Christmas Presents

Well, Christmas Eve is a week away and I'm lovin' it. I just took a week off from work, (it was a use it or lose it situation), and was able to relax and ease into the holiday spirit.

My wife and I went to the theater twice, which is something we rarely do. We saw "The Nativity Story" and a then a few days later, Mel Gibson's latest offering, "Apocalypto". Both were good but for different reasons. The former was about God's love for the Earth, and the hope and the promise He has given us. The latter was a fairly good look into the depth of depravity that would rule the Earth and its people, if it weren't for the former. I am so glad that human sacrifice is not what is required to satisfy the appetites of an angry god or government. And, I'll never complain about taxes again.

On Wednesday, we invited five kids over for an afternoon of crafts. All siblings, and ranging in age from 3 to 13, they took on the assignment of constructing small Christmas trees from wrappings and ribbons. This is all part of a holiday family tradition to goes back generations. As a child I loved making ornaments and centerpieces and other festive nick-nacks. Mom was very creative and could make just about anything she could imagine. I'm really glad I inherited that from her. And then I married a girl who also was very crafty. So it turns out, that all three of our kids are likewise bent toward similar creative outlets. Our son however, is most satisfied if he's allowed to blow up his creations afterwards, but that's a whole different kind of somethin' else.

I also was able to spend a few days woodworking. I had forgotten how much pleasure I derive from butchering wood. I can't reveal just yet what I was making, because it would spoil the surprise. Let me just say that if you hate, loathe or dispise shopping for Christmas presents (as I do sometimes), try making them. It's like you become one of Santa's elves for a while, and are able to express your love and affection toward someone special in a uniquely tangible and lasting way.
All of my kids will be coming home this week. I expect to have a houseful for the first time in a long while. We'll be baking cookies, and watching movies, and wrapping presents. BTW, that's another Christmas tradition that we take very seriously. Presents are not merely wrapped, but adorned. You'd be amazed at how you can transform underwear or a pair of socks into something special and beautiful. Sometimes I think we take more care in wraping gifts than in choosing them. We've even turned it into a competition. Before opening, each gift is scrutinized for the quality and attention that went into its camoflage. There's usually general agreement as to which one is best. This year, I expect to win. I am so confident that I'm willing to reveal it ahead of time.

Is it a coincidence that Christmas comes at the end of our calander year? I believe that someday, after the trials and blessings of this life have passed away, we will all be presented to God for His pleasure and approval. And what we were before, will be hidden in Christ, just as the gift is concealed within the wrappings and ribbons. Maybe we all secretly long for the day when the great promise of God is fulfilled in our lives, and we emerge from these cocoons, transformed from what we were, to what we will be, for eternity.

The Nativity Story

Another thing I like about Christmas are the movies. A short list of my favorites includes: It's a Wonderful Life, Trapped in Paridise, Home Alone, and Die Hard. However, I will have to revise this list after what I saw this weekend.
I don't care what the critics say, "The Nativity Story" is the most beautiful piece of film I've ever seen. I cried all the way through it. It so far surpasses anything that has come before, that it begs the question - Why did it take so long? I can't remember the last time any serious Hollywood filmaker dealt with this subject. This thing is an instant Holiday Classic. Casting, costuming, screen play, music...all winners. See it....NOW! Take your friends and family. I can't wait till it comes out on video.
See the trailer

