John Swinburn

When I got out of bed this morning, a good hour after I first awoke, I went outside to hang the hummingbird feeders. The outside temperature felt so much better than inside. Inside, the thermometer registers 77 degrees; outside, 68. Except for the damn pollen, I’d have every window in the house open. We keep the thermostat at 78 for air conditioning in the warm seasons and at 68 for cool seasons. I prefer the cooler temperatures. My body was constructed for life in a cooler climate and, perhaps, a different era. I can imagine getting up early in the morning, hungry and ready to seek breakfast in the untamed wilds outside my cave. Nah, not really. If I’d been born to a cave-dweller several thousand years ago, I would have long since died. My disease-ridden body wouldn’t have made it past the age of twenty-one. But maybe things would have been different. Maybe the sedentary ways of my youth would have given way to frenzied physical activity as I chased game for food, climbed trees, sought shelter, and in a twist to history, invented the printing press.

Yes, I feel relatively confident that I would have been the first to conceive of and create the printing press, had I been born in the appropriate circumstances.  In fact, now that I’m thinking of it, I think I remember those early days when, in brief flashes of brilliance, I advanced civilization by hundreds, if not thousands, of years simply by executing outlandish ideas. Even before mining and extracting metal from ore, I used dried plant products to shape drums and gears and letters and, through ingenuity unheard of amongst other cave-dwellers, I manufactured the first printing press. Plant-based dyes, principally made from beet juice and roasted red peppers, constituted the first inks. After creating the press, making the ink, and creating crude papers, I printed several books. At the time, of course, no one knew how to read (even spoken language was in its youth in those days), but I toiled night and day to teach them. And then came the meteors. What a waste of energy and talent; my work was so advanced. Thousands of years before Johannes Gutenberg’s so-called breakthrough, I printed the first advertising flyer. But all those advances were lost in the meteor showers.

But I wasn’t talking about my early years, was I? No, I was expressing my preference for cooler weather when my fingers were hijacked by a delusional madman. Back to the matter at hand. I wonder if anyone has gathered daily high and low temperature data from all around the planet during the last, say, eighty years and has analyzed those data in a way that might identify the ideal location, strictly from the perspective of temperature? I’d like to know what places on this planet I might be able to visit and expect with some degree of certainty that overnight lows will never dip below 45F and daytime highs will never exceed 80F. And, if such places do not exist, what locations come closest? Once identified, I’d like to know more about the places. Is potable water readily available? Might I expect reliable food sources within easy walking distance? Is electricity available and affordable? How about high-speed internet and WiFi? I suppose I could do without some of the luxuries; if food is not within walking distance, I could cope as long as the roads are smooth and reasonably-priced bicycle rentals can be had.

What is it that causes an otherwise arguably  normal sixty-four-year-old man to slip into nonsensical blatherings such as I have just recorded here? Might the pollen be to blame? Did someone spike my coffee with lysergic acid diethylamide or other hallucinogenic substance? Were the mushrooms on yesterday’s pizza not the button variety? Maybe the  cells in my brain are out of whack and electrical impulses are bouncing off the cell walls.Some days, my normal teenage dementia returns with a vengeance, causing me to edge dangerously close to the edge of the precipice. Were I to fall, I might find it impossible to crawl out of the abyss of insanity. That’s why I should always carry a rope and a cell phone.

It’s now just after seven o’clock and the first cup of coffee is gone. The sky is absent clouds but a soft translucent haze makes the distant hills look like I am gazing out the window at the Smoky Mountains instead of the Ouachitas. I’m sure my wife will arise shortly and our house guest, too, will emerge from the guest room. I should prepare for those eventualities and should commence the process of cooking the casserole I prepared last night for today’s church shindig. Our guest will go visit the church she used to attend while my wife and I visit ours (and feed the gathered masses a rather nice chicken-potato-lemon casserole). Before attacking the rest of the day, I need another cup of dark, black, and very strong French roast coffee. That will calm my frazzled nerves, won’t it? Indeed it will.

Once again, I am alone in the early morning darkness, the house bathed in the kitchen’s light. My wife and our house guest are asleep, as one would expect at such an ungodly hour, and I am alone with my thoughts and my hot cup of freshly brewed coffee. For some reason, it occurred to me the moment I awoke that washing clothes at this hour makes perfectly good sense, so I emptied the clothes hamper of shirts and shorts and socks and put said garments in the washer. Forty minutes hence, more or less, they will be clean and ready for the dryer. The sound of the washer’s “cycle completed” alert may wake the others several minutes before five o’clock, but people should be awake and alert by that hour, anyway, in my opinion.

No, I’d really rather be alone with my thoughts, letting my fingers sprint across the keyboard in their efforts to record what’s on my mind. I depend on my fingers to express my thoughts; they do a far better job of it than my tongue, which trips and stumbles in fruitless attempts to articulate what’s on my mind. My fingers are far better suited to the task and they’re more practiced at it. And, to be honest—and at this hour and with no one awake and aware but me, honesty is absolutely necessary—I don’t much like the sound of my voice. I like the way I think it sounds, but to hear it played back to me from a recording device I realize it’s the croaking from a poorly constructed throat aided by malformed vocal chords and an inadequate diaphragm. There are more broken pieces involved, I’m sure, but those are the key players in the noise emanating from my lips. So, my fingers, lacking the distractions of voice, do a better job of expressing myself.

I’ve gone off on a tangent, haven’t I? Well, yes I have. And it’s no wonder. I don’t really know what’s on my mind, so I let my fingers skip across the keyboard as if playing a game from my childhood. Not that I recollect any games from my childhood. I really don’t. Sometimes, I wonder whether I had a childhood. Most people seem to recall with fond appreciation the games they played, the friends they had, their teachers, etc. I remember Ms. Corbett and Ms. Stephenson (I don’t recall whether either of them were Mrs. or Miss), my first and third grade teachers, respectively. I think Ms. Painter was my second grade teacher. I know Ms. WhyCan’tIRememberHerName was my fourth grade teacher; she was blonde and was the owner of a brood who attended the same school. Aside from those recollections, most childhood memories either have been erased or buried under more recent records of where, when, and who I was at any given moment. I know more childhood memories exist beneath or within the layers of brain cells in my head because I’ve written about them. But, for the moment, they’re out on recess, ignoring the bell calling them back in to focus on the studies at hand.

My job today, aside from entertaining our house guest and finishing the load of laundry I started a while ago, is to do the preparatory work for a casserole I’ve agreed to take to church tomorrow in honor of the Ladies’ Day Luncheon. It used to be the Mothers’ Day Luncheon, but someone decided it would be best to honor all ladies, not just all mothers. I wonder why it’s not called the Women’s Day Luncheon (or is that Womens’?) to honor all women. I suppose it’s possible that someone in charge (if there is such a someone) decided to make a subtle dig at women in the congregation who, in someone’s opinion, are not “ladies.” That doesn’t sound like the sort of folks who attend the church. So, I choose to believe someone simply slipped into the language of an earlier time. The importance of the name given the event is far less than the space I’ve given it here, so I’ll stop. Instead, let me explain what I’m going to make for the luncheon. It’s called “Easy Lemon Chicken Potato Casserole.” I’ve made the aptly named dish before. If I were making it for home consumption, I would incorporate liberal amounts of jalapeños or habanero peppers to add flavor and excitement, but such an addition would make the dish inedible to many in the congregation, so I’ll refrain from the improvements. Tomorrow, in addition to providing food, I’ll help with set-up, serving, and clean-up. The “ladies” are to be waited on. The organizer of the event claims the men who help earn “brownie points” for an entire year. As if a single day of not expecting women to do “woman’s work” is worthy of a year in which men are waited on hand and food. I think I may have the wrong attitude. I know the intent of the event is good, but it just seems to me that, even in jest, suggesting that this one-day affair in which men do “traditional” woman’s work is an adequate sharing of the burden of feeding people is…I don’t know, just insulting. Maybe I shouldn’t have volunteered. With my attitude, things could get ugly. But I won’t let them. I’ll be good. I’ll just cook my casserole, prepare and serve and clean up, and keep my mouth shut. Best for me to write about it, anyway, inasmuch as my voice would simply sound like the screech of an angry barn owl.

