Nobody Knows

  “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics." This bit of whimsy is most often attributed to Mark Twain. Mister Twain insisted that the quote originated from British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. 

Whomever first uttered these words or committed them to paper is the person I have to thank for my ongoing attitude to the emails flooding my inbox each day. Depending on which one I open first, I might believe that I am contributing to the almost certain obliteration of the MAGA movement. If I click on one up the line, I might discover that the Harris campaign is struggling to stay afloat and my twenty dollars will go directly to keeping the lights on. 

The truth is that there is no objective truth. We can thank the adjudicated rapist and former game show host for that. Polls taken around this coming election do not begin to describe all the vagaries surrounding the contest. The suggestion that there are still "undecided voters" that might tip the balance one way or the other seems patently ridiculous. Those who will make a choice have already done so. The skewed results being reported by this firm and that network reflect only the sad ambivalence created by the insurrection of January 6, 2021. 

There are few, if any Americans who were around back then who expect that the night of November 5 will bring a clear and decisive winner to this race. If the past few weeks have taught us anything it's that counting ballots will be only the beginning. Numbers, as we have learned, mean very little. Which is why the former game show host fixed the game to end in his favor by stacking the Supreme Court with "Justices" friendly to his grift. Those who drank the Kool-Aid back in 2016 for the most part have not altered their views. Sure, we get stories of anomalies like the guy who threw away his red baseball cap once he realized that he had nothing to gain from wearing it. Just like those frightened men who talk a big game but are still terrified of the notion of passing the highest office in the land to a woman. 

Meanwhile, we must all take comfort from the words not of Disraeli or Twain, but of screenwriter extraordinaire William Goldman who once said, "Nobody knows anything." Hold tight folks, it's going to be a bumpy couple of weeks. 

Or more. 

Nighty Night

 Did you sleep well? 

This is a question that I invariably answer with this response: "I made a few mistakes."

As someone who has spent most of his life battling that wall of sleep, I can say that I have finally reached a point in my life where closing my eyes and drifting away has become a solid part of my routine. The biggest difference in the way I head off to slumberland now is, in part, keeping a solid rhythm. Bedtime has become a much earlier affair as I have passed into my sixties. Ten o'clock is "staying up," and most evenings I have retired by nine. 

The timing is useful because it gives me a chance to look at a book. Reading is fundamental. Turning pages and holding a real-life collection of someone else's thoughts helps to distance me from the ones I keep in my head. While very effective, this does not always keep my brain from laboring over any particular day's events. Trouble at school or an appliance that isn't following its prime directive are chief among those speed bumps in my expressway to Snoresville. I try to take my father's words to heart, the ones he spoke to me when I was just nine or ten years old, struggling to drift off. "You can't do anything about it right now. And if you spoil your rest, you won't be much good at making it better in the morning." That was more than fifty years ago, and I'm still trying to argue with him about it. As I try to go to sleep. 

Another thing that has make it easier to get the rest I need is that I spent so much time in my misspent youth trying to stay awake. "I'll sleep when I'm dead," was the phrase that I used to trot out in my party-boy heyday. Some of those late nights that morphed into early mornings gave me a rich sense of the value of just a couple hours of shuteye. As my father suggested, I wasn't a tremendous amount of use after lopping off the bulk of the time I should have been recharging my batteries, but I made it through. Eliminating the potential for a hangover was also a clever part of my overall sleep hygiene. No more passing out and waking up with the Anvil Chorus playing in my head. 

It could be that the advent of my decrepitude and the introduction of my CPAP machine forcing air up my nose into my brain gave me yet another advantage: not waking myself up with the roar of thunder that I acquired through genetics: my father's house-rattling snores. But the most likely reason for me to be able to go to sleep more easily these days is that I am bored. I've seen most everything. Even jury duty is a hill upon which I refuse to die. It's just another part of my busy day. After which I can look forward to a few hours of being not so busy. 

Until the sun comes up yet again. 

