Inside the gooey mind of Mark

Shock and Awe on the Roof Rat!!

2012-02-11T06:27:00.000-08:00

Its before

dawn and I am typing this blog in gloves to soften the key strikes on the computer. I have wrapped my coffee cup in a sock so when I set it down, it makes no noise. I wrapped the dog's collars in duct tape and toilet tissue as well. They stand as sentries, well, they're sleeping right now, but they could stand as sentries if they really wanted to. Stealth is my soul, Ginsu Knife is my moniker. I am at war. I didn't think it would take this long for them to arrive. But now, now they are here, the Al Queda of the vermin world-the infamous Roof Rat!

They migrated out of the Arcadia District, leaving the posh homes and the upscale gardens filled with fruit trees, being driven out of that section of town by women wearing Versace, shewing the animal with designer brooms. Sure, they're not as big as their New York cousins, nothing requiring collars and leashes, but evil just the same. Most left laughing, if rats laugh, not wanting to deal with their hosts, they moved out into other neighborhoods. Unfortunately for them, they wandered onto our peaceful street. Poor choice.

I first heard their scratching in the walls. It took a bit to figure out what the noise might be. I was hoping a lizard, geckos. We have geckos. They are our friends. We live in harmony with our gecko brothers. They eat the crickets and we supply outside electric boxes for them to sleep in.

It wasn't geckos.

There is no negotiating with these guys. They have their own hostile religion where they think they can impart their forced societal beliefs on anyone by living and eating and crapping in food drawers. You don't talk sweet to these animals. You burn their villages, snipe their leaders, putting their heads on little pikes made out of toothpicks around their living spaces to be a sign to the others they might want to leave before they too, have their beating hearts cut out and cooked with the morning bacon.

Shock and awe baby.

We started with the neighborhood ACE Hardware. I asked the salesman what he had for rodents such as these. He took me to an aisle, half of which was just for this animal. Traps, poisons, baits, sonic disturbance devices-I was a man standing at the temple of a weapons' factory. But I had to stick with the plan. If I showed my hand too quick, these little bastards would talk to each other and let the others know where the claymores were. First off-we give them the feeling they're welcome.We put out the recommended poison which has the taste of peanut butter! The salesman at the store told me "It won't kill them right away, so you have to be patient. They have to drink water to activate the poison. Then, they explode!"

I got a warm tingly feeling, like I just won $5 playing a $2 Powerball ticket. 'Explode'? What a great idea. They wander back to their little nest, thinking everything is okay at the end of the day, and WHAM! Rat juice all over their family. Psychological warfare. I even left a little tray of water right next to the bait so, you know, they didn't have to walk so far-poor things (insert evil laugh here). Within a day, some of the scratching was gone-it got loud and then--nothing, like death spasms.

Two days went by, more bait, signs of them still around. They were taking the bait. I refilled the water with good, bottle water. Take, drink, enjoy! Then, late at night, one came out in the open. There was an initial sound of controlled panic from the other end of the house. The dogs were asleep next to me and frankly, I don't blame them for our issue. Their dogs for crying out loud. They don't want to mess with these things unless I can throw them like a baseball for the dogs to chase and retrieve.

I went into the den where I found Joni standing on the couch pointing at the corner of the room. She said it was moving slow, in the open. Good! the poison, oh the sweet elixir of death has come, confusing them, like a cockroach coming into the light before they die, this varmint was doing the same, finding the solace behind the dryer on its way into the wall again. That was fine, there were mines there too. Luckily for the rat, we didn't go hand to hand. I was willing, just as soon as I could have found something to club it to death with. The first thing I reached for was a dog's water dish.

Insufficient.

The next day, Phase II kicked in. Standard, old fashioned traps were deployed around the bait. You have to understand something about the territory. We have a 60 year old house. There are gaps, the width of a little finger in small spaces these guys fold their bodies and push through, gnawing it a little bigger when they have time. Like napalm in war, traps have a political incorrectness about them. So? its a rat that can crawl from your roof's sewer vents, out through the toilet, and if you happen to be using it at the time, will cause you years-YEARS of counseling and you will never sit and read the paper again-ever.

I disposaled him/her. I didn't want to give the dead rat's friends some place they could go and build a shrine to martyr their buddy.

And the little pike stood, as first a red toothpick, designed to hold green olives at a cocktail party, finding now true honor, mounted in play dough in the pantry, holding the head of our enemy high so the others could see what happens when you stray into the wrong neighborhood.

So, like I said, I'm typing you this message in measured silence. They always come out this time of day, early, dark, morning. My listening posts are up and the wire is strung, holding empty baked bean tin cans in case they try to come in. I hope they do. I still have Phase III in reserve--DE-CON, the same poison my dad used at our cabin fifty years ago, the hydrogen bomb of rat poison. But its quiet. Maybe they moved on or the last of them crawled back to their nest and scribed a note with its last dying breath, pinning it on their fur for anyone to find, warning them of the crazy bastard down stairs.

They will be back. They always come back. But we will be ready. Always vigilant. Always stealthy. Always Ginsu-ish.

An Uncommon Thing

2012-01-30T06:45:00.000-08:00

I got to witness something pretty rare. Last night, Sunday night, I stood in the back of a room where a couple hundred people gathered to honor a man for being-himself.

Here's the curious thing, most of you wouldn't know him. He is not a famous person outside of his work or friends. He's not on the national news, hasn't been in the movies-divorcing his wife and running off with a co-star twenty years his junior. He is a teacher. He is a father of three grown kids, has a wife of decades, grand kids. He is a musician.

Just a guy.

He was leaving a job for another, a change in his season of life. I got to travel with him for a while on this life and hope to walk miles more. What was so so wonderful was one person after an another got up and commented on this man, his impact on their lives, some significant roasting his good spirit and fun. People cried not because he was leaving, but because they had an opportunity to tell this guy what he meant to them. Many times-most of the time, actually, we don't get that opportunity. Like I said, it was an uncommon thing.

People like this walk among us. They really do. We don't see them a lot because they aren't on the cover of People Magazine or their mug is not on the news as just getting arrested for drunk driving from their Malibu beach house. This guy can and does represent us in a way that is so good, so comforting, so right that we think something is really wrong. It isn't.

Randy Thompson is just a guy-a father, a husband, a grandfather, a believer and mirror of Grace. He has literally saved lives by allowing people to just be themselves around him. He stumbles and falls and says wrong things and and and-

He is loved and in turn, gets to love.

Yep, it was a rare thing.

2012-Anxiety

2011-12-30T08:50:00.000-08:00

We are standing on the edge of 2012 and I got to say, there is a lot of anxiety about it. Anxiety is just fluff unless there is some meat to it, some reality to go with our anxiety, and it looks like there is some of that to support our worries. A lot, as a matter of fact, like a whole herd of it.

The economy is starting to crawl out of the mire, unless of course, the European market tanks, which it probably will, sending us back into an even deeper tail spin. There's some good news for people struggling to keep or even find a job.

How about another earthquake like the one in Japan that we all got to see whole towns get slowly washed away. Like it was some bad NFL film in slow-motion, only this one was real.

Lets not forget the election of a new president or keeping the old one. You get two people pointing their fingers in the exact opposite direction and BOTH are telling the truth, at least a part of it is true, and its up to the voting public to figure out what part. That just makes the elections in November kinda sporty.

Of course you have to add in those wacky Mayans and their calendar ending on December 21st, symbolically meaning the end of the world. Couldn't it also mean they may have just run out of paper? Hmm? I mean, how far should they have carried out their calendar? When is too many days enough days for everyone to get the idea?

Add to all this the polar caps are melting and polar bears may become extinct; well there ya go, enough worries for all of us. So, what do we do?

We just need to love each other.

Yep, love. I said the 'L' word. This from a guy who thinks the use of a 2x4 along some of our politicians heads would be really good about now. We link arms and love each other. Now, if you know me you would know I am talking about love like god kind of love but what about finding that president of Iran a good woman? Huh? Bat-crap crazies need love too. Or all those Ayatollahs-have them find a woman that will peel her scarf away from her face long enough to give that guy a wink and a smile and he will forget all about being friends with the Al Queda-guaranteed.

How about when we get stressed, we call a friend and say "Hey, its me. I'm stressed." How about if we share that? Then the friend comes over and they sit outside and drink some soda and talk about crap? Or we take a kid who's dad or mom is over seas, divorced, dead and we go to a ball game, a burger, or just to Costco and they ride on the cart while we push?

If we are at the top of the food chain financially, it isn't far or even hard to fall to the bottom. Those at the bottom or in the middle can attest to that. It doesn't take a lot to stumble and hit bottom. The difference between me and that guy holding the cardboard on the corner can sometimes be tracked to one bad choice-that led to a second, then a third.

So what else can we do? Well, actually, that could be enough, oh, wait. We need to do one more thing. We all need to send President Ahmadinajad the link to E-Harmony. Hey, it could work.

Windows

2011-12-25T07:05:00.000-08:00

It's early Christmas day. I couldn't sleep. Actually, the two dogs woke me. Sometimes, they need to climb up on the bed and curl up on the corner. Of course each weigh about eighty pounds and they take up more than the corner. Somehow, we all wind up back asleep, at least for awhile. This time, however, they got me up, wide awake, walking the quiet halls and kitchen, looking out the window, overlooking the street and the front yard.

A year ago, there was a different tune-a different dance. We were all running this time last year with the thought of one of our own so far away and yet was able to come home. A new grandchild on the way. We had jobs an fairly free of illnesses. This year was so much better?

So, I stood there in the kitchen, looking out at an empty street with random decorative lights, frost on the lawn-quiet. It wasn't so different. The same lawn, the same random lights, maybe a different neighbor or two, and our own was home, but still pretty much the same.

I don't want it to be the same.

There is a line in the movie, Miracle on 34th Street where Santa is talking to the store manager about whether he really exists. The manager, if you remember the movie, is a sad sort and wanted everyone to be as sad as she was. She had trust issues, like the rest of us. He told her he was symbolic for hope, peace, there's a chance of a better life in this rough time some of us live. Nice, but how do you tell someone who lost a child, a home, a job-"Hey, Santa says there is hope, peace, there is a chance a better way. Thanks for listening. Have a good day under that bridge with your mental illness."

Yeah, you don't. Unless--there is. Unless there is actual hope, peace, a chance at both. Funny thing, as I found myself getting older, both of those elements weigh heavily with me. We opened our presents last night and I got a package of socks. Not just any package, a dozen white socks!! Now, right now, if you are a man, particularly a middle-aged man and you heard that present, you are drooling a little out of the corner of your mouth. I sat in a chair in the back and watched the rest of the family, particularly the grand kids open some of their stuff. I watched their parents. I like watching people-no not from an alley with binoculars. I use to do that-not anymore.

What can we be content with? How about being known for who we are? With all our garbage and issues; with all our baggage and our cabinets full of lotions. What if we were accepted-just the way we are? How would that change the running for the brass ring?

The tile floor in the kitchen was cold. I like to turn down the heat at night so little icicles form on the ceiling. I got a drink of water and walked back to bed, trying not to stub my toes on anything. Have you ever gotten up at night, half asleep, trying to take care of business without waking fully, only to stub your food on a chair, bringing you way beyond awake? Well, thinking about doing it does the same thing. Anyway, I crawled back into bed, pushing one dog out of my spot where she found my body heat had warmed it to a nice temp. She grumbled and then moved back to the foot of the bed.

Sometime in the next day or so, go stand at a window before dawn and take a look outside. See if you see it. See if you want to see it.

Merry Christmas.

T'is the Season to be a Ninja!

2011-12-11T14:04:00.000-08:00

There are few things I do right. There are even fewer things I do well. But when I have to go shopping and its this time of year-shopping alone, I'm like a ninja!

Yesterday, I was able to slide into the mall, access my predetermined target, and egress the zone, arriving back to my car and pulling out on the street in a total time of fourteen minutes! I was like a F-15 Strike Eagle, covertly arriving at a back, not well known parking lot, hitting the door and sliding inside. Sometimes, when I am walking, and truly in the zone, I am flying at low altitude, in and out of the racks of clothes, flying my mission well under the radar.

The ninja (yes, ninjas fly Strike Eagles-geez) slid passed the elderly couple as they approached the front door to the store, hitting one of the other doors while simultaneously, reaching into my pocket, finding some change-any change, and plopping into the red bucket operated by the only witness to my parking, the Salvation Army Bell Ringer. I bought his silence and his gratitude with whatever landed in the pot. He was now on my side.

I walked quickly, yet silently, my Asic-gels making me almost invisible to normal ears. Then, the first problem.

I had to pee.

Mentally, I had predetermined that was going to be an issue. Its always an issue. I'm fifty-three. It is just a precursor to my future in life.

I mentally suppressed it. Besides, the nearest restroom did not appear in my vision as I moved like a panther through the men's section and the bushes just outside were, well, just outside.

That's what a ninja would do-use the bushes or mentally suppress it. I had a mission and I was going to complete it.

There is a fairly well known law of shopping for women. If you land close on the purchase, chances are, you will win. What I mean by that is, for example, if she wants jeans and you get her something close to what she wants, like in the same color spectrum, she'll be happy. Why? Because she gets to take it back and go shopping and get something she really wanted and it probably won't be jeans. You do it enough times, she will come home with a new bedroom set. That's when you know you went too far.

I'm not going to give you all the facts of the mission. There is some deeply classified stuff I can't share. I won't share. We shopping ninjas are a very closed mouth group. We pass down our lore from generation to generation. My son, for example, already pees behind bushes, not at his own home. For the rest of you, the best I could suggest, the only real help you have-

Shop on line.

As for the rest of the ninja warrior shopping crowd remember-

'Domo shitsu aragato wasabi'
I would like fries with that

The First Week of New Choices

2011-11-27T07:37:00.000-08:00

After watching and actually participating in the melee that was Black Friday, I've noticed we all now have hit a lull in the frenzy. There is this time right after that experience, that settles for a moment all things, right before we swallow hard and strap on our backpacks and head out again.

Except we don't have to.

Something, over the years, has caused us to go bigger, better, faster, whatever. We want that thing or this thing , the green one or the red one. Then, after the heroine is in the mainstream, we lose our craving and our desire for those things we were beating our drums to get. Of course, we had to buy the drum first-the red one.

I know, I know, its easy talk for a middle-aged guy to say. I've had my run. Get out of the way old man and let us have our shot at that 32 inch on sale in the meat department at Walmart. There is something terribly wrong with that picture. Its kind of like making that heroine deal in the dirty restroom of a old neighborhood gas station, only the rump roast is on sale.

What if the kid gets only three presents instead of ten? What would happen? What if your partner gets you a bag of socks and underwear-something we, as men, always seem to need but never buy for ourselves. What if everyone comes over for a game of yard darts and cinnamon rolls and really good coffee? I got to tell you, I can't remember last year's presents. I do remember one of my three kids was in a war zone. Priorities.

What if, for Christmas morning, we got up and went for a walk-a long walk, maybe in a park, early so the morning colors were the most vibrant? What if the family down the street, whose single mother just had her hours cut, wakes up with a fully decorated tree on her front porch and not only some well needed presents for her kids under it, but something for her?

What if that kid at school you teach at wanted to buy a gift for his dying grandma, but didn't have the money and he comes in the next day and you give him a wrapped gift, tellingl him someone must have overheard his conversation because you found this in your mailbox with a note on it to give it to him (high school kids are pretty gullible).

Look, I'm not saying we shouldn't get caught up in the wave of free enterprise; we're 'Mericans forcrissake! But with that said, no one knows the true cost of where we live like us. We take care of the world and who better to take care of our own other than us? And here is the fun thing-you feel like you just won the lottery.

I don't know, maybe not. Maybe its all just a stage and we're the players. Oh, but what a play!

Just a Quick Note about this Weekend

2011-11-13T07:17:00.000-08:00

It is Sunday of Veteran’s Day weekend and I’m sad-despondent-a little angry-whatever the magic word is for the three day weekend coming to an end.

I understand that I should be grateful about having a job, being able to earn money, have insurance, all that stuff. That’s not what I’m talking about. Anyone working would probably be having the same thoughts to some degree. The weekend, a calm, soothing, rainy weekend in Phoenix (sunny warm day in London or Seattle) with some soft music playing and two dogs laying their heads on your feet, kind of gives you a good feeling that you don’t want to go away. But there was something else.

Last year, our son, brother to my daughters, newly married husband to our daughter-in-law was not here. He was about one third of his way through his second tour of the Sand Box. This time, he was an advisor in Iraq’s beautiful city of Basrah. There was a lump in our lives that was missing.

This Veteran’s Day, he was home.

And we all danced.

There is a guilt feeling to not be happy, to not express happiness when so many families have lost so much or have people away. I had to think about this letter before I posted it. The answer was clear.

That’s why they went, so we could-dance. Americans are happy, caring, loving, sacrificial people who will give up their lives so some people can experience what we have. That-is called love by the way. So, it would be wrong to do anything else, to honor those veterans, living or dead, with anything other than a good time feeling, a party, a celebration, a quiet morning with a good cup of coffee and two dogs asleep on your feet as long as in the back of our consciousness, we know who wrote the check. My son and those like him purchased this day for us. It’s not about politics or 20% off at Kohls, at least not with these people.

So from now until the day we leave this planet, when we find one of these guys, thank them for the day, whether it’s a good day or not, it’s our day to make what we want with it.

Time to Start Running

2011-11-06T08:07:00.000-08:00

Okay, Halloween is over and t'is the Christmas Season. Actually, according to Walgreen's, Christmas started back in August. I can't write much here because, well, I have to start running. I won't stop until the day after Christmas. That's just the way it is, but, I have made some decisions. See if you don't agree.

Our family adopted the idea, a few years ago, to go out on Black Friday. Sure, it was fun once, maybe even twice, but now its getting up at 0-butt-crack of pre-dawn to go observe the Free Enterprise system at its annual birth. The Occupy's would crap baby kittens if they saw this. I said I can't write much because my new thing is to read the Black Friday press 'leaks' about what is for sale. Supposedly a big secret. Yeah, right. Hey, if it saves me ANYTHING I'm all for it.

We are having Thanksgiving back at our house. Seventy-five hundred people are coming over. I'm thinking name tags would be nice, just on the grand kids. I don't give a hoot about the others. As long as they put the toilet seat down and take home the crap they bring, we're good. I do need to learn to 'let it go' so to speak. My motto at work is be the kelp-you know, ebbing back and forth with the tide. Go with the flow. Toilet seat, that is goin' with the flowin', oh, and don't miss either. Its a big target--hit it!

This year, like every year, we are in charge of the turkey, I am forced--FORCED to buy a free range, organic free turkey from the foo-foo market. They're like three dollars more a pound then Jennie-O's. As a matter of fact, those bad boys are on sale for fifty-five cents a pound this week!! Why, tell me why, am I not buying one of those--I am this year. Yep! I saved the hand woven crate those free rangers came in last year and I'm going to put the Jennie in that and sneak it in the house saying so all could hear "HEY, HERE I AM WITH OUR VERY EXPENSIVE ORGANICALLY MASSAGED UGLIESTBIRDONTHEWHOLEPLANET. LOOK, I CARE WHAT YOU EAT SO I SPENT ALL THIS MONEY ON A THING THAT WE WILL ONLY BE EATING FOR 12-17 MINUTES BUT TAKES US SIX DAYS TO PREPARE." Yeah, I timed it over the last few years. Thanksgiving, actual eat time, is only that long. That didn't even include dessert. That is right before the two hour clean up.

That leads me to my next item, clean up. Everything is throw away this year. I don't care what the environmentalist say, paper products smeared with turkey and gravy decompose faster in the landfill. I swear. I want clean up to be less than one hour and only one run of the dishwasher. AND if you brought it, you're taking it home. There are just two of us living here now and I don't want your rhubarb pie. I don't want your homemade pumpkin pie either. Those are never as good as a store bought anyway. When you figure in time to make and then the applied eat time as listed above, the return is crappy. If it was a mutual fund, there would be a sell order on it.

This year we, like last year, picked names in our family for gift exchange. We also shrunk the amount to spend, with a grand kid exemption. I am bringing back the gift coupon idea which is always labeled as cold or uncaring. No, its perfect! Because if you buy actual stuff, your amount includes tax. You always have to count the tax-what is the final bill when you buy that pair of socks? $9.99 listed is not the final price. It's $10.87. You short your gift exchanger out of $.87 cents worth of crap. Bad form I say. Give the Gift of Pureness. Besides, you can get them on line.

These are just a few of my main points. You might have your own. The bottom line is to make a bottom line. Have some standards. Draw the line in the sand so to speak. But, just make sure you are nowhere near the entrance to Walmart when they open the doors at 3:00am. You might get trampled.

Ohhhh, that would be worth getting up and seeing!!

This is what I want in our next President

2011-10-13T07:21:00.000-07:00

We need to really sit down and decide what we want to see with regards to the upcoming election for our next tribal chief of this here United States. The next few months, the folks here and around the world are going to be buried with debates and news accounts of what those running for the top office want us to believe about them and why they should get the nod and the keys to the little black briefcase with all the codes.

None of that is important.

Look, we need to focus on the real meat and potatoes of the job and what we really want to see from the supreme leader. If you think about it, they will tell us what we want to hear then carry on with whatever they want to do. Sure, it might effect the world economy, jobs, national security, none of that is the crux of the matter. Below, are some of what I think are the real important aspects of our presidency that we have not seen in recent memory. We need a president who models a life like ours. Here are the character traits and modeling of the man or woman who I want in the White House. Go on, tell me I'm wrong.

I want a president who will eat off a paper plate. Not one of those Chinet paper plates that are reinforced and are so strong you can have soup on them and they won't break. I'm talking about one of those real flimsy ones that you can buy seven thousand of for a buck-those kind. And he or she is eating a chili dog, a really big, nasty, chili dog. As a matter of fact, they eat a lot of chili dogs. They really like chili dogs.

I want a president who will wear some other color than white for a dress shirt. Come on, mix it up. If its a woman president, step away from the business suit. You're not a man, you're a woman! Its okay to be a woman and look like a woman with your finger on the red button. Both need to be shopping at Target, maybe even something from those big tables at Costco.

I want the next president to have a barbecue grill on the grounds some where. Nothing fancy, there is just you and your spouse and maybe a kid or two. You don't need some big built in. Something on wheels like a Thermos or a nice Char-Broil, couple of burners and maybe that side burner for your beans. You wouldn't even have to chain it to a tree. If you have the family over, you set up a folding table with some folding chairs and eat outside if the weather is nice. And that Marine standing guard at the door, make sure he has something to eat too-oh, don't forget the guys on the roof.

While the grill is heating up, I want to see the president flip a Frisbee or a ball for his dog. Take her out on the south lawn and really let loose. But I don't want to see them using those ball throwers either. You've seen them; they're like a sling you put the ball in and fling it. That way, you don't get dog slobber on your hands-GET DOG SLOBBER ON YOUR HANDS! And I don't want to see any rare breed of dog, something no one in America would have or afford. I want them to go to the pound and pick one out. Get one with some meat and character to it. Maybe one with a half missing ear, or bull-legged. Then give it a real name, like Mitch or Buckethead if its a boy or Margret if its a girl. We, the people, don't need you naming your dog to make us feel good. We know all about political correctness and naming your dogs Liberty or Freedom. Those are dorky dog names. Don't do that.

I want to see the president, sitting in the oval office, sitting at the desk that so many presidents have sat at, with a cup of coffee. Have you ever noticed every time we see the president sitting there, there is nothing on the desk? Come on, a nice Sumatran black in a mug. This is where dorkiness is cool. Have the mug with your kid or grand kid's picture on it, like the ones you get at the fair. How about working through lunch, sitting right there at your desk, signing some bills, having your chili dog on a paper plate and a soda. Sure, you're eating on an antique. So, use a coaster.

I want to see a president that will drive himself somewhere. Put the Secret Service in the back and you take the wheel. I am sure we couldn't get away with not driving the big limo, but maybe sometime, take the '98 Buick Electra out for that meeting with the Jamaican Prime Minister. That would be cool-tossing the keys to the valet and telling him you'll only be a minute.

I want a president who will be the first one to respond to a national catastrophe, Like the hurricane in New Orleans or flooding in Vermont. We don't need some big Show and Tell thing where the governor is walking the president around showing what everone is doing. Everyone knows what is going on. We can see it on TV. I don't even want the governor to know the president is there. I just want the president to show up in boots and jeans, a t-shirt and a John Deere ball cap and start filling sandbags. Someone looks over at him and says "Damn, anyone ever tell you you look like that guy, what's his name?"

They smile and say "Nope, no one ever did." And they just keep filling bags. And you do it for hours, not for some photo op. You are there filling a need-and sand bags.

I want a president who isn't afraid to say out loud what they are thinking inside. Like when that Iranian nut job talks at the U.N.; wouldn't it be great if the president followed him and merely said while he points at the Iranian guy, "That guy right there is bat-shit crazy!" And then they sit down.

I would like to see a president stop his motorcade (if he's driving the Electra he can just pull over) at an ATM and use one-and only get like $20. That's all he really needs for the day. Its not like he's buying lunch for anyone other than himself. OH-WAIT- what if he goes through a drive through and pulls up, orders, then asks his driver, "Hey Pete, what do you want, come on, I'm buying." That would be cool.

While he's throwing the ball for the dog, the president is drinking their favorite beverage and using one of those cozies, you know, those foam things to keep your drink cool. It's old and beat up and from some trucking firm in the Midwest.

Maybe on a nice night, we see the President sitting on the second story balcony, in a lawn chair, with their feet up on the rail. We never see anyone on that second story balcony.

Yep, I would vote for a president who was like this. They are regular people. Like my neighbor only in a nicer and bigger house. The other stuff will take care of itself. At least we would know the guy or gal driving the wagon is one of us; flawed, tempered, human. They aren't some figment of someones imagination. They are just like us, trying to make life a little better for the rest of us. That's all.

Just a little better.

Band of Brothers with Moves Like Jagger

2011-09-24T19:10:00.000-07:00

I like the music that's out now. I am a big country music fan. But there is music out now that is pretty good with actual lyrics you can hear-one, I never really pay attention to and two, with age, is increasingly hard unless I turn my head. We had a real dry spell with rap with artists who were swallowing their microphones and, unless you were fourteen, couldn't understand what they were saying.

My older brothers have moves like Jagger as the jaunty tune says. When the three of us go to weddings, we form a small herd, have a nice, aged, beverage, and wait for our song-Shout. Then, we are called to the dance floor like the aged left-handed pitcher of twenty years, being called out of the dugout to save the last inning of the World Series; like George Blanda driving the last five minutes of the Super Bowl, throwing the touchdown pass then taking his forty-seven year old leg and kicking the field goal.

We're like Stormin' Norman.

The crowd doesn't know we've been carbo loading for these events for the required forty-eight hours before and two of us are wearing knee braces. We've talked seriously about whether or not we should do Depends or just double up on our underwear. We come from the darkness and the crowd circles and we bless the wedding. No, really, marriages have the possibility of being a train wreck without us dancing to Shout. Shamans from all over the world write us and ask us to come. If only Arnold and Maria had us at their wedding, they'd still be married and opening a food kitchen somewhere.

But the Band is getting, well, old. I'm the youngest at fifty-three then you got the other two at sixty-two and sixty-five. The brother at sixty-five is in better shape then the other two. He is fighting age with hammers in both hands. We go to weddings and he never leaves the dance floor. Makes me tired just watching him. He doesn't listen to the lyrics either. None of the brothers do. We can't do that and concentrate on not getting hip-displasia. If we fall, we ain't getting up. Its a survival thing, but every once in a while, some words come through that are simple, concise, to the point, and sometimes will make us snort corn out our nose.

You got artists like Lady Gaga and Katie Perry leading the way. It's funny anyone can make a zillion dollars off the the various forms of the words yeah...yeah or hey, hey, hey the latter of which always has to be said in three's. The Band, if nothing, is hip, we're in the groove; in the know; we know what's shakin'.

We know that ...yeah tonight baby... means that something is going to happen tonight. Why can't it happen during the day, when we're awake? We're with you, we know-as long as it happens before nine. See, at nine, its bed time, sleepy time. Maybe that's what they mean. Oh man, bed with cold sheets and a good book, unconscious by nine-fifteen. Oh, yeah baby.

Then you got ...locked up like Lindsey Lohan...which is just a reminder to live a good life instead of one with the constant threat of DUI's and cavity searches. Frankly, when that song comes on the radio, you can't help but tap the dashboard of your Audi (when you're over fifty, you buy Audis).