Pause. The clothes are clean. They’re in the dryer now and, if all goes according to plan, they will be dry and cool, ready for hangers, in around forty-five minutes. Don’t worry. I won’t continue writing for the entire dry cycle.

For some reason, even though the indoor temperature reads 77 degrees, the room feels hot. And humid. I’d really like to open the doors onto the screen porch and let is some cool morning air, but doing so would also let masses of pollen flow into the house. In a matter of an hour or less, a thin yellow film would cover every surface. The air would feel cooler, but the house would require a deep cleaning. And everyone would have a bit of a hard time breathing, what with their noses and lungs exposed to allergy-inducing “stuff.”

If I’d been thinking yesterday while preparing for our guest’s arrival, I would have taken the ear buds out of the desk in the guest room so I could listen to music or news or whatever this morning. But, apparently, I wasn’t thinking. So, in the interest of not interrupting the sleep patterns of people who have more normal patterns than I, I will not play music or listen to the news. Instead, I will now turn to another morning ritual, wandering the web, looking for ideas and inspiration and motivation. If you’ve read this far, you’re a better person than I. It occurs to me I could start an online “news” service. I’d call it The Daily Drivel.

May 2007. My only visit to Moscow. My only visit to Russia. I stayed at the Golden Ring Hotel. Aside from a horrifying white-knuckle trip via taxi from the airport to the hotel, not much stands out about the trip in my recollection. Well, there was that evening at the hookah bar after dinner and our group had dinner another evening in a private dining room in the Kremlin. That was a privilege rarely extended to “outside” groups, I was told. I suspect that one of our Russian hosts—a woman with whom I remain remotely connected via Facebook—was responsible for making that happen. The woman, absolutely beautiful with deep blue eyes and golden blonde hair, is CEO of several companies that do business internationally. I do vaguely recall my departure from Moscow, wading through line after line to have my papers checked, my passport reviewed, and my airline tickets examined. I took those line to be assertions of bureaucratic control, reminders that I was a commodity to be dealt with as the bureaucrats wished. I don’t recall the flight from Moscow to London on the way home, but American Express receipts suggest I did, indeed, fly to London. Then, the next day, I flew back to Dallas. And, according to American Express, I ate dinner at a Heathrow hotel restaurant the evening before I returned home. It’s amazing how much more one can “recall” from one’s travels by looking at old credit card bills.

I stumbled across several notebooks stored in boxes in the garage the other day, each labeled with a year. The one I happened to leaf through was 2007. That’s how I came across the evidence reminders of my travel to Moscow. I didn’t pay sufficient attention to the receipts to learn  how long I stayed in Moscow, but I am sure it was just a few days, probably three, maybe four at most. I was extremely frugal with my clients’ money and time, so my travel on their behalf was strictly business. I rarely took time for myself, either before or after meetings. I regret that I didn’t take the opportunities to see more of the world when I had the chance. Opportunities like those I missed don’t come around often.

Early this year, a Facebook friend (who was, first, a fellow blogger) added me to a Facebook group of “back when” bloggers. The group was created, as I understand it, to generate “conversations” between bloggers about their posts. You know (or maybe you don’t), the way it used to be: people would read posts and comment about them and a conversation would develop in the ether between several bloggers. Initially, I loved the Facebook group idea. But then the apparent lack of engagement, as I perceived it, suggested the idea wouldn’t work. But then it did. And it spurred me, at least, to try to keep up with some of group members’ blogs. Which leads me to today’s post.

My email this morning included an alert that a new post had been added to a Facebook group member’s blog (I had added my email address to the blog’s notification list). The post was a letter to the blogger’s future self, explaining that she had started a new job on May 7. I do not know the blogger. I’ve had no more than two or three online interactions with her. But those few interactions sparked an interest in learning more about her. When I first came up on her blog, I read several past posts. Now, I feel like I knew quite a bit about her. One of her posts was an honest reflection of how she became estranged from her sister. The comments made on that post, from many years ago, ranged from compassionate to cruel. And one of her posts, from the first of December, explained that she had just lost her job, the job she held for more than ten years. We can learn a lot about people by listening to, or reading, what they say. And we can develop, if not a friendship, at least a kinship with them. Knowing a bit about the lives of people with whom we have casual interactions tends to make them—oh, I don’t know—more human. They begin to matter. Even if it’s extremely likely that we’ll never speak directly to one another or meet. But the likelihood of not meeting is not necessarily a fact. More on that in a minute.

In addition to the woman whose blog I read this morning and who lives someplace I don’t know just where, a budding relationship is developing with other members of the group. The guy who started the group is a long-time blogger, author, actor, newspaper columnist, and committed thinker and walker. He writes about everything and he reveals quite a lot about himself. Everything he writes demands the reader to think about the words he shares. He’s an excellent writer and I find it absolutely fascinating to read what he writes. By reading his blog and his Facebook posts and comments, I’ve learned about his son, his wife and her work, the kinds of things he enjoys doing, and a little about his history and how his life has changed over the years. Truly intriguing to get to know a person that way, as if we’ve spent time together over the years without ever having met.

Another of the Facebook group members, an American woman who lives in Sweden and is married to a Swedish man (I think he’s Swedish) posts to her blog relatively often (in spurts, at least), offering tidbits about her life and the way of life in Sweden. By reading what she writes about her daughter’s upcoming graduation, I learned quite a lot about how American and Swedish schools and how they are radically different from one another in some fundamental ways. I know by reading her posts and her comments that she has a good sense of humor.

A recent addition to the group is a retired general surgeon who now writes a column for a newspaper. I don’t know much about him, but the style and substance of his writing suggests to me we’d get along just fine, provided we could overlook any fundamental differences of philosophy that we might discover. He’s an author, as well, having written a book entitled, Cutting Remarks.  Retired surgeon. Get it? Unlike some of the other bloggers, he generally sticks to political and philosophical issues (with many posts littered with acerbic comments about politicians and those who support them). While he doesn’t reveal much personally, one understand quite a lot about how he thinks by reading what he writes.

Another blog that focuses on one topic like a laser beam deals with whiskey. Yes, reviews of what I consider exotic whiskeys. It’s not so much the whiskey the guy writes about that intrigues me, but the way he writes. It’s like reading first-person fiction with an acidic wash and a sharp wit.

