Anti-Welk

The old-time band leader Lawrence Welk used to gather the attention of his crew leading up to a performance number by calling out, "A-one, an-a-two". This piece is not about that. In fact, it is the exact opposite, sort of a "A-two, an-a-one". It is about how I sometimes go about things in the wrong order, or how I don't deal with the most important things first. In some ways this reminds me of the old saying about how you can learn the native language of a person by how he cusses when he hits his fingers with a hammer. If that is the case, I am likely to loose my "good father" badge as I have sometimes put the "2" before the "1". Let me relate two stories that happened during the raising of my daughter.

Story #1: My daughter and I used to love to go to a nearby park on our adventures. One summer I had purchased one of those air gliders that you launched by mounting it to a spring-loaded trigger. After a few sessions the foam and cardboard glider had seen its fair share of brutal crashes. As my daughter was reloading the glider onto the rod that contained the spring, the mechanism on the glider that held the spring latch broke and a cardboard tube shot out from the trigger at mach 1, hitting her in the throat. My first words were, "Oh no, the glider broke!"

Story #2: My daughter used to love to go out with me to collect our mail after the postman came. Our mailbox is a rather hefty piece of cast iron. For some reason, the neighbors across the street used to love to back their car into my mailbox and then come over to beg my forgiveness. Anyway, these repeated blows eventually took their toll on the door of the mailbox. One day as my daughter opened the box to get the mail, something broke on the opening mechanism sending a jagged shard of metal flying. It hit my daughter in the neck. I yelled out "Oh no, the mailbox is broken!"

Well there you have it, my anti-Welk parenting stories. It's a wonder that my daughter even looks at me today.

The Last Juror

My first foray into the world of author John Grisham was the book The Brethren. This choice was made not out of considered research, but because the book was available. The story was predictable and plodding, without great character development or in-depth layering. However, it wasn't horrible and I decided to try another Grisham book, The Last Juror. This work was evidently crafted, layered, poignant, and sweet. There was nothing contrived or implausible. Just good story telling from start to finish that kept me turning the pages.

The story takes place in the early to mid-1970s in Clanton, MS, a small backwoods southern town. At this time the deep south was still markedly segregated, although the first tentative and anxious steps toward integration were being taken. There was a very uneasy tension between the blacks in their portion of town and the whites in theirs. We meet the narrator of the story, William Traynor, a young man who has just gone through journalism school at Syracuse, but who essentially coasted through, without much motivation or energy. Through a connection made by his aunt, he ends up working as a reporter at the small Ford County Times newspaper. We are introduced to the various townspeople, a collection of folks such as you might meet in any small town. As an outsider, William is often dealt with coolly, kept at arms length. However, he is given an opportunity to purchase the paper and he jumps at the opportunity. Slowly he works to bring the paper to the modern age and along the way he slowly becomes an accepted part of the town. His attitude and approach go a long way toward helping with the integration of the town, weaving the stories of black and white simply and honestly across the pages of his paper.

The main headline in the Times in 1970 involved a man named Danny Padgitt. Born into a clan of lawless thugs, who are involved in every illegal activity that you can imagine. This family is comfortable keeping to themselves in their own corner of the world. However, one night after a night of drinking, Danny rapes and murders a local woman. He is convicted of the crimes, but his family has greased enough palms to ensure that his time served will be short and comfortable. When Danny is eventually paroled, two of the jurors from his criminal trial are murdered. The town reaches a boiling point and nobody feels safe. In this backdrop, we get to enjoy the growing friendship between William and a local black woman named Calia Ruffin, who served on the jury that convicted Danny. Calia is a woman deeply devoted to her large family and her Christian roots. We watch as this courageous woman deals with a very difficult time of racial stereotypes, but manages to maintain her deep faith and her love for life through all of the struggles that she faces. This was a gem of a story, perhaps not for folks looking for a white-knuckled, fast-paced thriller, but it made an impression on me.

One Last Hug

My daughter is now in her second year of high school and I strongly sense that dreaded pull of melancholy, realizing that our time together is nearing an end. Even though she is now fifteen and becoming a woman, our relationship is still sweet and innocent. A daddy and his girl. In just the blink of an eye, she will be graduating from high school and going off to college or off to start her life. Since my wife divorced me nearly eight years ago, my daughter has only lived with me part time. Our life together in this period has played out like a movie where half the frames have been cut away and the movie speeds through at double time. The photographs I keep of my daughter around the house captured the little girl that somehow sits more vividly in my mind than the one that I see now. This is likely because I spent so much more time with that younger version of her that the foundations were built up with more of a solid structure.

The other night after my daughter went to bed, I said my goodnights and went across the hallway to putter about in my office while she wound down a bit with her Nintendo game. After a few minutes I realized that I had not given her my customary hug after she was tucked in, so I went into her room to say one more goodnight. She had already fallen asleep, her game sitting on her bedside table untouched from where it had been positioned just a few moments ago. As I whispered my sweet dream wishes to her, I sensed that I had missed an opportunity, like so many other times over the past eight years.

Observations 32

My occasional blog series "Observations" was created to be an outlet to share a variety of topics that pop into my field of view as a result of a condition that many bloggers are afflicted with known as "blogger's eyes". In this state we view the world on the constant look-out for topics on which to write about. Today's blog came about from random odds 'n ends of things that I have noticed over the past few weeks.

