My Life's Work

Happy Resurrection Day!

2010-04-03T23:34:00.000-04:00

We’re just home from a wonderful Easter vigil Mass. It was even more special than usual because Kathy was a reader, taking a part of the Exodus reading. A woman who had read at the vigil for many years (Maureen) passed away a few weeks ago, and two readers decided to leave, so I was really stuck. Kathy volunteered to read—only the second time she has ever been up there—and she did a great job.

Holy Saturday is always the day when I think about how my life, how my family, how the whole world would be different if Jesus had not existed, if He had not come, taught, died and rose. Would all our cities resemble Pottersville, from "It's a Wonderful Life", where the 'working poor' are crushed by avaricious landlords like Mr. Potter? Or would they descend into the hedonistic vision of "Back to the Future", where Biff uses the sports almanac to build a gambling empire? If we couldn't be 'good Christians', what would we be? How would we treat each other without Christ's example to emulate?

Take a look around at your world and imagine all the church spires gone, no minister to turn to in times of despair, no one to share your faith with, because you wouldn't have any to share. This is the one day when we can say "What if", and maybe come to a better appreciation of tomorrow's gift. Perhaps Easter is a better time than New Year's Eve to resolve to do better in the coming year, since it marks the beginning of our real New Year, our acceptance of salvation.How would your life be different without Easter?

Poker night

2010-03-13T21:09:00.000-05:00

Seven year old Max came over on Tuesday, which is getting to be poker night, since that’s what we’ve been doing lately with him. Before the big game, though, he had some of Nana’s famous mac n cheese. We shut off the TV to visit, and I asked him about school. He was typically noncommittal, though he did talk to two girls in his class, Krista and Katerina.

He started talking about those hand buzzers that kids use to shock each other, and how one might be built. His dad cautioned him strongly about playing with electricity, but asked him, theoretically, how he might go about making such a thing. Max surprised us all by saying, “I have a diagram in my pocket.” Sure enough, there it was: an exploded view of a buzzer, complete with “battery holder” and “copper wire”. Shane said it looked like the kid version of the Anarchist’s Handbook.

Nana was the big winner in poker, taking the “all in” hand at the end.

Look who's 60

2010-03-06T20:54:00.000-05:00

Today is my 60th birthday. I’ve come to terms with it. It was a little rough for the past year or so leading up to it, as I thought about what it might mean. Growing up, anyone who was 60 was really old! I remember that 50 kind of felt good. 60 is not much different, though I might be creaking a little more than I did ten years ago.

I’m fresh from my birthday dinner with the in-laws. We tried a place that none of us had ever been to before. It bills itself as “comfort food with a twist”. We had a nice time with great food—one brother in law even cleaned his plate of his chicken parm, and the other liked his steak. I had lamb chops and discovered that I really don’t care for lamb chops, but I could see where they were going with it.

Everything was going along just fine until the checks came. There were errors on all three of them. Ours was correct the second time (we wound up owing more). Kathy and I left, though, while the others waited for their checks to be corrected for the third time. Too bad. We were thinking of returning there some time.

I spend the day doing things I like to do: I got a haircut, and walking back from the barber, I saw a pretty girl in a red Corvette stuck in the snow across the street from our house. What to do? I got a board and some carpeting from our garage and went to the rescue. Later I went to Borders and got a book on the photo software I use, and wandered aimlessly around the store for a while. So it was pretty much a perfect day.

As long as I keep up with walking the dog a few miles a day, swimming and weight training, I should be able to keep age at bay. After all, isn’t 60 the new 40?

Memories of Maureen

2010-02-21T15:41:00.001-05:00

One of our friends from church, a woman named Maureen, died a couple of weeks ago. We think she had pancreatic cancer, since she went so fast. Two weeks before she died, she was in church, telling us how she was having a hard time with her treatments, with blood counts so low that they couldn’t even administer the treatments. She went into the hospice which is just up the hill from our house. I went to see her one day, but I yielded my time to a couple of ladies who had driven over from the east side to see her. They used to teach with her. Turns out I should have just gone up with them, since on that day she was lucid, talking to visitors, but by the next day, when I finally got back there, she was just sleeping.

I was fortunate to be invited to do the readings at her funeral, since her two adult children said they would not be able to get through it. The night after she died I was in her house, planning the liturgy with her husband and the priest who was going to help with the Mass. Her kids traded stories about their mom while the five grandchildren meandered, crawled and otherwise orbited the table where we grownups sat.

Maureen and her mom (who passed away two years ago) had a standing hair appointment every Thursday. Sometimes the kids would go with them. Her daughter said it was a wonder they didn’t develop lung disease, since the women would get into the car after the appointment and pull cans of hairspray out from under their seats and liberally spray their hair, locking it into place. The kids could (and did) bounce wadded up paper off their mother’s hair helmet.

One time when Maureen and her husband John were in Las Vegas, the hair appointment loomed large when, at the airport gate, the agent announced that they needed two people to give up their seats for some VIP’s who needed to fly out that night. They offered a sweet deal: two $500 ticket vouchers, transportation to a hotel, dinner that night, and first class seats back home on the following day. John wanted to grab it, and Maureen said no—she had to get to her hairdressers the next day! Once on the plane, John couldn’t help himself, “I hope you enjoy your $1,000 hair appointment,” he scowled.

We gave her a nice sendoff, with trumpets and a tympani and some great hymns.

If you lived in the 60's

2010-01-30T20:21:00.001-05:00

We just finished a heck of a cold snap here, with temperatures staying in the teens for the last week. The other day the wind was whipping through town as a front came through, but then things calmed down. Fortunately, Tank and I did not have to contend with much wind on our walks. I did keep it short, though, since he doesn’t have a very thick coat.

I took him for a bath again on Saturday, this time just the two of us went. I had reserved the shower room at the dog wash place. We have the routine down pretty well now. They give you about a half gallon of shampoo and they expect you to use it all. I applied his medicinal shampoo after the oatmeal mix they give you, so he is super clean right now. His coat is repairing itself well , such that unless you know where to look, you can’t see the former bare spots. Later, I cleaned his ears and brushed his teeth, so he’s ready for his close-up.

My goals at work on Friday were a) Leave early, b) Get my email cleaned up and c) Get control of my desk. I accomplished all three, but not in that order. Ever since the Great Flood, I’ve felt out of control, with papers strewn everywhere. Fortunately, most of what I found had already been handled and could safely be recycled. I got my email down to about two inches worth of screen.

Grandson Max stopped over on Saturday for a visit for a couple of hours. Max discovered a Lego set that had never been touched—I think he took it with him. He did goof around with a some pieces of something for a while, then he and I watched cartoons while he had a lunch-snack. We watched something called “The Kids Next Door”. After a while I thought the show was getting a little out of hand and I remarked, “I wonder if we should be watching this…” and Max responded by saying, “It’s OK. It’s funny violence—like Tom and Jerry.”

On Saturday night, we all went to Bonefish for my brother in law's 60th birthday celebration. The waiter wasn’t the sharpest, it was crowded, we had a crappy table, but we still managed to have a good time. My contribution to his birthday booty was a CD of Procol Haram, a group from the 60’s that he liked. It was interesting talking to a twenty something sales clerk in a music store, trying to explain what I was looking for. His manager wasn’t any more hip, as he confused the group’s big hit “Whiter Shade of Pale” with Simon and Garfunkel’s “Hazy Shade of Winter”. Jeez—where do they find these people? I told daughter Ann this story and she said, Oh yeah—the Bangles’ song. No—you have to go back a little further.

Woo-hoo! Burning through a four day weekend

2010-01-17T20:15:00.000-05:00

Four day weekends are the way to go. Kathy and I both took Friday off last week, and I had MLK Day off. We had a nice day on Friday since it had stopped snowing and warmed up a little bit. We ran errands, went grocery shopping and then went out to lunch at Outback.

One highlight of the errands was taking Tank for a bath at the dog wash. This time we used the shower room and it went much more smoothly. Kathy was there this time, though she practically had an anxiety attack over the prospect of bathing the beast. He behaved quite well and stood patiently while we worked him over with an oatmeal shampoo and then his medicated stuff. He was unperturbed by the all the yap dogs that surrounded him.

I kind of treated Saturday as a work day, though, since I was working on staff evaluations. There is a new on line way to do those things now that is supposed to be “easier”, “faster” and “more convenient”, but I think that just applies to the people in HR. I was so frustrated and infuriated by the new system. At first, every time I tried to open the instruction page, it would freeze my computer. I called the help line at work and of course then it miraculously started to work.

My plan was to do all my evaluations (I have five to do) and then tell the staff to do their part of the evals. I finally figured out that I cannot do theirs until they do theirs, even though the instructions don’t come out and say that directly. So I printed out the version the system uses and then wrote out as much of the evaluations as I could without using the computer. In the end, I was only able to do half of the work. I can’t access the rest of the work until the staff fills in their part of the forms.
The person who is resigning—Sharon, the one who works with the College of Education who broke her arm January 4—was the easiest to write. I just gave her all the highest marks, and wrote glowing things about her, and she deserves it. I really have some good people working for me. They typically don’t cause trouble and do their work well.

Water, water everywhere

2010-01-09T20:55:00.000-05:00

We had another bunch of snow this week, such that I was clearing the driveway each night and then the next morning. On Friday they were promising 4-8 inches of lake effect snow, but it never materialized. I felt cheated.

This weekend it’s sort of cold, but the sun came out brilliantly on Saturday afternoon, prompting me to wear sunglasses when I walked Tank. He loves the snow, incidentally. He’ll throw himself into the deepest drift he can find, and enjoys snapping up mouthfuls of the stuff as we walk along. I told him he might find a chewey surprise left by another of his species if he keeps that up, but he was undeterred.

In other news, we had a flood in the office this week. On Monday we noticed water coming under the door of an equipment room where electrical and heating equipment is housed. The water kept coming until about half our space was covered with it. Several offices had soggy carpeting, the whole career library floor was soaked. It even started moving into our storage room. The housekeeping people came with all their equipment and sucked up all the water, shampooed the carpets and left by 2pm.

They had just left when a pipe snapped in my own personal office, and brown yucky water poured out, flooding the floor and moving into the space outside my door. Now, you must understand that the floor is part of my filing system. Anything on the carpet was soaked, but fortunately, I don’t keep very important stuff down there.

So we called the cleaning people back, and they sucked out the water and treated the carpet with antimicrobial solutions and then left. The carpet was still very stinky, though, so I called them back to redo it. We’ll see how it is on Monday morning, but when I left on Friday, it wasn’t too bad. Someone else’s office that, didn’t even have as much water as I did, had an awful stench on Friday.

It’s all an academic exercise until it’s your own office that is involved. I moved all my furniture out including a big filing cabinet and couch, along with two small filing cabinets and all my chairs. All that is in there is a bookcase and my desk, which is covered with junk that belongs in drawers somewhere. Or on the floor in my filing system. The building engineers have to come back and check their repairs before I can put my space back together again. Every time I look for something, it’s in the hallway somewhere.

Turns out the University thought they could save money by turning off the heat over the winter break. The result was that the water pipe that supplies the sprinkler system froze and broke. My boss had a geranium cutting in a Cool Whip bowl of water in his office sitting on the radiator. The bowl was frozen solid.

A present for ourselves

2009-12-27T20:02:00.001-05:00

Christmas was lots of fun with all the kids home. Our grandson was thrilled with every package he opened--probably because none of them contained underwear or socks.

Our big news this week is that we have a new car. We went to the Toyota dealer on Boxing Day and leased another Camry, but this time we decided to treat ourselves to the next level up. The interest rate was only 1.2%, and everyone assured us that prices would be going up after the New Year. So, for “only” thirty dollars more a month than we were paying for the last three years, we now have the following goodies:
-leather seats
-heated seats
-power moonroof
-fog lights!
-17” wheels
-six CD changer in the radio, with XM Radio free for three months
-slightly more powerful engine with supposedly better gas mileage
-steering wheel tilts and telescopes
-power seats on both driver and passenger sides.

I think those are the main differences between our old car and this one. These are all things we’ve never had on a car, but wished we did. Kathy was especially pleased with this package. We bought the one we test drove. Given that it was a frigid day outside, the heated seats were a big selling point. We may not need the CD changer, since we only go on short trips to work and back, and if I drive to NJ, I just plug in my iPod, and XM Radio is not something we necessarily care about.

The last time we had a sunroof was on the 1974 VW bus. It had a hand crank, and it opened the entire roof into a four foot square hole. Fog lights are exciting because we’ve only had the holes where they go in our other cars.

There is a history of landmarks, watersheds, benchmarks—whatever marks you care to use—a trail of “firsts”. For instance, we remember:
- the first car we got with air conditioning
- the first car with power windows
- the first one with remote control side mirrors
- the first car with a CD player
- the first one with a power seat on the driver’s side.

Maybe other people take these for granted, but we think they are pretty neat. For a long time we couldn’t afford air conditioning, though we would pay extra for the automatic transmission. Power anything seemed a long way off for us. Now that we are approaching our dotage, darn it—we deserve some creature comforts, especially those bun warmers.

The latest news

2009-12-20T19:04:00.000-05:00

I am still here. The dog did not eat me, though he has eaten into my free time in a huge way. Once I get home and walk him, eat dinner, and try to read something, it’s time to go to bed. I have some time off from work now, so here I am.

Here’s what’s happening:

Our youngest has accepted a new job! He will be moving to Tacoma, Washington in a few days to begin work for the Tacoma Habitat for Humanity affiliate. He is pleased with his choice, and we are glad he can stick with Habitat, since he knows it so well. Of course, we are less pleased with the prospect of having him 2,422 miles away, but we kind of used to his peripatetic ways. He does have two sea kayaks as well as a snowboard, so recreationally speaking, he is well prepared for the region.

Max’s tonsillectomy worked out just fine. He had the usual discomfort, didn’t feel like doing much except watch movies and maybe play a video game. We saw him for a while on Saturday and he was a little subdued, but otherwise feeling fine. He helped decorate the tree, played a card game with his dad, and uncle and aunt.

Our daughter is in from Ireland for a couple of weeks, and she came with lots of goodies you can’t get over here. She hasn’t been home for Christmas since 2007, so Kathy is quite pleased. She has been visiting friends from high school and hanging out with her brothers, squeezing as much fun as possible into these weeks.

We seemed to do a lot of our Christmas shopping at the supermarket this year, since gift cards are so easy and people like them. Kathy and I missed our usual shopping day last weekend because I had to work at commencement, so this was a good way to get it done.

Last night the sermon was about how we’ve spent this Advent season: is Jesus any more present in our lives on this last Sunday of Advent than He was on the first Sunday? Uh oh. I better get crackin’.

Better late than never?

2009-11-14T20:10:00.001-05:00

Last week we had a meeting up at church for all the “Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Eucharist” (not supposed to say “Eucharistic Minister”). Anyway, after we got the word on the choreography changes the bishop wants, we all left to go home. On the way across the parking lot, I wound up walking next to a guy I’ve seen in church for thirty-some years, but to whom I had never spoken. He is eminently recognizable, since he’s a big tall guy with a luxurious handlebar mustache. So I made my move, telling him that I’d seen him in church ever since 1976, but never introduced myself. So we did that, and he said, Oh I’m shy, but once you get me talking…And so we talked for a few minutes in the parking lot and then went our separate ways.

Later I realized that I had missed out on 33 years of knowing this man, all because I had never said anything to him in all that time. I think I'll get cracking on meeting more people.

What did you do with your extra hour?

2009-11-01T13:25:00.001-05:00

I had to carve a frowny face in our pumpkin this year, since we did not see Max on Halloween. Fortunately, we did see his bat costume last weekend, so it wasn’t a total loss. He has been doing well in school, so we are glad about that.

Halloween 2009 was a cool blustery one. We had 53 kids this year, before we packed it in at 7:15pm. Trick or treating runs from 6-8pm, but things got very quiet so there was no point in sitting out there any longer. We had the requisite Ninjas, Scream guy, demons and even a tiny Yoda. We also had a little fireman in flannel, a shark, a Gene Simmons girl, a cow, two butterflies, a bloody princess and a banana. One enterprising character walked up with a cardboard box wrapped in foil on his shoulders and two squares sticking out of it. It wasn’t until he had walked away that I realized he was a toaster.

The strangest incident was watching a new neighbor back out of her driveway from two houses down, park carefully in front of our house and have her daughter come up to me for a treat, then drive off.

Kathy’s office participated in a trick or treat event for the neighborhood kids at the hospital. Over a hundred came over and walked around the cafeteria, stopping at tables that various departments and offices had set up. Kathy wore a little witch’s hat decorated with marabou feathers. She recently got her hair cut so it’s much shorter than it was, and sometimes it looks a little poufie. All this to say that one little girl remarked to Kathy, “I like your hat” and the little boy behind her added, “And I like your wig.”

I love the Sunday when we “fall back.” I just luxuriate in all the extra time. It’s not even 10am yet and I’ve already done a wash, defrosted the basement refrigerator, gone to breakfast with Kathy straightened up the house and finished this letter. Now I’m going outside to finish winterizing the yard. Too bad no one needs a house painted or something.

Trooper Day

2009-10-10T20:49:00.001-04:00

If you had been on Cleveland State’s campus this past Wednesday, you would have seen dozens of state troopers, the SWAT van, mobile crime labs, the canine unit and the mounted unit all up and down East 18th Street. If you thought we were under siege by a deranged gunperson, no one could blame you. But wait—all is well. It was “Trooper Day”, with the Ohio State Highway Patrol and the Pennsylvania State Police coming to recruit students. Many students did think something was wrong and were afraid to come over to that side of campus. We had to go over and convince them that everything was OK.

The PA State Police landed a helicopter on the soccer field, and that was a big hit. I have a photo of our director standing by the helo with the pilot and a couple of troopers. I told him the caption should be “Governor Klein arrives in the state helicopter”. The troopers were happy with the number of applicants they had and they want to do it again next year. We have some ideas on how to make it more welcoming: balloons, a DJ, and a popcorn machine. We also want to do it earlier, since we stood in a freezing cold, rainy wind all day. And the helicopter? Turns out he landed on the wrong field. He should have been on the practice field—they had to chase him off because there was a game scheduled that same day.

Silly Season

2009-10-04T20:37:00.001-04:00

We are gearing up for elections in November here. There are several seats on the school board, another school tax issue and miscellaneous judges running. I called and asked for a sign for our front yard urging passage of the school tax, and it arrived the other day. Even though we don’t have any kids in public schools and only one of ours ever did attend public school here, the high school art program was very important for Shane years ago. Besides, good schools should help property values.

On Saturday afternoon, a little old lady came to the door and asked Kathy if she could put a sign in our yard supporting one of the school board candidates. Kathy said, oh sure, and the little old lady stuck the sign in the ground and went on down the street. I missed all this action so I looked up her web site and discovered she was a Republican! The horror! But she was also an art teacher for many years, a school principal, and has worked in almost every school in the district. Who else could know the issues as well? I showed Kathy the photo on the site and she said—how about that—it was the candidate herself. So the sign stays. Hey—she’s 73—I don’t believe she’s the next Sarah Palin.

A new guy at work

2009-09-19T21:14:00.001-04:00

We had a new guy start this week at work—the one I mentioned who is from Nigeria. Hi supervisor and I took him out to lunch on Tuesday, and had an interesting conversation. It was my fault. I asked him about Nigeria, and he stretched out his arm on a vacant chair next to him, stopped eating, and began an expansive discourse on the major tribes of Nigeria, the regions in which they live and the relative political power of each. While it was a remarkable presentation, I broke in to relate some tidbit of my own in order to give him a chance to eat, since, after all, we did eventually have to get back to the office. He politely sat and listened to me, but he didn’t start eating again. I had to indicate that it was OK to eat while I talked.

I am so glad he does not report to me. His supervisor was run ragged all week taking him to meetings and events. I just had to sit with him for about an hour to explain our database system to him, and he understood it easily, since he has an IT background.

One of the coordinators who does report to me was out sick a couple of days this past week. She sounded awful on the phone. The director’s secretary had also been sick, so I hope whatever it is is not marching through the office. When the coordinator returned to work on Friday, I hung a biohazard symbol on her door. She didn’t think it was all that funny. I got a kick out of myself, though.

The 216 Hour Report

2009-09-09T20:16:00.000-04:00

Tank has been settling in this past week. We’ve been walking a mile and a half at 5am and another two miles at 5pm and one of us should be in pretty good shape soon. On Saturday of the Labor Day weekend, our extended family met at the same park we had had breakfast in back on the Fourth of July. Tank was the big attraction since most people had not met him yet.

Shane’s girlfriend, the tri-athlete, took him for a run back and forth in a big field; a nephew's girlfriend took him for a walk in the woods, then my brother and sister in law took him for another spin on the trail. By the time we got home, he was exhausted. This is significant because we’d never seen him like that. He had always seemed ready to go. In any case, everyone was suitably impressed with him. He was, of course, a perfect gentleman. Oh. Except for the crotch thing, but hey—he’s a dog.

Kathy and I went out to breakfast on Sunday, did a little PetSmart shopping and then came home to give Tank his first bath with us. We did it outside since it was so warm. He did very well, but Kathy did not. You see, Tank took out my good knee during the Saturday outing. He swung his head at just the right angle and that was it. She was afraid he was going to take me down during the bath, but he behaved quite well.

The 24 Hour Report

2009-08-28T20:11:00.000-04:00

We have been dog owners again for twenty-four hours, and here is our report.

Tank is very well mannered and has lived up to his former owners’ glowing description. They dropped him off last night with all his equipment: two beds, feeding bowls, toys, leashes, food and food container. Kathy slept downstairs so he wouldn’t feel lonely, but it turns out he spent most of the night out in the living room.

I took him out for an early walk at 5:30am this morning, as he excitedly explored the neighborhood. Apparently he is not as interested in marking his territory as our former dog Kodiak was, since Tank just pees until he is done, all in one spot. Later in the afternoon, we went for our first mile walk and he did not even stop to sniff anything but just walked briskly down the sidewalk watching everything.

He knows many commands and is very easy to direct both inside and outside. They warned us he does not like the rain, and I found that out tonight when it started to sprinkle during our evening constitutional. He shook himself every few steps, though it wasn’t even raining very hard, and he plunged ahead trying to hurry us along, as if he were about to melt.

He really is a great dog and it’s wonderful to have such a beast in the house once again.

Tank is coming!

2009-08-22T21:22:00.001-04:00

Our big news is that we are taking possession of our new dog on Thursday this week. The owner called us a few days ago to let us know that we were the successful suitors. They felt good about us and our house and believed that Tank would be loved and cared for well here. We are very excited. At first we were going to take him in on Labor Day weekend, but since the owners are going away next weekend and needed someone to watch him anyway, they asked to transfer him to us earlier. I was anxious to get him in here, so I was happy to agree.

They are giving us a bag of food, his bowls, toys, bed and a “manual” on how to take care of him, so we should be in good shape. When Ann Kodiak, she had a seven page owners manual. Tank’s is only three pages, but that should help. Kathy will take Friday off to help him ease into our household. So here we go!

Interview with the dog

2009-08-16T18:52:00.002-04:00

We had an exciting Saturday morning being interviewed by a prospective dog. I had worked myself into a state over this dumb dog—I didn’t sleep well on Thursday, on Friday night I couldn’t sleep at all so I came downstairs for a while. Finally, D-Day (D for Dog) arrived. We were waiting on the front steps when "Tank" and his owners pulled into the driveway. He bounded out of the back hatch of the SUV and our first thought was: Jeepers! He’s big!

