Suddenly Snow

Last weekend’s snow was…a surprise, among other things. 24 hours before I snapped the photos below, all you could see was brown grass and black pavement. Since these were taken, we’ve received another 6″ or so…and the city’s running out of places to pile the stuff!

The Fog of War

That well-known phrase referring to the confusion and uncertainty common during a battle seems like it is not unique to the battlefield. I grew up in a military family, and have memories of the occasional soldier or sailor going off the deep-end, usually injuring property and themselves more than anything or anyone else, but sometimes an unlucky few who happened to be close by never had the chance to regret it. But nothing like the mind boggling events that unfolded this last week at Ft. Hood.

There is no question that military service at the front is a dangerous business, and things happen that aren’t always explainable. I find it ironically that the Ft. Hood tragedy happened in the same town that decades ago had the horrible massacre at Luby’s, in a time before Texans freely carried handguns. I remember vividly the argument that had people been packing, someone might have stopped or reduced the carnage during that tragedy in a Texas cafeteria. Now we have this recent horrific event that defies us to make sense of the why, the how. Of all the places you’d think someone on a rampage would have little success, it would be on a military installation. Yet, amidst all that training and weaponry, no one was armed initially. One wonders if firearms as de rigueur will be the norm on bases in the future. I’m not pro-gun by any means, just sense the irony at work.

Bob Greene’s CNN column lays out the challenges brought on by the Fog of War, the likely progression of the days following, and the intense interest in learning who the slain were, their comrades, and a renewed appreciate of what these young men and women go through. But why, oh why, does it take the senseless loss of life to awaken the American psyche like this? Why are we systemically deaf to what we’re doing to our young (and not so young) citizens? How many Americans really understand the damage that’s going on by repeatedly sending our patriots back to the insanity with little regard (or a sense of intentional ignorance) to the mental damage?

Wars are sadly a fixture of our history, yet modern warfare seems to be pushing our mental capacities to cope far beyond what’s humanly possible to handle. Or is it just that such sensationalized media reporting make it seem unusually so? I believe many a Vietnam vet would argue that the mental damage from that senseless engagement is no different than the post-trauma stress syndrome that’s getting more and more publicity.

In conversations with my father about his wartime and military experiences before he passed on, he believed back then his generation served with a purpose, that everyone believed in the cause behind the war. Fast forward to 2009 and it seems not many of us consider the why of what we’re doing over in the Middle East as reason alone to go blindly into the Fog of War.

Enjoy the Last of the Color

My favorite time of the year is drawing to a close. Winter is about to replace fall’s multi-colored coat with a drab, grey blanket. This year was especially colorful in Northwest Ohio, yielding vibrant reds and yellows in every direction, and seemingly timed to turn at the same time. A good year for fall colors, which old timers are telling me means a snowy winter. Oh boy oh boy. Winter wonderlands are a close second in my book to autumn colors. Don’t mind the cold if there’s a white blanket everywhere.

The NaNoWriMo Cometh

October is all about pumpkins and pretty colors. Come November, our thoughts turn to…30 crazed-filled days scribbling nonsensical sentences in a quest for 50,000 words, a modicum of sanity at the end, and that elusive brag: “I wrote a novel.” Oh, and something involving a bird and cranberry sauce happens that month, but never mind that, focus on the writing!

This year will be my fourth voyage into the world of daily word counts, banning contractions, and breaking all the rules for crisp, succinct writing. For those unbapitized, NaNoWriMo is short-speak for National Novel Writing Month, and annual event held since 1999. My first dipping came in 2004, where I’m proud to report I cleared the bar with 51,700 words that will never-see-the-light-of-a-publishers-pressroom, but hey, a goal met is a goal celebrated. If you’re feeling voyeuristic and want a glimpse of the madness such an endeavor breeds, read my celebration post. And if that didn’t bring you to your senses and you still want to have a go, I wrote about my takeaways a week later after my fried brain cells were replenished.