All of this is the stuff of which friendships are made in “real life.” But communicating through the ether on the internet isn’t the same as communicating face-to-face or even voice-to-voice. The missing tone of voice, the absence of a facial expression that amplifies or completely changes the message a comment sends. These voids, coupled with the relative infrequency of communication, make real friendships impossible, don’t they? Well, online relationships don’t necessarily parallel face-to-face relationships, but they can be relatively strong. Thanks to fellow bloggers following my posts and thanks to me following theirs, I got to know some people well enough that, when I traveled to places they were, I made a point of seeking them out. During trips to California, I met—face-to-face—Tara and Robin and Roger and Kathy and another Kathy. When I went to New York, I met Teresa and then visited with her again when she joined us on part of our train ride. I say I sought people out—in Teresa’s case, she traveled from Syracuse to New York City to meet me. Later, after I met Juan via a Facebook group for people from my hometown, he followed my blog. And we made a point of going to meet him at his home in Florida when we made a trip there. One Kathy and Juan seem to have vanished from my sphere, but I remain in infrequent contact with the others. Now, though, that contact is almost exclusively through Facebook or, on occasion, through blog visits. My point is that, during the heyday of bloggery (at least in what I consider the heyday), exchanges online grew into relationships of sufficient depth that bloggers actually wanted to meet one another. I remember once, long ago, I proposed to a group of bloggers that we all meet somewhere in the middle of the country for a day or two of social engagement. The idea met with approval, but the outpouring of support was inadequate to propel it to reality. It gradually dissipated and blew away.

I suppose most of the relationships one develops online are similar in many ways to pen-pals (though I never had any nor was one). Friendly, but not overly close; trusting, but unwilling to share credit card numbers and PINs. Yet some of them grow and the bonds become stronger. A sister-in-law met her late husband online while buying and trading music CDs; she lived in California, he lived in Massachusetts, but the internet, then telephone, then cross-country visits led to much more.

I can count on the fingers of one hand, with the thumb and two fingers missing, the number of people I consider very close friends. I suppose the online relationships I develop, though they are superficial in many ways, fills that void to some extent. Maybe that explains why I so enjoy connecting with people through their blogs more than through Facebook. If interactions and relationships through blogs are somewhat superficial, FOFOs (that’s friends on Facebook only) are almost garish in their superficiality. In my experience, most people don’t share as deeply on Facebook as they do on their blogs. There’s no real or imaginary limit to the length of a blog post, whereas long Facebook posts seem intrusive in some fashion. Not all bloggers reveal a lot about themselves on their blogs. Many—perhaps most—focus exclusively on one topic: like food or politics or nature or bobcats or marsupials. But many bloggers fashion their blogs into journals of sorts that, when read in large swaths, paint a fairly accurate picture of the writer’s personality, political stances, likes and dislikes, and family ties. In other words, they reveal enough about themselves that people who share enough commonalities with them could very well become their friends. Except for the impossibility (in my not-entirely-solidly-held opinion) of really knowing a person without ever having been in the physical presence of that person.

I like developing a new cadre of electronic acquaintances who write and who read what others write. It reminds me of the “old days” when people stumbled on others’ blogs, commented, and sparked dialogue. Today, it’s extremely rare for anyone who doesn’t already know me to read my blog, much less comment. Of course, I’ve never tried to market it and develop a readership, but in the “old days” people did just stumble across it. With millions and millions of other web places to trip over, it’s understandable that not many get there. And fewer still say anything. So this recent development of recreating the environment that many of us who’ve been blogging for years remember so well is a welcome one. I am glad it happened and happier still it seems to be taking off. It may not last, but while it does, it’s fun and enlightening. And I’ve added several blogs to my blogroll. Speaking of which, here are some new (to me since the first of the year) blogs that are worth “stumbling” upon:

• Actually Unretouched Photo
• Chuck Sigars
• Cutting Through the Crap
• Lizardek’s Obiter Dictum
• The Boosh

Enough for now. I just wanted to record what was on my mind with respect to blogging. Facebook certain changed blogging. But maybe Facebook, in spite of itself, can be tricked into promoting blogs and bloggery. Time will tell. It always does.

The arrival of today’s weekly newspaper brought with it news of a black bear sighting. In addition, it offered additional confirmation that the Village is experiencing an unusual spike in the population of migrating Baltimore Orioles. I’d never seen a Baltimore Oriole in the feather, so to see them frolicking on our deck railing and climbing on our hummingbird feeders was a treat. For that matter, I’d not seen a black bear in the fur, either, and still have not. But the newspaper offered two photos, one of a bear in the vicinity of a yellow diamond-shaped sign warning viewers to “watch for ice” and one of a bear approaching the back door of someone’s house.

The photo of the bear I include in this post is courtesy of Mother Google, Lender of Images. I took the shots of the birds. You may have noticed the orange half in one of the images. Word on the street here is that Baltimore Orioles love oranges, so we used some as bait. Other people, more experienced in the ways of luring exotic wildlife to their environs, hammered nails into boards, then affixed orange halves, cut side up, to the boards. This prevents the birds from knocking the oranges off the deck. Every orange half we set out was eventually thrown to the ground far below by gluttonous and fiercely territorial birds.

We’ve been told black bears roam the forests around us; this was the first photographic confirmation since we moved here four years ago. And this was our first sighting of the birds since we moved here, as well. The morning I first saw the Orioles, I also saw a rose-breasted grosbeak, though I did not know what it was at the time. It took some digging to learn what it was. Another first-view for me. Others, far more attuned to local bird-ways of the area, when I told them what I saw, sniffed  and noted that the sight of the bird is not at all uncommon. I do earn respect of the bird people when I tell them we regularly see roadrunners up and down our block (apparently one of the few places in the Village where they are seen with any regularity). When I show the bird people my photos of the creatures, they swoon. As if I had anything to do with the beast landing on my deck. 

That’s the good stuff. Birds, bears, snakes in beaks. You know, life on the wild side.

The other wild side came up in conversation last night while we attended a birthday party for our neighbor. It was a lovely affair, with good food, champagne, wine, and entertainment provided by a highly skilled and talented musician and song-writer who played Spanish style guitar beautifully. About the conversation. The guy, nice fellow, talked about how crowded southern California (his home) is getting. And he spoke about the “homeless problem,” identifying the homeless as the problem, as if the solution would be to move them someplace. Their plight is their fault, for the most part, he suggested. I disagreed, but in a friendly way. I explained that I had seen documentaries about homelessness that suggested the majority of homeless people are absolutely NOT enamored of the lifestyle and that most found themselves homeless through no fault of their own. Things like illness, loss of a spouse who was the sole income-earner, loss of a job that had only barely paid the bills, etc. I told him I had read that, once people stumble into homelessness, their lives can spiral downward. With no address, it’s hard to get a job. It’s hard to find a place to get your clothes washed. It’s hard to look out after one’s personal hygiene. The mere fact that so many doors get slammed shut very soon after a person becomes homeless makes it critical to get people help early. Because after a relatively short time, hopelessness sets it. And attitudes toward the homeless don’t help. People get depressed. Depression exacerbates the problem.  Admittedly, I hogged a lot of the conversation. I expressed the opinion that municipal governments would do themselves and their privileged, non-homeless, people a favor by investing in getting the homeless into decent, private residences and a basic stream of income sufficient to cover bare necessity expenses as soon as possible after homelessness occurs so those folks can invest their time and efforts toward becoming self-sufficient as opposed to spending every waking moment looking for food and shelter for the next night. By the end of what was mostly a monologue, he seemed to agree with me. And he even suggested that the homeless people who are aggressive and ugly and angry probably developed their attitudes as a result of their experiences in homelessness. Homelessness is a wild ride I wish on no one.  But it’s so easy to dismiss it when it’s not very visible on a day by day basis.

I’m rambling on, as I am wont to do. Time to stop and consider what’s next.