Anyone who has been in our house probably wouldn’t recognize it after we staged it for this dog. We put four or five chairs in the basement, along with the exercise bike and an end table, all to make the house look bigger to the owners. Kathy had a brilliant idea to collapse the dining room table down to the size of a bistro table which opened up the whole room. In fact, once Tank had settled down, he laid on the dining room rug and filled the whole space. He really is the size of small horse, weighing 135 pounds.

Max was here this weekend, so they got to meet everyone, too. The owners brought their three year old daughter, and she and Max got along famously. They brought down toys and played together while the grownups talked and Tank paced around the house. Near the end of the visit, I took him for a test drive around the block and we did very well. We should know in a week or so if we are the winners.

Checking in again

2009-08-09T21:03:00.001-04:00

I didn't realize it had been so long since I've posted. Bad blogger, bad! It's just too nice outside at night to be in front of a computer screen.

Last week I was in Chicago for a conference. OK, not exactly in Chicago, but in Lombard, a surburb that wound up being 45 minutes away from the airport, provided the traffic is moving. The conference was pretty good altogether. I got to see my friends from around the country, take photos of everyone, hear some useful ideas and also present a workshop. I heard later that people liked it, so that was gratifying.

We are closer than ever to a new dog. The friend of one of our son's Facebook friends has a Great Dane that she cannot keep and so she is looking for a good home for him. He is five years old, all black with natural floppy ears, 135 pounds, and reportedly very smart and sweet. I spoke to the owner the other day and we had a long conversation as she vetted our credentials as potential Great Dane owners. At first she said she had several people interested and that she would get back to me, but at the end of the call, she agreed to bring Tank (an apt name, from his photos) to meet us this coming weekend. It turns out that I know the owner from our interactions a few years ago when she worked in HR for a hotel here in town. It’s a small world after all.

We feel as if we are adopting a child, getting nervous, hoping that the “parents” will like us, approve of our living arrangements, and allow us to take their baby. We are trying not to get too excited in case they decide we are not worthy. Kathy pointed out to me that we are "staging" our house for a dog: moving furniture around to make the house look bigger, so they can visualize their baby romping in our space. We are trying not to get our hopes up, pretending that it's OK if we don't get him. But it's not OK. How do people do this when they are adopting a child? How nerve wracking.

Sorry I missed your call...

2009-07-11T22:07:00.000-04:00

Seeing first run movies is not something I usually do. “Public Enemies” was an exception last week. Kathy said she would treat for rental movie—one I would watch, since we rarely agree on what’s “good”. Blockbuster has a deal right now whereby for ten dollars you can take out as many movies or video games as you like for one week, one at a time. Woo-hoo! I went for it. Wish I had known about it during my vacation week.

There were four movies that I knew I wanted to see: Taken, Defiance, Gran Torino, and Knowing. I watched Taken tonight and promptly switched it out for Defiance, which I will watch tomorrow some time. Have you seen Taken? It’s sure to ruin many college age daughters’ plans for a European adventure this summer. It is a guy movie, I suppose, with lots of car chases, fighting, shooting and the like. It was also the fastest movie I ever saw as the 90 minutes or so just shot by. I felt my heart rate rocket and honest to goodness I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.

This afternoon I knocked off another Robert B. Parker novel, a western called “Resolution”. Very fun read with wonderful good guys who hardly say two words at a time—in other words, typical Parker dialogue.

So why this burst of entertainment-seeking activity? I caught up on my New Yorker magazines.

Back on Wednesday three of us from the office volunteered at a local TV station to work a phone bank where people called in with job search questions. The first call I took was from a woman in her fifties who had been temping for the past ten years. I was on with her for half an hour. She managed to shoot down every idea I came up with. I felt I was kind of representing the TV station, so I didn’t tell her what I really thought. Shall I tell you? Well, she’s dug herself a pretty good hole over the last ten years—employers might now wonder what’s wrong with her, that she hadn’t taken a full time job in all that time.

Many of the other calls I took were from people whom I am not equipped to help, at least not over the phone: lots of blue collar guys who did die casting, mechanical assembly—that sort of thing. One poignant call was from a guy who did have some college and I was able to encourage him to get back to school somehow. As we talked he eventually told me he had a felony arrest, but no conviction. I didn’t ask him about the details, nor did he volunteer them.

Another was from a nice little old lady (I imagine) who had been retired for the past fourteen years. She had worked for thirty years in one company, and was now concerned about people who could have served as references, but whom she can longer find. I think that thirty years is reference enough. Why was she returning to work? She had been raising her grandson since the day he was born. Now he’s a teenager and no longer needs her 24/7 care. See what I mean? Nice lady.

It is hard to stay optimistic with announcements like last week’s of another 400,000 jobs gone. Makes you wonder where we will be in another year or two.

Staycation

2009-07-02T11:09:00.002-04:00

This is my ninth day of vacation, if you count last weekend. The first four days were devoted to painting the garage, the rest to messing around in the house and doing decadent things like going to the movies in the middle of the morning. It’s been raining for several days now and cold—cold enough for some Barry’s Tea in fact.

On a recent warmer day, I was sitting in my favorite chair on the deck thinking if this is what retirement would be like. I could see my retired sixty-three year old neighbor who rarely leaves his house and I thought, boy—my world would be pretty small without work or something to do. Kathy assured me that I would be volunteering somewhere probably, doing more at church. I suppose so. There are still four more years before I have to deal with that, though.
Tomorrow everyone is off for the Fourth of July holiday, so Kathy and I wanted to do something together, get out, go somewhere.

When I asked her what she had a taste for, she thought of a casino about an hour and half away in Pennsylvania, some place where we’ve never been. I was a little surprised, but said sure, let’s go. We’ll bring some rolls of quarters and see what happens.

My new computer is beginning to feel more like mine and less like Bill Gates'. Dell shrunk the keyboard, and I was having trouble typing on it, since it resembled a crowded laptop board and I hate typing on a laptop. So, a genuine Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard now graces the slide out tray on my computer table. It does take a little while to get used to, but I’m starting to get the idea. It won’t fit under the table with the big plastic strip that raises the front of the board, so I remove that and just snap it back on if I have any extensive typing to do.

At first I was skeptical about buying such a thing, but I went to Best Buy to try it out and when I looked at my hands I was surprised to see that they naturally fell off to the sides anyway. The keyboard I have is not too swoopy with those crazy separate sides for left and right, but seems to be just right for what I need. Best Buy wanted $80 for it, so I got it from tigerdirect.com for $50.

One more note on the new computer: I finally got my “Favorites” over to the bookmark section so I can easily find all your blogs again.

Oh--what movie did I see? "Public Enemies" with Johnny Depp. It was something that I knew that Kathy would never want to see, and I was curious about Depp, since I've seen him in other things like Willy Wonka and Benny and Joone. He was pretty amazing. You're left feeling sad about his death, but you have to remember that Dillinger killed a lot of people himself. Even though you know how it will end, it's still a good story.

Where have i been?

2009-06-06T22:13:00.000-04:00

Jeepers, I didn’t realize that it had been that long since I last posted—May 17. So here’s what’s been happening: I spent Memorial Day weekend in NJ visiting my dad and sibs. We had a great time catching up on everyone’s doings, especially those of all my talented nieces and nephews. One niece’s summer job involves delivering clothes from a fashion designer to celebrities’ houses. She’s met some au currant people I never heard of, though. A nephew—a law student—is working for a judge, another niece leaves soon for a teaching job in Switzerland—they are a busy bunch.

On Memorial Day itself, my sisters and I were drafted as marchers for the Democrats in the town where our brother is on the town council. We were a small but popular group as we slung candy at the kids lining the parade route. It’s gotten to be like Halloween now, as kids expect treats at every parade, even to the point of bringing bags to haul away their loot.

Back at home, Shane and Max went to a classical kids concert on Saturday, both of them dressed up in pants and collared shirts like young gentlemen. Since Max knows all the words to some song called “Holla back” and likes a song by Beyoncé, Shane thought he better get some culture. They both liked the music, sitting in a box in the big concert hall. Back on Election Day, Shane took Max to the polls and allowed him to fill in the circle by the issues on the ballot. Later Shane told us that Max had voted. He reached out his hand and touched his father’s arm saying, “Technically, Dad, technically”.

Earlier in the week, he had to go to the ER for a cut on his heel. They put a purple bandage on it, and he groused about how everyone would laugh at him at school since to him it looked like a “girl’s “ bandage. What did he do when he returned to school the next day? Went around saying, “Hey everybody, look at my cool bandage!!”

Battling malware, treating myself

2009-05-17T14:19:00.001-04:00

I have been battling some extremely malicious malware on my computer—something that rendered it virtually useless, so I haven’t been a good correspondent lately. The worm I had would put up irritating notices about my computer being under attack, and then would try to get me to buy some bogus antivirus package (“Spyware Protect 2009”). This thing was so insidious that it would not let me go to malwarebytes.org to get the solution. Eventually any browser I would use would be shut down immediately by this program.

If it happens to you, go straight to www.superantispyware.com and get the free version and do a complete scan of your computer to clean everything out.

Even now, there is still something wrong, since when I click a link in a Google search, IE will go to some random site and not the link I wanted.

Anyway, I decided to get a new printer, since the color stopped working on my current one. I don’t do a lot of printing, and I probably could have limped along with this one for a while but someone else offered to buy it for me, so how could I refuse?

After dithering about it for a week or so, researching HP, Canon, reading reviews (“Love it!”…”Hate it!”…”Waste of money!”…”Fabulous color!”…”Blows through ink cartridges like crazy!”…”Wonderful buy!”), I decided to stay with Lexmark after all. When I bought my Dell six years ago, a LexmarkX75 (scan-copy-print) came with it for free. The darn thing has been plugging along all this time with no problems. Soon Amazon will ship a brand spanking new Lexmark X7675 All-in-One Printer.

HP seemed to have humongous drivers, poor ink management and set up headaches. At least, that’s what stood out for me in the reviews. I have an HP at work and it’s fine if you don’t mind all the clicking and clacking it goes through before producing a document. We have two older HP 2500’s with footprints like dinosaurs that rotate four big toner cartridges, cycling them all through before it spits out what you want. Also, there are approximately forty-two skillion models of HP printers and I just started to get lost after a while.

Canon was a possibility. I had a small Canon back in the 90’s with my first home computer and it worked fine. I guess I didn’t want to pay for features I won’t use, like fax or super dupe photo printing. (I use my Canon Selphy for quick 4x6 prints.) Wireless—I also don’t care about wireless since I don’t have a network at home, and the wireless feature seemed to add fifty bucks to the price.

Today, fourteen hours after I bought the printer, I checked on Amazon and saw that the price had dropped by 32 dollars! I was mad—how stupid! I should have waited till today! But I used that cool feature Amazon has now where they call you—and I clicked the button and my phone immediately rang. I thought it was my sister in law and here it was a nice lady in India calling from Amazon. She adjusted my account and I got the new price. I was very pleased.

So, here I’ve gone and spoiled myself again. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.

Putting in the crops

2009-05-09T16:46:00.000-04:00

I’ve been a lazy blogger lately. The weather has improved, and it’s time to sit out on the deck and read until I can’t see the pages anymore. Since I’m not wireless, I won’t be blogging from the backyard either.

Today it started out warm and sunny, but a cold front blew through this afternoon driving the temperatures into the 50’s. It didn’t keep me from my landscaping projects, though, as I planted the pansy bed again in the back. One year I used Miracle Gro soil, but it just caused the poor dears to become all stalky. What usually happens by July is that it stops raining and no amount of watering can keep them going.

So why bother? They are Kathy’s favorite flower and that’s reason enough.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Dixie and all that

2009-04-26T21:59:00.001-04:00

This past week was our big trip to the Deep South—Americus, GA to see our son and his girlfriend and of course, their house. Before we left, we asked our local son for a AAA triptik and the book for Kentucky and Tennessee. I also mapquested every leg of the trip. When we left, I plugged in the GPS (nicknamed “Penny”). So we had three sources of directions, and they didn’t always agree.

This is what our trip looked like:
Cleveland to Knoxville
Knoxville to Americus
Americus to Seneca,
SC Seneca to Chattanooga,
TN Chattanooga to Lexington,
KY Lexington to Cleveland

In Knoxville, the restaurant hostess was from Binghamton NY; the server was an underemployed Psychology grad from the University of Tennessee and the hotel clerk regularly drives up to the Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio. It was fun driving further and further south and seeing stronger and stronger signs of spring. In Kentucky, the dogwoods were in bloom and in fact Knoxville was getting ready for their Dogwood Festival.

Kathy was not pleased with the crowded bypass around Atlanta, but soon we left that behind for the empty country roads heading into Americus. I did not realize that Andersonville, the notorious POW camp run by the Confederacy was located in Americus until we drove right by it. I added that to our list of things to see later.

The house was wonderful: a “Craftsman” (no, it did not come from a Sears kit or anything).It has three bedrooms, two and half baths, a ginormous kitchen, a big comfy living room, a formal dining room, a sitting room off to the side, a nice big porch out front and a screened in porch out back. They put a lot of work into it, staining the woodwork and restoring a lot of its former glory. It used to be a group home, then the owners just previous to our son knocked out some walls to enlarge the kitchen, and were in the process of removing all the paint from the woodwork. They pleaded with our son not to just paint over the wood but to stain it as they had planned, and he was fine with that.

During our stay, we walked over to an “Art in the Park” event. There was a Shakespearean troupe strolling around in costume, promoting their production of “Taming of the Shrew” for that night. A woman on stilts was a hit as she effortlessly glided through the throng, occasionally stopping to juggle bowling pin-like objects. We watched glass blowers in action and bought a nice vase made by one of the college students raising money for a trip to China.

We got a glimpse of southern gentility when we bought tickets to a Porch Walk—another fund raiser, this time for the Americus Historical Society. We walked up and down Lee Street, visiting a total of six houses with grand wrap around porches. The hostesses had prepared finger sandwiches and cakes and provided liquid refreshment (vodka was a popular choice). We met some nice people along the way and saw some great houses.

There are 62 churches in tiny Americus, Georgia. Of those, 38 are some variety of Baptist. There is one Catholic church. I called the church one night before we left to get the Mass schedule. They had two Masses in English and a few more in Spanish. So we planned to go to the English 10:30 Mass. Instead, we sought out Maranatha Baptist church in a town right next to Americus. We realized that it was not often that we’d have a chance to go to a Sunday School session taught by a former President of the United States. Sure enough, Jimmy Carter was our teacher for a lesson on the last chapter of Luke. Of course, he spent about fifteen minutes talking about politics and his upcoming travel plans—he’s going to Lebanon, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. He was funny and warm and engaging and we all had a great time. After the service, we walked outside and waited for a moment to get our photo taken with Jimmy and Rosalynn.

I am not making this up.

Kathy’s favorite story about this adventure goes like this: We pulled into the church parking lot where a large black man in a suit stopped us. He told her to roll up her window, as he was about to have an explosives sniffing dog walk around our car. Of course he was Secret Service, not the valet. At the front door of the church, there were more agents searching purses and wanding everyone before they entered the building. Kathy was a little embarrassed when she realized she had a pair of panty hose stuffed into her bag. The agent rummaged around in there but handed it back to her without comment. It could have been worse, I suppose.

The jaunt to South Carolina was to visit some retired friends, then we backtracked to Chattanooga, staying at the Chattanooga Choo Choo Holiday Inn. Trite, I know, but an interesting place.

Way more important than Christmas

2009-04-12T14:23:00.001-04:00

On Holy Saturday, Kathy and I were in the flower shop buying something for her sisters as an Easter present. The cashier was wearing bunny ears. I wondered (to myself) if a crown of thorns might be more appropriate. I suppose it would be, but it would also be somehow less festive.

Happy Resurrection Day!

Check your local listings

2009-04-05T20:58:00.001-04:00

Lately, we have been deluged with coverage by the television stations and newspapers since the economy is the big news these days. One station taped a staff meeting a week ago; on Monday I have to call a reporter about a question she had. So who comes to our Government Career Day? A television crew! They wanted to interview me about what we were doing that day, since they didn’t have anything like it in their country—Russia! So I was interviewed by a Russian TV crew. A woman would ask me to explain what all the people were doing at the event, and I tried. Then, she would ask for clarification, since the concept was so foreign to them. I’m still not sure I was able to communicate in terms their audience could understand. Later, I thought it was kind of funny that they didn’t know what I meant by a government “agency”—come on—you’re from Russia! Surely you know what the word “government” means. Later, Kathy said I should have said, “Bureau” and that would have made more sense.

All this meant lots of standing and walking, and by Saturday, I just couldn’t move anymore. I slept a lot, went to Mass with Kathy. I read the part of the “Speaker” in the Passion. I scheduled myself deliberately for that part, since all I have to do is say “I will not betray you!” a couple times, and a few other lines, with conviction, of course.

Today will not be a day of rest, though. It’s Palm Sunday and food packing day for Social Justice. With the change in the Mass schedule, we can start an hour early, and we should have plenty of help, since the cub scouts have again offered their services.

Creative Process

2009-03-28T21:38:00.000-04:00

There was the most amazing set of poems in the March 16 New Yorker by John Updike. Written in November and December 2008, a few months before he died, they reflect his last recorded thoughts about his illness. Or at least, the ones I know about.

What struck me is that these were either written in his hospital room, or at home between stints on the oncology floor. He was turning out still more work, converting his experiences into art, instead of bemoaning his fate. What did I do in the hospital a couple of weeks ago? Whatever it was, it certainly didn’t involve crafting amazing images to convey the meaning of those events.

Usually, I keep a notebook on my hospital bedside table to track the comings and goings of my doctors, vital signs, and random insights. (“Usually”? How sad to couple that word with “hospital”.) Anyway, composing poetry is not paramount at those times. Watching out for myself and not annoying the nurses are activities that generally top the list.

Here are the last ones in the set, apparently written on December 22, 2008:

Needle Biopsy
By John Updike

All praise be Valium in Jesus’ name:
a CAT-scan needle biopsy sent me
up a happy cul-de-sac, a detour not
detached from consciousness but sweetly part—
I heard machines and experts murmuring about me—
a dulcet tube in which I lay secure and warm
and thought creative thoughts, intensely so,
as in my fading prime. Plans flowered, dreams.

All would be well, I felt, all manner of thing.
The needle, carefully worked, was in me, beyond pain,
aimed at an adrenal gland. I had not hoped
to find, in this bright place, so solvent a peace.
Days later, the results came casually through:
the gland, biopsied, showed metastasis.

Fine Point
By John Updike

“Why go to Sunday school, though surlily,
and not believe a bit of what was taught?
The desert shepherds in their scratchy robes
Undoubtedly existed, and Israel’s defeats—
the Temple in its sacredness destroyed
by Babylon and Rome. Yet Jews kept faith
and passed the prayers, the crabbed rites,
from table to table as Christians mocked.

We mocked, but took. The timbrel creed of praise
gives spirit to the daily; blood tinges lips.
The tongue reposes in papyrus pleas,
saying, Surely—magnificent, that “surely”—
goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life, my life, forever.

Waking up

2009-03-21T21:59:00.001-04:00

So I went back to work on Monday after a leisurely five days off with my “procedure”. I felt really logy, walking around in a fog. If I drove somewhere, I was surprised at how uncoordinated I was, and would hurry home before anything happened. I kept slogging along, and then finally, I woke up on Thursday morning in more ways than one. At last I felt like myself: rested, alive and ready to go. I realized that it was the long sleep under anesthesia the week before that had taken so long to wear off.

The doctor ordered no exercise for a week, so as soon as my sentence was up, I jumped in the pool at work and did my regular half mile. I was quite proud of myself. The exercise bike is seeing some action, and next week I’ll be back into my regular rhythm.

I’m sure you were all glued to the set on Friday night, following the Cleveland State University Vikings basketball team in the NCAA tournament. Ohio State (who?) was playing at the same time, but they had the CSU game on a different channel so we could see it without interruption. As I’ve always said, my favorite team is whoever is playing Ohio State—lowly Siena beat them in the first round. Not sure CSU will get past Arizona, but I’m glad they got this far.

It’s always in the last place you look

2009-03-14T20:08:00.000-04:00

This past week was my big heart health event. I had my TEE on Monday, where they run a camera down your esophagus to look at your heart, and then the “procedure” on Wednesday. It’s properly a PVI—a pulmonary vein isolation.

There was an electrical problem in my heart that would send me to the ER at odd moments. There didn’t seem to be a particular trigger. Sedentary reading could set it off. Walking down the hall—completely random. The electrophysiologist was 70% sure he could fix it so we gave it a try.

They put me under general anesthesia instead of the usual “twilight” state that they use. Good thing too, since the whole thing lasted eight hours. When I woke up, the doctor said he’d found the problem and fixed it. He was about to give up when he got one more idea about where to look and that did it.

Eight hours! That was impressive. He never took a break; just kept on working straight through. Kathy and her sister were waiting that whole time without a single word of his progress or lack thereof. He did warn us that that could happen and that they shouldn’t read anything into it. Also, they take the family into a separate room to explain the results, and again they were warned that the private session did not imply that any disaster had occurred.

He said that I was “tough”. Imagine that. My blood pressure stayed steady through the whole deal—guess all that swimming and biking paid off.

When I got to the room, I was woozy and kind of out of it. Then the phone rang. Stupidly, I picked it up.

“Hello?” says I, groggily.
“Arak?” a gruff voice barked.
“No.”
“Arak?”
“No.”
Arak?”
“You have the wrong room.”
Click. He hangs up, no word of apology.

This happens three more times, with calls for three different people. Finally, after the fourth call, this woman says, ‘”Oh, they moved him, huh?” I said, as politely as I could, “Ma’am, I just came out of eight hours of surgery. I have no idea.” She at least apologized, and that was it, since they turned the phones off on the floor at that point.

A pair of nurses came in to introduce themselves. Get this: They were named Faith and Sara. I love it! God’s gift to us, and God’s faithful servant. And there they were. I knew I was going to be fine.

Of course they checked my vitals every half hour—I mean it—they were in there every thirty minutes all night. So sleep was impossible.

The next day I was a sleep deprived goof. I was supposed to be discharged by 11am, but my neck was bleeding where they had put in a catheter. It took them five hours to get the bleeding stopped. There was a hierarchical parade of nurses, residents and one of the partners in the practice as they each tried a remedy. Finally, the partner came in with some needles and injected lidocain and epinephrine (Nora Ephron?) and for some reason, that did it.

So, much prayer brought us all through this. We thank God for his Spirit, guiding the doctor, giving him “one more idea”.

Now if I could only wake up.

It's my birthday

2009-03-06T21:26:00.001-05:00

Today is my 59th birthday. This means I am still in my 50’s, in case anyone asks.

So what did I do on my big day? Stayed home from work and napped. Does this sound like something an old person would do? To be fair, I am recovering from a bad cold which went to a sinus infection, as my colds are wont to do. It was a good call, since I do feel better. I saw my regular doctor last night for some antibiotics and that seems to be working.

I am reading “The White Tiger” by Aravind Ariga. It won the Man Booker prize—an award for fiction for writes from the British Commonwealth and Ireland. It took me a while to get into it. My daughter and I have rules for books. Give it a hundred pages—if you can’t get into it by then, forget it. This one was oddly seductive. It draws you in and before you know it, you’re speeding along with the story. Give it a try.

