after just 2 months) she could live off her new largess and move out. We were all getting along fine, in fact last year I was joking how my oldest daughter “who couldn't wait to leave town now really likes to be home with us!” I remember we all went out to a movie after assuming Andie, who was due home any minute, would prefer to see it with her friends. We came home to find her miffed that we had not included her. It wasn't just the movie, she said, it was doing things with the family that she missed. I felt quite guilty for thinking of her as so independent (despite her years of complaints about being around her noisy siblings). That was 18. At 19 she announces she is "too comfortable" at home and needs to "learn how to live independently" before she departs for said mystery college beyond the horizon. A sound idea, perhaps, but naïve, financially nearsighted, and tainted by the deeply irritating fact that her three new roomates include her college-less, fast-food working, video-game crazed boyfriend. We argued, cajoled, and threatened. We even made out a budget, Bill Cosby-style, that showed her with $2 left over each month under optimistic circumstances, but she displayed her typical stubbornness (after weeks of her typical avoidance of telling us about the decision), and moved out in November ‘04. She was hoping to go on to a 4-year school "anywhere but Humboldt County,“ but lately she has been struggling, feeling that she is “confused and not sure” what to do next with her life. The small effort she gave college failed to inspire her; in fact, it overwhelmed her, and so after two years she has dropped out and seems content, for now, to trudge off daily and be part of the Target “Team”. (Sigh.) We check on her periodically, calling whenever she remembers to pay her phone bill, but avoid their house because it reminds us of... decrepit poverty, which at 19 both Anna & I were all too familiar with. Of course for Andie it represents freedom or maturity or some intangible inspiration that druges like us can't fathom anymore. To me it looks like crap, an unnecessary move into expensive challenges, a wallow in an unambitious collective, and, yes, immorality.

Sure, even I cringe a bit when using that latter word; it seems archaic in this “anything goes” society, but Anna and I didn't need to shack up, and we can't expect morality from our children if we don't reproach its lack. Andie was always the best behaved and still the most pleasantly disposed which makes it all more difficult to be the thundering Old Testament father (my thunder is more of the whiny variety). Still, she stood her ground and so we vowed to subsidize none of this madness, except for school expenses, and... well, we keep her room empty, half wishing her back safe, half hoping she makes it so we can finally have an extra room... but those days will come soon enough and we would probably be wise to not wish them a hasty arrival.

It seems that she might feel she has let us down, and so sort of avoids talking to us, unless we go to Target (captive audience!). We wait for her to decide what she wants next. Perhaps her boyfriend Mike, who possesses a college scholarship from his stint in the CCC will set an example for her when he finally starts taking classes, which he vows to do "soon". He’s a good guy, treats her well, and I’m hoping he's giving ambition serious consideration and perhaps inspire our wayward daughter. There’s not much more we can say except, well, it could be worse. She could be pregnant! (Oh God, why did I think of that….!)

Don’t believe them when they say it gets easier (It never did for my parents, or Anna's!), but it can get better....well, maybe not that either. Children are a miracle...well, maybe not our kids...something close, perhaps...well, huh... let’s just say we love ‘em dearly, no matter what...and they aren’t pregnant or on drugs!! And they are beautiful and successful good people and...they have sucked our whole lives out from under us and...we would do it again in a heartbeat (only this time we’d know what to say each time, and when to say, or NOT say it!).

We stand in Andie’s room, all the hidden spills on the rug now visible, the heater vent closed, shelves bare. After nearly an entire adulthood spent being parents, the prospect of the empty nest seems tantalizing... and frightening. We know in our hearts that our kids are the main reason we have struggled to arrange all the myriad details in our lives in order, to subdue our natural laziness, and become high priests of patience, discipline, and self-denial. Yet when you come to realize that the impossible has happened, that we really have become better at those qualities than we ever expected, our kids begin leaving us, first in their hearts, then with their bodies; so seeing how far they still have to go to include those qualities in their lives, we worry and we fear. But sometimes they surprise us, at unexpected times, and if we stay calm, we know they’ll probably be all right, just as the older folks assure us with those maddening, confident smiles. And when we are finally sure of that, we can begin spending their inheritances with glee.

...to be continued...

Ann. Letter: Following The Crayon Marks

2005-12-24T13:12:00.000-08:00

Of course, the first people we aim to affect with a better world are our children. Choice is a frightening concept when it comes to them. We parents quake with fear over the choices they may be about to make, while trying to stay optimistic, even excited, about the potential. It’s pretty hard to write about our kids and avoid the critic’s eye. And with teens, nearly everything has gone underground, below the radar, and you gotta be a detective to catch what’s really happening inside them. We want so much for them; we hope they will become the people we’ve always wished them to be, despite the glaring contradictions, naiveté, and vanity of those dreams. Yet they are fast becoming the people they were meant to be, people that will probably surprise us.

A block from our house is the doorway at Washington School where we dropped off each of our three children on their first day of Kindergarten. Ages ago to them but only yesterday, of course, to us. Once we walked among their strewn crayons, now we walk together through the halls of the Met and the myriad examples of humanity’s universal desire to express itself. All those memories of the struggles with day care, “enrichment”, and midnight awakenings amazingly fading away. We still have uneaten vegetables, sibling rivalries, and cluttered rooms, oh hell yeah, but we also have discussions about the wide, wide world they will soon inhabit fully. Where once we watched a million Disney videos and “Blues Clues”, we now watch “The Civil War”, “Ghandi”, and “Schindler’s List”. They are learning about human nature and human potential; the dark, the light, and the possible. The requisite of war and the way of peace; the ease of evil and the difficult necessity of love. The lessons are tougher but hopefully so are the students. And don’t worry, we still have a bit of fun,..we never miss an episode of “The Simpsons” or “My Name Is Earl”!

We all went to see the fantastic movie version of Narnia. Anna & the kids had read the books and loved the faithful recreation on the screen. The story is so good at presenting the sweet impression that so many of us feel that something great lies just beneath the surface of everyday existence, a calling for each person to be noble, strong, graceful, and caring, and that it permeates the spiritual landscape of humanity like the very air we breath. Yet at the same time there is a counterspirit just as pervasive, also barely hidden, that wants to drown out that calling, to distract us with minutia, petty wants, individual anxieties, and a charmless grey repetition. The former calls us to honor and dignity, the latter to extinction. To most of us, it is difficult to fully perceive either nature, and to nearly everyone the divide between them is imperceptible. Great, compassionate people can fall, ruined souls still find redemption. The struggle, however, takes place most often in the vast middle ground of souls, starting in adolescence. To young children the difference between good and evil seems so simple, yet it becomes so cloudy, so soon. Our children are now at that age where they are trying so hard to hold on to that uncomplicated view of morality yet they yearn to be accepted and sail out into that sea of impulses and desires that independence embodies.

