Finding Lost Things

 

I am the guardian of a small, one-eyed black dog named Tai. He has been a fine companion through this horrible pandemic, usually cheerful and a very willing walking partner. We walk four times each day, including one long ramble through the neighborhood to our favorite local park. Tai has  been by my side for the past 8 years now, through the break-up of my second marriage, the move out of the marital home, and the myriad of crises that have arisen since the move. Yeah, he's just a dog and has no awareness of human foibles, but he comforted me. During this Covid-19 disaster, Tai helped me to stay somewhat sane.

The other day, Tai and I were on our morning walk. When we got back to the house, my keys weren't in my pocket. Damn! I must have dropped them while pulling the plastic bag from my coat pocket to pick up Tai's poop.  This was not a major calamity since I have spare keys, but it was annoying. I might have to change the locks.  I opened the house with my spare key, put Tai inside and started re-tracing my steps.  I had little hope of finding the keys. It was late autumn, and it was likely that the keys would be obscured by fallen leaves.

I was muttering under my breath. I had screwed up and now I was screwed. There is an alley that Tai and I often walk in the neighborhood - it's Tai's favorite place to drop a deuce.  I crept along behind the houses, eyes on the fence line.  I was on the verge of giving up when I saw something shiny in a pile of oak leaves - my keys!! 

There is no greater joy than finding something important that you were sure was lost.  The day seemed brighter and my elation lasted quite a while.

But of course, I did the same thing again a few days later. This time, I dropped the key to my backyard shed - a bigger problem because I had no spare key in my possession. I re-traced my steps to no avail. And then, yesterday morning, I was on a walk with Tai and a very good friend. I told her of my lost shed key.  She went into search mode, looked at the steps of a neighbor's house and there it was! So once again, I had that jolt of elation. This time, I was saved by my friend.

I have been married twice, divorced twice.  All my other relationships prior to and after my marriages also failed for various reasons that are  too boring and banal to describe in writing.  A few years ago, I gave up. I'm over 65 years old & retired now. I have a dog. I have hobbies. I have children & grandchildren. I have a few good friends. That's enough. I accepted that I had lost the chance to have a life partner.  I have given it the college try. I stopped looking for something I couldn't find.

Last April, I was taking Tai on his long walk through the neighborhood. I heard someone behind me call my name. I turned and saw a woman I knew from the local wine shop. Back in the years before Covid, we both went to the Friday evening wine tastings and we would chat a bit. She joined my dog & me on our walk that day and we had a pleasant conversation. 

And after a few months, I realized I had discovered another thing I had stopped looking for. This is unfolding day by day. I'm trying hard not to screw up or future trip. It's an unexpected chapter. It needs to progress without my efforts to guide or control it.

The past two years have been terrible for the United States, and the world. Covid-19 has killed millions. Trust in experts has faded. It appears that climate change is accelerating. Democracy is under attack. Violent crime is spiking.  But I feel hopeful. For me, something important that was lost has been found.

Brother John is Gone

 

My big brother, John, died early in the morning on August 31. I have been processing this loss for the past two weeks and felt the need to write something about him. The picture above was taken in the summer of 2016 at the Aspen Viewing Area of the Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico.  This was our last big trip together.

John was born in February 1947, an early Baby Boomer. Our parents were both veterans of World War II - our father served in Europe with Patton's army, our mother served under MacArthur in the Women's Army Corps, mostly in New Guinea. John got to be an only child for almost 8 years as our parents tried to scrape out a living in the San Francisco Bay Area after the war.  New "starter homes" were springing up all over the country for returning service personnel and their young families. In 1953, my parents bought a newly-built 3-bedroom ranch house in the Bonaire neighborhood of San Leandro CA, a town next to Oakland. I arrived in November 1954.  John & I grew up in that house.

John was a high-achieving kid, a stand-out student, an Eagle Scout, president of his class in high school, a varsity swimmer, recipient of a full-ride scholarship to a fine liberal arts school in southern California. I was his annoying kid brother, and I hated following in his footsteps. The guy was so damned accomplished - all the teachers used to throw his excellence and stellar reputation in my face. There was no way I could match my saintly brother's track record. I wasn't quite 10 years old when he graduated from high school and left town in 1964. I wasn't really close to my brother when I was a kid - 8 years is a lifetime for a 10 year old boy, and our worlds were very different when we were under the same roof.