Cardiac News Department: On Monday I have a TEE (transesophageal echocardiogram) scheduled. It’s the third one I’ve done so far. The last one was about ten years ago, though. I do remember you have to gargle with this stuff to freeze your throat, then they spray your throat with something to numb it further, then they sneak up on you and slip a camera down your gullet before you realize they’ve done it.

On Wednesday, I go to the hospital for the ablation procedure. They will try to induce the arrhythmia that typically sends me to the ER. by using my pacemaker to fiddle with my heart’s electrical system. “Fiddle” of course is a technical term. If they can do it, they’ll stick a laser thingie (another technical term) in there and burn out the offending circuits. The doctor is “70%” sure he can do it. If it doesn’t work, I guess they’ll stop and that’s it. I’ll have to ask if they can try again when the rhythm kicks in naturally next time.

Work was so busy lately that I didn’t really think about next week. Now I am free to obsess all I like.

Made another one!

2009-03-01T13:26:00.001-05:00

The 30th Annual Spring Career Fair is in the books. We had 1,519 people through the doors and 138 organizations there. The attendance for candidates was a new record, eclipsing the old mark of 1304 from a couple of years ago. The number of employers was the lowest in many years, though. Counting the number of employer representatives, the number of candidates and the number of Career Services Center staff, we figure we had 2,000 people in the gym on Friday.

This year was especially hard on me for some reason. I was dead on my feet when I began work on Friday at 6:30am. I felt the way I usually feel at the end of the fair, but it was only just beginning. Fortunately, we have a pretty good crew who did what they were supposed to do and everything worked out well.

I told everyone how I had woken up at 2am worrying about things I had forgotten to do, and the wind was howling outside and the rain was lashing the windows and I was so distracted, that I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I began to pray. I asked the Holy Spirit to settle over the building where we hold the Fair, and to grant us wisdom and peace—and He did. Ordinarily there are small moments of panic when someone comes up to me and asks for something I had forgotten to get, or there is some error I’ve made that scrambles things momentarily, but there was none of that this year.

On Saturday following the Fair, after sleeping for nine and half hours, I got up, took the car to shop at the end of our street for an oil change, walked home, sat for a while, walked back up to get the car and then fell into bed for another three hours of unconsciousness. Today, Sunday, I am feeling a little better, but probably shouldn’t operate machinery or make major life decisions for another twenty-four hours or so.

Work, work, work...

2009-02-24T20:15:00.000-05:00

Been busy. I worked from the moment I got home on Friday all the way through Sunday afternoon. One of the people who report to me got 60 resumes to review in her email and I said…”Give me half.” Then I worked some more on the big Career Fair coming on Friday, the 27th.

We have 139 employers coming. Last year we had 205. Some registered, then cancelled as time went on. Today UPS cancelled. Shipping volume is down so much, they are not hiring. We are expecting many more candidates to show up than ever before. My secret wish is for 2,000 people to come. We seem to be stuck at about 1200 each year. Now, the word is out everywhere. Other fairs have been flooded with people, so we are preparing for the onslaught.

If you want to see a neat interview that a local TV station did yesterday, go here: http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=107959

I about fell through the floor when they gave us such a great plug.

I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

What I learned from John Updike

2009-02-13T21:01:00.001-05:00

The first book by John Updike that I ever read was “The Centaur”. I don’t remember why I picked it up. No one I knew was reading it. Maybe a high school English teacher suggested it. In any case, I was hooked. I loved his writing, his descriptions. Evocative, I guess critics would call it. When he described a skiing trip in a short story in a collection called “Trust Me”, I could see the snow, feel the cold. My sister in law doesn’t like him. Too much description, she feels. His descriptions could run on for an entire page without a single period. I couldn’t figure out how he got away with that.

Family Safe Alert: if you are related to me, you might want to skip the next paragraph.

How did I first learn about the mechanics of sex? “Rabbit Run”, of course. Something about how “their loins joined”. That’s as close as I got at the time. “Couples” just blew me away, all that running around with people not your spouse. Infidelity was such a major theme of his, I always wondered if came from his own life. Now, when I read his obituaries and tributes, it seems he wrote about what he saw going on in the post world War II U.S. He was “chronicling” it all, not necessarily living it.

As I do with my favorite authors, I hoard their books, afraid to finish reading them all. If there are no more books to read, something will happen. Something will stop. I’m not sure exactly what’s at the end of that road—it just seems to dissolve in the distance like the arms of a pinwheel galaxy, dribbling off into space.

A few years ago, my daughter called me from a book sale in Chicago. She had stumbled across a rich vein of Louis L’Amour western novels. OK—this goes into my “secret pleasures” category, so don’t tell anyone. I love those stories, can see myself as the hero in each one. She had called to ask me which ones I needed. Yes, I keep track of the ones I’ve read. She bought a dozen or so for me and shipped them over. I treated them like Krugerrands, like the last quart of Cherry Garcia. I finally pulled the last couple out of the dusty box I had stashed in corner of the bedroom. To keep from spinning off into space, I’ll start re-reading old ones before I finish the last one from the box.

I have a big collection of Updike’s short stories in one hard bound volume, “The Early Stories”. I bought it a few years ago but never opened it. Now you know why.

I own fifteen of his novels and seven of his short story collections. “Pigeon Feathers” was the first short story collection of his I read. In one story, I think it’s in “Pigeon Feathers”, he describes breasts as scoops of vanilla ice cream. I was still in high school when I read that. Who remembers lines like that from something they read forty years ago? People like me, I guess.

I noticed that he would crank out a new novel in December each year. I knew to go to the bricks and mortar bookstore at that time to see what would be that year’s prize. I was thrilled to find first editions right there on the shelf, and I happily scooped them up.

Then I realized that the reason I could so easily buy first editions was that no one else was grabbing them first. Usually I would find the Eighth Printing of a book and be happy with that. I vaguely knew that first editions could be valuable, so I was glad to own a few. One day I discovered a bunch of first editions of “Toward the End of Time” on a remainder table. I wept.

Well, no, not there in the store and not even in the car. Still, the idea that such a master’s work would languish on the remainder table in a common bookstore was incomprehensible to me. What was wrong with people? I bought them all and put them away as investments.

The guy was so prolific, though, with dozens of novels and short stories and hundreds of reviews for The New Yorker, perhaps it’s unlikely that I will run out of Updike to read. If I actually did finish everything, I know I could just start from the beginning and feel those same feelings and see those same visions all over again. I’m kind of looking forward to that.

It's a miracle?

2009-02-07T22:06:00.000-05:00

Tonight our pastor talked about how Jesus was not a miracle worker, meaning that that’s not what He was all about. Some people were disappointed when He didn’t work a miracle cure or some other wonderful thing, but when He did, it was for a specific purpose.

I thought about how when I was much younger, maybe eight, nine, ten years old, I used to pray for Jesus to make an appearance in my bedroom. I wanted Him to float down in a glowing ball like Glenda the Good Witch from Oz. Couldn’t He do that for me? Of course I was disappointed when it didn’t happen. In my little kid brain, though, I believed it was possible. Who was I that I merited such a heavenly apparition? Again, little kid brain did not take that into account.

Later on in life, I realized that He has made many appearances, in the form of the people He has brought into my life, beginning with wonderful teachers, continuing with good friends, insightful mentors, and strangers.

Especially the strangers. I’ve told you about Paige and Tabitha sharing their faith journeys with me. There have been other angels along the way, and I know there will be others, depending upon what I need in the future.

Even co-workers. On Friday, Yolanda, the woman who is a manager at work, just as I am, came into my office after a staff meeting, closed the door and said, “Let’s pray for Career Fair.” It was a good idea, since we are having a tough time convincing companies to invest in such a venture in this economy. So we prayed. She has such an eloquent Spirit—I wish I could pray as she does.

So did it work? Five more employers signed up that afternoon.

Then I got an email from a woman I met ten years ago, when e-commerce was just taking off. She was an HR manager for several start ups and had invited me downtown to see their offices. The CEO would dream up an idea for a dotcom and bang—it came into existence. One of his ideas was books.com, the first on line bookstore, before Amazon. There were literally stacks of books in the corners of these rooms in his downtown Cleveland company. It’s gone now, subsumed by the big guys.

Anyway, over the years I had tried to contact this woman but she was always too busy to get back to me. I never forgot her, but I gave up. Then here comes this email, asking about registering her new company for the fair.

So I ask you, just how cool is our God?

Enjoying the ride

2009-01-31T20:22:00.002-05:00

On Friday last week, I was just heading out the door to a reception for one of my friends at the University who is leaving, when a student named Paige called and asked for help applying for a job with the Diocese of Cleveland—the deadline was of course the next day, Saturday. I said, sure come on over, with one eye on the clock, I figured I could still make the reception. So Paige rushed over from the coffee shop where she had thought to call us, and she hadn’t even taken time to print her resume, so we huddled around the screen of her laptop. She was a sergeant in the Army Reserves, a clarinet player in the Army band. She had held three jobs simultaneously, including one at Starbucks, and she was applying for a job as an office assistant at the Diocese.

What made her story especially compelling was the fact that she was in the RCIA program in a parish near Parma—the program that prepares converts to Catholicism for baptism. She wrote the sweetest, most touching paragraph in her cover letter about her faith journey, how her mother had not allowed her to be baptized as a child and how she was finally coming into the Church. At first I wondered if we should keep that in there, but she reminded me that the job description called for “knowledge and understanding of the Roman Catholic Church” , so we left the language in the letter. She was just so thrilled at the confluence of her religious studies and the discovery of this opportunity at the Diocese. She promised to let me know how it all turns out. Oh, and that reception I was in such a hurry to get to? I finished up with Paige, raced over to the building across snowy Euclid Avenue, only to find that the darn thing is next week.

Back on Jan. 3, I wrote about the phlebotomist, whose name was Tabitha, with whom I prayed for help for her troubles. On Saturday I went back to the same lab and asked for her and she was working, so she did my draw again. She reported that both she and her husband were back in church and that they had rededicated themselves to Christ. She looked much much happier than she had just a month ago.

So between Paige and Tabitha, I am just so excited about how God is bringing these people into my life, enriching my own experience. We closed Mass tonight with the hymn, "Seek Ye First", just a perfect ending for this amazing week. Laying up treasure in heaven is all well and good, but I'm enjoying these little dollops of joy right here.

Retire?

2009-01-24T23:35:00.001-05:00

In the wonderfully arcane public retirement system here in Ohio, there is a marvelous provision that allows you to buy time earned elsewhere in public service, thus resulting in an earlier retirement date. Having taught for a couple of years in New Jersey back in the 70’s, I filled out the paperwork and sent it off into the bureaucratic void to see what would happen.

I had gone through this exercise once before and had never heard anything back. This time I followed up with a phone call to my former employer in the Garden State. The woman I spoke to said that my records were stored off site in a trailer somewhere, and may have been lost in a flood (no—not the Great Flood. I’m not that old.) Buoyed by this cheery bit of news, I anxiously awaited her letter which would surely tell me that my paperwork had been washed out to sea some years ago.

Instead, imagine my surprise when I received a nice note with a copy of my application, saying that she had forwarded my records on to the Great State of Ohio. Then, another heartening piece of correspondence arrived from said State, requesting eleven thousand dollars for 1.8 years of service.

That may seem like a lot of money, but it’s really not. A friend of mine got a bill for forty thousand for six years. I can handle eleven.

But the strange part was my not so subconscious reaction to all this. My brain ricocheted around my head like a cartoon bullet as I struggled to get its smooshy mass around the idea that I can retire in a scant four years.

What does one do in retirement?
Will we have enough money?
Can I keep it together at work for the next four years?
Why do I suddenly feel so insecure?

I would be 63, not the 66 I had originally thought. This is good, right? So what’s wrong with me?

Jeepers! I just realized there are three operations I want to have before my health insurance changes! (The heart ablation my electrophysiologist wants to do, a new pacemaker and oh yes—a knee replacement as long as we’re at it.)

Like Steve Martin’s “Jerk”, all I need is this ashtray. This ashtray and this paddle game. That’s all I need. This ashtray, this paddle game and this ablation. That’s all I need…

Everyone's a critic

2009-01-16T20:43:00.000-05:00

A little over four years ago I finished writing the textbook that we use for our job search classes. I was very excited and very pleased with myself for having completed such a project. Even now, people ask me how long it took me to write the three hundred page book. The answer is probably twenty years, since all I did was write the book I always wished I had had as an instructor, pouring everything I had learned over the years into it.

A few small schools around the country have adopted it; students at my own college buy most of them. Last year we actually had to reprint some to cover the demand, so that was gratifying. Naturally, I asked the publisher to help me out with a marketing campaign to promote the book, since people constantly remarked on how helpful it was and how much they liked it.

The other day the publisher’s answer came in the form of a spreadsheet put out by their marketing department grading my book on different factors. One item that stung a bit was the rating of “7” out of 10 for the quality of the writing. This struck me as odd, since in my world, people come to me looking for just the right phrase or for sharp edged editing. I have never gotten anything approaching a “C” for my writing, as this rating seems to indicate.

I received a zero for “Outside Adoptions”. This struck me as nonsensical, since it begs the question: how can someone adopt it if they don’t know it exists?

Worse, they had “comments”. Essentially, they said that the information was rather basic and should probably be sold to two year colleges. Nothing against community colleges, but I wrote it for use in universities. The information is pitched at a certain level, the whole book talks about Bachelor degree candidates and third and fourth year internships.

Enough about that, though. I am disappointed and that spreadsheet did knock the wind out of me, but it also woke me up to the fact that this is just a business transaction. Kind of takes the romanticism out of it for me; makes it less fun somehow. As long as they pay me, I’ll keep cranking out new editions, perhaps with less enjoyment and enthusiasm for the project.

This brings me to another story altogether.

Last weekend I spent my Saturday at a downtown church, working at a special career transition day. Dozens of people had been laid off at our big city newspaper, and one of the well known columnists organized the event to help them and other people in the business who were out of work.

I brought three other people from my office to help out, since the organizers expected a crowd of over one hundred people. We weren’t sure we would make it downtown safely, since we had to drive through a heavy snowstorm that dropped ten inches of frozen sunshine on us. A car in front of us slid right into a ditch as we navigated the on ramp to the interstate.

The day turned into a five hour career advising marathon for me and the other “career coaches” who had volunteered to do resume critiques and transition brainstorming with the participants. I was completely drained by the end of the event.

I talked with a crime reporter, a fashion writer, a cartoonist, even a PhD candidate who wanted to teach journalism and several other job seekers with the same sort of newspaper experience. These were people who had received numerous awards for their writing from the Associated Press and others, and you want to know something? Not a one of them had any idea of how to write their own resume. In fact, the phrasing was abysmal. I was so surprised. I went into this project feeling a little intimidated by the prospect of telling professional writers how to construct a resume

So how is my book “too basic” when people who make their living with words cannot even put together an effective description of their experience and skills designed to move their career to the next level?

Praying with your phlebotomist

2009-01-03T23:12:00.000-05:00

This morning I went for my monthly blood test at the hospital. I go there because there’s no co-pay and no hassle waiting at the doctor’s office. I showed up a little later than usual and so missed the opening rush at the lab.

A phlebotomist that I had not seen before called me back to the bloodletting room. I wished her a happy new year, but she remarked that her year was not off to a good start, and something told me that there was a special sadness about her, so I took the plunge:
“Do I need to add you to my prayer list?” I asked her.

She responded that yes, that would be good. She wondered what church I was affiliated with and I told her. She asked if I was a deacon or a priest or something and I said no, nothing like that.

We went through the mechanics of the blood draw and as she finished, she said, “Can I ask you something?” and then posed this painful question: “What makes a man, separated from his wife, think he can sleep with another woman and that there is nothing wrong with that?”

I suspected she was talking about her own husband, but I didn’t explore that. All I could think of to say was that it was a selfish act of someone who had forgotten the place of God in his life. She considered that thoughtfully and allowed that that could be so.

Finally, as I was about to get up from the chair and leave, I was struck by how much pain she was obviously suffering. She had remarked earlier that this was a new job for her and even though she was so sad, she could not afford to make a bad impression on her new employer by calling off sick.

I took both her hands in mine and prayed with her briefly. Oddly, we were the only people in a normally bustling lab. So, I don’t know if I did any good, but I’m glad she confided in me and she is on my list—perhaps I’ll see her next month.

Bridge freezes before road surface usually

2008-12-31T23:44:00.000-05:00

Here is another scene. It’s New Year’s Eve day—today in fact. I’d been rushing around for the past week of my ‘vacation’, shopping, spending hours in the basement rearranging junk into more appealing piles of junk, blowing an afternoon cleaning out a bookcase—removing some books to make room for still other books, getting rid of various bits of paper stuck here and there: generally not ‘vacating’ much at all.

Today it must have caught up to me because a couple of hours after Kathy left for work, I fell asleep in my chair for an hour. Then I was still tired so I went up to the nice cozy warm waterbed and slept for another hour. Coming downstairs, I thought it seemed a little chilly, so I checked the thermostat. Set for 66 degrees, the room temperature had dropped to 63. The furnace had quit working.

It was twenty degrees outside with wind blasting the house with forty mile an hour gusts, producing an uncomfortable wind chill, and the house was cooling fast, hitting 58 degrees very quickly.

So I called the people who had installed the furnace, the same people who had serviced it in the fall, and thankfully they were able to get a guy out here in about an hour. It turned out to be the same man who had worked on it in September. He got it working in short order and said I should probably replace the doppelganger doohickey and the frissen mast chunk-a-blunk and I agreed. He went back to his truck, called his boss and explained the situation. The upshot was they did not charge me for the parts, just the labor to install them which was great news given the price of doohickeys these days.

By that time, Kathy was home from work. So what, right? Well, you don’t understand. Kathy hates to be around when someone is working on the house. She really had nowhere else to go, so she had to break one of her rules and stay in the house while the furnace guy worked. It turns out that she was so distracted by a harrowing escape she had had on the highway, that she wouldn’t have cared if John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy were tinkering with the heating system.

We had some snow overnight and the wind kept spreading it around over the roads, such that some stretches were fine, while others were fit for a Red Wings-Rangers game. The past couple of days, I had accompanied Kathy to work so I could run around in the car doing useless errands, but today she ventured out alone. She made it to work driving very slowly along the treacherous mountain passes in the eight miles between our house and her office. (OK, but the road does take a little dip there at that one point.)

She decided to take the “Big Girl” way home on the interstates—something she rarely does. There is a tricky bit where three highways converge and no one ever yields to anyone else lest they appear weak. Some character came whipping past Kathy going about 70 when he hit a hockey rink strategically placed at the merge. He spun violently around, hit the gas and ran up the hillside whereupon clouds of white smoke issued ominously from under his hood. Tree branches festooned the fuselage as he flattened two tires. Undaunted, he slide back down to the highway and tried to continue his mad dash. The car would have none of that, though, and he mercifully gave up and limped to a stop alongside the road.

Her heart in her throat, our terrified heroine wisely eased up on the gas and watched this solo ballet unfold before her, all the time fearing that the crazy driver would carom into her car next. She came home full of her tale of horror on the highways, and regaled our guests with all the details later that evening.

Everyone went home early this year, so it’s a quiet New Year’s. Every year we say why bother to stay up? and every year we’re standing in front of the TV as the ball drops. I wish my readers (all two of you) a year in which you have everything you need, and even a few things you don’t really ‘need’ need; and a year in which you make even more progress in your spiritual journey. And let’s have some fun along the way. See you next year.

Miracle Shmiracle

2008-12-25T11:40:00.001-05:00

OK. This was the scene. Kathy and her sister and I went to church for 4pm Mass on Christmas Eve. The decorations were beautiful; the place was packed with people, SRO, in fact. I was chatting with friends before I had to go back to the sacristy to get ready for the procession into church. I was doing the scripture readings, as I have for at least the last ten years, and I felt comfortable with my preparation.

One of the ushers came to get me, saying that there was a woman outside who needed help. He knew I worked in the Social Justice group and that we help parish families with food throughout the year. At Christmas, the people of the parish donate great mountains of presents for the children, and they had come through again for us this year. Everything had been delivered the Sunday before Christmas.

In the vestibule of the church a nervous woman in her thirties told me her name was Jennifer and I asked her what was going on. She explained that her husband, a construction worker, had been laid off three days ago and his last check had not yet arrived. She was worried about her three children and how they would not have a Christmas this year. I dug a scrap of paper out of my suit pocket and wrote down her name, address and phone number and said I would see what I could do. She started to cry and she thanked me and then she left.

She left the building. I thought she was staying for the service, but she just left. Then it dawned on me that she did not belong to our parish. She mentioned that she lived a few blocks away, just off West 54th. I realized after she left that that would put her outside our parish boundaries.

A couple of years ago our group reviewed the list of people we had been helping and saw that many of them no longer lived in our parish, or had never lived in our parish, and certainly did not go to church, any church. We asked each family to register with our parish. Those who did not would be dropped from our list. As a result, we no longer serve about half of those families.

So, this realization kind of cooled my jets. Then I thought about what I could do for her on such short notice and put a little plan together. Then I wondered how I would explain to Kathy that somehow we had to help this family, even as we were hosting fifteen people at our house in a matter of hours. All during Mass I thought about it. I did still have a good time with the scripture readings because they are a couple of my favorites from Isaiah 9 (“For every boot that tramped in battle and every cloak rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for flames. For a child is born to us, a son is given us…”) and the letter to Titus.

Predictably, Kathy blew a gasket when I told her what I had to do. Then she turned to and wrapped some games that I had in storage—thankfully there was one age appropriate toy for each child in Jennifer’s family. These were games I bought last year for Social Justice in case some pledges were not fulfilled. I thought there were some more toys up at church but found that nothing was left after our day of Christmas packing.

We put a twenty in each of four envelopes for each kid and the parents, and my brother in law and I went up to church (again, thankfully I had kept the keys to the food room after the food packing last weekend). We filled a couple of boxes with food staples (cereal, pasta, PB&J, vegetables—that sort of thing, and then set off to find Jennifer’s house.

Turns out she lived a couple miles away, much further than we thought.

My brother in law and I carried the food and presents into the house, and he went back to the car while I talked to Jennifer. She started to cry, and asked me, “How do I keep from feeling guilty about not being able to give Christmas to my kids?” I was caught off guard by this whole scene because I planned to drop off the stuff and zip right out of there, and now it was turning into a counseling session, or was it a teachable moment?

I didn’t have any lesson at the ready, so I just mumbled something about how everyone passes through times like this and then told her to come to church on Christmas. She asked me the Mass schedule and I told her. We hugged and then I escaped.

So. What is the likelihood of her actually turning up at services today? Was I just being played? I called her before we left to go to her house, and she said that while she did not belong to our parish, she wanted to join. She wanted to get the kids involved in church, because she hadn’t done it when they were younger. Privately I thought it was a little late, especially for the twelve year old boy, but I didn’t say anything about that to her. She suggested that I might be able to send her some “literature” about “Sunday School”. That sounded like something you’d say to a telemarketer to get off the phone when you don’t want to say ‘No’ directly, but I wasn’t selling anything.

My feelings are all jumbled up about this. I’m as torn as a manic depressive person cycling through moods like riffling through playing cards. Here is the hand I am holding:

--I ought to feel good about helping someone in the nick of time on Christmas Eve,
--but I have this nagging feeling that I’ve been somehow made a fool of.
--On top of that, I feel bad that I couldn’t do more for Jennifer and her family.
--Layered on that is the fact that she doesn’t belong to our church or any church and seems unlikely to do anything about that.
--And who is she anyway that I should care so much?