Earlier this year we journeyed together to see U2. Fantastic show, lead by Bono, the new Time Magazine Person of the Year. We were inspired by this great showman and humanitarian to think more about the power of one faithful person, armed with well researched facts, a clear voice, a handful of charm, a disdain for wishful thinking, and a simple love of humanity, can end hunger, end crippling international debt, end disease…to change the world. And that it isn’t just something for a celebrity to take on, but, as Bono pointed it’s critical that we do it. “The only thing that balances how preposterous it is to have to listen to an Irish rock star talk about these subjects is the weight of the subjects themselves.” No preaching, just the right amount of persuasion, and I could see my children listening… What a thrill to share at least one more thing with our finicky teens.

We do wish our kids could become sophisticated and a bit more worldly, so they might build upon the better parts of growing up in a small town and thrive in the wider world, but (irony) how can they do that while living IN this isolated small town? We don’t have the funds to travel 12 hours round-trip to San Francisco very often so here they sit, amid all this beauty and some very good people, but far from most of civilization’s wonders.

Aren’t kids something? After all these years, all these lessons, all these many weighty issues to ponder, they still don’t have the sense to notice all the mud they tracked in. “Where?!” they ask incredulously, standing right there on a mopped and now freshly defiled floor while you scream at them, as if you have lapsed back into your senile tendency of senseless accusations. Even though they now are in sight of official adulthood, good sense still eludes them with startling frequency. The good news about their being older, is that by giving them more chores than ever, chances are that, say, big sister mopped that floor and will graciously deliver the obligatory beating to the clueless transgressor for you. I love these kids and I want so much for them, yet discipline is such a hard job, such a feat of endurance. I once listened to a video tape of me disciplining the kids; I spoke so sharply I sounded like an obnoxious jerk. It shocked and even shamed me that I should sound so harsh. I vowed to handle things differently… so now I don’t speak on tape.

...to be continued...

Annual Letter: Stuff About Ken

2005-12-22T08:18:00.000-08:00

I’ve fully embraced the middle-age/income/class/ and middle-of -the-road lifestyle. We even live in the middle of the block. I may be the last generation to not only care about being bourgeoisie, but to even know what it means (actually I think I know what it means, but since it sounds French I’m inclined to ignore it). In June 2000 we attended my 20 year high school reunion in LA, a freaky experience as anyone who as been to one knows, and in June of 2003 I reunited with some old college friends and commiserated with them about turning 40. It was great to see them (everybody looks great!) and reminisce: the best part seems to be the realization that you care so little now for the things that racked your psyche at 16 or 20. Perhaps the burdens we carry around today will be so much fluff even sooner. The gang all agreed that time is way too valuable to be wasted, and the plans that still are with us need to be addressed, not ignored. It is sad to realize how out of touch we get with old friends over the years (if you are reading this you prob. already know how guilty I am!), how out of touch with the old dreams and how caught up in the mundane and everyday.

In Oct.2000 this awareness became apparent with dreadful insistence when my high school classmate Russ Kaneshiro died from a heart attack at 38. There was a huge funeral and several beautiful eulogies; such a diverse community of grief puts to bed the notion that your anguish is unique. Still, I had nothing to offer other than my presence, and the same terrible, clichéd thoughts that we all have when a friend dies so young. The camaraderie afterward among good old LA friends helped assuage my sorrow, but nothing could ever make up for the inconsolable eyes of his widow and small children.

The love of friends and family can’t be repaid with an avoidable early departure. We shouldn’t pass up an adventurous life but we can prevent an unhealthy one. I returned from LA with a commitment to get into decent shape, which still took me about a year to get going, but I steadily committed to the outrageously simple notion of "eat less, exercise more" that the docs push all the time. Who knew these quacks were on to something? I lost about 60 lbs and have kept most of it off for three years. Folks keep asking for the name of my "diet plan". Wha? "Eat less, exercise more!" It's the simpleton diet -- perfect for me. Ok, you have to count calories which means you have to read labels and add, but finally I'm using all those years of math I learned in school. I only live 3 miles from work in a nearly flat town so I rode my cheap bicycle, huffing loudly a couple times a week in the first summer, but eventually building up to every weekday, rain or shine, all year long. I had all the excuses in the past: "my life's too busy", "I get up too late", "the culture made me this way". Yikes. Silly. I'm not saying getting the habits going was easy, maintaining them is even harder, but you have to find something specific that motivates and hold on to it each day . For me it was the way good health really percolates through your system, it calms, clears, and strengthens your mind & heart as well as your body. My other constant motivation is the look in Russ's kid's eyes. Every mile on the bike, every donut deferred, puts that darkness a bit further from my own family, hopefully. Brutal but true. I may get creamed by a truck (I've had a few close calls and Andie & Anna have actually collided with cars) but at least I won't be sitting around waiting for it. The very best part? Now that we're getting serious about their health; we have better attitudes and increasing self-esteem (which is legally mandated in California), and we look mah-velous (in just the right light). Unfortunately, our dog Tom is still quite fat, but he can’t ride a bicycle.

I strive ever on to be like Phil in Groundhog Day. Not the rodent, but the jerk weatherman played by Bill Murray, who repeats the same day, literally, until he begins to learn and improve and love. Partway through his long ordeal he wonders aloud in a bar, “What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and everything you did was the same, and nothing mattered?” A pathetic beer-swiller next to him replies, “That about sums it up for me.” Lashed to the great revolving wheel of time, Phil will spin in place until he finds a way to earn his promotion to the next level. He can’t change his nature, his human nature, but he can change his expression of it, and his actions reflect it, to the eventual good of all (along with some real chuckles, heh, heh).

Hitting 40 does feel a bit like just that: hitting 40. There’s a more than slight amount of aches and pains, especially after taking up a regular gym regimen. For our contemporaries, and older folks, you know what I am talking about. But if you work at UPS, climbing in and out of the truck dozens of times a day, lifting, twisting, pulling, etc., the aches are pervasive. I was pretty bummed to see Vioxx taken off the market because I was planning to use a lot of it in the coming years. The company has graciously provided us with a simple and consistent policy toward our decomposing bodies: it’s your fault. Ok. Working out does help it feel better overall but man, I’m tired, yet surrounded by restless youth. How beautiful that in a world obsessed with youth & beauty, we would have an example set for us by the Pope who would not hide his infirmities nor hide them as a badge of shame. He set an example for me to follow into the last half of my life (Should I, God willing, live that long), “Do not be afraid.” I’ll do what I can to stay healthy and vigorous, but someday my body will let me down and hopefully I’ll remember him and his example.

