Have Yourself a White Bread Little Holiday (and other Chris..err Holiday Stories)

Christmas is done for 2014.  Like a Dickensian Christmas ghost it snuck up on us, stayed for an instant and then dissolved into winter’s fog.  Every year around Halloween we bellyache that “those capitalist bastard retailers are foisting Christmas on us earlier and earlier every year.”  And then a couple days before Christmas we’re in a panic because we managed to procrastinate away the 2 months long shopping season that the capitalist bastards graced us with.   “What the hell do I get for the wife?  She already has everything.”  So we head for Ross and grab a sweater, any sweater.  On Christmas morning she opens the box, holds it up and asks, “Did you save the receipt?”

In The Land of the Mustangs

The three ambled slowly along the hard scrabble trail, rocky white clumps that crumble underfoot and disintegrate into grainy sand; a landscape peppered with knots of spiny sagebrush.  Looking at the trio you feel desolation; a desperate loneliness;drifting as if looking for something or someplace but you don’t know what or where.  They headed for the ridge that would soon swallow them up taking them to..

A family group of mustangs stops at a water hole

Visiting the Founders' Dilemma

“I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.”  ~ George Washington

“21 Aug. 1805…bought a negro woman Lucretia Jame’s wife, her 2. sons John & Randall and the child of which she is pregnant, when born, for £180.”  ~ Thomas Jefferson’s Memorandum Book  

We traveled the Old Dominion from the northeast corner at Arlington over the state line from DC to the southwest corner at Abingdon, just a tobacco spit away from the Tennessee border.  Along our route we made house calls on some former presidents.  The presidents are long since gone but their homes, from Washington’s Mount Vernon just south of DC to Jefferson’s Monticello on the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge, all remain in magnificent restoration.  Four of our nation’s first five presidents hailed from Virginia, George Washington (1) Thomas Jefferson (3) James Madison (4) and James Monroe (5) and we visited the homes of all four. 

 

Reproduced Slave's Cabin at Mount Vernon

On The Civil War Trail

“The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.”

~ Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative

Unharmed he reached the nearest sufferer. He knelt beside him, tenderly raised the drooping head, rested it gently upon his own noble breast, and poured the precious life-giving fluid down the fever scorched throat.

This done, he laid him tenderly down, placed his knapsack under his head, straightened out his broken limb, spread his overcoat over him, replaced his empty canteen with a full one, and turned to another sufferer. 

~ Excerpt of Confederate Gen. Joseph B. Kershaw’s account of the Angel of Marye’s Heights.

“And let the perpetual light shine upon them.”

~ My wife Cora.

We left Washington DC for a driving tour of Virginia.  Our drive crisscrossed Virginia's Civil War trails.  You can't hardly drive for a few hours in Virginia without coming across a site related to the Civil War.  If it isn't a building or a battlefield it might simply be a sign describing a particular spot as being some general's headquarters or a place where a skirmish took place.  The white signs are along highways, on country roads, near schools and on the fringes of shopping malls. 

Confederate cannons on the hills above Fredericksburg

Song of Appalachia

On Google Maps Hiltons, Virginia looks to be only a short jog from Abingdon where our hotel was.  In fact the directions will tell you that it’s only 27 miles away.  The directions will also tell you though that it’s about a 50 minute drive.  Well that didn't look at all right when we started out until a few minutes into the drive when we left the the town limits of Abingdon for a narrow, winding road through the woods and farms of that little corner of Appalachia. This section of Virginia is about a tobacco spit away from the border with Tennessee.

A familiar Baptist Church in Appalachia

Reporting From Washington

Reporting from Washington.  You hear that at least once every evening on the nightly news.  That’s because DC is, as Reggie Jackson once said of himself, “the straw that stirs the drink.”  Or is that Wall Street?

DC isn't a Budweiser or a white wine town; it’s a Scotch rocks town. 