Oh Tannenbaum

Well, now that the dust and my stomach have settled from last week's Thanksgiving Day festivities, it's now time to start thinking about what really matters - Christmas. I love Christmas, and everything about it: the music, the lights, the commercialism - yes (gasp) even the commercialism. I'm tired of the generations of Xmas bashing by preachers, journalists and assorted other curmudgeons, who've become constipated by their own self righteousness. Come on, what is inherently wrong with being nice to the people you like for one month out of the year?
I do have my limits though. No kidding, one year I saw a holiday display depicting the baby Santa in the manger. Right next to it was another, that showed Santa kneeling before the baby Jesus. Now before you get your shorts in an uproar, let me say that both of these displays were located at Koreshan State Part in Estero, FL. The Koreshan Unity was a utopian society founded in late 19th century, and considering their unusual world view, a little confusion regarding the gospel of St. Luke, might be expected. But I digress.
In spite of the controversy, for us the Christmas season begins and ends with the tree. This is no ordinary fresh, live, expensive tree. Nooo... we love the cheap, cheezy, artificial variety. Not that I'm unnecessarily cheap or cheezy, it's just that I'm cautious. A fireman once told me how a Christmas Day house fire had ruined his holiday. I guess there's something about the charred remains of children, parents, pets and presents that can put a damper on any festive occasion.
So immediately following Thanksgiving, or at least by the first weekend in December, we release the tree from it's 11 month incarceration in the garage. And with the help of lights, ribbons, ornaments and several adult beveredges, we transform this modular mess of plastic and wire into something beautiful.
My favorite part is wrestling with the mini-lights. There's no way to do it right, and scores of ways to do it wrong. In fact, I've never hung them the same way twice. My goal is to space the lights evenly thoughout the tree, in as few attempts as possible. It's like golf. But like golf, you can obsess over it, and I generally do. When the kids were little, they'd grow bored and discouraged watching and waiting for me to get it just right. I have been known to ruin everyone's Christmas before it even gets started, because of the anger and frustration I succumb to during the annual lighting of the tree. After 2 or 3 drinks however, my mood generally improves, and I'm able to enjoy the rest of the evening, even if they can't.
The magic happens when we start hanging ornaments on the tree. (Martha Stewart would throw up if she saw the gems we've preserved over the years.) It's with great care that we unwrap and handle the one hand-blown glass ornament from my great grandmother's tree. Faded and fragile, it reminds us of the ancestral connection made this time of year, through the celebration of Christ's birth (or pagan ritual of trimming the tree, which ever you prefer). My personal favorite is the "Dood" ornament, named after my dad. It's a clear plastic little tabernacle with a shiny whirly-gig on the inside. Dood would make sure that it was suspended directly above one of those large colorful igniters. The heat rising from the bulb would make the whirly-gig go around, reflecting all the lights from its unique position in the tree. Since we use mini-lights now, the ceiling fan does the same thing, just in reverse. Then there's Hannah's 1983 hand print ornament, reminding us that our mechanical engineer was once an inquisitive 2-year-old. There's at least a dozen ballerinas and nutcrackers that grace the tree. Our Sarah was born to dance, and Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker was her favorite. Most of the ornaments are hand made. Grammy spent countless hours over her needle point projects, and one of them, an angel, watches over our living room from the top of the tree. Last year, she told us that it was time to throw "that tired old thing" away. "Not in this lifetime," I thought. Years from now, after the kids have divvied up the ornaments that survive us, they may wonder about the cross-stitched ornaments that bear their names and birth dates. Mrs. Bauchspies made them. She was in her 80's and dealing with the grief of having lost her own child to leukemia. She made them because she loved us, and wanted us to have them. She also made the green cross-stitched frog, that always has a Hershey's Kiss inside.
We've been known to keep an artificial tree for decades. Each year it comes out of hibernation significantly more damaged and disheveled than before. Eventually it winds up in a garage sale or out by the street. I know, it's not a very suitable way to dispose of something so significant, but cremation or burial are both out of the question. Maybe the next tree will be a real one. Either way, it reminds me of the temporal nature of these bodies in which we live, and the enduring precious promises that we carry within them, and celebrate each year, in December.