Aww-let’s call the whole thing off.

Christmas card list

2008-12-20T20:49:00.001-05:00

Not that anyone asked, but I was looking over my Christmas card list the other day, musing about the different people I found there. Here are some of them:

-The friends we’ve made on Caribbean cruises. A couple from Regina in Canada. That pronounication (with a long i) always gave me pause. Couples from British Columbia, Maine, North Carolina and California.

-The guy I went to grad school with back in the 70’s. He was from Philadelphia and we both wound up at the University of Illinois, out in the middle of the cornfields. I wore a Villanova t-shirt to class one day and that got a conversation started. We’ve stayed in touch since then.

- A couple with whom we used to be close. We drifted apart a few years ago. I saw him in the supermarket the other day and I remarked that I had been thinking about him and his wife. “What have you been thinking?” he asked. “Why did we drift apart like that? How come we don’t go to your house for our annual Christmas get together or celebrate family events like we used to? What happened to our friendship?” That’s what I had been thinking, but it’s not what I said to him, standing there by the meat counter in the store.

-Dave-Here’s one for a guy I used to work with. He hired me, a failed Social Studies teacher, back in 1977 for a job he thought I could do. He was my first mentor, but I didn’t know the word at the time. He was rather irreverent, did not suffer fools; it took a good bit to earn his respect. Smiled a lot. His card this year said he was now retired.

-Vince and Jan—He and I were in the YMCA Indian Guides program when our boys were little. I wrote a note in our card bemoaning the fact that they are now called “Adventure Guides”. He wrote back advocating lawyercide. He worked for big city newspapers on the press gangs. Moved to Arizona years ago to “shovel sunshine” as he joked.

-Frances, the widow of a older friend from church. We used to have a men’s Bible study group that occasionally met at their house. I was never sure if she approved of us. He once posed a question to the group: “What is grace?” Well, heck. I can find that out. I pored over my concordance in a scripture research project and later presented my findings to him. I talked about what I had learned about grace from all the reading I had done. He listened politely and when I was done, he—well, he said something like: “What else you got?” something that indicated he wasn’t satisfied with my findings. What a guy he was.

- Here’s the only high school friend I exchange cards with—John. Isn’t that odd? I had come over to the public high school fresh from Catholic elementary school in 1964. Plopping down into ninth grade, in the midst of Protestants and Jews who had been together in public schools for eight years already. At some point we got to be friends and I would go to his house to watch Star Trek and Wild Wild West on TV. He always anguished over his ineptitude with girls. Compared to him I must have been a smooth operator. His wife writes their Christmas missives and we wait each year to see which medical procedure or mishap she will be describing in great gory detail. It hasn’t arrived as of this writing. Sometimes it doesn’t show up until after Christmas.

-Oh here’s a strange one. Maureen. She retired from our office back in the 90’s sometime. She’s a staunch Republican. Used to listen to Rush Limbaugh during her lunch hours, tried to interest me in that activity, but I didn’t go for it. Anyway, one day she said we were going to do some “employer development”, visiting companies to tell them about our services. She picked me up at the leisurely hour of 10am. We did a few visits, then went to lunch. A long lunch. We did a few more after lunch and then knocked off at about 2pm. She was close to retirement—can you tell by her pace?

-Kathy lives down the block. She is a couple years older than me, and already a widow. Her husband John died four years ago after a brief futile struggle with an especially virulent form of Lou Gehrig’s disease. It just swept over him and quickly robbed him of any ability to move and finally to breathe. Some time ago, my Kathy and I started going out to breakfast with her about once a month. She’s doing OK—leaving our parish now to go to the church attended by her children and grandchildren. We still plan on breakfast, though.

- Gene, my eleventh grade English teacher. She was also the advisor for the school newspaper and talked me into writing for it, thus sending me into a life path that I have enjoyed immensely. In each Christmas card she sends me suggestions about what I might want to read. She’s the one who got me into Annie Proulx. Isn’t she wonderful? (Yes—I mean either or both: my teacher and Proulx.)

So who's on your list?

The Tree Discussion

2008-12-13T22:51:00.000-05:00

Every year at about this time, Kathy and I have the Tree Discussion. If we must have a tree, she wants a small tabletop model, much like her mother used in her later years. For my part, I lobby for a monster that goes to the ceiling. Sometimes we compromise, and I buy a four or five foot tree. One year we were leaving for a cruise right after New Year’s Day, so we bought a too expensive evergreen decoration from LL Bean and plopped in the front window and called it done.

This year, she tried a different tack. Since Stuart Little’s relatives have been showing up in the basement traps lately, she said, “What if a mouse gets into it!?” I thought, oh swell, here we go again. I left the room for a while and came back to get my breakfast out of the microwave (blueberry pancakes I’d made last week, if you must know.)

She said, “Are you upset with me?”, because of course she knows me. Instead of denying it, I said, “I’m hurt and I’m mad about not having a tree” and left it at that for the time being.

I went off the bank, she went off shopping with her sister.

As I drove I tried to figure out why I had reacted that way and why I felt hurt. This comes up every year, after all, so I should have figured it out by now. I usually push down feelings but this time I admitted them—in several senses. I admitted I had them, and admitted them to my consciousness.

This is what I came up with: when I was a kid, we always had a tree that towered over us, smushed against the family room ceiling, decorated with those horrendously inefficient big bulbs. Some had liquid in them that bubbled when they got warm. This is safe? Glass ornaments whose population dwindled each year, due to dropsy; kid-crafted masterpieces and miscellaneous mismatched doo dads dangled from its branches. And tinsel, great gobs of tinsel were strewn over its mass, clumped and dumped until we learned to lay each piece individually to be the ‘icicles’ the box proclaimed they were.

I want a tree like that. Every time.

The darn tree connects me to my youth. Setting up the yuletide shrub is encoded in my DNA. First choose a seven foot cheap old white pine, cut off the bottom three inches to keep the veins open, stick it in the stand and then weave the lights around the branches, then the ornaments then the tinsel then the garland. This sequence is as much a part of my genetic makeup as the markers for blue eyes and distinguished gray hair. Lemmings, salmon, men in my family. Same thing.

Further, it makes me feel young. I’m again a young father doing something for his kids. They aren’t here to see it, so maybe it’s not for them after all. Not putting up a tree is admitting I’m too old to bother. Never! I’ll drag myself to the tree on my last day, stringing the lights just so, to make the tree appear to be lit from within. It’s my light, flickering still, glowing brighter, searing the Christmas night.

Preparing for the worst

2008-12-06T22:23:00.002-05:00

Why was this past week so long? It just took forever to get to Friday. It’s not as if we were looking forward to anything in particular, it’s just that each day was about 28 hours long.

I did do a nifty thing at work that I was quite proud of. In thinking about the economy and the lay offs and the poor outlook for new grads, I decided to do a training for the staff on how to help people who can’t find a job, or who have been laid off. We have some new members who have never seen a down market, so I thought they could use some help before the onslaught.

Instead of just lecturing at them I decided to get them involved. I wrote some case studies incorporating pieces of different problems I’d seen before: men, women, different ages, different majors, different stages in life, various degrees of career decidedness. With the staff divided into groups, I had them analyze the cases and report how they would help the individual in each story. It worked pretty well, in fact, in the heat of their discussion, one staff member remarked, “I know this guy!”, and of course they were all composites of people I’ve met over the years. It was then I knew I was on to something.

So, a few people came away inspired to learn more and try some new things. A few of them thanked me—how about that! I finished the session with a short presentation on what I learned from the recruiting trends conference last month. (It’s bad and going to get worse.)

My professional group has a summer conference in August and the program proposals are due soon. I can never think of anything to present, but this time I’m going to put my staff training session in and see if the program committee goes for it. Of course, there is that small matter of a ban on out of state travel at the University.

The Kid was at our house this weekend, just in time for St. Nicholas Day. Nana explained how it worked and The Kid urged his father, “C’mon, Dad, put your shoes out, too!” St. Nick brought him some slippers, some simple toys and five bucks. One of the toys was a very small flower pot with special soil and seeds, so we’re intrigued about how they will turn out. On Saturday, I suggested that he might want to put out Christmas decorations in our house. He was up for that, so I said we had to dust first. He happily proclaimed that “Dusting is my game!” and so dad supervised his cleaning. They did a nice job and then set out the house Christmas bric a brac. Later they headed down to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where kids get in free. He was drawn to the Johnny Cash exhibit, since his mother likes him.

Big changes at church for 2009. As you know, our pastor died a month ago, and we only have one priest now. We are not sure if we will get another one any time soon, so our priest, who is called a parish administrator—not quite a pastor—is cutting the number of Masses in the parish from five to three. We will now have 4:30pm on Saturday, and only an 8:30am and 11:00am on Sunday.

It was apparent that something had to be done after an attendance survey showed that an average of 925 people came to Mass each weekend. The capacity of the church is 910, so it took five Masses to fill the church one time. Now I wonder if people will drift to other churches who have earlier or later Masses than we do. We’ll see what happens over the next few months.

A record of existence

2008-11-19T14:01:00.002-05:00

Bantering back and forth in a email exchange today with my children, the youngest decried the fact that his baby book was empty, that there was no record of his existence. This is a running family joke, but I took it to heart today and answered him:

A record of existence.

You were born between two blizzards in January 1978. God gave us a breathing space to allow you to appear. I went to work that morning of January 11, thinking we still had some time before you would enter the world. When I got the call, I remember driving home in that 1974 Volkswagen bus, and having the accelerator cable stick—frozen in its long passage from the rear engine to the gas pedal up front. I was turning the corner at 82 and 21, using the side roads because I was afraid of the interstate in that weather. I threw it into neutral as the engine raced and I thought—great--my child is about to be born, and I’m about to die. Miraculously, the cable came unstuck and I worked my way home.

I was working nights and your mother was working days. One morning I woke up and found you sitting quietly on the couch in the living room. You must have been about two. Apparently you thought you were alone in house. I was sleeping and you didn’t realize I was there. I hugged you and told you not to worry because everything was alright.

We had a conversation once when you were older, in eighth grade? High school? You told me how you had been a nerd pretty much up to that point, but you made a conscious decision to change direction, and I remember how proud I was of you in that moment. You decided not to let people pick on you, but to stand up for yourself, and it worked.

High school football didn’t work out, but elementary school was fun. I remember that one assistant coach who thought I was a spy, videotaping the games for some opposing team. What a goof. All I was doing was preserving those memories for us.

Teachers remember you. That high school was never the same after you.

Who was the driving force behind the first ever John Carroll Habitat for Humanity house? Who would never tell us how much money he had accumulated for the project because…because why? You didn’t want to jinx it? That was a stunning achievement, never equaled.

How many people have you touched in your HFH trainings, your campus meetings, in all your work so far? The well of inspiration that you are for all those people seems bottomless—but be careful to take care of yourself in all this, too.

A record of existence indeed.

Post election reflection

2008-11-08T21:10:00.001-05:00

At about nine thirty each evening I start closing things up, getting ready for bed. I’m up at a little past five a.m. each morning, so it makes sense to crawl under the covers early. Tuesday November 4, 2008 was an exception, though. I stayed up till half past midnight in order to see the speechifying that I knew would follow the election results.

It was funny to me how at precisely 11:00 p.m. they declared Obama the winner, just as the California polls closed. Kathy sat at the kitchen table like a little kid with a red crayon and a blue crayon, coloring in the states as they were called for McCain or Obama. She was the one who volunteered us to make phone calls and to canvass for the Obama campaign. She was also the one who made herself ill over the whole battle in the closing days. “I can’t stand it” she would say. “I wish the election was over already!”

I thought McCain’s speech was actually his best of the entire campaign. It was reasoned and heartfelt and conciliatory. If he had shown a little more of that and a little less maverick, it might have been a different story.

By the time Barack came out, I was too tired to listen. All I could see was Michelle Obama’s hideous dress.

What usually happens to me after an election is that while I follow the daily rounds of revelations, charges and countercharges before the big day, I rapidly lose interest and stop watching MSNBC and figure that things will work themselves out. I’m going to try to stay on top of current events this time.

When I was in maybe seventh grade and a Catholic president was in the White House, we Catholic grade school kids had memorized the names of all his cabinet members. I couldn’t tell you who is who today, though. I want to see who Obama picks and where they come from, since past is prologue.

Anyway, I know what Michelle Obama meant when she said that for the first time in her adult life, she was proud of her country. Many people jumped all over her for that remark, but you can’t deny there is a spark now in people’s eyes, standing a little straighter, smiling a little more with the knowledge that we’ve done something significant and it’s more than just “one bright shining moment.”

Madeleine Albright

2008-10-25T22:59:00.001-04:00

DSCN7619-2
Originally uploaded by careerguy

Madeleine Albright comes to town

2008-10-24T21:34:00.001-04:00

You missed it. Tonight I went to the VFW hall a few blocks from my house to see former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She came to town to stump for Obama. I just started reading one of her books, “The Mighty and the Almighty” about the role of religion in international relations. Anyway…S

he was amazing—very smart, great sense of humor, down to earth, very sensible, approaching everything with unassailable logic. She made a brief presentation about six major issues that she sees as critical for the future:

- dealing with Al Qaeda

- nuclear proliferation

-restoring the good name of democracy (supporting not imposing democracy on others)

- negative aspects of globalization—i.e. gap between the rich and poor

- energy-environment, global financial mess

- two wars : Afghanistan Iraq and unintended consequences like the rise of Iran. She sees it as being worse than Vietnam especially because of the pressure of refugees on surrounding countries.

At times it was like listening to a college lecture, but what a professor!

She remarked that the next president will need to work with China, Russia, India. Latin America, Africa—everyone. In describing Obama, she feels he makes good judgments, thinks through problems. Will be a ‘confident’ president, rather than a ‘certain’ president. A ‘certain’ president doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Obama asked questions, getting different viewpoints. Will be able to prioritize issues.

In answer to questions from the audience, she was confident that we will be out of Iraq in sixteen months. She characterized Vladimir Putin as very smart, but mean. President Karzai of Pakistan is a very nice guy, but he’s more the mayor of Kabul than president of the whole of Afghanistan.

Gosh, I think it would be great to have her as Obama’s Secretary of State. ATt 71, I wonder if she's interested in the job.

Not unexpected, but still unwelcome news

2008-10-18T22:46:00.000-04:00

Just before Mass ended tonight, the priest asked everyone to sit down and he went back to the ambo. We knew this could not be good news. He read a letter written by St. Ignatius of Antioch who was telling his followers not to interfere with his impending death sentence.

We were all a little confused, but then he explained that our pastor, who had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year ago, had just informed his family that he would not seek further treatment, but would eventually go into hospice care.

The priest who told us this has been the administrator of the parish for the past year, doing a lot of the pastor's work. He had been our pastor's professor in the seminary, and he got kind of choked up delivering this news.

We knew the pastor was getting worse. At 6’4” he had always had a little paunch—he was a big guy, but now he was down to 125 pounds and just looked so gaunt. He hadn’t been able to eat very well all year and probably lost about a hundred pounds. In the past few months, try as he might, he could not work. He was very tired all the time. The last time I saw him, he was coming from the church, crossing the parking lot to the rectory. I knew he wasn’t feeling well and I certainly didn’t plan to engage him in a long conversation, but in reply to my inquiry into his health, he simply said, “I’m tired—I’m going to take a nap” and he kept on walking without breaking stride.

There we all were in church, just kind of stunned. I could hear people sniffling, and saw women leaving with reddened eyes, clumps of people standing with tears on their cheeks. The pastor will be staying with his parents for the time being, but will move to a hospice if necessary in the coming weeks. So he’s that much closer to heaven.

So why are we crying? I have a relative who had a “Coming Home” party for our grandmother when she died, complete with a cake that she made for her children. I can’t quite do that. I was inconsolable when my mom died ten years ago, and if anyone was bound for glory, she was.

Maybe I’m not walking by faith but by sight—stumbling over obstacles that block my way to seeing God’s promise clearly. Wonder if I’ll ever get over that?

2008-10-12T20:49:00.000-04:00

This was Max’s weekend at our house. On Friday night Kathy cooked him a hamburger—I guess he’s forgone the vegetarianism he maintained early in life. I enticed him into a game of War and we didn’t have a war until we were almost through the pack. I won that one and Shane came in to tell him it was time for bed. Shane granted him five more minutes to play and Max put down his cards and said, “I’m going to play something else for five minutes!” Evidently he wanted to maximize the value of those five minutes and playing cards with the old man was not gonna get it. The allure of video games can be too much at times. He was playing one called Up Your Arsenal—fortunately he’s too young to get the joke.

On Saturday, I did hit on something he liked. I had a pair of walkie talkies that I was holding until he was old enough to be able to use them. I brought them out, showed him how to use them and then we played walkie talkie hide and seek. He ran off and I “hid” on the front steps. I had him going up and down the stairs inside the house until he finally found me outside. We played a couple of rounds and had a great time laughing at each other.

On Sunday we drove out to the country and took Max and Shane to the farm where we have been taking Max since he was two years old. This year he was looking forward to seeing the pumpkin cannon and the hay bale maze. When he was younger, he couldn’t see over the bales so it made for a more interesting experience. Now he can easily find his way through. This year he was eager to try to corn maze, as well. Years ago he was immediately frightened by the high corn stalk walls and turned right around and crashed through them to get out. This time he navigated the field very easily. The hay ride was another attraction and we enjoyed a nice comfy ride around the field. We bought some pumpkins and gourds and squash for our holiday decorations and had fun walking around on a beautiful sunny day.

The farmer uses an air compressor to power his pumpkin cannon and it used to be mounted on an old vintage fire engine—quite a sight. This year the fire engine was gone. I asked him about it and he said he turned it into scrap! At first I thought he was kidding, but he went on to say that it was loaded with 900 pounds of brass, and even the motor was valuable. He wound up with about $7,000, having paid his neighbor $500 for it years ago. Still, I was sorry to see it go, since it was probably worth something in terms of history, but maybe not seven thousand dollars worth. Besides, with fuel costs tripling in this past year, I suppose he made an economic decision not colored by sentiment.

From the Wild Animal Department: the other day Kathy saw a mouse skitter into the heat vent in the kitchen and she screamed like a cartoon character. I was immediately dispatched to the hardware store to buy traps. I set one by the suspect vent another by the refrigerator. Kathy suggested I put one in the hole that the goofy electrician punched in the basement ceiling a couple years ago. The hole leads right to an open space under the family room. Sure enough, the remains of Stuart Little were found in that trap the next day. Cute little fellow—nice ears, tailored jacket. His hat was lost in the melee, though.

Vineyard Wedding

2008-10-05T20:13:00.001-04:00

On Saturday afternoon Kathy and I drove out into the country to a vineyard where our friends’ daughter was being married. It was the strangest wedding we’d ever witnessed. To begin with, the bride and her father appeared walking over the hill between the lines of trellises down to a sort of arch way of woven branches (I tried not to think ‘Blair Witch Project’, I really did).

The minister was a woman who made various signs with her hands—almost a sign of the cross but not quite, along with pronouncements about the sanctity of marriage (this is called foreshadowing—see my conversation with her below). She did say one thing that stuck with me: something about how over the years the annoying things about your partner become “endearing”.

There were several readings: one from the Tao and a couple I couldn’t quite catch. The bride’s father, a staunch Catholic guy, recited a sonnet from memory. All the readings blathered on about love and stuff like that, which was fine. Periodically a woman dressed all in black with a 1930’s hat perched on her head stood up to sing various selections. One was in French, another was in Italian and the third again I couldn’t quite catch. Mind you, we had no scorecards to tell us who was on first. There was no best man, but rather a woman who happened to be a lesbian served as “best person”.

The bride and groom said some things to each other that no one could hear, they exchanged rings, looked expectantly at the minister, unsure as to whether they were done or not, and kissed exuberantly at the end. It was a brilliant sunny day in the fifties, and there was a tent sent up with rows of tables and chairs inside, a DJ, and about a hundred people milling around after the ceremony. There was no formal cutting of the cake because the “cake” consisted of tiers of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. If you wanted a piece of the wedding cake, you simply grabbed a donut. Appetizers and wine flowed freely and after about three hours we were ready to leave. The sun was sliding behind the trees, the temperature was dipping with it, and we didn’t want to be driving around the countryside in the dark. Our hosts said, “Wait—the food is coming out!” It took three hours to get to the food? We made our excuses and slipped away.

It was something of an artsy fartsy crowd, since both bride and groom are creative types. He seems to be vaguely employed, with dreams of doing something with wind turbines in California. The poor guy had injured his foot and wore dress shoes for the ceremony but switched to one of those big Velcro shoes later. He had to trudge through the vineyard with a cane on that bad hoof. Kathy had a chance to catch up with the mother of the bride, and I walked around and met some interesting people.

One of the bride’s brothers had a girlfriend who had gone to the same college as I had, so we talked about that for a while. She told me she is now a “life coach”. I thought to myself: you’re 28. What do you know about life? Come back in thirty years and we’ll talk. They live in California, though, so that makes all the difference. Another couple consisted of a cabinetmaker and an artist of some sort. I also talked to the minister and her husband (second marriage for them both). She wanted to talk about the gender of God. I edged away toward the hors d'oeuvres.

Nothing to see here...

2008-09-28T20:41:00.001-04:00

Nothing to see here—move along, folks. Show’s over. I’m out of the hospital and safely home. Earlier this week, on Tuesday, I had a racing pulse and a heart flopping around like a freshly caught sunfish twisting on a boat dock. By the time I got to the electrophysiologist’s office, everything was fine. The car always runs great when the mechanic drives it. On Friday night, the heart palpitations returned. The moment my head hit the pillow, it took off again. I decided to sleep through it and see how I felt in the morning.

On Saturday morning, Kathy and I debated about whether or not to call the doctor, and finally I did leave a message with her service. After talking to the service, then a nurse then a couple of “fellows” (fellows in an academic sense, not goodfellas sense) from the hospital, they sent me to the ER at Parma hospital. They took me right away of course, slapped the EKG leads on me and then parked my butt in an ER cubicle down the hall. Four hours later I was admitted.

One of the EP’s from the practice came and tuned me out of the PVC blues by using my pacemaker. He then prescribed an additional medication to control the arrhythmia and kept me overnight. I was discharged Sunday afternoon at 2pm. The hospital chaplain spilled the beans in the sacristy before 9am Mass t one of my friends and then the word went out through my network. He came to see me just as I was leaving. Mostly he talks about his own problems when he comes to visit you in the hospital, which is kind of funny. Today he was having back problems from trying to move fifty bank boxes of books to a different rectory.

So, we’ll see how it goes with the new pills.

Good news—my landscaping project in the front yard seems to be working as planned. We’ve got little green shoots all over the place. I felt like a farmer fretting about the crops and weather, nursing the lawn along.

Green green grass of home

2008-09-20T21:28:00.000-04:00

It is finished. It took me about twelve hours over the last week, dozens of garbage bags, 1200 pound of dirt, 400 square feet of the grass patch stuff and about $85, but it’s done. Our front yard, that is. Since the blue spruce came down a week and a half ago, I’ve been working on clearing out the debris and preparing the ground for new grass. Today I dumped all the dirt (four trips to Lowe’s) and spread lime and then sprinkled the patch stuff over half the lawn. Now I just have to keep it watered for the next couple of weeks and we’ll have new grass just like that.

