Might As Well Be Here Now

My father had a unique sense of humor. He laughed easily and often. He told the same old jokes  again  and  again, laughing each  time as if he  were  hearing them for the first time. I think he was funniest when he  was trying  not to laugh , which  often happened in church. Somehow ,  George  did not  mind falling asleep and snoring  during services,  but he drew  the  line at laughing out loud .  The harder he tried to  hold it in,  the funnier he became.  I remember sitting next to him  once  at a dance recital of seven year old girls. When  a  little girl did a handstand and accidentally knocked over the little  dancer next to her,  George’s entire body began to  shake as he struggled  to suppress a laugh.  Of  course , it  was contagious ,  and  soon  I was  shaking right along  with  him. This pict...

My father, George died twenty-eight years ago of heart disease. He died when he was the same age as I am now. Near the end of his life he said to me, “There’s worse things than dying.” I asked him what was worse and he replied, “Being a burden to my family.” He died shortly afterward and relieved himself of that concern. In the subsequent years I have come to realize that I did not lose my father. Nor have I lost my mother who died in 2019. I continue to experience a connection with both of them. The connection is more than just a memory. I feel their essence any time that I pay attention to it. I suspect it’s always there even when I am not aware. I call the connection to my father George Consciousness. When in George Consciousness I experience a moment or an event from what feels like his unique perspective. Given his sense of humor those moments are usually very funny. I am grateful that both of my parents are Still Here.

It's not a lot But it's what I got Hope it'll last Not go too fast Some comin’ in Some goin' out Leavin' me just about Enough to break even So I can keep seein' A decent balance to be bequeathin’ To two fine young men Who are my best reason For Bein’ Here Now.

 I am waiting for a new political movement in the USA. The movement will be lead by a young, charismatic leader who is not connected to either of the archaic political parties that exist today. The movement I am waiting for will not hold itself and the country hostage to an ideology. It will be joined by independent thinking citizens who are focused on sensible, pragmatic solutions to problems we all share. Leaders of this movement will apply a term from my childhood - the art of compromise. I am 75 years old so I hope I won’t have to wait much longer.

No good mail, no good wishes No mail box of Cherry Berry’s chocolate kisses No checks, no refunds brought to me by snail All I get is an endless supply of useless junk mail  Why doesn’t the mail carrier just put it in my garbage can? Why do they need me to do it? I’m just the middle man. Better yet, how do I automatically send it back to where it’s already been So somebody else can put it in their recycle bin.

I wonder what and I wonder who Could ever unite the Red and the Blue. I’ve lived in a sea of Red and I’ve lived in a sea of Blue. I know people on both sides who are good  and some who are bad, too. In many ways it doesn’t matter if we are Red or if we are Blue.  We all love our families and we all love our friends  We all help our neighbors and we’ve all worked hard for the money we spend None of us feel good about the feelings of hate Cause in reality we are just eating from different sides of the same plate. Let’s not be duped. Let’s not be conned By the screens that we watch that profit by leading us on. There’s lots money made by buying and selling hate I hope we remember who we are before it’s too late.

 I suggested recently to a Men’s Group that we each write our own eulogy that might eventually be read by someone else. We are all old guys and we often talk about death and dying so I thought a practice eulogy could be interesting and beneficial. So I started by writing my own. __________________________________________ Like you and everyone else, Michael had an upside and a downside. His Upside: He recognized and appreciated the quirky aspects of many of the people he met.  He enjoyed facilitating conversations among people with divergent perspectives. He learned how to see and reflect humor in many situations, even this one.🙂 He truly loved being a father to his children and a close friend and lover to his wife. He certainly believed his family and their relationships defined him more than anything else. Anyone could see that he cherished his role as grandfather. He deeply valued a handful of longtime friendships. The longest and deepest being his friend Lloyd, his golf bu...

I believe in Jesus I believe in Buddha, too I believe in Lord Krishna  I believe in Lao Tzu  I believe in the Bible I believe in the Quran I'd believe in the Upanishads If I could ever understand  I believe in Confucius  I believe in Shinto I even believe in the preachers who rant on the radio I believe in Jehovah But please accept my apology  Cause I can’t make myself believe in Scientology   I believe most religions sense the same reality  That all of us are so much more than any of us can see. I believe in Jesus  I believe in Buddha too I believe in L ord Krishna  I believe in Lao Tzu They all seem to share a similar intuition. You gotta look deep inside to resolve the human condition

R.I.* and I were very close friends when we were children. Many decades have passed but, a glimmer of that childhood connection remains. We occasionally see each other on holidays or at other family gatherings. We usually talk about basketball teams. Once or twice over the past forty years we have talked a little about his ongoing struggle with alcohol. Not long along I heard that R.I. had a life-threatening emergency that involved an uncontrollable nose bleed. I called him on the phone to find out what happened. The circumstance was not funny but, his unique way of telling the story was certainly funny to me. After a couple of basketball comments I said, "So. R.I., how's your nose?" He offered the following detailed response which I have attempted to capture verbatim. WARNING: If you are offended by profane language, stop reading this now (and by all means avoid my cousin R.I.). You won’t believe this shit but my goddam nose started bleedin' like a water faucet ...