Merry Christmas to All

Drink a Toast

"Back through the years I go wandering once again - back to the seasons of my youth."(1) My family moved to Riverside, New Jersey in the summer of 1960. I was 7 years old, and this was not just another move. We were going to stay here long enough for me to put down some roots for the first time. We moved more that Bedouins. Prior to this, I had lived in 9 different places, and by now I'd had my fill. I wanted to make some friends and matriculate from one grade to the next within the same school, like other kids did. Riverside seemed as good a place as any to do this.
Dad had been in the Navy and was now stationed at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital - not as a doctor, but a patient. My father graduated from Annapolis in 1949, and then served in Korea, the Phillappines, and then all over both coasts. After being riden hard and put away wet one too many times, dad wound up in a psychiatric ward, only to be summarily discharged and then discarded as just another casualty of war. Riverside became our "port in the storm."
The Delaware river gave our town its name. Even though Philadelphia and all of its problems were on the other side, we shared the river and the 100 mile long chain of factories and mills that fed it with commerce and industrial pollution. We were blighted community, but in denial. Remember, this was long before Rachael Carson had written "Silent Spring. " But I liked Riverside. In the summer of 1960, I was hoping we would get to stay.
Our home was just outside the town limits. The very first day after moving our stuff in, we took a walk downtown. The streets were lined with working class houses and inhabited by Italian and Polish immigrants,and then subsequent generations thereof . The closer we got to town, the larger the trees grew, serving as living monuments that marked the beginnings of new lives in a new country. Riverside was a one stoplight town. It didn't take us long to scope it out and find the relevant points of interest. There was Saint Peter's Catholic Church, where I would spend the next 6 years of my life. It was a modern structure for its time, and served the spiritual needs of a predominately Italian congregation. The adjacent school was 3 massive stories high and built of brown brick. I had already begun to hate school, so it looked like a prison to me. The guards, I mean the nuns, lived in the convent across the street. Anyway, there in the shadow of the school was Faunce's Soda Fountain, a relic of a place that served the epicurean needs of the children of Saint Peter's Catholic School.
The interior of Faunce's was dark, worn and wooden. We were greeted by the proprietor who had a broken middle finger that had been set poorly, so that when he made a fist, the best he could come up with, was a perpetual "California Howdie." My older sister and I found that alarming, but somewhat humerous, and tried not to stare at it. After the usual pleasantries, he invited us to try a local beverege called "Drink a Toast." It was also known and marketed as "Take a Boost." I think they would change the lable on it, whenever sales would begin to go flat. Manufactured in Riverside, Boost, a.k.a Drink a Toast, maybe the only thing for which the town is even remotely famous. It was/is a dark proprietary concoction of caffeine and "fruit juices", (mostly corn syrup I'll bet) that when mixed with 4 parts water, and served over ice, tasted like one of the more fameous colas gone flat. We liked it. The only thing that could have enhanced the flavor might have been a little bit of cocaine, but I'm pretty sure that was just as illegal back then, as it is now. It had purported health benefits. (Remember now, that this was long before accurate labling was required by the FDA, or before truth in advertising had become popular.) Mr. Permanent Rude Gesture Man told us that it had been invented by a local physician who dispensed it to alleviate a whole host of stomach ailments. I'm convinced that it must have been none other than the infameous Dr. Hyde, considering the monsterous effect all that sugar and caffeine had on the children of Riverside. We were hooked instantly. So were all our friends and their families. You purchaced it in concentrated form by the gallon, and from legitimate businesses. (I'm not convinced that the Mafia didn't have some stake in it.) We soon discovered that you could dilute it in 5 parts water, thereby stretching it the way a savvy drug dealer might cut his merchandise. There was a local Pepsi bottling plant nearby, but that was for distibution elsewhere. We loved Boost.
After high school I worked in one of those mills along the Delaware. I was a melter, and nothing was more refreshing than ice cold Boost during the summer swelter. It also helped me stay awake during the graveyard shift. Eventually, I discovered that it mixed well with burbon, and a B&B became my adult beverege of choice. I'll bet that, unbeknownst to us, our parents had been spiking their's all along. Maybe it did have medicinal qualities after all.
Today I live in Florida, and mix my burbon with diet Coke. I miss Boost, even though I have a filling in almost every tooth. I miss Riverside, NJ. I miss the roving gangs of hopped up kids, and Faunce's pharmacy where we used to go get our fix. If you think I'm making this up.....
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:Yae2ch6jHM4J:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takaboost+drink+a+toast+riverside&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

(1) First line of "My Coat of Many Colors" by Dolly Parton

Guardrails? Who Needs Them.