John did many wonderful things. One wonderful thing impacted me when I was still living at home. Our father struggled with alcoholism and bipolar illness when I was in middle school and high school. I didn't have a strong male influence and I was starting to slip into misbehavior. John noticed. He stepped up. He invited me to visit him in his first home after he graduated from college. He would come home and hang out with me. He talked to me about sex, something my parents never did. John filled the gap - he became my mentor when my dad was too sick to play that role. John always showed up when I was in trouble - during my two divorces, during the failure of my business and during the illness and deaths of our parents. He was a rock.

John was a great husband and father. He was a master teacher, who taught at international schools in three different countries and the public schools in Portland OR and  New Orleans LA. He was an enthusiastic outdoorsman, full of skill and resilience. But the amazing thing about John is how he was able to accept everything that life served up, good or bad. His son Joe summarized it well: "My dad always made the best out of every situation."

When he was in his forties, John was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. This was an early onset of the disease - the majority of folks that get Parkinson's Disease are diagnosed after they are 60 years old.  It was a stroke of bad luck, to be sure, but John soldiered on. He kept fighting to retain the things he loved in life for as long as possible. While he was always kind and compassionate, those qualities expanded as the disease progressed.  To make things more challenging, John was also afflicted with severe scoliosis and osteoporosis. He kept moving forward, but the burdens eventually overcame him. These are evil diseases that slowly steal a person's ability to function. John was suffering, especially after his wife, Susan, died in August 2020. I miss him terribly, but I'm glad that he is no longer in pain.

My brother, my mentor, my friend. I am the last surviving member of my family of origin. It is going to be weird to live without John.

Stoic philosophy and Afghanistan

 

I have no significant knowledge when it comes to foreign policy or military strategy. I am an aging white man in the midwestern section of the United States who avoided military service and is repulsed by the idea of a political career. But I have Opinions, of course. And I do believe my Opinions are wise and glorious, even though I have no experience or expertise to support them. So I am probably somewhat delusional.

In view of this disclaimer, here are my thoughts about Afghanistan.

Epictetus, the great Stoic philosopher, lived in Greece between 50 and 135A.D.  One of his core contributions is presented above - we are powerless over most things in this world. We only have power over our own actions, reactions and thoughts. When it comes to other individuals, or groups of people, or actions taken by other humans and non-human creatures, or viruses, or nations, or Nature - we have no real power. We cannot force change and impose our will over these things over the long haul. We can only control ourselves (if we have the self-discipline to do so).

The war that the United States has waged in Afghanistan ignored this core truth. 

The goals of the initial action in Afghanistan were clear - destroy Al Qaeda, catch and/or kill Osama bin Laden, the man that masterminded the 9/11 attacks.  These actions were mostly within the control of the U.S. But then, our government decided that Afghanistan's people and government could be changed to fit the U.S. vision of what an acceptable society should be - the assumption being that this would eliminate future threats from terrorists. In order to do that, we poured money, resources and lives into a 20-year conflict. So our government was trying to force, through military violence and a gusher of money, a massive change on an entire nation. This was a severe case of "mission creep."

This effort was doomed to failure from the beginning. I can't force someone to make a change that I think is "in their own interest." A nation can't force another nation to behave differently. Yes, it is possible to conquer and dominate territory if you are willing to oppress people that disagree with your authority. But even those efforts usually fail unless the conquerors resort to genocide.

The greatest tragedies in the world occur when people, or governments, struggle to control things that are beyond their control. The only outcomes are failure or extermination of the people that won't or can't comply. The U.S. war in Afghanistan is a classic case of ignorance and folly on the part of the leaders of a very powerful nation.  We have nothing to show for the 20 year struggle except for pain, financial losses and embarrassment.

Let's hope that the United States doesn't do this again, but I'm not optimistic.  

What I have Learned from the Pandemic

 

In April, I thought that the pandemic was over. It was a month after I received the J&J "one and done" jab. Vaccination demand was skyrocketing and the primary problem was getting adequate doses to satisfy the folks clamoring for their shots.  The United States went from a high point of over 300,000 new cases a day in early January of this year to under 3,500 new cases on July 4th. I started travelling again and went out to my local restaurants that managed to survive this terrible time.

