The Big Not So Easy

 I understand that the grotesque tragedy that occurred on New Year's Eve on Bourbon Street allows the sarcastic tag "When cars are outlawed, only outlaws will have cars," to gain traction. The fact that I wrote this preemptively does not blunt the impact of the callous act committed in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Fifteen people were killed and dozens more wounded when a pickup truck drove into a crowd of revelers. Police on the scene exchanged gunfire with the driver who was shot and killed. 

Happy New Year. 

I can say this with a straight face for one reason: My school's principal, a good friend of mine, was in New Orleans that night. She and her husband decided to go back to their hotel a little earlier and missed all "the excitement." Carnage. I feel very fortunate that I do not have to report the nonsensical death of someone close to me, but that will not be true for hundreds of others who will now have to stubble with the reality of the first moments of 2025 setting the ugliest possible tone for the rest of the year. 

A firsthand account: “The guy in the pickup truck just punched the gas and mowed over the barricade and hit pedicab passengers. There were just bodies and the screams. I mean, you can’t unhear that. It was chaos and very, very scary.” Witness Kimberly Strickland, a visitor from Alabama, starts the New Year with a tragedy that will most likely stay with her for the rest of her life. 

The other glass of lemonade in which we can take Solace in is the bag of lemons that might have been spilled if the attacker had been able to open fire on the crowd after crashing through a barrier at the scene. Two policemen were wounded in the gunfight that broke out in the resulting chaos. A bittersweet reminder from the land of the guns and the home of the pickup. 

If you'll excuse me, I'll just stay out of the way of the spin on this one. 

Auld Acquaintance

 Hindsight, they say, is twenty-twenty. That means that we see more clearly with time what transpired in our youth. This might explain why I spend so much space here ruminating on what was rather than what will be. I know what was. I can pick it up and spin it around. I can look at it from top to bottom without it moving around too much. Which is how I discovered that this connection I continue to cherish was only five years out of my life. I only lived in the same apartment as Darren for less than a year. For the nine months of our sophomore year and two months in what was his senior year. 

Darren only lived for two months after we moved in together in the fall of 1985. His passing is the stuff of legend around this corner of Entropical Paradise. How I came to elevate him to such lofty status has been examined and re-examined for decades now, but it was only this past month when I read a book called Stay True that I truly began to comprehend how this young man who I only knew for a handful of years landed at the top of my pantheon of friends. This memoir, written by Hua Hsu, tells the story of two friends who met in college and developed a kinship through music and fashion and the day to day business of discovering oneself in college. And then, when that friendship comes crashing to an end through no choice of their own, how survival becomes making sense of tragedy. Reckoning with the fragility of life when you thought you were indestructible is a tough pill to swallow. 

I have been fortunate to make that journey myself with the help of fellow survivors, all of whom had their own connection with Darren. For many years, however, I struggled with this puzzle by myself. I was sure that there was no one who understood the shock and depression that I was enduring. It wasn't until I read Stay True that it became apparent that this is a turn we all make at some point in our lives, and I have been grateful to have experienced it with a circle of caring friends. 

This does not mean that I don't continue to be guilty of a bit of navel-gazing. The insular nature of my grief kept me from fully connecting with all those other hearts that were broken when Darren died was part of growing up. Grief was like being tossed into the deep end of adulthood and being forced to swim to safety. I was fortunate enough to make a connection with Darren's younger sister over the past nineteen years. The little girl I met in a Muskogee, Oklahoma living room is all grown up now and she found her way back to me thanks to Al Gore's Internet. That was nearly twenty years ago. 

We talked again last week, picking up where we left off. Her kids, like ours, have grown up in the meantime. The stories we both share with our kids are often sprinkled with the lively spirit of her brother. My friend. We agreed that there is something about his spirit thatat we need to keep alive. She was the one who reminded me that Darren and I were both in high school band. He ditched his saxophone shortly after moving away to college. I sold my tuba and trombone to a guy who intended to turn the into lamps. Darren's sister held onto his sax. She has kept it for all these years. It is a talisman much like the plastic Celica badge I found near the wreckage all those years ago. 

We hold on to things when we can't hold on to people. 

