Twenty-four

 

Today looks like it's going to be a nice day, doesn't it?

Not quite as nice as your birthday back in 2002, though. 

That was a glorious spring day, full of life, with flowers, like this one I found down at the Chinese Garden the other day, blooming all around us. The little courtyard at Emanuel Hospital was a riot of colorful beauty the day you were born.

Which just made the day that much harder. I know, I say this a lot, but it was bitter hard knowing that each one of those fragile, ephemeral blooms would live longer than you would. 

Still is.

Today?

Oh, no, it's nowhere near that beautiful. 

Sunny, sure, but cold.

That's the way our winters usually are, y'know; sunny and cold or rainy and not-quite-as-cold. 

I wish you already knew that, that we'd had other winters and blooming springs to remember. That you'd grown tall and strong, in sun and shadow, that we could celebrate this day as a happy one instead as a slowly dwindling memory and a distant grief.

But instead, here we are. Having just this one day to sit together in silence.

And then, as always, you will go. The next day now almost a quarter-century ago when we kissed goodbye, you in your little yellow onesie that you took with you and returned to us only as ash and sorrow.

I miss you, love.

I always will.

I know your mother does, too, and she, and I, will keep your memory alive until it is our own time to get up and pass through that door you closed behind you, all those years ago.

Goodbye, love. 

Goodbye.

 

Bryn Rose Gellar
March 1, 2002 - March 2, 2002 

Breeding press

 

 

No. Not that one.

The folks over at Lawyers, Guns & Money have several posts up about "depopulation" and declining birth rates, which are apparently a global trend.

The first linked piece posits that it's cell phones.

Kidding. Sorta. The conclusion is that:

"...we do have this big increase in personal online entertainment, whether it’s watching shows on Netflix, sports bets — online gambling has become absolutely massive across Brazil and Latin America more broadly. You can go on PornHub. Online connectivity enables people to stroll on Instagram, play Call of Duty, World of Warcraft.

So we are all becoming — it’s not just being single — we’re all retreating into this digital solitude. I think that’s partly because technology makes it nicer and easier to stay at home — you can work from home — and some of these apps are so hyper-engaging that you get distracted by the constant stream of dopamine hits as each app, as each technology company competes against others to keep its users hooked."

IOW we have more fun "practicing while I'm alone" than we do with some other human being in meatspace.

There may be something to that, but I'm not sure it's smartphones per se.

I think I've discussed this before. 

(In fact I know I did, back in April)

The thing with kids is that you the parents end up spending LOTS of time and money on kids.

At at time when there's lots of fun things to spend time and money on. Travel. Entertainment. Porn. Games. Sports. Leisure. 

As opposed to changing diapers, taxiing to soccer games, reading bedtime stories, kissing owies.

Are those good? Are they worth it?

I think so.

But based on global fertility? A lot of people disagree.

There are real risks about that, though, including the reality that our modern industrial welfare states depend on a continual supply of people paying into the system to pay for us olds. And for them when they get old. If the pillar becomes a pyramid, with fewer and fewer paying in and more and more pulling out..?

Yike.

The second LG&M post makes a good point about our New MAGAt Moron Overlords, tho; 

"The triumph of the authentic Trumpian stupidity is reflected in the extent to which it has made one particular belief absolutely central to all political discourse in the Republican party, and on the American right wing generally.

That particular belief is the key concept at the core of the stupid person’s world view, and it is this: All of these apparently complicated problems that trouble our society, and that interfere with our impending return to greatness, are actually very simple.  For every social problem there is always a simple solution – one weird trick – that solves the problem perfectly.  All you need is common sense, and an unwillingness to be fooled by the so-called experts.  This is the stupid person’s Nicene Creed.

Moreover, stupid people love simple answers to complex questions, because such answers validate their entire world view."

Yes. Oh fuuuuuuuck yes.

Is there an answer to this slide into a post-population world?

If there is I don't know of it.

But if there is, I do know this; it won't be simple.

Or easy.

Or quick.

Birthin' no babies

So among the other weird creepy MAGAt things that Tubby47 has uncorked is something call "natalism"

Birthin' babies.