I tried again in 2005, thinking I’d start with something more structured than the 18-word sentence I launched with the previous year (yes, one can create an entire plot in those few words…at least, if your target audience is the NaNo). Spending a week prepping a five-page outline, multiple character sketches, the usual stuff, I thought I’d really take NaNo seriously…and promptly bailed out after about 10 days. Too much structure for NaNo? Perhaps.

2006 brought a third attempt, this time a plot paragraph (yes, as in MULTIPLE sentences) of a book idea, but the fates intervened via the passing of my father that November. Few things can deter a determined writer during NaNo, but that excuse certainly qualifies.

So now, a couple years removed from my three-year NaNo servitude, I’m ready again. Armed with a NEW idea, one not too deeply prepared, but one with serious intent, I’ll charge up the MacBook batteries, load up the iPod with tons of Hearts of Space recordings, and head off to the dozen or so coffee shops I’ve targeted to get me through the month. Nothing brings a smile to writer’s lips, hope in their heart, and that unbridled passion that writing with a purpose brings. Won’t you join in? It’s free, fun, and safe (don’t worry about the months of therapy that’s bound to follow…think of that as research for future NaNos).

It’s All About the “O”

Obama… Osama… Oprah… Overstock.com… Obsession… there’s lots of famous “Os” in the world to muse over.

But, of course, I’m talkin’ about ORGANICS! (And where was your mind, dear reader?)

In a world of plastic and pharmaceuticals, preservatives and pesticides, I am progressively going organic. Fortunately, organics are fashionable, therefore local markets carry a lot more than they used to stock. I’m old enough to have gone to college when and where the mighty Whole Foods Market had their meager beginnings. Back then it was mostly hirsute hippies and willing wannabes hanging out in the original Whole Foods Market, a modest bare-concrete-floor, rough-made-wooden-shelvies, foreshadow of what was to come. Organic wasn’t a buzzword back then, but the practice of nurturing whole Earth and eating clean was well underway.

Without going into the politics of organics and the open-ended argument that big-farm organic isn’t as healthy as localvore organics, I’m just happy there is more variety and reasonable prices than ever before. With terrific tools like this iPhone app and the uber cool companion wallet card), I can channel my inner hippie and decide when it’s all about the O and when it’s not.

random past musing: Patience My Posterior

Long lines, commuting to work, waiting for a table in a favorite restaurant, waiting on our families, waiting for inspiration: these are just a few things most of us deal with daily, sometimes impatiently more often than happily. Some people, content to stand in line and wait, practice some sort of standing meditation to survive the experience or feign idle chit-chat with the persons standing next to them. And waiting can even be a Zen-like moment if one is able to rise above the irritation. I, however, am not a fan of waiting, to put it mildly. It’s not that I go ballistic if I have to wait, causing a riot or making a scene. I simply choose, usually, not to spend time foolishly that way.

Now if I’m standing in line for something very special that is not regularly available (the Treasures of Tutankhamen art tour back in the late 70s comes to mind…and no I didn’t wait in line, but only because the show wasn’t close to me). Airports? I get there early to avoid lines, prefer to carry on to avoid baggage lines at both ends, and ticket via the Internet. Restaurants? Tell me it’s “about a 45-minute wait” and I’ll respond “It’s about 5 minutes to another restaurant where we won’t have to wait.” Voting? I’m a fan of absentee balloting or early voting, although the 2004 election caused me a bit of angst and took over an hour to get through the early voting process. In my mind, however, it was important and worth the wait.

What it really comes down to is tolerance. I have a high level of patience and tolerance when the wait is justified and I’m aware of and elect to accept the wait. While that may seem like I’m a control freak, it’s more about the wait having value than a personal desire to control things. But what gets my gall is the unknown wait or worse, the lie-to-me wait, the one where they tell you “10 minutes” and slowly, progressively, this falsity morphs into an hour (or more!). It isn’t that I’m a prima don and think I’m above waiting on anything more that I’m acutely aware of how I spend time and frankly, in my mind waiting is not time spent wisely in most cases.

So when do I wait? Here’s a list of situations I’ve had the patience to endure and instances where I’d rather not and avoid like the plague whenever possible:

* Wise: Waiting at the airport for a loved one to walk through the terminal portal (waiting for a hug is never time spent foolishly!)