It was during our most recent conversation that Darren's sister pointed out that this fall will mark forty years without him. Sometimes that feels like a long time. Sometimes it feels like last week. The best thing about being here now is knowing that I am not alone. 

We, The People

 Looking back on the year that is creeping toward being a memory, I have to say that I am somewhat ambivalent about seeing it go. 

On the one hand, there was the presidential election. This provided me with no small amount of stress and fatigue, even as I tried to paint a rosy picture of a future that would include our nation's first female chief executive. I let myself get excited about the possibility of driving a stake through the heart of the chief MAGAt and watching our country move on from the decade of rage and fear inspired by him. 

On the other hand, I've got a slew of private satisfactions that allow me to look into the day to day business of life with a modicum of self-assurance. I have reached a point where I can finally accept many of those things over which I have no control. Not the least of these is aging, and waiting patiently for medical science to determine that whatever ails me is just "part of growing old."

Which is what allows me to remain both incredulous and amused as I watch the Second Trumpreich stumble into 2025. I have become just a little numb to the constant barrage of "did you hear what he said yesterday," while at the same time I allow myself to be outraged within limits. Each new transgression against the American Dream for anyone who is not a billionaire reminds me that this is what we, and I'm using that pronoun very loosely, seem to want. 

Even as the edge continues to be pushed on what we have come to recognize as democracy, I maintain an old man's conviction (pardon the pun) that justice will win out. The votes that were cast for the convicted felon continue to show the United States willing to "take a chance" on the presidency not unlike buying a lottery ticket. Even though the odds are incredibly disproportionately stacked against anything that resembles prosperity trickling down past the one percent, Americans seemed to be willing to take the chance on empty and increasingly bizarre promises. 

So, I will sit here and continue to watch as someone who has already been impeached from the office fiddles while Rome burns. I will remind myself daily, if necessary, that this is what we wanted.

But there is still time to change our minds. 

Stolen Moments

 As we put volume 2024 up on the shelf, I can't help but feel the weight of the innocence lost in the year that was. 

Nothing captures that feeling better for me than the departure of the Oakland Athletics. I have written about the ugly business of professional sports and the way that greed has taken over so much of what was once a glorious connection with a community. I have described the helpless feeling of being a fan who watches essentially helpless while the powers that be take a piece of history and leave a divot in the place where baseball used to fit. As if to apply an exclamation point to this sad transaction, Rickey Henderson died in what we might call the late innings of December. 

Outside of Oakland, you might not be aware of Rickey's accomplishments. As a matter of fact, you could say that the New York Post's headline, "Rickey Henderson was far from MLB’s greatest baserunner," stands as an argumentative tribute to the talents of the Oakland A's Hall of Famer. It will be noted that Rickey spent his professional career with nine different Major League teams, but it was his time spent in Oakland that made the biggest impact. 

I say this not simply because of the statistics he piled up while he wore the green and gold. I say this because of the T-shirts sold across the East Bay bearing Rickey's likeness holding up a record-setting base with the legend printed above it, "Everything I know about stealing I learned in Oakland." printed above it. In an era when naming rights for professional sports venues are bought and sold like candy to corporations that can afford it, the field which will no longer be home to Major League baseball was named Rickey Henderson Field. And not only that, but the field that was refurbished and brought up to competitive standards by a group of Oakland Tech parents and community members will forever be known as, you guessed it, Rickey Henderson Field. 

So with all that local fuss, why do you suppose a New York writer would take it upon himself to denegrate the legacy of baseball's all-time leader in stolen bases? Maybe it has something to do with the way that the New York Yankees, as is their wont, decided to trade Rickey back to Oakland after four years, having lured him out to the east coast with a ton of money. he returned to the East Bay to continue his legendary campaign to eventually become the all-time leader for stolen bases with one thousand four hundred six. Second place goes to Lou Brock, nearly five hundred bags behind him. In a career that saw him bounce around the major leagues, Rickey Henderson kept finding his way home. 

To Oakland. He will be missed in that same sad memory of baseball in Oakland. Rickey stomped on the base paths and he will be missed every autumn. Aloha, 2024. Thanks for rubbing those memories in our collective faces.