It looks like I celebrated too early.  We had 108,775 new cases on July 26. The Delta variant is overwhelming the unvaccinated. When cases go up, so do hospitalizations and, eventually, deaths. We are closing in on 300 Covid-19 deaths a day, up from 37 on July 4th. These illnesses and deaths are all voluntary since they are occurring primarily among unvaccinated people. Supply of vaccine doses is no longer a problem.  There are no more supply chain kinks; there are only kinks in the brains of many Americans. They are choosing to believe things about vaccines that can be proven to be untrue.

I'm back to masking when indoors. I am also looking into adding Pfizer or Moderna to my system - the J&J jab doesn't seem to be as effective against Delta as the other vaccines.  I am in the risk group of folks - over 65 years old - so I am interested in bolstering my immune system.  But I'm lucky - I live in Evanston IL, where most people are fully vaccinated.  If I stay in the city limits, the risk is quite low. Covid isn't a crisis anymore for those of us who are vaccinated. It's the unvaccinated people that should be worried. But the kinks in their brains don't allow them to perceive the threat.

I went into isolation on March 12, 2020. I got my jab on March 12, 2021.  I learned a lot during this year + of loss and solitude.  I decided to make a little list.

• Death is right behind us, all the time.  It can be a microscopic virus or a drunk driver or a heart attack or a bullet. Remembering that death is coming for all of us helps me stay focused on the miracle of human existence.
• In addition to being inevitable, death is also random. I tested positive for Covid-19 last fall and had almost no symptoms.  A friend of mine (about my age) caught the bug and was dead in 10 days.
• We can't ignore our losses. I've lost friends to the novel coronavirus. My sister-in-law died during the pandemic (but not due to the virus). Many of my musical heroes caught Covid and died. I have felt numb at times. I need to sit with the losses, not stuff them down and seal them off.
• Great progress can be made in solitude. Sorting out the tangle of past events, finding ways to increase serenity and reducing the crazed "busyness" of modern life have helped me relax a little, finally.
• Grandparents are important. For parents of young children, this pandemic has been really challenging. When grandparents can step up and help with childcare and other parenting work, the pressure on mom and dad becomes more manageable.
• Humans are incredibly adaptable. I have spent a lot of time on Zoom video calls. The platform works well for certain types of interactions.  Technology and government fiscal policy saved the economy from a long, terrible recession. It has been amazing to see resources mobilize to fight this thing.
• Technology can't help us with one problem - lack of human touch and closeness.  A life without handshakes, hugs and kisses is not a complete human life.
• We should not let things go back to normal. I learned that I am more self-sufficient than I realized.  I also learned that I need other people and I need to extend kindness to friends, family and strangers. Self-sufficiency can co-exist with deep connection to others. The pandemic also exposed a truth that we like to ignore - that rich people/white people sail through crises that destroy poor people/people of color. We should not forget what has been fully revealed.
• When all else fails, play the harmonica.

And finally, the pandemic has helped me re-commit to staying in the moment. I am trying harder not to let little bullshit things piss me off.  Whenever I feel my temperature rise over some irritation, I ask myself "How important is this?" Almost always, the answer is "not important at all."

 

Remembering Ted Hawkins

 

I've been listening to Ted Hawkins this morning. His vocals are searing, gritty and insanely emotive. This man had a hard and somewhat chaotic life.   A great deal of his music was delivered to tourists on the boardwalk at Venice Beach where he busked for spare change. His talent got noticed and he was "discovered" several times by record producers and music promoters in Southern California and England. He actually moved to the U.K for 4 years in the late 1980's and had a bit of success, but he got into some sort of trouble and was deported back home in 1990. Ted had quite a lot of trouble in his life, starting from the age of 12 when he was sent to reform school in Mississippi. As a teenager, Ted drifted, hitchhiking across the country and living on his wits and petty larceny. He was busted for stealing a leather jacket when he was 15 and ended up in an adult prison for 3 years - a ridiculous sentence for a youngster, but he was a black kid in the early 1950's - Jim Crow times - so he was abused.

Ted started singing while he was a kid in reform school, and he heard Sam Cooke while he was in the state penitentiary. He said that it was Sam Cooke that inspired him to focus on music. Ted got an old acoustic guitar and set it up with open tuning so he could strum chords while he sang. He moved to California in the mid-60's and started busking on Venice Beach.

Ted Hawkins wrote some great original songs. He was a genre-busting guy, very soulful, but he could kick out a killer country tune. His cover of the old Webb Pierce country standard, "There Stands The Glass," slays me every time I hear it. It is one of those covers that completely re-forms the original song. Webb's 1953 recording is the same song, but definitely does not have the same impact.