Once again it's time for me to share with you (all 3 of you) something interesting and insightful from my life. Unfortunately, it's been as dull as a letter opener, so I'll have to borrow something exciting from someone else's. Today's blog is about the irony of life, and how it can be used to gain appreciation for an otherwise meaningless existance.
It was with great pride and enthusiasm that my friend Rob showed off his new truck to me. After giving him the obligatory shot for not supporting one of the American auto makers, I congratulated him on his wise purchase. When I asked him how much he got for his old one, he proceeded to tell me about the wreck.
Rob was returning from Tampa late one night, after yet, another uneventful blind date. Tired and in a hurry to get back home, he had just about convinced himself that this was the last time he would drive long distance to one of these, when a set of headlights seem to appear out of nowhere. It took Rob about 3 seconds to realize that this car was heading north on the southbound side of interstate 75, and that a head on collision was imminent. With a sudden jerk of the wheel, he avoided certain death, only to realize that now, his life was officially, "out of control." In an attempt to regain control, he oversteered slightly, so that the truck slid sideways and was plummeting at 75 mph into the dark unknowable future. Slipping off the highway and onto the grassy median, Rob braced himself for the possibility of a high speed roll over crash. To the contrary, Rob soon realized that vehicle was quite stable, but was inching closer and closer to the headlights of the north bound traffic. Instinctively, he closed his eyes. Who wants to see their own death? Or maybe it was to say one last solemn prayer before meeting his maker face to face. Anyway, the truck slamed into something hard, but not as violently as he had anticipated.
The anxiety, adrenaline and fear that had commandeered the steering wheel of his life seemed to release its grip as Rob regained his senses. He was stopped. His truck was mangled up against a guard rail. It had prevented him from careening into the oncoming traffic. He was alive and unhurt!
These guardrails had just been installed. I noticed them going in, but never gave them a second thought. My friend however admitted to me that he had been complaining about them since they first appeared. He remembered reading that the cost for our county alone was like $12 million. Several times since, he had grumbled to himself while driving down the highway, about how expensive they were going to be to maintain. No longer could a large gang mower alone do the job, but now, someone would have to hand mow around each post and under each rail. He was absolutely right, but....
What all this means I'm not quite sure, accept that I'm glad that Rob is still alive. And the next time that your life gets sideways, remember that there maybe some method behind the madness that surrounds you.

TSA Blues

In the interest of national security and the war on terror, it's time for me to weigh in on the issue of profiling passengers. I was under the impression that profiling was illegal, or at least strongly discouraged by the Transportation Safety Administration. After talking with a friend who had just tried to get through security at JFK in New York, I found out that I had been sadly mistaken.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have any really strong opinions or feelings - for or against profiling. I figure that they know what they're doing, and I certainly wouldn't want them to offend anyone. Like the time that my wife and I tried to make a connection in NY after a 14 hour flight from Istanbul on our 25th anniversary, and the woman at the ticket counter gave my wife her boarding pass, only to tell me that the gate was closed. Which means, "you'll have to take another flight to another airport that is 175 miles from home, and then, wait there until you're able to inconvenience some friend or family member into picking you up and taking you home. Have a nice day." But I digress.

My friend contends that he was singled out amoung the hundreds of passengers in a hurry to make their flight, because he was...and I kid you not...a Boston Red Sox fan. Pay attention now. This is important. Unless you like the intense anxiety that accompanies an extensive and time consuming search of your carry on luggage, then choose you're sports apparel carefully. For you see, just as my friend cleared the body scanner, a TSA official, with a very thick Bronx accent, instructed him to "please step to da side." After a lengthy Q&A regarding the innocuous contents of the back pack, the TSA guy says, "Hey, how 'bout dem Red Sox?" Completely unaware that the baseball cap he was wearing was implicating him in some sort of plot to demean all of New York, (the city that had been attacked by the Muslim hordes) my friend innocently replied, "Yea, we had a great weekend." Wrong answer. Boston, although not in the pennant race, had won 3 out of a 4 games series in Boston. Upon uttering these words, the guy from da Bronx proceeds to swab every square inch of the back pack and its entire contents. Its during moments like these that you realize, time is not a constant; only an illusion, subject to the whims of our emotions. Seconds can become eons in the time-space continuum, when we travel within the margin of a short layover. My friend made his connecting flight. But only after this Klingon had sufficiently toyed with him long enough to compensate for his home team's inadequacy.

