firewood

One of the infinitely many things I apparently have not learned in my first 50 years of life is how to stack wood.  A few days ago we had firewood delivered to our Bergamo home, and rather than standing by and watching the deliveryman hoof it all out of his trailer, I decided to help.  He spoke no English (and I no Italian) which might have been part of the problem, but in my defense our next door neighbor Matteo was also there.  He and I were dutifully stacking wood on one side (the open side not up against the wall), and Alessandro on the other.  

About halfway up the stack our side collapsed sideways, in slow motion such that we weren't alarmed so much as dismayed as one piece after another found its momentum and rolled off the pile.  Alessandro rolled his eyes and yelled 'ragazzi!' (boys!) and then proceeded to show us how to stack a column of wood on the end to buttress the rest of the stack.  Which makes perfect sense, of course.  

What made it so funny is that it was such the stereotypical incident you hear all the time from contractors, when you ask them for the price and they ask in response, are you going to help me?    

Ireland + Ancestry

Just dropped off Stewart at the airport.  He's headed to the northern parts of the Republic of Ireland, not to be confused with Northern Ireland, to meet distant and long lost maternal relatives.  His cousin George from New England is meeting him there, a potentially dangerous combination those two.  

I too am pursuing my ancestry, although I have not gotten very far yet.  My motivation is Dad's 80th birthday next Summer, with me hoping I can trace his lineage back to Europe.  My suspicion is that we are Scottish, and that our actual last name is MacNab, with an 'a' being deleted and a 'b' being added on somewhere between the British Isles and North Carolina/Virginia/Kentucky.  But we'll see.  

Reason #1 Why To Never Buy A Rental Car

While working in Cannes our crew has a rental car, and it gets valet-parked every evening at the hotel.  In the morning the valet runs out to grab our vehicle (I don't know why he runs, we never tip him) from a parking area down below the hotel's entrance.  After a minute or two we can start to hear him in the distance as he rounds the first corner, weaving through a maze of turns and the gauntlet of other parked cars, steadily accelerating until he's 20 or 30 feet away from where we're standing.  

At which point he pops the transmission into neutral, and fully and expertly locks the parking brake in the full up position whilst steering through a street racer's handbrake turn.  And just before the brake pads burst into flames, the car lurches to a stop at our feet. 

Bonne Journée! he says, hopping out.  Au Revoir! I say in return.  

Ok, maybe a slight exaggeration.  But over the past twenty years of renting a lot of cars, riding in rental cars, and observing the operation of rental cars, I can say with some confidence that not owning the car that one is driving can bring out the worst in people.  Or from a realist's point of view (mine), it releases whatever restraints are holding back marginally terrible people, allowing them to blossom into their full potential. 

People who wouldn't think of slamming their own car's doors?  They'll slam a rental car door.  Driving on the highway in second gear because you bought the full tank of gas and you need to burn off a few gallons before dropping it off at the rental car center?  Completely logical.  Hitting speed bumps fast enough to get airborne or to get the distinct feeling that the front axle has detached from the frame?  Absolutely!  Eating a loosely-wrapped two pound California burrito larger than most people's thighs, in a manual shift rental car with cloth seats?  Why not? 

Hell is other people, it has been said.  So don't buy the cars they've driven.  

Venice, the Dolomites and Dublin

Stewart and I were recently in Venice to see my cousin Shannon, her husband David, and her daughter Madison.  Always good to see family, to catch up on their lives and to have some fun along the way.  My sister Lori and her husband Karl then arrived, and we spent another day with them.  A rare photo of Lori and me: 

We then traveled to the Dolomites in Northern Italy.   It's a UNESCO world heritage site, and pretty darn deserving of that accolade.  One spectacular view after another, one lush and manicured farm after another, one towering mountain next to a lake after another.  And then we headed to Dublin, to check it out with a view of moving there next year.  Quite a neat city, and an equally beautiful country.  

Turning 50, Part 1: Introduction

So next year I turn 50.  I understand I'm not the first to reach the milestone, and I do not expect anything earth-shattering to happen on my birthday, save for the continuation of a slightly-after-midlife crisis.  But in any case it's hard escaping the numerical weight of it, and the fact I feel accountable for how I've spent what seems to be like an inordinate amount of time here on Earth.  

In a series of posts I will try as best I can to account for my life, the good and the ugly, and maybe do a little prognosticating about what lies ahead.  It's a good exercise for everyone to do, as I've always believed we should reflect on our lives, at whatever age, and to try to do so objectively, dispassionately.  My own life has certainly ebbed and flowed, meandered most certainly, but at times taken on a bent of purpose and intent.  And I thought as I plow through my 50th year of life that an accounting of all those years would not only be useful to me, but for my friends and family to get to know me better.  I'll try not to overshare, but if gets too much to bear, just scroll on through. 

(to be continued....)

Luck Of The Irish

Stewart is on the cusp of being an Irish Citizen.  By virtue of his grandmother being born on the Emerald Isle, and by way of a quirky law granting him citizenship for his biological association with her, Ireland is about to inscribe his name in the Foreign Births Register.  

