Associations Renewed and Maintained

This year I renewed or maintained in my retirement friendships that I wouldn't want to slip away.  Yesterday I went running with a friend and former colleague whom I hadn't seen since before Trump was inaugurated.  I remember that encounter (also a run) because he was telling me then how, despite what we all already knew about this loudmouthed unqualified, corrupt stumblebum, there was a way he might surprise us when he took office and become presidential.  Now my friend predicts that catastrophic, perhaps apocryphal, events may occur soon.  Who am I to say that this viewpoint is fantastical?

When I took a week-long car trip through the south over the July Fourth weekend, rather than be around town to listen to an old, foolish, loudmouthed crackpot on the National Mall, surrounded by "his" tanks, rant on about the Revolutionary War troops "taking over airports".  During my trip I stopped in to stay for a night as a guest of my BFF during my last year at SIA before I went off to boarding school for four years.  He lives alone in an old port city in South Carolina and I was glad to catch up with him after several years of not seeing him.  He has had occurrences in his life as a parent that are eerily similar to mine.  We went out on the town that night and the next morning I got up before dawn and ran 2 miles in the stifling summertime heat of a seaboard southern city before I left after sunup to further pursue my trip.

In January I took a car trip to stop in overnight to see my cousin and her husband in Hampton, Virginia.  I hadn't seen them since shortly before the last presidential election where, during a restaurant dinner with her extended family present, it became abundantly clear that politically I was supporting a clear upcoming winner (the qualified former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton) and victimhood resentment was obviously abounding on the part of her larger family when I was asked why all democrats maintained that all Trump supporters were uneducated (stupid, I guess), because didn't I know that many Trumpites had P'Hd's?  I felt a little ambushed as I allowed as to how undoubtedly there were many Trump supporters who had received an education somewhere and let it go at that because Clinton was so overwhelmingly predicted to win handily.  After Trump won, we didn't speak much for a couple of years.  When I visited this year, I walked on the beach with my cousin and her dog early the next morning and we had a short, hesitant political discussion about the "deep state" and the "criminal presidency" and I guess that's a start because we both listened respectfully to each other.  It did seem like two ships passing in the night on divergent courses though, with me knowing that my assertions were based on actual facts and believing that her assertions about the "dirty dems" must be based on what she perceived to be as facts.

During that trip I stopped in to see my college roommate on the Inner Banks of North Carolina who I visit occasionally.  He lives alone in a house on stilts in hurricane country on the bank of the New Bern River and I enjoy visiting him because we sometimes sit around on his screened-in porch watching the river flow, eating fish and sipping beer.  One of the last times I visited him I canvassed locally with him for a few days in 2016, monitoring early-voting at the courthouse for the Democratic party where, I'll never forget, a big ole caricature of a Southern elderly male voter took me aside and whispered in my ear, "You all are on the wrong side, boy."  I laughed him off to myself because it was so obvious to me at the time that America was on an upward orb to ever more greatness.  Little did I know the dark underside of Amerika being hidden inside the fetid belly of the outdated, republic-killing electoral college.  My friend this year was looking to move out of his tiny coastal village, where life was awful slow, and move into a bigger seaport town so we toured the towns of Oriental and Southport, looking at their downtowns and nearby residential neighborhoods and looking at residences for sale.  It was an interesting trip wherein I saw a person I thought I once knew well but never really did in the least.

Home again

I returned home from my little six-day trip to North Carolina last month on the day after my college friend and host Jimmy and I went to tour Southport, a seaside town near where his girlfriend lives on Oak Island and where Jimmy has contemplated moving to.  On the day I left I got up before dawn and made the 363 mile drive in good time, arriving back home early in the afternoon.

It was an eventful trip, despite the three days that involved travel, during which I saw my closest cousin, visited with my university buddy, and we toured three North Carolina towns looking for houses he might inquire about to buy.  We partook in local food, especially seafood, local beer, and paid our respects to a vanishing breed by attending the burial services of a World War II veteran.

My favorite parts among many were getting up early every day to take pictures of sunrise, touring seaports especially Oriental and Southport, relaxing in Jimmy's house on stilts on the water as darkness descended and the bustle of the day calmed down, and making calls to friends from college to start planning our 50th-year reunion of our arrival as teenage newbies at our college co-ed dorm.  The worst part of the trip was driving through the tunnel under Hampton Roads from Hampton to Newport News which was dark, narrow and long, and bothered me because its low light environment affected my vision so soon after my eye surgery of a few weeks before.

The trip stirred up memories of yore, for shore.  Seeing people again whom I have known for decades and who were such an integral part of my life in the past was good and, in one instance, cathartic.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all.