We’ve been raising kids for so long, even though we never finished being kids ourselves, in a society that tells us to remain children forever, so how do we age gracefully and usefully in a culture obsessed with youth and ephemera? At least folks my age always have the baby boomers just ahead of us, all that constant marketing aimed at older folks, all those Cialis and Lipitor ads to make us feel younger (not to mention the once “dangerous” Led Zeppelin now selling Cadillacs). In a house full of teens, I seem like Gandalf at times, wizened and wise (I need one of those big staffs) but I lack even an old wizard’s amount of cool. I try: I still listen to all my old music, but now I carry it all around on my iPod. We watch a few movies and programs together, and that’s fun, but I’m a bit of an alien among these youths. I’m like the Ugandan Ambassador to the UN; living in Manhattan, dining with swells, picking up slang and sophistication here and there. He’s observing a lot, having a pretty good time, even seems like a New Yorker, but in the end, he’s still from Uganda, often clueless, perhaps more than a bit put-off. Dig? I’m not hip; I’m just assigned to deal with it as part of my mission, which includes judgment and criticism. And for me, that’s cool enough.

Is it all so anti-climatic? I've already lived to see so much accomplished not just by civilization but even, wonder of wonders, by myself (mostly by somebody whipping me, but whatever it takes...). I've seen things in the natural world of great beauty and spectacle, and take comfort that they will endure long after me, and I've seen the disappearance of things, such as the mountain glaciers, I never thought would fade. I've seen humanity take great strides toward peace and health and comfort, yet still too many live lives of stunning fragility in the face of man's neglect and nature's ravages... the Sudan crisis, New Orleans, and the horrific tsunami being perfect examples. I know but there but by the grace of God go we, perched on the edge of a similar quake fault and an even deadlier ocean, yet so fortunate to be born here... and in this time. It is a great time and I've seen an amazing span of it. I've seen technology let us down, build us up, or both; the internet comes to mind on that one. I can bore my children endlessly with tales of "back in my day, we had hard, heavy black telephones and they lasted 40 years!" An old world where the products outlasted our desire to depend on them. I revel in the new stuff as much as the next guy but I already sense the growing bewilderment the old must feel at the exponential growth of gadgets and systems and sheer changes that are pushed at us everyday. It's cool looking, but do I really need a cellphone that takes a bad picture of me? I'm still a bit amazed at phones without cords. It’s exciting that potato chips have evolved from a time when having “ridges” was cutting edge to myriads of varieties, including “organic roasted red pepper and goat cheese, kettle-cooked”, but it doesn’t change the fact that I can’t eat them anymore. I use expressions that I hardly anyone still uses or has the slightest idea what they mean, in fact I use more of them than Carter has pills. My car cost more than my parents' house. I recently took a class at the local college: the professor was in diapers when I started at HSU. My doctor is younger than me and my music is older than "classic" but not “classical”, which I now appreciate so much more. I’m older that Teddy Roosevelt was when he became president. I’ve outlived Elvis and Martin Luther King. I've seen comets, religions, revolutions come and go. And I have to chuckle at the goofiness of some of what I've lived to see. Most aging baby boomers, in whose shadow we '60's babies are condemned to forever dwell, are a constant source of amusement. Can it really be that Sting is a Vegas singer and Led Zeppelin sells Cadillacs? At least Dylan is still Dylan, though in his recent autobiography he admits that he really wasn’t Dylan, which oddly, sort of makes him more Dylan than ever. More often I'm beginning to feel like I have enough stuff. Acquiring (now that I have acquired) isn't as much fun as doing. And what the hell was I doing during those years when all I could afford was "doing", not acquiring? Well, I tried to be a husband and a Dad, with often mixed results, but I can easily say that those are the best things I ever did and ever will do. I am ready to add to the to-do list, as is Anna, and that means more than just learning snowboarding (though I want do to do that before my joints give out).

From this point it seems so obvious and cliché (forgive me, I’m thick): the last few years have really forced me to consider the obvious fact that life, while not necessarily short, is fleeting, and I need to live for something higher than being entertained or fitting in. That each of us matters in different ways, and I better get cracking on doing something effective. Right now our time is spent mostly on the kids and that’s plenty, but eventually the years left should be spent embracing, not hiding from, the shrinking world. After all of these years we are (to paraphrase Don Henley) trying not to settle for less out of life while careful not to recklessly let slip our contentment in the search for something more.

Amid the struggles of parenting, husbanding, and career, things have happened that have seriously challenged and ultimately enhanced my entire belief system. I found myself being presented with opportunities to test my courage and my faith (both in God and people); and involved in situations fraught with risk and vast potential for disappointment. In some cases I dodged and weaved for a time but overall, I did not run & hide and was surprised to find my faith rewarded. I do believe God is watching. Screwed-up as I was as a kid, I can’t even imagine the dangerous, rude, and hurtful things I might have done without the concept of a observant higher authority holding me accountable for everything. Higher Power: it’s not just for drunks anymore! I didn’t always do the best I could, but I found I could do better than I had ever expected, and that has made all the difference. I allowed myself to see myself better, and it was the catalyst to being better. Self-help gobble-de-gook? Well, maybe, but it’s simply looking myself in the mirror each day and saying, “Do you really want to be the same old thing again today?” I know, I know, some of you are saying, hey! Hide those mirrors, pronto! They just cause more trouble. But at mid-life it seemed nicer to start looking in the mirror and thinking, “what’s good about you and how can you use it for good?” rather than rehash the past worries, trying to avoid the bad. All these ordeals made me want to do a bit more for those around me, family, friends -- the folks we know we should put first but who often trail behind the noisy gang of Me, Myself, and I. I’m still a gaff-prone, lazy, arrogant goof, but I am taking some comfort in knowing that each day I’ll grit my teeth & keep trying to rise above the doubt & the petty selfish concerns that most of us have to struggle with.

And we have to struggle with it. All this self-doubt adds to the barely audible deep bass line of evil that permeates the world with noisy lies & quiet despair, shaking our foundations, clouding our vision, and crumbling hope, while it camouflages itself as “life”, life with all its disappointment, risk, and darkness.
“Well, that’s life,” we all say, game faces on, striving to hide our bitterness and dread. No, no, no, it isn’t. That’s death and you can reject it. Every day, every moment, turn away from that sound and rise a little higher… ascend above the rubble. Hard as hell, it’s true, but for most of us lucky, healthy, rich Americans it’s still as simple as that. Or should be. We’ve already attained great heights just by dint of where we were born or where we now live. Can’t we reach a little higher or has the altitude of our affluence thinned the air and made us foolish? Lots of people understand this need to keep pulling ourselves above the dark gravity of despair. Was this simple turnaround on my part by divine intervention or plain reason? Does it matter? I choose to believe that it is both, and what makes life grander and even more worth living is the fact that I have that choice. The choice to see a better world as possible and choose to make it happen, one faltering stumble at a time….