DC oozes power.  It radiates from the buildings, flows down the Potomac, and jostles it’s way along the busy sidewalks.  You feel it in the streets, in restaurants and in bars.  There seems to be more business than tourism in the marble lobby of The Willard Hotel (known to locals as “The W”).  Folks in business suits greet each other with firm handshakes and then retire to a corner to discuss - what?  A peace initiative?  An appropriations bill?  What legislator to lobby (read: buy off)?  Possibly an obfuscation strategy, or for those old enough to remember, the old Ralph Kramden "Hamana hamana, hamana."  

The Willard Hotel's Marble Lobby

We’d planned an al fresco dinner at Bobby Van’s Grill and before leaving I mulled over the jeans I was wearing.  C'mon, a pair of jeans is the everyday ensemble in California.  I glanced down at my jeans and running shoes; nah; shit’s not gonna work.  Went to slacks and loafers.  Good move; I’d have stuck out like Old MacDonald – or Surfer Joe.  Either way it would've been a bad look.  You don’t see baggy shorts, jeans and a t-shirt in a DC restaurant - not unless the wearer is from California.

Strolling near The White House you know what you see; uniformed Secret Service, Park Police, DC cops, bomb sniffing German Shepherds and those fellows in gray suits and shades.  You also don’t know what you don’t see.  A tour bus operator pointed to a sniper at the top of a nearby building.  Chilling. 

If you come to DC you need to visit The Newseum; no you really NEED to visit it.  Dedicated to the fourth estate and the ideals of the First Amendment it sits on Pennsylvania Avenue, ironically between two infamous manure factories; The Capitol Building and The White House.  The Newseum is a big building of steel and glass, making it highly transparent, unlike the government buildings that flank it. Why do you NEED to visit it?  Because the press has become a popular whipping boy; it’s biased, its left wing, its right wing, it’s a corporate tool, it’s this, it’s that, but whatever it is it can’t be any good.  Right?  Everyone seems to have his own bias about the press, whether it came honestly or it came from Limbaugh, but the fact is that very often the press is the only check when the so called checks and balances of our government become unchecked and out of balance.  Lest we forget Watergate, Iran-Contra, and countless investigative reports that have uncovered government, waste, abuse, excess of power and assorted skullduggery.

Why do you NEED to see the Newseum?  Because in a powerful section about the former East Germany you see what happens when we don’t have a free press or a first amendment or we the citizens fall asleep at the switch and buy the government line, or the corporate line. You see in the East Germans the lengths to which people will go, when they yearn for basic freedoms; you know, kinda like that 1776 thing.  But what the hell, a lot of us are already asleep; night-night democracy.

There is also a film presentation that relives the press coverage of 9/11 through the words of the reporters that were there.  Just outside of the theater is a well used satin metal tissue holder.

At The Newseum there is a display of the 9/11 press coverage. 

There is also a permanent tissue dispenser

As we strolled Pennsylvania Avenue, I noticed a building that houses, figuratively at least, a butt load of my hard earned money; IRS headquarters.  Sigh. 

There might be better ways to sight see than going for a run in the early hours but I can’t think of one right now.  Forget that health stuff, the lighting is spectacular and if you aren't alone with the sights you’re about as close to alone as you’re going to be.  Two early morning runs through the National Mall and past the monuments yielded breathtaking sights in the dramatic light of sunrise.  What I missed out on were Homer and Marge in Bermuda shorts and all the other gazillion touristas. 

I was told by someone who claimed to be in the know that DC is empty now.  “Huh?”  I asked.  “Seems awfully full to me.”  She pointed out that a lot of folks leave town this time of year because Congress isn't in session.  I suppose that the dearth of crowds is the only thing that would tip you off that the blackguards have skipped town.  When they're on recess nothing gets done.  And when they're in town?  Nothing from nothing is nothing.

One of those morning runs and I happen on to the Vietnam Memorial.  I’m the only one there and the rising sun is shining on that long bright ebony wall.  The lawn and trees and the Washington Monument are all reflected as clearly as if that black surface were a mirror.  The reflection makes the thousands of names blend with the idyll of that park; the trees, the emerald lawn and Washington’s monument looking down on it all.  I get emotional at that monument.  It brings on a palpable wave of sorrow.