Show Biz

 A long time ago, Steve Martin suggested that the banjo could have saved Richard Nixon. He suggested that when he got off Air Force One, he could simply say, "I'd like to talk about politics, but first a little Foggy Mountain Breakdown!"

It could be that somewhere in the haze of The Orange One's delirium last weekend this was the seed that grew into the half-hour dance party where the convicted felon and blithering ninny hosted rally goers who were told they were attending a "town hall meeting." After a couple of softball questions, the host and former game show host suggested, “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” The sound crew took their cue and played a forty minute playlist that included James Brown’s It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World, the Village People’s YMCA, Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O’Connor, and Luciano Pavarotti’s rendition of Ave Maria. 

Ostensibly, the change was made because two attendees at the Pennsylvania rally had fainted, causing concern. Of course, what better way to show concern for your fellow MAGAt than to crank up the tunes? 

This odd debacle took place just a couple of days after the twice-impeached former "president" had stranded hundreds of his followers in the desert near the Coachella concert site. He provided more than twenty buses to get his fans out to the Southern California rally, but when it was time to leave, reports from those left standing out in the dark without water, food or bathroom facilities were left with just one or two busses to ferry the crowd back to the parking lot. Six miles away. Suddenly, Woodstock seemed like a really well-planned event. That was three days of peace and love, after all, not the sort of experience for which MAGAts line up. 

Rumors swirl as to why all of this chaos was meted out to the fans of this "very stable genius": a man with a gun was arrested near Coachella, the bus company in California was not paid, the star of the show was ill-prepared for any sort of back and forth question and answer session, and people were fainting, and the guy is seventy-eight years old.

If only there was a banjo. 

Boomerang

 Nothing golden stays, but something blue might find its way back. 

"Hi, we lost a wallet and a California Poppy earring at the game on Saturday night. The earring was probably lost near an entrance. The black wallet could have fallen behind a seat in the second row from the top n section 119, or on the field. "

This was the email my wife sent to the folks at the Oakland Athletics Guest Services office. It was not a lot different from the one that I sent, with the possible exception of her identifying the wallet as black, rather than the deep blue that I remembered. 

She gave it to me, after all. And this one particular pair of shorts has had a history of leaving my wallet in all manner of inconvenient places, mostly in the back support of my office chair. But about a month ago, when my family attended one of the very last Oakland A's games, I wore those shorts and somewhere in the middle of all that nostalgic reverie that back pocket on those shorts did their trick one more time. And this time after exhaustive searches of my chair in the office as well as the obvious places and many of those less obvious it was determined that the wallet was gone.

But not forgotten. 

My wife never gave up hope. Even as I cancelled my credit card and replaced my driver's license, she held out hope. Even as I made mild peace with the idea that the memories I had shoved into that fistful of leather were now just that: memories. Even as I moved into the Snoopy wallet she bought me as a replacement. 

She got a reply from the helpful folks at Guest Services. "Did the wallet belong to you or did it have another name on it? Please let me know." That other name was mine, correctly identified by my wife just a few days ago. "We do have David's wallet in our inventory. We can ship it to you free of charge! Please let me know the best address to send it to."

This past Monday, the UPS driver handed me a package with my wife's name on it. This happens a lot, so I took it inside and handed it over to her. As it turned out, the parcel was for me. This was a happy turn of events that confirmed the general sense of goodness in the universe. That is my reason for telling you all of this. 

Because who knows what tomorrow will bring. 

Response

 A bridge too far. 

This was the phrase that came to mind as I was reading an article describing how FEMA workers had to stop clearing mud and debris from the recent hurricane that ravaged the southeast. In North Carolina, National Guard troops ran into armed militia saying they were "hunting FEMA." Further investigation led to the arrest of William Parsons of Bostic. Parsons was charged with "going armed to the terror of the public." Combine this with the flurry of misinformation being passed along by various elements regarding the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and you've got the recipe for a Perfect Storm Response. 

Rumors such as the agency is running out of money, that if victims apply for assistance their property will be seized, FEMA aid will impact Social Security and other benefits, and a particular favorite of those on the hard, red right: FEMA is spending disaster recovery funds on sheltering immigrants at the border. All of this fearmongering is like pouring itching powder on America's trigger finger. Imagine going down to help out your fellow man by shoveling mud out of people's communities only to dodge bullets while doing so.