...to be continued...

Annual Letter: Travelin' Fools

2005-12-22T07:54:00.000-08:00

In the last six years our children have matured into free-thinking strong-willed people with their own take on the world and their own sometimes furtive ways to explore it...which means, of course, we now long for the simplicity of the “diaper-needs-changing“ days! (No, just kidding; keep yer smelly brats away from us.) They argue politics and social dilemmas, though are still more prone to go on about music (Kayleigh), video games or trivia from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader (Logan), or never get a word in (Andie). In 2001-02 I spent 14 months reading “The Lord of the Rings” to Logan and Kayleigh (Andie read it on her own in about one voracious week) and as much fun as it was, it was the last for bedtime stories. After all those years of herding each one to the couch for the regular pre-bedtime becalming ritual, they seem to be good & diverse readers in their own right. Even though school demands plenty of reading now and they need a break, we’ll see one eating breakfast cereal, groggily reading a copy of Time and know our efforts on that front paid off.

Since 1999 we’ve launched expeditions to Yosemite, Crater Lake, Mt. St. Helens, the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, Central Florida, and Colorado. We keep dreaming about trips to Hawaii or even a few extra days in $an Franci$co but those remain financially elusive, so we try to concentrate on the good stuff in our backyard and enjoy the delights that come with them. Somebody once said, “fun is like life insurance, the older you get, the more expensive it gets”. We just bought our first new car in 17 years (a Honda Odyssey) and now that we travel with air conditioning, no leaks, and actual room for the family AND stuff.... how did we do it before?? So fun not only gets more expensive, it needs to be more comfortable as well! Getting older isn't all bad...

It was everyone’s initial visit to the Grand Canyon except mine, so I was treated to the “oohhh!” reaction as they first gazed upon nature’s greatest spectacle. Perhaps the only time in many years, if ever, that we all shared the exact same wonderful feeling together, at the same time. We had great hiking weather, topped off by a sighting of nine extremely rare Calif. Condors. We didn’t make it to the river, of course, but getting this bunch out the door is an achievement in itself. It was most special in that it was the last big trip before our kids started turning 18 and moving on. Dad the latent geology teacher goes hog-wild in the desert (perhaps the burning sun does it?). After a few days in Death Valley the kids will never forget what an alluvial fan is, no matter how hard they try.

Our recent trips have included rare visits with our dear old friends the Maggios (who married in college under a cloud of naysayers and who have now celebrated 20+ years); on each visit we catch the infectious enthusiasm for travel that Karen brims with. She’ll pull out guidebooks and toss out ideas faster than we can say “arrivederci.” Someday, we’ll finally manage to afford to join them. We’ve also been the regular guest of our friends the Lews in LA where we get the run of the house and their great hospitality as a base for my old stomping grounds. It’s been difficult to get old friends to come up to our inaccessible location in the far reaches of Middle-Earth, so we try to go to them; an effort that’s always worth it (though we would love to be hosts more often - hint, hint!).

...to be continued...

Annual Letter: Recent Family Events

2005-12-20T08:22:00.000-08:00

In recent years our extended family experienced a roller-coaster series of events sad and sublime. Like many of you, our friends, we lost our oldest generation, and their collective experience. And we greeted a whole millennial crop of little folks. First, my stepdad Lorenzo was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in May of 1999. He began treatment just before my cousin spent a 17 day stint in a Vegas ICU. It sounds like a bachelor party gone bad (especially knowing Boyd—the old Boyd, Tina, I swear!) but it was a missed diagnosis on a burst appendix that very nearly killed him. Boyd recuperated in time to limp west and join us at my sister Audra’s wedding to Andrew Houston in October. They had a beautiful ceremony at Mission Carmel, kneeling on the very grave of Father Serra, the founder of the California missions. Step lightly! The weather was perfect and the reception lively and warm. My stepfather (Audra’s natural father) was declining rapidly, despite treatment, but held on long enough to have the first dance with his youngest daughter and to give her away. He succumbed on Dec. 24th. I gave the eulogy at his funeral on New Year’s Eve, 1999. He had raised me since I was 4; and we had many stormy times, but he told me he was proud of me. He was often difficult, childlike in his anger and his joy; he was not very comfortable with the individual, but he held a strong belief in the potential of the human race. He was a 20th century man, an engineer, one who dreamed of great machines, grand formulas to explain the universe, and an awakening of humanity to its possibilities. He loathed the despots, large and small who plagued his times. A rural survivor of the Depression, he knew hunger and want, so he worked hard and kept an eye to the future, sure that we would all be better if we focused on our abilities and not our fears. He was always skeptical about God, always seeking some proof of His existence. In his last months he told me he had found it but I didn’t understand his explanation, though he seemed at peace with it. In the end, the dead leave those answers up to us.

My Mom had a tough time for a while, but made it through the grief. Four years later she married a long-time family friend, also widowed, and my former school principal, Bill Raines. There's no foooling this guy; he's known about my shenanigans for decades. Lately they have been enjoying Bill's new granddaughter, Jordan.

Four days after Lorenzo's funeral I was rear-ended in a hit-and-run auto accident and spent the next five weeks at home with Regis, Ripa, and my new friend Vicodin. Fortunately, no broken bones. Around the same time Uncle Bruce, my NY summer-time dad, also passed from cancer. He had volunteered in the Army at 16, rising to Lt.Colonel in the Air Force, and was a veteran of WWII and Korea, being a decorated pilot in the latter conflict. He once flew 97 missions in 97 days, so his later career as chauffer in New York City traffic came easy. He was raised in Eastern Tennessee but loved NY and knew it intimately, bestowing that affection on me, filtered through a keen southern wit. I miss him and his adopted hometown, and I miss him in it. Like many war veterans, he kept much about himself to himself. Something about family life didn't work for him, and we all suffered his absences, especially my aunt & cousin. Many folks give greatly to one thing in life and in doing so help many strangers, but they come home incapable of giving to those most needy, the ones that try to love them. He died alone, unwilling to be cared for and we grieve most for the lost opportunities. There are still a lot of vets around who have yet to win the last great battle of their lives, the campaign to open up and seek real solace among the living. Even though we will never really know what they saw and what they lost, we can listen, and learn more fully what we have all gained from them, if they find the last measure of courage to let us in.