* Wise: Waiting in line for over an hour at the first showing of “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (and yes, I waited in line that long for the other two parts, and will wait even longer for “The Hobbit” film rumored to appear in the next few years).

* Wise: Taking my son early to his band concert resulting in an extra hour wait before the kids play, making us all proud parents (waiting in any form for your kids is always exempt from “should I or shouldn’t I” consideration).

* Wise: Waiting for Godot: a most excellent play and doesn’t belong in the list, technically, but I couldn’t resist the play on words!

* Foolish: Waiting in line at a restaurant that isn’t special or incredible…as in one chosen for no reason other than convenience or laziness.

* Foolish: TRAFFIC! Just about any wait in traffic is a bummer, but often necessary. That’s why God gave us talk-radio idiots …so we could transfer our traffic-intolerance indignation to those bozos spouting extreme-right- or extreme-left-wing tripe.

* Foolish: Standing in line for movie tickets (exception noted above, but made unnecessary in today’s Internet-everything world since one can buy tickets online, walk to the kiosk, punch a few numbers, and strut proudly (while feeling special) to the ticket puncher well ahead of those non-pro-active cretins back in snaking lines waiting to buy tickets the boring way).

* Foolish: Watching a TV show, becoming completely engrossed in the story and suddenly, startlingly seeing those unexpected yet dreadful words: “To Be Continued.” A slow, painful, death is too good for such TV producers. There ought to be a law!

* Foolish: Busting your ass to make a doctor’s appointment only to be rewarded with waiting well past your appointment time. Too bad we can’t bill them for our time spent foolishly waiting from their inefficiencies.

Ultimately, there’s no such thing as a life spend without waiting on something sometime. The trick is, I think, to make good judgments on when it makes sense to wait, when doing so is important enough to you to tolerate the inconvenience, and avoiding instances when it’s really time spent foolishly to wait. As a writer, of course, I can make the most out of any waiting by loosening the elastic band on my ever-present pocket moleskine, going to the next blank page, and putting motion to my hand. These little opportunities to capture thoughts can be golden moments, assuming one remembers to carry the dang journal at all times! For those times I can make do with waiting-room magazine inserts, napkins, or whatever’s handy to capture an unexpected epiphany. I may have to wait in line or in a chair occasionally, but I can’t afford to wait for those delicious epiphanies to reappear when it’s more convenient: doing so most likely means opportunity knocked and I couldn’t answer the door.

> PATIENCE, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue. – Ambrose Bierce (1842 – 1914), The Devil’s Dictionary

> “How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success?” – Elbert Hubbard (1856 – 1915)

random past musing: Media Overload

I try to read as much as possible to sate my info-junkie muse and keep up with my points of interest. It’s an ongoing battle to get through everything on a daily basis, and the struggle’s continuous between devoting more reading time or reducing to fewer sources. If I could, I’d read The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal every day, two print sources I consider at the top of the news heap. And while I don’t always manage those two, I do try to keep up with 20+ Web sites/Weblogs in my constantly shifting virtual reading pile. I use Avant Browser which makes this task easier: one click on my Daily News link and it opens all 20+ sites/blogs in individual tabbed windows. Definitely makes for easy strolling through each day’s offerings.

Even with tech toys streamlining the process, it’s still a media blitz of sorts. Information overload is a real threat in our lives. I’ve read about folks committing to media blackout and feeling great after unplugging the television, cancelling the newspaper and periodicals, etc. These individuals tend to experience better communication and bonding with their companions and greater overall serenity and happiness. No question the news can be depressing. Our world is not always pleasant, especially with the media constantly reminding us of human failures whenever it can. If newspapers could only report good news, we’d save a lot of trees.

