In My Time of Dying

It’s just another song…

He flinched with his grandson’s fear of the needle seeking crimson flow. A bout of Diverticulitis threw an 8 hour delay into vacation, but not life. I sat with my Dad at the Villages Regional Hospital for extended coverage of “I knew her best” coming from our presidential contenders over the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, interrupted regularly by the other “important” story of the day which could have been reported with a simple scrolling message:

Don’t fuck with a tiger.

I sat, paced and pondered the day away while Kyle spent it watching movies with my Dad and Caroline’s long-time friend, Anita. Many concerned faces filled my view of the ER expressway. I imagine many trips to the Villages hospital are one way and the hasty, nervous voices of loved ones explaining symptoms were subtitled with hope for a reprieve back home. Fortunately for Dad, there was no blockage or infection, so he got a ticket for the 7:30 home.

With a nod to “Reservoir Dogs,” a film he’ll likely never see, Kyle has dubbed Dad “Mr. Grey” for the trip, although I think his nickname more closely resembles a Boston mobster he looks like: “Whitey.” Oh, and “Mr. Young” didn’t leave me out of the naming game. I’m “Mr. Old.” Thanks, my boy.

“Mr. Old.” With less than 10 months to a half a “C-note,” I’m not digging it. Tonight Dad asked if I’ve given any thought to living here, um, later. “I try not to think about it,” was my reply.

“Though the course may change sometimes
Rivers always reach the sea”

“Ten Years Gone” – Led Zeppelin from Physical Graffiti

After we completed the red tape obstacle course, the staid woman at the desk said “stay healthy,” and three generations walked out, one better than the others. With the deadline for making resolutions we’ll break a few days away, that woman’s advice is the leader in the Villages clubhouse.

The Quiet of Christmas

I’m sure it all goes back to the story of an infant born in a manger after his parents were shut out at the local Bed and Breakfast. Didn’t they know how tough it is to get a room during the holidays? I think anyone raised with the traditions of Christmas just naturally chills out, even if the temperature doesn’t fall below 60… This year’s Christmas is being spent with Dad, but I can’t say I remember another. As each page turns, the ghosts of Christmas past dim, like old monochrome Polaroids.

I do remember many Christmas highlights with Mom, and some presents… The fire engine set… Lincoln Logs… A wood burning kit… “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and “The Beach Boys Greatest Hits” on vinyl… A tabletop hockey game*… 1995 was a quiet but dark year and I ended up on the naughty list and collected the traditional lump of coal. That was funny and would actually come in handy now given the price of home heating oil…

It’s quiet here in “The Villages.” For one thing, there aren’t many young children in a retirement community. Last night as we walked around the town square before and after dinner, Kyle sang Christmas carols. I joined in and Dad left us just Megan short of a barbershop quartet. That’s what Christmas is about for me. When the silent night is broken only by songs from the heart.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.


* By Isaiah12:2 on Flickr

Judicious Jack

While Kyle charmed the cute Southwest Flight Attendant into food that nobody else on the plane got, I read a Men’s Journal interview of Jack Nicholson. I thought there would be more, but three gems are better than none:

• Live in the Now.
• Don’t waste hate time on anything you don’t love.
• Live the way you want to live.

There it is. The sun rises...

This morning was only the third time Madison’s R&D into crying woke me up. 4:46 emitted against morning darkness and the daily ritual began. Baby girl must know Big Papi still has presents to shroud before our early Christmas morning unfolds in a couple hours.

My dawn routine consists of filling my head gradually with caffeine and data. It’s actually much more pleasant that that made it sound and it is elevated by the aroma of Green Mountain Fair Trade Organic Breakfast Blend. Yeah, it’s a mouthful. Once the caffeine drip commences, my narrow attention span turns to Bloglines for vast consumption of bits and bytes. This morning a post in the Creative Generalist blog on Neuroscience and psychology reminded me how music can “get you.” Think about the songs sleeping in your ipod. Some are "nice," but they’re just a little above a dentist’s office background of acoustics. Then there are those that reach into your soul, pick you up off your feet and shake you. One of the great things about music is the freedom of it. OK, DRM aside, one person’s dental diversion is a “stop you in your tracks” heartbreaker to another. What song(s) have that emotional pull for you? This (lyrics) is one that does for me…

Beauty and a Beast

I’m like a second grader on the path to understanding the calculus of my new Nikon D40, but in spite of my inexperience, the new toy grabs some cool stills. Last night “Tanta” Claus visited in the form of Barb to share a few presents with the kids and me. “You should take some profile shots of that baby.” Uh, OK.