It was a long process and a lot of hard work, made even more difficult in that his relatives, in the intervening years of their lives, were not entirely honest with government authorities.  It was apparently scandalous for a wife to be older than her husband by more than a few years, and so the grandmother suddenly became younger when stepping onto Ellis Island.  There was a time when being Irish was shameful, and so on his Mom's wedding certificate her Irish ancestry turned into Scottish.  But Stewart worked through it all, diligently, and now it would appear it's all been a great success.  

A success, nearly to the day, of the 100th year of Ireland's Easter Uprising.  

(update:  it's happened.  Stewart is now a dual citizen...!)

Two Paragraph Book Report: The Age Of American Unreason

Perhaps it is just me, but the the U.S. political scene has now seemed to have reached a near-untenable state. The most influential nation in the world, with unprecedented reach and power, is literally within months of potentially nominating Donald Trump to be its next President.    Our collective, international strength as a country is matched only by our unstoppable desire to look as ridiculous to the rest of the world as possible.  

Enter The Age of American Unreason, and its methodical and damning walk through U.S. History that describes a slow, steady decline in both our political system and the general public's ability to act as its counterweight.  We have Donald Trump (and now Sarah Palin, sweet jesus) splashed on the front pages of newspapers and political blogs not because it is some unfortunate byproduct of our laissez-faire system of government, but because the unabated dumbing down of American citizenry has driven it there.  Anti-intellecutalism driven by fringe religiosity, junk science imbued with credibility by irresponsible mass media outlets, and the abandonment of literary and intellectual endeavors in favor of cat videos on the internet.   One of many telling statistics:  in 2006, 9 out of 10 Americans couldn't find Afghanistan on map, even though hundreds of American soldiers were dying there every year after the U.S. invasion and occupation.  

What I'm Listening To Right Now

1. Tainted Love, Marilyn Manson.  No one has been angrier, for a longer period of time, than Marilyn.   But if you want to see a moment of quiet introspection from him, watch his cameo in Bowling for Columbine.  
2. Waiting for the Summer, Yeasayer.  Consistently eclectic, and generally melodic indie music. 
3. High School Art Class, Pretty Lights.  A little bit of Moby, combined with the funk of Gorillaz. 
4. With You In My Head (feat. The Black Angels), UNKLE.   Edgy psychedelic dance music, with a lead singer that sounds a little like Ministry's, and a backup singer that sounds suspiciously like Grace Slick. 
5. Miami, Foals.  Mainline indie, of the Modest Mouse ilk.  

Two Paragraph Book Report: The Fear Of Physics

I just finished the audio book The Fear of Physics by Dr. Lawrence Krauss.  It is fascinating to me that I was able to listen for the better part of 6 hours (during trips between home and Cannes, typically), comprehending at times next to nothing, and yet I was still captivated.  I almost understood Einstein's theory of relativity at the end of it, but not the concept time being relative.  Still blows my mind.   And the fact that merely observing a particle can change its behavior, an idea I cannot yet comprehend no matter how much I think about it, and yet...fascinating.  

It is humbling that this book is often used as a physics primer in college, presumably for students far smarter than I and that are headed off to distinguished science careers.  Which is fine, I have accepted my lot in life, but the uncaring, undirected yet magical universe never fails to impress in both its simplicity and strangeness.  Recommendation:  two rotors up.  

Christmas 2005

This photo was taken somewhere along the Sunrise Highway, the main road snaking up through the mountains east of San Diego.  (Yes, it does get cold (and occasionally snow) in San Diego, you just have to get high enough up.)  I thought it apropos as Heidi and Greg will be traveling to Italy next week to spend Christmas with us, so perhaps we can recreate this photo somewhere in the Italian Alps, ten years later.  

I also enjoy this picture because of Stewart's off-handed resemblance to Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick.  

Rope Of The Ship

“The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute-book; the mechanic a machine; the sailor a rope of the ship.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Army-Navy, Take 14

Part of the holiday tradition at our home is the Army-Navy game, Stewart being an alumni of West Point and a 26-year Army veteran.  One might think with my 8 years in the Navy there might be a rivalry amongst us, but I didn't graduate from the Naval Academy and I don't understand or appreciate people's obsession with sports in general.  That, and the game has turned into an annual day of tragedy in an otherwise enjoyable December, with the Navy on an utterly humiliating 13-year winning streak.  

It's made all the worse because the USMA makes such an enormous deal out of the matchup.  It is their ultimate prize of the season, more than bowl championships or overall win-loss records, or winning against the Air Force.  It is the most emotionally invested they and their alumni get all year, their battle cries heard all over social media and  the news.   The football coach's reputation pivots on his success or failure in this single game, and the unending string of losses has resulted in a cacophoinc call to arms, to identify the team's weaknesses and to right the ship.  Or tank, whatever.  

The USNA takes a slightly more casual stance, but perhaps their own battle cries have become more muted over the years, as with each successive victory over Army they become a little more embarrassed for their rivals, a little less eager to claim victory over their compatriots.    

For both of their sakes, let's hope the Army can pull off a victory this year.   

Post Game Update:  good grief.