I learned last night of the death of a man with whom I had rare interactions for a period of about eleven years. He was the husband of a woman with whom I had much more frequent contact, as she was a member of the board of directors of an industry association my company managed and for which I served as executive director. The woman was (and remains) president of a successful company involved in the market research and customer satisfaction metrics industry. We were not close, but I liked and respected her and I think she liked and respected me. When I decided to close my business and live the good life, I stayed in touch with her and a few others from the association. Staying in touch may suggest closer ties; I occasionally saw her Facebook page and, courtesy of Facebook, I was regularly reminded of her birthday and I dutifully sent her birthday messages. Her most recent birthday was late last month. I send her a flip message and wished her a happy birthday that might involve wine and birthday pie. And then, yesterday morning, I got a text message from another woman who was involved with the association, telling me that the husband was living his last days and was on hospice treatment. I thanked her for letting me know. I went about my day, taking care of all the myriad preparations for our Cinco de Mayo party last night, a tamalada we had offered to our church for auction as a fundraiser. There was a lot to do to get ready for the party. I thought I’d wait to get in touch and offer my sympathy today, after the stress of the party was history. But, after the party was over and my wife and I were sitting outside on our screen porch, soaking in the cool temperatures and relaxing from a good but grueling day, I got another text.  The man died. That prompted me to stop procrastinating. I withdrew from the conversation and sent a message to the widow, expressing condolences.

I didn’t even know he was sick. I knew he’d battled cancer before, but I thought he’d beat it. Apparently, it returned with a vengeance. I didn’t know. Only after reading the widow’s message about her husband’s death yesterday did I learn he had been battling for months and months. Friends had come to visit. Family and friends had gathered around him for a long time, giving him support and boosting his mood (though he tended to be a funny guy who laughed through hardship, so he probably gave his visitors more than they gave him).

“Staying in touch” would have made me aware of the man’s battle. I didn’t stay in touch. I dabbled in superficial interactions so infrequent that news about a lengthy fight against cancer didn’t reach me. On the other hand, staying in touch is a two-way affair, so I do not blame myself entirely for not knowing about the man’s condition. And, as I think more about it, neither the woman nor her husband were actually friends of mine. They were business acquaintances with whom a casual connection continued on a massively reduced scale after the business reason for the connection disappeared.

But I knew the two of them and had occasion to see them and spend time with them, especially her, at least four or five times a year for eleven years. The realization that a lengthy, though not intense, relationship can simply dissipate into an ephemeral connection with the passage of time is somewhat disconcerting. When the man was ill several years ago, I offered encouragement and a shoulder to cry on. We were closer then. Not friends, but closer.

There’s nothing particularly unusual about relationships, whether personal or business, evaporating into the ether when the glue that holds them together—some degree of relatively frequent interactions and close proximity—loses its adhesive properties.  Yet I find that evaporation odd. And I can’t explain just why I find it odd. Odd may not be the right word. If there’s a word that means moderately and mystifyingly sad, that’s the word I’m looking for. In this particular situation, what’s moderately and mystifyingly sad is that my words of solace and condolence simply cannot have the same strength that those same words might have had before I closed my company. When I had a business and acquaintance  relationship with the woman, I think my words would have meant more to her. Of course I’m thinking of this through my own lens of experience and not from hers, but that’s the way I see it.

The man’s death does not leave a huge empty hole in my life, but it does (again, I assume) in hers. And there are others I do not know for whom his death is earth-shaking and ugly. This is all just part of experience on the planet and here I am trying to understand it by “talking it out.” That won’t happen. There’s nothing to understand. It just “is.” As the saying goes, “it is what it is.” Which says nothing but, then again, says it all.

Sometime recently, I don’t know just when or how—maybe online, maybe on television, maybe on the radio—I heard a tune I haven’t heard in years. Baby Elephant Walk from the movie Hatari. Listening to it triggered a memory of watching that movie with my mother. I remember a few scenes from the movie and I recall sitting with my mother, both of us laughing at the baby elephants. I remember being entranced with the music of Henry Mancini and talking to my mother about his music and other music by Mancini that I liked. My mother liked Mancini’s music, too. But there’s more to it; something about that movie and that music are necessary for me to explore. That memory came to me out of no where. I don’t think I’ve recalled sitting with my mother, watching that film, since I sat with my mother, watching the film. I must have been just nine or ten years old at the time. I wonder why, after all these years, that memory popped into my head. I’m certain I’ve heard the tune many times since then, but I don’t believe the music sparked my memory the way it did this time.

I don’t think of my mother as often now as I used to, but she’s still frequently on my mind. She died when I was thirty-two years old, a year after my father died. That’s too young to lose parents. We had only been communicating as adults for a few years when they died. I miss my many years as an adult, expressing to them that I did, indeed, appreciate all they did for me and all the sacrifices they made for me and for my brothers and sisters. I don’t think children and young adults have the capacity to understand what people give up when they become parents. It takes adulthood and years of observation to understand. Of course, I am not speaking from the experience of sacrificing for my kids; I never had any. I guess I did learn something from watching my parents’ sacrifices for their six children: if you want to live beyond hand-to-mouth, if you want to have the resources to enjoy life outside the confines of the four walls of a small home, don’t have children. I learned that lesson. It stuck. It paid handsome dividends. Many people would say, by choosing not to have kids, I missed out on the most wonderful experience a human being can have. Such is life. I can’t say I regret the choice. Not in the least. Most of the time. And most of the time I think it was the very best decision my wife and I could have made. Our lives would have been radically different if we’d had children; I don’t think our lives would have been as free and as open as they have been.

But, back to my recollection. What might propel that memory to the front of my mind? Music? Film? Who knows. I think I might have an inkling. I don’t think anyone else in my family had any interest in the film. I think it was something unique my mother and I shared. And hearing that music while in my frame of mind at the moment, a frame of mind that questioned whether anything about who I am and what I do is unique, took me back to a moment in time at which I felt a unique connection to my mom. This is just speculation, you understand. This is just me trying to explain something that probably doesn’t have an explanation based on facts…just theories. If nothing else, the recollection made me think about how long it’s been since mom died—thirty-two years. So that may be it. I’ve spent half my life as an orphan. I still miss her. And I miss all those conversations we should have had over the years as she watched me make career decisions and the like. I might have made a lot of other choices had I listened to the advice she could no longer give after she died.

I was up before 4:30 this morning, a not uncommon experience of late. Unlike most days, though, I did not write in my blog. This morning’s output remains close to my vest, where it ought to be. Some things one needs to keep private. Some words are too intimate to share. Some words cannot venture beyond one’s own brain. But they do find their way to the page. Or, more correctly, to a file that could one day be exposed to the world. But not now. Not today. Some days, we need to remind ourselves that we are not the most important people on the planet. Though we might matter, the universe doesn’t revolve around us. Our emotions don’t merit a microscope whose image is broadcast to every living thing.

I’m tired of politics. I’m tired of caring in an ugly space in which compassion is either weakness or delusion. That’s not what I was taught. Compassion is an attractive strength to which we should aspire. That’s what I was taught. Though too much of what I was taught was bullshit, the beauty of aspiring to be compassionate was a lesson in which I believe, still. Compassion heals. And we all need to heal. We’re all licking wounds that shape the way we live in this world. We need to heal to get past those wounds.

Some days, and this is one, I wonder what wounds afflict people who populate my life. I mean my family, my friends, the people who belong to clubs that count me as a member. Every individual who inhabits my thoughts. Facebook friends, church-goers I know little about, the guy at the grocery store self-check-out lane who patiently explains to newcomers who the credit card payment system works.