• I was recently blown away when I walked past a colleague's office and overhead him talking on the phone in portuguese. I had no idea he spoke a second language.
  
• There is nothing you can do when you walk past someone's car in a rainstorm and see that its windows are down. No cranks like in the old days.
  
• I hate it when companies send their junk mail to me with the envelope addressed using a pseudo-handwriting font. They do this to try to trick me to open their crap under the thin ruse that I will think it is a real letter like people used to send in the days of yore.
  
• In 1998 the NL leaders in home runs were McGwire - 70, Sosa - 66, Griffey - 56, Vaughn - 50, Belle - 49. With a few weeks left in the current MLB season, the NL leader in home runs has
  "only" 36. I love it when folks (including those who were users) continue to argue that PEDs make no difference in performance.
  
• Businesses like to put up their local community awards around the cash register area. It is kind of sad when the only award mounted to the wall is a dusty and faded plaque from 2001.
  

1400

A friend once told me that when it comes to an anniversary or a birthday, you had better darn sure pay attention to one that ends in a zero or you will likely end up in the proverbial doghouse. I can only think that any reasonable person would agree that regardless of the context of my friend's statement, this had better darn sure apply to blogs. Today marks the 1400th post on this site. To put that in perspective, if I posted everyday for 1400 straight days, then I would have compiled a library of 1400 posts. Now that is a pretty sobering bit of perspective. Anyway, I am thankful that I have this outlet for my thoughts, my creativity, and my humor (such as they are). I have had a lot of fun and continue to have a lot of fun with this site. I also want to thank those of you who stop by regularly and say hello. Your presence here helps me to find my smile. I look forward to another forced celebration when I get to post number 1500.

P.T.A.

Each year shortly after school begins, the schools in my area have an evening where they invite the parents to come in to meet the teachers, to tour the school, and to see what is expected of the children in each of their classes. At this year's gathering at my daughter's high school, I learned a few things.

1). Many of her teachers are young, energetic women, just a few years past getting their own high school diplomas. It turns out that all of these women have the same first name, "Ms." (where you really stress and enlongate the zzzz sound). None of them, it seems, has a traditional first name like you might find with ordinary folks out on the street, such as Henrietta or Maude.

2). On a prominent sign in all of the classrooms are the words: "Tanks tops should measure 3 fingers across." There were no other words or instructions given. Yet it seems to me that if the material that goes across either a girl's or guy's chest is only three fingers wide, that wouldn't leave much for the imagination if you get my meaning. I think some additional clarifications to this dress-code rule are in order, such as whose fingers are used as the standard?

3). A dress code plaque in the front hallway of the school just outside the principal's office read, in letters no less than 1 inch tall with a notoriously bold and jaunty font, "No razorback tops allowed!". Why the hate against folks from Arkansas? Shouldn't our schools be promoting harmony and acceptance of others, even folks from Arkansas (properly pronounced as "Arrr Kansas").

4). After a long and exhausting day at work, without a chance even to go home for a moment's rest and a quick bite to eat, I went straight from my last late meeting to the school. I did not want to miss the beginning of the festivities, which gathered everyone in the school's auditorium. Apparently severe fatigue and low blood sugar combined to make me so punchy that I could not help but giggle when the school's color guard campily goose-stepped across the stage swinging their fake wooden rifles to the prepubescent squeaks of their squad leader.

5). All of the teachers that I met had a great passion for their work and a love for children that was immediately obvious as they told us about their classes and their experiences as a high school teacher. I left feeling that my daughter was going to be in more than capable hands this year.

The Brethren

Over the past five or six years, I have read many fiction novels. However, I have contained myself to a relatively limited number of authors. In an effort to start seeking other sources, I decided to read my first book by popular author John Grisham, called The Brethren. After I finished reading, I checked out the online reviews for this book. Without a reference point to understand how others viewed his body of work, I enjoyed getting a bit more perspective reading what others thought compared to other Grisham novels. It was interesting that of the 1100 reviews for this book on Amazon.com, most had a decidedly negative impression. My take, just judging from this one read, was that this work was nothing special. Fairly predicable, fairly simple story arcs, not particularly compelling characters. However, I still enjoyed the book and it was a fairly quick read.

The Brethren are a group of three ex-judges, sentenced for various crimes to do their time in a low-security federal prison. They have set up a little court of their own within the prison to adjudicate various disputes between the inmates. They also oversee a scam that involves posting ads in the personal sections of gay men's magazines, posing as a young man looking for an older man for a relationship. Using a series of carefully crafted letters, they learn more about the men who answer before finally extorting money from them under threat of exposing their activities. It is a scheme that is beginning to pay dividends.

As a backdrop to this, the world continues on a steady course to instability and war due to various rogue leaders and enemy states. The director of the CIA and his inner circle have hand-picked a candidate that they will groom and fund to run for president of the United States. This man, Aaron Lake, a low-level congressman from Arizona, has agreed to run on a platform promising to double military funding over the duration of his term. The CIA director then uses every trick in his bag to ensure the citizenry grows ever more worried about the current weak state of the U.S. military. Mr. Lake takes the nation by storm, but has a single skeleton in his closet. He answered the personals ad and has found himself caught up in the net of the Brethren. Payoffs, assassinations, well-placed operatives, and intelligence services abound in this straight-ahead, but fairly middle-of-the-road thriller. I have another Grisham book on my desk called The Last Juror that I will tackle next.