Then there’s this optical illusion taken from Kyle’s world of all things Potter. I had the camera on “Program” mode and 800ISO (for low light). The shutter stayed open just long enough to catch a shot of Kyle’s mind being sucked out by Dementors. Of course he loves it...

The Letter...

Sometimes you just fall right into the shit... The good shit. Like "happy as a pig in shit" shit. Tonight I wrote a quick email to one of Kyle's doctor's reminding her I needed "the letter" from her so I can carry all his medications on the plane to Orlando on Sunday. Then I did a Yahoo search (sorry man) on "the Letter" and the #1 result was this gem:



Shit...

Ordinary Miracle

“In my day, they put kids like him away.”

– He who shall not be named.

This morning as I struggled to figure out what the heck Kyle wants for Christmas, Megan, who for some reason just appeared around 6am, said, “You should get him the Charlotte’s Web soundtrack. Yesterday when you were trying to get him ready and he wouldn’t get off the couch is because he wanted to hear that song at the end of the movie.” The song is “Ordinary Miracle” sung by Sarah McLachlan. She’s got a hauntingly beautiful voice that’s had a home in my head for quite some time.

Kyle loves (It’s not a coincidence I use that term so often. Kyle loves.) Charlotte, but I know somewhere in that place between his heart and head, he identifies with Wilbur. And just as Wilbur inspired the love of all near Zuckerman's barn, Kyle does the same for nearly all who know him. The "miracle" that's happening right now is that Kyle's physical problems are fading and I know he's sensing other changes he can't quite articulate. "The winds changed," is his recurring phrase. Speaking of wind, yesterday Kyle walked over a mile from the Wang Center to a restaurant on Temple Place off of Tremont Street! He and I had lucked out to see "White Christmas" with Barb after her out of town guests canceled due to this week's snow. It was a fantastic show and Kyle couldn't stop talking about it.

As for soundtracks, I’m all set. I mean, I’m not sure how many more times I can hear “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” before someone will have to put me away. I downloaded the song from iTunes…

“When you wake up everyday
Please don’t throw your dreams away
Hold them close to your heart
Cause we are all a part
Of the ordinary miracle”

“Ordinary Miracle,” written by Grammy winners
David Stewart and Glen Ballard.

Fastball Fiction

It's pretty much all been said in the news about the performance enhancing drug scandal in major league baseball. I thought Roger Clemens was a selfish bore way back in 1990 when he was tossed from game 3 of the ALCS after just 1 1/3 innings for profanity. Oh, and he was a member of the Red Sox then...

As always, it's the fans that pay. Coming out of the 1994 strike, the owners looked the other way while many of their "stars" shot themselves in the ass to create an illusion of greatness and we fans paid for it. We bought the phony home run chase of cheaters Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa and invited the widow of Roger Maris to help celebrate a lie. Warning track outs became dingers and fans flocked to see them, allowing greedy owners to raise prices to the point where most families cannot afford to attend a game.

This is yet another example of the unraveling of this country. We are so fatigued by scandals and phoniness that apathy is growing and we're losing the basic expectation of personal integrity in our society.

In "Field of Dreams," James Earl Jones as Terrance Mann spoke a beautiful and nostalgic soliloquy about the game:

"The one constant through all the years, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again."

Not anymore.

Hey, there's no sense ending this post on such a downer. The forecasters are calling for another foot here in the snow belt. I can only hope they're telling little white lies.

I hear dead people

As I steered the orange snow eater through slippery slopes and drifts exceeding a foot, sounds in my head competed with the engine drone. For some reason, as I cleared plow remains from the driveway front, the dead Jim Morrison was screaming:

“Get together one more time
Get together one more time
Get together one more time
Get together one more time
Let’s together one more time”

I don’t know about that one, but it’s a great song. On two stunning occasions, the ice underfoot eliminated all traction and I soon heard Howard Cosell, another dead guy…

FPS

One cool thing about my new growed-up Nikon D40 camera is that I can snap off 2.5 frames per second. That feature allows me to annoy the crap out of Madison with face flashes while I struggle to attain the perfect still moment. One of the benefits of digital photography is the hoards of crappy images are erased with a keystroke and no "film" is wasted. As I sift through the blurs, the eye closers, and the otherwise bad, a golden glint occasionally appears:

A title is futile...

