Winter Solstice, 2011
Dear Ones:
The pressure is mounting, cards and letters are coming in, and so I must confront the blinking cursor on the blank page, and do SOMETHING, dammit, about my annual blast. It has been a funny year, but not how you think. That has been the theme the last few years. Where are the laffs in partisan venom, Congressional gridlock, ongoing war, and economic quicksand? How about a nice nuclear Tsunami? No, thanks. Well, now that I mention it, the political scene has produced some hearty guffaws, watching the right get righter and the whites get whiter. More laundry product than politics, to be sure, but who can keep a straight face, watching each try to slide to the right of the one next to him/her, until they fall off the stage altogether? Or watching former lovers/harassees pop up like dandelions on Mr. Cain’s lawn? This only goes to prove the old saying that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t walk around at night naked with the lights on. At least the Arab Spring has given us a little something to smile about, if only we don’t get Ayatollahs in exchange. As well we might.
Not much is new here—still hangin’ out in Anacortes, still employed, still working night shifts. Parents and siblings are all well. Catherine continues with her Quilts of Valor Foundation. www.qovf.org Her far-flung empire has distributed 60,000 or so quilts to veterans of our various wars, and she still puts in a full day’s work, beginning at 05:00 or so. Then at 15:00, it is break time, when she curls up in a heap on her special spot on the couch, and watches Star Trek reruns. She is learning about filming and editing, making promotional videos for the cause, and will be featured on Iowa Public Television this year, with hopes the piece will be picked up nationally. Please consider a year-end tax-deductible donation, by going to the website. It is a grassroots barebones effort, run on a shoestring, and every little penny from heaven helps. (Whew! I am fresh out of clichés!)
Michele continues her child rearin’, runnin’ and impossible balancin’ act in Columbus. Husband Eric is flying and administrating for Net Jets. Son Jack is 6, and just the sweetest-natured kid ever. Daughter Lily is 4, a perfect little flower. A visit out here in the NW is planned this summer…We look forward to that.
Nathanael has taken a new tack, and is back in school, this time for Art. He is making the most of his veteran’s benefits, and doing what he has always wanted to do. You may or may not recall his brief career as a vandal-muralist in Seaford as a teenager. Nowadays he is “tagging” walls with permission of the owner, which must take some of the frisson out of it, but for compensation, he has daylight, no Officer Tommy Lee to chase him, and the time to really do it right. He DOES have the hand and eye for it. He was here for a visit at Thanksgiving, and has grown to a mature, happy, and centered young man. It is great to see him so well.
Hannah has just returned from her second 7-month deployment to the Persian Gulf, aboard the USS Hopper (DDG-70), a guided-missile destroyer. She informed us just before departing for the war zone that we had a new son-in-law, David Skudin, who is an endurance swimmer, and works for the City of Honolulu as a lifeguard. We have yet to meet him, beyond emails, but look forward to that. She returns to her new husband, and just in time to defend her title in the HURT 100 mile race in Honolulu. She won the female division this past year, placing 6th overall, in 29:22, and will run it again this January. She prepared all throughout the deployment on her ship, running several treadmill marathons, and also a remote Columbus Marathon, in laps around her ship, while underway. She also motivated her sailors by organizing “Couch to 5K” runs on a regular basis.
Everett has had a tough year, still waiting for his real vocation to become apparent, still waiting tables in DC, but making progress towards the Foreign Service Exam. He is at least self-supporting, and moving soon into his own apartment. He remains the wry fellow we have always known. I call him for a dose of sarcasm whenever I am feeling bereft.
As for me, there is not much to tell. The year has been spent in a blur of work, a little bit of recreation on our boat, a load of fixing up my little boat, (always “messing about in boats”) and assembling a wood-shop of sorts in our basement. I am also pleased to report that I have been skiing already this season, so I am taking some advantage of our wonderful surroundings, despite myself. I had a bit of a comedown with that, when it was pointed out to me that my early 90’s all-black one-piece ski suit, which I was pretty proud to have scored in a yard sale for $5, was known generally as a “Doctor Suit.” I am SOoooo outré. But skiing (and Facebook) have given me an opportunity to reconnect with Cousin Trip Fanning and family, so I am OK with outré. I have continued my little 4-mile jog on an irregular basis, but got my time down to 35:22. I was shooting to break the 36:00 mark as my big goal, and now I am adrift, lacking a new goal. Getting back to that goal would be enough, I guess, since I am back to slower than summer-school typing class, after the letdown that happened once I finally did it.