Ted wore a glove on his fretting hand - apparently he had some sort of injury that made it hard for him to play the guitar which led to his basic style. He was pretty ambivalent about recording - he did an album for Rounder Records in the 1980's that flopped. In 1994, Geffen Records convinced him to do a real album with studio musicians. That was the record I got my hands on - it's called "The Next Hundred Years." He did a stunning cover on that record of the John Fogerty song, "Long As I Can See The Light."   It transports me to some strange emotional place that I can't put into words. 

So "The Next Hundred Years" was well-received and had respectable sales. Ted began to tour and seemed to be having a career take-off in his late 50's. 

Of course, he had a stroke and died a few months after his record was released. He was 58 years old when he passed. Damn.

Here is one of Ted's originals, called "Big Things."  This song feels like a summary of his life and his philosophy.  This was an incredible artist that deserved more than he received.

The Crisis Text Line

 

So many of us were upended by the pandemic.  In my case, Covid-19 accelerated my retirement. My profession required a lot of face-to-face consultative advisory work. I just didn't have the energy to convert my work to the Zoom video world (ironic, since I am on Zoom almost daily now that I'm not working for money). I planned on doing a lot of service work in retirement, but that became tricky for older folks - the virus likes to kill us first, apparently. In April of 2020, I read an article about the Crisis Text Line.  I realized that I could be helpful while staying home & hiding from the novel coronavirus.

I applied to be a volunteer - it wasn't a cakewalk. I had to get a couple of recommendations from credible people, and the I had to pass a background check. Once accepted, I had to get through over 30 hours of on-line training, complete with tests. It wasn't easy. But about one year ago, I got my "stripes" and logged on to the Crisis Text Line platform for the first time.

One of my first texters was seriously suicidal - with thoughts, a plan, the means to complete the plan and a timeframe. This is what as known as an "imminent risk" texter. With the awesome support of my supervisor, we managed to  talk that person "off the ledge."  Since that start one year ago, I have spent over 350 hours as a volunteer crisis counselor and have communicated with 472 people that reached out for support.

The Crisis Text Line is like an on-line emergency room for mental health and emotional health issues. The tech folks in the organization have used data from millions of text conversations to construct an algorithm that identifies the highest risk texters by their word choice. Those folks are pushed to the front of the queue. It is a classic triage system. Telephone hotlines use a chronological model - first come, first served. This can leave folks in imminent risk of suicide on hold for long periods of time. This is obviously not a good thing to do to a suicidal person.

There has been a number of surges in volume at the Crisis Text Line during this pandemic.  Environmental anxiety has been sky-high and that is reflected in the number of texters seeking help. The peak hours happen at night - from 10 PM until 4AM or so. The demographics of the texter population is pretty young ( 70+% under 25 years old) and quite diverse (white, black, Latinx, LBGTQ, Asian, Native American).  Mental illness is very democratic.

Texting works really well for so many people, especially younger folks. I have had texters as young as nine years old. Sometimes folks are too upset to speak, but they can text. Or sometimes people are within earshot of someone that might be abusing them - they can't speak, but they can text. 

It's a free service, available all the time. How great is that?

Since May is Mental Health Month, keep the Crisis Text Line in mind if you or someone you know is in crisis. It can calm emotional storms and sometimes saves lives.

Random Events Change Lives - a Personal Story

 

Do you have a random event in your life that totally altered your trajectory? I do.

It happened in early 1976. I was a senior at the University of California at Berkeley. I was born & raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, my parents lived there as did all of my friends. I played the trombone in local funk bands in my spare time. I loved the ocean. Northern California was my home sweet home.

I faced a dilemma, however. I was graduating from UC Berkeley with my econ major and music minor. I needed to transition into something new, either work or graduate school.  I was a broke-ass college student from a lower middle-class family, so work was my first choice. There was a problem, however - the unemployment rate in 1976 was 7.8%. The current unemployment rate in the U.S., in the middle of this Covid-19 pandemic, is 6.2%.  I couldn't find a decent job, one with reasonable pay that I could imagine doing every day. I didn't have any money to pay for graduate school, although I did apply to several econ PhD programs and was admitted to a couple of places (They told me to bring my checkbook to pay enormous amounts of tuition). I was nervous about borrowing shit-pots of money to pay for school (and loans weren't easy to get back then), so I was in an uncomfortable spot. No decent job prospects, no affordable grad school option, future at risk.