Next door neighbor Joe kept bringing me helpful tools while I was working, including a couple of picks that were very handy for chopping the giant roots left behind, and a seventeen pound pry bar to encourage them to let go and pop out of the ground. He has also been thinking about ways to “improve” my new snow blower, including cutting the cables on the safety controls. I graciously declined, but then he came back with an idea that might actually be helpful—tying down the auger control so I use that hand to direct the chute. Promises to be a very interesting winter season.

Max popped out of his father’s car the other day when I was working on the yard and announced that he wanted to help. He went into the house for dinner and an hour later he came out as I was putting my tools away. He and Shane went right to it though and did a nice job cleaning up the rest of the mess. Kathy gave him a dollar for his help and he was all excited saying, “Now I can buy a lottery ticket!”

Without her

2008-09-07T12:38:00.000-04:00

I spend the night in the chair
Thinking she’ll be there but she never comes
And then I wake up and wipe the sleep from my eyes
And I rise to face another day without her.

It’s just no good any more
When you walk through the door of an empty room
And you go inside and set a table for one
It’s no fun when you spend the day without her.
(Harry Nilsson, “Without Her”, 1971)

Thirty-five years ago, Kathy and I were living in Illinois. Our daughter was only a few months old. I was in graduate school (a move that didn’t pay off for another twelve years, but I didn’t know that at the time). Kathy was working in a hospital, but even so, we were on food stamps. She was desperately homesick, so when we drove back to Ohio to visit her parents at Easter in 1973, she announced that she and Ann would remain with her parents and that I was to go back to Illinois and finish that degree just as fast as I could.

Harry Nilsson hit it on the head for me back then, and he still does even now.

I sent Kathy and her two sisters to The Ritz for her birthday weekend. They left on Friday and should be back any time now. Turns out this time alone gave me pause. What will it be like if she precedes me in death? I obsessed about that on Friday, leaving work a little late (Kathy hates that) and stopping at the grocery store on the way home (she also hates that).

We have befriended one of the women who work around the cash registers, you know—the one who runs around OKing wine and cigarette sales and fixing problems with the computer. Jackie noticed I was alone and she asked about Kathy, concerned that she was OK. I reassured her that she was out having a wonderful time at the hotel. Jackie patted me on the shoulder and said, “It’s a good time for you to have some ‘alone’ time.” Still, I was dogged by the thought that being alone could be a permanent thing.

Finally, on Saturday morning I shook off those thoughts and concentrated on doing other things that Kathy hates: going to the big box hardware store, going to the local hardware store, working on things around the house that make her nervous, banging on things that needed banging on, generally enjoying myself.

I walked down to the end of our street to the Ariens dealer and put down a deposit on a big honkin’ snow thrower that I’d coveted for years. This thing has six forward speeds, two reverse (why do you need two reverse speeds?), a six horsepower engine and a 24” wide auger. For the cognoscenti, it’s a two stage machine with an overhead valve engine. Bring it on, baby, I’m ready for anything.

Now Kathy is back, tired and happy, full of tales about their adventures in the big city. It seems they thoroughly enjoyed themselves, living it up on the Club floor with fabulous hors d'oeuvres, tempting martinis and a sweeping view of the river. Gosh it’s good to have her home.

Blue Angels and one not so blue

2008-08-30T21:47:00.000-04:00

Imagine—it’s the end of August already. Winter should fly so fast. This past week was the first week of classes at the U. As usual, I worked the Welcome Table in front of my building on Monday and Tuesday from 7m-9am. In the past we had two people at a table, but this year for some reason, they had trouble finding people willing to work them. I like to do it because it’s fun helping new students find their way around and answering their questions. I wound up working alone both times, but that’s OK. On Monday I was so busy I handed out hundreds of logo'd planners and pencils and pens and keychains—hardly had time to get the table set up when people started streaming by.

It was noisy work, since there is a huge construction pit right in front of the building, with five excavators hammering on old concrete, loading up old rebar, and generally roaring around without let up. They tore down the old student center and will open a new one in about year and a half. The wing of our building where the Career Services Center sits has been shuddering since the beginning of July, since we all seem to be sitting on the same concrete pad as the demolished building.

On Thursday and Friday last week we had the Blue Angels streaking around the city at practically tree top level, practicing for the Cleveland Air Show that’s held every Labor Day weekend. We had a great view from my office, as the planes zipped by in formation, climbing into the sky, disappearing and then roared in from a completely different direction.

I had my last physical therapy appointment last week, and I wanted to do something for my therapist, so I asked one of the aides what she liked and learned that chocolate would be a good thing. Kathy and I drove out to the only mall with a Godiva store and I bought a good sized box for Laura the therapist and a smaller one that she could use to share with the other people at the clinic. I also bought her some swim goggles that I thought she could use. When I arrived for my appointment, she wasn’t’ there yet, so I was able to stash the duffel bag with the goodies in it in a closet without being observed. After the appointment—during which we really worked hard by the way—I made my presentation. I told her that I had been treated by five orthopedic surgeons, five physical therapists, three emergency room doctor s and my own doctor, but she was the only one out of all those people to take the time to diagnose me properly and find the source of my problem and fix it. I think she was touched—she was mostly excited about the goggles, I think. Then she went to the computer and told me that there are still three more sessions.

HHH-Hot Hazy Humid

2008-08-23T19:56:00.001-04:00

Still no rain this week. The lawn, such as it is, has browned up nicely and those odd weeds that thrive in drought have popped up here and there, the kind that make you think you should mow the grass just for the sake of cutting those weeds. Each day for the past two weeks we’ve pulled into our street wondering if the tree surgeon had come to slice and dice our big evergreen out front, half expecting to see a pile of pine rubble where the monster once stood. So far, the tree still stands, heedless of its fate.

In the backyard, most of the pansies have withered away, sun loving though they maybe, they still require a modicum of water that must now come from the hose, if I can stir myself to go out and sprinkle them at all. The dogwood leaves look ready to fall, discolored by drought, though I do dump some water on it every couple of days. Meanwhile, we are ensconced in air conditioned comfort keeping the August heat and humidity at bay.

Six year old Max was trying out a new word this week. I was sitting with ice on my knee and he looked over and said, “I would be pleasured to bring you more ice when that one wears out.” I knew what he meant, though. Later, when he was headed home, Nana Kathy thanked him for doing something, and he replied, “It was my pleasure!” On Saturday we went to an early soccer game to watch him play and got there a little late. It was already hot by 10am and Max was in no mood to race around a soccer field. He sat out the third quarter and reluctantly agreed to play goalie for the final stanza (as the sports writers say). No threat to his team’s unblemished record as most of the action as always was at the other end of the field. Just as well as Max managed to get a good dust storm going at his end, kicking dirt and ignoring the game.

Summer musings

2008-08-16T22:06:00.001-04:00

What happened to summer? It’s still warm, but cool nights have moved in, as they do during August. The days are dry and sunny, the nights comfortable for sleeping—don’t even need the air conditioning anymore.

I sat on the back deck and watched the moon rise the other night. The breeze had quieted. The first star came out. OK, it was probably a planet, but still. The crickets were ratcheting up their calls, some other insistent insect was buzzing, not doubt looking for some bug-love. Fireflies soared and swooped. First here, then there, then gone again.

Crickets used to make me feel a little ill. Sick to my stomach, marking as they do the waning days of summer and warning of the start of another school year. This was back when I taught high school. I dreaded going back, but then I got there and it was pretty much OK. Now it still means the start of another school year, but I love my teaching now, though I’m more often training other people to teach the courses I write.

Maybe January, February and March will go by just as fast as June, July and August seem to.

There is a blue spruce in the front yard that my mom and wife bought for our “new house” 28 years ago. It was a little stick that almost didn’t survive its first winter. Now it’s probably forty feet high and takes up half the front yard. I just signed the contract to have it cut down. The guy will be out in the next couple of weeks. My neighbor has been really good about it, but he’s mentioned that guests parking in his driveway can’t even get out of their cars on that side. We already know it’s impossible to see down the street when we pull out of the driveway. Are we rationalizing?

I’m a tree guy. I planted another blue spruce in our postage stamp back yard and keep it trimmed so it won’t take over the landscape completely. (You know it never occurred to me to trim the doomed one in the front yard.) There is a pink dogwood that we call our anniversary tree back there too. It flowers each year on our wedding anniversary. The birds planted two maple trees by the back fence and I’ve let them grow. The goal is to have them drop leaves in the back neighbor’s pool someday.

All this is to say I’d rather keep the tree, but I will replace it with maybe a river birch to dress up the front yard. Something that won’t completely block our vision or annoy our neighbor to the east.

Every prom photo and graduation portrait featured that tree in the background. One of grandson Max’s first “jobs” was collecting its pine cones one spring day. Generations of birds have made their homes in it. The lawnmower has been bouncing over its roots for years.

Being on the north side, it probably won’t affect the amount of light in our living room, but it will certainly open a vista long hidden: that of the neighbors’ houses across the street. We kind of liked the privacy it afforded us. No reason to buy fancy curtains if no one can see them, either.

It will be different here once it’s gone, but I think it will be a good thing. We won’t have so many close calls with people driving down the street, we won’t have to worry about it blowing over in a storm. But still, visitors will not have that landmark tree to help them find our house (“Just look for the big blue spruce. That’s us.”)

So the tree is coming down, summer is winding down, school is cranking up and pretty soon we’ll be carving pumpkins and sending out Christmas cards.

So where have I been?

2008-08-10T13:44:00.001-04:00

So where have I been? In that city with the Gateway arch for a professional conference. I hadn’t been there for twelve years. Since I spent five days in the hotel without venturing out, I’m glad I did some touristy things twelve years ago—things like going up inside the arch to see the view. OK, we did go out one night for dinner, but that was in taxis and didn’t really count.

We had some interesting speakers including Bill Rancic, who apparently was the first winner in the TV show “The Apprentice”. I didn’t know who he was, but I guess he brought a little star power to our group. He told some funny stories about how he got into business and a little about the TV show. No great earth shattering insights, just some thoughts about bringing different strategies to different problem solving situations and the importance of setting goals.

Different people have talked to us abut Generation X and the Millenials and their different characteristics and how they think and what they want from a career, that sort of thing. I couldn’t really keep it straight. This time, though, a speaker divided up the 400 or so people in the room into groups according to our birth years. We had enough different aged people to represent all these groups: “Traditionalists”, Baby Boomers, X-ers and Millennials. Then we answered questions about our own experiences growing up.

We covered things like TV shows we watched, what family dinners were like, what we thought of performance evaluations—ten questions all together. Then she had each group report on their answers. It really brought the generational thing to life to hear people talk about their group and how they were shaped and why they do the things they do. Very much fun.

A friend of mine did a workshop on Multi-Cultural Counseling Competency that was very rich in content. She has been training her staff on how to talk to people coming from different backgrounds. She covered womens’ issues, African-American, Gay/Lesbian, American Indian,--all sorts of different perspectives.

Then it was off to New Jersey to see my family there: Dad, sister and brother, nieces and nephews. Dad is 85 and doing better these days in terms of walking. He got some sort of shots that helped him. It had been a year since I had seen him, so it was time to go again. Plus, I love driving alone for seven or eight hours and listening to my iPod tunes coming through the radio speakers. That’s my idea of fun.

Also , it’s hard to sit down at a computer and keep up with blogs in the summer. If it’s nice outside, then I’m outside. What’s that? I should get a laptop and wireless network? Donations cheerfully accepted.

Our little girl

2008-07-26T20:40:00.001-04:00

Since I won’t be able to call Daughter Ann on her birthday, I’d better post this now.

Kathy and I were up early on July 27, 1972 since contractions seemed to be underway. We played cards for awhile—rummy or War, nothing too complicated. Then we left for the hospital around 8am. I had recently taught Kathy to play chess, so we brought a little traveling chess game and set up the board by her bed. The doctor thought we were crazy. We probably were, since we didn’t get very far with the game.

At some point Kathy told me since it was going to be a while that I should go for a walk or something and come back later. Well, I did. I drove over to a friend’s house and talked to him while he painted his front porch. All the while I was moving in a world without time, a world that was fundamentally changing. The air was charged with wonder and a sense that I was being carried along inexorably forward to a new place.

Back at the hospital, Daughter Ann was born at 3:55pm. Or was it 3:58pm? In any case, I wondered about the significance of the fact that the time of her birth was exactly twelve hours different from my own. Did that mean she would be directly opposite me in temperament or something? That little bit of numerology didn’t quite work out, since she is kind of more like me in some things.

I was very happy that we had our little girl. In those days, the only way to judge the gender of a baby was to go by the divinations of old wives and their tales. That is, you guessed. Some men would rather that their first born be a boy. Not me. I was proud to show off our new little girl. In fact, we took her to our favorite bar when she was five days old. Dressed in a frilly purple number, she sat in her child seat taking it all in. There was a woman from my home town in New Jersey who happened to be visiting her daughter in that college town where we lived. She came into the bar and recognized me and gushed over the baby.

Later, back in New Jersey, she called my mother and raved about the beautiful grand daughter we had produced. This irked my mother no end, having this slight acquaintance get the first glimpse of her first grand child.

So it was in the beginning.

July 4 2008

2008-07-15T21:12:00.000-04:00

Did you get my email?

2008-07-15T20:31:00.000-04:00

Today I was so busy I didn’t even have a chance to check my email. Messages piled up with no regard to my busy schedule. While I was in meetings, these electronic newsy bits kept piling up.

Listserves are the bane of modern existence. People chatted away, though I wasn’t’ there to follow the thread. When I finally looked at my inbox tonight, three was an entire inane conversation about something really important and half the members did not participate.

I sent an email to over 9,000 people last night and accidentally forgot to change the email return address to something other than my own. Consequently, I wound up getting all sorts of responses ranging from pleas for help to complaints about our database system.

Maybe it’s email news subscriptions that are the bane of modern existence. Of course, like listserves, it’s our own darn fault. We signed up for them, so we shouldn’t be upset when they show up. But how much information does one really need, anyway? I read the news articles and promptly forget what I read, but boy I sure had to have that information for some reason.

No wait—it’s spam that is the bane of modern existence. We have a pretty good filter at work and an address to send it to in order to prevent future messages from different sources. Lately there has been an outbreak of spam from Lilly—or something that purports to be the pharmaceutical company. I keep forwarding them to the filter and they keep popping up like e-weeds It just takes time away from anything else I want to do.

We all ask ourselves: what did we do before email? I guess we picked up the phone and asked a question, got an answer and went on our way. People email me from their offices located a few feet from mine. Why not get off your duff and come see me?

You know what email is? It’s free. We love free. We will use the heck out of free. Not that we should be charged for it, like text messaging or something. Just be sensible. Think before you type. Ask yourself: is this message necessary?

Don’t mind me. I’m just tired tonight.

Ireland, Part two of two (and link to photos)

2008-06-13T21:39:00.003-04:00

One adventure we had as a family in Dingle was a search for a pair of pliers. In order to read the meter and pay the electric bill for the cottage, we needed pliers to open the access panel outside the house. A guy in a convenience store directed us to a place that was a combination bar and hardware store. We didn’t quite believe it until we walked into Foxy John’s Bar and Hardware: half bar, half hardware store. The left side of the room was a bar where some locals were quite lit at 10:30 in the morning. The right side of the room was a rabbit warren of cubby holes with all kinds of junk stuffed in them.

The bartender changed hats, so to speak, coming out from behind the bar and going behind the hardware counter. Sure enough, he went right to certain box and pulled out a pair of pliers for about €5. We were saved!

One curious thing I noticed was that as Ann drove around the back roads, every time a car came from the opposite direction, she would raise a finger or two. I asked her about it and she just said, “Country wave”. Gotta love the country wave. There is a certain convention, apparently about the correct use of this salute. Unless you recognize a friend, one or two fingers is sufficient. If you see an acquaintance, a whole hand wave is required.

On our last day in Dingle, we traveled around to see the famous beehive huts, famine houses and an ancient stone fort. After sightseeing, we stopped for an early dinner in Dingle at Ashe’s—turns out someone named Scanlon is the owner. We couldn’t find any “an”s anywhere, but there were plenty of Americans to go around. One sales clerk was from Louisiana, a server was from Bergenfield, NJ (a few miles from where I grew up) and some other tourists on the Fungi boat were from a town a few miles from our town in Ohio.

Kathy and I went to Mass on Sunday in the country church in Ballingeary. We were able to walk there fortunately, since there is no parking to speak of. I had been looking forward to that Mass all week. They had five servers: two girls who did all the work, one boy who was on the same side of the altar as the girls, and two little boys who had nothing to do over on the other side of the altar. The Mass was partly in Irish (the prayers and readings) and partly in English (the homily). It was a rather joyless affair, though, with no music at all. It all seemed so …obligatory. We sat near the front, about eight pews back with no one in front of us except two grandparents and five grandchildren. Then there was a no man’s land of about ten empty pews behind us and then about 150 people were jammed into the back of the church.

Our second week, we went ‘round the Ring of Kerry. All this time I thought it was some stone structure we were going to see, but of course it’s rather a string of towns with different sights to see, all around the Kerry area. One highlight was a trip through the Gap of Dunloe, a long winding road through a boulder strewn valley. There was one point in the trip where you had to pass between a kind of Scylla and Charybdis—two big rocks with only enough room for one car.

The absolute best part of the trip for me was a secret visit to Skellig Michael with Peter. We stole away one morning without telling Kathy where we were going. Everyone else know, though. Skellig Michael is a forty minute boat ride out into the Atlantic. Monks lived there beginning a few hundred years after Jesus finished his work on earth. They had to carve hundreds of steps into the stone, leading to the top of this big rock that sticks out of the ocean. They built bee hive huts there and a hermitage. They considered themselves living at the edge of the world, and it certainly seems that way when you are there. I hope you can see the photos on http://www.flickr.com/photos/44964247@N00/.

You had to walk along the edge of the cliff for most of the hike, so it was no place for acrophobiacs. We met one on the way up. She was terrified of crossing a rather wide ledge—actually an easy part of the trip. She did make it to the top eventually and had someone walk her down later. I allowed myself a half hour to get down to the boat, and I just made it. Peter hot footed it down the trail and was the last one aboard.

My knee held up just fine through all of this and then gave out on our last day. Our last round of sightseeing included the Cliffs of Moher, which we saw both from the top and from a boat (courtesy of Ann). They were very impressive, despite the cloudy weather. Kathy made a new friend, Sean, on the boat. Sean coaxed her out onto the bow and told old jokes to keep her entertained. You can see him in one of the photos.

I have some classic shots of the 5,000 year old portal tomb at Poulnabrone—the last nifty sight we saw on our trip. After that, we headed for Shannon Airport for our last night in Ireland. Ann’s plan worked out very well. In fact, everything she planned for us worked wonderfully well. She was a terrific travel agent, guide, cook, driver, hostess and daughter throughout the whole two weeks.

I’ll leave you with some Irish-isms we heard during the trip:

- In one little town, a woman bent down in front of our car to pick up a coin. She came over to the driver’s side to say, “I always pick up money, because the angels have left it for me.”

- What time does the restaurant open? “When they get there.”

- How do I get to ______________? “Well, I wouldn’t start from here.”

Ireland Trip part one

2008-06-09T18:16:00.001-04:00

We only slept a few hours on the way over to Shannon. The in-flight movie was “The Bucket List” which turned out to be very good, funny and sad. This time we had a plane with the TV screens built right into the headrests in front of us instead of the ones that swing down from the ceiling every few feet.

Our party split up with Kathy and her sisters going off with Peter directly to the house. I left with Ann to go pick up their dog Toby. He turned out to be a great dog. He’s about fifty pounds, a medium haired Alsatian. We’d hate to see a long haired one, since he was plenty furry himself. We learned that “Alsatian” was just a politically correct term for German Shepherd.

Their house is only two years old, the garage about eight months old, so everything is very new. They have two bedrooms upstairs where the sisters slept, and three downstairs. Kathy and I had the one opposite the bathroom. It normally serves as a workroom for Peter, but they were nice enough to set up a bed for us in there.

The back of the house is a very big space with a kitchen that sprawls along one wall and an eating area set up in a sort of glass enclosed patio. They put down a line of black tape, scribing a arc around the food preparation area in the kitchen that is a Toby-free zone. He is not allowed past the line.

We spent a lot of time lounging at the dining table reading, talking, eating, looking out at the hills searching for the pheasant we knew lived in the bushes. Ann had set up our places marked with coffee mugs full of chocolate, and we wound up staying in our assigned spots for the whole visit.

Staying awake the first day is always a challenge. If you can stay up till 8pm or 9pm, you feel much better than if you sneak in a nap. To ensure our wakefulness, Peter and Ann took us out to an enchanted forest called Gougán Barra. OK, maybe it’s not really enchanted, but it’s my vision of a place likely to be populated by fairies and hobbits. The moss covered rocks and boggy ground with groves of pine trees are very picturesque. In fact, Peter has some wonderful shots of the area in his portfolio.

As part of our sleep deprivation routine, Kathy's sister and I decided to walk into Ballingeary proper—the village located just a mile down the road. We were instructed to walk on the right side facing traffic on the narrow country road. We dubbed it the Highway of Death because the cars race along without a thought for anyone foolish enough to be on foot. As you approach the village, you come to the Bridge of Death, as we called it, since there is nowhere to go if two cars approaching from opposite directions meet on the bridge. You have to go over the side. Fortunately, we survived the excursion and in the end we became rather blasé about cars rushing by us on the rural lanes.

We walked into the little store in town to get a head of lettuce, and had to ask the produce driver if he had any on his truck—fortunately he was just making his delivery. The store clerk was chatting with him as he worked. Since we were visiting an Irish speaking or Gaeltacht area, we heard lots of things we didn’t recognize. Later we saw the produce driver outside and he asked us, ‘Could you understand that lady in there?” We said no, and he said, ‘Me neither!”

Day Two
Ann and I drove out to the “Community Amenities Center”---read Recycling Center. Ann’s favorite activity is to smash the glass bottles she has brought inside the glass bin. It’s quite a carnival trick to get them into the hole in the bin so they won’t just smash on the parking lot.

Our next adventure was driving down south to a lighthouse point called Mizen Head. It was a cold and windy seascape there on the southwestern-most point of Ireland, with fingers of rock reaching into the ocean and waves crashing over them. Sea caves in the cliffs are a dramatic feature as are the folds in the rocks along the walkway that takes you to the light house buildings.

We stopped for a late lunch at O’Sullivan’s, a little pub on the water in Crookhaven. Most of us had the crab sandwich, complete with bits of shell, so you know it was authentic.

Day Three
We had plenty of authentic Irish weather on Wednesday, with pouring rain the primary feature. It gave way to scattered showers and sprinkles. Do the Irish have many words for rain, as the Inuit have for snow? They should.

Our inside activity was a visit to Muckross House, a big estate in Killarney Our tour guide Niall took us through all the rooms up and down and into the basement as well, explaining the function of each room. We asked about why the beds were so short, figuring it was just that people were shorter then, and Niall pointed out an additional factor—that they often had respiratory problems and they thought that sitting up in bed was better for them.

In the scullery, the guide pointed out the sinks that were built low to the floor, remarking that that was because the children of the servants would work at those sinks. The whole group groaned at the prospect of children inheriting their parents’ station in life.