In my travels, one indulging pleasure is the leisurely read of a newspaper over a breakfast served and cleared by someone else. Simple decadence awaits for the taking in the unhurried act of reading the paper without deadlines to attend, appointments to make, or demands of morning’s usual rituals for facing the working world. Whenever possible, I try to read local papers for a taste of where I’m visiting. I can learn world events anytime, but the reported shenanigans on a local level are priceless. One of our frequent destinations a few years back was the sleepy west Texas town of Fort Davis. With a local population of 900, but an annual tourist influx in the tens of thousands, their local paper The Mountain Dispatch was always a treat. Part of the enjoyment of any small town is the slower pace of life, and the local rags usually reflect this improved approach to what’s important. Sometimes it takes the small things in life to show us what’s big on the important scale, and lessons sometimes appear where you least expect. Simple pleasures should be slowly absorbed, and the casual reading of events outside my periphery while leisurely basking in sunbeams with fresh coffee odor tauntingly floating seems like the good life…at least it does to me.

random past musing: Market Redux

Don’t feel like writing today (and yes, the irony of this doesn’t escape me on the heels of yesterday’s post), so I’ll default to that best friend of a blocked blogger: images! Enjoy…

random past musing: Energy or Wisdom

The Irish dramatist, George Bernard Shaw, once commented “Youth is wasted on the young.” That’s not far from the truth. Even though wisdom gained in later life could have been put to good use when young, age is not the limiting factor it used to be, provided we take care of the hardware along with the software.

It’s a cruel irony spun by some higher power that we often cannot do things of youthful exurberance at a time in life when we are more mentally attuned to enjoy them. I became a father later in life than most folks (33) and I thought at the time, with a wry grin, that you either have children early in life when you have the energy but not the wisdom to deal with them, or later when you’re mentally better equipped but lack the energy to keep up with the physical demands of Mom- and Dad-hood.

And it seems the same irony exists in our later years, a time when we tend towards more intellectual pursuits yet still feel the tug of unfinished youthful business. I’m feeling the pull of wanderlust to hit the road and travel, perhaps even (albeit only daring to mention in a quiet whisper) vagabonding for a time. I can’t tell yet if these are true interests or merely distracting yearnings of unfulfilled youthful adventures. Whatever the reason, I’m finding that I need to pay greater attention to those fascinating hobbies of nutrition and physical conditioning, even Yoga for returning flexibility to these older legs (who of us in their youth ever considered Yoga a prerequisite to adventure?). It’s frustrating for my ready-to-go mind to wait on my body, a condition I never had to deal with before. But it is what is, and the path to nomadic adventure is clearly through this temporary obstacle.

“You’re as young as you feel” is one of those expressions I thought pretty lame in my youth. It made absolutely no sense to my logical mind. Either your young or your not. You enjoy your youth, spend your moment in the sun, then be content to sit in a rocking chair out of harm’s way, letting the next wave of youth spend their time. Order, not chaos in the grand scheme of things. As we all learn the hard way of course, life doesn’t exactly follow that path. With modern health advances and better (smarter) living we can extend our youth and the abilities to match that exurberance, provided we remain proactive and pay attention to the ever-increasing maintenance our bodies crave as we age. While I’m not going to go out and climb mountains as I did in my youth (okay, in Texas what we call them mountains most folks call foothills, but…), my activities are only limited by my willingness to prepare. In my youth I may have perceived a walk along the cliffs of Ireland as a journey with goal of completion, but now I see the same walk as a chance to go to a desolate place, ponder the beauty, and enjoy the journey more than the accomplishment.

Each spring when a young man’s fancy turns to girls, an older man’s eyes still notice these same girls, but every year it seems they keep getting younger looking (it can’t possibly be *me* getting older, therefore it must be reverse evolution). I see their youthful expressions and carefree attitudes and silently pray that they will understand life’s great secret in time to avoid middle-aged mud. If only they could realize now that with effort this happy and carefree state can continue, providing they make the right decisions along the way. But like most of us, their destiny is to spend time and effort later trying to find their lost youth. Unfortunately, as with most things involving young people, that’s something you can’t tell them (or rather they simply won’t listen). Their other destiny is to learn experientially on their own terms. My generation was no exception, and we dutifully ignored our parents and elders thinking we had all the answers and these old fogies were, well, just old coots. I’m going through the same process with my teenagers when we butt heads, and with a twinkle in my eye I tell them, “I can’t wait until you have kids.” It’s a Dad’s best and truest revenge.