Here are hopes for a happy and better New Year.

There's a lot to be thankful for, like family and friends.

Life is too short not to forgive.

Holidays

November gave me a couple of opportunities to try to reconnect with my family. Veterans Day presented two, with the actual holiday being on Friday, November 10th, and the actual day of remembrance being on Saturday, November 11th.  (Lunch with The Empty Chair on Armistice Day.)

Life moves on. I decided to go to visit my sister and her family in red Ohio for Thanksgiving this year, after visiting my sister in blue Colorado for the last two Thanksgivings.  (Holidays are for reaching out to family and promoting family togetherness.)

I traded in my little "roadster" for a big truck for my planned upcoming cross-country trips. I put 1200 miles on it and enjoyed a week in the midwest.  (I visited this sister this year, whom I hadn't visited in many years; any normal person would agree it's natural and important to keep in touch with family.)

Now that I'm home again, it's time to prepare for the holiday season. I already know that someone nearby is moving, maybe out of town or out of state or even, perhaps, out of the country.  (Don't forget to leave a forwarding address, in case I need to get in touch with any of our three children, and enjoy NC!)

Goodbye.

I go to church twelve times a year, whether I need to or not.  Some of my friends think this orderly regime is funny, others think it is indicative of how I think.

This year I went to church thirteen times, as in today, because there was so much to speak to the Lord about currently.  I also contribute to the collection plate (of course) and add a dollar coin (as a token) for whomever I am  thinking about, troubled about or hopeful about currently.

Today was a record, perhaps by multiples, for the token donations, ten one-dollar coins, for my thoughts on persons or concepts.  After communion, I prayed on my knees in church for each person(s) or concept that each coin represented.

In no particular order, my prayers were for (i) a friend who was terminally ill, (ii) all relatives abroad for their eventual safe passage home, (iii) my estranged children, (iv) the one wife thereby that I know about (welcome to the family!), (v) the USA (do you wonder why?), (vi) illness stricken people in my family, (vii) a family member who currently needs prayers, (viii) my own heart for hardening against a person who should be close to me were I more understanding, patient and compassionate, (ix) a hopeful next year (this embarrassingly might be the same as praying for myself), and (x) a blessing upon the marriage and moving on of a friend of mine.  When I got home from church, I learned that the gravely ill friend of mine had passed and was obviously with the Lord.

Farewells

This past year was a time of change as I have said, having retired.  It also marked a time of farewell.  (The times, they are a-changing.)

The farewell was saying goodbye to most of my friends and acquaintances at my going away party at work, and watching them slip out of my life one by one despite my best efforts to keep up with them because they have busy lives with work and family, and I have neither anymore.  The friends I miss most are my former running buddies, all of whom have fallen off my radar screen.  (Former times.)

One got married and moved away, another had a condition exacerbated by running and was medically advised to specifically not run anymore, and yet another ran with me whenever I set up the run and spent considerable time and effort getting there each time but little else was done to continue the routine so it fell away to virtually nothing.  (Moving on.)

I miss that most of all.  Kirk Vonnegut summed it up best in Slaughterhouse-Five--So it goes.  (The view from Roosevelt Island just beyond the District.)

A Quiet Holiday

I spent a quiet Christmas visiting with a friend.  It was absolutely dead at my house.

My friend fashioned a tree out of a cactus while I cooked an omelet breakfast.  It didn't look like much but it was tasty.

I received some wonderful presents from friends and a couple of my siblings.  A running vest, a novel, a sweater and a few other useful items.

For the first time I drank a beer that had a cork and wire as its closure.  It was tasty.

I spoke with a couple of family members.  My brother visited my sister out west and everyone else seems to have spent Christmas at home.

Happy holidays to everyone.  I'm looking forward to 2015.

Getting Pea Married

My niece got married in Portland over the Fourth of July weekend.  It was nice to be able to spend time in the city, I only made the acquaintance of the great Northwest recently when I spent a week in the summer of 2012 touring Oregon, Washington and Idaho.  (The happy moment at the West End Ballroom, as taken through a mirror in the corner.)

I remember thinking then that this would be a great area to retire to.  Fit, liberal people, beautiful landscape, lots of interesting history and great cities in Portland and Seattle.  (Mount Hood in 2012.)

I was taken aback by the beauty of Crater Lake.  A must see for anyone.  (A stunning vista at Crater Lake.)

But aside from seeing a baseball game in Seattle and ascending the space needle, I didn't spend any time in any of the cities that week, which was pretty much one long car trip.  But last month I got to see Portland the best way possible, by running through it on two early morning runs.  (From the Burnside Bridge.)