It was a Wednesday, I think.  I had a couple of hours between classes.  I had just gotten another rejection letter from a prospective employer the previous day, so I was wandering around the Student Union Building in a funk. I stopped in front of the bulletin board that had sign-up sheets for job interviews and was trying to get excited about an opportunity to become a life insurance salesman (the only employer with open interview slots). I wasn't feeling very happy at that moment.

Someone behind me said "Excuse me" and I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and saw a tall woman in a 1970's "dress for success" female executive outfit. She definitely wasn't from Berkeley. "Hi - I'm Mary from Northwestern University's Graduate School of Management. I'm recruiting candidates for our MBA program, and no one has signed up for interviews. Are you graduating soon?" I told her yes, I would be graduating in June. "Great - do you have 30 minutes? I would like to interview you for our program."  I had the time, so I went with Mary into her conference room for an interview.

So she told me about Northwestern University. I thought it was up in Oregon, but was surprised to learn that it was just north of Chicago IL. Very confusing - Chicago is not in the northwestern part of the country. She asked me about my GPA and my Graduate Management Admissions Test scores (I took every grad school admissions test - LCAT, MCAT, GREs. etc. etc.). Once she got that info, she told me that if I applied to Northwestern's MBA program, I would be admitted and the university would figure out a way to finance it for me via grants, work-study and a little debt. Northwestern was trying to get more students from big western universities to enhance its credibility as a high-quality MBA program with a geographically diverse student body. Most students as of 1976 were from the Midwest.

I filled out the application that day. I arrived in Evanston Illinois on September 5, 1976 and received my Kellogg MBA a couple of years later.  I am still in Evanston Illinois after a 42 year career, two failed marriages, 4 children (all adults now), 4 grandchildren, etc. etc. etc. 

If Mary hadn't tapped me on the shoulder back in 1976, my life would have ended up much differently.  This is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but demonstrates how a chance encounter can totally alter the direction of a life. 

That is my random event story. What's yours?

Pandemic's Crushing Effect on Live Music

 

The past year has been devastating. As of 8PM on March 15, 2021, there were 533,057 deaths from Covid-19 in the United States.  Healthcare providers are exhausted and traumatized by all the death.  Millions of people (myself included) are still sticking close to their homes and are quite isolated from other human beings. School children and teachers are struggling to figure out how to keep education going during the pandemic. The economy has bifurcated into a group of home-working professionals (they're doing fine, thanks) and everyone else (folks laid off due to the illness, forced to work at low-wage jobs with exposure due to the essential nature of their roles, etc.). Food banks are seeing record numbers of clients.

In the middle of all this is the live music industry. It has been crushed. I know this isn't the biggest problem when we ponder all the effects of the pandemic, but it is still significant.  Concerts and local music venues build connection and community. I am a huge music fan (and amateur musician) and I feel a little lost without live music.  My musician friends are struggling. Their livelihood depended on performing.  Yes, they have shifted to livestreaming and other methods to connect with their audiences, but it is a very poor substitute. The local venues in Chicago are getting killed, as this video points out.

I am so very pleased that the Biden Administration recognized this crisis and included $15 billion of relief funding for independent music venues and other cultural organizations (museums, etc.)  in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act of 2021.  This might be enough oxygen to get these important institutions to the other side of the Covid-19 pandemic. We are starved for the love and shared experiences these places and their passionate backers provide for us.  

I went to my last live concert at SPACE in Evanston IL on February 23, 2020 - I saw Howard Levy, the insanely great harmonica player & pianist. I can't wait to be in front of the stage with my music peeps again.

Good Bones

 

Even though my kids are grown, I think a lot about being a parent.  I did some things right; lots of things wrong. I did my best in view of what I knew at the time.

I ran across this poem, which I love.  I am posting it in case it might resonate with others.

Good Bones, by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I've shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I'll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that's a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.  

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, 

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind 

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children.  I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, 

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones. This place could be beautiful, 

right? You could make this place beautiful.