Some yards from the wall is a statue of three grunts.  You stand in front of them and you look at them but they don't look at you.  They look over and past you as if you’re not there; as if you weren't there. To me they seem to know that I wasn't there.  They're dismissive of me as they should be. Unquestionably those who were there see those men differently; more intimately.  To me the one on the left, with the machine gun appears bitter, the one in the middle, resolute, and the one on the right, just sad and weary.  All three wear a look of resignation.  They wear the emotions that pulled on each other, on each of us and on the nation as a whole during those years.  If you didn't serve you can't get it. I didn't serve and I don’t think I even know anyone who perished in that swamp.  The memory of those times still brings tears.  As I look up at those young men I want to ask their forgiveness for not helping with all the heavy lifting that a misguided government heaped on their young shoulders.  

Served or not, if you didn't live through that era, you can't get it either. To say that the country was divided is an understatement.  Americans squared off in nose to nose confrontations at demonstrations, in the office, at school and in the home.  If you believed in the war you saw your local recruiter. If you had the financial horsepower or enough grease and you didn't believe; or even if you did but lacked the testicular fortitude to enlist then you got a deferment.  If you were just a plebian you might just head for Canada.  Failing that you counted on lady luck in the draft lottery and if you lost; well as Country Joe put it, "Put down your books and pick up your gun, we're gonna have a whole lot of fun."  And add to that the racial unrest, and you had a cauldron of unrest and a big fucking mess.

Some will never get it; they’ll never get anything.  Like the fool that mocked the nurses portrayed in the Vietnam Women’s Memorial.  He had a jolly good time and his female companion laughed like a braying mule.  I wanted to call out to him to shut the fuck up but for some there’s just no remedy.  You can’t shame someone who has no shame.

And yes that Women’s Memorial is as moving as the Vietnam Memorial – maybe more so.  A nurse with an expression of sorrow cradles a fallen soldier while one behind her hopefully, desperately scans the skies for that dust off.

If you’re visiting DC, the National Mall is where it’s at.  Monuments and museums so numerous you would need more than a week to see them all.  The museums are enormous and you can’t dally at any single display in a museum and hope to get through it all.  You breeze along the displays and soak in what you can.  At the Smithsonian Museum of American History the wife got so engrossed in a display about the original flag that flew over Fort McHenry that it took her nearly a half hour to finish.  I finally had to drag her out, “You do realize that we only have two more days in DC.”  “What do you mean?” she asked. “I mean at the rate you’re going we’re going to spend both days here in this museum.”  I really hated to rush her along.  You couldn't pay that woman enough to actually read a history book but plop her into a museum or a historical site and she’s riveted. 

Constitution Avenue runs the length of the mall and along much of that boulevard a cottage industry has sprouted.  Trailers line the curbside hawking food and trashy souvenirs.  As you walk along the line you pass a food vendor and then a souvenir vendor and then another food vendor identical to the first food vendor and then a souvenir vendor identical to the first souvenir vendor.  Every shopkeeper in every trailer looks to be Southeast Asian.  And so you walk along Constitution Avenue with the green grass of the mall on one side and a line of cloned schlock traders on the other. 

Food and provisions on Constitution Ave. 

The original impetus to take this trip was, believe it or not; baseball.  The plan was originally to go to Yellowstone but when I looked on the San Francisco Giants website way back in January, I saw that they were offering a vacation to DC with lodging and tickets to three games.  Given the choice the little woman jumped on DC.  We took in two night games and bagged the third; a day game on Sunday.  I like baseball as much as the next guy but this is Washington DC.  And so as it turned out we went for three baseball games, took in two and then decided to drive through Virginia for a week.

We've left DC now.  I’m writing this sitting in a cottage tucked in Virginia’s Piedmont, in the shade of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  There’s no traffic, no commotion, no horns; no impatience that business demands and none of the pressure and urgency that embraces that most powerful city on Earth.  Out here the night sky is full of the stars that are made invisible by the lights of DC.  The city sounds have been replaced by a million crickets.  It’s almost as if we’d never been to DC.  Hell, almost as if it doesn't exist. 

