Yesterday morning a Canadian military vessel sailed into Puget Sound. With my binoculars, I could actually see sailors standing on deck – very exciting.
Point to any retired U.S. Naval Commanders among my regular readers who might venture a guess as to what this vessel might be. 
Archie is now big enough to sit in the Fisher Price jump seat, although he needs a pillow under his feet to have them reach the floor. He bounces up and down and side to side with great glee for about ten minutes, and then wears himself out with the motion and the excitement. I don’t think he gets that if he stopped moving his feet, his body would stop bouncing. So he needs to be lifted out and cuddled and calmed before he’s ready to go at it again.
Joe Paterno, Penn State’s legendary football coach, was laid to rest last week with the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal hanging in the air.
According to press reports, the Penn State college president and several trustees approached Paterno in 2004, when he turned 80, and suggested that it was time to retire. Paterno blew them off. Cowed by the amount of money the football program brought in, the administration backed off and Paterno was allowed to stay.
Big mistake. Tragic mistake, in retrospect.
Paterno, like many of the U.S. Catholic bishops, was of an era when protecting the institution from shame outweighed the brutality of young boys being raped. The Penn State trustees made the right decision in firing him. For that matter, all of the bishops and cardinals who looked the other way should have been removed too.
Paterno could have retired in 2004 with the undiluted adulation of the entire Penn State community behind him. How sad, in retrospect, that he couldn’t see the right time to go.
Last night I went with a friend to Seattle Repertory Theater to see Bill Cain’s play How To Write A New Book for the Bible. Cain is a Jesuit priest who believes that the bible is not a list of rules but a collection of stories, a narrative of the human search for the sacred. The lead character in the play, Billy, is a priest and a writer who moves back to live with his mother for several months while she is dying. The new book he’d like to add to the bible is the story of his own family’s struggle with life, death, and the poignant moments in between.
The play is deeply Catholic, and the Theater provided the equivalent of Cliff Notes in the lobby so that playgoers without that religious background would understand more of the nuances.
I haven’t practiced as a Catholic since leaving college 45 years ago. But I didn’t need the Cliff Notes.
Oatmeal sticks to the ribs. Spilled candle wax sticks to the table, not easy to remove without leaving scratches. Early religious formation is in there, whether we choose to have it or not.
Most parents of my era believed that children should be raised with some religious sensibility, and then as adults they could decide whether or not to practice. I didn’t love growing up Catholic, and didn’t want to pass it on.
No matter how many other points of commonality we might have, my kids and I will always see the world though somewhat different eyes.
Martina Navratilova was one of the first elite women athletes to come out as openly gay, and for that she never won the lucrative endorsement deals that her stature in the tennis world would have warranted.
These days, long retired from the singles game although she occasionally plays competitive doubles, Navratilova is a TV commentator - and a very smooth and polished and informative one.
Good for her.
I absolutely, positively, emphatically, and undeniably don’t think bed bugs are funny. When I snickered upon reading a notice in the condo elevator that a well-regarded nearby building has had an infestation and we are to take all necessary precautions, I meant nothing more than to acknowledge the migration of the little scourges from some of the best hotels in Manhattan to the ecologically pristine Pacific Northwest.
Riding in the elevation along with me was one of the condo association’s founding residents, who considers herself a high authority on all matters regarding the building. Upon hearing my audible smirk, she informed me archly that the management [of which she is not a member] would prefer that bedbugs not be treated as a joke.
I hate being spoken to archly.
Seeming not to notice, she continued on with dark predictions of what would happen in our building should someone inadvertently traipse bedbugs through the front door. Apparently we would be encircled in plastic and heated within an inch of our lives. You can’t use DEET any more, so you have to cook the little buggers to death without also decimating fish, pet cockatoos, and blast furnace-averse residents. Bedbugs, she said pointedly, can ride along on anything. She looked down at my leather low-rise boots with suspicion.
Here I am, worried about Newt and the European union and space debris falling out of the sky and whether, in an earthquake, I’ll be able to get to my carefully packed emergency bag. Now I have a humorless woman looking with malice aforethought at my footwear.
Happily, the elevator reached my floor and I prepared to exit. I put on my most authoritative voice and told her that bedbugs NEVER attach themselves to leather. The woven bag she carries everywhere is a different story – practically a tour bus for meandering microbugs. Then I wished her good afternoon with all the arch in my voice I could muster.
Hawkeye blanket. Hawkeye bib. Hawkeye man.
Newborns are kind of vague about what they notice. By four and a half months, Archie zeroes in on exactly what he finds interesting. Nothing vague about the li’l man’s expression here.