The grim toll continued that winter of 2000 as we lost Andie’s great-grandmother Wilma and her grandmother Carol. These were women who loved Andie dearly, Carol having been indispensable to Anna when she was left by Carol’s son, and in our early years together when we were a young couple trying to work our way out of poverty and raise a toddler. Both lived long enough to be sure that Andie would be a happy & successful woman, but Carol especially died much too young and would miss so much of her many grandchildren’s lives. In March 2000 my father Jack suffered a heart attack. I spent a week in Seattle while he recuperated from bypass surgery. The anxiety my stepmom Delores and I experienced was relieved by hours filling me in on years of interesting dirt about Dad. He has made a full recovery, thank God, and is back to over-working himself again.

These sudden losses and frightening experiences had us reeling but new lives were joining us as well. In April 2000 Lucy Roberts was born to Anna’s sister Jen & her husband Tim, followed by the googley blue eyes of Miriam in Dec.2002. We were all overjoyed when Tim accepted a family physician’s position in a clinic in Grants Pass, Oregon; still not next door to us but far better than Minnesota! In late 2000 my cousin Boyd and his lovely new wife Tina held a reception in Tampa, Florida, so we trooped east to celebrate. The kids had their first jet ride and it was quite the thrill to fly all the way across the US. Florida was fun but the weather was freaky; ice at Disney World while it was 62 back home in Eureka. It was also the first time that I was able to join my mother and my Aunt for Christmas since 1966. Audra spent the holiday eating for two and in May 2001 produced Candace, making me an Uncle again. Tina & Boyd, despite busy professional careers found time to deliver smilin' Liam, two months early but doing fine and justifying his grandma Rosemary’s move to Florida (which put my family’s NY connection into past tense). Had enough babies? No? Bring ‘em on! (Hey! Somebody else is changing the diapers finally!) For Xmas 2001 Anna’s brother Chris imported from Ohio his fiancé Jade and her two sweet daughters Sierra and Desiree. We were present as all three girls had an exciting dip in the Pacific, their first contact with an ocean. Last December, Jade produced a third baby daughter to completely estrogenize daddy Chris. In March 2001 Anna’s cousin Josh and his wife Kathy brought happy Jack into the world, just 2 weeks after the passing of the matriarch of our family, Anna’s paternal grandmother Marian (they passed each other on the trip from heaven!).

I was very privileged to get to know this venerable and always cheerful lady, who was a very positive influence on us. For Marion's 90th birthday (Jan ’99) the whole family chartered a yacht for a sunny cruise around San Francisco Bay. Four generations enjoyed each other’s company and the view, sailing under the great bridges that were just dreams when this woman, wizened now but still hale, was already in adulthood. It was marvelous to think that one person had brought some of us into being and all of us together, safe at the end of an astounding century she had witnessed unfold nearly in its entirety. Long enough to greet little faces that never saw the 20th century and have a darn good chance of making it into the 22nd. Each long life is a bridge between civilizations and a vessel of wisdom from one to the other, though it is tragic how little of that wisdom we end up incorporating. I think of Marian's horse-powered childhood, riding unafraid with her big brother on acreage that is now the Santa Ana Civic Center. Life on the ranch was a life of hard, but liberating personal responsibility, in a world practically alien from ours, before the Depression & the Greatest Generation made their mark; before the term "World War" was heard, and long before they were numbered. Yet it was, of course, a world with miseries and terror. That seems to be always with us, but she lived a life that kept it at bay from her own family. My own grandmother, who died 10 years ago, was an ardent anti-communist who liked to point out that she lived to see the creation and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I remember the joy I felt as the Berlin Wall came down; like a great thaw of the human spirit taking place, ending a world trapped in a 50-year ideological deep freeze. We all watched the people pour through the openings, their faces giddy with excitement, fear, and desire. What next, they wondered, even as they enjoyed the moment. What next?

The world where order is maintained at gunpoint is giving way to a world of numbers, borderless entities, and some perilous new anxieties as the tribal collides with the global, but it also becoming a world of openness & personal responsibility that can harness for good the best strengths of the human spirit... if fear doesn't blockade. When symbols fall and the walls come down, when emotions & desires, idealism and cynicism crowd and mix chaotically, there is no sure prediction it will all go well - but there never was. Some things come together, some just collide. Old rusty systems are swept away without any concrete plans for something new and we quail at the uncertain prospects, but was being frozen better? Are inaction & gray certitude the ideals we really want to live by? When we tear down the walls around us and in us, the ones that keep us trapped & isolated in a faithless notion of "safety", who knows what may come creeping in, yet who knows what may come soaring out? We all need to be vigilant and resolute enough to guard against the former while still optimistic enough to look for the latter, and we need to instill these qualities in those around us. Marion stayed hopeful through a century of horror and terror, not with her head in the sand but doing what she could to bring comfort and peace to those around her, with pleasure and confidence, and lived to see a sunny 90th birthday surrounded by love and admiration, and still appreciating the wonders of all we have achieved, great and small. Hope matters, and it matters most when we live it.
....to be continued...

Annual Letter!! Part 1

2005-12-20T08:15:00.000-08:00

Talk about anti-climactic! After three years of desultory effort, my "annual"letter has finally crossed the finishing line. Rather than hack it down into a meaningless chunk that can easily fit in an card (when have I ever done that?!), I thought I'd publish it here in chapters and you can read all or as little as you like. Thanks so much to everyone who has encouraged me to keep writing over the years and who still read this! It isn't much, I know, but it's really great to know it's appreciated. It adds to the fun... and let me know what you think! hiway96@yahoo.com

From our family to yours we hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a great, great New Year!

THE MALCOMSON FAMILY LETTER 1999-2005

“We thought it would never happen…”

How many times, in so many ways, have we said that? The thing so longed for, and worked for, that seems just out of reach; the event so dreaded we would pretend it was impossible, until it strikes. Children grown, elders pass, dreams attained, worlds changed. So much can happen in so short a time… even one day.

Writing a simple letter, however, is not one of those things for me. It’s been six years since I last inflicted you with this missive, something I thought might never happen again! We are all well and fine and hoping this finds you even better than last we met.

The River of Memories...