                                              

Touring The People's House

In the early days it was called Washington City and it could be muggy as all hell.  It’s now called Washington DC and it’s still muggy as hell.  James Madison, the fourth President used to avoid Washington City in the sticky summer.  He was prone to illness, especially what he used to call the “bilious fever,” whatever in the hell that is, and so he did what he could to take care of the nation’s business from his home in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains in his native Virginia. 

Getting Motel 6'ed

We do the same sort of thing every damn time we leave for vacation.  It’s a nod towards budgeting on an otherwise expensive expedition.  And so every trip starts by taking it south no matter the actual compass direction.  It’s become a sorry vacation tradition to use Motel 6 as a sort of staging area, and every time we do it we swear it will be our last.

Reno Rambling - Too.

Reno's Peppermill; a mile or so from what’s left of The Strip's glory years.  In the sixties the strip was a glittering string of casinos and hotels; Fitzgerald’s, The Sahara (which would become the Flamingo Hilton), Mapes, The Nevada Club, Cal Neva, Harold’s Club and a full deck of smaller players. The strip has since been stripped. 

Reno: Rambling

Alright so it was less rambling and more gambling but I felt as if before we even got to Reno; before I’d finished booking a room, that I’d gambled and been snookered by our hotel/casino – The Peppermill.  The Tuesday and Wednesday before the 4^th of July were advertised at $59 and $69 respectively.  A good deal I announced to the wife and she said, “Book it,” and so I clicked BOOK IT.  The next page showed me that my grand total was over $180.  What the hell?  And there was the $15 dollar per day compulsory resort fee telling me that if I wanted to use wi-fi, the fitness center and pool, have a bed and get toilet paper in my room I would have to pony up.  Okay the last was an exaggeration but if the fee is compulsory why not put it up front in the cost of the room?  Oh but I know the answer to that question.  Because at first blush $59 looks a lot more inviting than $74 and so you rush to click the BOOK IT icon before anyone else gets YOUR room.  And now you’re at the page where it’s time to pay up and excitement has taken charge and you say “screw it” and you tap in your credit card number.  Oh I had second thoughts but in the end I reasoned that, hell its only 30 bucks.  Of course that’s how things get expensive.  You keep tacking on the “its onlys” until you've racked up the national debt – it’s the American way.  And so before even leaving the house it was Peppermill -1, American Boomer – 0.  

Independence Day Musings

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ~ The Declaration of Independence

“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

July 4^th, 2014.  After taking my usual sunrise run I was surprised, and disappointed, to see that my coffee house haunt was open at 6, the usual time for a weekday.  Not so disappointed that I boycotted coffee for the day but enough so that it gave pause to note that another holiday was passing with business as usual.  Workers were arriving at Home Depot to start the day and the Big Lots folks were putting out their Independence Day displays; sadly they aren't independent from work on what should be one of the most significant holidays in America’s calendar year.

It was 238 years ago that the Declaration of Independence from the British crown was adopted.  It was, for all intents and purposes already a done deal.  Two days prior the 2^nd Continental Congress had approved Richard Henry Lee’s resolution declaring independence.  And this certainly didn't mark the day that the colonists took up arms.  The revolution had been going on since April of the preceding year and the colonists had been raising bloody hell (As King George might have said) for some time before that.  The Declaration of Independence wouldn't even be signed until the following month.  But I’m splitting hairs, aren't I? 

Welchie and Reggie on a Chilly Ballpark Night

The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;

He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.

And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,

And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.

From Casey at the Bat by Ernest Thayer

It was awfully late in the year to be attending my first baseball game of the season; nearly mid-June, a Tuesday evening game against the Washington Nationals. I usually manage to get to the yard in late April; certainly no later than mid-May.  This game was a birthday present for my son and a present for myself.  There aren't many better ways to spend an evening than taking in a ballgame with your son.  It’s the American way.  There are a lot of “American ways”; some good, some not so much.  This is one of the best.