It takes a special sort of evil to intentionally stir up chaos for those who have been sent in to try and manage it. Who cares if those directly affected by the disaster don't get the support they need as long as a conspiracy can bloom in its place? 

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. We are just a few weeks away from bearing witness to seeing just how ferocious the divide that exists in our country truly is. The well-armed militia that our founding fathers once hoped would help maintain order in the midst of unrest has become the engine by which factions will be further divided while we all run for cover. 

Not from a hurricane or wildfire, but from our fellow Americans. 

Time to put down the guns and start picking up the shovels to get some of this manure back where it came from. 

The Blame Game

 What happens if the good guys lose?

Part of the problem with speaking things into being is that I can now be held accountable for a Republican Victory in November. I don't know if the butterfly wings flapping of my mouth can truly influence the outcome of a presidential election but in a contest as close as this one is purported to be, it might be nice to have someone to blame. 

Blame me. 

Or blame Joe Biden for pridefully holding on to his dream of leading the country for another four years. Maybe point a finger at the Teamsters who are refusing to endorse the Democratic candidate for the first time since 2000. Perhaps the difference was the confounding appearance of Robert Kennedy Jr. that knocked things off kilter. 

But I think the most likely reason of all is that there are a whole bunch of deplorables out there who don't mind if they elect a "dictator on day one." A red-hatted mob who are willing to give up their rights and their livelihoods to satisfy the ego of a convicted felons. You could hold those who would rather ban books than read them accountable. These are the ones who are willing to turn a blind eye to all the ways that their candidate has proved himself to be unfit for the office he seems just as ready to steal as he is to earn. 

Or you can blame me for imagining what life might be like if a world run by MAGAts. The word dystopian comes to mind. Another word: despotic. How about oppressive? I could go on and on, but instead I will encourage us all to look forward to a world where Donald Trump is just a memory. A bad dream from which we all woke up one day and can only remember as that time we came so close not to living in a dream, but in a nightmare. 

If the good guys win, you can thank me. 

Later. 

Always

 "Mommies always come back."

These were the words we used to soothe our little boy when his mother left to go out to do her sundry activities and left him with the guy he would refer to as "dad," his father. It served as cold comfort to a kid who was very attached to the lady who brought him into this life. It came as a relief, later, when it turned out this aphorism was in fact true. Mommy did come back, much to the relief of the son and the one he would refer to as "dad."

It has now been two years since my mommy left. As an adult, I have spent that time reckoning with the sad reality that in this particular instance, mommy will not be coming back. The most obvious way in which this absence is felt is the lack of a weekly phone call. I spent most of my adult life making a call to my mother most every Saturday or Sunday. It was a check-in for both of us, keeping track of the way things have gone and where they were headed. There were also the occasional weekday connection that became necessary when events prompted. Football scores, family news, and the announcement of my annual jury duty summons. We stayed in touch. 

The thing I feel most readily in this void is the lack of Gin Rummy. When I would go to Colorado to visit my mother, at some point the two of us would sit down with a deck of cards and play marathon games that provided a scaffold for lengthy discussions of whatever was on our minds. Sometimes it was nostalgia, sometimes it was current events, but it was always a connection that reminded us both of how close we were. 

Very. 

Then, two years ago, only a week after our last dissection of the Denver Broncos' loss to the Las Vegas Raiders, mom left. To say that there was no forwarding address would not be completely true. On any given afternoon you could take a stroll out to her plot in Mountain View Cemetery, right next to her mom and dad. Or simply pointing up to the sky. Hey mom!

Still, not having that regular exchange leading up to what we expect to be the first woman president in our nation's history stings just a bit more. Mine was the mother who asked her family if she could get a subscription to Ms. Magazine back in 1972. A lot has changed since then. Change continues to happen all over the place. I miss my mom, but every time I think of her and the bond we shared, I know that mommies always come back. 

Always.