Sometimes, just because its old doesn't mean its washed up. The great philosopher and money manager, M.C. Hammer with his classic, Can't Touch This causes the listener to ask 'touch what?'

What Katie or Lady should think about is maybe replacing such enigmatic word combos as ...fill me with your poison... with ...passion burns like never before.... Both seem to require a series of antibiotic booster shots. But we need to keep it real. Music listeners are smart people, we know what is true and what isn't, come on.

No twenty-five year old believes they are a tiger she wants to tame and if you are over forty-five, you are tamed. You just want to curl up with a good book or find a comfy chair with two fingers of Jack Daniels (black label of course) and an old John Wayne movie.

Lyrics like ...all night long...have no application to the older set unless we're flying high cover for a patrol in the Sandbox, waiting for our granddaughter to be born, or are having a serious discussion about the number of trips to the bathroom during our sleep cycle. And for the young, come on, who are you talking to? We use to be young once. Nothing has changed. When your talking about all night long, nothing goes past thirty minutes and then you're just like the rest of us, forming a drool pool on your pillow and developing that slight snore that is cute at twenty-four, but at fifty-four causes your spouse to leave you brochures to sleep clinics on the counter.

So, take heart my young friends. We're as good once as we've ever been. The old warrior stock, that is at least twenty years ahead of you, have your back. Just help us up off the dance floor if we go down and can't get up. Lend us a hand or maybe two, get us back to our chair, pat us on the back and thank us for coming out of the dugout, then check your watch. If its nine, call us a cab, will you?

I'm Beginning to Miss It

2011-09-10T21:47:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to miss it. Actually, I've lost it some time ago. It comes and goes but as time passes, it mostly has faded. Over the last ten years, it has wandered away, and sometimes I find myself looking for it, trying to revive it, spontaneously trying, most of the time in vain.

I remember, probably like every other living adult, where I was when I heard. I was riding my bike to work, west on Indian School, making the eight mile trip to my new high school after I had retired from twenty plus years in law enforcement. It was a new school year, part of a very long year dealing with not only a career change but my wife's cancer. Over my headphones, on a local country station, they started with 'there was a plane crash....' which changed to '...there was another plane crash....' It was the start of an incredible journey for all of us. Some, more than others. Unbelievable crippling, pain of loss and incredible, near-panic fear of trying anything to contact loved ones, only to find the phone lines were down.

Then another crash into the Pentagon.

I remember I couldn't peddle fast enough, trying to get to school to turn on the television in my room.

Then another crash into a corn field.

I miss it. I miss what happened after. I remember thinking about calling my family. The three kids were in their late teens and already knew about it and Joni was going to school. Writing this, I don't remember if we cancelled school or not. I don't think so. I think we tried to teach. If we did, I know it didn't work well.

I miss what happened-later. After the fires were out and the smoke cleared. Once we, collectively, could start thinking clearly again. It was funny. It was different then, I think, every other nation on the planet would have done it differently.

We turned in, on ourselves, and what counted most to us as humans, as Americans. I don't remember any drum beats, any chest pounding. I never saw a foreign flag burned in protest or a foreign embassy overrun and trashed. Maybe it happened, memory fades, but I don't think it did. I still, to this day, don't know how to spell Al Qaeda and just let Spellcheck fix it.

I remember sleeves being rolled up, flags, oh the flags-everyone had a flag out. There was even a house in our neighborhood that was vacant and someone jockeyed one on the front porch. Commercials on TV had them. Country songs said it all, asked it all.

And we prayed. Not only for those that died, or their families who were left without them, but I heard prayers for those that flew the planes, their families, their loved ones and friends, that they may see someday with clear eyes and their hearts may someday be turned.

Now, I write this the night before the tenth anniversary. I am tired and worn, no thanks to the last ten years. All three of my children are married. My only son survived two tours to the Sand Box. There are four grandchildren here, just getting back from taking two of them to the Scottsdale Quarter to let them play in the un-chlorinated fountain, which, I am sure, will generate some type of strep thing in their collective throats. The site was not there ten years ago. The parents of some of the other kids, were, by the looks of them, children themselves and don't have any real feelings about what the sunrise will bring tomorrow.

For some, it will be just another day. Someday, as with all significant days in the human run, the memories will fade and time will wear away on the mind and heart. Healing takes place and the young and parentless find a way through the days and grow to be parents themselves. But if I close my eyes hard enough and think long enough, I remember those weeks and months after that day. I remember crying, not with sadness but with so much pride of having been in the same career of those that ran the opposite direction. I think about that and realize every cop, every fireman, every person wearing a uniform was represented so well that day. Even those who didn't stand a watch, American people, for months, helped each other just to cope and reached out to each other and loved. We loved well those months after.

'...the greatest of these is love.' A guy wrote that in a letter a long time ago, told to him by someone else. That's what we do so well, we Americans. Almost to a fault some would say. '...the greatest of these is love.' Hmm, not sure I could ever find fault with that. Today, as I wake to a new day that happens to have a special significance, I will dwell on those words. They seem to work.

Always.

Heat Advisory--Really?

2011-08-28T07:11:00.000-07:00

This last week in Phoenix has been a little warm, like the seventh level of friggin' Hell warm. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that I am getting older, my hands swell, and sometimes I find myself turning my head to hear what someone is saying. But I also think its because it is actually getting warmer. It also seems like this year, unlike years past, professional groups like the news or some new governmental agency, has spent a bunch of money to put out these 'Heat Advisory' warnings you hear on the news, radio, even read them in the paper-the next day, which makes great sense.

I haven't seen rain at my house during daylight hours this year. So the two times I have seen wet sidewalks when I woke up, could be from sprinklers. Oh, sure, it threatens a lot. The clouds build to the north and east an threaten everyone, just not here. I've lived in this valley all my life. I know exactly where I was when we hit the all time back to back days of 121 and 122 degrees, shutting down the airport and finding people lighting candles in church for their air-conditioner. I was in a motor home, monitoring a wiretap of a murderer's home and the A/C in the motor home burned up. So, really, I was in a metal box with no ventilation, balancing an unbalanceable check book. Yep, good times. But here's the thing, I didn't need anyone to tell me it was hot. I knew it was hot. I live in Phoenix for Christsake! Having someone telling me "Hey, uh, well, be careful, drink water, stay inside--its hot outside," kind of seems, well--dumb.

That must mean there are people out there that wander outside and just keep wandering, I guess, kind of like someone in Buffalo, New York during a lake-effect snow storm. "Oh, look honey, its snowing! Let's take the kids, pile into the car, and go look at Christmas lights!" Okay, I get it; they deserve to be thinned from the herd, but do we have to spend tax money on it?

Look, this is Arizona. Summers in Arizona, especially central and southwestern Arizona is just a place you don't necessarily want to be without a completely filled swimming pool that you can carry on your back. As a matter of fact, you don't want to be anywhere except in a cool mall or the rank darkness of a movie theater, moving from movie to hiding in the restroom until another movie starts, to another movie to hiding in the restroom to another movie, until the sun goes down. We had a low temperature the other day of 91 degrees. 91 DEGREES FOR A LOW! Who does that?

Yeah, I know, I hear it all the time-"Well, you just don't know what cold is like. This feels so good." Okay, then take a bottle of water with you if you're out in it. If I was in New York, near Buffalo and it was snowing, I would travel-if I did travel, with a blanket, jackets, gloves, a fire place, a sleeping back, food for a month-all the things the natives travel with. I wouldn't need someone to get paid to tell me "Hey, ah, its cold outside. We have a 'Cold Advisory'. Wear your Mukluks."

Nope, don't need that.

So, if you are coming to Phoenix or have been relocated by your company to Gila Bend, halfway between Phoenix and Yuma, there are two things you need to know the answers to. 1) Who did you piss off to get re-located to Gila Bend and 2) where is the movie theater?

There, there is your heat advisory. Now, put butter on your popcorn and find a quiet row.

This is one of my favorite pictures!

2011-08-14T07:36:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite pictures. I've used it before and with this blog, I think its totally appropriate to use it again.

I am sorry for the lateness of this blog. You see, here's the thing. I think my secret love is writing. It would be wonderful if I had a one room cabin up on the Olympic Peninsula, overlooking Puget Sound wearing a big sweater, a pot of chili on the stove, and this computer, cranking out stuff, the gooey stuff that makes writing my crack. I would find myself standing in the door way with a mug (not a cup) of hot coffee, watching the morning rain and the deer family in the front yard. But until then, I need to make a living, so I teach high school and actually, I'm pretty good at it. The last few weeks have been a little busy, requiring my attention and causing full fatigue with no juice for writing. Nights come and my favorite time, bedtime, which usually brings some quiet reading in cold sheets, has been ending with me opening the book and then falling asleep with it on my chest, not a word consumed.

We got kids last week.

Yep, for you fans getting this in Turkestan and the Yukon Territories, who have been keeping me afloat with your Kindle purchases, allowing me to get cheese on that occasional burger, thanks and yes, its high school-right in the middle of the peak hormone cycle for a human. They cry and laugh at stuff that usually isn't even a complete thought. They walk off without their gym bag, leaving it in the room. Don't you think you would feel you are missing something, like a forty pound gym bag, with all your dirty laundry and football helmet in it? Nope, you call the young boy back in who is walking down the hall to his next class, which of course is in the next building over in the opposite direction, once you notice the bag and have him come back and get it. "Oh yeah," he says as he sees the bag you are pointing at. You are sure he would have wandered out to practice after school in his practice gear minus the $130 helmet. You want to be there when coach asks him wear his helmet is and he shrugs his shoulders. You know he actually walked half way out to the field not realizing he didn't have it on his head until some mentioned it.

High school kids, especially these guys-sophomores, are fun to watch and mess with. They're clumsy, hormonal, testing, and unfortunately, with some-sad. Home life is anything but home life. We get a ton of kids that are refugees. Their stories make you cock your head to one side and say 'huh?' Makes you want to go out and kiss anything American.

This being Sunday, tomorrow is week two. Usually the first week students are getting settled, schedule changes, their lost, loads change, whole classes disappear then re-appear as something else so its pretty useless to actually teach anything the kids will be measured on. The worst ones in the group, however, are the teachers.

You got to understand something about teachers, we do love our job, love maybe being a little strong of a word. You would have to at least like it to do it for so long when the job is attached to so many crazy decisions made by people who have only seen a classroom thirty years prior when they were young or in a magazine. I guess that's the way it is with most jobs, we promote or hire or vote for those that seem to sound good, but who have never walked in the shoes of those they lead. Of course, that's our fault. I feel, like most teachers, any one of us could fix the problem with the American education system (still the best in the world) within four months if we were given the chance. Actually, its not a chance we need; we have the chance. We just need the energy. Yep, don't have that.

So, I think I will just keep with the pace I'm at. I've been asked every year if I would go into Administration and after watching those guys do that job, I am convinced I would rather disarm IED's in Afghanistan-at night.

So, as you send your children, grand-children, nieces and nephews out into the fray, we are ready to receive them. Oh, and at the end of the day, we'll make sure they have their bag of laundry.

Signs of our times

2011-07-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

There are some signs out there that I am not sure we either need any more, ever needed, or that beg the question if we want them at all. Here are just a few.

'Unleaded gas'. Do we still need this one? We haven’t sold gas with lead in it for about 150 years. It has become a habit to call it that. I remember when we needed to tell the difference between leaded and un-leaded at the gas station. When cars came out with catalytic converters, if you put lead in the tank, something exploded or melted or crapped on your shoes-something. Today, every car has a catalytic converter unless you’re driving an old De Soto from Havana. Even those cars can take unleaded. Let’s quit paying the poor guy in the paint shop for those six letters and just call it ‘gas.’ And really, if you pull into a gas station, do you really need to be reminded its ‘gas’? Maybe if you were that woman who bought the ‘hot’ coffee at McDonald's and then spilled it on herself and sued them because it was, well, hot.

“Walk-in’s welcome’ in front of a palm reader’s house/business. Really? Are there that many people making appointments to have their palms read that you really need to buy a can of red paint, a four by eight sheet of plywood, write those words on it and prop it up on the sidewalk in front of your house? And frankly, how many of us drive down the street and see that sign and say ‘Oh, yeah, that reminds me, I need to stop and have my future told by some total stranger who wants to charge me $30 cash, visa or MasterCard, to tell me I am going to meet a handsome stranger who is going to make a difference in my life?

Tell ya what, I will predict your future right now and save you the $30. You will meet a handsome stranger (their momma thinks their handsome despite the scar that goes from their forehead to their jaw and their lazy eye) and they will make a difference in your life because they are the bag boy at Fry’s and they put the milk on top of the eggs you were planning on having for dinner.

'Home Cooking'. Do I really want to go to a restaurant where they say this? Does that mean they really don’t cook the food in the back but at someone’s home and then ship it to the restaurant? Of course not. It means there is a bed and a small TV on a night stand in the corner behind the walk-in freezer in the back and the cook sleeps there because he was kicked out of his house for drinking shots of rum while being ‘inappropriate’ with the cat. Do we really want that? I think not.

And like the picture at the top of this blog, do we all really live in a neighborhood that has slow children?

My favorite-the plastic cover on my new lawn mower had stenciled on it in about a dozen places ‘this bag is not a toy.’ How many parents give their child that item and say “Hear you go son/daughter, go play with this. STAY away from the hot coffee though!” Any adult who does that needs to be thinned from the herd. Wait, I forgot, there is that woman with the hot coffee from McDonald's.

I guess there are those people out there that need this.

Look, I’m just making some observations here. I guess we just need to be reminded that there are some among us who need a little help—a lot of the time.

Peace in a Small Town, Day 7, last day

2011-07-05T06:57:00.000-07:00

Day 7-last day

I wish I could report this morning the Bad Boys were found eating some more of Mrs. Johnson’s award winning roses, but I can’t. I think they have moved on to the next cycle of deer life; having wives, kids, finding a place to stay in the woods, staying out of the cross hairs of anything with the word Remington on it. The town, early this morning, is bustling with people loading up their Range Rovers and moving on to the next town or state.

So, how does a Grand Lady clean herself up when she is overrun with people and vehicles so thick they are lined up in both directions as far out of town as one can see, double parked, overflowing her trash cans, and generally taking up too much room on the sidewalks? How? She rains on them; rains on them a lot. I mean a lot of rain, hard, pelting, sideways, in a confined space, on all of them, soaking them and making them cold.

They were running to their cars, under over-hangs, getting back on their motorcycles and Caravans and pulling their soaking wet Maltese’s in to the cars with them. There, they stayed for hours. A large supply of them gave up and left even before the fireworks.

Maggie’s Kitchen closed early yesterday. They sold out of the smoked brisket and pork shoulder along with their burgers. The boss went home to take a nap and a shower.

The fireworks in this town are probably one of the best in the country. The town fathers had shortened the show due to budget. This town lives on tourism and we all know that is down. They have to cut their school budget this year by 10% which is now into staff. When you only have 200 students in a K-12 program, that can be a whole grade level. It was obvious the show was cut back. They had large times between rockets, trying to stretch the show to match the music they synced it to via the school’s KURA radio station. Still, it was incredible. The echoes off the mountains could be felt as well as heard.

I guess that’s just part of the cycle of life; like the Bad Boys. We want that memory, that time when all things seemed right with the world; that perfect moment when we cut out a place in our brain just for that image. Then, we spend the rest of our life trying to find it again.

We never do.

This town is terrible, please don’t come. Stay away. Those pleas are from someone who has done just that, cut out a corner of the memory bank and tried to capture and keep that image as a real event. It isn’t. It was once, but now its gone. I need to let my grip go.

Time to make new images and memories. There are more to come, more Bad Boys, more Mrs. Johnson’s roses, more Bries, more walking in a small town eating some ice cream while sitting on a bench, watching the Meadow Gold truck make its delivery and counting that as the high point of my day. You just got to look. Some new images will be from here, but I have to allow the old ones to go or I will be sorely disappointed-every time.

Maybe, if we are lucky, the Bad Boys will have kids. They will teach them the ways of the world in downtown Ouray. They will show them how and when and what to do.

And the rest of us, while we sip our coffee on our breathless walk up a street at 7700 feet, will smile at the sight of the new kids on the block and store that image for a day when we need to remember; a time and a place.

Peace in a small town-July 4th

2011-07-04T06:01:00.001-07:00

July 4^th

The town stirred awake well before sunrise. Actually, being at the bottom of a valley with cliffs 5-7000 feet above us, not seeing the sun until 8:15 is the norm here, let’s just say whenever the rest of the world was having a sunrise, many of the locals were up and prepping for their Grand Lady’s big show.

Two Ouray city trucks were out putting the final cleaning prep on Main. One, changing out all the trash can bags, tying off the bags and throwing them into the back of his pick up, the other following behind, watering all the flower pots that lined the street and the moss filled hanging baskets from each street sign and light post.

Frank, the owner of Maggie’s Kitchen and the author of one of the best burgers ever eaten in the free world, was sleeping next to his smoker, parked in the street. He stayed with it all night, tending to the fire box with pieces of hickory while the pork shoulder and brisket slowly cooked since about 5 yesterday afternoon. Hickory smoke has been wafting into our room all night. Its like we’re camping only on a sleep number bed.

At the other end of town the BPOE Lodge is prepping for the big barbecue after the 10am parade. The Elks will be serving ribs, burgers, and hot dogs. Is there really anything else anyone should be eating today? Oh, wait, Frank’s slow cooked pork.Cardiologists are all on vacation today-or here.

Early this morning, starting about now, is the Ouray Volunteer Rescue Team’s fund raising breakfast, just before the start of the 10K. The Ouray team saves people from themselves every year. The pass between Ouray and Silverton is very susceptible to death. You drive off the road, you don’t hit anything but air for about 700 to 1000 feet. Its straight up and down and the one time in your life you probably want to not wear a seat belt, hoping to jump or do something circus-like on your way down. These guys repel down and pull you out, at least enough of you so your family can have a funeral. They are all volunteers and live off the donations of everyone. Their breakfast is a mainstay for the 4^th. Most of the team are up a good portion of the night cooking-with the help of cold beer and Jack Daniels. Their blood shot eyes and slight whiff of stale whiskey breath greets you in line why you get your eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, toast, fruit, juice, and coffee you can stand a spoon up in. The food is okay but the cause is just. It’s a good time to buy another shirt that talks about bringing a GPS so you don’t have to eat your friends.

At 10 today, the parade starts. At its point is the color guard made up of four old war horses from another era. They usually give the younger of the four the American flag, he would be the stronger and can hold it for the whole length of road, about three hundred yards. The four wear their uniforms from another time. They try to march in unison but have a tendency to slide out of step every so many yards. That doesn’t bother anyone and the entire length of this small town people stand on their feet and clap. Some salute, wave flags, and cheer.

Its been so for well over 230 years.

Enjoy.

Peace in a small town-Day 6

2011-07-03T06:33:00.000-07:00

Woke up early this morning with a craving to walk. I got up and made a pot of joe and wanted to spend time with the Grand Lady and the God who protects her before she needed to turn and take care of the needy tourists today, the eve before the celebration of her country’s birthday. The town began to fill yesterday like a bucket under a waterfall, which this town has. There was a stream of cars coming from both ends. I wanted some alone time with the two of them, before the fray started.

It was just the three of us and a cup of good coffee that I knew wasn’t going to get me around the horn before it was empty. That was okay. We just walked and talked, looking for the Bad Boys but knew they were too smart. They got out of Dodge before Mummy and Daddy and the six kids, three with runny noses THAT NO ONE IN THE FAMILY WANTS TO WIPE walk down the street and into the clothing store where they proceed to touch everything. Yep, the deer are smart.

Some of the locals were out this morning, starting their yard watering and sweeping off the stoops, putting up flags and bunting. Tomorrow, July 4^th, is huge here. The locals celebrate their country’s birthday like it’s the first one. There will be a parade here in town complete with an old fire truck, the Synchronized Dog Walking Team, clown cars, the Ouray Youth Dirt Bike Club, and a water fight. Yep, they seal off highway 550 and arm two parties with fire hoses and the first one to get knocked over loses. At the end, there is a fly over by something of the military. Two years ago you had to be looking because they were moving so quick, they were in an out of the valley before the sound reached you-very cool. I think 300 years ago, in Scotland where my ancestors are from, they had kind of the same thing, only they used axes.

I walked by the Artisan Bakery. They were working, but wouldn’t be open for another hour. The owner waived. I waived back, tipping my nearly empty coffee cup.

I continued north, back up Main. Meadow Gold was making an unusual Sunday delivery to the Backstreet Bistro. They won’t open until 7:30. The locals know that but no one told the tourists. They’re standing outside its door like a methadone clinic waiting for it to open to get their morning fix of coffee.

Last night, O’Brien’s Irish Pub was partying late into the night. Its an Irish pub so that is to be expected. Our room however, was right next door. I am guessing most of the locals hit it early and then went home and to bed before nine, leaving the place for those people. We had our balcony door open so we could clearly hear the drunk chicks. “No, I told him I don’t want him, but he just don’t listen. He said he’d get a job when he gets out of jail and that I should wait. He says he loves me-whoo hoo!” I’m sorry, but isn’t it the drunk chick that always starts the problem in the bar? Think back to all those times. It was a woman who started it. “What are you looking at? Tommy, TOMMY, put that beer down and listen to me, this guy was looking at me. What are you going to do about it?” All Tommy wanted to do was to enjoy his cold beer and maybe watch one of the three games on the flat screens around the bar. But, nooo, now he has to carry out some title fight with some guy he really has no beef with, just to please a woman he wasn’t too fond of in the first place.

Two of Ouray’s Finest sat in their patrol cars right across the street. I mean we’re here, and if any of you inside go sideways we are going to rain down on the lot of you like a Mexican sombrero on a Frenchman kind of close. You start something with two police officers the size of sycamore trees five steps away, you deserve to have stitches. About 2am, the drunk chicks finally went home. “Whaaaduyoumeanweeeregoin?idonwannaleave—wait-Igottapuke.ohiloveyoubaby-kissme.” I was just thinking-wouldn't it be funny if she woke up with her head shaved.

I'm just saying.

Justice served.

Tomorrow, the Grand Lady puts on her formals and presides over a party that is taking place in thousands of towns just like this. There are thousands of clown cars in parades across the nation, probably not too many synchronized dog teams, but maybe. One thing I can tell you, there isn’t one synchronized dog team in a parade celebrating freedom in ANY other country on the planet. Nope, not one. There isn’t a fire truck with the Grand Marshall being a 21 year old marine, sailor, airman, or soldier who just came home from the sandbox, sitting next to the 17 year old Miss True Value princess, nope, not one. There isn’t a country that will wear their nations flag or flag colors as shirts, lapel pin, hat, flag tucked into a hat, scarf, dog wear, or strapped to the back of their Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Not one. Two-hundred and thirty-five years ago, a bunch of dead guys had sealed themselves in a room on an upper floor of a building in Boston and had decided to lay it all on the line. Everything they had and known they were saying wasn’t enough unless it had freedom attached to it, including their lives.

Enjoy.

Peace in a small town-Day 4--I think

2011-07-02T06:44:00.001-07:00

The day started, like I said yesterday, with a sunny, bright, and very blue morning. Of course morning doesn’t start here until about 8:17 when the sun finally creeps down the western slopes and hits Main.

Deer weren’t seen until sunset when on the night walk, about 6:30 on 2^nd Street, between 4^th and 5^th Avenue, tucked under a tree across from the Spanger Bed and Breakfast a young buck was eating the fresh cut grass of the front yard across the street. It was late, he was alone and wasn’t part of the Bad Boys but the deer were here, in town, and eating whatever they found.

The town is starting to fill with people. Most of them don’t belong, you can just tell. They move from store to store with no sense of purpose or care. These people need to pass a test before they come here. They really do. If the world was to look at these people, I think the world would be embarrassed for the Grand Lady. She is gracious with them, gentle in fact. The men wear black socks with dark tennis shoes and some of the funkiest hats ever-they don't fit. Picture your fathers wearing clothes that are just embarrassing and then walking in public with YOU from door to door. Some are even wearing those sunglasses that clip on to their black horned-rimmed and flip up and down. I even saw a husband and wife (I assumed they were husband and wife because, oh my gosh how bad would it be if they were dating!) with funky hats, plaid shorts, black socks, and flip up sunglasses. The great trifecta of nerdom. These are the ones where a pay box at the front of the city needs to be in place-just for them, but lucky for the people who need their money the town is more forgiving.

Kind of an odd thing to report, the Meadow Gold truck made a late delivery last night. Usually, they are early morning. I watched them from our balcony. Huh, interesting. I'm wondering if the mayor knows?

Crows are interesting here-or are they Black Birds? I am sure there is an ornithologist or a podiatrist, or some other specialist that could tell the difference, it really doesn’t matter. They’re big. That’s all I want to say-big. Like carry off your little Maltese dog with the pink collar big. If you are a circus worker, you would want to weigh yourself down with something. These guys sit on fences just waiting for you to leave your dear old frail grandmother unattended. Actually, I think they are a critical part of the circle of life. Anyone here walking a Maltese, needs to have it carried away and become part of the food chain.

Last night and this morning-Saturday I think it is, I walked the back alleys. Best part of this town is found in the alleys. You get to see into people’s homes, especially at night, and look at their stuff. Oh, come on, you would all do it if you were here. Its not like we’re peeping toms or something. You just want to see what the inside of their house looks like, especially if its from 1888.

We went in to Ridgeway yesterday and stocked up for the 4^th. Ouray’s Duckett Market will be closed on Sunday and again on Monday for the holiday so we found a nice place in the larger, more commercial, but dramatically less likable town to the north. This is where you go to actually work and earn a long term living. Its not as creepy as Silverton, you don’t mind being there after dark. We ate at the semi-famous True Grit Café named after the iconic movie filmed in Ouray and Ridgeway in 1969. Supposedly, John Wayne’s hat is still hanging in the Outlaw Restaurant and Bar in Ouray. The restaurant has posters of every movie Mr. Wayne was in and some were even signed by some of the actors, just above or below their name on the playbill.

Speaking of Silverton, we might go there today. I was saying earlier how creepy it is. If we go and survive, I will give you a report.

Well, off to watch the sun rise over the valley. Brie was out walking, carrying her leash in her mouth, waiting again for her master to hurry the hell up with his coffee at the Backstreet. She was patient but definitely wanted to run. At least she won’t get carried off by a crow.

Peace-Life in a small town-day 3 and start of 4

2011-07-01T07:35:00.001-07:00

It rained most of the day with some pretty good winds. The Meadow Gold truck was still able to make its delivery, parking in the middle of Highway 550 and hand carting the goods in to Ducketts. UPS and Fed Ex parked next to them and made their deliveries into the Ivory’s Trading Company and a small one to the Silver Nugget Restaurant.

Speaking of Silver Nugget, they have the ‘Miner’s Breakfast’ for $7.50; pancakes, sausage, two eggs, toast, hash browns. Who the hell can eat that much food, except the guy I was with. Incredible. Also at the other end of town, for $10 you can have the all you can eat breakfast buffet at the ‘open for breakfast’ place. We didn’t see a name on or near the sign so that is now its name.

Brie, the vizsla, that is a cocoa colored version of the weimaraner, was walking with her owner this morning, carrying her own repelling leash. It was coiled and tied and she carried it like it was the newspaper. Her boss went in for coffee and a bagel at the Backstreet Deli and Brie sat outside, putting her leash down and waiting for master to return.

The Links, up on 8^th Avenue and 4^th Street have their wild squash starting to sprout behind their house, next to the flume that carries the water from Cascade Falls through town. There was a small doe munching on some of their wild daisies next to the road, just under the ash tree behind them. She checked me out, finding I was no threat since I was sucking air so badly climbing the street at over 7700 feet, then she just went back to eating.

The sun just topped the ridge line to the east at about 8:17 this morning. Sun is now starting to warm the valley, a valley you can walk and touch the east and west wall to over a cup of joe. We might head out of town to the north towards Ridgeway and see what shops are there. This is a place you can lose time in, if you don’t work here. Sometimes, I find myself counting the nights we've been here, having to start from the beginning of the trip. When we get back, the world will be spinning fast enough. It’s good just to take a time out and get off the carousel for a while. Aaaaaahhhh.