Armed and Stupid

October 28^th, 1880.  A group of rowdies, loosened up with whiskey and high spirits decided it would be a fine night to shoot their guns into the air.  Fred White, the town marshal didn’t figure that rousting the townies with gunplay was a great idea and so he moved to put a stop to the festivities.  He found one of the men in a vacant lot and confronted him, “I am an officer, give me your pistol.”  White grabbed the barrel of the gun held by Curly Bill Brocious.  When Curly Bill didn’t immediately comply White yelled, “Now you god-damned son of a bitch, give me that gun.  White jerked on the barrel and the gun discharged sending a bullet into White’s groin, the muzzle blast setting his clothing on fire.  Almost immediately Curly Bill was sent to the ground, struck in the head by a pistol wielded by Wyatt Earp.  Two days later Fred White, age 32, died of his wound.  As a result of White’s death, an ordinance was passed by the town council prohibiting the carrying of deadly weapons in Tombstone, Arizona. 

June 2014 and Americans are strutting the streets carrying guns; holstered pistols and long guns (often assault type rifles) slung over their shoulders; they are in wild west parlance “heeled.”  I’d like to say that we’ve come a long way in 134 years – but we apparently haven’t.  In the wake of increasing mass shootings businesses have had to do what lawmakers lack the testicular fortitude to do.  They are banning the carrying of weapons on their premises.  Starbucks, Chilis, Sonic, Jack in the Box and Chipotle have all adopted policies banning the carrying of long guns into their stores.  The latest battleground is Target.  A group called Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense is circulating a petition asking that the store ban the carrying of weapons into their stores after an armed group called Open Carry Texas walked through a store. Could it be that the gun nuts locked on to the name Target and figured this must the place “fer bringin’ yer fowlin’ piece to?”  No Billy Bob, that’s not what they had in mind when they named the place TARGET. 

Staring Down the Barrel of the Truth

Clearly America has reached the point at which she needs to look herself in the eye.  Look herself in the eye, take a collective deep breath and be honest with herself.  She needs to come to grips with the realities of gun violence and admit some simple truths.

A table of death at a gun show

Dinner at Mom's: 2nd Course - Fried Meat, Mushrooms, Politics and a Side Order of Fear

Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?

Can't you see the fear that I'm feeling today?

If the button is pushed, there's no running away,

There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave,

take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,

but you tell me over and over and over again my friend,

ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction. 

~ Eve of Destruction written by P. F. Sloan, recorded by Barry McGuire.

October 1964; probably 3 or 4 times in a month mom put fried pork chops on the menu.  Chops carried more fat back then and so it followed that they carried a hell of a lot more flavor.  Mom would put the pan drippings to good use and make a batch of cream gravy.  Nothing quite like pork chops and mashed potatoes in a bath of cream gravy.  It was the meat and potatoes diet that was starting to undergo scrutiny.  The medicos waved a bony finger at America and warned that fatty red meat, cream, butter and all that frying was going to clog the arteries and bring about a national cardiac crisis.  We were faced with the fear that our diet was killing us.

As so as we cemented our arteries, we watched the dour TV newsmen report on the upcoming presidential election. The GOP had nominated the conservative Barry Goldwater to unseat Lyndon B. Johnson who took office after JFK was assassinated.  It was the dual of initials; LBJ versus AuH2O (the chemical symbols for Gold and Water).  Johnson teetered on the Vietnamese fence by positioning himself as a pillar of war restraint who could still be tough on Communism. It might have been a hard sell against anyone but Goldwater.  The Arizona Senator's tough posture on the Commies translated to acute "hoof in mouth" disease with some propositions that scared the shit out of the electorate. His notion on dealing with Chinese supply lines in Vietnam was to clear them out with "low yield nuclear weapons."  I still recall the GOP campaign slogan touting Goldwater's conservatism, "In your heart you know he's right," being turned by the Democrats to, "In your heart you know he might" (launch a nuke) and "In your guts you know he's nuts." And so as we sat at the dinner table that forkful of dessert hung suspended as we watched with unease and then gasped at Johnson’s campaign ad; a little girl, a daisy and a nuclear mushroom cloud.