That guy. I wonder about his life. I wonder whether he’s married and, if so, what his wife is like. Does he have kids? Does his job pay enough to cover his necessary expenses? He wears glasses; does he have insurance that covers vision issues? Questions about others’ lives can become overwhelming. Ask those questions about the police officer or the people at the post office who retrieve your mail after an extended absence. What about the guys who collect shopping carts in the parking lot? Is that job the top of their career ladder?

You can’t ask the questions I want to ask. Or, you shouldn’t. The answers are none of my business, but I’m so deeply curious. I wonder why that is?

Enough questions for one afternoon. Tonight, we’re off to HSV Open Mic Night, the event I tackled for a while and then gave up. The “new guy” seems to be doing a fine job of taking “my” event to a new level. Tonight, I get to sit in the audience and do nothing. I enjoy that. I’m an unpaid slob, same as when I had to sweat the event’s details. I do not feel wounded that someone else has taken “my event” in another direction. That’s a nice feeling. Unwounded. That’s me. For now.

Yesterday, Janine was under the weather (suffering from allergies, I should say), so our plans went to hell in a handbasket. I spend most of the day hanging around the house, trying to be quiet so she could sleep, which she did for almost the entire day (she got up around 8, but was back in bed by 9 and didn’t arise until well after 3). Staying still and refraining from noise-making activities like blowing leaves, using the pressure washer in a vain attempt to wash away pollen, and other such macho endeavors was hard. But I managed. I left the house twice. Once to check the mail at the post office and once to do something equally as vital but which now I forget. I needed out of the house.

Today was better. We went to church to experience the first Music on Barcelona, a shindig arranged by our soon-to-be music director. The church board and others with a say in the matter have decided to have a music-only event on every month with a fifth Sunday. Today’s inaugural event was absolutely outstanding. The Village Strings, an all-volunteer group comprising mostly lifelong-amateur string musicians played Vivaldi and Broadway tunes and a host of other wonderful music. There wasn’t a shred of churchiness to the event, an attribute I found quite appealing. I’m still not terribly comfortable with the liturgical aspect of attending church. I prefer casual engagement to what seems to me artificiality on steroids. But I’m new to liturgy, so maybe I’m just allergic.  At any rate, the music was superb, the execution was marvelous, and the crowd was much bigger than usual. But we had promised to get away and go visit art studios, so we left before the post-service intellectual conversation that we normally enjoy.

Off we went, in search of specific artist studios. But first, we had lunch at Froggy’s, a nice place on the west end of Hot Springs. Janine’s country-fried ribeye steak was about the best I’ve ever tasted. My hamburger was okay, but over-cooked (overdone medium as opposed to the medium rare I ordered). But I was in a generous mood. So I ate it without complaint (it was tasty, in fact).  And then, off to Glenwood, Arkansas. We visited two studios, one a metal/welding shop at which the artistic display was phenomenal, and another  at which the artist and his friend were exceptionally educational. I loved much of the art. At the second place, I loved a small dog they had recently adopted from a shelter. If I were single, I would have stolen the dog. But I am married and my wife wouldn’t tolerate my thievery nor my adoption of a dog. Dogs do not live in our house, with its wood floors. I’m open to carpet, just to mention.

Then, we went back to Hot Springs, where we visited the studio of a woman we know. She does art glass, mostly making glass window hangings. Neat stuff, really. She has a very nice small studio ideally suited to her craft. After viewing her shop, she invited us (and another couple who’s very involved in the arts scene in Hot Springs) to look at their house. We had a wonderful time surveying their home and its art. And the birds! They have enormous numbers of birds dining on their deck at any given time.

But now we’re back home. Kicking back. Relaxing. Enjoying a warm Spring afternoon. (At least I am. Janine is watching television.) It’s time for me to go out on the deck and commune with nature. With a glass of something appropriate, of course. I’ll sit and express my gratitude to the universe that I am enjoying happiness and goodness that I probably don’t deserve. Too many people can’t experience this. It shouldn’t be so, but it is. We just have to keep trying.

The divide between progressives and conservatives isn’t entirely a schism of opposing principles. While I believe plenty of conservatives do, indeed, live in a parallel universe in which my “bad” is their “good” and vice versa, that’s not true of all of them. In fact, I know several  conservatives whose attitudes about treating others with dignity and respect mirror mine. We may differ in the extent to which we believe others deserve said treatment, but we’re on the same side of the equation. We differ, though, in two fundamental ways.

The first difference is that my conservative acquaintances seem to be more attuned to the costs of “doing good” than to the fundamental obligation to do it. That is, their approach to how we provide social safety nets (for example) seems to be: We provide a safety net only to those in dire need and only until the available money runs out.  I disagree with that philosophy. You don’t buy only staples for the pantry and then stop when you have no more money—your pantry ends up full of flour and sugar and your menu might as well be poison. In my view, that is a backward approach to meeting objectives. My belief is that you should fashion your grocery budget around meeting needs, in priority order—the budget should be the financial expression of your plan. You plan a balanced menu and determine what it’s going to cost for the ingredients. If the costs exceed available dollars, you look to make adjustments in both income and spending. First, work on  generating more revenue. Then, if necessary, modify the menu by removing items in reverse priority order—the empty calories go first.

The second distinction between my conservative acquaintances and me also revolves, tangentially, around money. I get the impression that many of them equate financial stability with goodness. The greater one’s financial stability, the better the person. The reverse, in their views, is also true. They seem to believe that the degree to which a person lives in poverty (or simply is not financially secure) reflects on the person’s willingness to work to accumulate wealth—that is, a person who has less is less.

I can live with a poor approach to spending and planning. A wrong-headed approach to fiscal policy is upsetting, but I can counter the arguments in favor of such a policy with logical arguments against it.  But the idea that a person’s worth equates in some way to his or her wealth, or lack thereof, bothers me in ways that stoke my emotional fires. Logic can’t win the game when it’s automatically excluded from the rule book.  The belief that levels of wealth defines a person’s value is what allows these conservatives to believe in providing a limited social safety net. It’s what allows them to say, “Once a person has gotten welfare for a year, they should be dropped…let them figure out that they need to work to make ends meet.” These conservatives are perfectly comfortable saying, “There’s a limit to my pity.” That gets at a clear difference between us. They speak of pity clarify that it’s a commodity in limited supply. I don’t look at it as pity. I look at it as compassion. And compassion may have its limits, but I think it’s in much greater supply than pity. Compassion is more likely to engender action, I believe, than is pity.

Yet despite our differing philosophies, I share a limited perspective with conservatives about money. I understand conservatives’ frustration at hearing all the things progressives say they want government to do, things requiring huge amounts of money, without hearing about the sources of funding for these things. It’s as if the progressives have only gotten part way through the planning process I mentioned above. The rhetoric covers the plan, but never adequately gets at how it will be expressed in financial terms. Now, I believe progressives are, in general, conscious of the fact that a burgeoning national debt and monstrous deficits potentially do massive harm. And I think they are optimistic that compassionate policies ultimately will bring about fiscal stability. But optimism is useless unless coupled with well-conceived plans executed and regularly measured and adjusted.

I’m wandering all over the place here, revealing a left-of-center social philosophy with a centrist fiscal bent. I wonder if the two can meld into good policy in the political arena. Not just policy on which the major political parties can agree, but policy that actually works. I have my fears. But if the extreme far ends of the political spectrum can be cast aside for the moment, I believe the possibility exists for an uncomfortable, but workable, middle ground to settle in. Mild discomfort is, in my opinion, far preferable to the agony of today’s ‘normal’ social political discourse ripping us to shreds. Maybe we’ll all simply become too tired to fight and will out of physical and mental necessity just agree to an unsatisfactory middle ground in which everyone gains and everyone loses and everyone’s willing to compromise.