Work remains work, that four-letter word you are allowed to say in public. We in the ER have experienced a decrease in volumes, product of the economic times, I guess. I hate to think of people with real issues staying home because they have no insurance, and getting sicker. We have indeed seen people coming in later and sicker, victims of the downturn, with the loss of their health insurance and their jobs. There has been no slowdown in the needs of the chronically addicted, however. They continue to arrive with ever more fantastic stories of how the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune have separated them from their rightful, Constitutionally-guaranteed doses of narcotics. They desire only to settle into the arms of Morpheus, god of dreamless sleep, and of constipation. And only I can provide what is rightfully theirs. One told me just last week, after I woke her up from a should-have-been-fatal Heroin overdose, that I would be committing a felony, if I failed to provide her with her narcs. She was a damned creative liar, even among the enriched population of creative liars I deal with daily. Another addict was so distraught at the sight of a needle, about to numb up an abscess she had from shooting unclean street dope into an arm muscle, that I had to tell her a story to distract her. Now understand, she only resorted to shooting herself in a muscle because she had already used up every vein on her body, with her own gross, reused needles. So her reaction to seeing mine was a little difficult to comprehend. Anyway, I recited Where the Wild Things Are word for word, and got her calmed down. She cried “OWwwiiieeee” like a wounded toddler about a hundred times, and quivered her lower lip most piteously, but we got her through it. Thanks, Maurice Sendak, and to my kids, for the many bedtime stories which allowed me to memorize the book.
I pause, as always, to note the departure of some of our more notables. Farewell, Space Shuttle, and all the magic that came from that program. Christopher Hitchens challenged us to think and be free. Joe Bageant wrote with savage humor and crystalline insight about the hard truth of the American Underclass; Andy Rooney was our favorite curmudgeon; Peter Falk just had “one more question…”; Jack LaLanne led us to fitness, eternal youth, and stretch suits; Harry Morgan made M.A.S.H. his own; Cliff Robertson of “PT 109” and a thousand other roles has taken his final bow. Betty Ford did more AFTER being Mrs. President than during, as a substance abuse spokesmodel, and Dr. Kevorkian actually died of natural causes. Not so for Amy Winehouse, whose sad addictions squelched her talent. She should have listened to that judge who wanted to send her to rehab, and said “Yeah, Yeah Yeah,” ‘stead of “No, No, No”... And fervid Farewell to Liz Taylor, remembered from before she became a celebrity magazine gargoyle. And by the way, no loss for the world, but we note with satisfaction the departure of Osama bin Laden (SEAL Team 6—Ooh-rah!) and fellow evil toad Anwar al-Awlaki, along with Hitler wannabe Muammar Gadafi.
And so, fellow denizens of this fragile blue orb, take heart in this Solstice, in this return to the light. We may be confused, bewildered, and benighted by false prophets and false hopes. We DO seem to be short on optimism and purpose. But these phases of human group psychology run in cycles, and I feel the bottom has been reached. We may have awakened from a bad bender of unmanaged debt and wild spending, with vultures feeding on the wreckage, but we can rise up, channel Rosie the Riveter, and do what needs to be done. My personal hope is that we just don’t require a world war to give us the motivation. Be firm in your optimism, and your determination to improve the world around you; shun those who use tribe and religion as dividers of people. They are the false prophets, and the merchants of evil, even as they cloak themselves in piety and self-righteousness. That tribalism which had survival value ten thousand years ago, is fatal to us now, and we must rise above it. I wish for each of you a peaceful eddy in our turbulent world, a place to take a breath and take stock, the love and support of true friends and family, and armor against the arrows a cold world might send against you this year. Be well, eat locally produced food, exercise even though you don’t want to, and minimize your personal consumptive impact on the planet. The return for your investment is fruit that actually tastes like fruit, a reduced waistline, increased libido without blue pills, and maybe many more years before you need a walker and a personal butt-wiper. And once again, please keep in touch.
Cheers, best, love, wink and a nod, or whatever else suits the occasion.