Oh yeah, we knew all about mushroom clouds.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki were within my parents’ recent memories and as a kid I remember news footage of those boiling explosions. My grade school friends and I may have been too young to be concerned but we knew all about mega tonnage and we were in awe along with the rest of the world of the Soviet's gargantuan tests. I was 10 years old when Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro had their atomic pissing contest. It was the Eve of Destruction that Barry McGuire would sing about two years later.

As kids we carried A-bombs in the backs of our minds.  We wondered if the destructive force of a nuke dropped on downtown San Francisco would carry as far south as San Mateo.  My friends and I would ride our bikes around the nearby College of San Mateo, often passing by the stairs that led down to the fallout shelter.  I seem to recall some sense of relief that we had a shelter so close, although in retrospect had the bomb been dropped when class was in session the shelter would have filled up with college students leaving the rest of us to go through the radioactive baking cycle. We knew all about the Strategic Air Command B-52s that hovered round the clock on the outskirts of Soviet air space to deliver retaliation in the event of of a Soviet launch.  We knew that fighter pilots on alert slept in the cockpits of their jets on the tarmacs.  When the sixties began we went through the bomb drills not really knowing what we were doing as we got into a tuck position under our desks.  We giggled and made faces at each other.  By the mid-sixties we probably started to question what the hell good a student desk would do in the midst of a nuclear attack.  Finally, by the end of the sixties as we entered high school we darkly joked that the tuck position was invented to be able to conveniently and easily "kiss your ass goodbye."  And yet there was this perverse fascination, an attraction to the images of nuclear blasts.  The vivid colors and the seeming grace in which the big cloud formed carried a strange and awful beauty. And then of course there was the awesome, hard to imagine power. We were transfixed, but really, who would admit to it?

Practicing to kiss your ass goodbye?

When I look back on the cold war I pause for a moment at 9/11; I recall the general fear that gripped our nation in the hours, days and weeks that followed. It makes me wonder how much fear our parents felt when they knew that destruction and death from above were just a few minutes away.  A nuclear storm could strike Oklahoma City with more destruction than a tornado and about as little warning; or a bomb could topple San Francisco as suddenly as a 7.0 earthquake.  If we kids could sense the danger of nuclear holocaust how much fear dogged our parents?  In some cases it was enough for them to build bomb shelters under the house and then be prepared to lock out the desperate folks who used to be friends and neighbors before the sky started to fall.

The images that left us in awe

In October 1963, just weeks before the election, my parents brought me with them to Washington Square in San Francisco to listen to Johnson preach peace in a stump speech.  LBJ concluded his speech by saying, “For 11 months I have tried to help us have peace in the world, and if I can have your help, if I can have your hand, if I can have your heart, if I can have your prayers, if the good Lord is willing, I will continue to try to lead this Nation and this world to peace." Johnson won the election handily but in the end it didn't work out so well; for LBJ or for America - at least not on the foreign policy front.

America sat at the dinner table that election year and was fed a diet of fear. By Goldwater, the fear of the Red Menace; by Johnson the fear of Goldwater. Not much has really changed has it? Candidates still serve up the fear diet; just in a different flavor.  Soft on Communism has become naive about terrorism. I feel fortunate that as a boy I had a connection to a different time, as my dad would relate to me the calm that FDR tried to deliver to an anxious nation; "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Fear is now a permanent ingredient in the campaign recipe. We'll never go back will we? Sad.  