Maybe not.

When, after a full meal, a taste of dessert whets an insatiable appetite for a month of meals, one regrets dessert. Well, not always. We spent half the day and the evening yesterday with friends in Franklin, Tennessee. The “full meal” was the leisurely drive through Arkansas and Mississippi, the enjoyable evening in Tupelo, and the trip on the Natchez Trace Parkway from Tupelo to just south and west of Franklin.  The dessert is Franklin. The town is incredibly active and vibrant, its historic downtown bustling with activity on a Wednesday afternoon. The scenery in and around Franklin is gorgeous. Its appeal is, I think, its history, coupled with its progressive presence (not, sadly, progressive in the political sense). The town’s governors have, in the recent past, ensured the preservation of its historic downtown, while allowing (perhaps encouraging) modern ideas of entertainment and commerce to thrive. Outside that historic core, the town looks much like other growing communities injected with tax dollars and investor monies. Lots of restaurants, upscale businesses, corporate headquarter So, and the like. The challenge will be to rein in growth so that the historic core does not become just another antique attraction.

Back to dessert and its antecedent. I could make a full meal of Franklin! There’s so much to see and do, a quick visit makes it impossible to consume a full meal. We must come back and spent a few days here, soaking in the community. Nashville is only twenty minutes away and the area boasts some of our favorite stores: Sprouts, Trader Joe’s, and Costco, as well as two Flying Saucer locations, places where I can feed my love of good draft beer from around the planet.

Alas (to use another blogger’s favorite expression 😀), we must head toward home today, as we have commitments to keep back in the Village on Friday.

The aforementioned location-based happiness would be nothing without the generosity and hospitality of friends. Thanks, Maddie and Robin, for your kindness and hospitality. We hereby invite you to come back to the Village and stay with us for a few days, allowing us to repay your hospitality! (I am purposely scheduling this post to go live after we head home. 😀).

The time fast approaches for our tamalada, the tamale party we offered to our church auction. The offering garnered three winning bids, so we’ll have three couples joining us on Cinco de Mayo (cheesy cultural appropriation, I know, but it’s respectful appropriation) to make pork and jalapeño tamales, eat chile con queso and guacamole, and drink margaritas and Mexican beer.  These sorts of events appeal to me. Utterly informal gatherings at which laughter and appreciation for the company of others (in the presence of satisfying food) is all that matters.

It occurs to me that I’d be happy arranging such events monthly! Now, the question is whether I can sell tickets.

Seriously, might a food-fueled social engagement meet my need for entrepreneurial activity and, simultaneously, meet a need for relaxed social engagement in the Village? I think, on reflection, I have answered my own question. People don’t need someone in the form of entrepreneurial gadabout to generate social engagement in the Village. It just happens.

We spent much of the day wandering toward Tupelo, Mississippi, mostly on back roads in Arkansas and Mississippi. Except for the occasional spawn of satan (let me go on record that I do not believe in satan, but I do believe certain of his progeny have managed to get access to vehicles and their keys) who wants nothing more than to commit murder by motor vehicle upon encountering geezers traveling only ten to fifteen miles per hour over the posted speed limit, our drive was pleasant. Those few occasions when said spawn tailgated me at 70 miles per hour in a 55 MPH zone offered strong arguments against allowing me to possess firearms. On at least one occasion, an argument could have been made that I should not be allowed to control the steering wheel and accelerator pedal of a car capable of reaching speeds of 90 miles per hour and more. But those short-lived spikes of volcanic rage notwithstanding, today was a pleasant one. I enjoyed driving the back roads of Arkansas and Mississippi. I especially enjoyed driving through swamp land in which huge cypress trees, surrounded by their own cypress “knees” rose from bayou waters. Gorgeous stuff!

We stopped for lunch at one of the only non-chain restaurants we encountered. Our luck was good; decent food, pleasant staff, and reasonable prices. For dinner, after we stopped rather early for the night in Tupelo, we chose the Blue Canoe, a one-of-a-kind funk house restaurant that serves all sorts of draft and bottled beer. Our burgers were massive and tasty. Mine, cooked medium rare just as I ordered it, caused the flowing juices to effectively ruin the bun. That mattered not to me. The thing tasted so damn good! I had two high ABV beers, so I’m about ready to call it a night at only a few minutes after 8:00 p.m. I’ve had both beers before (a wonderful double IPA and a superb ale), but the opportunity to taste them again was welcomed. It’s been so long I felt like I was trying them again for the first time.

Though I enjoyed the beer and the food, I feel like I’ve had far too many calories for this year, so I may have to cut back until 2019. That’s going to be hard, given my commitments for the rest of the year. Perhaps a cut-back until 2020 is in order.

I spent the majority of the day yesterday undertaking what I expected to be a one or two hour job to repair to the wood floor in the master bath. The job is not complete, nor will it be complete until I do what I should have done from the outset; hire a competent contractor to deal with the issue.

The problem began several months ago when, one day, we moved the bath mat next to the walk-in shower and noticed a discoloration in a plank of the engineered wood floor next to the shower. (I will not get into the inadvisability of putting engineered wood floors in a bathroom or kitchen. We knew what we were getting when we bought the house.) I could not figure out what the problem was, so I vowed to “keep an eye on it.” And I did. Periodically. On rare occasion. Twice, maybe three times.

A few days ago, as I was showering, I noticed in a corner of the shower that tiny brown bits seemed to be flowing into the shower from a corner. After the shower, I examined the area more closely.  Caulking was missing from a tiny spot in the corner and that’s where the brown bits were dribbling out, along with water. And, moving the bath mat, I noticed the top layer of the engineered plank in the discolored area had separated from the layer beneath it. And the plank behind it felt wet and spongy. “Okay. No more using the master bath shower until I fix it,” I said to my wife.  I think I saw sadness in her eyes when I spoke the words “I fix it.”

Looking at the problem, I thought, “all I need to do is to clean out and caulk the spot where the leak was, remove the quarter-round next to the shower, remove a couple of planks of flooring, and replace them with the extras in the garage.” (The woman from whom we bought the house had the flooring installed and had kept a box of planks). Two hours, tops. It took me an hour to get the quarter round out. I vowed not to break it (and I didn’t), but getting it out in one piece was a painstaking effort. I spent most of the remainder of the day removing two little pieces of flooring. I had assumed the tongue and groove planks were simply laid on top of the subfloor. I thought I had a floating floor. I thought wrong. The installers affixed the planks to the subfloor with white adhesive that could have successfully attached pieces of the space shuttle to one another and survived re-entry. I have never encountered an adhesive so determined to keep two objects bound together. I used pry bars, putty knives, chisels, and screw drivers to tear those pieces of flooring out. Though I was beat after ripping out the planks, I decided to tackle the inside of the shower, caulking every possible point at which water could escape into the walls or floorboards. But first, I had to buy a new tube of caulk. The unopened tube I had bought who knows how many years ago had dried.  Off to the hardware store for a  new tube that worked just fine.

It was during the caulking that I discovered that the grab bar inside the shower had to be removed temporarily so I could caulk around the soap dish. Removing the grab bar was a little like removing the flooring. One of the six tiny set screws holding the grab bar to its two base connection was almost impossible to turn, but I finally got it done. As I was doing it, though, I noticed black and red drips of water running down the shower wall from the lower grab bar connection. Though the grab bar looked fine on the outside, the corrosion inside stunned me. Water had gotten into the cavity between the exterior shower wall and the grab bar connection, causing it to rust. Cleaning up the grab bar took me an hour. And then I finished caulking.