  

Yeah I been running a little...

A year and a half ago, I was atop the world. I had just finished running the Army Ten Miler as the race's official 9:00 pace group leader, having completed my running club's fifth consecutive 10-miler training program as a site director and certified running coach, a program I had formerly directed and largely developed. I was president of my running club.

I got injured in the race and haven't raced since then. I haven't run since then. I was unsupported on the club's board, running afoul of some young Alpha Dog twenty-somethings in the club's IT department, one of whom in my opinion is an actual paranoid schizophrenic with narcissistic affectations, and this crew, with the active participation of a young disgruntled club VP and the hands-off acquiescence of the other VPs, literally ran me off the board (I resigned when I could not get any requested information from them, especially about suspicious transactions in the club's payment-receiving account). I let my club membership lapse, and 95% of my "friends" from a decade of running don't have anything to do with me anymore.

In a year of injury-induced inactivity, I put back on practically all of the weight I had lost and kept off during ten years of running. I almost died in an accident. I stopped blogging.

Well, I'm trying to come back from "there." I check in regularly with my family (meaning my five siblings, my children are alienated from me as a result of my Western-style nuclear divorce). I attend church regularly.

In January I started participating in a walk-to-run 5K program which has caused me to drop a little weight and get my running schedule up to 16 miles a week (my injury still bothers me). I have my target 5K race coming up in three days.

Four days ago I ran four miles on the race course in 40:35 (10:09 pace), a slow time for me back in the days of old but still my best outing in a year and a half. My 5K time would have been about 31:50, a far cry from my PR set a decade ago of 21:58. I have run dozens of 5Ks and not one has ever been over thirty minutes.

Things change. Or perhaps the more things change, the more they remain the same.

We'll see.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Dreams have been bothering me lately, waking me up out of a sound sleep and leaving me in a fitful state aching with sadness. What does it mean?

This morning my mother was in my house saying how in the present bad economic circumstances, no federal workers have left their jobs (I am a federal employee). My sister closest in age to me was expressing her disgust at this as she walked across my living room, when she accidentally stepped on my black lab retriever who was lying on the floor.

As was his wont when he found himself underfoot, Bert immediately jumped up seeking assurance. He found me and attached himself to me, wriggling his body furiously.

I noticed for the first time how this good ol' boy's black shiny coat was streaked with grey. The poor old fellow was finally showing his age.

It saddened me to see the physical manifestation of Bert's impending date with mortality. But my mom died before the millennium, my sister last visited me eight years ago, and Bert was a family member before my oldest son, who is in his twenties, was born.

Dogs don't live that long, do they? Yet my loving four-legged friend was pressing against my legs, moaning in his need for me to pet him.

Even in my nocturnal state I knew that dogs don't live to be twenty. In my befuddled state I remembered that Bert passed on before I left Colorado to attend law school in 1987.

This jarring dissonance caused me to wake up. I was not happy as I lay awake under my covers in my empty house, eyes pressed closed.

I wish these memories wouldn't come around anymore.

And now, a word from the North

I have a family member whom I respect and admire who left the US to live in Canada. Here is this relative's report on Obamacare, with some non-substantive editing.

I think what was passed is a great start, but I am shocked that the vote was that close. I think it's disgusting those Tea Baggers think health care does not rank alongside the rights they take for granted--like the ability to spew racial epithets and express their hateful beliefs. The view that people without health care are lazy and just need to work harder is ridiculous. Nothing is black and white.

Canadians are mystified why people in the US consider this bill a victory. I have to explain how compared to what Americans have now, it's quite an improvement. But when you compare it to the system here, it still looks rather barbaric. People are also shocked at the level of lobbying that goes on. Here lobbyists are on a shorter leash and no one thinks of the MPs as being in the pocket of some corporation. Until the US elects representatives of the people and not corporations, real change is unlikely, and with the recent Supreme Court decision, things will get worse not better.

I love how the Tea Baggers call health care Socialism but forget about all the other socialized services that make their lives better. They don't listen when you talk to them but just spew talking points prepared by the propagandists at Fox News. When disputed, they just raise their voice and try to drown you out. Or they become silly and say, "Move to Canada," which is easy to say but hard to do (I know!).

Anyway, I hope this means real change for you all and that it hasn't doomed Obama's presidency.

You go, relative! The viewpoint from the Northlands. Who doesn't think that Canadians aren't great? Elsewhere, the industrialized world apparently thinks the US has finally been dragged into the 20th century (not the 21st century yet). I can't wait for November to see the Americans reveal their true selves.