Stump speeches.  I look back at LBJ in Washington Square as irretrievable nostalgia.  Presidential candidates don’t make stump speeches anymore.  They rarely come to California anymore but when they do it's with a purpose irrelevant to the election itself; Republicans know they can’t win here and Democrats know it’s in the bag.  So why would you come to the most populous state in the Union? To meet the people you hope to lead?  To deliver to the electorate your vision of hope for the nation?  Hell no. It’s to appear at a gazillion dollar a plate fundraising dinner.  They go out of their way to appear in front of friendly crowds because protest signs make bad photo ops and heckling a poor sound bite.  Politicians have lied through their teeth for ages.  In the old days you got to see them do it in person - for free, in a big city park.  Now you have to whip out the AMEX, or mortgage the homestead so you can listen to a fellow mortgage his morals at a private dinner in a rich guy's mansion.

And ironically, some fifty years after we were being told that our diet was about as healthy as a glass of hemlock, the stigma has been removed from red meat, starches and heavy cream.  Meat and potatoes have been repackaged as the healthy, salutary paleo-diet.  I suppose that if the diet experts ever tire of analyzing what we eat they can turn to politics.  They seem to be pretty good at flip-flopping and scaring the shit out of the public.
"Wife, we need to get off those damned grains and legumes.  They're killing us.  Whip me up a chicken fried steak with a an order of cream gravy and do it on the double quick"

Dinner at Mom's

“The oldest form of theater is the dinner table. It's got five or six people, new show every night, same players. Good ensemble; the people have worked together a lot.”  ~ Michael J. Fox

San Mateo, circa 1960s.  Dinner was the required event at our house and in most American households.  In our home it was straight up six, every night right after mom and dad had drained their martinis.  About five, dad would shake up some gin with a whisper of vermouth in a gray metal cocktail shaker and the parents would savor a couple of cocktails until dinner time.  The gin was cheap stuff, probably Seagram’s.  I doubt the existence of snooty boutique gin in 1960 and mom and dad wouldn't have it if it did exist. It was after I’d moved back home after college that dad included me in the ritual and I developed a taste for martinis.  I still had the cocktail shaker and used it up until a few years ago when the doc took alcohol off my menu.  I recently gave it to my son in law for his home bar. In sixties America you didn't entertain the thought of skipping dinner for work or an “activity.”  Yeah, dinner was the activity; not soccer or dance class or karate.  And certainly not work.  You worked your 8 hour day and then came home.  Those leashes known as cell phones and laptops were fantasies in the minds of a few dreamers.  Dinnertime was sacred.

A May Day Medley

It’s International Workers Day, AKA May Day.  Most of the world takes this day off.  In America, most people work just like any other day.  In a sad irony, the Grand Old Party celebrated International Workers Day by blocking a bill to raise the minimum wage from an “extravagant” $7.50 an hour. 

Easter; Memories of Eggs, Dogs, Cold Cuts and Japanese Tourists

“New Rule: Someone must x-ray my stomach to see if the Peeps I ate on Easter are still in there, intact and completely undigested. And I'm not talking about this past Easter. I'm talking about the last time I celebrated Easter, in 1962.”  ~ Bill Maher

“And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.” ~ Gospel according to Matthew 27:50-53.

It’s Easter; the time to celebrate eggs, chocolate, hard boiled and jelly bean; pastels; bunnies; baby chicks; horrid marshmallows called Peeps; bright flowers and spring.  Oh yeah, it also celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after he was crucified, which is celebrated as Good Friday.  That’s the Christian (read; original) version of the holiday and I’m not here to refute it or ratify it.  I’m not feeling a religious debate today. 

COBOL, French Fries and Roger’s Sprite

“The computer is a moron.”  ~ Peter Drucker; Management Consultant.

“Cobol is Fun!”  That was the enthusiastic claim made the first evening by the instructor in the COBOL class that I was taking with my friend Scott at the College of San Mateo. I'm certain that Scott and I exchanged a derisive rolling of the eyes.  If COBOL was fun he was going to have to prove it.  A few weeks in and we knew that he was either a liar or just plain loony.  With his stout frame cloaked in a bright red blazer Scott and I immediately christened him Hank Stram after the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs football team who wore a similar red blazer while roaming the sidelines.  It seemed to us that there could only be two men in the entire world who would wear a scarlet blazer. One because it was his team's color and the other because he apparently had no fashion sense. 