Core Principles

 

As I have stumbled through my life, I struggled to find a set of principles that would provide some guidance and comfort.  I read a lot of treatises on self-improvement, success, etc. - not much resonated.  I went to various churches even though I was not a believer.  I didn't find anything for me in those spaces.  In the past few years, I became acquainted with the 12 Steps.  They have been quite helpful, but the Steps are pretty generic.  I felt a need for a list that spoke to me personally.  So I wrote my own Core Principles.  Here they are:

• Always deal fairly with others. Negotiate fiercely, reach agreement expeditiously and follow through as promised.  Remember that turnabout is fair play, so integrity is not only the moral path - it is the safe path.
• Be a fiscal conservative. Don't borrow money that you can't pay back.
• Be independent.  Don't expect others to take care of you.  Friendship, love relationships and economic connections are helpful at times, but self-reliance is the source of true contentment.
• Be clear-eyed.  If you must judge others, do so based on their actions, not their appearance or background.
• Avoid proselytism.  Never, ever try to push your religious beliefs down the throats of other people.
• Always pause first.  Resist impulsive words and actions.  Take a breath and think for a minute, or ten.
• Cherish existence. Recognize that humans live for a very short time. Try not to waste that time.
• Recognize capacity constraints.  Don't take on burdens you can't carry.  Collapsing won't help anyone.
• And perhaps the most important thing - listen to lots of great music. Play and/or sing some, too.

These 10 principles work for me when I remember to follow them.  When I am mindful of this list, I am calmer and my level of self-loathing drops.  I have a code to live by.

Perspective

One of my favorite forms of reflection is to review the known timeline of our planet and then compare that to the timeline of Homo Sapiens.  

Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago.  The first single-celled life form (Prokaryotic Archaea) appeared on our planet about 4.1 billion years ago (and these organisms are still around).  Multi-cellular life forms appeared 2.1 billion years ago.  The earliest land animals (semi-aquatic amphibian tetrapods) crawled out of the oceans 350 million years ago.  The mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs happened 66 million years ago.  The first primates showed up 55,000,000 years ago, and the precursor to humans finally appeared 7 million years ago.  The first "real human" evolved in Africa 2.8 million years ago, and it took 1 million years for their descendants to begin migrating from Africa to other places.  The first confirmed controlled use of fire by humans happened 1 million years ago.  The first emergence of our species, Homo Sapiens, occurred 315,000 years ago.  

So for 93% of the Earth's history, there were no recognizable humans walking the planet. Oh, and the first "anatomically modern" version of Homo Sapiens evolved 46,000 years ago, so we could say that humans that resembled the current crop of people have only been around for 1% of the earth's history.  Humans are new,  and our share of the geologic time arc is quite small.

But we think we are The Most Important Thing To Ever Happen on Planet Earth. Hmmm...maybe not.  

For sure, Homo Sapiens has proliferated.  The population has grown exponentially over the past 5,000 years (from 50 million about 4,800 years ago to 7.8 billion today).  For sure, we have used the weirdly large frontal lobes of our brain to invent heaps of shit and organize massive groups of individuals into religions, nations and empires.  For sure, we have obliterated thousands of  species (sabre-tooth tigers, wooly mammoths, giant ground sloths, dodo birds, passenger pigeons, and on & on). And we have created conditions to allow other species to flourish (dogs, livestock, etc.).  

But the planet motors on, and will continue for 3 to 7 billion years before the sun turns into a Red Giant and burns it to a sad, lifeless rock.  Homo sapiens probably won't be around to see the end of days.  Good old Mother Earth has quite a lot of life left no matter what we pesky humans might do before we join the list of extinct species.

Yeah, we ain't that important.  We are just another successful animal that has experienced a population explosion.  We will eventually join the dinosaurs and the dodo bird.  

This is what I turn to when my panties are in a bunch over politics, or I can't figure out how to play a Big Walter lick on my harmonica.  In the end, it's all pretty insignificant, so no need to worry too much.

Wintering, 2021 - Galena IL & Davenport IA

 

I am writing this on a Sunday morning from a room on the 4th floor of a Hampton Inn in Davenport, Iowa.  The window overlooks the parking lot of a shopping center.  Because of the Covid-19 crisis, the parking lot is empty.  Davenport has had quite a lot of snow recently, and now the temperature has plunged - currently sitting at 15 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. The parking lot looks deadly in the thin grey morning light.  I saw a couple of burly guys struggle to free a tow truck stuck in that parking lot last night.