During my childhood I spent summers with my aunt and uncle in their New York City apartment. When I was about nine, my aunt was given two tickets for an evening sail on the Hudson River aboard a three-masted schooner. My uncle worked evenings so I was her escort for the cruise. So cool; it was like being on a pirate ship! Excited people of all ages filled the vessel and were put to work by the crew, helping to disembark and raise the sails. We glided into mid-river on a gentle summer breeze amid light rain, but the motion on the water roiled the stomach of this land-lubber straight away. My green pallor was soon noted and I was quickly led to the rail and parked. Blaeh… my joyful cruise turned into an ordeal as nausea became my world. Manhattan and New Jersey rolled slowly by; happy and eager voices surrounded me, taking in the view and enjoying food and wine while I stared at the green water, quietly groaning, wishing I had never come. As the late sun dipped low it emerged beneath the overcast. We had reached the south end of the island and so the sun’s radiance in the west illuminated the ranks of skyscrapers, giving them depth and even greater height. An intense reflected glow began to fill the ship’s sails with light. In my queasiness I’d barely noticed the view but now I looked up. The World Trade Center’s twin towers, their aluminum facades newly installed, were intended to be silver in the daylight, but for these few moments, brief even for a child, they blazed with the golden brilliance of the sunset. For several years from our Greenwich Village neighborhood just a mile away I had watched these two mammoth buildings rise, filling the sky with their bulk. A 9 year old is no architectural critic but even I thought they were plain at best, yet so thrillingly huge. My uncle had first taken me to the site when I was five, holding me up to the fence so I could peer into the enormous foundation excavation. It was neat-o to watch their progress, the Tallest Buildings On Earth, steadily higher each summer, then finished in silver. As I grew older, I would ride my bike down to the site, stand at their base, and gaze upward. Two pillars of human construction holding up the sky at the center of the world. Not lovely, but powerful beyond time. From the river that evening, however, they became awesome and beautiful, pulling me out of my sickness and transforming my perceptions.

I’ve wished I could go back to that evening cruise…I’d take the Dramamine this time, I swear. I wish I could just sail down that river one more time and be in the memory, all the sensations, all the promise, all the innocence…but…
…we must all move on, from every memory, every inconsolable darkness, brilliant light, or confused gray; time does more than carry us along on its steady current, it gives us the chance to see a revelation or at least an opportunity to lift our sails into the winds of change, though we may be tempted to huddle below decks.

...to be continued...

California Be Damned

2005-11-15T08:16:00.000-08:00

"...as long as it might win votes, there is virtually no argument too deranged or dishonest for the desperate defenders of California's failing status-quo. Up is Down. Black is White. Right is Wrong." -- San Diego Union-Ledger

"Want to send a message to California's politicians? Vote NO on all the propositions!" -- campaign literature mass mailing

A year ago I laughed at a bitter, almost vicious, tirade written in the gloomy hours of post-election dawn by the NY Times's hyperbolic elitist Maureen Dowd, bemoaning the basic stupidity of the Red-State mentality that had put the man she loved to hate back in the White House. Her frustration was visceral, grinding, wrenching. If a pedestrian so much as sauntered by wearing a red shirt she might have poked out his eyes with her stilettos and chewed out his liver. I too voted for Kerry but, to say the least, didn't share her level of disappointment.

Now I do.

The Special Election is over and California has revealed itself as a political wasteland littered with the propaganda of an out-of-touch oligarchy and crowded with the sun-ripened bodies of a misinformed, sheep-like electorate. The state is beyond broke; billions in deficit; we have raised our education budget to $10,000 per child and keep increasing total spending yet our test scores still sag and our buildings crumble; we can’t fix enough roads and bridges; we take decades when we do; we pay the highest taxes in all the states and don’t want to pay more…. We can’t unseat a single legislator because of fixed districts, yet we send a message saying, “don’t involve us in the process, fix it yourselves!” and so send the whole mess back to the same folks who got us here. Shame! Shame on all of you for allowing Dick Armey, Barbara Boxer, and Judge Wapner (fer godssake!) to sway you from effective, moderate reform of this once great state. Who made that great cynical quote that I used to pooh-pooh and tell folks not to subscribe to in any way: “If voting actually had any effect it would be made illegal.” (already Googled it and mostly get outrageous far-left websites saying “Ward Churchill got it right”; boy, that helped pull me back from the brink!) ? Pure old money, lies, and more lies have triumphed over moderation and rational change. What hundreds of years of monarchy, tyranny, communism, fascism, imperialism, and dictatorship could not do to democracy, one single election has done. The insulated forces of the status-quo have turned the people into willing participants in the undoing of their own economic well being. Democracy, great as it is, allowed this to happen. The people were willingly coerced into voting for Tammany. (Do you not know what that refers to? You probably went to a Calif. Public school; you probably shouldn’t vote until you do know about Tammany, and when you do, you will vote different, I guarantee it.) The foxes are in the henhouse and rather than drive them out you stuff more hens inside.
“Lies, ALL LIES!” says Frau Unabrow in the Austin Powers movie, yet that farce is like Shakespeare compared to the parody of truth emanating from Sacramento’s hallowed halls and neighboring propaganda sweatshops. I’ve never been less proud to be a Californian, a Democrat, a Union member. I’ve never been less happy to be non-ignorant. Shame on all of you. A pox on all your houses.

<deep breath>. Ok… why didn’t the reform props pass? The Gov, now safely ensconced in China, laughs and says, basically, “whoops, I made a bad; sorry ‘bout that. We’ll all work together now!” Well, sheesh. He has to say something like that now. Look who he is forced to work with. The same legislative robots whose owners pulled a mega-million dollar curtain over the eyes of several million voters.

How could good reform measures like these fail? Arnold wanted reform quickly because we are in the red and structured to not get out, so every day matters. You don’t wait to put out a fire. But the enemy was so good at calling the Special Election “unnecessary and costly” that turned some people off to the idea of any props in the first place, so a number of folks just voted no on everything. My local fishwrap was one of the few papers to come out against Prop. 77 (redistricting) because they maintained a “send ‘em a message to work together by voting no on everything” philosophy. If it was just the regular June election, some of the enemy’s argument would have been undermined.