Peace-Life in a small town-day 2

2011-06-30T06:53:00.000-07:00

The search for the Bad Boys of Ouray, the three young bucks traveling together and causing havoc to gardens throughout the town, have yet to be seen this morning or last night. However, Dr. Loundren and his two-year old lab, Becky, were out for their morning walk. I wasn’t quite sure who was walking whom. Becky seemed to want to go one way and the good doctor had another agenda. When I turned down on 4^th Avenue heading back to Main, it looked like the good doctor was losing.

Several biker groups were working their way through town yesterday, semi-big biker town, Ouray is. I’m not talking about your gang bikers, I’m talking about doctors and engineers using some of their extra bucks to buy a $40,000 Harley and leathers to give them that Bad Boy-living to ride, type appearance. They still stop at the Billy Goat Gruff Beer Garten and drink their pints of some beer no one can pronounce. That gives them away. The Rolex’s don’t help.

If they really were bikers, they’d be drinking Bud out of a can and collapsing the empty container on their foreheads-or their friend's forehead.

Maggie’s Kitchen ran out of Coke in both nozzles yesterday and the Diet Coke was broken. Anyone who bought a Coke and was standing there ready to fill up their cups was out of luck. They just needed to drink something else, no refunds. Now, some of those bikers might have asked for a refund; they didn’t get what they paid for, but in every life sometimes we come to a point where our Diet Coke or regular Coke lives take a change and we have to drink the orange Fanta-deal with it. We don’t want to drink the Fanta. Its been years since we’ve even had that Coast Guard orange drink and we thought we had matured over the years as well as we’ve taken on the battle of the waistline, high cholesterol, and just shear bulk, but now we have to deal with a curve ball of life. So, we push the bright orange button, just enough to put enough in the glass to take a sip. And there, to our surprise, is pleasure, like those orange ice cream bars we had as kids. Full of sugar and flavors of days long ago. So, we fill the glass, minimize the ice, and after lunch we go back and top it off again, just a little for the walk, you understand.

The owner of Maggies sent a runner, a young boy about fifteen, to get more soda syrup for the machine. It should be on line tomorrow; no word on the Diet Coke. That one might take longer. The quarter pound burger was every bit a half a pound. The French fries had that light sheen of oil on them, you know the kind, allowing the salt your heart needs to adhere to it when you take the lid off the salt container and pour it on.

Our travel team decided they liked the chicken sandwich there so much, we went back for dinner, finding myself arguing with my own brain about whether to get the grilled cheese or the hot dog that appeared to be the size of a small man’s femur. I went with the dog. Good choice. I asked for a Diet Coke, thinking maybe the lad made it back with the syrup or a new button and was politely directed to the table next to the dispenser where I found Coke products in twenty-four can cases. I helped myself. I never saw the boy they sent to get the syrup. That is what I call improvising.

It rained in the afternoon right after a hurricane wind storm stirred everything up. The temperature dropped at least fifteen degrees in about fifteen minutes.

We missed sushi night at the Cascade Deli last night, although I’ve never heard of sushi with roast beef. Oh, well-when in Rome.

There are things to buy here as well. T-shirts with quick, sharp sayings like a picture of a line of silhouetted backpackers and a caption Take a GPS, it is embarrassing when you have to eat your friends; tin signs you hang up somewhere in your house like the Ten Commandments for Cowboys, with a commandment which reads don't take another feller's stuff; coffee cups of every size and shape and animal. Nothing says office décor like a moose coffee cup.

We’ll see what day three brings. The day is starting with a clouds. Something guys like me from Arizona go out and light candles too. It could rain the rest of the week and I would be a happy camper. The rest of the town would cry and frankly, the grand lady we call Ouray would suffer, so no, I guess I don’t want it to rain, but maybe just threaten. You know, you don’t always have to shoot the suspect. Sometimes, just as long as he can see in your eyes that you would and could blow his head clean off, is all it takes for him to put down that 32 inch flat screen you caught him coming out of the window with.Somehow, tie that metaphor with the rain and you will get what I am trying to say.

Justice served. Now, my friends, its time for some more coffee and to see if Dr. Loundren is still being walked by Becky. I hope he gets home.

Peace-Life in a small town-day 1

2011-06-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

It has been two years since I’ve been to this town-two years since I have walked the small town streets of Ouray, Colorado. We arrived yesterday afternoon, coming in from the traditional south end from Silverton. Silverton is scary. Don’t ask; it just is, especially after the tourist train leaves, heading back to Durango. More about that later.

Stay with me and I will walk you through a week of trivial living that can be so valuable and so precious that we can all walk away feeling a little better about this rock we live on. Today is only the first day in this town. She and I need to spend time together and get re-acquainted.

We’ve been coming here for years, usually around the 4^th of July; however, to me, the best time is in June, before the tourist come. Its quiet then. The end of June and the start of July, its picks up. That’s when the tourists arrive, crap in the street, then leave.

She likes her tourists, Ouray does. She is gentle to them and welcoming, even if they don't return the favor. She needs what they have to live and gives back what they don’t know they need, whether they want it or not. She knows what we need and she will openly give it and if we truly look, we will find what we, ourselves, didn’t know was missing-peace. I just wish there was a box at both ends of town where these people could just come, deposit their money, then move on.

Okay, enough with the mysticism, back to the town-Day 1. Do you have your coffee? Breakfast bar or cereal? Sit back and feel, just a little, of this place that is accurately called the Switzerland of America.

The town hadn’t changed since the last time we drove in. This place is the county seat and yet doesn’t have one traffic light. The town fathers mean for that to be, although they did put up little plastic signs in the middle of the streets where there are painted crosswalks. Modern control devices which resemble those little plastic guys you can buy at Home Depot and put out in front of your house to warn drivers to slow down, you have kids.

After we unpacked, we walked Main Street which is also state highway 550 connecting Durango to Silverton, Ouray, Ridgeway, Montrose and I don’t care beyond that to the north. Many of the businesses last year were for sale, causing us to fear that the recession was going to run over this town like a freight train. Many of the old Silverbacks who had worked those stores were tired and wanted to retire to Boca Raton, moving to someplace that didn’t get 275 inches of snow each year.

But new blood picked up the slack, people that can handle a few winters and maybe bring in some 21^st Century technology to help with business. When you are using a cash register that you inherited from your grand-pappy, its time to upgrade. I was happy to see most of the stores, either moved to different store fronts or were sold and changed all together. A True Value moved into the Mercantile location. The sharp smell of paint and potting soil, along with a new NCR 4500 highlighted the place. They got rid of camera film that had expired in 2008 and replaced its spot with a paint mixer.

After dinner, it was time.

Every day, I walk the town, early in the morning, and at night. You can cover this town from tip to tip, all four corners, on two cups of coffee. You start with one from your apartment, and restock at the Artisan Bakery on the south end before you head to the east side. They painted the Antler Motel, a key location for the next book and where our hero will meet Bucket Head, the motel owner's mastiff. But the painting was a long time coming. On these walks you look for these things but also, you look for deer.

They live here, in town. The last few years, I have found three brothers, or maybe they are deer’s version of homies. They were seen together, young, small racks, eating flowers from Mrs. Johnson’s prized roses. The Bad Boys of Ouray I called them. I didn’t see them on the night walk and will advise you daily of their appearance. I am assuming one of these years, maybe this one; they will no longer be a part of the story, having moved on to doing deer life somewhere else in the Rockies. However, I did find, up on 6^th Street, the farthest street to the east (streets run north and south and from 2^nd Street to the west of town to 6^th Street on the east and avenues run east and west starting on the south and moving to 10^th Avenue on the north) two young deer, does.

They were eating the wild daisies and grass and stopped and looked at me in the twilight. There was no fear in their face. They had seen this image before. Actually, they took three steps towards me but were distracted by a passing car. Maybe they wanted to say ‘hi’ up close, see what I had in my pockets to eat, or let me scratch that itch behind their ears. I would have done it. Or, maybe they wanted to kick my ass-not sure. I will withhold a label until I know more.

This is a town that we all wish we lived in, if we were true to ourselves. It is a place where a guy tosses you his keys to his car and lets you borrow it for a day-based only on your word. Windows are left open and doors, for the most part, unlocked. Not that there isn’t crime here; there is. According to the Police Blotter, a section of the bi-weekly Plains Dealer newspaper, Mr. Donaldson’s car was caught running a stop sign at the corner of 7^th and Main where he was pulled over and given a warning. Especially at this time of year, with all these tourists, one must be careful and frankly, with the little plastic things in the street warning drivers to slow for crosswalks, you would have to think that driving and flagrantly running a municipal traffic control device should be at the top of everyone’s caution list.

Justice served.

This morning’s walk was wonderful. The air is cool and the sun we will not see for a couple of hours due to the fact there is a 13000 foot mountain in the way. The cool breeze and the shadows again make me feel welcome. I will leave you now, the Artisan is open and they were making fresh crescent breakfast sandwiches. That is a priority. Until tomorrow.

Homecoming

2011-06-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is a Sunday. Our son is set to arrive home from war tomorrow. Iraq is still a war zone, deadly, dangerous-dark. He went there-twice. Tomorrow, he gets off a plane and the first human he is going to be allowed to touch is his wife, Tara.

I will hurt anyone that gets in the way of that moment. Only those two know the true cost of their separation after only a month of marriage. They spent their first anniversary on almost the exact opposite sides of the world. If you went any farther, in any direction, you started to head back home.

The world is filled with drum beats and chest beating when it comes to justice around the world. Men-and now, unfortunately, women too, experience this. I say unfortunately only because the contamination of war now touches both sexes when it comes to the fight, at least for Americans. We need to beat our chest and sing the songs because on game day, we need to shelter our fear and put on our game face. It's the game face that sees us through the times when fear is right there, just below the surface. The idea of old men and women in nice suits sending the best and brightest in to the throats of the Dragon doesn't calm the nerves.

But many times, we need to step out and into the wake of war. That is just Man being, well, man. But no one knows the value of peace, like those that stand or have stood the watch while we sleep-no one.

Sgt. Williams voluntarily escorted his virgin team into the throat of the Dragon and brought them home again-to their children and families. He will say goodbye to them today or tomorrow and probably never see them again.

They're alive. That's his gift to them, and he being alive is their gift to him--and Tara--and us.

The drum beats on.

It always will. That is Man being man. Until God comes to us and qiets, with the palm of His hand resting on the drum head, we will forever send our children into harm's way. People around the world, who have never been free, thirst for what we have. My little boy was willing to risk it all to make sure his team got there and back to accomplish this goal.

Not bad.

When he is old and grey, his grandchildren on his lap and they talk to him about whatever young grand kids talk about, he will look into their eyes and smile, stroke their face with the back of his wrinkled hand. It is this moment, this time, he bought for them and millions of others. Only he and his love know this price. Funny thing, it is men and women like this who, in their ancient years, would, without hesitation, do it again.

Oh, what a place we live.

Father's Day

2011-06-20T06:41:00.000-07:00

The picture is of myself and my two older brothers, Silverbacks all. We were at my nephew's wedding, holding, of course, the appropriate dram of the sainted martyrs who have crossed the bar before us. Ahhhh fatherhood. You get the three brothers together and there is no greater team on planet Earth, nor are any three funnier to be around. We laugh until we cry over stuff that no one sees humor in.

I only heard from two of my three children yesterday, Father's Day. And that was wonderful. More about that later. There is also an old fighter pilot saying when they would cross from water to land. They would report their position by radioing their feet are dry or vise-versa if they were leaving land back to their carriers-their feet are wet. Again, later on this as well.

Unfortunately, this day, for a lot of people, is a reminder of what wasn't. Dads who weren't there, chose not to be there, or who were there and were abusive in ways that would make Saddam blush. For those individuals who suffer from this form of victimization, I can only say, it doesn't ever have to be the same with you. It can change-with you.

How do I know? Because I have seen the other side as well. I have seen men who have come from such upbringings and have become fathers themselves, good fathers; caring, loving, devoted dads. I have seen men who have adopted children and raised them as if they were there own. My own father did such a thing. I have seen men stand in as fathers, with no obligation or requirement to do so, stand in place of the empty role of father.

"Well, that's great, Mark. That's fine for you. What about the rest of us who don't know how, when, what thing this or that we should be doing? What about my anger? Hmm? I have anger issues and, well, I just can't."

Bull.

You know what is right and wrong. You know what is good and evil. You know. The tough part for men is owning their screw ups. But, this could be the greatest thing you ever show or teach your children, daddy's ownership of self. Because if the kid sees you own and confess and ask for forgiveness of them, they are then able to learn how to give forgiveness and eventually-needfully, own and forgive themselves later in life. And we all need to know how to do that.

Being a dad is hard, especially if you do it well. You're tired all the time. You are sore in places that shouldn't be sore. Your focus on seemingly mundane issues rather than those things that give you status and position. And we won't even talk about our bowels-my dad's #1 question whenever any of us were sick-How are your bowels? "Uh, dad, I was hit with a baseball. What does that--"

You get my meaning.

Nope, I only heard from two of my children on Father's Day. My two daughters made me a FATHERS breakfast! All the fatty good foods and sweet waffles a father could want. My son, however, didn't call. That was wonderful too. You see, I know my little boy. I know he would have called if he could. He couldn't call me and that was the best news all day.

There are no phones on the transport plane I was sure he was on, coming home from Iraq. He left Iraq and went to Kuwait and then they pointed their plane west and followed the sun.

At 1:30 in this morning, the day after Father's Day, he called from Maine to wish me a happy-if not belated, Father's Day. I went back to sleep three hours later knowing he could walk home if he had to.

His feet were dry.

Happy Father's Day to those who are standing as fathers. You have a noble, Biblical, Herculean task. Aye, ti's a good day.

Beauty

2011-05-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

The word 'beauty' is a funny and sometimes misleading word. Sometimes, we are entrapped by it with ads on TV, billboards, sides of buses, fliers on our doors. Almost all of it has some sexual edge to it to attract us to it, get us to pick it up, and at least touch it with our eyes.

Sometimes beauty is a mountain or a climate, even a culture. As I sit and write this piece, I am on the island of St. Lucia. It sits towards the southern end of the Lesser Antilles island chain way down towards South America. It is a British Commonwealth, formerly owned by Spain, France, Britain, the Ameri-Indians, the Carib cannibal Indians (who still have relatives in the heart of the rain forest on the island) and now, for the most part, they own themselves.

This is the second time we have been deep into the Caribbean. I think the farther you are away from the U.S., the better taste you get for the life these people truly live, how they look at life, what it is that makes them go about their day-their beauty.

I think its hard to see beauty when you plan for it. I guess you have to ask 'why is that beautiful to me?' You can watch the Miss USA contest and see physical beauty although the contestants do sing and tap dance and occasionally they twirl a baton but all anyone is interested in is hoping beyond hope that she drops the baton or trips on the dance floor, kinda like NASCAR. We really don't care about that kind of beauty-its just a show.

I think beauty, true beauty, changes people when it shows itself when you least expect it-like during a funeral when the lights streak in the windows and land on the casket at just the right time, or during a storm when the power and largeness of the event is awesomely incredible, or in a poverty soaked country where the environment is striking but its people, even living in the squallier they do, somehow have the ability to put a crease in the white uniform shirts of their children in order to send them to school. I mean a crease you can cut a loaf of bread with.

I have only been among these people for a few days and only have a few days more. But there is a beauty walking here among them, a quiet, dignified beauty that I want to learn from. No matter what you ask them, tell them, talk to them about, they almost always finish the sentence with no problem. To them it is, whatever it is, not a problem.

At this resort we are staying, there was a shift change about five in the afternoon. The women were leaving. They took their purses and their bags and began the long walk up the hill to the bus stop, about a mile away. there, the buses (vans really) would pick them up and take them home, maybe about an hour away. They smiled and laughed and some did a little dance as they walked up the hill. They had good jobs, making about the national average of $350---a month.

They would do this six days a week. There is no minimum wage here, no overtime, no social security, no food stamps. If you didn't make it or grow it, you don't eat. Yet, these people, as you drive along, waive to you-

-and then they smile.

I think as I get older, I learn about stuff that has value, real value. I want to hang on to that stuff and dump the other stuff. The stuff that takes too much energy and work and try to melt things down to what really counts. I am closer to the end than to the beginning and I want to finish well, although the finish line is decades away-maybe. I don't want to finish and have some say-'who died?' Not that I need some icon or statue of my image somewhere so pigeons can crap on it.

Nope, I just want my life to count, even if it is just for one person. Here is a group of people who live on a month's salary what we can spend on a meal at home and yet they have found beauty in their lives. Their lives impact and change people who come in contact with them. I want to take what these people are showing me and bring it back and pour it on others I come in contact with. Sure, there is always a need to be able to do well in a gun fight, but those moments are rare. It is much more important to do well in every day living; to share your life and give hope among the hopeless.

These people are experts at finding beauty in life when life itself is not beautiful.

I want to be an expert too.

Day and Night

2011-05-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

I have had an incredible experience this last week.

I got to watch a man die.

It was a very sad and terrible thing, don't get me wrong, but if you have to do something like this, to get the opportunity to be a part of this was nothing short of inspiring.

Randy was my brother-in-law. He had lived in a group home for almost forty of his fifty-one years. He was diagnosed as a mosaic Downes, a unique chromosome pattern that turns normally docile Downes patients into a different, unpredictable individual.

By many beliefs, it was a tragic life. People would look at his situation and just shake their heads and then avert their eyes. But they didn't know. They didn't have an opportunity to look at this life close up.

Randy had a great life. He lived in a group home and had a room he shared with another resident for decades. He had a big screen TV, his own special recliner, bongos. He went to work making something with his hands that I am sure, somewhere in our house, we have at least one of. On days when his sister would come and see him, he would wear a tie, not necessarily a tie that matched the shirt, except maybe in Italy or parts of Uzbekistan, and it wasn't necessarily tied, but he got dressed up for her. She was never disappointed.

With all his health issues, he wasn't suppose to live this long, but he did.

He choked on a peanut butter sandwich.

Really? A peanut butter sandwich?

The staff worked so hard trying to save their friend, but the sandwich was so far down that only the paramedics could extract it. He had gone too long without air.

But then the magic began to show. The world doesn't expect to see people like Randy making a difference in the world. That's why the world created the group home. Make them comfortable is the official version and we do. We try to give them a life that is normal whatever that means. Then God steps in and makes it perfect.

This guy, impacted lives like I wish I did. In my life, I hope I have people who love me so unconditionally like this man had standing by his bed. The rules in cases like this are to wait 72 hours to see if his condition changed, righted itself, or ended. At the end of that time, the doctors gathered us together and the decision was made to let nature take its course.

He lasted another twenty four hours.

In that entire time, this man had a standing vigil by his bed. The group home workers took turns with Randy round the clock, sitting by his bed, talking to him, touching his arm, rubbing his legs, washing his hair, shaving him, trimming his toe nails. I could have done all of those things-if I had too. Here's the thing, they didn't have to-they wanted to. It shamed me.

They loved him. He changed their lives. He loved them back-purely; in a way that took away all the crap the rest of us deal with and use. This was his family. Even the residents, who had some knowledge of a change in things, wanted to come to the hospital and were granted and escorted by the care workers. I met them all, shook their hands, received their hugs. Yep, I was shamed.

I want to love like that.

I can-I have, but it is never consistent. I want to be like these people. I want to love so purely that conditions or issues are never even questioned, there is just love.

There is a letter, written a long time ago, that talks about faith and revealing things. It talks about the revelation of love, not to the wise, but to the children. Randy couldn't drive, have a family, do his own taxes, or fly a plane, well, maybe he could, but you definitely wouldn't want to be around him when he was doing it. He couldn't do the vast majority of things we all take for granted.

Frankly, none of those things are important. ANYONE can do those things. Randy, was a lover. He gave it and, in the end, he received everything he sowed. He changed lives, healed hearts, motivated the lives around him to be better and to continue to love like they had for so long.

If we find comfort in a spiritual life involving God, then we need to know something about that. Randy doesn't want to come back from where he is now. He has the wisdom of the Universe and as I write these words and as, I am sure he sees them form on the page, he is nodding his head. "You tell them for me they don't understand where I am. Tell them they don't understand-they will, but no way do I want to leave this place! No pain, no suffering, laughter all the time, fresh pie, and purple ponies. Tell them there is pure joy, pure happiness, pure love."

"...and the greatest of these is love."

Now its over-or so we think. I guess that's up to each of us.

Yep, I got to watch a man die-or did he?

Pish-Posh and a Well Done Wedding

2011-04-29T19:43:00.000-07:00

I, like apparently two-billion other people around the world, watched part of the Royal Wedding. Actually, I saw it on the news the next day. I wasn't about to get up at one in the morning and watch it like some colleagues I know. Yep, they got up to specifically watch the Prince marry the common girl he had been living with for years. There are some observations I have noticed about myself in this process.

I like the English-all of them.

Just about any country that is or was part of the British Empire, I smile at. I think I like them because they like us. Sure, we have opinions about each other, but families do that. Still, we truly like each other and like to spend time together.

I like the Canadians. When the crazies in Iran invaded our embassy and took our people hostage for 444 days, they had several dozen Americans that were caught outside the embassy when it was taken over and they sheltered them in their own embassy, made them fake passports, citizens, and got them out with the rest of their own people, right out from under the Iranians noses. That was just good form.

The Aussies are the British version of American NASCAR lovers. They play hard, work hard, and were just a bunch of bandits cutting a life out of a area of the world that was just like ours, only sixty times bigger. They have common sense, dress comfortably, and frankly don't care what people think. If anyone doesn't like what the Australians do or say, they can get the hell out, thank you.

Then of course, there are those in the Motherland and its extension-Ireland. I am sure I am missing other territories and for that, I apologize. It is the Motherland that I really have discovered a true affection for. After all, Scotland's there and so is the birthplace of the single malt. I also like some of their words and phrases. 'Pish-posh' I heard one Brit say on TV.

Pish-posh-hmm.

I have a poster in my classroom taken from when the Brits were being bombed by those pesky Huns during WWII. It simply says, Say Calm, and Carry On. Well said-oh-there's another one-well said. Some how, I need to weave into my vocabulary pish-posh, The key is to not sound like Mary Poppins Italian towel boy.

Frankly, any place you can have a calm Welshmen, a sly Scot, and a crazy-eyed Irishman-or lady, together under the same cause, you got something no one wants to mess with but many want to be around.

Pish-posh? No, not yet.

Sure, they spent a lot of money on this thing. A lot of money in a country that is struggling economically. But you watch the people and there was a celebratory pride. It was part of their identity. It was their heritage.

It was part of ours.

Family.

There is something about this country and its people. They do put on a party really well. They drink hard, cheat at fighting, love their country and each other. The fact is, they can track their heritage back thousands of years. I noticed the prince doesn't even have a last name. Did you know that? No last name. Sure, he's from the house of Windsor. What does that mean? What name did he use on his driver's license application? I think the work 'prince' is in there somewhere. He rattled off five names when he was putting the ring on his brides hand. They were all first names. Good form.

Heritage. Sometimes it isn't so nice to look at. You look hard enough, you'll find that dark, ugly side. But then there's the colorful, hat wearing, flag-waving, singing out of tune, side of family.

Yep, good form.

A Sunday Morning in April

2011-04-22T07:21:00.000-07:00

For many today, they wake up on this Sunday morning and in some form, celebrate Easter. They mix traditions of such things as wearing their best clothes to church, often being the only day of the year some members of the family even go to church. I remember my father, on this day, would go with the rest of us, all in our suits and mother and sister in dresses with those little cap/hat things with the pretend veil that covered the forehead. They would even wear gloves.

Celebrating the rise from the dead of the Son of Man was almost always preempted, at least for a few years, by me sitting up in our Mulberry tree in the front yard with my fully automatic Thompson, that I got from the toy aisle of Skaggs Drug Store, waiting for the Easter Bunny to show up so I could machine gun his fluffy little butt back to Arkansas, or where ever Pez candies are from.

We use to hunt real eggs, not those plastic containers which, I'm sure, originated in France in some neighborhood where it is totally acceptable to have pasty skin, no chin, and a weak handshake all under that now well-worn label of just be yourself. You know the containers, shaped like eggs of different colors, where you put candy or coupons to a movie in. People have gotten so afraid of a little food poisoning. We use to hunt the eggs until their shells were so cracked they made a noise when you simply held them in your hand. Then we would bring them inside and make egg salad; the color from the mono-sodium gelatin phosphate #3 dye turning the salad a pale blue. Just eggs and real mayo, no celery or any other crap.

We kept the mayo on the shelf next to the sink, next to the peanut butter. We never kept it in the refrigerator until I got married and I was asked why I was putting the open jar back on the shelf. "That's where we've always kept it," was my answer.

I can't keep it there any more.

Not once did we get sick. At least I don't remember getting sick. Tying gastric-distress with egg/mayonnaise consumption in the Williams household in the late sixties was never on the radar. We were the family that use to dip our potato chips in a side of mayo. So, eggs that were hidden in bushes, under trees, and sometimes buried with a shovel never held a health concern. This age-old tradition has simply fallen by the side of the road, never to come back, I'm sure, because of those guys in France.

This Easter, we have a lot on our plates. We have things that distract us, push us down, cause to feel wounded and pained. We sometimes stop and realize things are not only not fair, but often it feels like bad guys and Evil is winning. I don't have all the answers. Most of the time, I don't know the question, but I know where to start.

Evil, never----ever wins, ever.

It starts with a basic question-If there is a god and if this god IS the God of the Universe-the inventor of the the Big Bang, Enya's music, the Banzai pipeline on the North Shore, and the cinnamon roll, then is it possible he could chose us to be his kids?

Sunday is about a lot of things, but most of all it is a love story, pure and simple, probably the best and greatest love story of all time. It is a story about a father running towards his lost child, scooping them up and holding them so tight they gurgle the words "Daddy, I can't breathe." Then the two fall to the ground and laugh and cry together, the father still holding the child close. Nothing that kid could ever do, would separate that father's love from them again---------------------------nothing-------------------ever.

Now, saddle up. Grab your Thompson's, a canteen of water, and some warm egg salad. We got some rabbits to hunt!!

Happy Easter.

"Git out of my way-I'm going to sneeze!"

2011-04-16T06:27:00.000-07:00

This will be, should be, the last of the series on preparing for, and living through, an Arizona summer. I hope you have been taking notes, putting them into a three-ringed binder you went to Target to specifically buy for this review and study, and tabbed the sections accordingly. If you did, I'm afraid you have more to worry about than the six months of suffocating heat you are about to enter.

Allergies in Arizona, especially the lowlands like Phoenix and Tuscon are terrible. According to some study somewhere, we are the third worse climate for allergy and allergy related symptoms. The Third!! People use to come from all over the world to recover from disease's like tuberculosis. Problem was, they brought their plants with them, you know, to remind them of the old country they would never want to see again. An Arizona Spring is the worse time of year for allergies.

I never remember having allergies growing up. Maybe I did and never knew it. You feel like you have a cold or flu all the time. You cough and hack and feel achy, and your face just leaks-constantly. You take one of those generic allergy relief meds, a case of those breathing strips you wear on your nose at night, and a bottle of Southern Comfort just to get you to the next day. I went to the doctor a couple of years ago with these symptoms that had lingered for two or three weeks. I was sure I needed something cut or lanced or something. She asked me three questions-"What trees do you have in your yard?" Mulberry and Olive. "Ah huh," she said and made a note. "What kind of grass do you have?" Bermuda was my answer. "Ah huh?" She made another note. "Any pets?" Two. She took a deep breath.

Come to find out we were lucky enough to have the first three plants on the Mother of All Allergy Lists with regard to plants not even mentioning the dogs. And everything was in bloom now-right now, in my front yard.

What does this have to do with summer? You see, once it starts to warm, I mean really warm, things in the desert begin to die-quickly. I guess we could be living somewhere like those sites depicted in Sunset Magazine. You know the images, those people who have back yards where you spit a seed out and it grows. Their yards are jungles of vegetation and neat places to hide when you and your kids are playing Army Rangers with broom sticks for guns (maybe that was a different generation?). Anyway, I think those people have faces that leak too.

At least I hope so. I want to share the good times. So, we gird our loins, and pop the salt tablets, and wear hats that frankly we make fun of people who don such attire any other time of year, just to survive. We shop at malls and see movies-all indoors with the thermostat set at 68. We switch to living more at night although temperatures posted at the 10:00 o'clock news is often well over 100 degrees. So we hunker down and take smaller steps and dream of Halloween.

We're always in a sweatshirt by Halloween.