One of the owners of Muckross House spent most of his fortune and all of six years preparing for a visit from Queen Victoria. He hoped to garner a title out of the deal, so he went all out. She spent a total of two days there, and after all that work and expense, she completely forgot about granting a title to the owner. Her husband, Prince Albert, died shortly after this visit and in her ensuing depression, she never gave it a thought.

I asked the guide about the name “Muckross”. It was derived from ‘Muck” meaning “boar”, since there were once boars on the property, and “ross” meaning peninsula, since it’s situated on a peninsula. No one else asked that, so I was quite pleased with myself.

We had a sumptuous lunch at the Lake Hotel in Killarney. The sisters decided that this was their favorite place to eat so we did come back here the following week. After lunch, the sisters and Peter went back to Ballingeary since the sisters were flying to London for three days. Ann, Kathy and I split off for Balliferriter, a village on the Dingle peninsula where we had booked a cottage.

The “cottage” turned out to be a three bedroom affair with a nice kitchen, dining area and a big living room, all very comfortable. The only thing we lacked was bath towels. We bought a couple rolls of the paper variety and that did the trick. Kathy felt like she was camping.

We drove into Balliferriter for dinner at the hotel/restaurant/pub. I ordered Irish stew and got four whole potatoes, carrots as big as tree trunks and meat in a big bowl of broth. If I had worked all day building stone walls, I could probably work up enough appetite to handle it. As it was, I asked to take the rest home and the woman serving us bit her lip, considered the problem and said, ‘I’ll try to find something to put it in.” Turns out no one had ever asked for a doggie bag before. Fortunately I did not use that phrase—it might have really set her off. She returned with a plastic container that she had obviously scrounged from the kitchen. I felt kind of dopey after that.

Day Four
Ann and I walked down the lane to the beach near our cottage in the morning to collect shells and check out the scenery. The day before had been so rainy we couldn’t see anything. Today we saw the mountains surrounding us for the first time. There is a set of peaks called “The Three Sisters” (ironic for our visit) across the water from our beach. There were photos of them in the cottage, and I took a stab at capturing them on film, er, memory card too.

One thing we got accustomed to this trip was “elevenses”, or what the Hobbits might call “second breakfast”. At about 11am each day, we would find a café and get coffee, tea, croissants, cake or whatever we could find. Kathy was shocked to find me ordering a pot of tea at each stop, since I never ever drink the stuff. I decided to give it a try on this trip.

What I learned was that, at least for me, tea kind of slows things down. First, you have to wait for the tea to steep in the pot. Then you pour, add milk and brown sugar to taste, and wait some more for the cup to cool enough so you can drink it without scalding yourself. By then, things have slowed down to a manageable pace. How civilized.

Next stop was Dingle town and the search for Fungi. Nope, not the mushroom variety—this Fungi is the dolphin variety. We boarded a small boat and set out into the bay to look for the famous dolphin. The deal is, if you don’t see Fungi, you don’t have to pay for the excursion. This seems like a fair deal until you realize that he is a mammal after all and has to come to the surface to breathe. If he were a shark or something, that would be a different story.

Of course we spotted the critter, but often it was just a glimpse of a dorsal fin. One time everyone but Kathy was leaning off the port side, and the tricky little guy showed up along the starboard rail, grinning at Kathy. She jumped up and whooped at the sight!

At lunch at Murphy’s pub, I told Ann to text the following message to Peter: “Sighted Fungi, Sank Same”, hoping he would get the reference. He did.

During this trip, I was in search of a CD from an Irish traditional group called OSNA, who had played at the afters party at Ann and Peter’s wedding. After checking three stores in different towns, I finally went to their website and discovered that the new CD is not out yet. It’s really the thrill of the hunt that I was after, so I didn’t immediately take the easy way out on the Internet.

Peter and Ann are really of the Internet generation, since it is their first resource. Ann uses her laptop as her kitchen radio, listening to NPR stations. It’s also her typewriter for communicating on her blog and her movie studio for DVD’s and game arcade just for fun. Peter has servers running in his computer room that take care of his web site, and of course he has a desktop for his photo business, not to mention a ginormous printer producing those elegant prints of his.

After dropping Kathy back at the cottage, Ann and I took off for Connor Pass, circling around the mountain to approach it from the more difficult side: the side with a single lane road with two way traffic.

At one point, a car was coming down and we had to back up to find a spot to inch over to the left to allow the car to pass. There were a couple of problems with this. First, there was already a car behind us, so we had to get them to back up too. Next, the woman coming down the hill was in a rental car and thus not familiar with the area and so she panicked at this situation and froze. She made us come right up against the rock wall on our left until she finally crept past us.

I told Ann she deserved the Connor Pass Driving Merit Badge. Part of the test for an Irish drivers license requires one to back up around a curve. It was surprising how often this particular maneuver was needed on narrow country roads. There is another trick you have to use when stopped on a hill facing the crest. You need to pull the emergency brake, then release the brake while applying the accelerator—it almost feels like the collective on helicopter controls. Ann is also a star when it comes to this trick.

Triumphant, when we reached the top of the pass, I bought her a “99”, an ice cream cone with a chocolate stick poking out of it. We enjoyed the view of the mountains to one side and Dingle town to the other. It was cold and windy, so after a brief rest, we climbed back into the car for a trip down the mountain on the easy three lane road for a change.

A word about Ann’s car: it’s a diesel Peugeot, four door hatchback with amazing power. Ann has nicknamed the vehicle ‘Leo”. Leo did an outstanding job during this whole trip.

We next ran down to Sleá Head drive, a nifty road that takes you down to a hidden beach that is covered in high tide. (The beach, not the road.) There is a section where a stream runs over the road. It’s too expensive to build a bridge at that spot, so they didn’t. You just have to be careful when you come around that curve.

This being an Irish speaking area, the traffic signs and messages were in Irish. Here are some typical ones:

“Go Mall” - go slow

“Tog Bóg Ė” - Take it softly (slow down)

“Failte” - Welcome

“Sían” - Come Again (or something like that. Appears when you are leaving a town.)

(more to come)

Ode to Spring

2008-05-04T20:38:00.000-04:00

For some reason, this spring’s beauty seems to have lingered a little longer; a reward for surviving another winter---a winter whose swirling snow and frigid air has already faded from memory. We were just complaining a moment ago, wondering if spring would ever come, and now we’re stuffing sweaters away for next year and digging out our favorite summer t-shirts.

The flowering trees—dogwoods and whatever the heck the other ones might be—the pink and white and purple clouds scattered down the sidestreets hover just a little longer before the blossoms rain down, coating the lawn with their color—yet one more spring treat.

It’s a cliché, but darned if our yard isn’t perfumed by the lilacs in the neighbor’s yard—a pleasant smack in the nose when we walk out the door and head for the car to go to work. Just a reminder that wonderful things are going on despite our conceit that we are in control.

Just for a moment, it’s OK that dandelions dot the landscape. Right now they are part of the whole panorama of color that comes with spring. Tomorrow I will murder them in their sleep.

Blood, Soccer and a Real Date

2008-04-26T22:34:00.000-04:00

This week was my fifth instance of hemarthrosis. I had my knee drained on Thursday. This time it was the woman DO that took care of me. She and the RN did a great job—much better than any of the men. The RN would smoosh the blood pockets around so the doctor could suck it up with needle. They got a world record 72cc’s out of there. This is the best I’ve felt after one of these incidents all year. I will meet with the surgeon next week to set a date for arthroscopic surgery in June. I was thinking I would wait until later in the summer, but I don’t want to go through this again. My own doctor is afraid of infection, and the more often they stick me, the more likely it is that I’ll get an infection. So, I hope the surgery clears all this up.

Today I had the honor of attending our grandson’s first soccer game. We got sprinkled on a little bit, but soccer goes on regardless of the weather. Max’s approach to the game was much like his attitude toward t-ball last summer. He always seemed to be facing in the wrong direction, was not interested in “hustling” anywhere, and would converse with the opposing team at odd moments. If they kept score, his team won 9-0. Max made contact with the ball at least twice. One time their leading scorer got close to the goal and then let Max have a go, though to no avail. Max played alternating quarters, today it was the first and third. He spent his sideline time curled up on his mom’s lap under her umbrella.

At work, I’ve been training a new person who we thought had some experience in the sort of thing we do, but she just looks so puzzled every time I explain things. Finally a little light went on this past week, so maybe I managed to break through. This Social Work professor sent me 45 resumes to review before I speak to two of his classes next week, so I gave the new person a healthy stack and showed her what I wanted her to do. We’ll see how she did next week.

It looks like we will be able to hire two more people finally, though they are not the ones we originally wanted. One is the wife of a political science professor that I see in the locker room all the time. The other is a woman who did an internship in our office working for the director, and I never did interview her—for some reason I was out of the office the day she came in. I still have to train these two, but they may be arriving when we are gone in Ireland. We should have been able to fill these vacancies back in January, so I thought we would be well on our way by now.

Kathy and I went out on a date today to celebrate our 37th wedding anniversary that happened on April 24th. We went to Ruby Tuesday since we liked the takeout we had had from there, but going inside the restaurant did not work out. I had some chicken and crab meat, but there was something “fishy” about the crab meat and I wound up sending it back, thanks to Kathy who agreed that something was wrong. Guess I’ll stick to hamburgers. After we left the restaurant we stopped in a new park/reservation area that we had not seen before. A few years ago some people stopped the area from being developed and got the city to keep the wetlands and build hiking trails in the woods. It’s really a great refuge for people and animals—a little bit of country in the middle of the city. We sat for a while and listened to the birds and watched them swoop around a pond—better than HD TV.

Things on My Computer Desk

2008-04-19T19:06:00.000-04:00

A half used sheet of labels for our church envelopes with the wrong amount typed on them.

The TV remote, so I may multitask.

A pen, a pencil, a black Flair pen, a yellow highlighter.

The remote to my Bose iPod sounddock that sits in the next room, but which I can still control from here.

A card for a free Blockbuster movie that I received for complaining about something or other. It came with a beautifully composed letter of apology that I still have somewhere around the house.

A birthday card for my sister’s big day later this week.

The September 2007 issue of DISCOVER magazine open to a page that says “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Hygiene”. My favorite item from the list: “There is no ‘five second rule’ when it comes to dropping food on the ground. Bacteria need no time at all to contaminate food.” Darn.

The Lonely Planet guide to Ireland. We leave in one month—woo-hoo!

A paperback copy of “The Original Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases”, printed in 1966. That’s when I bought it—42 years ago. Never found another as good.

Loose photographs of my family, Max at the baseball stadium.

A 12’ Stanley tape measure I’ve owned for 37 years. Still retracts, too.

A business card from the Phe’be Foundation (www.phebefoundation.com), a nifty organization that educates teens and college students about credit and finances.

A used Barnes and Noble gift card. (Thanks, kids!)

A rough budget for the Ireland trip.

A wonderful draft itinerary for the Ireland trip, drawn up by our wonderful daughter.

A new thank you card ready to go in case I have to, you know, thank someone.

A picture of Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in a plastic sleeve that we bought for grandson Max but haven’t given him yet. Of course it’s been on my desk for probably two years. Better take care of that.
I wouldn’t presume to tag you, but—would you like to play?

Nice work if you can get it

2008-04-12T22:48:00.001-04:00

Last week I was only in the office on Monday and Friday. I spend a couple of days in Des Moines at an executive board meeting for my professional group. I am the treasurer, which is kind of funny because I don’t know a balance sheet from a bed sheet.

Since I didn’t get home until very late on Wednesday night, I stayed home of Thursday. I did do a little work, but I slept in until 9am. It was a good rest day, since I was exhausted the whole time I sat in meetings, having been up at 4am to catch my flight on Tuesday, going long hours the whole time.

We have an interesting group of people on the board, exemplifying diversity. If you just look around the room you would see the following:
- an old white guy (me)
- a mature white woman
- two African American women
- one African American man
- one Vietnamese American man
- one gay white woman
- two straight white women

It’s a pretty good group of people who care about the organization and serve on the board for it’s sake rather than any personal glory one might garner in such a position. Actually, I think most members don’t even know who’s on the board, so there’s no point in joining if you are looking solely for personal gain.

I’m not sure why I do it, myself. Maybe it’s for the neat plaque you get at the end of the year.

Moment of Truth

2008-04-02T21:35:00.001-04:00

I had never watched this show until its finale tonight. Apparently spouses go on TV, sit in a lie detector chair and answer devastating questions about very private matters in an effort to win money.

As the contestant gradually erodes the bedrock of his or her marriage, the host of the show idiotically keeps “congratulating” them on progressing toward the goal of wining more money. Why people would subject themselves to such a brutal display of their inner lives before a nationwide audience just for the sake of a few thousand dollars?

Contestants’ answers bring their families to tears, dredge up old hurts, , shred relationships , and reveal things that should never see the light of day.
Why would anyone in their right mind answer questions like:
- Have you ever regretted marrying your husband?
- Have you ever had sexual relations with one of your best friend’s old boyfriends?
- Were you in love with someone else on your wedding day?
- Have you ever had a sexual fantasy involving your best friend?
- Have you ever stolen money from the family business?
- Have you ever had sexual relations with someone other than your husband during your marriage?
- Have you ever considered hiring a private investigator to follow your husband around?
- Do you blame your father for ruining your childhood?
- Do you consider yourself to be a better mother than your own mother was?

Now come on. Sometimes people think terrible things, do terrible things, but they wouldn’t dream of making these blunders public. Are we really so shallow that we’d willingly bare our soiled souls for a few bucks? Apparently some of us are.

The thing is, while an unexamined life may not be worth living, a thoroughly scrutinized life may be the death of you. Everybody mutters under their breath, wishes plagues on pests, fantasizes about the people in their lives, but how serious are we in these momentary lapses? Following through on crazy thoughts is one thing, and even if you do something foolish, no amount of money is worth revealing a secret that has the potential to wreck your life and ruin relationships with your closest friends and family.

How much are your secrets worth?

Oh, the people you’ll meet!

2008-03-30T18:12:00.000-04:00

On the way home from work on Friday, Kathy decided we were going to play hooky and not go home right away. She had a taste for mussels from Bonefish, and that was where we headed. She even drove the big girl way down the interstate to get there. We had a nice dinner all by ourselves and relaxed for an hour and a half or so. She had had a rough week at work and so we deserved it.

I’ve actually been having some fun at work lately, feeling more like a counselor, since I’ve had so many appointments lately. I was a little rusty, but now I’ve been able to really nail it with some people, coming up with the perfect thing to say, or getting them to tell me what they really want.

The other morning at about eight o’clock, an interesting person came to the office without an appointment. Turns out she was an erstwhile art teacher who graduated 12 years ago when there were no jobs in that field. She started doing secretarial work and stayed with it, but now she wants to give it another shot. I got her to talk about what she’s been doing and how it relates to her goal. She’s the one out there with the neighborhood kids playing badminton, organizing crafts—now it’s on her resume.

Some of the other people I met included:

-The serious young social worker who is relocating to the Carolinas—she mentioned an air force base. Maybe that’s where a boyfriend may be stationed. She didn’t volunteer that information and I didn’t ask. I did get her to smile a few times, though she kept focused on the task at hand: getting her resume together and figuring out how to relocate to a new city and find a job..

-The harried linguistics major with a tiny diamond nose piercing who wants to teach English overseas. She wants to go to Greece—Crete, in particular. I mentioned that I wasn’t sure there was a market for that there, but that’s what she wants, and she’s certainly not going to listen to some old guy tell her how it won’t work.

-The earnest, not-so-young any more man who spent the last ten years working in finance instead of teaching math, which is what he really wants to do. After seven years of school, he’s anxious to make his move, but feels like the Colossus of Rhodes, straddling the gulf between the sure thing (boring old job) and the uncertainty of landing his dream job in teaching.

-The secretary with the Tracy Chapman ‘do, who majored in fashion merchandising of all things, and worked for HBO in New York City, had a daughter and is now back living with her mom, looking for “something stable, but in an artistic environment.” How’s that for a tall order?

Even though I complain about having to do three peoples’ jobs—and it has been hard at times—it’s been good to get back to what I liked about this job in the first place. Kathy had to remind me of that lately. Maybe some day we’ll get some more people to help us, and I hope they are good people, but in the meantime, I am fortunate to be in the company of such wonderful students, so motivated, so driven, so hopeful. There is an amazing group of young people coming up—Generation Y, Millenials, whatever you want to call them—we’ll be in good hands.

Woo-hoo!

2008-03-22T19:00:00.001-04:00

So this is the day between Good Friday and Easter. A day when I wonder what the world might be like if Jesus had not risen from the dead. I can’t help but think we would all be living in a world ruled by Biff—the bully from Back to the Future who makes a fortune betting on games whose outcome he already knows, due to the sports almanac he filched from the future.

It was an amoral place, full of vice and empty glitz, where pursuit of material things was all that seemed to matter. There was no reason to look out for anyone but yourself, no code of conduct other than that of Mammon. It would be a difficult place to exist, because that’s all we would do—exist—not really live.

But I believe He did rise from the dead, and that makes all the difference.

Now there is hope. Now we know there is a better way to live. We have an alternative to self interest and avarice. It’s called love.

Tonight I’ll be in the Easter Vigil service, celebrating the wonderful gift of the Resurrection.

Happy Easter!

I had too much to dream last night

2008-03-15T22:19:00.001-04:00

I had a temp job as a guest lecturer in a math class in France. I had nothing prepared—I just know I was supposed to talk about U.S. math for an hour. The classroom was full, but there were all kinds of people: men, women, young twenty-somethings, older people in their 70’s.

There was music blaring from different corners of the room, so I messed around trying to shut it off. I finally got one section quiet and the class applauded.

The room was very wide and resembled a hunting lodge or pub, with log walls and wooden booths in a the back with traditional school desks scattered around haphazardly.

I said things like, “My sister is a French teacher.” They thought that was very funny. I asked if numbers were different somehow in the U.S.—they thought that was funny, too. I asked if anyone liked to count things, and this one woman answered, but her accent was so strong that I couldn’t understand her. While asking her to repeat her answer, I realized she was naked from waist down. No one else thought anything of it.

All of a sudden a group of older people gathered around a TV right in the middle of class. “What are you doing?” I asked. They mumbled something, but it was apparent that some sort of national sweepstakes horse race was on, and they didn’t want to miss it.

I considered storming out in a huff, but I was afraid I wouldn’t get paid—that’s if I were paying paid at all. I wasn’t too clear about that. Meanwhile, some kids were trying to shut off the music in a corner of the room and I went to help them, but that area of the room was like someone’s kitchen and we couldn’t find any switches. I went back in front of the class to try to continue and I looked at my watch and a whole five minutes had passed the class had started!

Hunkering

2008-03-08T19:09:00.003-05:00

We have been hunkered down since Friday night with this huge snowstorm howling outside. This morning the weather guy on one channel was giving the official definition of a blizzard—a certain wind speed, snow fall and visibility—and declared that we hadn’t yet met those criteria but then he looked at the camera and said, “But, that’s pretty much what we have out there—it’s a blizzard.”

Kathy tried to clear a little path by the backdoor, since we could hardly open it against the snow, but much of her efforts were obliterated by the blowing and drifting snow. I stuck a tape measure into the snow by the backdoor Saturday morning and it was nine inches deep. Now there are drifts three and four feet deep in the driveway, and it’s impossible to tell what our local total might be. It should subside over night and be sunny on Sunday. The lector for 7:30am Mass called me to say she wouldn’t make it to church. I told her I wasn’t going at all myself—we’ll watch the shut-in Mass on TV Sunday morning. The paperboy called fishing for a snow shoveling gig, and we asked him to come on Sunday when the weather clears. He asked, "How much will you give me?" We said twenty dollars (we knew he had been asking $10-15 the day before, but now he knew how much work it was!). He seemed pleased and said he'd be over around 11am. You know we'll give him another five dollars just because he's a great kid.

The roads were closed to all but essential traffic, with the police telling everyone to just stay home. Two major malls closed, so you know it must be bad for retail commerce to grind to a halt. Of course the airport was closed—I am very glad I didn’t have to go anywhere this weekend.

We have heat, lights and the Internet. What could be better than that?

We have plenty of food and no reason to go out until Monday morning for work. We watched some episodes of “Northern Exposure” on dvd—just the thing for a snowbound afternoon.

How I Spent My Birthday

2008-03-06T21:09:00.002-05:00

A little while ago, daughter Ann lamented that fact that her dad was no longer blogging. Her plaintive cry worked on my sensibilities for a while—she always could get anything she wanted from me. So I decided to crank up the blog again and see what happens. Watching from the sidelines as she flourished here in the blogosphere has been fun. I guess I want to get in on some of the fun. Perhaps the reasons I originally stopped blogging are no longer relevant. So here goes:

How I Spent My Birthday: I got up early as is my wont, and started several loads of wash. Then I took Kathy to work so I could have the car. I came home and checked email and cycled the washes into the dryer until it was time to leave the house.

I drove to FedEx and shipped the draft of the third edition of my textbook. Do you know the sort of redneck comic named Bill Engvall? He’s famous for the “Here’s your sign” routine. That is, some people should wear a sign saying “Stupid”, so that we’ll know not to rely on them for anything. So I’m in the FedEx store and I put the box on the counter and the woman says, “You want to ship that?” “No, I just thought you might want to admire my neat printing on the address label….here’s your sign.” I didn’t actually say that, of course. Her name tag said “Christine—Team member since 1998.” What I did say was, “So Christine, you’re coming up on a ten year anniversary” and she got this stricken look on her face as if to say, “Ohmigod, have I been here that long?” as she multi-tasked shipping my package and printing color copies for a little old lady standing further down the counter.

Then it was over to Sams Club for paper products, chips and Advil—just the essentials.

Then to a big mall where I was determined to do some damage with the Macy’s gift card Kathy had generously given me. There was $47 left on it and I didn’t see why it shouldn’t be wiped clean in one fell swoop. I wound up buying the most expensive pair of black dress pants I could find.

It was nearly lunch time and I was feeling rather peckish. (Always wanted to use ‘peckish’ in a sentence, but first I accidentally typed “puckish”, which I believe is a whole ‘nother thing.)

I stopped at a Dippin’ Dots place, I think it’s called. Ever see that stuff? It looks like crumbled cookie toppings but magically turns into ice cream when you put it in your mouth. The was my first experience with the concoction. I also picked up an Auntie Anne’s pretzel, since I was celebrating anyway.

Dippin’ Dots is a little tricky, requiring most of one’s attention, so I sat on a couch in the middle of mall eating my Dippin’ Dots, by myself, on my birthday. Then I realized how pathetic that was, and I left to go to the car and eat my pretzel, washing it down with the dregs of a can of Coke I had left in the car. Aware of how sad that was, I headed home.

Desiring to surprise Kathy with an ice-free driveway, I went out and chopped ice and snow for a while. Probably just long enough to screw up my knee again.

For some months I’ve been promising myself a new watchband for my Mickey Mouse watch, since the old one has these sharp edges that ruin my shirt cuffs, I drove to another mall to get one. The young lady at the mall kiosk has been there for years and really knows her stuff, so together we picked out the right one for me. She even gave me 10% off when I told her I had bought the original band from her ten years ago. I didn’t even have to play the birthday card, so to speak.

After picking Kathy up at work, I came home and fielded calls from ~~admirers~~ family members who felt obligated to call with birthday wishes. Still, it was fun catching up with everyone.

So. What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain? Try to catch up with New Yorker magazines that have piled up.

