1.18.2020 – bang, bang, bang-bang-bang

bang, bang, bang-bang-bang
middle of the night gunshots
get out of Dodge time

It was the night before any other day and all through the house.

Not a creature was stirring.

Not even me, which for an old guy, sleeping through the night, is pretty good.

Then the sound of gunshots, two then three in a row from outside but close by woke up everybody around 3AM.

Lauren, my oldest daughter, who is fearless ran outside to see what was going on.

Fearless but thoughtful, she stuck a meat cleaver in the pocket of her robe just in case.

If you can imagine a young lady, 8 months pregnant, in a flowing robe and slippers carrying a meat cleaver, outside at 3AM, you get the picture.

Her report was that the nieghbors heard someone banging on their back door, then the gunshots and the sound of a car driving away.

She added that the cops were on the way.

Understand that this is the quietest of quiet nieghborhoods.

Filled with families with children and dogs and mini vans.

An incredible diverse community of White, Black, Asian, Middle Eastern, Hispanic, and Euro families.

My wife and I walk daily no matter how cold it gets and I am talking below 40 even 35 degrees sometimes.

We felt safe.

Not this morning.

I want to feel safe and I want my wife to feel safe and I want my family to feel safe.

What am I to do?

Buy a gun myself?

For those of you who know me, say out loud, “Mike with a gun in his hands.”

Admit it.

You laughed.

You laughed out loud.

Things … happen to me.

In the book, The Haunted Bookshop, Mrs. Mifflin says about 19 year old girls, “The don’t react, they explode!”

Things around me, well, they explode.

Believe me, if I had a gun in my hands, the only place anyone should be is behind me, and even then I am not so sure.

Its a long way between feeling safer and me with a gun.

I am always trying to find the humor.

But this wasn’t funny.

Is the answer when a car pulls up at house, everyone inside is stationed at a window with wooden shutters pierced by loopholes and a half dozen rifles are trained on the car.

The person in the car can hear the clicks of rifle hammers being pulled back.

Wait, that’s from the Daniel Boone show.

Last night was not TV.

It was real.

I don’t know.

Time to get out of Dodge I guess.

1.17.202 – grumbling, arguing

grumbling, arguing
warped, crooked children
shine among them, stars!

Over my desk is a bust of ‘the young’ Abraham Lincoln.

Beardless if not young.

Next to it on the wall is a cast the life mask of Mr. Lincoln, made in April, 1860 that was the model for the bust.

Daily reminders of Lincoln that I see a lot more often than I see a penny these days.

I watch the political processes of today.

The debates.

The hearings.

The sound bites.

In place of the best and the brightest, how has this pack of grumbling, arguing, warped, crooked children got themselves elected.

That’s the rub isn’t it?

Elected.

Elected by us the voters.

Where are the candidates today?

The candidates who shine among them like stars?

Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

(I got today’s haiku verbiage from Philippians 2:14-16, Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain. (NIV ))

1.16.2020 – working life tunnel

working life tunnel
enter on Monday, no daylight
until next Friday

If I think my week of working is something to complain about I know I should contemplate a life without work.

That being said, I will complain about my week of working.

Wikipedia says that, “Job satisfaction or employee satisfaction is a measure of workers’ contentedness with their job, whether or not they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision.”

If I go down that path, I start looking at all the ways my ‘job’ is lacking.

Poised on the abyss of a pity party, I hear myself say, “What dog peed on your toast today?”

Laughter, at myself as it does so often, comes to the rescue.

I GOT a job.

I get a paycheck.

I perform my job at a level of satisfaction to myself.

I do go home at night.

I just visit this tunnel of a work week.

I am not saying that Job Satisfaction is good to have.

It is out there.

It is possible.

But what is it?

I ask whose job is it to make my job happy?

Are they not doing their job?

All things considered, when I think about what my paycheck makes possible, I AM content with my job.

I can be satisfied with that.

I can enter that tunnel.

I can get through that tunnel.

I get out of that tunnel.

And if I get down in the dumps over my job, I just have to think about a dog raising its leg over my toast to make me laugh.

PS – I repurposed (stole) the Dog Peed on Your Toast line from Garrison Keillor.

1.13.2020 – After that third sip

After that third sip
Coffee, wines, local craft beers
It all tastes the same?

I had a great cup of coffee yesterday.

A latte, or caffè e latte in the original Italian.

It was in a bar slash brewery slash coffee house / reading room / restaurant.

The name of the place is the Bold Monk Brewery.

On their website, they state:

“To the mindful, to the curious
to the brilliantly flawed.
To those seeking comfort, respite,
splendor, and sustenance…
The Bold Monk welcomes you.”

I am not sure what it means either or what type of business they want to be.

But Leslie and I just wanted coffee.

The sign outside listed coffee and the hostess said of course we could get coffee and directed us to the bar.

The bartender said of course we could get coffee and handed us a menu that listed:

Today’s Roast
Cappuccino
Latte

I got a latte and my wife got a cappuccino.

It took a bit.

The coffee’s were delivered in china mugs on small wooden platters.