Dress for Survival-not for Success

2011-04-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, continuing our series on prepping for the days to come called an Arizona summer, we need to establish a few rules. Last week, we set our baseline of maybe getting ahead of the game and even toying with such ideas as using a tanning salon so our bodies would not wind up in a burn unit after a day on the beach in San Diego, the favorite refugee camp for Arizonans escaping the heat. Today, its clothing.

With attire comes a level of self pride. There is a distinction, obviously, between the young; lets say those in their real early twenties and teens; with everyone else. As the young get older, I have observed, they discover that comfort surpasses style.

Women are so much better at this then men at the younger age, but then border line later in life with style and trying to retain that sexy/stylish/beautiful look they think they might have lost but in fact, didn’t. It is this change that brings them to the discussion table. Men, young men, on the other hand, have a tendency to embrace stuff that makes no sense at all.

Example 1-Young men wear ball caps sideways, making them look like a modern day Lenny from Mice and Men (for those whom have never heard of it—it’s a book). In order to do this, they need to consciously ignore the feeling of the hat as it pinches theirs heads because in all the dream world of the hat manufacture, they never thought anyone would wear their product contrary to the way it was suppose to be worn. I’m waiting for someone to start another look where they wear it upside down. Now that will look good! Summers in Arizona require hats. If you truly wear them sideways, people just think you’re slow and will start talking to you in a loud voice—thinking you’re deaf as well.

Example 2-Young men have also forgotten to pull up their pants. This was a style some years ago when Mark Walberg was known as Marky Mark and did underwear commercials. It was a style that two years ago began to fade. Someone forgot to tell the Arizona connection. Nothing funnier than watching a young man with a pair a shorts hanging almost to his ankles, having to hold them up with one hand as he walks down the street. Pictures should be taken of these men, stored in a photo album, and secured until that man is thirty; then on his birthday, presented to him as what he use to wear. We older men have our leisure suit photos, the young—shorts dragging on the ground. Shorts in an Arizona summer is a required dress. It kills the functionality if you wear them long enough to cut off any fresh air circulation while both hands are filled, one with your pants and the other with your bag of pork rinds.

You combine these two examples on a young man walking down the street and one can not help but think that poor fellow has to write letters to his grandmother with a crayon and will spend the rest of his natural life working an assembly line sorting colored glass at the city’s recycling facility.

Now ladies, frankly, you’re perfect with some minor suggestions. Frankly, men have really no say in what you look like when we dress like that described above. But can we make some minor suggestion(s)?

Ever since we have accepted you and your shoe choices, which is a major realization of style and its importance in your self-esteem, we are left with only two minor things.

Spandex and moo-moo’s.

There are some things you need to be aware of. Young men (those wearing the crap above) will always be surface people. Your looks are what they are attracted to. Whether you can survive after your plane crashes on a deserted island never crosses their minds. What you looked like after you crawled from the wreckage—that’s the important part to them. The application of spandex is only good for one thing-the gym.

Women should never wear spandex past the age of twenty; in a climate where the daily temperature is over 100 degrees by eight o’clock in the morning; or the woman’s body mass would test the tinsel strength of the fabric weave.

Look ladies, here’s the thing, we are all in this life for the long haul. Those in the Donner party survived because they had something to survive on. Those skinny women who were so attractive to the others were the main course come supper time because their body mass index was so low they couldn't survive the blistering cold. They had no staying power. Embrace the fact that the average woman’s size in the United States is a size 12 and move on. Those women are survivors! You don’t need to wear moo-moo’s or whatever the Hawaiian name is for those one-piece dresses large women and some men wear unless comfort is your middle name. Those can be equally unsettling.

We had a neighbor once who lived behind us. She was from Greece or some place from the Ukraine, I think. She would climb up on a ladder leaning against our back wall and call to us holding her cigarette in one of those extended filter things that Natasha used in the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (it was a cartoon). We all laid bets she was a former Russian tower guard in the Gulag at some time and used her ‘get away from the electric fence’ voice in callilng us. She wore those moo-moo things. She passed before spandex made a showing. Just the idea of her in eight yards of black Spandex is enough to cause a seizure. Bottom line is this-dress this summer with loose fitting, breathable clothes, comfortable shoes, hats facing front, carrying a bottle of water.

We can get all wrapped up in the hype of needing to wear this or that just to say we have this or that when we really need to dress to survive. When the first skinny person became the pot roast for the Donner group, I bet, if you could of asked them, they wished they would have bulked up a little bit before they got to that pass in the dead of winter. Yep, just a little bit of me thinks they were a size 12-or even a 14.

The Chili Effect

2011-03-27T08:08:00.000-07:00

Habenero chili. Yep, that is a hot food. Makes your mouth burn, any part of your skin that it touches feel like a red hot poker of burning metal trying to cook its way through. That is the foundational history of the chili. It is also the history of an Arizona summer.

You know, it’s hotter here now than when it was when my grandfather use to swing from a rope hanging from one of the cottonwoods that lined the canals near his parents dairy, which, by the way, is now runway 8 left for Sky Harbor International. Arizona summers require planning. We move from winter to summer in about 72 hours. There is no gosh, wasn't this whole month wonderful-type talk. These summers require us to think about such things as air conditioning servicing, pool maintenance, swamp coolers, cooking outside or just eating salads, chaffing, and the new ones for the new-agers—tanning booths.

“Mark, whoa, slow down there. Tanning booths? Where did you come up with that? You won’t find any self-respecting man who has a XY chrome-pattern to even think about going to a tanning booth. Besides, it’s Arizona, just go outside, take your shirt off and cut the lawn, or change that bearing adapter on your swamp cooler along with the pump. That old deer gut will be red in 12 to 19 minutes according to the woman with the troweled on makeup doing the weather on the six-o’clock news. She should know, she just transferred down here from Minnesota and she fell asleep laying next to her condo's pool and her back is the color of a fire truck.”

Okay, look, I’m not some wing-nut from a French baking school. This is serious prepping for one of the harshest climates the Big Ten Cities have. Now, granted, I would much rather have Phoenix summers than a Buffalo winter. Shoveling FEET of snow off my driveway just to be stuck in the street every day is not my idea of good times, but every year that same weather gal, having believed what her colleagues have told her, tries to fry an egg on the sidewalk outside her studio. Of course it eventually works, after hours on the pavement and the flies reduce it to a small pool of goo, but she tried and was marginally successful. We need a plan. I’m just spit-balling here.

Here is the idea, if you go to a tanning place (do we really need to call them a salon?) and capitalize on their specials, like a week free or coupons and discounted stuff, get a little controlled UV roasting, then when we do go outside and mow the lawn, trim the hedge, or replace that flange adapter on the #2 control rod of the cooler’s squirrel cage, we shouldn't wind up in the burn unit at County General. Arizonans have some of the worst tans on the planet. ALL the health experts say you shouldn't have a tan; its bad for you, it will give you some cancer they have to remove the old fashion way—with a knife and Bondo.

Some of us might want to travel this summer to someplace with an ocean like Florida, San Diego, or the Caribbean. You don’t want to walk out on the beach with a tanned head and neck, forearms, and the rest of your body so white it’s translucent. After one day, you find yourself in a burn unit on an island where the doctor is in a tank top of woven Hyena skins and treating you by waving some chicken bones (you hope they are chicken bones) over your head, while humming some chant through an Ibex horn, and throwing some crushed coconut ash on your second degree wounds. The idea of strapping yourself up with a zip line harness that afternoon is the last thing you want to think about.

Look, we need to live wiser out here in the great southwest. Sir Lawrence adapted when he came from pasty-white England to the Middle-East. He wore a man dress and head cover. HOw he looked was not as important as staying alive. He drank water and stayed out of the sun. With the flat screen and Blue-Ray, that last part should be easy. But we are creatures who like the outdoors. We are creatures who fix stuff. If we are going to harvest the lawn and do so in our Speedo and flip-flops, we need to take precautions against things, like someone doing a drive-by harpooning of a Great White.

NEXT TIME: Sun block v. Baby oil-sauteed or fried.

To Live to my potential-According to my dog

2011-03-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

Some wise person said once, they hoped to live up to the potential their dog thinks they have, or something like that. There is something magical about dogs and men. Sure, women love dogs just as much and have just as good a relationship and feelings, blah, blah, blah. But I'm not a woman, so I can't talk from that perspective.

Dogs and man go back to when we use to chase down mastodons together. Today, we herd sheep, stand guard at some remote airbase, pull a sled in a fifteen hundred mile competition, chase balls or Frisbees, or just sit and watch TV. All the dog wants to do, is please its master, whatever that looks like.

Some people spend thousands of dollars on their pets. They say, 'Hey, he/she is just like my kid.' Since I've had kids I know the difference. I know I wouldn't spend thousands of dollars for something like a kidney transplant or surgery from a car accident like I would on my own flesh and blood, but I can understand those who do and why they would. What's funny is, I would run back into a burning house to save either of my dogs.

They would try to do the same for me if they could. Funny.

So, today, this morning, I have to do the thing dad's have to do and take my sixteen year old dog to the humane society to have her put to sleep. I would rather run back into a burning house to save her. I have to live to that level my dog thinks of me and do what she wants me-expects me to do, make the pain stop. I curled up with her last night while she got sick and then this morning, realized it was time. She had been sick for a while.

It was surely time.

Funny thing about those times. Dogs (and I'm sure other pets for other people as well) become this thing in our lives. If we truly want to admit it, in a way, we want to be like them. Imagine knowing someone-anyone, who, when you came home, ran to the door and kissed you and welcomed you home like you had been away for years, instead of just to the corner store for a gallon of milk. Imagine knowing someone who only wants to please you, love you, play with you, listen to you and whatever dribble you have to say so attentively that you would swear they were listening. Another guy, probably the same one who said the first quote, said once "Don't you wish you had the heart for god, like a dog does for its master?" How about the heart for anything like a dog has for it's master?

That dog didn't care what we wore, how we smelled, how much money we made last quarter, or if we drove a new car. All she cared about was being around us. Where ever I was, she was within feet of me, laying down, taking the pressure off of her arthritic legs.

Yep, that dog taught me a lot over the years. She listened to stories and could sense heart ache and joy and at just the right time, she would drop some dog wisdom on the old man that made sense-perfect sense.

When it was time to go, I swear she smiled.

She knew something.

Yep, I want to live up to the image my dog thinks of me. It would only make me a better man.

Wave of Life

2011-03-07T06:15:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, don't you wake up just wanting to go back to sleep again? Kind of like life-not everyday is a fun filled extravaganza run of frolic and joy.

Sometimes, its just work.

Sometimes, we just have to lower our head, tuck our shoulder, and prepare for impact. I remember as a kid swimming in the surf in San Diego, a wave would come and it was too shallow to dive under it, you did exactly that, leaning into this wave that you could see coming, ready to try to knock you over. Once it hit, it usually pushed you back on one leg where you found yourself hopping, trying to keep your balance.

You survive the impact only to find yourself in deeper water, trying to wipe your face free of the salt water and that long green grass like kelp that got stuck in your hair, not to mention what ever that stuff is wrapped around your ankles.

Sometimes, for days, weeks, months, whole seasons, we feel like we just have to tuck our shoulders, lower our heads, and brace for whatever is going to roll down the street at us, leaving whatever it brought, wrapped around our ankles and stuck in our hair. After a while, after one wave then another, we get use to the stuff in our hair and we don't even feel the goo around our ankles. It has become a part of our life.

But then it happens.

You don't even realize it, but finally you come to a point when you are in the perfect position to catch one of these waves that has been beating you for so long and ride that puppy to shore.

And the one you pick is huge!

You look up at it as it starts to curl and the top ridge of it starts to thin, allowing the sun light to come through. For a moment, you think about going under it, avoiding it because for a moment, you are feeling fear. Then it happens.

You lose your fear and replace it with courage of a paramount level-almost joyful, exuberant joy. You turn and start swimming as hard as you can to shore and quickly find yourself being picked up by this thing and pushed forward. You tuck your arms and try to form a bullet, going faster and faster and sliding down the curl that now, instead of beating you to death with its power, you are in full sinc with. You and the wave, for just a few seconds, are together.

Until your belly scrapes the sand.

Then, you stand up, pull the green grass out of your mouth, the kelp off your ankles, turn and walk back out to sea, only to be battered again for a season, before you get another chance to ride the Big Kahuna all over again.

Just like life.

Hmm.

Do I really, really need this?

2011-02-12T07:04:00.000-08:00

I was feeling really vulnerable the other day, kind of like a French yachtsman off the coast of Somalia. I was in uncharted waters when I crossed the Big Muddy this last weekend.

I bought a phone.

Actually, it is probably not called a phone anymore. It’s probably more of a communication/multi-media interactive device. Yep, that’s what I got. My wife got a bigger one with bigger icon-type things but I wanted to stay low to the ground, keep my feet planted in the reality of what I really needed, not go crazy with all the bells and whistles that so many of my contemporaries have reduced themselves to.

I got an I-Phone.

‘Whoa there little pony,’ you’re probably saying. ‘We all heard you say you didn’t go crazy.’

You’re right, you did. I did say that. I didn’t get the new I-phone. I got the one-one step down I-Phone. Frankly, I drew the line at being able to talk to the Space Shuttle while I sat on the toilet in the morning. Nope, don’t need to do that. Why get a piece of hardware that you truly don’t need?

Besides, this one was less in price than the regular little ‘flip phones’. But here’s a question: When did this happen? Hmm? When did I get so busy or so important that there is a standing need to be in contact with the weather reports in Nepal if I need it at the touch of a finger on a device smaller than the pack of cigarettes my Dad smoked when I was a kid? I got a better phone than the President of this here United States, and he truly does need to be able to talk to the Shuttle when he’s on the crapper. He only has a Blackberry. He can only text America’ Bravest. I can Facebook those little bastards WHILE I’m texting them AND listen to my music or watch a movie at the same time.

For some of you (geez, I sound like a geezer, but…) we remember rotary phones and the first two numbers were in the form of a name. For example, our house line started with AMHERST and the first two numbers were whatever was under A and M. As a matter of fact, when people asked for your phone number, you would quote ‘A, M,’ then the other five digits. You started living large when you got that space age-looking phone--The Trim Line! It had push-button technology. I remember feeling like we were part of NASA. Something with so many buttons had to come from the space program; it just had too.

Cult groups started to figure out ways to play songs on the phone with the different tones each button produced. Then someone wised up and sold just the cords, either the one from the wall outlet to the phone or from the phone body to the handset, long cords. Now, you were mobile! It was always better to get the cord from the wall to the phone because if you did the other, you had a tendency to reach the end and pull the phone off the wall. We went through about a half-dozen phones that way. You could talk to your Uncle Ervin about his gout and stir the chicken fried steak at the same time. What will they think of next? The Trim Line, tucked safely under your arm. It even had a light for night use!

Now, I can’t figure out how to turn my phone on.

The day before we went to look at phones, I was thinking. What if I came across an accident at an inter-section? My phone was out of batteries and there, right next to you, the victim of a red-light runner, was your phone. I pick it up to dial 911 (a product of the space-age push button technology) and I DON’T KNOW HOW YOUR PHONE WORKS! I lean down and poke your unconscious body with my foot “Hey, mister, how the hell do you turn your phone on?”

You don’t answer.

Where’s my trim line with a seven hundred foot extension cord when you need it?

Miss America-That's not a talent

2011-01-16T07:21:00.000-08:00

I found myself sitting in front of the big screen last night and somehow, in the sea of channels on my satellite TV, I fell on the Miss America Beauty Pageant. Before I could escape, the women in the room yelled at me to step away from the remote. It has been years since I have actually watched the competition and there have been some significant changes-like the swim suit portion, the host, etc. BUT-the one thing that still remains a touchy subject with me is the talent competition.

Come on.

Now, I should say they did make a change or two to this portion as well. All the competitors, ten at this point, come out and sit on a bench. You got your singers, piano players, dancers-who actually aren't sitting but you can see stretching just off camera, on stage watching and waiting to be called up.

They only call eight out to compete. So here you are, all warmed up and ready to do your interpretive dance of the flamingos and they don't call you up. You and one other loser get to walk off stage trying to smile. That's pretty cool. But lets talk talent for a minute.

Sure, you can sing Puccini or be some white blond gal trying to be Tina Turner, but anyone with a voice coach can do that. Here are some real talents-new talents that I think we need to write letters to the pageant and have them at least try. Let me know what you think.

Recharging the freon on a 1976 Admiral refrigerator in under two minutes (the actual length of the talent portion)

field strip a military grade M-4 rifle while blindfolded.

Eight second bull ride (the other minute and fifty-two seconds could be filler video of the competitor being loaded on the bull-clock starts when her butt hits the bull's back)

roofing a small shed.

changing the flange adapter on a Hudson 280 smoke suppressor

performing a live appendectomy (it can be done in under two minutes of the volunteer/patient is already anaesthetised)

Fix a table leg on someones patio table

Digging ten feet of trench for a sprinkler system

repairing a sprinkler head on said system

changing a washer on a kitchen/bathroom faucet

starting a fire in a fireplace

I am sure we, as a collective, could come up with more. What I am happy to see is none of them are baton twirling. Now, if the baton was lit or had razor sharp ends to it-huh, maybe.

The wonders of vision

2011-01-08T06:56:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to bore you with my health issues. First, your eating and drinking something nice and you don't want to hear the ramblings of a middle-aged guy talking about his bowels, joints, teeth, or anything else. Its just not proper, not good form.

Except this time.

I went to the eye doctor yesterday. Now, I am not an expert at searching for doctors and that is a good thing. For the most part, I'm in good shape with the exception of things starting to wear out, like joints, teeth, and apparently, now my eyes. I went to one of those chain stores in the strip mall. I have an acquaintance of mine who goes to an eye doctor and then an exclusive eye glass store-so exclusive they don't take insurance. Mine, well, I think they have coupons. Something about a doc that takes coupons that just seems borderline.

Now, understand something. I use to have vision. Like owl vision. 10/20 in each eye at one time and not when I was twelve either. I was in my late twenties. I could see stuff across the universe without the use of a telescope. Bats asked for advice from me. It was that good.

I have been wearing little reading glasses for about 6 years. Ever since my arms quit being long enough to hold the paper away from my face. But in the last few years, they have started to leak, itch, blurry, all of it. So, I figured it was time to get another inspection for the decade.

Geez.

The appointment wasn't bad, quick, efficient, but now I am truly a middle-aged guy with another part that is in need of repair.

I understand I was going to hear about my vision. I get that. But I wasn't prepared for hearing I have the beginning stages of cataracts. "You have just a little bit of cloudiness, Mr. Williams, nothing you need to deal with now." And then, as if to console me, she told me that everyone gets them as we get older.

Now that made everything better. 'Cloudy', really? Is the next thing that I take a fall and I can't get up? And what about my bowels? Haven't heard from them lately. You know what they say-'No news is not necessarily a good news.'

They then tried to sell me a $400 pair of glasses. Once I took the Cadillac stuff off of it, it was whittled down to about $178.

I can get 3 glasses for $18 at Costco.

But I can't complain. Life is good. Daily struggles, occasional rewards that we are allowed to see and remind us of those things and people we touch that positively impact their lives as we walk through them.

Now, I just need to find my cane.

Faith, Hope, God, and Baileys

2010-12-22T08:30:00.001-08:00

Christmas, it has been said, is a magical time of year. So, why do most of us don’t feel magical? We actually have to force ourselves to think good thoughts, be relaxed, let go of those things that stress us, and not—even for a moment, dwell on that dark, dark place in the back of our brain, where all pain is made free by the simple act of ending our life. Yep, for the happiest time of year, its also one of the darkest for millions.

‘Gee Mark, this is an uplifting blog,’ you start to say. ‘I could get the same great feeling by simply taking a ball peen hammer to the soles of my feet.’

Well, I think for a lot of people, they would prefer the hammer to the feet than the gut-wrenching pain of loneliness, fatigue, sadness, personal failure, abandonment, illness, poverty, or any and all combinations. What can one do to alleviate such hurt?

Buy a bike.

What?

Buy a bike. Isn’t that our answer? Look, when we have an issue, we, the collective we, do something about it. We medicate, exfoliate, generate, or terminate. Yeah, I know, I sound like an O.J. Simpson lawyer, but I couldn't pass it up, plus, it made my point. We go and throw a great big patch on it. We see each other and after the polite hug we ask the standard line—‘So how are you?’

We get the standard response—‘Fine, just fine.’

Bull.

We have internal bleeding and our organs are shutting down, our spouse left us for someone right out of bar tending school, our insurance lapsed, and the power company gave us until this Friday, Christmas Eve, to come up with $300 to bring us current or they will turn off our power. No, we’re ‘fine.’

I have spent hundreds of hours, buying bikes. And although it patched the open sucking chest wound for a short time, eventually, the patch came off and the existing wound is bigger and badder and usually its magnified and spread to other areas. There is no hope, no fix, and no remedy that lasts.

None.

Except, well, one.

You don’t have to read this. You can stop right here. ‘Crap, Mark, I know what you are going to say. You are going to start talking about faith and all that B.S. THAT is what got me here. I hate that—HATE IT!

Yeah, I think if we’ve been wounded by something, we would have a propensity to put it on our naughty list. But here’s the rub. It wasn’t your faith that beat you, it was others interpreting your faith that did. God can’t do those things we’ve accused him of. It is against his nature of being God. Man has been interpreting the words of God for centuries. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell you what it means,’ we’ve been told by our betters. And we assumed that God is so big, so—BIG that there is no way we could approach Him with our crap. He doesn’t want to hear it, just obey and be good or you’re going to Hell. Well, here’s a secret—no your not.

You see, here is the thing about God. Because He is God, he is perfect. Perfect love, perfect dependence, perfect forgiveness. All we have to do is accept that, believe that it was given to us as an individual, alone and separate from everyone else—no group rate, just for me. Accept that there is a God, that he took our place in line, took the terminal illness away from us so we can be in his presence (a perfect God can not be in the presence of imperfection so he makes us perfect) forever.

Wait just a minute, if he makes me perfect then why do I keep screwing up and feel guilty and blah, blah, blah? Ah, that’s the human influence, not God. You see, once you bite the bullet and dare to accept the gift he gives, life as you know it, will never be the same, although you might not feel it right away. That hairy mole on your ear will still be there, the cancer in your colon, will still be there, the spouse leaving you, yep, that too. Life might not get easier, it might actually seem to get harder. So why the hell would you want to sign up for such duty?

Good question.

Imagine, just imagine, the God of the whole friggin Universe, calling you His ‘child.’ What would that feel like? You see, our problems, our issues on this planet, without God’s intervention, would be sooooo much worse. You think its bad or even good now, imagine it without God.

It is the perfect medicine for a terminal disease. Once that decision is made, we now have the choice to screw up. Before, we were going to do it no matter what. Now, over time, we can choose not to do so. ‘Today, instead of having that affair with the receptionist, I choose not too. It’s not my power that did it, but Daddy’s.’

‘Tomorrow, I will not cheat on my taxes when I file. I’ll take the hit.’

‘I have the rent money, instead of betting on the ponies, I’ll pay the rent.’

‘I will love my spouse, even though I want them placed in a wood chipper one limb at a time.’

But when we decide to follow through and act out in our infection, God doesn’t flee or cast us off. He actually moves closer; His arm around us grows tighter. Holding us closer to him.

Every day, you might notice, is a battle, in one arena or another. We are in a gun fight and we keep getting shot at some level. At some level we disappoint even ourselves. God, never—EVER is disappointed in us. Ever. Even when we screw up with the receptionist while at the track right after we use a false name on our taxes. He knew we were going to do it, before the world began. And he stands right there with us while we do it. Thinking about that, the God of the Universe is standing with us while we commit the big sins, loving us through that, that is a game changer. Allow it to happen.

No man needs to interpret god for you. You don’t need anyone to have an on going out loud conversation with the God who made everything. You just need to start talking—in bed, in a closet, while you’re cooking dinner, while walking the aisles of Costco. He is standing there waiting for you to start. He isn’t pushy and can wait for you for, well, ever.

So, I guess whether this time of year is magical or not is really up to us. I have been in this dark box like I described. I know what it feels like. I can still taste it if I close my eyes. But the fact is, my faith is faulty. I will have good days and bad. I will be surrounded and have the absolute feeling of being all alone. The reality is, that Dad is sitting right next to me, right now, sharing my love for coffee and the dogs at my feet. He tells some of the funniest jokes and shares my love for Enya and Toby Keith. He runs next to this child of his while I try to ride without training wheels and catches me as I start to tip over. Yep, that’s my Dad. And all the crap I’ve done and will do until the day I die, He has taken away. He looks at my ‘naughty list’ and there is nothing there—nothing. The bill is paid in full.

Oh, and He loves egg nog with a splash of Baileys. Big smile Daddy gets!!

Crawl up in is lap today. Talk to Him. He LOVES to hear your voice.

Merry Christmas.

Men and their shopping RADAR

2010-12-19T09:26:00.000-08:00

It is the last weekend before Christmas. If you are in this week and haven’t attacked the stores for bountiful Christmas booty, you’re in trouble. Now, here’s the thing, for men, we are in our element. Actually, we could wait a day or two and we would still be fine. You see, the trick to men is we don’t linger—ever.

The next time you’re out shopping, watch the two genders of the species. The woman will graze through the stores, touching every rounder, display, and in the process, almost without knowing it, will manage to avoid each and every Sale sign in the store. If it has one of those, it’s like a deflector shield over whatever it is advertising. ‘Why,’ the woman says, ‘would I want last month’s old stuff when right next to it is the new stuff?’ Sure, you can look at it that way, especially if you’re going to touch each and every garment or gadget in the store. There’s a sustainability issue here. There is only so much time before you need to rehydrate and take nourishment. You need to move if you are going to cover such ground. Maybe that’s why women last longer than a man when they’re stranded in the snow.

A human male is a quick-strike species, especially if you are a father and have kid duty. Watch these guys. They are the epitome of a shopper—rapid deployment, quick strike, no lingering, no prisoners. Fathers shopping are the most efficient shoppers. They move in and out of the stacks of merchandise, avoiding the high gloss mannequins and the glitz of the displays. They are locked in on the sales signs, usually with one child in the stroller, the older one in a backpack carrier, and one diaper in their hip pocket. They can Christmas shop for an entire family of four and their Aunt Millie in Burlington, Vermont in less than two hours. The key is they never stop—ever. If they do, the child in the stroller, who has been lulled into sleep by the gentle movement of the stroller, will wake up crying, then all is lost.

A man shopping, especially this time of year, is not someone you want to necessarily shop with. He moves quickly, head up, eyes focused, using his peripheral vision to take in data from the sides of his forward radar, analyzing anything that he might be missing. You see, he has no idea what to get. There is only a constant scrolling of ads and commercials he has seen on television in which he is using as a guide.

Now, the idea is not always in line with what the receiver really wants, but it’s not about that. His mission is all about conquering the task. He can say he shopped for Christmas with the kids. That alone, earns him a Bronze Star with an oak leaf cluster. The underlining knowledge is it can always be taken back. You see, men know something about women. Sure, not a lot and what we do know is ever right, but the one thing we do know is women have a gene that requires them to love-LOVE shopping, especially when its free. And a gift given that is wrong, is like getting free money or a gift card to a woman, which, by the way, is the perfect gift for any man. Remember the equation, gift card=perfection.

So ladies, if your man, husband, significant other, or dad hasn’t shopped yet, don’t worry. He has a plan. You see, the closer to Christmas he is before he starts shopping, the thinner the stock on the shelves gets. Those things left are now easier to see. It’s like when the Forest Service goes in and thins trees in a forest. All of a sudden, you can see! Items are now easier to spot. Why wouldn’t his woman want the melon-ball er that doubles as a tire pressure gauge? EVERYONE wants one of those! You just got to decide if you keep it in your kitchen or glove compartment of your Kia. Just kiss him on the cheek ladies and smile at the thought he put into it.

Besides, it will help with that cashmere sweater purchase you had your eyes on.

New Scientific Discovery! Well, sort of

2010-12-11T08:08:00.001-08:00

Sleep is a magical time for me, especially this time of year when everyone gets all reflective and personal about their lives, where they’ve been and where they are going.

If you have a bad night’s sleep, your day is shot. Not only that, you make sure everyone else’s day is a piece of crap as well. “Geez, what a night,” you start in with, at the morning coffee stand.

“What happened?” some poor unsuspecting bastard says, not knowing he just walked into the perfect storm.