Shutting down

2006-09-07T20:45:00.000-04:00

“Shut down all the garbage compactors on the detention level! Shut down all the garbage compactors on the detention level!” Luke hollered into his communicator, as R2D2 and C3PO sought to help their human companions. It’s one of our favorite lines from the first Star Wars movie.

Applied here, I am shutting down this blog. It all started on January 22, 2005. This is my 200th post, so I’m happy about that milestone. I may start up again some day, but for now, I’m closing up shop.

Thus, My Life’s Work goes the way of Mirty, Stacy, Sister Golden Hair, Darlene (though she can still be found contributing to a group blog) and some others who have dropped off the radar screen.

If it’s OK with them, I’ll still follow my favorites, including Rebecca’s Thoughts, Suburban Lesbian, Maybe Expectant, Rabid Fun, Of Marathons and Other High Intensity Endeavors, It’s not Exactly Pepperland, Shake It Like a Polaroid Picture, Nettie Rules, One of Six , thestafflounge, and a few others I’ve discovered along the way.

I’ve enjoyed getting to know you all over the past two years and sharing your lives a little. I’ve appreciated your comments on my blog and wish you all the best.

42 Things About My Dog

2006-09-04T19:18:00.000-04:00

1. He rarely steps in his own pee.
2. When we feed him he will wait for the command before he starts to wolf down his food.
3. He will wait for the magic words: “Go eat!”-usually.
4. He seems to be attached to me, since he follows me from room to room.
5. He came to us very well trained from our daughter.
6. During the day he rotates from a bed in the family room to one in the living room for no apparent reason.
7. If he can he will sneak into my chair while we are gone for the day.
8. Our walks go better when it is cooler out.
9. He plods along very slowly when it’s hot.
10. People always stop us to ask what kind of dog he is.
11. Great Dane-Lab is the answer.
12. Brindle is the color.
13. I didn’t know what brindle was until I saw his paperwork
14. He weighs 100 pounds.
15. Kathy wonders what will happen if he dies in the house.
16. After all, he weighs 100 pounds.
17. As big as he is, he’s afraid of thunderstorms.
18. When a storm rolls in, he’ll come into the kitchen and lie on the floor.
19. He’s not allowed in the kitchen.
20. At night, during a storm, he’ll scrunch up on the floor alongside my side of the bed.
21. He sees me as the alpha male or something.
22. He gets a treat every Saturday morning.
23. I keep his treats in the basement.
24. I tie him up outside for his treat because he gets all foamy when he eats it.
25. Whenever I’m home all day, he thinks it must be Saturday.
26. Whenever I tie him up outside, he thinks it must be Saturday.
27. Whenever I go into the basement, he thinks it must be Saturday.
28. We hide the kitchen trash can in the bathroom.
29. Thus, he hardly ever gets yelled at for making a mess.
30. Every morning we go for a walk around the block.
31. Every morning we see skunks in the neighborhood.
32. Apparently, he finds skunks fascinating.
33. Every night we go for another walk, much longer—about two miles.
34. There are lots of dogs in our neighborhood.
35. Our record for setting off barking dogs just by walking by in one evening is eighteen.
36. He does this head thing when he wants attention.
37. He puts his head in your lap and looks at you soulfully.
38. An ear scratch usually takes care of it.
39. He’s kind of dumb, but in a nice way.
40. He’s nine years old. We’ve had him for a little more than one.
41. He’s a chick magnet.
42. Let’s face it: he’s the best dog ever.

Coloring with the master

2006-09-03T18:35:00.000-04:00

Uncle Greg of American Splendor fame gets a few tips on coloring from Max.

Beat up swallowtail

2006-09-03T18:31:00.000-04:00

This little guy has been through the wars--
he's a little raggedy around the edges.

Annual Fall visitor

2006-09-03T18:28:00.000-04:00

I came out one day and found seven flutterbys
on the butterfly bush--a new record for me.

My Summer Reading List

2006-09-02T15:50:00.000-04:00

1. The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren
2. Tristan Betrayal, Robert Ludlum
3. Oblivious, (I must have been, because I never noted the author’s name)
4. Whisker of Evil, Rita Mae Brown
5. Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich. A writer takes a series of minimum wage jobs to see what people do in order to get by.
6. Twisted, Jonathan Kellerman
7. Sea Change, Robert B. Parker
8. The Broker, John Grisham
9. A Catskill Eagle, Robert B. Parker
10. The Mad Cook of Pymatuning, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
11. The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd
12. Marker, Robin Cook. Disappointing.
13. A Year in the World, Frances Mayes. I rushed through this, wanting to get to the travel parts. Much of it revolves around food, but enough is enough.
14. All Our Yesterdays, Robert B. Parker
15. Smashed, Koren Zailckas. Apparently she’s not an alcoholic, but sure lived like one for a few years.
16. School Days, Robert B. Parker
17. Sea Glass, Anita Shreve. Several different threads of different points of view are brought together in the end. Key word: foreshadowing.
18. The Godwulf Manuscript, Robert B. Parker
19. God Bless the Child, Robert B. Parker
20. Mortal Stakes, Robert B. Parker
21. Eat the Document, Dana Spiotta. Wonderful story of a radical gone underground, and her life through the 70’s-90’s.
22. The Hunt Ball, Rita Mae Brown
23. Predator, Patricia Cornwell
24. Wilderness, Robert B. Parker
25. All He Ever Wanted, Anita Shreve. Hey—it’s Anita Shreve—great stuff.
26. An Almost Perfect Moment, Binnie Kirschenbaum
27. The Pilot’s Wife, Anita Shreve. Didn’t see what the big deal was with this one.
28. The Judas Goat, Robert B. Parker
29. This Book Will Save Your Life, A.M. Homes. Or not.
30. The Great Influenza, John M. Barry. I never knew how horrible conditions really were: sick people having to lie in bed with the recently deceased since there was no one well enough to carry out the dead.
31. A Savage Place, Robert B. Parker
32. The Footprints of God, Greg Iles. Something about computers becoming intelligent.
33. Pale Kings and Princes, Robert B. Parker
34. There are Worse Things I Could Do, Adrienne Barbeau. C’mon, she was pretty cute, you must admit.
35. Looking for Rachel Wallace, Robert B. Parker
36. The Widening Gyre, Robert B. Parker
37. Let Me Finish, Roger Angell. Well written stories from the fiction editor of The New Yorker. I think I’ll have to find his baseball writings now.
38. Man in the Shadows, Efraim Halevy. Former director of the Mossad. You would think it would be really cool, but it plods along with little in the way of secret insights.
39. Ceremony, Robert B. Parker
40. Death in Dublin, Bartholomew Gill. I loved it since I’ve actually been in some of the places described in Dublin, and some of the action takes place in Dun Laoghaire, where daughter Ann and her husband Peter live.

As you can see, quite a run of trashy reading with the occasional redeeming serious work. My goal is always 50 books, so I’m a little short this season. I could extend the summer on through September, but I still wouldn’t hit it. Time to tackle the mountain of magazines that accumulated over the past few months.

Let them eat yogurt

2006-09-02T14:35:00.000-04:00

For the past month I've had to fight off bronchitis with two rounds of antibiotics. The second one kicked its butt, and I started to feel better. Then one evening, Kathy cranked up the air conditioning, and I was sitting in my shorts (summer shorts, silly, not the other kind) and the cold air chilled my poor little legs and I got sick again.

Now people (you know--doctors, nurses--that kind of people) say that is not how one becomes ill. Well, it's how I get sick. Walk outside with wet hair: sick. Walk outside in a cold wind with no hat: sick. Sit in an icy movie theater without a sweater: sick! I think she must be doing it for the insurance money, but I've foiled her plans.

I went to the doctor today, though my regular guy was not there. I talked to this younger doctor who was rightly concerned about all the antibiotics I've been taking. He talked about how the drugs were killing all my bacteria, including the good ones. He suggested that I eat yogurt to get some more bacteria into my system. Sounded wacky to me, but Kathy said he was right. She even went out and bought me a bunch of Yoplait containers. Blueberry. My favorite.

Maybe she's willing to wait for the insurance money.

First Day of School

2006-08-28T21:42:00.000-04:00

For years, I took photos of our children heading off for the first day of school. First one, then there were two, and then three. One of my favorites has the morning sun slanting through the trees, slicing the scene as they traipse down the sidewalk.

I’m not sure how they felt about the picture taking, but certainly as they got older, they were more resistant, as it seemed babyish to do such a thing. They were harder to nail down in high school, and then all of a sudden they were leaving for college. I still sneaked a few in there, though I didn’t call attention to it being the first day of school picture.

Today was the first day of classes at the university where I work. A major road in town is all torn up, three lanes of traffic are forced into one at several points, there aren’t ever enough parking spaces anyway, and it’s always a crazy day without such distractions.

I always volunteer to work the Welcome Tables each year because it’s fun to help people and make them feel comfortable at a new school. We give directions, answer questions if we can or pull out our cell phones to call someone who may know the answer. We hand out day planners, campus information, lollipops, whatever it takes.

I did notice something new this year. Mothers accompanying their first year student children: a son, a daughter, it didn’t matter. Some call these people “helicopter parents” since they hover over their grown children, still shepherding them through life’s passages. We don’t see it as often as my colleagues in smaller liberal arts colleges, but they are here, too. Mothers will walk their five year olds to kindergarten, but eighteen year olds to college?

So here we go again--a fresh start for everyone, but probably no photos to capture the moment.

The Assault

2006-08-26T10:41:00.000-04:00

We are getting ready for students to return to the university next week. The last few days, there have been first year students wandering the campus trying to find their classrooms. There is the annual influx of international students as well, in their seasonal hunt for on campus jobs. They are not allowed to work off campus for the first nine months they are in the US, so they rove the halls looking for graduate assistantships, tuition waivers, anything, really.

This past Friday was no exception. Early in the morning, around 9:00 a.m., there was an international student standing in the door of a secretary’s office, asking her about jobs. She told him some of the places to look, such as the library and the parking department. He was insisting that she call someone and get him a job, and of course, she could not do that. His English seemed to be very poor, and he just wasn’t getting the idea.

We have a young graduate student working in the office named Jackie. She has dark blond hair, very thin build, medium height, I suppose. She has a ready smile, very nice person, always willing to help with any project. In short, just the sort of person you would like to have working in your office.

I spoke to her Friday morning as she was working at the front counter, greeting students, answering phones—we were both glad it was the end of the week. Moments later the secretary brought her to my office in tears.

I’m not clear on all the details, but that last demanding international student asked Jackie where the men’s room was, and she must have gone into the hall with him to show him, and he may have asked her to take him there, feigning lack of understanding. When they rounded the corner, he grabbed her and tried to kiss her. She fought him off and he left the building.

When they told me this story, I said, “Call the police!” So the cops came and took a description and the details of what had happened, then they left to look for the kid.

This guy was so stupid, he actually came back to the office a little while later and picked up a job application. That same secretary, instead of calling the police, went back to Jackie’s desk to get her to come out and ID him. Of course by then he was gone. She did see him walking outside and declared, “That’s the guy!”

So we missed our chance to nab him. We hope he returns the job app, and that will be his undoing.

We all felt just terrible for Jackie, and the rest of the day we escorted her wherever she had to go, and tried to look out for her. Our day was pretty much shot by all the excitement.

So you never know. Such incidents are few and far between. Some students fear the street people who pass along the campus, but sometimes you have to be more wary of your own peers.

Books!

2006-08-13T16:27:00.000-04:00

While Ann did not officially tag me, I decided to go with this meme anyway:

1. One book that changed my life. Rabbit Run by John Updike. It gave me my first hint about what sex was about, however indistinct its references were. It was the second Updike book I read (The Centaur was the first), and it kept me on a path that would eventually lead me to read just about everything he’s written (except for the magazine review articles in “The New Yorker”). I always marveled at his ability to write a sentence that ran for a full page, and you don’t even notice.

2. One book you’ve read more than once. None. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book more than once. I will watch certain movies over and over again, but for some reason I feel that once I’ve read a book, I’ve gotten everything I can from it and I don’t go back. When I do re-read one, I bet it’ll be On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island. I am tempted to say The Bible, even though it may seem trite. I’ve read it through three or four times now and there is no lack of things to learn there. If I couldn’t have that, it would have to be The Early Stories by John Updike. The 103 short stories in that volume should provide plenty of diversion.

4. One book that made you laugh. A Wolverine is Eating My Leg by Tim Cahill. Or anything by Carl Hiaasen.

5. One book that made you cry. Harumph. Being a man, I don’t cry, of course, but if I did, it would probably be due to reading The Greatest Generation, about how my parents saved the world.

6. One book you wish had been written. How to Ensure That Your Children Are Never Hurt by the World. It’s selfish, I know, and probably not a good idea, but when your children hurt, you do too.

7. One book you wish had never been written. There are so many, like bad Patricia Cromwell novels, but I choose Mein Kampf. I don't know, maybe things would have turned out differently.

8. One book you are currently reading. Man in the Shadows by Efraim Halevy. Halevy worked in the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service for about forty years, mostly in leadership positions. He purports to reveal the inside story on the crisis in the Middle East, so I hope he gets to it pretty quickly. Right now his insights are few and far between.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read. Magister Ludi by Hermann Hesse. I started reading it a twelve hour bus ride to visit my then girlfriend at her college in Virginia in 1968. I got about a third of the way through it and never finished it.

10. Tag five people. Suburban Lesbian, Rebecca's Thoughts , Nettie, Rabid Fun, thestafflounge. I'm sure they'll appreciate it.

I have other more meaningful categories for me. Would you like to see them? Of course you would. So, due to popular demand, here you go:

1. Best use of dialect: Close Range by Annie Proulx. I’ve never been to Wyoming, but I can sure hear their voices.

2. Best use of images: any John Updike short story. If he writes about a winter day, you feel cold. If he writes about riding in an auto, you get car sick. If he writes about sex…oh, have I said too much?

3. Best use of oriental sensibility: Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden. OK, “oriental” is a politically incorrect term, but “Asian” is kind of antiseptic in this usage. The delicate threads running through the story are reminiscent of Snow Falling on Cedars. I practically went off on a woman at our dinner table on the last cruise we were on who remarked that Memoirs was a terrible book.

4. Secret pleasure: reading the Spenser novels of Robert B. Parker. I’m a sucker for that crisp, funny, punny dialogue and undercurrent of righteous violence, whether the characters come to blows or not.

5. Worst run of secret pleasure reading: this summer. I have read twelve Robert B. Parker novels and I have two more sitting here right now. Someone stop the madness!

6. Most recent surprising (pleasant) discovery: Anita Shreve and Sea Glass. It led me to read a couple more of her books. Very interesting characters.

7. The last book you read because it would “be good for you”: The Purpose Driven Life. “They” were right.

8. The book that everyone in your generation read, but would never admit it to each other: The Harrad Experiment, by Robert Rimmer about a college where sex was not part of the curriculum, it was the curriculum. Presented in a very wholesome way, of course.

9. The book your ninth grade English teacher raved about, but that you vowed you would never read precisely because of her recommendation: Personally, I kinda liked my English teacher, so anything she suggested was cool with me.

10. Best essential desk reference: Roget’s Thesaurus. Not the wimpy hard backs they have now, but the three inch thick paperback version I carried through high school, college and grad school.

Shhh!-Don’t tell anyone else

2006-08-12T21:36:00.000-04:00

Tonight we went out to dinner to celebrate Kathy’s sister Lois’ and her husband Greg’s “Catholic Anniversary.” Thirty-five years and some months ago, they were married by a justice of the peace, but kept it a secret. You see, Lois, needing her parents’ financial help for college, had promised them that she would not get married until she had graduated from the university. Kathy and I were married in April 1971. Lois and Greg took the plunge in September of that year in a private ceremony. We didn’t even believe them at first when they told us.

We were sworn to secrecy, since Lois’ and Kathy’s parents would have been very upset, had they known of the secret nuptials. When the parents came to visit, we moved all of Greg’s stuff into our apartment and acted like nothing was amiss, kind of like a sitcom—“Three’s Company” or something. Even after their Catholic wedding in August of 1972, no one ever told the parents what had really happened. We believe they never suspected, and we kept that secret for the past thirty-odd years. Now, of course, both their parents are gone, and there is no need to keep it classified.

To commemorate the public celebration of their union, I combed through thirty or forty photo albums, looking for pictures of them through the years. They never had children of their own, and I was struck by how often they were photographed with our own children and other nieces and nephews. I came across one album I had forgotten I had, that held a conglomeration of photos of Kathy and Lois as toddlers, and some of Lois in the ‘70’s. There was even a small photo of Lois and Greg from one of those places where you could get a strip of photos of yourself sitting in a booth at the mall.

I scanned, cropped and printed about twenty of them, and Kathy found a small album to put them in. We gave it to them at dinner and they loved it. Turns out we had photos they didn’t even have of themselves. There were some of situations that I didn’t even remember, they recalled with great clarity. Kathy also presented them with one of those cards that plays music—she is enthralled with them, even at $5 apiece. The one she chose played “The Sea of Love”. It was kind of neat.

So now this family secret is out. Hope no one’s upset at our treachery of so long ago.

Lazin’ on a sunny afternoon

2006-08-06T20:43:00.000-04:00

We went to 7:30 a.m. Mass this morning and saw our friend Kathy in the parking lot. Kathy’s husband died two years ago of ALS. He went very quickly, a victim of a fast moving version of the disease, probably a blessing, but still a very difficult thing for Kathy. How she wept at the gravesite—it was heart rending.

She spends much of the week caring for her preschool grandchildren, but Sundays are especially hard. The day seems to drag on, as she has nothing to look forward to. Knowing this, we asked her about her plans for the day. Grocery shopping seemed to be the highlight, so we invited her out to breakfast with us. We had a great time laughing for about an hour in the restaurant. We asked the server for extra cinnamon on her French toast, and got it. She laughed at our sharing a single breakfast, each taking what the other doesn’t like (my hashbrowns go to Kathy, her sausage to me).

We dropped her off at her house later and that was that. Or it was until we came back from some errands and noticed police cars down in the next block in our street. Being curious cats, we drove down to check it out. When we saw officers with their guns drawn, we skedaddled out of there and came straight home. All this action was happening right in friend Kathy’s backyard, so I called her to see if she was all right.

“Kathy, are you OK?”
“Sure, why?”
Well, there are police with their guns drawn standing on your patio!”
“OMIGOD OMIGOD OMIGOD!”

She said she had been taking a nap on the living room floor when all this started and she was completely unaware of the bizarre happenings. I suggested she might want to get back on the floor. Instead she cracked open the back door to speak to the police. Turns out a teenager in the house next door had threatened to kill the police and blow up the block. The mom and the children are druggies and have acted strangely in the past, but this was more dramatic.

The police asked her to open her garage so they could hide in there, so she hit the remote control for the door. We hung up then, as she promised to let us know what transpired.

Ten minutes later they had the kid in handcuffs and it was all over. She hopes that this incident might be the catalyst to get that family out of the neighborhood, but who knows?

Genes Will Out

2006-08-05T21:25:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, at my brother’s mysterious urging, I called my sister in Boston. She was reported to be depressed about something, and she usually fights against anything that could bring her low. She has come through all sorts of things in the past: staffing issues at work, raising two daughters, dealing with her husband’s ongoing midlife crisis. Something was different this time.

She told me that she had had a red mark on her skin for some weeks that looked suspicious, so she consulted a doctor friend about it. (As a nurse practitioner, she has lots of those friends.) He told her it was a squamous cell cancer. It was located on her nose, right where the nose pads of glasses sit, so it was kind of strange. She is not a sun worshipper by any means, but our father had the same sort of thing on his chest and ear some years ago. We always attributed that to his days of lifeguarding on the beach at Atlantic City, but who knows.

They will take care of it on Friday with lasers.

But there was more. She had noticed a giant “floater” in her eye one day, and when it didn’t go away, she went to a doctor who told her she had a tear in her retina. They lasered that and told her “No restrictions, you can go back to work”. So she did. Then there was a second and third tear. A first year resident said this was very common. My sister had little faith in what such an inexperienced person thought was likely or not, so she consulted an opthamalogist who still sent her home with “no restrictions” after the second tear. Later, she decided to take a couple of days off for the heck of it—something she never does.

Mom had had a detached retina, so we started thinking about that. We thought these things had happened to our parents when they were somewhat older than us spry fifty-somethings, though. Maybe they just seemed older to us at the time.

Wonder what other little genetic landmines are out there?

Heaven must be filling up

2006-07-26T21:34:00.000-04:00

Here are the people I know who died last week:
Rose, my brother-in-law's mom (heart)
Rudy, from our Social Justice Group (prostate cancer)
Ray, the husband of Theresa from our Social Justice Group(heart)
Jan, a nurse that Kathy worked with (breast cancer).

House weekend

2006-07-22T22:09:00.000-04:00

This weekend was devoted to house things. No office work allowed. Friday night I went over and cut our friends’ grass. I had done it once before and made diagonal lines across their long sloping lawn. This time I tried making a Zen garden, cutting circles around the big oak tree in the corner of the lawn. It was supposed to represent the tree as a pebble dropped into the lake of the lawn…got it? I’m not sure the idea translated that well in the doing of it. If they ever ask me again, I’ll try something different.

I felt I was falling behind on the painting in the kitchen, so Saturday morning was reserved for that. Shane was a tremendous help, putting the final coat on the ceiling and then helping trim and prime the cabinets. We got a lot done and both collapsed later for naps. I couldn’t face the ceiling again, having put three coats on it earlier. The Kilz did the job and now it looks terrific.

We are still trying to get the last three pieces of the hardware we need. The store says maybe Wednesday. Today I finally took one out of the wrapper and tried it. I didn’t realize there were these little threaded nubs sticking out where the screws go. The holes in our cabinets are not big enough, so I’ll ream them out a little with a drill and everything should be fine.

Max and Shane stopped over the house on Saturday. Unremarkable, except that they did it in a steady downpour—on foot. They called it a ‘rain walk’. Since it was time for Kodiak’s after dinner constitutional, we joined them on the trek home. Max thoroughly enjoyed watching Kodiak try to shake himself dry. He learned that his glasses fog up in the rain, and that he cannot shake himself dry like a dog, try as he might. Earlier in the week, Max was in the backyard and he ran his hands over the grass, as he had seen me do once before, and he excitedly declared, “The grass is dry—we can play in the clubhouse!” The clubhouse consists of those two cardboard boxes from the appliance store. Of course we can only use them on dry days. I cut doors and windows according to Max’s specifications in every side of both boxes, so he is constantly flowing in and out of the openings, encouraging less limber me to follow.

Saturday night I went to 4:30 p.m. Mass since I was substituting for another reader and another Eucharistic minister. If I hadn’t had those responsibilities I would have stayed home. As it was, I was so tired, I was standing in my spot with the wine, and no one was approaching me—not unusual—when I heard “Psst!” It was a little old lady in the handicapped pew who wanted wine. As it turned out, a whole row of little old ladies wanted wine, so down the line I went.

After Mass, one of the women from Social Justice, Theresa, came up to me and told me that her husband had died that very morning. She was determined to come to church, and so she did. I felt really bad for her, as she stood talking to me, her eyes filling up. Her kids are in town, but the rest of the family will be coming in from out of state. Her husband was not active in the group, but Theresa is a wonderful worker. She is in her sixties, not sure how old her husband was, but we think he was a little older than her. Last week was a busy one with funerals, now we have another one.