About a week ago, I was in Galena and rented a cabin in the woods.  The snow hit, and I took a picture of the deck off the kitchen - the pic is at the top of this post.  I couldn't get out of the joint for several hours - a snowdrift blocked the door and there was no snow shovel. The managers of the property cleared it away around lunchtime.  I was happy to be trapped, surrounded by the winter's hush in the woods.

I am now visiting one of my adult children who is currently staying in Davenport.  It isn't a bad place - the pace is a lot slower than Chicago, and the folks here see things much differently than us urbanites.  The good citizens of Davenport have declared that the pandemic is over - the restaurants and bars were packed last night, and mask discipline is pretty weak.  That's why I split a take-out pizza with my kid in the hotel room last night.

Lots of mid-sized cities have interesting histories, and Davenport is no exception.  Davenport is a river town; the Mississippi is its major geographic feature.  River towns tend to be kind of racy.  Davenport had a lot of bordellos and speakeasies during the Prohibition years, and once was called "the wickedest city in America" by the national press.  It is also Bix Beiderbecke's hometown.  If you have never heard of Bix, that's OK - he is not well-known to the general public.   He was a giant of the jazz cornet in the 1920's.  You may have heard Royal Garden Blues, considered one of the most important jazz recordings in history.  Bix was a tragic character.  He drank himself to death in his Queens, New York apartment in the summer of 1931.  He was only 28 years old when he died. So Davenport has the Bix Beiderbecke Museum downtown near the Mississippi River.  There is a Bix festival and many other Bix-related organizations and events here.  Davenport also was the location of America's first college of chiropractic medicine. You can lay factoid that on your chiropractor when you visit for your next adjustment.

I am here to spend time with my adult offspring.  I won't bore you with the details, but this child of mine has been struggling.  I love this young person to death and I am here to help if possible.  I have no idea how things will turn out.  I know if I force an outcome, things probably won't improve.

I have no power over anyone else's actions or reactions.  I only have control over my own actions and reactions.  Even that is sometimes more than I can handle.

The sun is breaking through the cloud cover now, so I will head out to see what Davenport has in store for me today.

Linda Twyman's Murderer(s) Still Walk Free, and So Do Many Other Murderers

 

I knew Linda Twyman.  She was my neighbor on Maple Street in Evanston in the 1990's.  As you might guess from her picture, she was a cheerful person with a ready smile.  We weren't close friends, but I was always happy to see her in the neighborhood.  She moved off of Maple Street to an even quieter street in Evanston.

I was shocked and crushed when she was murdered in late 2005.  Linda was stabbed to death in her apartment.  This murder remains unsolved and as far as I can tell, the Evanston Police Department have made no public comment on it since 2013.  I think about Linda's case often, and it has been on my mind due to the spike in murders we have had in my community over the past 12 months.  

Evanston usually has 1-2 murders annually.  We have had at least 5 in the past 12 months.  This is due, in part, to the general spike in violence that has swept the country in the wake of the pandemic.  People are short-tempered and psychosis blooms when stress is high. The most recent murder happened right in my neighborhood, at the local International House of Pancakes, fer Christ's sake!  

An individual in a state of psychosis got his hands on a gun and went on a spree starting in Hyde Park on the south side of Chicago and ending on the Evanston side of Howard Street on Chicago's northern border.  He killed a woman at the IHOP - she worked in the elementary school that all my kids attended.  The shooter got shot by the police and died outside the Dollar General store.  It was horrifying and heartbreaking, for the victims and the perpetrator.

Since I was thinking about Linda Twyman, I called the Evanston Police to inquire about progress in solving her murder.  The officer I spoke with told me that she would tell the detective on the case to give me a call.  That was a few weeks and I have not received that call.  This is a cold case now, and may not ever be solved.

Poking around on Google, I discovered that there are about 250,000 unsolved murders in the United States and the the total is growing by about 6,000 each year.  Over a third of the murders in the U.S. are unsolved.  A lot of people have gotten away with murder in this country.  And a disproportionate share of the unsolved cases involve people of color.  

I believe that people should bear the full, natural consequences of their actions.  That is not happening when it comes to murder in the U.S.  Maybe more funding for cold case units would improve the situation.  Perhaps police departments really aren't focused on solving cases that are not straightforward, I don't know.  I know that lots of folks that know people like Linda Twyman yearn for justice, and it is nowhere in sight.

On Resentment

 

I'm going to tell you something that is based on a true story.  Names have been changed and some of the details have been altered to protect anonymity.