“Well, let me tell you….” The procession begins.

I have researched sleep, its components, nuances, flavors, and quirks. Over the years, I have been able to create perfection. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, perfection. I call the summation of my discoveries, the Perfect Sleeping Position or PSP.

When you’re young, you can sleep anywhere. Currently, my young son is sleeping in a country that doesn’t believe in shoes or owns a tree. But as you get older, sleep and the comfort of the sanctuary of the bed becomes paramount and if it was a god, temple lights would be lit to it.

It requires pillows—lots of them. Here’s the thing, when you sleep, your body collapses on itself. If you’re a belly sleeper, your body settles and actually bends backwards, hence the reason you wake up with a backache. A simple pillow under your stomach keeps this from happening. If you’re a side sleeper, your shoulders try to meet somewhere in the center of your chest. Through years of devoted research, I have perfected and eliminated these nocturnal issues!

Three pillows, piled one on top of the other, held in your arms as you lay on your side, keep your arms from collapsing. The fourth is under your head. The bottom of the three you are holding, is staggered down just far enough to rest between your legs, keeping your knees from hitting each other, but still providing volume to keep your shoulders properly distanced. If you’re short, two might work.

One of the great side benefits to this new program is the reduction of hourly trips to the bathroom, at least for men. You sleep right through it! You no longer wake up like an old cripple. Well, yeah, sure, you still do, but not so much like a ninety-year-old, maybe just a seventy year old.

Listen, most of you don’t care about this. I know that. Bed time for you is just the end of the day to get you ready for the next day, but for a few of us, a quiet few, bed time is just short of a religion. It has replaced the Holy of Holies since the curtain was torn and we approach it with beautiful trumpets blaring, announcing our arrival. We curl up with our cool pillows and our cool sheets, folding them back over the comforter ever so neatly, our own body heat bringing the temperature up to just the right comfort level while we peel back the pages of a good book until our eyes cross. Then, implementing the PSP, we roll over and tumble off into the Never Land of good dreams of flowers and pony rides.

Enjoy

The Third Wave on the Beach!!

2010-11-26T13:09:00.000-08:00

Just got back from the annual witnessing of the great Free-Enterprise system. It's like one of those rare cactus flowers that only blooms one night in its life at about four in the morning and by dawn, its dead.

Now, don't look at us like that. We aren't so pushed to sit in line to save six dollars on a 50 inch big screen. Our mission formed about three years ago when we first went out. Now, we just want to see the phenomena.

The first desert flower we went to was Target. They have a different crowd. They stood in line, reading books and discussing Dostoevsky, all in a British accent. We got in line, followed the calm, well-mannered pack into the store and the women went one direction and I went the other way, towards the coffee. I found a quiet section next to the lettuce and was amazed that the store, at least from that perspective, was empty. I did buy some Christmas lights, which, according to my teammates was a lame purchase. They were purple. Sure, the house will look like a brothel but I like the color.

After Target, we moved to Walmart. And life changed its tune.

Now, my firm belief is that this store is the epitome of the American way of life. Its really not, and frankly, its scary, but the vortex of the enterprise system can be found in the center aisle in the center of the store. No discussions about Russian writers here. Nope, this is not a place for the weak of stomach or heart. Lines were formed INSIDE the store. If you wanted the big screen TV, you found yourself in line in the cereal aisle. If you looked around and found yourself standing next to the avocados, you had no chance of getting one of the six-hundred TV's being sold. You'd have a better chance with the portable TV player the size of your wallet. No line for that one. It was right next to the women's jammies. There was even a line for coffee at the McDonalds in the store.

It was hard to find a wall that I could put my back too. Yes, there was a desire to put my back against a wall or any solid object. You see, there were people there you don't routinely see during daylight hours. There was also a lot of illegal use of spandex at this store. Tensile strength of fabrics and buttons were being tested as well. There were people who you could tell, didn't have enough money to buy soup, and yet had two big screens in their cart. Somehow, in their minds, they had a plan to money-enough to top off their Thunderbird wine collection.

By the time we stepped outside, the sun was starting to peak over the horizon. The edge of the early morning was starting to fade the bloom. Pallets of purchased goods were finding their way to their new homes and our team was now heading for breakfast. Done for another year of observing what America is uniquely known for.

I love this country! I really do. First of all, most countries, when you go shopping, don't have floors, so we have that going for us. Secondly, where else can we observe, actually participate in some of the most flagrant violations of self-image without anyone really caring? In some countries, they arrest you and after you've aged for a few months in prison, they take you out and make a fine chili out your butt. Not here. People just watch you walk by and compare your stuff with what's in their possession and then are easily distracted about when the last time they took their meds were.

So, maybe next year, I'll sleep in. Then again, I might get up to see the flower bloom-one more time.

Thank you

2010-11-24T07:42:00.001-08:00

So, Thanksgiving. Every year I tell my students to write a letter to someone and tell them you are thankful for them-tell them why you’re thankful for them. For some of the students, it is the start of a huge healing process. For others, it’s the hardest thing they’ve ever done. The students need to say it to those that impact them. The people need to hear it. Well, I guess that applies to the old man.

What am I thankful for? There is the list of standard answers, health, job, family, God, all of those work. But this year, for whatever reason, it cuts close to the bone.

I am grateful for my daughter, Jeannette, and her husband Matt, for standing firm in their love and commitment to each other and to model that image to their two kids. That is a rare thing, the model they provide. Matt sees a lot in his job that could turn him hard, but he is a Pooh Bear around his kids and a gentle soul to his wife. Good form.

I am grateful to my daughter, Jessica, and her husband Matthew, for standing firm in the faith. They are also committed to reaching out to others and pulling them into their world of safety and love. Both are careful with their love and they spend it on others, caring and listening to wounding and providing a home that is safe and loving.

I am grateful to my son Travis, and his new bride, Tara. They haven’t had a chance to follow the traditions of a marriage just starting out. Their love is truly a test of fire, with Travis in a world of darkness and evil. Yet he stands, sometimes held up only by his Father, but he is still standing, taking care of his team and somehow—somehow, reaching back a half world to his wife, stroking her face with his words of love and commitment. She, in turn, affirms him, causing his back to straighten and to make it, one more day—back into the breach.

I am grateful to my wife, Joni, who has committed herself to loving me for decades—DECADES. Not a lot of marriages can say that word when it relates to their marriages. It has been not without struggles, down and dirty struggles, but now at the apex of our lives, we can see the product of grace. It is because of her that I can see it.

Sometimes, we need to look pretty hard to see what we have. Sometimes, we need to work at looking. It’s hard—miserably hard, sometimes. But it’s there. The beauty of the life we have, it’s there. Sometimes, we just need to take a breath and relax for a moment. I hope you can find moments of peace this Thanksgiving. I hope you can find someone to say ‘thanks’ to. Tell them. Grab them by the shoulders if you have to and tell them they have impacted your life and that you love them. That word, love, isn’t used enough outside of TV shows and bar talk. In the real world, Love is a sacrifice word. When you love someone, you’re willing to say you stand with that person in the fires of Hell. Yep, it’s that big. So, if you have seen it demonstrated to you, thank the giver.

It cost them dearly.

Thanksgiving and the Shopping Quandry

2010-11-21T06:45:00.000-08:00

Guess what time of year it is? Unless you've been in a coma; a victim of a kidnapping, rolled up in carpet and locked up in a steel storage shed; or less than five other things to keep you from reality, you know its time to be gearing up for Aunt Martha's, just outside Cincinnati, to see the cousins and your mom and dad along with that pesky Tommy Chulansky who grew up with you and your sister and brother and eventually convinced your sister that his career as a telephone service sales representative for a magazine company, was a good enough foundation to start a marriage. Yeah, he'll be there in his leisure suit and pawing your sister and telling her how beautiful she is after five kids. Oh, crap, that's right--THE FIVE KIDS WILL BE THERE TOO!

But there is a greater concern this time of year, a more important focus we need to look at, shopping. That's right, groceries or gifts, it doesn't make any difference. Let me ask a few pertinent questions and see if you agree. Today, its the food we will objectively look at.

First, I was restocking the shelves, walking the aisle of my favorite warehouse store, when I came across the cheese section. I love cheese. I can eat cheese until I bind up like a longshoreman on a D-2 CAT forklift, but do I want a cheese that is advertised as ruggedly matured? What is a cheese that is labeled as that? One that had a hard childhood? Does it wear flannel shirts and carry an axe when the store is closed? What does that mean? So, I bought it. Hey, I needed cheese and I figured a cheese that's been working out is better than a cheese that's been sitting on the couch.

What about anything labeled earthy? Do I really want to slather butter on something that will taste like the mulch in my rose garden? There are breads out there labeled earth grain-as opposed to Moon grain or grains of Mars.

How about a full-bodied wine? Usually this happens to reds, Merlot, Cabernet, not the whites. I guess the reds live in a more ruggedly matured neighborhood and there are more amputee-type grapes. I think that's sad that you can't use a handicapped grape, or one that is physically challenged,to be more politically correct. I think the Feds should look into this for discrimination against handicapped grapes! The fact is, I wouldn't walk away from a half-bodied, or quarter-impaired wine if the price was right. Mix in a little 7-Up and we are good to go. This is a big issue with my favorite, scotch.

Scotch comes from all over Scotland. Some places, the water they use, comes from areas heavy in peat. Drinking that scotch is like licking the ashes of a campfire WHILE the fire is still lit. If you had a low testosterone level before, you will have a full beard by the time you're done with one glass.

I was forced to watch one of those home channels the other night. I was forced because it was on and I was too tired to change the channel. The home decorator was reworking some poor couples spare bedroom. It looked like all our bedrooms-packed floor to ceiling with crap. This decorator starting throwing around the word organic. He was referring at the time to the chrome lamp. Now, its been a while since high school chemistry, but I do remember that for something to be organic, that something had to have a carbon atom in it. Chrome doesn't have a carbon atom. It has chrome atoms. I think he was trying to refer to something ruggedly mature or full-bodied.

Who the hell knows.

All I know is that bird at the top of this article is one of the ugliest animals on this planet and needs killing. It needs to be on sale at 29 cents at Fry's and enough to feed a gaggle of people at my daughter's house within the fifteen minutes it takes a group to eat a meal that took two days to fix.

I'll bring the peaty stuff. There, quandry over.

Rocket Men--er and Rocket Women!!

2010-11-07T07:13:00.000-08:00

I went to my thirty-fourth year reunion last night. I posted a blog yesterday about going. Well, I went and I have to say, I was surprised. It was really good, lots of old people, some who looked like they hadn’t aged at all, and many in various stages of life that ran the spectrum. The food was good, conversations, atmosphere; all of it went really well. I think the high point for me was that Elton John showed up.

Elton John.

No, not the real one. This one was better. He had brought a huge victory story with him.

At this reunion, there was a band. I think it was a compilation of former student musicians. They played as the hired band and they were really good. Later in the evening, the piano player came out-dressed like Elton John. For the next forty-five minutes he played and sang like Elton John too. Amazing. I sat there with my smuggled-in scotch (all they had was that blended crap) and sipped and listened. What was even more amazing and what added a taste of sweet victory to this story is this former student, piano player fellow had a stroke two years ago.

He had lost everything, including, I was told, his memory.

Now he was mimicking one of the premier piano players in the history of piano playing. And he made people smile.

This reunion was probably are watershed moment for those in attendance. Running this reunion for a ten year graduation span was a good idea, lots of people came, but it was also an indicator. A reunion in another ten or even five years, will find less and less people. Strokes, illness, distance, will begin to seriously take its toll.

But for a few minutes last night, we were hopping fences and feeling the touch of youth again. For a few minutes, we were all Rocket Men.

Heading into Life's Turn

2010-11-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

Well today, actually, late this afternoon, I'm going to my high school reunion. It isn't a particular number, well, I guess it is. Let's see, I graduated in 1976 and its 2010 now, one plus one carry the four- it will be my thirty-fourth reunion. It's not the crystal or gold of reunion celebrations. It's a convenience.

I came from a large school. We had 2300 kids on our school and we graduated well over 400 in 1976. Our first reunion, five years in, we had about 200, not bad. But its been down hill ever since. The last eight reunions (seems like eight) we've been teaming up with other years, just so we can get a good group rate on the chicken breast or Fiesta Platters. This year, we are having a decade reunion. Anyone who went to West High (now its called Metro Tech) in Phoenix in the 70's can come tonight. Out of about 4400 graduating students, I think 200 signed up.

Not bad.

Which means, based on traditional math usage-one plus one, carry the two divide--I should know 2 people. I think its important that I go. Not necessarily to see everyone. I haven't been in contact with that group except on rare-distant occasions where we've maybe ran into each other in prison or something. Nope, I think I need to go because the reunions after this one, and yes, I am sure we will have at least a dozen more, will really get interesting. You see, from now until the end of the race, we are going to start losing chunks of the original herd to old age, disease, bus accidents, etc.

"Did ya hear about Pete?"
"No, what happened?"
"Hit by a train!"
"A train?"
"Yup, in his sleep! Jis lying there mindin' his own and WHAM, train dun run him clean over. Left nothin' but a stain."

We'll gather, talk about kids, grand kids, divorces, deaths, molds that look like they should have been removed a year ago, food allergies, heart meds. Heck, I can hold my own in that field.

Now if I can just remember where I left my car keys.

A moment to say 'Thanks'

2010-10-31T07:53:00.000-07:00

Sometime tomorrow, I don't know when, the next book, our second book, Holy Ground, will be born. What started years ago as a way to memorialize my grandfather's stories we all had to listen to, over, and over, and over again, writing them down so we could read about him, morphed into, well, this.

I hope you like it.

No, Mark, you really hope we hate it. What person would create something so the viewer or reader would hate what they created? Good point. No, I say that because this is a story about a lot of us. Us with issues.

Stand in line.

When I first drafted this story, it was funnier. I had some ghosts and, well, it was just funnier. But only to me and a select handful who helped me create those characters over some well worn single-malt scotch. Everything is funnier over scotch, especially well worn scotch.

Then my editors read it and they all slapped me like I was stealing candy. So, I listened to them. That's what Stephen King said you are suppose to do, listen to your editors. Especially if you're paying them to be listened to. I thought they were wrong. But when the three of them came to the same conclusion. Look, I can be stubborn, but I'm not totally stupid. They saw something that I didn't want to. So the book took a turn.

Now, you can see the story for what it is, not what it was trying to be.

I hope you like it because of all the insecure reasons anyone hopes people like what they do. Like a party. You go to a friend's party and they have some wonderful food. But on the way home, you are happy to point out that they used Chick'n-in-a-bisk't crackers as the foundation for their Cheese Whiz and salami. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

No, I want you to like it because I want to enjoy this feeling of being absolutely humbled, brought to my knees humbled, that I have been allowed to go this far. Sure, it costs some greenbacks on my part, but there is something you all have caused and I want to share it with you. You see, you helped create this baby. It's ours. I believe everyone we meet, effects our lives, changes our path, sometimes in big ways, sometimes just a degree or two at a time. Most of the time-at that moment of contact, it is insignificant to us. We don't even feel it until later. Then, it has had time to build and grow, until we find ourselves on a grassy knoll with our own box of thoughts and issues. Then, in the sunlight and never alone, we look back over time.

So take a look at the cover. It's a neighborhood bar like a thousand others, but its a safe place, at least it was for our main character and a few others. It is a warm and inviting place, with fresh pastas, ice-cold beer, fresh made breads, and a French onion soup made with Guinness beer that you want to try to figure out how to bathe in-its that good. You can sit and have a conversation or just sit. Our hero likes to sit right there at the corner where the bar turns. He can watch the TV to his upper right. His favorite program comes on late and the bar owner flips it off of ESPN just for his friend. A small two-piece band, the Catfish Hunters, is playing for a few who venture out on the floor, another pair are playing some pool. The smell of whiskey in oak casks and fresh bread fill the air. You find yourself just sitting back in your chair, not speaking. You can actually feel your pulse slow, your blood pressure drop.

Yeah, I don't want to stop doing this.

Enjoy the ride.

And so, it begins again.

2010-10-20T15:32:00.000-07:00

So, there's another book. Sorry, I can't stop. Holy Ground follows the life of Cooper Gardner, a man living a life like many of us. It will become available on November 1st. A friend of mine has graced this book with its Foreword. When you ask about the book, I think this describes it the best. Enjoy.

Foreword
___________________________

Mark Williams writes his heroes the way God probably sees us. We find them stumbling around in their own personal battles: grizzled, failed, weary, tough and cynical. They have a great heart, but it’s had the life nearly kicked out it by failure, pain or rejection. They drink too much scotch and employ language usually reserved for dockworkers and pirates. But near their lowest, they find themselves inexorably drawn into a life altering, life revealing chain of events. From somewhere within, they discover themselves responding with bravery they didn’t know they possessed. I think that’s how God probably sees us all: messed up and full of compromised sludge, without the slightest awareness that our moment to shine is waiting, just around the corner.

His hero is usually encouraged and reminded of his purpose by a partially-sane vagrant, or some such sketchy character. In speaking wisdom through them, his books give strange and wonderful dignity to the forgotten, misplaced, rumpled and ignored.

Smack dab in the middle of the most dangerous scenes is where you discover some of the best humor. And oh, there is humor! There are one-liners in here worth admission to an overpriced Vegas buffet!

Toss in his ability to seat you in a neighborhood bar-where undercover cops swap war stories…or an evacuated office where you learn horribly close-up how trigger pins detonate explosives-and you’ve got a page-turner like few others.

Mark has this great ability to show the invisible thread woven throughout each of our lives-giving meaning to every moment; especially the ones that presently make no sense.
He has become a writer worthy to stand with the “big boys of fiction.” He tells a story you don’t want to end. I think it’s because you’re not reading a rehashed plot a ghost writer has reworked for an author who has run out of good ideas. Mark’s letting us into how he sees life. He somehow convinces us that this life, in all its pain and ugliness, is still worth hanging around for. Because that moment is coming…where all the unraveled threads form a tapestry…where the good guy’s unseen courage gets displayed…where you finally see that your day to day life actually counts…where the garbled mess of real life turns on a dime, just when you’d feared it was all a random hoax. And he hands this gift to all of us who read along with him. You’re in for a wild and delightfully redeeming ride. Enjoy the pie!

John Lynch
co-author
True Faced and Bo’s Cafe

Nothing Important-or is it?

2010-10-03T06:44:00.000-07:00

I haven't been writing my blog as much lately. For some of you, that's probably a good thing, well, deal with it. I've been busy doing other writing and just dealing with the mundaneness of life, if the word mundaneness is actually a word, which today, it is. At my age, still feeling young at this point, which is closer to the end than the beginning, I can look back and actually have an opinion that is worth something because I have walked the road. At least this much of it.

There is the bulk of our lives that are just, well, mundane; at least we think they're mundane. Its just life, refilling the toilet paper roll when there is three or four squares left on the end of the roll no one wants to try to use, that makes up the vast majority of our time on this rock. If you think about it, really analyze it, anyone can be a hero-really. What glory there is to strap a supersonic airplane to your butt and throw yourself off the front end of a moving ship, or run into a burning house and pull a small baby out of its smoldering crib, or my favorite-'keying' a door to a house with a forty-pound ram on a search warrant. Really, who wouldn't want to do that? Everyone wants to do that!

No one, absolutely no one, wants to refill the toilet paper roll.

Holy Ground, my next book after Emancipating Elias is coming out in a few more days. I was telling a friend I was having coffee with yesterday that writing to me is like heroin-the good kind of course. The type you can apparently now buy in California at their CVS pharmacies. After Holy Ground I am finishing up Looking for Indianola. Its a story of just this issue-the mundaneness of living. Life is not filled with fighting fires or the eighty yard touch down drive. Its filled with vasts amounts of time of what we could perceive as 'Boredom.'

We try to fill and remove our boring times with carrier launches and search warrants. We buy a car, we take a trip to the woods, we paint a room, something that is safe yet, whimsical. Now, don't sit there and say, 'Mark, you are just against change.' Because, you would be right. That is an Achilles issue I have had for a long time. You don't need a new couch or drapes if they are still working as a couch and a drape, do you?

The last few days, and writing this new book, is proving very interesting for me. I've gotten to focus on this topic and compare it to my life. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, until its your grass and you have to mow it. Ask any fighter pilot and they will tell you they love to fly. If you ask them what the worst part of their job is, they would say the three hour pre-flight and two hour post-flight de-briefings. Cops, cops love search warrants. They hate the eight to ten hours of paperwork afterwards.

Last night was an example. Everyone was over for Joni's birthday. She just wanted to be surrounded with her kids and grand kids-plural-jeez, it still stuns me that I am a multi-grandfather. Anyway, it was pizza and wings and toys on the wooden floor, and noise, and dogs, and TV on mute (why have a TV with a 'mute' button?-seems wrong). Then Spencer had one of those Latoya Jackson wardrobe malfunctions and blew threw his diaper like a shotgun blast at a watermelon, all over his mother, his father-my couch. People were laughing, screaming, running for towels. I just sat back, as a true grandfather would, and in all my wisdom of such things over the years called out in a calm, yet firm tone "Get the spray-someone spray the couch. Get the spray." Whatever that meant.

Actually, from a grandfather and a man's perspective, I was kind of proud of my little grandson. THAT, was an impressive feat. Most men would think so too.

I have also been working with my one son in law with his back yard sprinkler system. My other son in law, I helped lay sod when they moved in and so now is was plumbing. Of course, we waited until the hottest time of the year. Hey, if you're going to do something challenging, you might as well risk your life doing it. Also, on the last day of September, my oldest brother reported he turned the big sixty-five. This is a guy, who could and still can run us all into the ground. Lastly, my little boy sent me his first e-mail since going back to the Middle-east as an 'Advisor.' We talked about the Iraqi food and how he has Spencer issues for about a week.

Yep, the mundaneness of life.

What does it take to stay in the fight? To stay and deal with those things that come up and wash over our lives every day. I am not going to sit here and say it takes hero status to do so. That term gets misused enough. But it does take us sometimes stopping and looking around to truly appreciate what life is giving us at this particular moment. Sometimes the dancing Santa's and the Burger King commercials mask what is truly there for us to enjoy. A walk around the block, early morning coffee before the world is awake, a nap, a good book, trimming a hedge, window shopping with no intent in buying anything, anything that makes up our lives that have been given and laid out for us to look at and find humor or comfort in. Right now, as I write this to you, I have one dog asleep on the far side of the room under a desk and the other laying on my foot, sound asleep with her breath hitting my ankle. I am trying desperately not to move my foot so as to not wake her-my dog. Jeez.

The mundane, Old man Kopchek says in Looking for Indianola "You were feeling nostalgic about the good old days, or bad old days, whatever they were when you were a tike on a trike and wanted to reclaim that feeling? We could search forever for that feeling when all we have to do is open our eyes and look around.

Or we could go in and clean a toilet and change the roll. Try it. See if the next time you do it, it doesn't bring a smile to your face. I'm going to see if I can actually use those last four squares. Three cups of coffee will do that to this middle-aged man.

What's on tap for today?

2010-09-19T11:05:00.000-07:00

Here's just a quick update on the wild things happening here in the Williams campground and cigar emporium.

We are fast approaching my favorite time of year. We are still in mid-September, but Christmas will be here in a week and a half. No kidding. Costco has had their decorations up since August beaten only by Walgreens, which had theirs available since July. I like this time of year because, yeah, yeah, yeah, the holidays. No, they bring stress and poor judgement. I'm talking about the weather changing.

It is mid-September and today its going to be 108. Yep, that's what I said. I was talking to my boy on Facebook today. He is in the beautiful Middle East and he didn't think they were going to be that hot. The nights cool though. That's a good thing. You hate going to bed and waking up hours later and its hotter before dawn than most countries have for a high for the year.

Teaching is still teaching. Kids in school come in all shapes and sizes. Their problems float between acne and being deported, parent (most only have one) dying or going to prison, and what they don't have to eat.

The politics this time of year is great!! You have two candidates saying, in many cases, the exact opposite. Sooommmmeeeeeboddddy's lying!!!

We have three grand kids now. That makes me a true Grandfather. Now, don't get me wrong. You can be a grandfather with one grandchild. You're official. But, your not a Big Kahuna Grandfather, with a capital G, until you have at least 2. That way, no one can say the first one was just and accident.

Maybe a nap is in order today? I need to sleep on that.

Oh, need to check the transmission fluid in the truck. I think its leaking. Maybe need to add some.

When was the last time you had fried chicken? Doesn't that sound good-with homemade mashed potatoes. Yum.

Okay, look. There isn't much time left in today. In a while, I will need to start getting ready for work for tomorrow, laying out clothes, packing my lunch. Crap. BUT, I do have a job, my family is healthy and so far, Travis hasn't had to shoot anyone. So, I guess this is a banner day. We will take what we can get.

Now, what chair do I want that nap in??

Whoa Nellie!

2010-09-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

We spent the night with some dear friends up at their home on the western end of Flagstaff this Labor Day weekend. Nice house, modern; not a 'cabin' one would think of for the woods. It had everything you wanted in a weekend respite.

The four of us walked around the downtown area, the two men following the women in front of us. I could feel my blood pressure drop, kicking my brain into neutral and allowing the coolish air to remind me that living in a convection oven most of the year was an anomaly and most places, just a few hours away, were not like that.

Then, I heard it. The train.

Every day, several times a day, trains pass through downtown Flagstaff on their way back and forth across the nation. And I mean BIG trains, lots of cars, carrying Aunt Millie's refrigerator and your sister-in-law's new car. They blew through town like they were on their way to a chrysanthemum convention in Long Beach.

It was funny, I love that sound-the sound of that huge piece of machinery running through town. You never heard a whistle; you didn't need to. The rumbling of it was enough to tell anyone to get the hell out of the way. Where ever you were in Flagstaff, you could tell a train was coming. Eventually, you stop hearing it. Oh, but at night, I found that was the sweetest time.

Just before I started my coma cycle, I got into bed with my book. This is my favorite time of day. Cool sheets, comfortable pillow, a book with a nice story, ahhhhh, I'm there now! But at this home, you could open the windows. Now, for those of you getting this who do not live in Phoenix, let me explain something. You don't open your windows in Phoenix in the summer time which, of course, goes from March to October. You definitely don't open them in July or August or the shoulder weeks on either side. You will wake up dead from dehydration. Someone will come into your room in the morning and there you are, looking like a dried piece of apple. So, opening the windows and letting fresh, cool, mountain air in was like the foyer to heaven. That, and my bookie time, I was two steps away from Nirvana.

After about three minutes of solid reading, my eyes crossed and I turned out the light, getting into my PSP (Perfect Sleeping Position-years of research have helped me find and patent this).

In about two minutes I was on my way to Never Never Land. Then I heard it.

The 10:05 from Muncey to LA was passing through town.

It started off a subtle rumble and it grew. I found myself loving it. Like thunder, I love the sounds outside. Wind, rain, thunder, locomotives, all of it massaged my brain. I pictured, oh so briefly, the engineer in the front engine looking out the window into the darkness that made up the woodlands of northern Arizona. He would be making sure that all the lights were green, showing he was clear ahead, knowing that if anything was in the way, there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it. So, he opened the throttle a little more, once he cleared the heart of the town. Five hours later, I awoke to the edge of consciousness to hear another train, then drifted off again, a smile on my face.

Funny how things affect us. Some people would no more be able to sleep than I could stay awake to that sound. I think today, I'm going shopping. Need to price one of those train sets that circled the base of my Christmas tree when I was a kid. Maybe an engineer's hat as well.

"Send me..."

2010-08-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

An interesting conversation with two Iraqi boys occured in my class today. They saw a picture of my son, father, and grandfather in my room. My father’s picture was of him in WWII, my grandfather in both World Wars, and my son in Iraq. “Mister, is that your son?” one asked. I told him it was. He then asked if that picture was taken in Iraq. It was either Iraq or just before when he was in Kuwait, it has the epic image of moonscape. It opened up the conversation about likes and dislikes.

One boy clearly didn’t want to talk about it. I think he had been asked the questions before and was tired of answering them. The other boy was wide open. The boy who didn’t want to talk said he liked Saddam. “He kept the lights on.” The other boy, he clearly hated him and said so. Saddam and his people tried to arrest his uncle for being friends with someone Saddam hated and had killed along with anyone who knew him. Both said they miss the part of their families who were still there. Neither wanted to go back. Both said things are worse there now because at least when Saddam was in power, the power was on. The boy who didn’t want to talk just said “You would be fine if you just kept quiet about the government. Don’t talk or comment about them and you should be fine.” Both were amazed about the fact they could even have this conversation without fear-limited fear- that I might report them to some hidden government agency about what we were talking about. Old habits die hard.