Peddling Arrogance

During the recent Olympics Cadillac dusted off that worn out and musty Protestant work ethic to peddle their ELR.  In the process the car maker scored an impressive hat trick by also trafficking in xenophobia and firing some salvos in the ever escalating class war. The ad opens with a vaguely familiar actor standing in a well-manicured yard in front of a gorgeous pool asking nobody in particular, “Why do we work so hard?  For this?  For stuff?”  And then as he strolls towards his well-appointed, ultra-modern kitchen he takes up that great American pastime - Euro-bashing.  “Other countries; they work, they stroll home, they stop by the café.  They take August off – off.”  Then with a sneer he asks, “Why aren't you like that?  Why aren't we like that?”

Sochi: Skiing, Skating, Skeletons and Scandal

We’re in the middle of that quadrennial snow festival known as the Olympic Winter Games; this time in Sochi, Russia.  Concerns aplenty as the games began.  Concerns about security, treatment of LBGT athletes and visitors, and facilities that are still in various stages of completion (a local columnist described some areas as looking like a big construction site).  And then there’s Mother Nature.  She’s apparently irritated at Vladimir Putin.  Mountaintop views reveal a shortage of snow and according to the "expert analyst" talking heads what snow there is, is of poor quality.  At the half pipe the snow was too bumpy; at the skiing venues it was too slushy and at skeleton the ice was too warm.  The folks at the Sochi Chamber of Commerce (if such a body exists) must be taking good long pulls from the vodka bottle every time the camera pulls to show vast brown hills. For his part Putin has poo-pooed the criticism.  Calls it cold war propaganda.  Vlad should know cold war.  The man who once called the Soviet collapse the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century" sometimes seems to have aspirations of resurrecting it.  Sort of brings a nostalgic tug to my heart strings; the good old days of fallout shelters, those brilliantly colored mushroom clouds, ducking under a desk when the alarm goes off with all those jolly jokes about kissing your ass goodbye and watching the occasional B-52 cruising overhead. My apologies comrade, I digressed. 

Sochi 2014.  Got snow?

Snow quality?  I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.  What in the hell do I know about snow except that it's wet, we yearn for it in vain every Christmas Eve and actually getting it would cause an untold number of traffic accidents once the local amateurs got in their cars.

On Rainy Days and Childhood

The wife and I are babysitting the grandchildren, “tending kids” as my Uncle Al used to say, on a rainy Saturday morning.  Rain has been a rarity in California this drought year but in the last couple days it’s been nonstop torrential.  The pool which was on the verge of disturbingly low is getting scarily close to the brim.  I've been expecting this rain.  I know to expect a soaker every year about this time.  You can keep your cloud seeding and your rain prayers and novenas and rosaries.  Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we have a much more reliable rain maker – the annual Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco’s Chinatown.  You don’t got to show me no stinking rain dances here in San Francisco.  Just trot out a dragon, some lion dancers and light up a string of firecrackers and an old bearded boat builder carrying a staff and gathering pairs of animals can't be far behind.  The parade is next weekend and I have a feeling that, as per tradition, this Saturday’s storm is just a prequel to the gully washer that’s going to flood the parade route next Saturday night. 

The Monster of the Great Northwest

“I am not a role model.  I’m not paid to be a role model.  I am paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court. Parents should be role models.  Just because I dunk a basketball, doesn’t mean I should raise your kids”  ~  Charles Barkley

A monster is prowling the great Pacific Northwest.  A creature that has terrified the populace; making women faint, grown men cry and forcing parents to lock their children indoors.  Have they found Sasquatch?  Is it a crazed serial killing mountain man lurking in the dark forests preying on unsuspecting campers?  Is it a rogue grizzly bear or a rabid wolf tearing apart hikers?  No it’s none of those.  It’s much worse.  It’s a football player; Seattle Seahawks’ cornerback Richard Sherman.