Sports fans beware. Do not come into Miami International wearing a Buffalo Bills Jersey. It is a bilingual black hole, that only the brave or the ignorant would approach in such attire.

Happy Trails.

Eulogy For The Dragon

I moved the last of my three children to Bethlehem, PA the other day, where he will be attending Lehigh University. If you're expecting some maudline attempt at soul searching, you'll be disappointed. I was completely unaffected. He's a good kid, with lots of talent, and no bad habits (except for his penchant for Halo, the enormously popular XBox game of murder and mayhem.) Aside from that, I expet he'll do just fine.

Lehigh University is an endowment child of the late great Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Engineering and Business were its mainstays. Generations ago, upon graduating from Lehigh, you would have been guaranteed a job in the mill, and then lived out the rest of your life in the quaint town that gave the company it's name. You would have made the steel that formed the New York skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge. You would have helped win both of the World Wars. Now, Lehigh is a full fledged University and the steel mill is a ruin.

I got a chance to tour this 1500 acre montage of rust, brick and weeds. Our tour guides were retired (layed off) steelworkers, Bobby and Czechy. Czechy was the sixth son of eleven children born to a Czechoslovakian immigrant who arrived during the twenties. From the back of the trolley, Czechy spoke with the passion of a history professor about the one thing in life he loved more than anything else. Bobby interrupted regularly from the front of the bus, with color commentary that seemed to awaken the ghosts of this great and glorious bygone era.

The piece de resistance of the tour was the blast furnace. Now I'll be the first to admit that factories are inherantly ugly, and eyesores upon the landscape; but this thing was beautiful. Joined together by thousands of pieces of steel, it appeared none the less monolithic, as it loomed ten stories or more above our heads. For about a century, iron ore, coke and limestone were fed to this monster 24/7. By the time Czechy's father arrived, it was already producing over 1 million tons of pig iron a year. The men who served it feared it, for its power and influence over their lives was absolute. But that was then.

With pride, Bobby told us several stories of how during the seventies, the "time study guys" would come with their stop watches and clip boards, and try to measure the institutionalized lethargy that had become endemic within the union. He boasted about how they had slowed down production in order to gain "piece-work" compensation. He was completely unaware that he was incriminating himself and his fellow steelworkers, in the death of the American steel industry. But that's OK. I was a steelworker myself during this time, and I remember how difficult it was working amid the smoke and the noise.

Bethlehem is quiet now; and the air is clean. It's got a great bagel shop and of course, the Moravian Book Store. And then there's Lehigh, Bethlehem Steel's legacy to the world. Before leaving, we visited the engineering library on campus. There were about a dozen or so students there, all of which appeared to be of middle east or asian origin. Who else but serious students would you expect to find there, on a Sunday, during semester break?

That First Cup of Coffee

A long winter's nap is rudely interrupted by the loathsome clang of a cheap brass alarm clock. It's 4:00 am, and I grope hastily in the darkness to find this menace, and silence it for the next 24 hours. It will be a long time before I develope the ability to wake my self up at will, at any time, as needed. But I'm only eleven years old, and 110 editions of the Philadelphia Morning Enquirer are waiting for me. My mission is to count them, fold them, bind them, and then deliver them in the darkness before sunrise, to 110 anonymous patrons, randomly dispersed throughout the East End of Riverside, New Jersey.

I am a paper boy, and it's Christmas Day, 1964. I grudgingly free myself from the embrace of the warm blankets, and subconsciously slip into yesterday's clothes, left there in a pile on the floor. For a few seconds, I think about brushing my teeth, but then realize - what's the point. Within 3 minutes, I'm out the door and chugging along alone on my bike in the darkness and the crisp morning air. I ride the center line of the road; there's no one else out there at this hour, and on this day. It takes me about 15 minutes to pedal to work, time that I normally spend in reflection. The weather usually dictates how I'm going to feel for the first two hours of my day: wind is bad, rain is worse and snow is hell. It's pretty cold, but clear. So I got that going for me.