Finally, I was ready to cut the replacement planks. I do not have the tools best suited for the task, so I decided to use a hand saw. After much effort, I finally got a piece cut and tried to fit it into the appropriate spot (I only wanted to dry fit it; I intend to let the base floor dry completely and use the shower for a few days before finishing the job). It was then I realized that, because the piece I’m trying to replace is shorter than a full plank, there will be no tongue on one end to fit into the groove on the adjacent plank. The piece will have to have a tongue created on the end. Only someone with better tools and more knowledge than I can do that. So, I admit defeat. At least the work shouldn’t cost as much as it otherwise would have cost, thanks to my removal of the ruined pieces. Of course, a competent flooring pro probably could have accomplished in half an hour what it took me all day to do.

I’m questioning myself now as to whether I really want to undertake replacing the cartridges in the several dripping faucets. And do I really think I can replace the shut-off valve for every faucet and toilet without causing even more leaks? Speaking of toilets, should I attempt replacing it on my own? And the deck. Is it realistic for me to repair the broken and cracked boards?

My broken house needs some TLC. I’m sure I’m not the one to give it the love it needs. It’s not you, House, it’s me.

Our Meatless Tuesday is here again, earlier this month because it changed from the fourth to the third Tuesday. This was our first time hosting the group and this Tuesday also represents the last day of my wife’s volunteer tax preparation services for AARP. She was back home well in time for the meal, because no one showed up for assistance. Go figure.  Regardless of that experience, I was responsible for our portion of the main meal.  I opted to prepare Coconut Chickpea Curry, served with Basmati rice, thus allowing me to make a dish that’s moderately spicy but not uncomfortable for those with delicate palates.  My wife made a batch of cantaloupe cayenne sorbet to serve as dessert . Though it has a shade of a bite to it, I think only the rare person for whom bell pepper is too hot would find it impossibly hot.

The meal went well, despite the fact that it ended up being only four of us. One  person cancelled by phone mid-meal. Two people didn’t bother to cancel, just didn’t show up. They’re the sorts of folks I’d urge to consider becoming my friends. Oooh. I shouldn’t have said that. But it felt right. And, unless something horrific happened, I would think the people merit some unpleasant thoughts.

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My fascination with food invades my blog from time to time, sometimes in lengthy streaks lasting weeks or even months. A few short years ago, my fetish was not entirely food but, rather, the masks I made while taking courses in sculpture and pottery. The focus of most of my daily thought was directed toward my mask-making. Before and after that addiction, it was writing, specifically fiction and, for a while, poetry.  I think I must have decided, subconsciously, that switching between interests would lead me, eventually, to one for which I was especially well-suited and in which I might easily excel. You know—without the years of practice, hard work, and failure after failure after failure after failure. Most adults come to the conclusion, eventually, that the years of hard work and practice and repeated failures are just part of the process of getting good at something. I came to that conclusion late in life and then promptly forgot it in retirement. I’m reclaiming that knowledge day by day now. Even my current (well, I’d have to say life-long) passion for cooking offers reminders of that life lesson on occasion.  Though I don’t know why it is, I can say with absolute certainty that there is no guarantee that a recipe that works fine for four servings will not necessarily work for sixteen servings when quadrupled. The same is true for a recipe for a crowd. That service for sixteen may work great, but try quartering the ingredients to serve four people and you might end up serving your guests a hideous swill unsuited even for poisoning kings.

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At this very moment, I’m feeling a bit more lonely than usual. It’ll pass. It always does.

Have you ever wondered, after learning of reactions to something you said or wrote, whether you came across as unlikable? Or that, maybe, what you said or wrote didn’t come across as you intended? Or that your attempts to be jocular were received as jabs, or worse? Yeah. Me, too. And have you ever wondered whether maybe, just maybe, those misinterpretations were right? That maybe the people you thought were misreading you were, in fact, reading you more clearly than you read yourself? Have you ever wondered whether you could just start over, from the beginning, and replay all those mistaken communications. Whether you might fix those erroneous assumptions, those misplaced expressions that led to judgments about you that were, if you believe your thoughts about yourself, incorrect?  I have. It’s a pitiful belief. Reality doesn’t treat you the way you wish it would. Reality can be caustic, brutal, unfriendly, and unwilling to bend history to sooth your scorched ego.

I am not a fan of reality. That’s why I write. That’s why I create worlds, even ugly ones, that shine brighter and sooth more completely than this one.

Sorry. I just posted something else. I guess this is why people unsubscribe to my posts.

I’ve never been a big sports fan. I can’t explain why. My folks watched football and baseball on television (after we finally got television), and some of my siblings were big fans of team sports. But I’ve never been a big fan. A few years ago, on a whim, I watched the Super Bowl for the first time in who know how many years—maybe twenty or thirty—and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Oddly enough, I have no recollection of which teams were playing, who won, or anything else. Only that I remember telling my wife (who thought I might have lost my mind after I told her “I think I’m going to watch the Super Bowl”) that I rather enjoyed it. But I didn’t watch the next year, nor any year since. I was somewhat engaged when Boston won the World Series, but only because my wife’s sister was a fan and because we were in regular touch with her at the time. And I’ve since found baseball more interesting; I like live games, but television and even radio doesn’t do much for me. All of this leads up to my admission: though I didn’t watch it, my heart was in Boston today for the marathon. I guess I’ve been especially attached to the Boston Marathon ever since the bombing five years ago. That event touched me, like it no doubt touched many others around the world, as an unspeakably monstrous attack on civilization. But it wasn’t just that. It was the fact that so many individuals were competing against themselves more than they were competing against other people. The participants were competing against parts of themselves that said they couldn’t do it. They competed in the marathon to test themselves and to prove those parts of themselves who said otherwise wrong.

The first time I knew anyone competing in a marathon was around 1986 or 1987, when we lived in Chicago. A young woman who worked with me ran the Chicago marathon. She made it all the way through the 26.2 mile course. Though we weren’t close friends, I was wildly enthusiastic and proud that she ran, and finished. I remember thinking, at the time, that I’d like to do that one day. I never have. I almost certainly never will.

Today’s win by Desiree Linden, the first American woman to win in thirty years, was a big deal for me. And when I read that she had stopped along the course forty-five minutes in to stay with a team-mate, Shalane Flanagan, while she took a toilet break, I was so impressed with Linden. I’m glad she won. I’m glad for everyone who ran the race. I’m impressed with them. I’m a fan.

Maybe I am just now, in my sixty-forth year (hurling toward my sixty-fifty), just beginning to understand competitive sports. I remember being laughed at for my incompetence, but now that I look back on it, it’s probably the laughter that kept me from being killed or killing someone else. Not all people are cut out to be athletes. But I’m growing increasingly impressed with those who are and who behave not as kings, but as servants, when they excel. I can’t say I’m proud of impressive athletes, inasmuch as I have nothing to do with their performance, but I can and do say with conviction I am impressed and appreciative of humility when I see it.

We had grand plans. Dinner at Bones Chophouse, a new place said to be an old-fashioned steak house that sears prime-and-better beef on steel heated to sixteen hundred degrees. I’ve seen photos of their rib-eye steaks that made my mouth water. Those images triggered my olfactory senses, too. I would have sworn I could actually smell the meat cooking. People who have eaten there almost swoon when talking about their meals. It’s possible, of course, that the cause of their near-faint reaction was the price they paid for their meal. Bones is not your average “let’s go out for dinner” sort of venue. Dining at Bones demands one of three circumstances: a spectacularly special occasion worthy of taking out a bank loan; personal wealth of such scale and scope that it possessor, by default, owns at least two homes in the Hamptons; or fiscal irresponsibility that virtually guarantees financial ruin in the near-term. In our case, only the first circumstance applied: we were celebrating our thirty-eighth wedding anniversary and would promise one another not to spend so much on a meal for at least a year.