Not long after I moved to Seattle my good HP printer died – I don’t think it liked the trip across country in a moving van. Realizing that my printing needs would be reduced in retirement, I settled for an inexpensive Epson which I hated from the moment I got it. The print quality was only fair, the thing sucked toner like a drunk on a street corner downing a fifth of Richardson’s Wild Irish Rose from a brown paper bag, and if any of the cartridges were low – even if I only wanted a black and white copy – the machine wouldn’t work at all.
Now the Epson has decided to print only half of any page I need, and it would cost more to have someone come and look at it than to buy a new printer – which is what I wanted to do anyway. I revved up Amazon Prime, found a decent home version of an HP, and clicked “purchase”.
Within 36 hours of placing the order online, I received in the regular mail two Staples coupons for HP toner and ink. I found the timing fascinating and assumed the two were connected.
Son Matt reminds me they may not have been. I may have coincidentally bought an HP printer just at the time Staples was running a promotion. Or, Staples has an integrated marketing program with either Amazon or the actual vendor of the HP, and the coupon mailing was triggered by my purchase.
With every step we take online we build an identity, and the wireless world responds with what it thinks we might like to do next. When I buy a Kindle book, Amazon often sends me list of suggestions for similar or related books. When I bought a pair of infant OshKosh B’Gosh overalls for Archie, a prompt appeared asking if I’d also like to buy a matching shirt. When I make a dinner reservation on Open Table, the site suggests other restaurants in its inventory that I might also find appealing.
Sometimes the algorithms get it wrong. My father’s family lives in Iowa, and although I don’t travel often to that state, a trip there is well within the range of something I have done and will do again. On my last visit, I was turned down for a credit card purchase of gasoline for the rental car – which I chalked up to happenstance. Shortly after, my credit card was also declined at a roadside restaurant where I stopped to eat lunch. When I called, the credit card company verified my identity and then restored access. They explained that the purchase of gas in rural Iowa had triggered a fraud alert, as there was nothing in my profile that suggested I might actually be in the state.
By and large I’m comfortable with a world in which algorithms suggest what I might want to do next – as long as I’m free to act on the prompt or not. I often do follow a Kindle suggestion, and have enjoyed books I’d otherwise not have found. I bought the overalls for Archie but not the shirt, and then found one at a bricks and mortar Target that worked just fine. I rarely take Open Table recommendations for other restaurants, and I’m not sure why.
My mother shopped a lot in the Sears Roebuck catalog, which certainly knew what she bought from year to year but did little with the information. We’ve come a very long way from that.
There’s something very endearing about the way young babies respond to the world. When they’re tired they sleep – regardless of what might be going on around them. When they’re hungry or wet, they cry. When they have tummy pains they fart or burp or spit up, even in polite company. When they’re happy they smile. When they’re really happy they chuckle. When it’s time to load up their diaper they screw up their little faces, turn red, and with a great burst of energy let loose – no matter the comfort level of the person who might be holding them. When they’re bored or cold or hungry or otherwise distressed they shriek, and the sound is piercing enough that someone – anyone – jumps to see what is the matter and tries to alleviate the problem. A young baby can make a game out of the simplest thing, like chewing on his fingers or bib or a plastic toy. Young babies love to stare at faces – sometimes their own, in a mirror – and no one tells them that staring is rude.
As we get older we become socialized in acceptable ways to express our feelings and needs. Most of the time using culturally appropriate behavior is good, but not always.
In my executive leadership consulting I once worked with a highly intelligent, super-competent, ambitious senior manager in her late 40′s who was finding her job, and indeed her life, more and more stressful and less and less fulfilling. I knew about her long list of professional accomplishments and awards. On impulse I asked her when was the last time she could remember having any fun.
I expected a quick answer and didn’t get one. She thought and thought. I grew more and more curious. Finally, she said she could remember a time but it was long ago and did that count? I said it did. Her face softened, and she spoke of going with her cousin to stay at their grandparents’ farm when the two girls were about 12. From early morning until supper time they ran barefoot and with abandon over the fields, finally coming to rest hanging upside down on a low branch in the apple orchard. For a whole week they’d had an amazing amount of fun.
Despite the presence of my evil twin, I confess to having some of those rigidities myself – and it’s not a good thing. My responses are pretty controlled – even when laughing or crying or hanging upside down would be the more natural thing.
I think I’m going to take a leaf from Archie’s book, and if I can’t imagine myself doing something spontaneous, I’ll think of him.
Learning never goes only one way.