Before I know it, I pull up to the News Agency, where the papers are waiting for me, along with the 3 other boys who share in this miserable endeavor. We're not really poor boys, just hungrier than most, and grateful to have these jobs. Although misery loves company, the mood this day is festive for several reasons. First, because it's Christmas. Get the papers done, and then go home to the warmth and comfort that the rest of the world will be just waking up to. Second, because it's Christmas, that means that the newspapers will contain just news, no ads. It was with shock and awe that I first encountered the Thanksgiving Edition of the Philadelphia Morning Enquirer. Normally, I could fit 110 newspapers in the large wire basket on the front of my bicycle. But on Thanksgiving Day and every Sunday afterwards untill Christmas, the newspapers were so engorged with holiday ads, that it would take me at least two trips, even with the addition of two canvas bags hanging from my shoulders. It became demoralizing, and it was during this time that all four of us became proficient in the use of four letter words. But not today. The Christmas Edition is so thin and light, that we had to practice throwing them in order to find that unique combination of speed and spin that would enable this paper to fly like a frisbee. It was going to be a good day.

After a few minutes of horseplay, we settle into the task of folding and binding our papers. No sooner had we started when a station wagon pulls into the driveway. It's Joey's dad, Tony, and he offers to run up to the Delrando Diner for coffee. When he asks me how I take it, I don't know what to say. No one's ever asked me that before. After the proverbial long awkward pause, he answers his own question saying, "double cream, double sugar". We resume our task of morphing newspapers into projectiles while discussing the possibility of getting high on coffee. Joey assures us that it's safe. He drinks it all the time. Which might explain his tendency toward hyper active behavior, and why the nuns enjoy hitting him so much. We finish folding our papers and grow impatient for the coffee. All we really want to do is deliver the papers and go home. Just about then, Tony returns.

I'll never forget my first cup of coffee. It was served in a cardboard cup, with a cardboard lid, nestled in a cardboard tray. You don't see these cups anymore; they've long been displaced by styrofoam. My fingers delighted in its warm caress, and I hesitated to remove the lid, not wanting to let any of the heat escape into the cold space surrounding me. But the exotic aroma of coffee was enticing, and when I carefully pried the lid from the cup, I saw the blond liquid brew that was about to captivate me for the rest of my life. This coffee was strong but had just enough of cream and sugar in it to seduce the uninitiated. Nothing to this day has ever tasted as good. Every sip was deliberate, and it became sweeter as I drank it. And waiting for me at the bottom of the cup, was one last sip, only slightly warm by then, but full of undissolved sugar crystals. I was no longer cold or anxious about getting home. I felt at home in the universe, and became lost in this great eternal moment.

It had never dawned on me why Joey's dad had showed up that Christmas morning. I thanked him for the coffee and prepaired myself to venture out into the cold, winter darkness. No sooner had I swung my leg over the bike, when Tony asked me where I was going. Confused, and wondering if maybe I was getting high on the coffee, I started to stutter the obvious. "I, I gotta get these pa..." Tony cut me off in mid sentence saying, "Shut up and put your papers in the car... all of you. Dumbfounded by this turn of events, we silently scrambled to pack 450 or so Enquirers into the back of his station wagon. Two boys sat up front navigating, while two sat on the tailgate chucking papers while singing Christmas carols. We changed positions of course, as each paper boy knew only his own route. It took us a little longer to finish all four routes, but that was OK. Tony even offered to take me home, so I put my bike in the back and sat up front between him and Joey. I thanked him for his kindness, to which he replied, "No big deal."

The day was dawning, and I noticed house interiors beginning to warm with the incandescent glow of living rooms, and children who could sleep no more. And I imagined what it was like in those homes, and to be a child in another family. It was easy to do. Because, it wasn't that long ago that I was a child - before that first cup of coffee.