Imagine a life where fear was a part of your daily life. Not the fear of being blown up by some bomber but a fear that is secret. It creeps out at night and snatches your uncle, your cousin, your brother, never to be seen again. You don’t even know who took them or if they had fallen ill on the side of some road in the middle of that flat country my little boy was photographed in front of. “Just don’t say anything, and you can keep the lights on.”

So, today, as I write this, my little boy is leading a small team back into the throat of the Dragon for a second time. In the undisclosed location that will be his duty station, somewhere between Saudi Arabia and the Himalayas, he will try to teach a new mind set. “Freedom” without limits, “Freedom” without reprisal, “Freedom” without fear. A concept we lose sight of while standing in the checkout line with a grocery cart full of food, getting upset because it is taking way over five minutes for the person in front of us to ring up their coupons. We have, forgotten the cost. Yes, the cost. “Freedom” is never-ever free. But, by the love of a power beyond our imagination, we have been supplied with hearts, owned by some who said a simple line, quoted by a simple man named Isaiah a long long time ago.

Send me, Lord. Send me.

With a wink and a nod, a kiss for his new wife, loving mother, and sisters and brothers-in-laws, a hug and one long look into the eyes of his father, a little boy turned and climbed up the stairs to a waiting plane. “Once again, into the breach.”

Nope, we’ll never know the cost to keeping the lights on.

Rain in Phoenix? You've got to be kidding!

2010-08-07T05:48:00.000-07:00

It's 4:30 in the morning here and its raining. Actually, its 4:37 in the morning-thanks to the new digital clock I got for the new side table that is so bright, one can see it from space. Its raining AND thundering with bright flashes of lightening or as we call it in this house 'Mr. Lightening.' A carry over from when the kids were, well, kids. I'm up writing about it because I am living in a city that breaks in on their television programing to alert the people to the fact that the stuff falling from the sky is, in fact, rain.

Its a good one too. Washed out the curbs and filled the street from sidewalk to sidewalk. On days like this when I was a kid, I would take my carrier fleet of 2x4's with smaller chunks nailed with 8 penny nails to its deck simulating radar and comm antennas and float them down the street. Mom would give up telling me something I already knew, that my black high-top Converse All Stars were soaking wet. They were suppose to get wet. You can't launch a carrier without getting into the bay-Geez mom!

I got up and turned the coffee on and took the girls outside. Betty, of course, was halfway across the street, oblivious to the water. Mindy, on the other hand, didn't want to get her feet any wetter than she had to. She stood under the eaves and watched her adopted companion. I wanted to rip my clothes off and run naked (wearing proper foot wear of course) down the street while holding my coffee cup yelling for everyone to get up and come outside and enjoy what I was enjoying. I didn't. The sun was starting to produce enough light where I could be recognized.

Funny thing about rain. It is a mood enhancer. You can go either way with that. If you live on the Olympic Peninsula, rain could cause depression because you get so much of it. Here in Phoenix its the opposite. It causes people to do things they wouldn't normally do. Like-

Go to morning mass. The real early one.

Go to Pottery Barn and buy some wind charms.

Think about eating healthier-including the idea of more tofu in their diet.

Not dwell on, at least for today, about the neighbor's cat using your feng shui garden in your back yard as a toilet.

Think about putting in a feng-shui garden.

Looking up in Wikipedia what the hell a feng-shui garden is.

Nope, rain in Arizona is like a drug to us here. As I sit here and look out the window, everything seems to be in its place. The world's problems, for just one brief moment in time, all seem to be at peace. In a little while, we will be back into the fray, but for right now, right this very moment, well, lets just say that this old man thinks he can get to the end of the street and back without anyone seeing me with my 2x4 and a half dozen nails.

Big Obituary or a Small One?

2010-07-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

I was thumbing through the paper this morning. Yes, I still get the paper. I like reading it in the quiet early morning. The smell of the newsprint on my hands, the feel of the dirt from the wrapper as the newspaper man slid it across the oil spots on my driveway. It leaves a little black stain on your fingers that you inadvertently transfer to your new white dress shirt. Anyway, after the comics, crossword puzzle, and I have my 'private time,' I come back out and finish the rest of my reading, I always turn past the obituaries. Now, I have noticed that they are getting to be big. Like a quarter page big. With a big picture and little emblems to show the dead guy's memberships in things like the Elks and being a Shriner Clown. Then I look at the others, the common man obits that are from, well, the common man. Or maybe the family just didn't have the money for the bigger one. I had to ask myself-would I 'wear that'? Would I want a big, quarter page, short story about me being dead and what my life was, what I did, or who was still left in my family after I 'crossed the bar'?

Nope, don't think so. I think I want to go out with no notice at all, just to make people wonder 'Hey, have you seen Williams? I haven't heard from him in three years. Maybe I'll give him a call.' You start thinking of this crap as you get older. I swore I would not live live past 40 when I was 40. Now, I'm 52 and stuff is getting more and more real. Physicals actually have stuff showing up. I can't remember when my knees didn't hurt or I wasn't so tired as I was approaching Coma Level at 8:30 at night, and the greatest marker-I'm listening to NPR instead of music-and liking it!

So, to wander through this life and have a big-booty article written about myself, that might be nice. I don't think I could say enough to fill a quarter page though. I know, maybe I could attach a coupon for a 'buy one-get one' somewhere. That would be cool. Pre-pay like $1000 to a neighborhood bar or drive through and the first bunch of people to eat up the $1000 win. Why can't you do that? Why hasn't anyone thought of that before? At least then I would be remembered? Not that's is the most important thing. Frankly, three or four generations down, your siblings will say 'Mark who'?

I left instructions in my will (you have to have a will when you pass a certain age; its required) to 'dispose of my remains the cheapest way possible.' I don't want to be buried so people can come 'visit me.' That, frankly, is kind of gross. Think about it. If you have any religious background, you aren't there. If not, you are a pile of ashes or a plot of ground with a piece of granite on top. Can't you get the same effect by going in your backyard and sitting quietly in front of the begonias?

Maybe a nice coupon for chocolate shake somewhere? Chocolate always makes people happy. Plus, its free! Now, that would be worth remembering.

Summer in Phoenix-you've got to be kidding!!

2010-07-20T20:09:00.000-07:00

Is there a reason we few, we happy few, live in Phoenix, better known as Dante's Fifth Level of Hell, during the summer? Huh?

We Phoenicians cheat and go to places like San Diego or Los Angeles, anywhere close to the ocean for a week or two during the summer. However, the vast majority of us are here for the greater part of the summer, moving the hose from one location of our dried-out lawn to another and scalding our collective mouths on water that is hot enough to boil an egg emanating from the 'Cold' water tap.

I remember my mom talking about moving to Phoenix after she met and married my dad. She met him while she was employed at the Alameda Naval Air Station in San Fransisco while he and his squadron were stationed there just after the Big One. She moved, like a dutiful wife, following her husband to where he was born, on the banks of the flowing Salt River in the middle of a wide beautiful valley-in the late fall, early winter. Warm, yet cool, and full of sun, unlike her hometown which had a little reputation for fog and cool-always. Then winter rolled to spring, which lasted about two days waking her to the start of an Central Arizona summer; introducing her to the hell to come. Oh, by the way, there was no such thing as 'air-conditioning' in homes then. That was reserved only for large department stores like Hanny's which would advertise their store with a sign which simply read 'air-cooled.' Evaporative coolers were in full effect and actually worked until late June when Dante's demons rolled in to town on vacation and invoked charms and chants and burnt incense raising their brethren demons of the underworld to come lay out in this god-forsaken heat.

Every year-I swear it gets worse. Although I don't think its the weather as much as my sorry ass is just getting older. Now, I think mom cried every night during the summer time. I know I would have. I never saw her do so, but she was 35 by the time she had me. By the time I was 7, mom and dad were frankly just tired. She probably got tired of weeping uncontrollably after years of repressed despair. I never saw her cry about missing the beautiful weather of the bay, cool breezes, fog, dark days, no sun, and the smell of stale ocean water. To a Phoenician, a 'true' Phoenician defined as one who was born/stranded/abandoned/left for dead here, maybe has a generation or two or, in my case, five generations worth of idiots who never took the train out, the smell of stale ocean and endless cloudy, cool days this time of year is like offering crack to any of the people living under the Seventh Avenue Bridge. I am salivating just sitting here thinking about it!

The idea of getting up in the morning in a place, such as the one my mother left, and doing something such as going out for your morning run, you actually get to sleep in. Ya see, in Phoenix, in order for anyone to exercise during the summer, you have to wake up and be outside before the sun comes up. That's about 4:30. Sure, its still 96 decrees at that time in the morning, but the advantage is you don't die as quickly from heat exhaustion in the pre-dawn hours. Anything after the sun rises, the simple fact is, you're dead-simple. They will find you under a neighbor's tree with your eyes rolled back in your head and your tongue swollen. If you awakened for a run in the morning in San Fransisco, you don't want to go out before dawn. You want the sun to be up or at least behind the clouds above the horizon. The neighborhood coffee shops aren't open until then. The only thing up at that time are the fishing boats getting ready to go out into the bay to catch something you could eat that night. The only thing in Phoenix you could get up and go catch at a pre-dawn hour is a STD.

Look, I like living here. I know you don't believe me and frankly, you'd be right. Except for my roots going way down and having actually touched Dante's fifth level, I am in too deep to move. Our kids are here and they show no signs of moving. Sure, mom could have married a dad who could have been born on the Olympic Peninsula, or New Hampshire, but she could have married a guy from Buffalo, New York where they 26 inches of lake effect snow in one day in the winter. That would-well, that would be bad.

There is a great advantage to living here. Living here weeds out the weak. This is God's farm where He thins the herd. We are hearty souls who make a living here, we few. My son, Travis, is in El Paso, gearing up for another tour of the beautiful Middle East and I talked to him yesterday. They spent 17 hours in the sun and soldiers were dropping like flies, except for his team. They were all from Phoenix. Just another day at the pool for them. You don't find any French people here in the summer. Italians are missing too. The Germans are in the hotels and delis and the Scotch and Irish are, you guessed it, in the bars. Don't believe me? Go hang out at one of our malls. We have a bunch of them. They're marked with signs that say 'air cooled.'

Ears, walking away-

2010-07-04T08:04:00.000-07:00

So its July 4th, 2010. Independence Day has always been a special day in the Williams household, going back to when I was a kid. The Williams lineage goes clear back to WW I with my grandfather. This one, how ever, is different.

I have been thinking. What do you say, those last words, to you little child, before they go off to war-again? What are those last precious sounds you want them to remember coming from your mouth, the last vision of you, as a parent, speaking to them, saying something so important? It has to count. It has to mean something-at least to you.

My little boy is saddling up again and leaving for Iraq. At least that where the first leg of his second deployment takes him. He was in Tikrit, Iraq the first time, Saddam's home town, two years ago. Now, he commands a team and is responsible for their lives in addition to his own. He will leave his new bride of three months and leaves tomorrow. What do you tell him that you want him to know, want him to remember, before he leaves, that he doesn't already know? What words, what cluster of sounds, do you want to put together and in just the right order, that you want him to hear, that you haven't said, used, formed in various ways over the years before?

There are a lot a things, especially a father, wants to say. A last piece of advice, a kind word, a question, some blustery quote, anything. We want to say anything and keep saying it to the ears walking away.

Because we know.

We know there is nothing more we can say that will make anything wash the chalkboard clean. We can add to it-this chalkboard, of all the memories we have generated over the years, but all that was said or done is there already, written in our memory; in our child's memory. If we did it right, those ears walking away have already heard it, seen it, tasted it, felt it with their own hands and seen it in the aging eyes of those they call 'father.'

For thousands of year, people have had to do what we now have to do, say good-bye to a part of us, our family- my child, as they walk off to face danger. For most, so it is with my son, it is to stand for a belief that there is Evil and this Evil is destroying those that are not strong enough to withstand it themselves. Sure, there is a whole political side to it, but none of that matters when it comes down to those wearing the boots. At this level, this level where two sides meet and look into each other's eyes, where names are attached to faces, the level most politicians have never seen, and some have avoided themselves, its personal, intimate, strikingly pure.

At this level, our best and brightest are forged. They do not develop their character here, they expose it.

This is not a place for politicians, or those weak in their character and morals. This is not a place for those slow at decisions or who waiver in action. This environment is where the test is made, not only for those leaving, but also for those staying behind. They are tested as well.

Sometimes, I think its harder to stay than to go. I always felt it was better to be in the melee than to watch. At least you had a feeling of some control, some belief the steps you take are under your power, your decision.

Where do we get such individuals, men and women, who can do such deeds? There's a whole list of reasons these people join the military or any first response group for that matter-good insurance, nice retirement, steady income, three hot meals a day, a personal pride, the Flag, God, a whole bunch of reasons. For my little boy, its all those things as well, but also he's going because he has orders to and most importantly, he will not leave his team without his experience from the first tour to protect them. He can't leave them-at least not now.

I went out this morning and drove to get some food for the sleeping little ones at the house. I drove through a neighborhood, also still asleep. I went into a crowded restaurant, got what I went there for, and drove home. No where along that route did I even think about a bomb going off, being shot at, kidnapped, or my life threatened by martyrs wanting a random piece of me. Not that some neighborhoods aren't a little 'sporty' but at least in this area, at this time, there was a natural calm and peace to the world. There are a lot of people who wrote checks over the centuries so that this could be so. My little boy was one of them. Thanks son.

We come back to the question of what are those last words. What do I want my boy to know? The conclusion is there is nothing. He has heard it all. He knows all that I would want to tell him because he has heard it from me for years. Those things that count, those words that have the real meaning-he knows them. He can close his eyes at night and hear me say them. I would rather he think of his beautiful bride and I am sure I will be way down on the list, but when he needs a word or two, he can tap that part of his brain and find me. I could remind him to duck or to run faster between buildings, love his team by caring for them, wear clean dry socks, pray, but he knows this better than I. I don't need to tell him. He knows.

I guess, when he walks away, when I lose sight of his face and can't smell his cologne anymore, it is then that the work begins. There is really only one things my little boy needs to hear from this father. Everything else has been said, instructed, shared-everything but one. There is one thing that no human should ever get tired of hearing or saying.

I love you.

Oh, and maybe-stay low and run fast.

To those standing watch, thanks.

A Road Less Traveled

2010-06-22T07:07:00.001-07:00

We were driving north on Interstate-17 this last weekend when I got to experience one of the least observed and yet most widely seen sights in our nation that any of us have ever had the privilege to experience. Of course, I thought I would share my take on it-with you.

We got stuck in the long tail of stop and go traffic due to an accident, ten miles north from where we were. I literally stopped the car on the freeway, designed to be traveled on at 75+ miles an hour. I stopped, twenty feet beyond the last possible exit to escape back to the south and an eventual trip around a mountain, fifty miles out of our way. But then I saw it.

It was rare. As a matter of fact, I had never seen this before, at least I had never seen it at this speed, which was slower than walking.

Crap along the side of the road.

Trash, waste, spillage, whatever you want to call it. I looked out my window and down at the asphalt. I looked over at the retention barriers, the faded Sprite 16-ouncer. All of them were still. They weren't flashing by at 110 feet per second (75 miles per hour converted to feet per second-hey- I'm bored and you admit, you found that interesting). So, as we creeped up the hill, out of Black Canyon City, towards Sunset Point, I started to make observations. I wasn't going anywhere in a hurry anymore.

9 hubcaps in about two miles. Here's a question- what would cause you to lose your hubcap? Wouldn't you realize it when you did? One of the hubcaps was from a Mercedes. You know that guy got out and looked for it, you just know he did. Here's a better one-ice chests.

If you lost your ice chest, heading north out of the city, you had something in it you wanted to preserve until you got to your destination; something you wanted to eat or drink at the campsite you were heading to that night. "Hey Merrill, did ya heard that?"

"Heard what Carl?"

"That explosive crashing sound. Sounded like a forty-pack and five steaks hittin' da asphalt at whatever speed we'z were goin'."

"Nope, besides, you know'd I'm deaf in one ear."

I saw several vehicle shock absorbers. How big of a pot hole would you have to hit to jar one of those babies loose? There was also some clothing that, if given the right water setting and some Tide detergent, could probably be recycled. I almost made Joni get out and get a five-gallon water jug just sitting upright with the lid still in place, but then we started moving a little faster and I could just see her trying to run to catch up with me in stop and go traffic, she'd just about get to the car and I would have to move the car up again, all of it going up hill. I would never hear the end of it.

Then there was all the trash. Mostly plastic bottles. I would not mind the recycling contract for the freeway. You could make a pretty penny with all the plastic, metal, and rubber that you could put back into the economy. You'd get enough to be able to order cheese on your burger, that's for sure. The interesting part was that I didn't see any cigarette butts. I'm sure they were there but they weren't recognizable, so we have that going for us, which is nice.

I think we need a little Koran law when it comes to intentional polluters. I can see having part of your load come undone and your steaks and beverages are returned to the land, but to do it intentionally, bad form. I think we, when one of these 'road polluters' is captured, tried, and convicted, should have his/her left hand completely cut off and duct-taped to their antenna of the offending car. Several things happen. Most immediately, they will stop polluting while they drive. They can't, unless they steer with their knees and throw with their right hand. It would just be easier to toss the empty container on the floor next to their baggy of Colombian and bag of half eaten Doritos. Secondly it sends a message, like a head on a pike in ancient Rome, that we take our 'road pollution' very seriously.

"Oh, look Marge, there's another one."

"Yeah, I wonder what he threw away?"

Third, it would bring people back to conversing instead of texting and tuning the world out while they traveled cross country. They would look out the window, hoping to spot another 'Polluters Flag' flying stiffly in the traffic breeze.

After an hour and ten minutes, we passed the accident scene. It was almost cleaned up. There were a couple of police officers, three news crews, and an overturned truck about twenty yards off the road. It looked like it had been a bad accident (I guess anytime you roll your vehicle over while traveling at high speed on the freeway can be considered a 'bad accident'), but it also looked like everyone made it out. Ten yards beyond the accident, I began to accelerate to flight speed. It will be, hopefully years, before I ever take that tour again, but I was sure glad I got to do it.

The last thing I remembered as I pulled away from the accident scene and back into my weekend was the image of the accident and the truck.

It was missing a hubcap.

Is This Something I Need?

2010-05-31T07:34:00.000-07:00

This is Memorial Weekend-2010. This is a holiday of conflicting ideas and activities. When you think about it, it is designed as a sad and reflective weekend. Unlike its twin brother on the other end of summer, Labor Day, where we celebrate, well, 'labor' and the 'Merican worker, Memorial Day is designed to be somber and passive, thinking about those warriors who paid the ultimate price for us. In response to this, the Americans honor this day with those things that only Americans have earned the right to do. We remember Memorial Day with the Indy 500, lake boating, and sales on toilets.

Look, I use to be like everyone else and talk about what we, as a family, were going to do on this three day weekend until Travis decided to connect the dots for us with his deployments into the throat of the dragon. But I won't take you there. I got my flags out and run through my mind the significance of this day and how it could very well relate to me and my family this coming year. BUT, and I speak for my son, we are not going to dwell on that. There are other things to think about, fun things.

Let us examine the sales that tag along with this day and what, if anything, we can do about them.

Our fallen would actually, if we could hear their collective voices, want us too. "Momma, I'm fine here, don't you fret. You need to get yourself out and go mallin'. Go find that pillow you've been talkin' 'bout. You're sleepin' on one you've had since you were in tenth grade. You keep sayin' it makes your jaw hurt. Take Aunt Millie with you. Let her drive. Her eyes are better than yours.' Yep, I think our fallen would want us to think about them and the cost they paid, maybe over the morning cup of joe, but then get ourselves out and enjoy the day-the way of life, they wrote the check for. I think if I could take their collective souls shopping, we would hit two places-Costco and Home Depot. And what says Memorial Day sales better than toilets!

But do I really need a new toilet with 'siphon flush action?' Do I want a toilet that uses the word 'action' in its advertisement? Do I want a toilet that does something that you describe as an 'action' rather than just a 'flush'? Especially when I am at its mercy and in a position of vulnerability?

So we have a toilet in this house of ours that dates back to when I was a child-in this same house. I never changed it and my dad never changed it. Its an American Standard. The type that won the hearts and minds of the third world. It has different guts but the porcelain is the same. It has been acting up lately. It is strictly an indication of the guts needing to be replaced, but one doesn't just go buy guts to a toilet without first looking at 'what's new in the world of toilets.' Its very similar to when you need to buy new tires for your car so you go buy a new car.

At Costco recently, they had a toilet for an odd price of $93.78. Why not $93.76 or .79? Someone told me once that those weird prices indicate something is about to go away and be sold out. Which means, good luck on finding someone to fix it. AND, it had a push button flushy thing. No handle, just a button. Apparently, you can pick your flush strength which, I would guess, taps into that 'siphon action' we were reading on the side of the box. It also is a way to save water, which is something I am not sure I want to negotiate about when it comes to my toilet-plants and trees, yes, my toilet-nope.

Look, I don't know about you, but I am a 52 year-old man that is, apparently, at a cross road in his life. I have to make a life changing decision. I don't think I want to make this decision. I don't think I want my life to be faced with ANOTHER life change. First, its computers, and televisions then cell phones, and as always, boxers or briefs.

Questions raced through my mind. Men take their toilets seriously. We spend time there. We 'linger.' Women get in and get out. Men, ah, men plan financial empires during their toilet time. It's said that Tesla came up with the alternating current while camped on his. Mercury astronauts sang songs before their flights on commodes, or the invasion of the Falkland Islands was mapped out on the back of the stall door. Worlds are conquered here. Very serious stuff-very.

So to change from handle to button, oval to round, toilet height to seat height, all are easy decisions for a women. Men, well, we have to go to our god about such things. Then, we field test them.

Yep, I sat right down on that bad boy right in the middle of Costco. No, I didn't 'use' it but I wanted to check it for, you know, reach. That's why they put one out there, for the men, to try-I swear. Can I reach around and push the button without getting up? Yes, with some strain to my back muscles. It just means I need to spend more time in the gym working that part of my back. Seat height appeared fine. It wasn't chair height like the one in our other bathroom. My feet dangle on that one and my legs go numb. This one, well, height was not an issue.

There ya have it. The decision of the day. Instead of watching the Indy 500, I can wait until tonight to see the wrecks, the best part of the race, I might buy a toilet with 'siphon flush action'. There is a game or two on today but maybe I'll try to finish the crown molding in the living room. I didn't buy the toilet for $93.78 with the siphon action the other day. The timing wasn't right-maybe today. I thought about it, but then thought I would go price another set of guts at Home Depot, my other favorite store.

As I was walking out of Costco, my path took me right by the LCD flat screens. I slowed. I stopped. I have a second thing to take to my god-I guess.

Another year gone. Did it count?

2010-05-18T13:43:00.001-07:00

Just finished another school year. It was a high casualty rate this year. Out of twenty-six juniors in one class, eleven failed. Here's the tough part, they chose to do so.

'Mark,' you start off, 'We think you're just a crappy teacher.' Well, sure if you are any teacher at all, you should go there. What can I do differently? What didn't I do? All of it. Many times we can, as teachers, differentiate our teaching and adapt. But sometimes, sometimes we need to let choices be lived out.

I've heard people say that kids don't choose to fail. They would be wrong. I've seen it. I've talked to them. I've actually heard them say 'I choose to fail.' Why?

That's all they know. They're comfortable with it. They've been told all their lives they were worthless, no good, wish they were never born, by those that were suppose to be their biggest fans. Some of the lives of these students are what make up bad movies. Their lives are terrible. They are old before their time. Parents? What parents? I am a firm believer that some parents-many parents, should never-ever be parents. They leave a wake of damaged children in their path. Somehow they breed and have children they don't care about, sometimes even hate. The cycle continues with the next generation.

But then there are those students that walk into class, torn, worn, beaten, and still they would rather spend the day with me than at home. It always happens just when you are contemplating changing your career path and thinking that being a roofer is the Arizona summer sounds like a nice break from this gig we call teaching. There's a look in their eyes. So, we take a walk, using whatever the non-educators at the state tell us we should be teaching. Ahhh, and here is the best part-I have learned that I can adapt and teach Life using anything-ANYTHING. Somehow, I can find an application to these young minds while identifying a preposition; how about Shakespeare? Way too easy. Give me a stick and a ball of twine and I will tie a life skill and a literary element to it. I can look any geek from the state in the eyes and justify why I used pudding pops and sock puppets to explain the literary element of characterization in Homer's Iliad while the transcendental metaphor was ignored. Yeah, I know, it makes me dry heave too. Same with the kids. We don't teach this crap for any other purpose than to help them understand the life they've been given. So, I usually tell the kids -"Look, the parts to Shakespeare you can't understand, well, those prose were probably written in the afternoon after he had been drinking rum all day because the water in London was so foul (sucked). The stuff that makes sense-the 'once again into the breach...' that good stuff? He wrote that in the morning before he got tanked." They buy it because instead of rum-momma's live-in-boyfriend is doing Cobra 40's.

Some of these kids, actually, most of them, will be the first in their family to graduate from high school. In some countries they make doctors out of a high school graduate. Here, you'd be lucky to mop the blood off the floor of the surgical room the doctor was in.

So, we as teachers, are running for the door at this time of year. This teaching crap really takes its toll. Lives are used up and spent before they even have a chance to grow whiskers. We get front row seats at the train wreck. We can even predict them, with almost 100% certainty. But, then there are those that have the eyes, looking into mine. The worn out and broken ones that somehow show up and stay.

I think about the course changes that have brought me to this very spot. In some districts, I'd be fired for talking to someones little spoiled brat the way I do. Here at my school, ahhhhh---I have students like 'Jose' come up to me. He was timid, shy, struggling with the language and life. He was almost completely broken, badly bruised, and his heart had been spoiled.

He waited until the room was empty before he spoke. "Mister, is it true?"

"What?" I responded. I was distracted with something meaningless.

"Is what you say, is it true?"

"About what?" I don't even think I looked up when he clarified. It took a minute before the radar picked up something.

"About what you told us all year, that whatever we can dream, we can do? I come from a real bad neighborhood and life. I don't want that. They shoot people and do drugs on the corner. My cousin, he wants me to join his gang-I want what you said."

Its was then that a middle-aged teacher's back straightened. Somewhere deep inside, as I get older, I find myself looking back and identifying, in times like these, with my heritage. My one grandfather was a Scotsman and my other was a rancher in the 19th century. Both, if they heard this, and I reckon they did, would look at each other and wink.

Grandaddy Jim's family, my brother and I figured, were not great warriors in Scotland; maybe his great grandfather, although doubtful. They were probably bakers. But in Scotland three hundred years ago, you were all warriors. You all went to the fight with whatever you had-an axe, a mallet, a long stick sharpened on the end. Your clan lived for a good war. You'd kiss your wife goodbye whom, by the way, could kick your ass, and you'd go. "Aye, looks like the lad is in need of some guidance he is," James would say, swirling some fine single-malt as he watched my show from the other side.

"Yep, reckon the boy needs someone with a good rope and a strong back to carry him if need be," Harrison would say missing the spittoon and leaving some pug on his chin. Grandad Harrison's idea of fine medicine was a kerosene soaked rag wrapped around whatever open, leaking wound he had, usually caused by a dull knife covered in cow dung. He would gargle with it when he had a sore throat. The brothers and I tried the kerosene treatment. It actually worked. He had the rag always with him, around his neck. it was his kerchief and if he needed to, he'd blow his nose in it too.

Sometimes, when God sets you down where you are, you don't know why most of the time. You look around and you question the foundation of life. 'This isn't my plan.' But sometimes, sometimes, he lets you see behind the veil. Instead of flying fighters off of a carrier, I am here. Aye, tis a good day for a fight! I could hear in the back of my brain.

"Yeah, Jose, every word is true-every word. Stay, and I'll show you," the old middle-aged teacher said.

Yeah, give me time and pen and paper. I'll make it fit into anything the state wants me to 'teach.' I'll even issue a grade.

As you read this, I am on my way to graduation. I don't want to be late. Jose is walking. He will be the first one on his block to graduate from high school.