Mine came with a small ‘side’ cup of sugar.

But I digress.

I had three (okay, maybe five and I can’t remember the other two) but there were no options like offered at Starbucks.

None of the life changing options listed by Tom Hanks in ‘You’ve Got Mail’ when his character explained why Starbucks is a success.

Say the Hank’s Tom Fox guy, “The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino.”

Here is my point.

What I have noticed, for myself, is that with all the self selection, I can get ‘my cup of coffee’ but, after the third sip, it all tastes the same.

Not saying it doesn’t taste different from my morning coffee at home but that it taste’s the same as any other boutique coffee.

All those choices.

End up the same cup of coffee.

I got to think about the many times I have wondered what wine to get or to order with a meal.

Red with meat.

White with fish or chicken.

Chianti with Italian.

Those basics are good to know and seem to work but go beyond that.

Just visiting Kroger’s Wine Aisle and I am bewildered.

To me.

For myself.

Can any of these reds really taste that different.

Why do so many restaurant reviews often sing the glories of the locally produced vin ordinaire that was served with the meal in some out of the place in Chicago or Quebec or Bouches-du-Rhône.

I can get a bottle of wine at my local grocery store from almost anywhere in the world.

And after the third sip, it all tastes the same.

All those choices.

End up with the same glass of wine.

Sitting at the bar last night, sipping my coffee, I noticed that (beyond the brewery smell) the Bold Monk had a large of number of local craft beer on tap.

The clear pipes for the taps went straight up to the overhead beer vault where the beer was poured out by gravity.

I enjoy the craft brewery rage.

I like a nice local brew from time to time.

All these choices.

After the third sip, it all tastes the same.

End up with a glass of beer.

A good glass of beer, no doubt.

But.

I was glad that the Bold Monk took the options away from me.

I was served a very good cup of coffee.

I enjoyed it very much.

After the third sip, it tasted the same.

Tasted the same to the bottom of the cup.

Good to the last drop.

1.11.2020 – Robert Paul Hoffman

Robert Paul Hoffman
Died thirty two years ago
miss him every day

My Dad and I have a special bond.

Really.

A physical, special bond.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1969, while goofing around in the basement with my brothers, I slipped and fell.

My brother Timmy had been chasing me and since he was on my back as I fell, I really picked up speed.

As I fell, I was yelling, mouth wide open.

Point of contact with the linoleum covered concrete floor was my left front tooth, which snapped in half.

I remember my Mom groaning, ‘Not the front tooth.”

Dad was a Dentist.

Our journey together over my tooth began.

The joke told was that Dad wanted to wait until I matured to put a cap on the tooth.

He finally gave up waiting and put a cap on it anyway.

Not sure how old I was but it was on a Saturday morning (for a long time, Dad worked half days on Saturday to treat those folks who could not take time off of work to see their Dentist) and he told my sister Janet to bring me down to the office.

I was about 10 or 11 but not sure.

The plan was for a gold crown cap which required that the stump of my left tooth be ground down to make room for the cap.

I had no idea what was coming.

I got no laughing gas or novocaine.

I sat in the operating chair.

Dad leaned in with the grinder making that whooooop whooooooop sound as he reved it up.

The grinder made contact with my tooth and I screamed.

Dad didn’t stop.

I didn’t stop.

Dad stepped back and hangs up the tool, says “This is ridiculous. We will just leave it.”

He stomped out the operating room.

I looked at Janet who had stayed to watch.

In my mind her eyes were as big as pie plates.

I said, ‘I’ll stop.”

Dad came back in and went to work.

I gripped the arms of that chair like a I was drowning.

It seems to me like this went on for hours.

In later discussion, Dad decided that the tooth was broken off so close to the nerve that it hurt more than he thought it might.

Since he had to grind some of my other teeth to make room for the cap and that was nothing like working on the stump, I agreed.

There were more trips to the office.

Impressions.

Fittings.

Final installation of the cap.

I got to see Dad sculpt a gold crown cap in wax and then create a plaster mold of the cap.

I watched as he used a blow torch and a manual centrifuge to melt dental gold and spin it to force the gold into the mold by gravity to create the cap.

He really was an unsung artist of this craft.

Over the next years I broke the cap the off several times.

Each time meant return trips to the office for repairs.

In 1978, my Mom demanded a cap that would last for my Senior Class Photographs for Graduation from Grand Rapids Creston High School.

One last time it was back to the office.

This last cap was just a little larger to insure a tight fit.

With this cap resting in place, Dad says, “just hold it” and fumbled in the equipment drawer for a hammer.

After a few blows that left me groggy, the cap was in place.

It has been there ever since.

I feel it with my tongue all the time.

Sometimes I don’t notice it.

Sometimes I do, and I think of Dad.

Happy to report that our relationship got past the time in the chair.

When he died, I felt he was my best friend.

The tooth is still here.

I didn’t know a gold front tooth was a fashion statement until I moved to Georgia, (Hey call me Earl!)

A special bond.

One last note, I haven’t been to a Dentist since he died.