There was also just too much stuff to ask the voters to understand all at once. Look, I believe in civic responsibility. You should read, you should study, you should look around and ask questions of knowing, fair-minded folks (like me!). Ideally, these props shouldn’t be that hard for most folks to understand, well… ideally, they should be dealt with by our elected representatives, but we know where they stand on that, so it’s up to us, unfortunately. Realistically, however, it was too much for most folks to get, and not because they are stupid. Just busy, a bit fearful, and not into doing other people’s jobs for them, especially well paid folks. Of course, you shouldn’t vote “NO” on something you don’t get!! Arnold should have gone for Prop. 77 only and then work on the others in June and November ’06. The teacher’s tenure was a bad idea I see now. It played intot he hands of the propagandists big time.
Some of the reasons the props failed is because so many people didn’t really like Arnold in the first place. Women think he is a groper and an over-testosteroned nincompoop. Men seem to like him more, naturally, but many (esp. union men) think he is the Republican Trojan horse, ready to take California over for the big corporations and change the overtime laws. I didn’t vote for him (but that was more against Recall than against Arnold, though I did, stupidly, vote for Cruz Bustamante; you we find that this blog will be a steady repudiation of much – though not all—of the political folks I have followed for 20 years). The fact is he is something untenable in this day and age of polarization and character assassination: a unity minded moderate. Yeah, I know, run for the hills! I’ve watched this guy carefully, read, listened to thoughtful analysis and have concluded that he really doesn’t have much of an agenda except to make California healthy for jobs and for the great life it was known for back in the day of Ronnie Reagan. Sound finances. A healthy business climate that still has the best worker protection in America. The best infrastructure: education, roads, water, electricity, and a clean, protected environment. It can be done, but it can’t be done by spending our bond rating into the toilet. There are realities to contend with, Mr. & Ms. Dreamer, and sometimes they may require your supposed enemy to sit at the table and discuss. Arnold, cigars, Hummers, and all, is a Practical Idealist. Someone who really believes not just the American Dream, but the truly wonderful upgrade of that: the California Dream. He lived it. He gets it. We should be helping him but too many of us believed the hype of a large, well-funded cabal of jackals who have only their own narrow agendas to protect.

Another reason for failure: Arnold’s team. Big dreams aside, Arnold, I believe, flunked the staffing test. These guys wouldn’t let Arnold respond directly to the early criticism last summer, and through most of the fall. Those stupid “scowling Nazi” billboards were towed on trailers up and down the state spewing the moronic “Arnold hates nurses, firefighters, teachers” back in March. Worst of all, they were rolling them through Humboldt County – way the hell up here with 0.4% of the state’s population!! If they have the money for that kind of penetration, I thought, Arnold better get his act in gear. We kept hearing from the mostly liberal, mostly status quo loving press that Arnold is “lining up special interest money in the tens of millions for his big campaign against public employees”. Sometimes they might throw in the more truthful addendum “unions” after that line, but the word was out: Arnold has big money from his big corporation friends to attack nurses, firefighters, teachers. Ridiculous? Well… he is a Republican, right? Therefore he must be getting Chevron, big landowners, Halliburton on his side. Well, if he did, he must not have given the execs enough rides in his Hummer because the poor beleaguered unions outspent him 5 to 1. Yes, FIVE to ONE.

The $$ are still being tabulated but it was a great year to be in advertising. The public-employee unions spent at least $200 million to defeat the reform propositions after their hand-picked, completely bought Legislature spent two years refusing to cooperate with Arnold on any meaningful, lasting reform (all they basically agreed upon was how to cover the last two years deficits, a shortfall that doubled our state’s total debt and sent our payments on said debts past the cost of funding the entire UC system). Arnold’s team was slow, apparently witless, and led by a well-meaning but (perhaps understandably naïve) leader. A far cry from the ruthless billboard Aryan paraded up and down every freeway in the state. Did Reagan have this much trouble in ’68? Well… things weren’t as f**ked up, then, son, and the vested interests weren’t as well invested…. Sorry, I ramble. All of us who supported the governor, followed the analysis, read and understood the facts, looked past the hype and slanted, ignorant reporting (it’s almost hopeless for California when you just consider that the two major newspapers are the LA Times and the hideous SF Chronicle), and really considered the situation (all 10 of us), could see he was in trouble early and kept getting worse. Paging John Kerry. Kerry didn’t respond early, quickly, and once to those stupid swift boat ads, so they dragged along for months, drowning out his message. Defeat came swiftly too. Arnold stayed on message but didn’t speak to the lies enough. Paging Dr. Geobbels: repeat a lie enough and people will believe it. And huge dues-paid funds to get a message out will do the trick. Arnold hates teachers. Arnold hates firefighters. Arnold hates unions. Arnold is scary. Arnold is white, angry, and well-funded. Arnold is the Devil. My mailbox began filling up weeks before the election with propaganda partly paid for by my union dues (the “California Labor Federation” which the Teamsters belong to, sent me a ton of glossy stuff with sad, angry, ethnically diverse firefighters and (oddly) very white nurses, bedraggled with overwork, warning me of the end of union protection) “Don’t let Arnold take away your rights!!” WTF? What about the right to pay less in taxes or have a solvent government at least? Anyway, slow to respond in the face of an extremely well-oiled machine, one that had obviously been getting ready since the Fall of ’03.

Arnold could’ve walked on to the Tonight Show any night and gotten a chance to get his message out to thousands of California voters for free. Jay is a liberal but loves Arnold and gets good ratings. Arnold announced his candidacy on that show! But does he go on? No. Arnold’s stupid staff wouldn’t even put him on the Armstrong & Getty show until the end of October. WTF?? This is the top rated radio show in the Central Valley and one of the biggest in the Bay Area. (Arnold’s staff was mad about some mix up during the ’03 campaign that had Arnold interviewed while conservative Sen. Tom McClintock was on the show; Arnold was refuted a bit but held his own very well, yet the staff never forgave A&G; that’s the kind of long memory that works against you in politics). RULE #1: ALWAYS GO FOR THE FREE MEDIA!

Alright, I know, I’m going on. This is a blog, not a barrage. Pithy ain’t my style, unfortunately. Arnold: I love ya, man. Fire some people and let’s git’er done. We knew it would be hard to bring even moderate reform to the state but surely among all these bright, talented people roaming around our Golden State, somebody must have enough expertise to avoid costly mistakes. Sure, it’s easy to criticize but I realize that I saw it all coming and I’m just some yahoo in nowheresville. Don’t let this fiasco gain momentum. Practically everyone I explained Prop. 77 to liked it more and most seemed willing to vote for it. I didn’t hide the facts, I cut through the lies by explaining. Arnold, you got some ‘splaining to do, and I will be there with ya, buddy. I hope a lot more of us are as well.