random past musing: Land of Confusion

Sometimes the simple becomes complex not through desire but misdirected intentions. As long as I can remember I’ve used Crest toothpaste to keep my pearlies nice, white, and free of insidious tartar and other maladies as promised by toothpaste makers. Since I tend to buy Crest in large quantities at places like Sam’s Club, I rarely have to venture into the real world when I run out. This weekend, however, I’d squeezed the last possible glob of paste from the tube and assuming this task to be nothing more than a mindless errand, sought a replacement at my local Wal-Mart.

Our local Wal-Mart, as most of these giant ma-and-pop-store killers go, is a land of promise for anyone who enjoys shopping. In addition to having most everything, their magic-carrot prices draw me towards them against my inner conscience that scorns their existence. I once traveled through Kansas staying overnight in a small town of less than 5,000 people. Upon rising I took a spin through the downtowon to enjoy the nostalgia of small-town America. On this particular day I left the restored downtown square with its attention to authenticity, drove through the city park and crested a bounding hill expecting to see neighborhoods with well-manicured lawns and stately oaks. But there blocking the sunrise sat a Wal-Mart, with closed small businesses on either side, testimony to this behemoth’s typically glacial movement eliminating all competition as it lumbers across our fair country. But I digress.

I thought buying a new tube of Crest would be simple: walk in, grab what’s on sale in the same flavor as before, check out. To my surprise the simple act of selecting Crest toothpaste has become an exercise in comparison shopping, and not just for price but benefits and options as well. Am I buying toothpaste or a car? Greeting me were no less than 13 varieties of Crest toothpaste not including travel versions, paste variants, size options, cap types, and the all important tube or squeeze bottle decision. How does one decide what’s best? One promises cavity protection while another tartar protection begging the question, “Am I suppose to choose one evil over the other?” And it seems that whitening teeth is as important as fluoride protection since Crest offers several whitening varieties in combination with whatever protection you wish to have. Safe toothbrushing has become as complex as safe sex (I won’t comment on the myriad of options in prophylactics, but you get my drift).

The madness Crest induces includes these perplexing choices: cavity protection, tartar protection, tartar protection with whitening, vivid white fluoride, extra whitening, whitening expressions in orange, whitening expressions in cinnamon, whitening expressions in herbal mint, whitening plus scope, dual-action whitening, multicare whitening, baking soda and peroxide, and rejuvenating effects. And then there are the kid’s toothpaste options, but by then my hand was cramping from recording all the flavors.

What once was a seemingly simple process for a most basic function now appears to require research and perhaps some in-the-aisle training on the benefits of each wondrous offering. A chart would have been nice or a pretty model demonstrating the benefits of Crest’s varied line (which just means that I would have bought whatever flavor she was peddling, so perhaps that’s not the best way either).

In the end I chose “rejuvenating effects” and not for any specific reason other than it seemed to appeal to more mature teeth needing extra re-mineralizing (have no idea what that is but surely I need it). I was tempted by the expressions in flavors, but I prefer my orange from the real thing’s juice not my toothpaste. The boxes do have scratch-’n-sniff spots to sample the wonders of chemically engineered flavors without committment, something that makes sense with cologne, but toothpaste?

After a couple of days brushing with my new toothpaste of choice, I can honestly say I can’t tell a difference over the old toothpaste, except that my familiar white with blue stripes is now a pale, solid green with a zillion tiny reflective somethings suspended in the paste. And it doesn’t even look right, resembling designer caulk more than my familiar Crest. But progress takes us all down new paths, so I guess I can adjust my old ways for the sake of re-mineralizing my teeth (still clueless what that means but it’s obvious I need it). After all, I only bought one tube and if I don’t like it I can always go back to Sam’s and buy a dozen tubes of the old familiar. Then I’ll get to wait another few years before venturing out into the brave new world of toothpaste. Pondering the wonders of toothpaste at Wal-Mart is hard work and not exactly my idea of the American dream, but it’s made me realize I need a life…and soon!