I was talking to our pastor just before Mass on Saturday night. He told me about a funeral this past week where he was presiding. During his homily, someone’s cell phone went off. The guy answered it and paced up and down the side aisle talking. “I’m at the funeral. Father’s preaching now…” The pastor stopped and said, “Maybe we should wait until this gentleman is finished, since it must be a very important call.” One of the family members went to the guy and told him, “Sit down, now!” Did we lose our brains when cell phones were invented?

Today we are off to the Indians’ game. It’s cooled off this weekend, so it should be a nice afternoon. Next week is the conference we have been planning for the past year and a half. I probably won’t be able to write for a time.

2006-07-16T20:26:00.000-04:00

Ah summer!

Some weekend

2006-07-16T20:04:00.000-04:00

We just got a call from our daughter in law that Max had been attacked by her step sister’s Rottweiler. They were all over at her father’s house when this happened. Max was trying to get away from the dog and it locked its jaws on his shorts and tore them off. Fortunately, he didn’t break the skin. They left the house immediately and headed home. The owner simply said, “Bad dog.” I say dead dog. How do you keep a dog that would do something like that? Max is used to our old dog that is very gentle and just leaves the room if Max bugs him. These people treat their dog like it was their child and haven’t done anything to train him.

Saturday evening we learned that Kathy’s sister’s mother in law passed away. The sister and her husband stopped over at the mother’s house in the morning and found her dead in bed. Now they are catching grief from the woman’s daughter who is complaining that her brother hadn’t called her to say that their mother had been in the hospital earlier in the month. Now mind you, this daughter has not seen or spoken to her mother in over a year. Where does she get off saying anything to the people who took her mother to all her doctors’ appointments, sat with her in the ER countless times, and always checked in on her at home? The viewing is tomorrow, with the funeral Mass and burial on Tuesday. We are both staying home from work to be with Kathy’s sister and her family.

That same night I found out that a member of our Social Justice group at church, Rudy, had died late last week. No services yet. They are waiting for relatives to gather from around the country. Rudy died of prostate cancer. He was probably in his seventies, but very good with tools and such, and was always looking for ways to help us. He made things out of wood or metal, like clothes racks and sign posts and was always trying to build a better mouse trap. He was really a good guy.

We really did have a nice day on Saturday, until all this news started pouring in. For instance, the electrician came back and finished the job he started a year ago. Now, after four hundred dollars, I can once again flip a switch and have a light come on in the garage. A year ago he dug a trench and laid conduit from the house to the garage, and the wires just laid there all winter. The next step is to get a garage door opener, a life long dream of mine. Hey—dream big, I always say.

The RN who is Kathy’s supervisor at the doctor’s office gave us a kid sized recliner for Max. His long legs stick out over the edge of the thing , but it still fits him pretty well. He immediately wanted to put it next to mine so we could watch movies together. He slept over here this weekend, and popped in on Kathy when she was getting dressed. She had just sprayed her deodorant, and he remarked, “Nana, you smell just like daisies” which I guess is the point after all. Shane took him to the Childrens Museum and a Cleveland fire truck pulled up and the fire fighters started to talk to the kids about fire prevention, and they got a call on their radios, so they suited up and jumped on the truck and took off. It was all very exciting. Shane said if it wasn’t part of the show, it should have been. The crew came back a short time later, since the call was a false alarm, and continued talking to the kids. Max came away with “Don’t play with matches” so he was listening. Yesterday evening we brought out the sprinkler so Max could cool off. I put my suit on and joined him. It was a great idea. Since it was in the 90’s again today, we were out there splashing around again. See the photo above for more details.

Woke last night to the sound of thunder...

2006-07-09T16:19:00.000-04:00

And so we have survived another Fourth of July. If you have to be anywhere on the 4th, you should either be in Boston or Washington DC. Here, people were popping off fireworks long and loudly, way past midnight. Poor Kodiak was beside himself, keeping us up all night as he seemed to be hyperventilating, pacing around our bedroom, going from one side of the bed to the other, breathing huskily into our faces. Phew—talk about dog breath. We were afraid he’d have a heart attack, he was so nervous. The only other thing that bothers him as much is a thunderstorm. In fact, he knows he’s not allowed in the kitchen, but he will come in and plop himself on the kitchen floor, and won’t move no matter how much we berate him. Then we’ll hear some distant thunder and understand.

This week we have big news: four year old Max now wears glasses. They are, of course, very cool. He has rectangular lenses on thin frames, with little images of Spongebob Squarepants on the inside of the ear pieces. The moment he put them on he said, “Mom, everything looks bigger!” Apparently he needs them for more than just reading and driving. He looks very cute in them.

I’ve lately discovered an author named Anita Shreve. Everyone else already knows her—she wrote The Pilot’s Wife. I read her Sea Glass and just finished All He Ever Wanted. I went to the library today and took out The Pilot’s Wife. Might as well read them all. Her characters are compelling and stories spin out in a fascinating way. So far I’ve read twenty-five books this summer. Painting took up this week, but I have lots of time yet to reach the fifty or so I’d like to do.

The Projects

2006-07-04T21:39:00.000-04:00

So where have I been? Right here. Working on projects. I took this week off for vacation. Kathy wanted some painting done—just the shower stall in the basement. Then, things changed. She has been watching every home remodeling show there is: “Flip This House”. “Trading Spaces”. I don’t know all the names. Something worked on her and she got an idea.

She decided to make over the kitchen. She chose a light gray (Sherwin Williams calls it “Cumulous Clouds”) for the walls, and wanted to paint the cabinets white. I was a little dubious, but what the heck—we’ve never been happy with any color we’ve had in that kitchen, so why not take a chance?

Fortunately, there was a great sale –25% off-- at the paint store, so I went nuts. After all, Kathy was buying. Now painting tools are still tools, so this was a great excuse to add something to my arsenal. I chose a nice Contractors grade two inch brush. They run about thirteen dollars, but last a long time. The bristles don’t fall out, they keep their shape. All you have to do is take care of it.

The project included using the same wall color in the downstairs bathroom and the basement stairway. There is so much masking and edging to do, I am behind schedule. There are all sorts of angles and corners. If it were only rolling the walls, like in the living room, I could have been finished in a day.

Tomorrow I’ll finish the basement stairway and start prepping the cabinets. Should be exciting, if not excruciating.

Nothing like the classics

2006-06-27T21:26:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday was the first one I’ve missed posting something new. It’s harder in the summer to be faithful to this writing. Harder still with no comments to keep things moving. We were busy with Max’s birthday party. He is four.

Without consulting each other, the grandparents bought him some of the classic toys of our own childrens’ youth. Remember Hungry Hungry Hippo? Our kids drove us nuts banging away on the hippo tails. It was my brilliant (every pun intended) idea to buy Lite Brite. In the olden days, this was a plug in affair with a hot light bulb in side the plastic frame. Now it runs on three D cell batteries. Where’s the adventure in that?

It cracks me up that they bill it as a “flat screen” device. It was always a flat screen. It’s the only way it could work.

Max dove right into the low tech toys, dancing around the room when he won a Hippo game. Kathy gave him one of those cards that plays a song when you open it. He peered inside, trying to find out how it worked. When his father explained that there was a computer chip in there, that prompted more dashing about the room as he pointed it out to all in attendance.

Max had another sleep over this weekend. On Saturday morning, Kathy and I woke up leisurely at 6am and she asked me if I had heard her scream in the night, and for once, I hadn’t. She then told me that she had had a nightmare. Max was standing outside our door and stuck his head in to say that he had had a nightmare too! His dream involved flying ice cream trucks that you had to take an airplane up to in order to get ice cream, and then you had to parachute down. Terrifying! He was very pleased with the box the washing machine came in, since it makes a great clubhouse. We cut windows and doors in it Saturday night, and he put his little plastic chair in there. Since I have two boxes, I’m thinking of tying them together to make a mansion.

Doesn’t take much to make us happy.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

2006-06-16T21:28:00.000-04:00

This is the most wonderful time of the year, despite what the Christmas carol says. I can read outside till it's after 9pm and I don't even realize it's that late. It's still a teensy light out even at 10pm when I turn off the bedside lamp and go to sleep. I love these long days leading up to the summer solstice. Even though I have to go to work, I look forward to getting home and being outside doing things or being outside not doing things. Just...being outside. In the light. I like light.

This week I took three days off, since it's the week of the church rummage sale and our Social Justice group runs it. Three of us men lugged the tables over to the gym on Monday night. We had to get some from the second floor of the school and some from the church basement, and we never had to hunt for tables before. Then we set all fifty of them up. I was so tired I could barely function at work, so I decided to grab Friday as a day off too.

Just as well—I had to be home to take delivery of the new washing machine. Have you ever noticed that just when you happen to have four hundred dollars laying around, something pops up to swipe it out of your hand? The washer died on Wednesday morning. At first I scheduled a repair visit but then I realized that it would cost as much to fix it as it would to replace it. So now we have a new one, sparkling over in the corner of the laundry room.

Two guys came to deliver it, and neither one was especially big or heavily muscled as one might expect. They did a curious thing in removing the old one and then bringing the new one down into the basement. Instead of using a dolly, they wrapped a wide strap under the machines and around their necks and carried them that way. Never saw anyone do that before. I was talking to one of the guys about it, and remarked that surely he wouldn’t be doing this for the next twenty years, and was he in school now? He said he probably would be doing the same thing, since he didn’t graduate high school and didn’t get his GED, though different people told him he should. The job didn’t allow much time to do all that though. He said he was 31 years old now and it was apparent that he didn’t see much more for himself in the future.

This exchange made me think about my own privileged background, where it was understood that of course all the kids would go on to college. Kathy and I brought that same attitude into our own family, that of course our children would get their degrees.

I didn’t really know what sacrifices my own parents made for us, but I know that whatever we did for our own children, we didn’t think it as sacrificing anything. It was just what parents were supposed to do. Our parents valued education—Kathy’s mom was a teacher herself—and we carried that into our own family.

While the one guy was working on hooking up the new washer, the other guy was standing around looking at the stuff in our basement, noticing shelves and shelves of books. By the door to the laundry room there is poster from 1978 that one of the school children in our parish made. It says, “If you wake up one morning and Christ seems far away, guess who moved?” I saw him reading it but I didn’t remark about it, deciding to let the Holy Spirit talk to him about that while I exhorted his comrade to get back to school. Between the two of us, maybe we gave them each something to think about as they went on their way.

SPECIAL NOTE: Grandson Max is four years old today. One of his presents will be the box the washing machine came in: A four hundred dollar playhouse.

What's your favorite song?

2006-06-09T22:33:00.000-04:00

The other day someone asked me to name my three favorite songs of all time. I think he was talking about rock, so that’s how I started to think about the songs that I never grow tired of listening to. If you grew up with the Beatles, it’s easy to pick some of theirs. I was shocked when iTunes classified them as “Pop”. I never really thought about them as anything other than rock and roll, but maybe it’s so, that they don’t really fit that category. I did include them on my list, since I decided to keep going past the “rock” category and add some more types of music.

My sisters were listening to rock before I was, and they were the ones who turned me on to WMCA in New York City and the “Good Guys” collection of DJ’s who worked there. There was also WINS with the famous Murray the K disk jockey. I even have a cassette tape from one of those Golden Oldies collections from 1964 that features his show and his goofy catch phrases.

I had no idea that that beautiful, amazing music was out there. I was too busy playing baseball and doing guy stuff to realize that my younger sisters were onto something good. We pooled our resources to get the three dollars it took to buy The Beatles’ first album and then shared it carefully. Later I would be in the record stores each week looking for the next big single, gradually accepting that maybe people other than The Beatles would also be worthy of inclusion in my collection.

So, without further ado, here is my list along with an explanation of why each song is meaningful to me.

Rock::
1. Gimme Shelter--Rolling Stones
2. Let the Day Begin --The Call
3 All Revved Up and No Place to Go --Meatloaf

Gimme Shelter became some kind of anthem in the small group of friends I hung out with sophomore year in college. One stoner pointed out to me that little bit where Merry Clayton’s voice cracks on “oh, baby” and even now, 36 years later, I still wait for it. The way the song builds in intensity, driving and driving thrills me every time.

Let the Day Begin was a song I didn’t pay much attention to from a group I didn’t know about. In fact, this is the only song of theirs that I like. When the Clinton-Gore campaign bus rolled into our town in the summer of 1992, “Let the Day Begin” poured from the speakers at the campaign stop just a half mile from my house. Maybe it was kind of sappy, but I heard what I wanted to hear in it, and identified immediately with its message. Was it hope? I think so.

All Revv’d Up and No Place to Go is the song I played when I was finished studying for my masters degree comprehensive tests and just wanted to get them over with. “Bat of Hell” is still one of my favorite albums—hardly a clunker on it.

If you are talking about blues:
1. Angel from Montgomery --Bonnie Raitt
2. Piece of My Heart --Janis Joplin
3 Can't You Hear Me Knockin' --Rolling Stones

Angel is chock full of wonderful feeling. I always liked angels (married one, in fact), so I was naturally drawn to this song. “How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, come home in the evening, and have nothing to say?”

Piece of My Heart kind of sums up poor Janis’ life to me. I was lucky enough to see her in concert once. Her wrenching vocals haunt even to this day. How could she dredge up such emotion and put it out there as a voyeuristic feast?

Knockin’ has this wonderful passage in the middle, a classic blues passage where you feel as though you are being led down into a tunnel where you are shown both the mysteries of and maybe some of the answers to life. Gradually you climb up out of the depths into the sunlight, but maybe you pine for the dark passage just a little.

If you are talking about folk:
1. Widow with Shawl: A Portrait --Donovan
2. Simple Twist of Fate --Joan Baez' version of Dylan's song
3. Tangled Up in Blue -Bob Dylan

Widow--now before you get all up in my face about it being Donovan—just listen sometime to the story. I like it because I love the ocean and I know what a “widow’s walk” is. The prayer expressed so plaintively here is, well, touching.

Fate is just a hoot the way Baez handles it, especially as she does her Dylan impression at one point. Sometimes it really seems like a simple twist of fate that brings people together or keeps them from ever meeting.

Blue is my favorite color. Besides, I like to think I’m “the solid type.”

If you are talking about pop:
1. Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles
2. Rocky Raccoon - The Beatles
3. Things We Said Today - the Beatles

Here Comes the Sun became Kathy’s and my song. I shan’t describe the circumstances that led to this momentous decision since my children sometimes read this blog.

Rocky Raccoon. What’s not to like? It’s just a fun story, and you can’t help pulling for good old Rocky.

Things We Said Today hit me just right in high school. It seemed to articulate my feelings about girls and relationships in general.

If you are talking about country:
1. I've Been Everywhere - Hank Snow
2. Wild One - Faith Hill
3. Long Black Veil - either Johnny Cash or The Band

I’ve Been Everywhere. Now come on—how does he remember all the names of all those places? Someday I will memorize it just to see if I can.

Wild One is a nice jumpy little song. I always think of Daughter Ann and her strong willed contrariness. In sign language class, this is the song I signed. Everyone else picked slow songs—they were shocked when the opening strains of Wild One started up.

Veil tells a great story—one I first heard by The Band. A tragic story, but a classic. Son Patrick sang it for us in Ireland when we were at Peter’s parents’ house. Peter’s mom and sister started singing one of their classics and Patrick answered with “Veil”. That was a fun night.

OK, I'll stop now.

When someone asks about a favorite song, it’s very difficult to pick one. It seems to depend on my mood, as melodies shift like albums in a six-disc CD changer.

So, how about you? Can you pin down your favorite songs and justify your choices?

Funny things

2006-06-03T22:10:00.000-04:00

An email I received the other day:
There are more Catholic churches than casinos in Las Vegas. Many people drop casino chips into the collection basket instead of cash. The churches ship these tokens to a group of Franciscans who sort them and turn them into cash which is returned to the various churches. This work of course, is all done by the chip monks.
________________________________________________________________________
Kathy and her sister on the phone the other night:
They were in their respective homes watching the National Spelling Bee. As the tension mounted in the contest, the sisters began calling each other on the phone, back and forth, answering by spelling “H-i!” or “H-e-l-l-o!” and questioning each other, “Language of origin?” or “Use it in a sentence.” They cracked each other up.
________________________________________________________________________

An alum came into the office to see me last week. He was out of work and wanted some help finding his next job. He had only been in his last position for six months. I asked him what had happened, and he demurred, saying he didn’t want to bad mouth his former employer. I said, that’s a good idea, but you have to tell me, so I can help you handle the inevitable interview question, “Why did you leave your last job?” Oh, ok, he said. So he actually told me that when his supervisor told him that he would have to come in at 7:45am now instead of 8:30am, he said, oh, that’s too early. No, the supervisor insisted, you have to come in earlier now. “In that case,” the alum said, “I resign.” He went on to say something about how he wanted to balance his life. I wondered how he was going to balance his check book now.

________________________________________________________________________

From the Medical Blooper calendar:

“When coming in for a routine office visit, a patient brought in her two year old daughter along. The child had been very inquisitive while the nurse took the patient’s vitals. The nurse asked the child if she would like to help take her mother’s temperature. The little girl walked over to her mother and said, ‘OK, Mommy, bend over!”

My idea of fun

2006-05-27T22:20:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite things to do is clean. One requirement, though, is a nice rainy day to keep me inside. That’s what we had on Friday. I took the day off to make a four day weekend, and it showered off and on all day. Perfect.

The kitchen cabinet over the stove was the first target. Here could be found all manner of age old spices from the mysterious East, misshapen candles that we keep “just in case”, the first cell phone we ever had, everything you need for a birthday celebration (candles for the cake, rolls of stained old crepe paper streamers, and those banners of connected letters spelling out ‘H-A-P-P-Y-B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y’. You would also see a collection of University phone directories for each of the twenty years I’ve worked at the school. To be fair, though, half of them were in the basement (my second target of the day).

The spices went in to a box for Kathy to sort through. I only kept the cinnamon. I knew what that was for, and since I’m the only one that eats it, I instinctively knew it had to be saved. I pitched the directories, keeping only the current one. The cell phone, some really sad candles and one of the two Clabber Girl baking powder cans went into the trash. It was hard, though. I really like the labels on those cans.

Later, when Kathy got home from work, she looked in the spice box, plucked a few out to look at them and said, “It can all go.” We don’t really use seasoning salt or bay leaves or parsley or sage or rosemary or thyme, for that matter.

Next, the basement. Every time I walk down there I wonder why we keep all this stuff. I filled three garbage bags with all sorts of knick knacks, papers and unidentified flotsam. Yes, jetsam too. One of the kids had already gone through his own stuff and cleared out a lot, so I didn’t touch that. He has no where to keep it except here, so that’s OK.

I’d love to have a normal basement and get rid of some of the old furniture down there, but the darn thing is liable to flood in a heavy downpour, and you just never know when it might happen. The old furniture just serves as a place to keep the things we want to stay dry off the floor. I cleared a place for all of Max’s toys. I think the high chair, the old car seat and some of the toys could go to Birthright or someplace.

Mostly I amused myself by wandering from room to room, rearranging things in my mind, opening boxes and gleefully tossing things into garbage bags, listening to suitably subdued music from Joni Mitchell and Carrie Newcomer.

Kathy was pleased with my work in the kitchen, though she had a strange smile on her face when she saw what I had done. Finally she asked me if that cleaning that one cabinet was the sum total of my work all day. She never goes into the basement and doesn’t really care what’s down there, so she wasn’t all that impressed with my three bags full.

Then today was outside day, bright and sunny, great for trimming bushes, cutting the grass and then plopping down on the deck to continue reading Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Mermaid Chair.”

Yup. It’s shaping up to be a perfect weekend.

A spot of rain

2006-05-21T11:37:00.000-04:00

My dad had a wall hanging or some such thing in his old darkroom, a "letter from an Irish mother." It was kind of funny, talking about mundane things like the weather, saying: "It only rained twice this week. Once for three days and once for four." We had the same situation here. The weather cleared briefly on Wednesday afternoon, and all you could hear in the neighborhood was the sound of a hundred lawnmowers roaring up and down front yards, mine included. Then the skies closed in again, and it’s been coming down ever since. Even this morning Kodiak and I were drenched during our morning constitutional. And him fresh from the groomers yesterday, too. Nothing like the smell of wet dog to invigorate a person.

The other day Kathy looked at me and said in such a way that it seemed she could hardly believe it herself, “I’ve been a nurse for forty years.” No wonder she wants to retire. We didn’t feel like going out to celebrate, so I picked up takeout at Mavis Winkles, and bought a card on the way to the restaurant and placed it in the bag to present to her. This morning we’ll go out to breakfast. As you can see, food figures prominently in celebration here.

Max's dad has been taking him out to the national park by the old canal to walk in the woods there. They did see Bambi’s mom one day, but Max wasn’t that impressed. I think maybe the whole world is a zoo to him. It might serve him well to maintain that perspective as he grows up.

I went to a meeting at church this past week for our Vibrant Parish Life committee. I used to belong to the committee for a while, but when Kathy’s mom was getting worse, I quit. Also, I was annoyed when I figured out that “vibrant parish life” really meant “do more with less”. There really is a shortage of priests that is already impacting the church, in fact, our new bishop came from Boston where he closed 70 parishes. I’m sure he’s been brought in to do the same thing here. There are lots of old ethnic parishes, some with only 250 families in them, and those sorts of places will be closed and merged. There are already parishes that have administrators, not pastors, and there are parishes who only have a priest on the weekends. Those parishes with fewer than 2800 families won’t even have a second priest working in them.

We have about 2800 families in our parish, so we warrant having two priests, but we will be “clustering” with other parishes for certain activities. For instance, for years kids from a neighboring parish have been playing on our elementary school football team. We no longer have a pre-Cana program for engaged couples—that is done somewhere else.

Anyway, the upshot of the meeting was that they wanted—you guessed it—volunteers to do two things: study which parishes we might cluster with, and educate our parishioners about the problem and our future. Of course, I went to the education group, since the politics of the other group did not appeal to me. Two degrees in political science, but I stay away from politics on that level. So, we will be going forth to talk to people about ideas for the future, preparing them for who knows what.

Hope you have a good week!

Multi-tasking

2006-05-13T23:00:00.000-04:00

It’s not that we’re short handed or anything, but tonight at Mass I lit the candles, did the readings, helped with the collection, was a Eucharistic minister and handed out bulletins at the church door as people left.

One of my friends came up and said, “Do you do windows?”

Yesterday a woman from church called and left a message asking me to come to a meeting on Monday night to talk about ideas about the liturgy we might try over the rest of the year. I would be happy to do so, but I have to run a meeting of our Social Justice group at the same time.

At Social Justice, we don’t really have officers, but four years ago, the woman running the group decided to step down after many years. Since I seemed to keep showing up at the meetings, a group of members asked me to take over. The group was established about thirty years ago, and a few of the original members are still active. They are in their eighties now, though, and are not up to some of the physical work we do. Another one of those long time members died recently. It’s hard to get people to come to meetings and do some of the less glamorous work between our monthly gatherings.

Now I’m not complaining about what I do—I think it’s fun, but does anyone else have trouble getting people to step up and volunteer to do things at church?

What is it out? Part Two

2006-05-12T21:32:00.000-04:00

What is it out? 42 degrees. Ask me how I know. Go ahead, ask me. My new thermometer arrived. Woo-hoo! Twenty-two days after I ordered it. Think I'll ever order anything from acmehardware.com again? I think not.