Goblins In The Mist

2005-11-01T07:02:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the least favorite day of the year for UPS drivers. First, it's Monday. 'Nuff said, except that it is also usually our heaviest day of the week (over the weekend the company actually advances some of our work for Tuesday so it gets here a day earlier, benefiting YOU the customer! You can thank me later...) Next, it's the first workday after the dreaded Time Change; the sun now goes down around 5:30 so we are all working an extra hour in the dark. Some of the luckier guys may have wound up light today and so get done at dusk but my route gets me back at 7:45. That's two hours of headlights as I snake back through the Coast Range. Management must love it and lobbied hard against the extension of Daylight Savings Time that Congress passed recently (first good thing they've done this session!) because productivity jumps as drivers race all day to avoid as much darkness as possible. Of course, this being the first year with our new mandatory lunch hours (in California our DIAD boards are shut down for an hour so we can't do any deliveries, due to a lawsuit and court order) more drivers than ever will be embracing the darkness.
The final dread-of-the-day is that it is Halloween so all the little children of our neighborhood will be swarming around in said darkness. I remember my first year as a driver. I'm going 5 mph along a curving suburban street in heavy fog, kids wearing masks, jonzin with sugar lust, runnin' around all over the place, oblivious to me and me dark, dark truck. Can't we put some temporary day-glo yellow on the trucks? Actually, we should just take the whole day off; UPS can keep the logistics part of the business going for that day, which is their big darling (read Tom Friedman's new book .) Why I am not running the company, I dunno. But it can be hell. The likelihood of your worst nightmare skyrockets, yet the delivery clock still ticks without mercy. If I still worked in town, I'd take the day off. But there's hardly anybody out at the dark far end of my route, in SOmes BaR, just hippies... so it's Ok to keep speeding. No! Just KIDDING. Actually, I'm grabbing my life-saving big cuppa joe at the Salmon River Outpost, getting ready to head back home, when several cars pull up and disgorge a variety of bunnies, princesses, and jedi knights. Out here in the Big Empty, ya gotta trick-or-treat by car if you want to fill your bag before All Saint's Day. The store was staffed by a very obliging witch and everyone left happy.
Do people still worry about the ridiculous urban legends of poisoned candy and razor-blades in apples? I was recently presented with the facts that, according to published crime statistics, no one has been injured by the infamous razor blades and only 2 cases of poisonings were ever prosecuted. Both those cases involved people who knew each other. I was warned about "sick" people who might try this so we would trick-or-treat with this mental picture of which neighbors we might need to triage. We had a lot of lonely pensioners and newly released mental patients living in my Downtown L.A. neighborhood. Who seemed nutty enough to try it? The old ladies that always yelled at us for throwing a ball around too close to their windows or shortcutting through their gardens were obviously haters and would commit murder upon us in a heartbeat. But their houses were dark and shuttered on Oct.31. Apparently they were senile, too, missing such a great chance for malice. The real loony toons were usually sacked out in front of the toob by evening, exhausted from a day of raving and arguing with their voices in the park. A knock usually brought silence or the TV growing suddenly louder. Yeah, I can't hear you either buddy (I was too chicken to try flaming dog-poop as a trick, but as we got older the real get-off-my-doorstep types would get a return visit; remember, there is just one day for treats, but 364 for tricks , heh-heh.) No, the dark-hearted kid poisoners and palate-slicers would blend in, insurgent-style. We'd have to judge on the spot. As the bags grew fuller, however, our judgment lagged. It became a race to see who could max out first so we'd bang on every seedy apt.door, regardless of any subtle clues. Then there would inevitably be some ancient person, perhaps a mustard gassed veteran of The Great War, who would still be getting used to this trick-or-treating thing (did they not have it in the Nineteenth Century?), who would open the door, have a puzzled look, then slow understanding, and shuffle off into the kitchen for about 20 minutes. They would return with a distant smile and hand us.... apples. This was the one! It was all true! We'd take them, from trembling hand to trembling hand, parkinsoned to palpably fearful, thank them, back away, and run home screaming and giggling. We'd sneak a knife out and do a dissection of the weapon under the streetlight in the alley. No razors, no implements of doom, just… an apple. Crap. Well, it had to be poisoned then. So we’d chuck the remains into the crazy old lady’s garden next door. Once, really sweet and friendly old feller gave us dates wrapped in tinfoil. You didn’t have to poison those—you’d get sick just from looking at them. Some people were just unclear on the concept.
I survived my crazy childhood to reach the full flower of crazy middle age and all its anxiety. I heard some hospitals are offering free x-rays of any Halloween treats parents want to bring in (in my day we ate half the stuff while we were still obtaining it, who knew if you would live to see tomorrow, right?). Please. Get a mammogram instead, hmm? Or get yer head examined at least! I hope everybody had fun… we’ll see you down that dark road, somewhere, among the giggles.

2005-10-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

MAN ON FIRE! The author of this blog attempting to spew incendiary rhetoric. Can you dig it?

Say Hello To My Little Friend!

2005-10-24T06:15:00.000-07:00

My poor aunt-- she hates Florida, her adoptive home since leaving New York 5 years ago, and is about to be hit with her eighth hurricane. I noticed there is a Tropical Storm whipping across Hispaniola and heading north, almost parallel with big ugly Wilma. TS Alpha isn't going to hit Florida but it's interesting to see that when these storms go traveling, they bring along a companion. Hola!
So this is my nascent blog; my literary fellow traveler. Along with about a million other key tappers I'm going to dribble out the occasional trenchant observation and witty aside as 1) they pop into my head 2) I have time to tap them out here (rarely). We'll see how I do. I drive along each day at my job, listening to various forms of media and forming opinions; occasionally something forms that I feel I should jot down, so I have all these wrinkled little scraps of paper floating around my backpack or jammed in my smelly shirt pocket. At the rate I'm going I'll soon be tucking them under my aluminum foil hat as well. Along comes the Web and voila! -- a place to publish. Well, ok, ten years ago the web arrived, but I've been busy, ok?? Some people who should be otherwise preoccupied have been nice enough to take the time to read or listen to the tiny amount of output I hae managed in between long bouts of navel-gazing and have offered very positive comments. Not all of them are related or owe me money, most have encouraged me to do more. So, lucky you, here is that effort. A friend who noticed the large amount of time I spend absorbing media, and had heard me occasionally mumble, like a deviant to a priest, that I might like to write my own stuff, began to take it upon herself to criticize me for being "all input and no output". Ouch, correct, gotcha. Time has come today.
What the hell is this blog going to be about? What is this Middle of the Road crapola?? Can't I be more original? Do I owe the Pretenders royalties?? Politics is my hobby, but more than that, I have a fascination with human interaction. I believe some things that might seem naive, unfashionable, uninformed, or even just plain stupid, but I do believe, and I believe that I might be right. I think that things can be accomplished by large groups of people that can benefit large groups of people and that these things start with a transformed individual. An individual who has learned to inform himself, trust common sense, understand humanity, respect each person, and strive for good. Most of all, I see that without a vision, the people do indeed perish. Will you obtain that vision here? Hilarious, the very notion. I still seek a vision that firms my own backbone to the proper rigidity, so I make no such ridiculous promises for you, my friend. What you may find here, and thus the title of said blog, is an exploration of moderation, that elusive component of success amid the hurricane furies of partisanship. Be reasonable, you bastard, that's my motto. Let's figure out how, eh? We'll explore some issues and, since this is personal, I'll throw in some stuff about what's going on in my life and world. Hope you like it, amigo.