There are gifts and then there are those times when a giant shark shows up on your front porch. This is one of those times...

Is Photography Dead?

Newsweek recently asked this question and its author critiques the use of software like Adobe’s Photoshop for digitally distorting “a record of something real that occurred in front of the camera.” This criticism seems like that of the art “establishment” who railed against French revolutionaries in the late 19th century for creating “mere impressions” of their subjects. Still, how real is the “real” photography of the pre-digital world? Isn’t it reasonable to think the great photographers have attempted to “control” their images with camera settings, filters, lens manipulation, and darkroom dabbling? In the end, if the two dimensional image viewed isn’t exactly the image seen by the naked eye at the time of the shot, is it real, or just an impression?

As for Newsweek’s question, one commenter wrote something like, “there’s a website called Flickr. Go visit it and then tell me photography is dead.”

For now, I’m too cheap to spring for photo-editing software, so pics from my new Nikon D40 will be um, digitally unaltered. Even a blurry shot can capture a memorable moment.

I declare, it's sweet and nice...

What do eggs, flour, sugar, buttah and coconut have to do with digital music? Well, on Thanksgiving Day, Auntie San and Auntie Barb delivered a Coconut Custard Pie from Luberto's Pastry Shop. They even put in a special order to “go easy on the coconut,” but the slip seemed to indicate “easy on the custard.” I can’t see how an “easy on the custard” custard pie would be, um, custard pie, but once it passed my lips to a longing sense of taste, it was clear Luberto’s can handle a pie.

As simpletons who easily regress to the mentality of teenagers, my brother Corey and I giggled over the custard connotation, but quickly moved to dissect the Led Zeppelin song as we did the pie. Corey even voiced the opening Jimmy page riff to the elders curiosity and bemusement. A few hours later, “Custard Pie” and the 14 songs that follow it from 1975’s “Physical Graffiti” were surging a digital pipe filling my hard drive. It's a great song and probably my favorite Zep studio record. I couldn’t find a live version of the song, but here’s a creative montage with the studio version by “ginaitaliangirl” on YouTube:

Oh, and I picked up the new Zep reissue CD/DVD “Mothership” for baby bro’s 43rd…

Reconciliation…

I appreciate the efforts and the prayers of a friend who recently wrote, “Get down on your knees, put aside all your pretenses and posturing and all the crap about how God doesn’t exist or care or whatever…and give Him a chance to show you that he does?” Hey, that day may come, but right now I’m focused on keeping everything cool with Santa Claus so I don’t end up on the “naughty list.” I also want to go on the record and state, unequivocally, I am not a participant in the “War on Christmas.” I am all for anyone’s peaceful celebration of this holiday, whether they celebrate in a religious or secular fashion.

It’s a cliché that people should never talk about “politics or religion,” because the discourse often veers into discord. Why is it then, that the Republican presidential candidates, and the party in general are so fixated on religious issues? The answer is that those issues help them win enough “red states” to win the White House every four years. I contend the right puts Christian “hot button” issues like abortion and gay marriage into the spotlight to manipulate evangelical voters into voting Republican and this trickery gave us the worst president ever in the last 2 elections.

In the CNN/YouTube Republican debate Wednesday night, candidate Fred Thompson astonished me by saying, “I think (Overturning abortion rights precedent Roe v. Wade) should be our number one focus right now.” What? We have thousands of people dying in a hellish desert and we’re burning trillions of dollars contributing to it, and Mr. Thompson thinks overturning Roe should be our top priority?

On September 30, 2007, Republican Presidential Candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona clarified his notion that the U.S. is a “Christian nation,” by saying “…the United States of America was founded on Judeo-Christian values, which were translated by our founding fathers which is basically the rights of human dignity and human rights.” I agree with Senator McCain’s clarification and he further illustrated this fundamental tenet of what we should be when he scolded former MA Governor Mitt Romney over waterboarding:

“And, governor, let me tell you, if we're going to get the high ground in this world and we're going to be the America that we have cherished and loved for more than 200 years. We're not going to torture people… and how in the world anybody could think that that kind of thing could be inflicted by Americans on people who are held in our custody is absolutely beyond me.”

Human dignity and human rights… Pretty basic stuff. I’d like to know how Christians that vote Republican reconcile these seemingly un-Christian positions:

• Treating those who cross our Southern border seeking a better life as criminals
• Denying people in love to marry
• Supporting the death penalty
• Using war as an instrument of foreign policy
• Opposing universal health-care for all

What would Jesus do?