Actually, our anniversary celebrations have become rather routine and not subject to the anxiety that might accompany the first or second or third or fifth anniversary. In those early years, if something got in the way of our planned celebration, I can imagine we might have been overwrought. (Though I don’t recall anything of the sort.) For number thirty-eight, it’s just another day, but with an excuse to splurge.

All during the day on our anniversary we heard weather forecasts calling for severe weather right about the time we had our “tentative” reservations (the place does not take reservations, but when I called and plaintively cried “it’s our anniversary,” they took my name and said, “we’ll see what we can do”).  As the time drew near for us to need to leave, the weather forecasters’ predictions seemed to be playing out to the west of us. If the storms heading our way maintained their strength, we decided, we could be caught right in the middle of a super cell or tornado about half-way home.  So, we decided to call and cancel. I spoke to the same woman who had said she’d do what she could. She did not seem particularly pleased. I said I would plan to try again soon.

There would be time, we decided, to zip over to El Jimador, our favorite little Mexican place in the Village.  We enjoyed our dinner (we always get the same thing) and I went to the counter to pay. I pulled out my wallet, opened it, and discovered something was missing—the credit card I intended to use to pay for dinner. I looked and looked. I emptied my wallet. It was not there. The restaurant manager said, “No money? You’ll have to do the dishes!” He laughed. I laughed, but not as loudly as he. My wife drew a credit card from her purse and paid for the meal. We went to the car. I sat there, stewing. “Where the hell did I leave it?”

My wife asked what I had done the day before. “I slept most of the day. Where did you go while I was sleeping?” I tried to remember. Yes, I had gone out. Yes, she slept most of the day to compensate for her inability to sleep the night before, due to her allergies and hours-long sneezing outbreak. Yeah, I had gone out. But where? It was the day before, for goodness sake! I couldn’t remember what had I done! Finally, it came to me. I went out only to a writers’ meeting in the morning and I attended an art show at which my neighbor won a prize in the afternoon. Nowhere else. I did not use my credit card.

My wife finally figured it out. I must have left it at another restaurant earlier in the week. I called. Sure enough, it was there. Sighs of relief echoed throughout the house. We could stop worrying that someone might be using my credit card to buy cruise missiles or a Caribbean island.

The storms arrived just a little behind schedule. Fierce winds, pounding rain, and regular screams from the NOAA emergency weather radio. When alerted to tornado warnings and advised to “take cover,” we hid in the hallway (our “safe spot”) until the television in the next room announced the cancellation of the tornado warnings.

We squarely placed blame for the derailed dinner plans and the discovery that my credit card was missing and the beastly weather on the fact that our anniversary fell on Friday the 13th.  Of course, our anniversary has fallen on Friday the 13th before. A little internet sleuthing (forget calculating it with a calendar) revealed that we’ve celebrated on that dreaded day in these previous years:

• 1984, 1990, 2001, 2007, 2012, 2018

Just another average anniversary.

I wasn’t finished. Apparently I hit “post” too early. So, I’m finishing my thoughts and posting for the second time this morning.

Yesterday afternoon, I attended an artists’ reception at which the winning entries for an art show were announced. It was a small show, no more than fifty paintings—probably fewer.  A professional artist, a water colorist who had taught a three-day course for the art club sponsoring the show, judged the contest. I probably wouldn’t have attended the show except for the fact that my neighbor, a very talented artist who paints primarily in oils, invited he. He and his wife often invite us to show where his work is on display. As usual, the talent on display impressed me. The hors d’ouevres the participating artists prepared for the show impressed me. The way the water colorist judge explained his process of selection impressed me the most. His words offered genuine praise to every single artist who participated, whether selected for a prize or not. I am sure I won’t quote him accurately, but here’s the essence of what I remember him saying:

“Every painting on display here represents talent and artistic vision. Every painting offers a glimpse into the mind and heart of the artist. Therefore, all of us viewing these artists’ work  are enjoying a real privilege. It takes courage for these artists to put themselves out there, to allow their paintings to be judged by someone they don’t know, and by the audience here, many of whom the artists know personally. My selections of the entries to be awarded honorable mentions and ribbons reflect my personal biases. My selections are subjective. Another judge would make different selections. I’ve forced myself to remove at least a little of my bias by refusing to select only watercolor paintings. But it’s impossible to remove subjectivity.”

He then announced his selections for honorable mention, third place, second place, and first place. For each one, he explained why he selected that particular painting. He was generous with his praise, but it seemed obvious to me that he based his praise on real knowledge, as well as subjective appreciation of the paintings.  My neighbor received a second place ribbon in the amateur division for one of his oils (paintings were entered in either the amateur division or the professional division, the latter for artists who [try] to make a living with their art). I enjoyed seeing my neighbor’s face when he heard his name announced. His face beamed with evidence of his joy and pride. Watching the faces of each of the winners was a real treat. You just feel good for people when they get recognition and acknowledgement for doing something that really matters to them, don’t you?

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The water colorist who judged yesterday’s show is to do a demonstration of his techniques this morning at the Unitarian Universalist Village Church. Though I’m not a water colorist (I’m an utterly untrained and unskilled acrylic painter wanna-be whose paintings are, by and large, crap), I think I may go see what this guy does. Yesterday, a very good professional artist asked me if I had anything in the show. I explained that, although I would love to create art, I am an utterly untrained and unskilled acrylic painter wanna-be. She insisted that I should learn certain techniques. Learning them would “unleash the artistic creativity inside you,” she said. She said, “next time we have a plein air workshop, come along and I’ll sit with you and show you some techniques to help you.” Such a generous woman! It’s a shame to waste that generosity on a talent-less schmuck, though. I know what I want to see on the canvas, but the result of my attempts to place it there always result in frustration. Maybe, though, I’ll give it another try.

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Today’s weather forecast warns of severe storms this afternoon with the possibility of rotation. That means a potential for tornadoes. I don’t want to experience tornadoes. Not in the least. Depending on the timing of the impending storm, we may need to reschedule our dinner at fancy steak house. Hmm. I cooked salmon last night (frozen pre-packaged stuff that had been marinated in something or other…it was actually quite tasty). So, if we have to cook “in” tonight, I’ll need to thaw something other than salmon. Although there could be worse things than having salmon two nights in a row. Perhaps meat balls, jazzed up with Mrs. Renfro’s Ghost Pepper Salsa. Or jerk chicken. I made jerk salmon not long ago; maybe it’s time to make jerk chicken. I’m writing as if I expect our fancy steak dinner to be cancelled. I don’t want that to happen. But, if it does, I want to be prepared with Plan B. When it comes to food, I like to be prepared. There may be evidence of a food fixation in this post. And in many other posts. I do enjoy food. Too much. It’s my go-to comfort substance, along with alcohol. I think an upcoming doing without month should eliminate alcohol. And perhaps it should eliminate dinners for a month, forcing me to rely on breakfast and lunch for sustenance. This paragraph has slithered through thoughts on our anniversary dinner, the possible cancellation of same, an exposition of my food fixation, and a need to cut back on food and eliminate alcohol from my diet. While I’m at it, perhaps I should close with recognition that I need to get much more exercise and I desperately need to start checking off my “to-do” list of maintenance items around the house.