The day before the Presidential election in November I wrote a conciliatory message to my friends and family who support Trump. However, following the riots on January 6, 2021 I no longer felt so magnanimous about Trump supporters so I deleted the message. ______________________________________________   Right now, it appears that most of us have survived the pandemic. All of the people close to me are vaccinated except grandson, Finn who is still too young to be eligible for the vaccine.    The speed with which this vaccination process has occurred is further evidence that time really is an ally.    However, about this time last year I made some grandiose predictions about what we might learn from the pandemic. I thought we might gain a greater awareness of how interconnected all of us are on planet Earth. I thought we might learn how to transcend cultural barriers that impede the kind of collaboration that is necessary to solve global threats to our existence....

In 1977, I accepted a job at Central Kentucky Re-ED, a residential school for children with serious behavioral disorders. The school was located on the campus of a state psychiatric hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. Working there was a great experience, in part, because I was introduced to the Re-ED model - an innovative approach for working with children and families. A few years later I accepted a job at Wright School in Durham which is another residential school for children that is based on the same Re-ED model.   The Re-ED model was created by Nick Hobbs in the late sixties. Nick was a psychologist and very wise person at Vanderbilt University. His model for working with children was based on 12 principles.    I am now old and retired but those 12 Re-ED principles are more relevant to me now than ever.    Twelve Re-ED Principles The italicized comments are mine and should not be blamed on Nick Hobbs.   1.       Life is to be liv...

Recently I was watching my family play (at social distance) in the swimming pool in our neighborhood. My wife was throwing a plastic ball to her grandchildren and I said, “Nice throw, Carol. You don’t throw like a girl.” Sara, my adult step-daughter, responded with an uncharacteristically harsh admonition. She said she resented the phrase “throw like a girl.” She said she did not want language like that spoken in the presence of her two young sons. She said she wanted her sons to grow up to be sensitive, good men who respected women.    I thought Sara’s reaction was a little extreme. However, it did cause me to reflect on the role of parents in the character development of young boys.    I wondered (especially in the context of the  #metoo  era) how do young boys learn to become men who respect women? This month I have also asked myself how do young white males learn to recognize and (unlike my generation) do something useful in response to systemic racism?...

Living in a pandemic reveals truths that are endemic  to the life, times, and polemics  of Planet Earth in this age of exaggerated outrage when we prefer to argue and fight and insist that only our side sees the Light that can reveal the solution to our global plight without seeing that the only hope… however slight is to work together toward a collective insight that just might hold us together  long enough to tether  a lifeline to the solution  to the pandemic’s challenge to our evolution.

2020 was a doozy of a year! So many of us got sick with the virus. So many of us died earlier than we would have otherwise. We lost jobs, money, and, most significantly, we temporarily lost a sense of confidence about the future. Yet, here we are in late 2021. We got through it. So what did we learn. We learned that we are all interconnected, whether we like it or not. We now recognize that all of us on planet Earth are connected in a giant physical (and maybe metaphysical) network. For many centuries prior to 2020 most of us were able to ignore this fact. But in a post 2020 world we can no longer ignore this simple reality... we are one... big interconnected organism. We learned that we need to create a global healthcare system that has the capacity to respond to the next novel virus and to the one after that. We learned that we need to transcend cultural barriers that inhibit collaboration. We learned that our giant physical (and maybe metaphysical) network can be helpful in s...

You might think there is no need for sorrow, no need for grief. You might think her death is actually overdue and a welcome relief. People might say to you, "The deceased has finally been released from the painful cage of very old age. So just move on. Don't feel sad. Just appreciate what a good life she had." You might even tell yourself. Don't feel lost. Don't feel lonely. Don't dwell on the loss of your one and only... Mothership. All of that might be good advice for how you should feel. But don't expect that advice to matter a great deal. Because the Mothership is gone and can never be replaced. So now you are left to learn how to fill in the empty space.