There once were two young men that met while playing in the school band at a public university.  They became friends rather quickly, and decided to become roommates to split the cost of an off-campus apartment.  Joe was a year older than Sam and had shifted from a music major to business administration.  Sam was also a reformed music major, having made the shift into the econ department. Joe and Sam lived together for 2 years and became very close friends.

Joe graduated into the middle of a recession.  Work was hard to find, but he landed an entry-level position in the purchasing department of a major department store chain.  It was a soul-crushing, miserable job, trying to squeeze down supplier prices so the stores could make some sort of profit on ladies underwear and other staples.  Joe hated the work, and Sam heard stories about his misery every night.

When Sam graduated a year later, the recession was still raging.  His job opportunities were awful - things like life insurance sales and management trainee at a discount store chain.  Sam got lucky. His GPA and admission test scores were pretty good, so he was awarded a scholarship to go to a decent MBA program out of state.  He left Joe and headed across the country.

The MBA program was an excellent fit for Sam, but he realized that it would be even better for Joe.  He had a strong desire to help his good friend, who was unhappy in his job.  Sam talked Joe into applying, even though Joe's GPA and admissions test scores were mediocre.  Sam managed to become the student rep on the admissions committee at the business school. He made a passionate plea for his old roomie and was able to convince the committee to let Joe in.  As Sam completed his MBA studies, Joe arrived at the university to start the program.

Joe did phenomenally well at the school - aced all his classes and impressed all the professors.  He also met and fell in love with another graduate student.  She happened to be the daughter of a very wealthy man - she was going to eventually inherit a fortune.  Joe married his new-found love, graduated from school and embarked on a magnificent career.  He rose to be a very senior executive at a consumer products firm.  That firm was acquired by a huge multi-national conglomerate and Joe's stock options cashed out in excess of $100 million.  He retired in his early 50's and embarked on the life of the ultra-rich, with multiple homes, luxurious vacations and a social circle that was oriented towards other folks in the same economic class. Joe's wife became a successful writer; one of her books became a best-seller.  Their marriage was strong and they had two children that grew up to be talented and successful adults.

Sam soldiered through a series of jobs over a very long year career.  He had some successes, some setbacks.  He had two marriages; both ended in divorce.  Sam had four children, one found a joyful path in life and the other three struggled with substance abuse and mental illness. He ran out of juice and retired at 65, sheltering alone in a comfortable, but not luxurious, 2-bedroom condo in a major metropolitan area.  At various points during his life, he would reach out to Joe.  Joe was often slow to respond, and once the options cashed, he stopped responding at all.

So Sam started resenting Joe.  The internal narrative ran as follows:  "I got the SOB into business school.  If it wasn't for me, he would not have been admitted, met his wealthy wife and made $100 million.  Now he has snubbed me; he is too rich and famous to bother with his old roommate.  I'm smarter than he is, too.  He just got lucky, and I'm the reason that he got lucky." 

Resentments are hilarious.  First of all, they are pointless.  There is an old saying - resenting someone is like drinking poison and expecting your adversary to die. The resentment just made Sam agitated and angry. He assumed the worst about Joe without knowing what was really going on in his life.  And Sam's rugged, chaotic family life might have caused Joe (and others) to back away, not wanting to get involved in Sam's personal business.  

There is another old saying that applies to Sam's state of mind - "Compare and Despair."  Joe had more success than Sam, and Sam was envious.  Envy is not an admirable emotion, so Sam converted it to resentment and righteous anger over being snubbed by a friend. "After all I have done for him," Sam thought, "how dare he treat me with such disrespect?!" 

Resentments grow and fester because they are kind of exciting. Perhaps it feels good to be the aggrieved victim.  Perhaps the internalized anger gives the brain something stimulating to think about to relieve the boredom of everyday existence.  One thing is certain - resentments are a waste of time and energy, and are usually unjustified.  Sam never thought about Joe's point of view, or thought about alternative reasons for the lack of contact.  Sam never considered what he may have done that caused Joe to pull away.  Sam never realized that he was directing his anger over his own bad choices at his luckier friend instead of addressing the real issues in his own life. It was more gratifying to be the resentful victim of injustice.

This is a trivial story, but it has broad application to the human condition.  Letting go of resentments increases personal peacefulness.  If everyone did it, the level of aggression and conflict in human societies would decline.  One of my primary self-improvement goals is to release all of my resentments.  It is a high bar to chin, but I'm working on it.