Excerpt from Holy Ground-need your imput

2010-05-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

We are getting close on the release of the second book Holy Ground later this year. It's darker, deeper, and hopefully, more entertaining than Emancipating Elias. Don't get me wrong, I liked Emancipating. I think it was a great read and people I've talked to say the same thing. Of course, they'were in a drunken stupor and thought I was the Sultan of Brunei.

I want your opinion, truly want your opinion, on a few things.

The photo to the left-every book I am going to write, (unfortunately for you there are YEARS worth) will have a photo of the author trying to capture the mood of the main character and the story itself. Emancipating doesn't have that but we are going to re-release it under a different publisher so we get a second shot. What do you think about that idea?

Tell me about the chapter you read. Would you like to read more? Does it cause you to keep going or does it not interest you (topic, genre, etc)? Or are you just reading it because I am standing over your bed at night with my Glock in your ear forcing you to read my crap?

I've included here the first chapter to give you a little taste of our hero, Cooper William Gardner, a middle-aged man dealing with things, much like the rest of us. The tests of his past have tainted him. He's a train wreck just waiting out life. Little does he know, 'life' is right around the corner.

Enjoy-

CHAPTER ONE
The purpose of life is to fight maturity.
—Dick Werthimer

March 20, 2003

Cooper woke up, lying on his back, to the clock radio.

“The second invasion of Iraq started early this morning….”

He was breathing like he just finished a run. His pillow was soaked with sweat. “Oh, god,” he groaned. His right shoulder hurt him. If he laid on it long enough, an old high school football injury flared up. As a matter of fact, it had gotten worse. Now, the other shoulder hurt from laying on it so much, so he would roll to his back. He couldn’t sleep on his back. His fifty-five year-old body was becoming a wreck. He was sore from osteoarthritis, from years of running on hard concrete, streets trying to keep his fading body somewhat in shape. He was losing that battle. He smoked too many cigars and drank too much scotch at Moreno’s Bar, usually to the point of becoming a stumbling pile of goo. His blood pressure bordered on hypertensive, and the rib-eye steaks he allowed himself to eat helped his total cholesterol to reach the nice round number of 260.

In the base of his brain, he listened to the radio and the report of the invasion. He kept his eyes shut and his breathing slowed. His hand moved up to his face and to rub his ear. He felt the whiskers on his face then down to his chest and his testicles, freeing them from the boxers he had on that spun tight as he rolled over.

Cooper’s ruddy complexion was highlighted with close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair and a gray mustache. His face was filling out from the high consumption of alcohol in the last year. His face had taken on a reddish tint, especially his nose, from hours in the Arizona sun and was marked with broken capillaries, just above his cheeks. His lips were thin; if it wasn’t for the mustache, his face would almost appear mouth less. Jowls were forming below his jaw line. His ears seemed to sag, like the rest of his body, which after years and years of abuse, sloped down as if he had carried a heavy rucksack and never taken it off. His whole body, under a load of weight that had been there for so long, no one noticed it anymore, especially Cooper, worked on the joints and muscles.

He felt his stomach and his growing waist line. His abdomen, which at one time was cut into six muscular sections, began to push on the belt holding up his pants when he would get dressed.

Surprisingly, in some regards, his body still depicted health. But if one looked, they could tell. Even though he went to the gym and ran three times a week, his body was still writing checks it couldn’t cash. All in all, Cooper William Gardner was a physical wreck waiting to crash. In a few years, if he kept up his lifestyle of self-abuse, he would drown in his own life, probably in his own toilet.

Cooper was a helicopter pilot for the Phoenix Police Department. He was the senior pilot and part of the development team that employed the aircrafts when the trend in police work called for it years ago. After his tours in Vietnam, he came back home and joined the department. It was really the only choice for many of the military, unless one could learn some other skill in order to make a living once they returned from the war. If you went over as a doctor, you could come back and work as a doctor, but most of the troops were not of that cut. Cooper had gotten a college degree in business using the G.I. Bill, but business didn’t interest him. He couldn’t stand the idea of working in a room all day. He happened to be at the right place at the right time when the city decided to start an air wing. He was part of the initial six who made up the section. He was also the only one with any helicopter experience. All the rest were street cops the department sent to flight school. He loved it.

He looked over at the top of his dresser and pictures hanging on the wall behind it with him in younger days. He had trouble focusing from the bed so he rubbed his eyes and his face again. Pictures of him and his first wife, Torin and graduation day from the academy. He joined the department and then shortly thereafter married his first wife, Torin, and just as quickly divorced her after a year and a half. The job and the old dreams consumed his life and that of his first wife, Cooper’s sweetheart, who made the mistake of saying she would wait for him to come back from Vietnam. She did. They married. But neither of them were the same person they were before he left for the war.

“God, you’re such a cynic!” she would call him.

“Oh, really, well I guess that makes you a bra-burning feminist!” Cooper wasn’t quite sure what all that entailed but it was the talk of the time and it wasn’t meant to be nice.

The marriage lasted until he had been out of the police academy for six months. He came home one day to an empty closet and a note on the counter saying she was tired of the silence. That was fine; he didn’t want to talk to her anyway.

“…coalition forces started in the darkness with air and cruise missile strikes at the nation’s capital of Baghdad….”

“‘Bout damn time,” he said as he reached over and shut off the radio and then wiped some white stuff from the corner of his mouth, transferring it to his bed sheet.

Mother's Day and the All you Can Eat Buffet

2010-05-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

Mothers-I will just apologize to all of you for all of us with a 'Y' in our genetic make up. Your little boy, well, sometimes doesn't think with his head; at least not very well, when it comes to this day.

Look sons, don't, whatever you do, take your mother to an 'all you can eat' anything today. Don't even pretend she'd like it. She won't.

Guys, there are definite rules to this day. Ask your sisters.

Daughters are in tune with this. They have the gene pool, even if they don't have kids, they know what is right and wrong. Ask them and stand by to break that crusted over thing you call a wallet in your back pocket.

But, being a mom, more so as a grand mother or great grandmother, they will smile and say 'that would be fine dear, an all you can eat Sudanese buffet would be just fine.' NO, IT'S NOT!

Look at your mother. Go ahead, I'll wait........................................................................................................................................................Does she look like someone who could put away a $9.99 all you can eat Chinese buffet? She's 4'11" and weighs 90 pounds! She began shrinking twenty years ago and eats almost as much as a large pigeon does in a city park-two large table spoons of whatever and then she pushes away and wants a nice cup of coffee-black please.

OR, you take your mother, who really IS the size of a small freight car for the Southern Pacific. That's what she wants, to be reminded that her presences in this restaurant will panic the owner into starting a fire just to get everyone to evacuate the place and try to save some of his stock.

I went by the new Great China Super Buffet at the corner of 15th Avenue and Bethany Home the other day. It use to be a Country Home Buffet. It had flags and banners announcing its grand opening. It has 'islands,' not just one line, but individual islands packed full of whatever you wanted-in deep bins. The shear size was enough to give that skinny Japanese guy who always wins at hot dog eating the Willy's. You take your mom there, two things are going to happen, you will not get your money's worth out of her and you, yourself, will start to feel self-conscious about the fact that your plate can't be seen under the layers of sweet and sour crap. The other thing is your mother will get a salad. That's all, oh, maybe some cottage cheese and those little hominy pellets but nothing more. Now, you look at her, then back to your plate, then you realize this was a bad idea. Too late. The only buffet that she might even feel good at is one of those that has linen table cloths and a French guy offering some sparkling wine. Your mom hasn't had a drink since your Uncle Phil backed the truck over her legs when she lay passed out from the 4th of July 'party' at a Woodstock reunion festival.

Look guys, the flowers and candy are nice. Even though you'll probably have the first one out of the box. But spend time with your mom today. That's really all she wants, some time with her little boy and girl. If your sister suggests something, listen to them. They know stuff. Go over and fix the dripping faucet or better, pay someone to fix it so she has someone else to blame when it starts up again.

Tell her you love her without her saying if first. That's the most important thing. Some day, if it goes right, she will leave you first. Mother's Day will come around and you won't have that woman around to pester you, wipe your mouth, comment on the wrinkle in your shirt or eat a salad at an all you can eat (totally appropriate place to take her on just about any other day of the year). She will be gone. Then its just you and those memories. Make them good ones.

Happy Mother's Day mom. You were a good one!!

Long Pull

2010-04-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

It was a long pull this week. And I look back and can't really say I did anything worth being so tired over. Sometimes, fatigue comes schlepping the mule across a prairie, scratching dirt and hoping to plant some soy beans in it, so in the fall you can sell them and buy that shot gun you've been eying at the Mercantile.

Or-

Sometimes, it just life.

Did some traveling this last week. Part of it was going all the way down the Florida, south of Jacksonville, then coming back within 48 hours, back to Phoenix, by way of Philadelphia. Yeah, I know, don't ask. There was nothing to it, except sitting and deciding which of the palm reading devices I would want to buy from Sky Mall magazine.

I don't know about you, but I am getting worse about air travel as I get older. I get anxious. Not that we are going to crash in a fiery ball of screams and body parts, although just writing that gave me a gurgle in my loins. The flying doesn't bother me. No, I don't do well until I get to the gate. I can sit for hours-HOURS at the gate, waiting to board, as long as I'm at the gate. Before I get there, I find myself pacing, cold and clammy hands, checking my boarding pass 78 times to make sure I have it, where's my debit card? Shoe strings? Is my bag full-crap, my tooth brush! It just takes one bump, one small squeal of the tennis shoes on the floor causing me to spin around to double-check something and then finding it was true, to solidify me in the paranoia for another ten years. The cycle starts all over again. It's like right before the kickoff and you are waiting to go in on the first set of downs, or the tip off of the big game, or you're in the chorus or orchestra and your Nana is in the front row. Anxiety, nerves; jeez, what a clown fish.

But, once at the gate, I morph into this playful kid. 'Who wants to go shop for food for the flight?' What about a loaf of bread? A magazine? Look at that guy over there and why is he taking his shirt off? Pull my finger-all those things that make time pass as we wait for our plane.

Arriving in Philly on the first leg of our return trip, we were late, hosting our own controlled crash-landing. Aside from the fact I hadn't been in a near crash like that since I used to fly as a pilot, we got off the plane and had to get two concourses over in 20 minutes to make our connection. 'Rajah', my little Ethiopian driver of the cart that the airline sent to move the seven of us more swiftly, said he could only take six of us and then only half way. He said this directed at me since I was sitting on the arm rest and by some OSHA code, I was endangering the lives of the world. Obviously, I was the one left behind, but since I had nothing to do with us being late and frankly, I think my dead mother could have landed the plane better, I was in a 'sporty' mood. The fear of being late or whatever it is that crawls out of my pancreas and causes me to be anxious prior to getting to the gate was gone. Now, it was game time.

I'm not quite sure what my little friend was thinking when his eyes looked into mine. Love? Compassion? His taxes? Fear that I would reach down his throat and rip out his duodenum with the hand I was pointing at him with and, of course-very politely, telling him to get my team to the gate-all the way to the gate, I'm not quite sure. There was no time. I grabbed my bag and turned for the four mile run (approximately, its always bigger when you're actually doing it). There was no time to check and make sure my boarding pass was secure, or my shoe laces, or the fact that I had to pee from somewhere over Gettysburg but couldn't get out of my seat for fear of being thrown against the overhead bulkhead due to the weather. I just had to get to the gate and hold the plane.

I had no plan as to where I needed to go or how long it was going to be to get there. I quickly knew, however, what I was going to do once I did get there to hold the plane-vomit. Hey, its a bio-hazard. I could buy 20 minutes easy and the run was going to provide the ability. I just needed to not make a wrong turn. I read signs and tried not to run over old women in the process.

Well, long story even longer, I got there. People were still in line and I climbed in behind them. I took up a waiting position behind the gate and waited for the rest of the team, preparing myself to force a stomach purge as soon as someone moved to seal the hatch. While I waited, I took stock in my gear-bag with contents-check, boarding pass stub with seat assignment-check, need to pee-on standby. I was good and in position. And then they showed. My little friend came through for us, although he and I didn't set eyes on each other again, he has made a wonderful memory for me.

I wonder if I made a wonderful memory for him?

Ah, life. It sometimes wears me out.

Bunnies, chocolate, and a good pair of underwear

2010-04-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

So, it's Easter, again. I wrote this last year and was thinking about what to write this year and said to myself "Self, this is good to run one more time. Enjoy the day, each other, quiet moments and laughter. Take a look, that big ass stone has been rolled away. Dare to believe it.

What the heck does that mean? If you were to read the paper, it would mean sales at Macy's; half off at Starbucks; cell phones, in all colors, at a discount; and of course, discounted breakfasts for seniors at IHOP. People don't want to really think about Easter, having to admit there is a God and that God had and has a plan individualized for each one of us. We don't want to think that on the Friday before, God took his son, and slaughtered the boy for us, as individuals. Who the heck wants to think of that? Nope, the idea of a chocolate bunny and paisley colors are much nicer.

Until you really look at the picture.

You see, I think love has nothing to do with what we think it has to do with. It has nothing to do with sex, skin tone, the shape in a pair of jeans, ice cream, or a trip to the Bahama's. Love, pure love, is a sacrifice word as my dear friend, John, puts it.

Joni and I just got done waiting out some tests to see if her breast cancer had come back. It had been a long couple of weeks waiting on the tests and doctors. You see, Joni's breast cancer was described by her original doctor as "having teeth." Meaning, if or when it does come back, the outcome won't be good. We've been here before and panic or high anxiety was not present. But there was an undercurrent of tension. I got the folder out containing the response plans to just such a situation. I keep this folder in the dark corner of my brain. I reviewed it and began to hold meetings with my response team, also deep within the gooey mind. As we waited, I planned.

This whole thing turned out to be fine. When I have some time, I will share with you some of the funnier moments; yes, there are some really laughable things-well-maybe just to me but still. But hear this, the one thing that was a constant was that I knew there was a plan. God, by definition, is Love. He can't be anything other than Love. He bought me, Joni, my kids, some of you, with Love. How? Well the payment was huge. He couldn't sacrifice a sheep or a goat like in the old testament. He could but we'd run out of sheep and goats and eventually start cutting up muskrats which doesn't work. So, He paid it once and for all. He laid his boy out on the alter and took his life--for me-oh wait, you too. Don't run from that image-run to it! That isn't embarrassing or degrading. Set that self-flagellating guilt aside. It is a wonderful image. Now, pass it on. I was able to think that this God has a plan for what we were wading in. It was a perfect plan. How Joni getting cancer again would be a perfect plan was beyond me. I just knew the source. I had to trust it. Whatever happened-Daddy had it.

So, Easter-the celebration of sales and chocolate, of half-priced meals and trips. I can look at those things and smile, enjoy them, melt them down and rub them on my chest. My Daddy said to me "Hey, now that you're mine, go and enjoy the world I have surrounded you with. Put some whip cream on that chocolate sundae; look at the sale of underwear at Target; check out the yellow ties and paisley bunnies. I made them-just for you to enjoy." We smile at each other because I know He knows. I remember. Then, like a toddler, I turn and run and play with the things He has laid out, looking back over my shoulder to make sure He is watching.

He is, with a big smile.

Happy Easter everybody!!! Go buy a chocolate bunny and bite its head off. Daddy thinks that is soooo funny.

A Country for Old Men

2010-03-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

During our lives, we have times that, well, quite frankly, are a little busy. I am terrible at social stuff. I fake it. I really do. As I get older, I like to go out more often, but I don't like to stay. It's like I need to go 'touch' whatever it is then I can go home, get into my jammies, and wander off into the deep well that is the Delta sleep level during REM. This reminds me-let me take us down a rabbit trail about sleep, which I have to mention before I forget where I was going; kind of like walking into the kitchen from the den, opening the refrigerator door and standing there, forgetting what you were looking for.

What was I saying-see? I forgot-oh, wait, now I remember, sleep. A few years ago, I would wake up with the digital rolling of the clock. I could hear the alarm 'click' sound to start the music. I slept that light. Yesterday morning, I was soooooo faaaaarrrr down in the deep well that I call Delta level sleep, the music actually was part of the dream. I hit the snooze button twice. I never even knew what the snooze button was for until about six months ago-never used it. Bastards (my favorite swear word. It is always plural).

All this to take us back onto the main trail about social dancing and the thrill of just living. We can go to the mall and walk around, usually when I am in the walking 'zone' I have my hands behind my back, my brain is in neutral, like every other man of 85 or more doing the same thing, only I'm not wearing black socks with my shorts. We might get something to eat, walk some more, then come home. Sometimes the drive to the mall is longer than the walk. Like I just want to go and get out and drive around, then walk, then come home. A friend of mine was in a small band and played at a restaurant. I could sit there and listen to him, have a scotch, share a pizza or a salad or whatever, then come home by 9:00. I'M FIFTY-FRIGGIN TWO!

I also discovered recently that my running days are just about done. No, correct that, my running days are over. My knees are like two Peruvian tortillas after my morning run. Look, I'm 52-oh, I said that huh? Memory is the next thing-bastards. I've been running since I was in Pop Warner, whenever that was-ten? Now, I get my sorry ass out of bed and go for a bike ride instead of a run in the pre-dawn dark. Same cardio, better on my knees, but I had to come to grips that I wasn't the Maltese Falcon anymore. If my son and I wrestled again, which we have done extensively, I think I could still take him, but I would have to refer you to the movie of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the type of fighting I would have to resort to. I could take him, but cheating would be my middle name. He has all that Army training crap and youth and muscle on his side but I have old age and treachery. I can still hop the wall to my neighbor's house next door, but with age comes the pausing question-why not walk around to the gate? See? I think that is what we exchange our knee cartilage for, brains-if we live long enough.

The wisdom that comes from just taking more breaths than others for a longer period of time, counts for something. Sure, you could be a real screw up at twenty-five. But if you live to eighty, you must have learned something to allow yourself to not be such a screw up for so long.

See, my theory is god thins the herd at two major points; between the age of thirty and forty-five and again later. If you haven't turned a major corner in your attitude or life style by one of those time periods, a tree is going to fall on you. I don't mean you have to be perfect, nope, that won't ever happen. But how many bullets can you dodge? A Department of Justice report indicated that most gang members are either dead or permanently incarcerated by the age of 42. The herd is thinned. The next thinning, at least for men, is right around 60-70. That's when the first 'Big One' starts thumping on your chest.

It doesn't help the fact that my family can now be shown to be 'predisposed' to things like cancer and heart disease. Every physical form I ever filled out since high school I had to check the first three boxes for family history-cancer, diabetes, and heart disease the 'Big Three', geez.

My dad had his first HA at 55 and the one that put him down at 58. My brother had something like eight vessels blocked and they were taking veins from chickens to put him back together at age 59. They didn't even have a name for it like 'quadruple' or 'triple' bypass. You look at him or my dad and you would say nope, not them. They look healthy. They had other factors that played into it but the Williams line has some gene that explodes at a predetermined time, our own IED. I have them both beat with dedicated exercise for a longer period of time and I eat well but I still have no illusions of making it out of fifties without someday breaking into a cold sweat with a sharp pain lancing down my arm while I'm operating something with a spinning sharp blade before I'm 60, not a chance in hell.

So, here, two weeks after our last kid got married and the smoke has cleared, do I sit in a house that is actually pretty still. Life, right now, has slowed, at least today. I helped my son in law move and plant something like 4,500 square feet of sod in his back yard yesterday. The old man operated an old wheel borrow and could still work like a Trojan slave. Three Advil this morning helped. Tomorrow morning, I'm back on the bike, listening to NPR and riding the neighborhood in the pre-dawn. Heart disease has to find and catch me first.

I like it.

But the pessimist in me says it won't last.

Nope, no such luck for a husband and father who actually did pretty well as a husband and father. My family loves me. They actually like to be around me, in limited amounts. They are making no plans for me to be electrocuted in the shower with an accidental falling lamp (not that I spent any time thinking about things like this) or doing Rocks Paper Scissors to see who gets Dad when he's in diapers, the house keeps the rain off, I've found a semi-creative side, I still have a job, and I currently have my health an most of my teeth. Life, right now, just before beddy-bye time is pretty good.

Now, if I can just put my hands in my pockets instead of behind my back when I walk the mall. Baby steps.

They Don't Call for Daddy

2010-03-05T08:37:00.000-08:00

It's an early Saturday morning and yesterday was the rehearsal of our son's wedding, taking place tomorrow afternoon in the middle of the first fairway at a golf club in south Phoenix. Travis is the last of three children to break out and start the age-old trek of germinating a family. His fiance, Tara, is a wonderful girl and the two appear in love and devoted to the common goal of the rest of their lives together. So I sit here, quietly reflecting, as not enough fathers do, on what I did or didn't do to facilitate this end.

I was watching a video this past week with my students on teen violence. Part of it was filmed in the L.A. County Emergency room. The doctor, taking a group of hard core teens on a tour of the hospital, was telling them, straight up, about the end of life which he saw so much of in those halls. He told them something that stuck, "All bad asses come in here and as they die, they all call out the same two words, 'Mommy' and 'god.'"

It hit me. Why don't these people call for their 'Daddy's'? The answer was clear. It didn't take a college professor to do a five year study. The dads had failed their daughters and sons. They abandoned them. They abused them. They made them witnesses to unspeakable crimes against their mothers or others who they, in their roll as a father, were sworn to honor and protect. Why don't bad asses, or any asses for that matter, call out for their 'Daddy's'? Because we fathers have butchered our duty.

I cried.

No, not like a Frenchman who got a paper cut. The eyes filled and when I blinked, they ran over. Crap, I get weepy at AT&T commercials now and don't even get me started with the Budweiser horses. I am sure I will be curled up in the corner somewhere during this wedding of my last child, sucking my thumb and holding a tablecloth up to my head like a binky.

The kids in the class knew why the bad asses didn't call for their dads. Why, as men, would we ever want to go down that road? Why, would we not want our child, in their last dying breath, to be thinking and calling to us as well? I lost myself in thought for a day or two.

Right before a wedding of one of your kids, you get reflective. You do the same on your birthday and Christmas. "Did my life count?"

I want my life to be one of those where, even years from now, my children or grandchildren will be able to come to my house, maybe I am stooped over some begonias in the garden (can one grow begonias in Arizona? What is a begonia?). I look up and there is fear, panic, tension in their face. Resources have been tried and for some reason, they felt a need to seek out the old Silverback. Quixada rises to a standing position, maybe helped by the child. "What can this old man do? He can barely stand," they might think to themselves.

But inside the old gentleman, still beats the heart of a lion of eighteen. Funny thing about fathers, they are capable of unspeakable horror and pain. But sometimes they get it right. And when a father gets it right-sometimes years or decades later, unimaginable healing and love happens. Which means for men, there is always hope.

So, since this damn video, I have been thinking the gruesome thought of whether my children would call my name in their last moment. Then I smiled, laughed almost. Nope, they wouldn't. They would call to their god. The one they know and who knows them.

Oh, I guess I all right.

Quixada straightens up to his child's fear. His back firms, his arms and legs tense. There is a fire that lights his eyes from the back. The child had not seen such a fire there before. Strange. He rubs his thinning silver hair and places his arms around the child. There is a transference of comfort in that arm. Something about it causes the child to believe he made the right decision coming to speak to the old man. As the fear is shared, the old man walks them into the house and they sit down. The child had not been there in a while, it was cluttered with old man things, newspapers, old gym shoes. Coffee is poured and cookies, for comfort are given. They sit at a table and Quixada listens. Counsel is asked for and smartly given. The old man smiles and says things will be better soon.

Just as the child prepares to leave, something in the corner catches their eye. There, next to stack of papers and where the old dog bed still occupies a corner. It is an old lance, a sword in an old leather scabbard, and a rusted iron helmet. The child asks about it-"Why do you have that old stuff over there?"

The old man smiles as he looks at it. "For certain times," the old man says. The old man winks and walks the child to their car. He kisses them gently on the cheek and waives good bye. When he comes back inside, he reaches under his sink and pulls out an old shoe box. In it, is a old can of rust remover, a well worn soap stone, a small tin of oil, and an old rag. He lays out some newspaper on the coffee table, takes the old helmet from its resting spot in the corner, and begins.

Another Day

2010-02-27T05:59:00.000-08:00

I turned 52 today. Its Saturday morning and like other Saturdays, I get up, walk the girls, make a pot of joe, get into my art class with Jerry Yarnell, and then do some writing. All this before I face the day-- love this time of day.

Men, I think all men, get up this high in the number range of their ages and when their 'special day' comes around, they can't help but be reflective. Think about it; I'm much closer to the end than the beginning, at least I pray to god I am. I would hate to think I am going to live to 104. "Roll over Mr. Williams. We need to change your bed linens-again." The Inuits had a good idea. The old ones would just wander out onto the ice pack and go away, eventually falling asleep and then surely becoming an afternoon snack for a polar bear. I would love being food for a bear! What a great cycle of life you could claim.

"How did you die?"
"Drowned in my own pee. You?"
"Fell asleep on an ice flow then a bear and her two cubs ate me. They didn't have to eat for two weeks after that."
"Oh, dude, that is SO COOL!"

So men get all reflective. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sitting here, polishing off a bottle of Jack and wiping tears away from my stained cheeks with a pair of dirty underwear. I feel pretty good right now. Very little in my life that I wish I could have done different or that I still see as an un-obtained goal. Maybe I still want to own my own restaurant or be a short order cook at Denny's. Plus, with age, come a paradigm shift in feelings, beliefs, values, etc. I want to grow up and be a Silverback!

My daughter hates that term, Silverback. I spoke at her wedding and while addressing her new husband, I made him turn and look into the audience an focus on the old men with silver hair. I told him those are the wise ones whom he should seek for counsel when you need it. Now there is a goal worth pursuing!

Look, my legs are starting to wear out. My "Christmas Day present handing out injury" actually still bothers my left knee which means my running ability is cut. I am sure I am going through male menopause-I'm having night sweats like a Coyote muling a bunch of illegals across the Arizona Sonoran in the summer time, and now there is just the act of living-like why is there water under my wood floor in the den and where is it coming from? That kind of living.

Life is a strain, its suppose to be. How I respond to that life, well, that's the fun part. I had a couple of partners in my prior life who I would still run into a collapsing building for. They're older men now, just like me. I remember we were following a bad guy along a canal. One of the young bucks we were working with was in a foot chase with this guy. Problem was, the young buck was a young buck who liked food too much and the bad guy was a gazelle. We couldn't shoot him; that would have been bad form. So, my partner and I were chasing him in a car. My guy pulled up next to this man running and opened his car door 'accidentally' causing the man to fall. That was Silverback wisdom.

We let the young buck cuff him after he finished puking his lungs out.

I am at a time of my life that I am still willing to try hopping walls, leaping tall buildings, and jousting at windmills. My Scottish heritage won't let me think that there isn't a day that isn't a good day for a fight.

But there is also something to be said for driving the car, filling the inside with the sounds of Bachmann-Turner Overdrive, up to the local Denny's for a short stack.

Now, where the hell is that leak coming from?

To you and yours, thanks for being in the life of this developing Silverback.

Stop and Sniff!!

2010-02-20T06:58:00.000-08:00

There are things around us that if we blink, we miss. The simple things, the quiet things, those things that we haven't seen because we've been too busy worrying about the building burning down around us. Sure, we have to survive the fire, get out of the building, make sure it doesn't collapse on our heads, but what about the beauty of the fire? Fire is primal. Both sexes love a good fire. Women love one in the fire place with a glass of wine, snuggled next to someone they care for and who they think cares for them. Men, well, we like the burning building.

I discovered this 'blink' thing this morning. I should say, rediscovered it. I got up and didn't have enough coffee to make coffee. So, I loaded the girls, Betty and Mindy, into the back of the rental (I was in an accident last week in my truck, a story for another day) and we went to Copper Star Coffee Shop on 7th Avenue.

I enjoy coffee. I don't worship it or light candles to it, but I am of an age now where I will spend $8 a pound for some instead of the $2 at Fry's.

The girls stayed in the car because I wanted to give Betty enough time to get her white hair on the dark upholstery. I ordered a cup of joe and a pound. Then I looked at the food display case. I have been coming to this neighborhood store since it opened, sometimes stopping on my bike ride to work for a cup, but I've never ordered food. Bagels, muffins, scones, things with frosting and things plain. I was easily talked into a scone, something between a biscuit and a heavy loaf of bread only this one had chocolate chips. They had some with blueberries and cranberries but why? I paid for everything and went over to a side table to dress my coffee. I then pulled a chunk of the scone out of the little paper bag it was in and, without thinking, plopped it into my mouth.