Mr. Hyde Comes to Work

Well this is the worst day I've had at work in a very, very long time. It involved really strong pesticides, 2 Irishmen, 2 Englishmen, 1 South African, and a whole bunch of Mexicans, 4 super big John Deere tractors and a lot of emotion. The mission: to inject 65 acres or so of golf course grass with enough poison to kill as many nematodes as possible, without destroying the golf course and/or killing any of the afor mentioned foreigners. You see, nematodes are parasitic, microscopic round worms and have become public enemy #1 for greenskeepers in Florida. So, if you're a nematode, today was Dooms Day.

This turned into a bad day, right about the time I turned into Mr. Hyde. At work, I have a personal mission statement, or guiding principle, or core value...whatever, and it goes something like this:

• Work is inherantly difficult, otherwise people would do it for free.
• Because it's hard, try not to make it harder for yourself or others.
• Since we are all getting paid to work, do it well. Else, Mr. Hyde will show up.

Mr. Hyde likes to use the "F" word. He likes to remind people that they work for him and that he can change that, any time he chooses. Mr. Hyde hates people and thinks that he can do anything better than anybody else. Mr. Hyde is a jerk.

I'm not like Mr. Hyde. I like to motivate and empower people by word and deed. I believe the proverb that says, "Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. But when I stumbled onto the scene today and found agricultural WMD's were being used indiscriminately against both nematodes and the United Nations delegation that had been asssigned to the task ... I lost it.

As it turns out, they really only screwed up one golf hole. It's amazing how much smoother things went after Mr. Hyde showed up. I heard that there was a lot of yelling (in several languages) , and gesturing with the middle finger (the universal language) after I left. That's the kind of impact jerks like Mr. Hyde can have on a workplace. But what the heck, it's hard to argue with the results. So, tomorrow's another day, and there are 85 more acres of nematodes to destroy. I don't think we'll need Mr. Hyde tomorrow. He can stay home and brush up on his Machiavelli or ... something.

This is your brain.

You know you're having a bad day when your neurologist puts up 2 different MRI's on the light board and says, "This is your brain. And then pointing to the other one says, this is what a normal brain is supposed to look like." He then asked me if I drink (alcohol). When I told him no, he encouraged me to start.

I didn't plan on this. I planned on dying of heart disease by the time I reached 53. Now, I've got to figure out how to navigate the rest of my life with a significant portion of my brain permanently damaged. And by what you may ask? My first guess was the cornucopia of illicit drugs that I smoked, injested and snorted during the 70's. But no... the good doctor said that I have high cholesterol... and there you go. I swear no one ever told me that you could eat yourself stupid. He also said to never smoke again (it's been 25 years since I'd quit smoking ((except for that 6 months in 1998 when I fell off the wagon)). Has anyone ever heard that smoking can cause brain damage? He even cautioned me about second hand smoke. I wonder if I can sue my parents. I think the neurologist is winging it.

Ironically, it all started on Good Friday of this year. Sat down for dinner with the family, and while we were saying grace, I slipped into another dimension. The emergency room physician called it Transient Global Amensia (TGA). I couldn't remember who people were or where I worked. The good news is that for about 2 hours I'd forgotten that George W. was the president of the United States. Anyway, it all came back to me, and it was kind of fun until they started looking under the hood.

Did you know that your brain consists of grey matter and white matter. The grey matter is the really important stuff, that which you can't do without. It's on the surface of the brain, like an orange peel. The white matter is the circuitry that the grey matter uses to communicate with. It's deeper inside the brain, like the pulp of an orange. Did you ever get an orange that looked real good on the outside, but the inside was kind of dried out. That's my brain. Now you know just about as much as my neurologist.

Well, thanks to the miracles of modern chemestry, my cholesterol is now low enough where I can start worrying about dying from something else. I need more sleep than ever before, but I'm ok with that, since it is the ultimate form of escapism. I'm getting accustomed to the tinitis. It's like listening to a radio station that's just not quite tuned in all the way. And I am enjoying the daily cocktail. Cheers.