It was warm.

A warm-bready thing, with soft, melting pieces of chocolate, some fresh ground coffee with cream and sugar. All of a sudden, life just got real good.

For moments in time, we have these things cross our path-then they leave, sometimes never to be seen again. Here are just a few that I have overlooked:

The color green in the early morning light as it falls into the shadows. Sunsets work the same way, but those are at day's end and we're usually too tired to notice.

A dog sleeping on your foot or curled up next to you on the couch and placing their paw in your lap.

The smell of an out-door grill from a neighbor cooking beef (men can smell the difference between beef and anything else).

The smell of the lawn at a spring training baseball game.

Having to stand in line for only fifteen minutes at the grocery store instead of hours in most countries only to be told they were out of whatever you were standing in line for, two days ago.

Reading a book in the afternoon and falling asleep after a page.

The laughter of a child younger than three.

A morning run, bike ride, especially this time of year. Summer time we would move from neighbor's sprinkler to sprinkler, dehydrating ourselves until our pee was a fluorescent yellow, but this time of year, it's glorious.

The soft, stroking, touch of a hand from someone you care about across your cheek while they smile at something 'cute' you said.

A barefoot walk on a beach, almost any beach.
ANY single-malt scotch, cigar, and a good friend talking about nonsense.
Seeing a rabbit in your backyard.

A clean pair of white socks. Underwear is a distant second.

Look, life is a freight train screaming right at our noggins. I guess we need to ask ourselves, what are we doing? Are we living to work, finding our identity in the labels we get from each other? Or, are we working to live? Most of us would say the second, but are we really? "Mark, you don't get it, my hours got cut, my wife is sick, my kids are sick, the car broke down...."Yeah, I've been there. I've also said that same exact sentence-still do sometimes.

But when you think about it, is our identity in what we do, since what we do, when we're done doing it, is just handed to someone else or cancelled due to budget cuts?

Here, tell ya what, lets try something. Today, go for a walk, a bike ride, or a simple drive in the car with the windows down-wear a coat if its cold. Throw the dogs in the back seat and let them have their own windows and just go. Stop off at some gooey store and buy a scone or a scone like substance. "Mark, (insert whine) I can't eat that. My doctor said I...." Geezus, quit yer bitchin', are ya French? What's it going to do? Shave a month off your life? I'm not asking you to double-salt your fries, although that sounds pretty good right now. Nope, we're going out for 'socks.'

Some nice, white socks.

Maybe if we're lucky, we'll see a house fire.

Pulling on a Cat's Tail

2010-02-13T05:35:00.000-08:00

I love the sound of bag pipes. I like the sound of drums-any kind of drum, bass drums, bongos, Native American drums, USC marching band playing with Fleetwood Mac, just about any marching band, really. Put those two sounds together and I'm marching off to war.

We had a "Cultural Awareness Assembly" at our school yesterday. It was one of those assemblies where student get up on stage and dance, sing, do something from their culture. We are an international school, something like thirty-seven languages are spoken by our students from all over the world, pretty cool. Of course, as I get older, I draw closer to my own ancestry-the Scots. These students don't necessarily need to see another white guy in a dress but I give them a pretty good accent when we're talking about Shakespeare and my theory that he was drunk most of the time, a prime reason why you can't understand half the crap he wrote. London water, terrible in 1604.

So I'm sitting there watching the tribal dancers and eventually, the Hula dancers arrived. Who the hell on our campus is from 'Hula,' I thought to myself. Most of the kids I saw dancing, from the back row I was sitting in, looked like Hispanic kids. Of course, if you put a Hispanic kid next to Polynesian kid, baggy their pants, turn their hats on backwards, and have them say "Wazup?" they would be identical. If they can have suspect Hula dancers, why can't they have the Scots!

I'm sitting there imagining a pipe and drum core marching in and then up the aisle to the stage. Kids would follow them automatically because they couldn't help it. That's just what they did at the Battle of Sterling!! Wait, I think we lost that one, anyway-why can't we?

So, as the sun starts to crack the horizon on another snow-less Phoenix landscape, the beasts are sleeping at my feet, the coffee is oh, so good, and The Royal Dragoon Guards play on the CD, I think today, later after the sun dries the lawn, I will proceed to the yard where I will mow the bonny glen to an even layer to the melodic sound of someone jerking on a cat's tail. Aye, tis a good day for a fight!

Tales of the Heart

2010-02-06T05:30:00.000-08:00

This next week men and women, little boys and little girls, and those in between, will be running around ordering flowers, cards, rings, making dinner reservations to lavish on their life partner, or someone they just met. We scramble to either get a date or to avoid it all together, to not give any false impressions, intentions, or basically tip our hand. Valentine's Day is next Sunday and this week is a running gaggle of stuffed bears made of soft reds and whites with sewn heart-shaped pillows attached to them. I think sometimes, we mix our definitions of 'romance with 'love'. Or even worse, the definition of 'gee, I really like you...' with love.

I remember in grade school, I had a Cyrano heart for a girl named Mary, I know-how traditional. She never knew about it. I could never tell her. Sometime between then and college, hormones kicked in and I think I 'loved' everything: cloudy days, rainy nights, my bathrobe, Gilligan's Island, liver and onions from the school cafeteria, and just about any high school aged girl and three teachers-everything. But upon reflection, it was the romantic side that I was wallowing in, not love. Especially after I learned what 'love' really meant years later.

I wrote, some time ago, that my bed was my 'lover'. Now, before you shutter and wipe the key board down with alcohol, you have to understand the context. It was in a book and, well, I thought it was pretty cool. My editor slapped me-hard. "Geezus, Mary, and Joseph Williams, are you from some small town in the West Virginia Appalachians? NO ONE can have a bed for a lover-unless, of course, you live in that part of the country." The point was, I liked my bed and bedtime and the resulting sleep a lot, most men, my very young age, do. I misused the word.

Every year, I get my students to write a letter expressing their love to their parents. That will take place again this Friday, for hand delivery on Sunday. Now, some of my kids really don't like their parents or many don't know where their parents are at so we substitute someone else. But this letter follows a discussion of the origin of Valentine and what 'love' might really mean.

A great teacher once said "Love is a sacrifice word." There, I should just let that line end this discussion. When I ask my high school students to tell me what 'love' is, they give me all the TV versions. They giggle when someone is bold and says 'Sexin' it up.' They dance all around it from 'really really liking someone' to marriage. When I ask them why do we say we 'love' our ham sandwich-does that fit into one of their definitions, they give me the deer in the headlights look. Sacrifice is funny too. I love my dogs. But I wouldn't sacrifice our financial stability and spend thousands on vet bills to keep them alive. However, and here's the weird part, I would run back into a burning building to rescue them.

But what if love meant 'sacrifice' and we lived by that? What does that make the world look like then? How would that thought, change the way we look at each other?

I look back at myself, coming up on 30 years of marriage. I swear, it just started yesterday. I made a video for my kids to give them on my 50th birthday, about two years ago, of pictures showing our family as they grew up, and set it to music. I have it on my desktop and watch it every now and again and still get teary. What a life I have been privileged to live! Now, hold the pony there sheriff, we stepped into it big time when we got married. Both Joni and I would say, and actually we did say in counseling six months after we were married, that it was completely different then the day before we were married. When you say 'for better or worse, sickness and health....'-- wow! Hold on to your toast.

We all say those words, almost as an after thought. Then, about a week into it, something I do, isn't so 'cute' anymore. Then the world applies stresses and tugs on that bond like the Olympic tug of war team. Job stress, bills, hidden issues from our childhood that we thought were dealt with come back again, addiction issues, self-esteem issues, unflushed toilets, pms, sex, fatigue, all weigh in, sometimes all at once. Those are fun days! The romance, so easily supplied at first, drains away and what you have left after the sweet candy outside is licked away is that weird chocolate center, which we all know, isn't chocolate. But there's something that happens in that trail ride of a married couple. Something that only happens if we allow it too.

We get purified.

After years of life, and if we allow ourselves to, we never reach the apex of that word, 'love'. It never stops growing-until we take our last breath. Soon into relationships, after the sex, and makeup, and ski trips to Vail, are all washed away in the sink, we wake up to living life and all the blemishes it has for us. During the daily melee of living, we have respites of peace, spread out over time, broken by life landing on us again. It is here, when we look around, we see those who matter. They matter because they stood in the fight with us. We look up and down the trench line and those faces that look back at us, providing a wink, a slight smile, a look of confidence letting you know they are standing firm with you, no matter the cost-'sacrifice'. They mouth simple words, like an old Scottish warrior-"Aye, ti's a good day for a fight." There is love in a form we can almost taste.

We have seen it daily:

The nineteen year-old marine in Fallujah

The single mother working to provide for her son

The father working three jobs to make ends meet

The fire and police running into a collapsing building while everyone is running out

The child, holding the hand of their dying parent as they reach the end of their life.

The problem is many of us fail-once, twice, many times. So, we think we can never find this Valhalla that is so celebrated; we can never get it 'right'. But we can. That's the thing, we can find it. Its there, we see it all around us if we stop to look. That act of sacrifice, we do-daily. We don't think much about it but the fact is, its huge! Look to both sides and see who is near you. Look and see who you are near and then take a hand. Sometimes that last few dollars or minutes of our time, that we can't really spare, we use to give a small token for someone less fortunate, a shirt, a birthday card, letting them know they matter, sometimes that small act will change that person's life forever.

So, here we are, approaching another Valentine's Day. Legend has it, that an old priest refused to give up marrying people in the dungeons of 3rd century Rome even after Caesar said he would have him killed. He was following an example of a guy before him. He didn't stop, and he was killed for it.

If you looked throughout the catacombs of the Roman dungeons where Valentine wandered, you won't find a stuffed bear with a red heart sewn to it anywhere.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

The Arts!

2010-01-31T08:20:00.000-08:00

I have discovered a love for writing and painting. Not those paint by number things or painting a bedroom. I hate painting rooms. No, I'm talking about that artsy-fartsy stuff of a canvas, easel, oils, and acrylics type stuff. Then, you throw some writing stuff in there and I'm a happy clam.

Like right now, I am in my little library/office/study/storage facility and writing to you. I have KYOT on the radio, they're the best on Sunday mornings, two dogs at my feet who think I am lord and master, and a cup of coffee that if it was compared to a baseball base hit would be at least a two-bagger and maybe stretched into a triple. Both writing and painting are like crack. Up until about twelve years ago they never use to be.

J.D. Salinger died this last week. He was due, the guy was 91. I don't want to live that long unless I have complete and utter control over every part of my body. I don't need to be able to run at that age but maybe still go out and get on a bike. Sure, a three wheeler by then, but just to ride around the block at least. Then just die in my sleep. I don't want to have my kids or grand kids or great grand kids find me in my own goo-you know? Anyway, back to J.D.

He was kind of a recluse. If ever you saw the movie Finding Forrester I think he might be something like that. No one interviewed him. He rejected and shunned anyone wanting to talk to him about Catcher in the Rye. The best line that came out of anything he ever said was that he wrote for himself, no one else. I could relate to that. I write because I have to. I paint because I have to. If I didn't do both of these, I would be at the track, smoking filter-less cigarettes and betting my pension on the ponies-and losing.

This year, Holy Ground will be born. It will be chasing her sister, Emancipating Elias, born in late 2007. If five people get it, it'll make me smile. Selling it is not the drive in my writing. The drive is the creation of something that I and I alone smile about. I have a few close friends who I care what they think. Three of them are my editors but the rest are family and very close friends-countable on one hand with a few fingers amputated. When one of those people say "Holy crap man, that was so good! I'm sobbing, laughing, I couldn't stop turning the pages!" or "Hey, paint that same crap for me, would ya? I want one just like it over my toilet," then I know I made something good. When one of my editors say they cried, my smile grows bigger. Everyone knows editors had their tear-ducts removed when they became editors.

Now, I have never met Salinger and frankly, it's too late now. But I think if I did, we wouldn't talk about theme, or inspiration or "so, where did you come up with the title...blah blah blah." Nope, I think we would sit and talk about our favorite scotch, best pet we ever owned, and our bowels. Men always, eventually, talk about their bowels.

We'd probably completely stay away from the topic of writing. Except for one thing, when is the best time for us to write? We'd compare. Then we'd talk about our favorite foods. Which, of course, would lead to another bowel story.

Do Your Eyes Leak?

2010-01-23T06:38:00.000-08:00

Do your eyes leak?

No, its a valid question. Do you, on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, have eyes that cry for no reason? My grandfather did. If my dad lived long enough, I think he would have. I do. Am I that old that I have to take a wad of toilet paper with me and wipe my cheeks every 30 minutes? Sometimes, the right one runs more than the left, like a wolverine in the circus. Of course, I wouldn't do that anyway, taking the toilet paper, bad form. I'd just use my sleeve or, in case of short sleeves, my shirt tail, sock, or just let it run. Usually I just let it run down my cheek. That way, people think I'm this 'emotionally connected' French woman.

"Oh Mark, you're so sensitive!"

No, I just have a gland issue. I find that as I get older, I have a tendency to cut loose stuff that after a while, I just don't care about. People care too much about stuff that really doesn't matter and not about other stuff. Haiti and what's going on there, that's pretty high on the list. Global warming, wars, stuff like that. Whether your underwear is on inside out or not, not a big deal. Sometimes that happens to me. I get dressed in the dark. I load my clothes in my bag, hope on my bike and go to work. I change there, usually in the dark. Sometimes, things don't go on as planned. So, I leave it. Socks are the same way. Inside-outside, who really cares? I do brush my teeth sometimes three times a day. Probably to the point where I am wearing out my fillings.

I have a hole in my sweats, multiple holes. But I think they might make it one more year. I think I said that two years ago. They're just getting broken in. Besides, I don't want to go to Target and buy a new pair. I can, I have the money. I just don't want to go. I'd rather walk through Costco and try the potstickers.

I think good fitting shoes are important. Feet, that's where the real effort should be. Focus on the feet and you'll have a much better day.

What about the lint from the dryer? A little on your shirt after you take it out and put it on, especially if it is in a hard to reach spot is okay. Really.

I'm finding I buy name brand stuff now. Not all of it but I figured I've lived long enough to qualify for stuff that advertises on television. I like that new laundry liquid that smells like mangoes. It reminds me of mango margaritas I had in Mexico years ago. Ahhh. Or baths. Yeah, I said 'baths'. I take showers but a bath is a poor man's jacuzzi. Helps those joint issues.

I need to ride my bike more and run less. I'm running out of cartilage in my knees and I understand you can't grow that stuff back. They take it from pigs and replace it with surgery. That doesn't sound too appetizing.

I would rather read than go to a Cardinals game. I do like going to the Diamondbacks game but that's only because you can sit down and clap politely. Its' like being at a park watching the ducks swim.

I'm a grandfather of two now, soon to be three. I need an air of tranquility and profound knowledge, like the Silverback gorilla. King of the family, the one all apes go to and ask where the best bananas are. He walks in and whatever melee is happening, it all settles down because he is there. The little boy in me still likes kicking in a door and sticking a gun in some bad guys face and telling him that if he moves, well, you know the rest. The Silverback in me wants to knock on the door and tell him its a pizza delivery.

Little do they know his underwear is on inside out.

Busy Hands are Hands with a Cramp

2010-01-21T07:05:00.000-08:00

How much more can one pile in a week? I know, a lot. But have you ever had a few days, a few compact days in a finite level of time that you just think, “Wow, that is a lot of stuff!”

Last week, a week ago Thursday, my son, Travis called me and tells me he is going to Haiti in 72 hours. That would put it on Sunday last. Travis is with an Army Reserve MP unit out of Mesa. It’s a week later and he still hasn’t heard. Every day, he repeats the same answer to the unending question-‘have you heard?’ If he doesn’t hear by Friday of this week, he won’t be going. It was a 30 day deployment and would bring him too near his wedding in the first part of March.

This, of course, is after the earthquake in Haiti. There is so much misery there in a state which is already miserable. But the tour cruises are still sailing there, so the country has that going for it-which is nice.

School is, well, school. The best part is when kids come into my classroom before the sun comes up. I’m usually at my desk by 6:30 to plan for the day and trying to get some writing in. I tried writing after school or at night but my brain is a bowl of cereal-covered in milk. I usually keep the lights off and have trees covered in those small, white Christm—oh, sorry, that’s politically incorrect—small white holiday lights and a fountain going with soft music. The smell of fresh coffee counters their over use of Axe cologne. Kids come in and just sit.

Wedding plans are progressing for a March lift-off. I called the place we’re having the rehearsal dinner at and made the reservations. It’s like we’re rolling out one of the shuttles to the pad for a launch. Soon, we’ll be fueling the rocket.

Speaking of shuttles, did you hear NASA is shutting down their shuttle program this year and selling off or giving away a million items to the highest bidder? I totally want a helmet.

Then this week are the rains. I’ve lived in Arizona all my life, same house even—never moved. And I have never seen so many people get their panties all in a wad over some rain. Sure, lots of rain, at least that’s what the weather forecasters say, but what do they know? They‘ve all moved out here from places like Chicago, or Omaha, or Long Island. They got their Doppler radar and maps and stuff and they bite their nails and say ‘ooohhh’ and ‘aaaaahhhhs’ a lot, but come on. Here’s an idea. STAY OUT OF THE WATER! If there is a creek where there didn’t use to be a creek, my suggestion to you is-stay away. Don’t go touch it. Treat it like you would a big Grizzly in Alaska. Yeah, their cute—from a hundred yards away. When they’re standing on your chest and preparing to rip your throat out and feed it to their young—not so cute.

There, that’s all you need to know.

So, that was a week that seemed busy. Sure, some of you had busier weeks and weeks with more action, but that was enough action for me. I’m a simple guy—really.

'Gut Instinct' or just Gas

2010-01-10T08:03:00.000-08:00

'Intuition' is one of those words that we like to flip around like a five dollar chip on a craps table in Reno; not so expensive to really hurt but just enough to let people see it and say "Hey, that person is groovy," or some other words to that effect.

I just got through spending a week with my students talking about the 'Transcendentalist period' in American literature, mid-1800's. When people didn't have any place to go at night and once the sun went down, they didn't have any light so they sat around and 'thought.' That can be fun and 'enlightening' if your crops are in and the fire is warm and your belly is full from the possum you shot earlier in the day, but what if your marriage is done, your brother is on crack, your high school age daughter is dating some Colombian drug lord wanna-be and the doctor called you personally after your 'routine' lab tests and asked you when you can come in and talk. How does that instinct working for you now?

Its the same.

We have a tendency to doubt ourselves on every stage. Why? We've been told over the course of time, that our abilities are falling short. So, we have a tendency, after a while, to believe those people. We look past the facts and look at the fog in front of us and begin to doubt ourselves. I think that's pretty normal. But here's the thing, certain things never change. Our prior experience, still has and is made up of facts that had certain outcomes. Those don't change. Fire, still burns the skin. That Ethiopian restaurant still requires you to take a sandwich along with you for dinner, that's just a fact. Have you ever-EVER seen a fat Ethiopian? Nope, they don't exist. Why? Do you really need to ask?

People know right and wrong. By age 12, you pretty much know its wrong to shop lift, shoot people, steal, or eat an entire large bag of Doritos. We know these things. So, why do we do it-violate the truth we know? We like it. We like it so we justify it with some politically correct statement. Why do I still run in the morning? Well, first, let me clarify that 'running' is not what I do at almost 52 years young. I shuffle, at least for the first half mile. All my joints and muscles are reporting to my brain pan that this is really stupid. But after a while they assign themselves the task of just getting me home and to the bathroom before I have an 'accident.' I say I like it. In fact, if I didn't I would be Jabba the Hutt, complete with no neck and beached on a couch waiting for my family genetics of heart disease to take me out with one massive shutdown.

Look, we all need to take a breath. The world, this year, will be a place of hope, despair, love, hate, war, and peace. In other words, about the same as its been for the last, oh, well, since the whole thing started. We do the best we can each day with what we have. Look down range today and see what you can do to find a little slice of lemon pie to look forward to and then pursue it. It's okay, even for a diabetic, to eat sweets sometimes.

So trust your gut when it comes to the things immediately around you. Don't worry about stuff unless the crap is on your radar. If not, let it go. Trust me, someone will handle it because it will be on their radar. Take that trip, eat at that restaurant, buy the sweater, enjoy those things around you that you can enjoy. I'm not saying bet the rent money on the ponies, but if we're not enjoying the life we have, what the hell are we doing? Find that moment to make you smile and trust your self to get you there and then back.

Even if its an Ethiopian restaurant.

2009-12-27T09:12:00.000-08:00

Okay, that's it. The holiday's over. All done. Nope, you can't count New Year's Eve as a holiday. Its just a marker for the end of the tax year and the beginning of your diet. Don't believe me? Look at the ads. Tell me where in your house you're going to put that $900 treadmill? Hmm? No, you're not going to get on it. Okay, maybe twice but that's it. Then it will be the thing that holds your clothes after your done ironing. Those new sweats you got, you will take them out and try them 'in the field' once, maybe twice, then you will wear them while you sit on the couch and watch re-runs of the Gilmore Girls, Band of Brothers, or NCIS. I don't care who you promised, it ain't gonna happen, at least not for very long, not if you shoot for the moon.

You've got to take baby steps.

Practice walking to the front walk for the paper and back. Start small. Instead of finishing those Christmas morning cinnamon rolls because you 'don't want it to go to waste,' try only eating one. If you wait another day or two, they'll be so hard, even microwaving them slathered in butter won't soften them up.

Take the dogs out and toss the ball or Frisbee for them. Make sure you stretch first. The last thing you want to do is pull a back muscle. That will interfere with you laying on the couch watching the Gilmore Girls, or Band of Brothers.

When you're ready, go for a walk in the mall. This will take some planning. You need a good pair of sneakers, good socks, and those sweats you bought. Take a bottle of water so you don't get dehydrated while you're looking at the sales in the windows or as you slow your pace down passing Victoria Secrets and give it a crisp, snappy hand-salute. Make sure you watch where you're walking. You don't want to bump into something and bruise yourself. It might lay you up for a week or so while the bruise heals.

We all know what's coming. First, we have to get back New Year's and drinking stuff that we haven't had since we were under the bleachers in high school. It all comes down to moderation. Between now and April we all need to save up enough to pay the IRS or, if we're lucky we're getting some back. So think about using that money for a new couch. Come on, you've earned it!

The Thrill of the Season

2009-12-23T07:10:00.000-08:00

Look, I'm not proud of the picture, at least, not officially. The fact is, the season made me do it.

That's right-the season. What's worse, I was able to convince the wife and children (the grown up hairy kind) to participate in this offensive behavior in which we believe, several federal postal laws were-if not broken, severely bent.

I don't believe in all that dribble of 'the devil made me do it' or 'I don't know, I was raised by wolves,' or any of that other malarkey stuff that is laid out to justify crappy behavior. We go into stuff with our eyes wide open-except during this time of year. It seems this is the time of year that the wheels fall of, for good for bad. There are more suicides and more babies being conceived this time of year than any other. Just when you think its safe to go to your mail box and open 'safe' Christmas cards, you get something like this. It's like your driving in Iraq and an IED goes off next to your convoy as you drive, well, this is nothing like that but its the best I can do. You open this innocuous envelope and BAM! You have this exploding all over your shirt. You have to admit though, it looks good on the refrigerator. But lets look at it for a moment in its entirety.

Christmas is the second most holiest day in the Christian calendar, right behind Easter and way out in front of Columbus Day (this holiday just pisses me off but I appreciate the day off). Family and friends are fighting like aardvarks in the Spring, trying to gather in family reunions all across this country, fighting the weather and consuming gallons of coffee and cocoa to make the trips to grandma's house in time for Christmas Day football games. Trips that will be talked about for years as Herculean tribal tasks of repatriation and good times. People do two things this time of year; they get nicer or they flip you off in a parking lot vying for that parking slot right next to the store. It brings out the best and worst in people. I toyed, I must admit, with sliding into a handicapped parking slot for just a short run into the store. It was only going to be a minute-honest-I use to be with the government. But I didn't.

I like to go to the mall and just walk. I'm 51, soon to be 52. Sometimes, I still think I'm eighteen and try to do things that I shouldn't be doing, like playing football with the staff against our football team. Yep, that was a bad call. I think I tore my hamstring on the first play. Not wanting to curl up in a ball and suck my thumb on the first play, I played until the half and then claiming department chair duties, excused myself from the game. But I can still walk the mall. That now seems more my speed. Walking with my wife and watching her in her element. Joni could touch every garment in a mall and then start over. I have the knack of finding every chair and nesting until she is done. I even walk with my hands behind my back, just like the 'Old Ones' the 'Silverbacks' of our society. At 51/52 I know I'm pushing the age thing but its comfortable-really, strolling with my hands behind my back like I'm a rabbi from Oslo.

Well, there ya go. Look, there's a lot of stuff out there that causes us to leave the light on in the house so we don't see the Boogieman. The world, sometimes creeps into our lives with pain, suffering, cancer, infidelity, aging parents, lost jobs, unmet dreams. I think I have laid aside several dreams that will never take place-ever. Those are hard things to realize. But, and I truly believe this, there is a purpose to our lives. If you believe in a thing called 'god' you know what I mean. Even if you don't, there is a sense of destiny we all have in us. Just because A, B, and C happen, doesn't mean D will follow. Today, look out the window and see it for what it is, a new day. Sure, those things we have been dealing with for what seems like years, might still be there, but its our hearts that are different, if we allow them to be. Shakespeare wrote in Henry V 'All things are ready if our minds be so."

Take this day, this season, as an opportunity to have hope that whatever you are in, will be what we can have it be. Enjoy it for what it is, a fresh start-starting right now-one step at a time. Who knows, you may find yourself standing on the front porch in a diaper-and loving it.

The power of the Christmas light!

2009-12-07T13:58:00.000-08:00

Every year it gets bad. The last few years its been the worst. We put lights up around our house. Not a lot, just the trim-easy, conservative lighting. Just enough to get us in the game and playing as part of the season. You know? Just to show up is a victory. But over the last few years, there has been peer pressure to move away from one style to another, more 'traditional' lights-the C9. Now, I admit, I caved. I bought some a couple of years back. We had them growing up as a kid. You know the ones, the alternating blue, green, red, orange\yellow, white bulbs that the power company wants you to buy because your little meter on your house starts to spin like a top.

Before the reinvestment in the C9's we had switched to the small, white lights and for a time, during their fashion, the icicle lights which takes on a whole new meaning in a city that never gets snow. But here was the thing, in all the years and during all the transitions, we never threw any of the strings of lights away. We had them all. We had those big plastic tubs from Target full of lights. We even bought the spools for them to wind them up and store them neatly. Crazy. So, last year, I put out every strand I had-all of them. I wrapped trees, bushes, walls, eaves, windows, nothing matched. We looked like a Key West margarita bar, a bad one. It was cool. then, after the season, we dumped them, keeping only the C9's and some lights for the tree. This year, during BLACK FRIDAY, I bought the lights on sale at Target. Hard to beat Target for Christmas lights, as long as you get there the first couple of days they open.

Ya see, they don't restock. Once those lavender lights with the LED bulbs are gone, they're gone. Their selection is really one of the best in the free world if your looking for that bulb that says "WHAM, NOW YOUR IN A NEIGHBORHOOD THAT LIGHTS CHRISTMAS THE WAY THE SHEPHERD'S SHOULD HAVE DONE IT 2000 YEARS AGO!!" You know the ones, the soft blues, or reds, or the lavenders. The multi-coloreds that you and I grew up with are, well, dull.

So, my friend and I stood there looking at the bulbs, comparing notes, strategies, effects-both desired and misdirected, cost, and distance. Another man, overhearing our conversation, piped in with time/distance ratios and the anomaly issues he had about being five feet short on a fix measurement, thereby requiring him to go to Plan F and add a string of crap to fill the gap. The gap was filled but he commented 'it looked like a scab on the end of a pretty girl's nose.'

I usually just leave the gap there.

At night, from the street, it gives the effect of the driveway ending a few feet short. Of course, with all the lights, you can actually see the driveway and see that it doesn't, but that's the theory we're going with.

Anyway, there you have it. Lights. Its an annual thing. All of ours are up and active. Of course, we had a storm last night and half of them are now decorating the neighbor's yard. But, still, the yard needed decorating. I'm not going to move it. They look fine there.