Apparently this came up back in March:

"The White House has been hearing out a chorus of ideas in recent weeks for persuading Americans to get married and have more children,” The New York Times reported on Monday. Proposals include baby bonuses for American mothers and a new affirmative-action program that would set aside almost a third of Fulbright scholarships for people who are married or have kids. Malcolm and Simone Collins, oft-profiled natalists hoping to seed the future with their elite genes, reportedly sent the White House a draft executive order establishing a “National Medal of Motherhood” for women with at least six children."

 "Medal of Motherhood"?

For fuck's sake, haven't we been here before...

And, anyway, it sounded better in the original...aw, fuckit, you know the rest.

Mind you, the obvious point here is not just "more kids" it's "more white kids" since MAGAts, duh. 

As I pointed out back in November of '24, the "problem" of an aging native population can be "solved" by immigration (or, conversely, that eliminating immigration usually results in an aging, shrinking population).

But for MAGAts that's a nonstarter. Hence the Mutterskreuz 2.0.

Anyway, this came to mind today because it's my daughter's birthday today. She's 19.

She's a terrific person, and I'm glad she's my daughter. I wouldn't trade our 17-and-a-half-years together for anything. 

But.

Here's the thing; she and her brother are, in economic terms, expensive luxuries.

Seriously. They've cost her mother and I...well, lots of money. And time. And emotional investment, general head- and heartaches...they're wonderful kids, I love them dearly, but...

If your "chorus of ideas...for persuading Americans to...have more children." were limited to trivial dumbshit like a measly $5K tax credit or similar gimmicks that range from useless to outright insulting?

You can fuck right off with that shit.

The death of the eleven-kid-family is baked into any industrialized society. Once childhood mortality drops to a statistical rounding error and mechanization makes homegrowing extra farm- or millhands superfluous?

People stop pushing out sprogs.

They're fucking hard work. Good work, if you and they are lucky. But decades of often-difficult, always-expensive, sometimes-heartbreaking labor whether you're lucky or not. Even one kid is work. Two is twice the work. Four? Six? Fuck me sideways, no! 

Early on my now-ex and I agreed; two, full stop. And, frankly, after losing Bryn Rose had Sheadon been a little girl? We might have stopped there. It's hard to express how difficult it was to roll the pregnancy dice again after Bryn. Terrifying. To do that four, six, eight more times?

You're out of your motherfucking mind.

And the MAGAt version is actually even worse:

"First of all, it’s telling that this administration will do anything other than what families really need. If the Trump administration was actually interested in supporting parents, they’d be pushing for paid parental leave, subsidized childcare, and an end to laws that make it deadly for people to give birth.

Actually, scratch that—because the administration’s “baby boom” push isn’t just about boosting the birthrate. It’s about reasserting a rigid, traditional vision of American family life: one where parents are straight, women are submissive, and the bro-natalists in charge get to pretend it’s all for the good of the nation."

Color me shocked, bro.

So, no. Nobody but the Quiverfull loons will sign up for this nonsense. Just like the other creepy, weird MAGATrump shit, it's just a clown car full of weirdos.

But whatever. Screw the MAGAts, it's her birthday, so...

Happy Birthday, kiddo. 

You kick ass.

In the waning of the year

 ...the little group here at the 1922 House is still, well, being who we are.

There's still four, although this may be the last winter of that. The Girl is looking hard at four-year schools. She's been accepted at University of Minnesota at Minneapolis...

Father: Do you know anything about Minnesota?
Daughter: It's...ummm...in the Midwest!
F: Have you looked at the climate records for Minneapolis for, say, the past ten Februaries?
D:
F:
D: No?
F: Then I highly recommend you take a look. You might be surprised. Not saying that should change your mind if you really want to go. But you might want to know.

She's battering her usual bullrush way into her senior high school year, both in academics and in all her usual avocations; theater tech - she's the Sultan of the Soundboard - and ceramics and the Asian Student Group. She's a fighter.

This was last year, but it still works. That's her.

On the personal side she's who she's been; salty wiseass, meticulous, impatient, cynical. She seems too busy for relationships and so far as we can tell has no particular preference in that. We're pretty comfortable with who you want to pursue, so if the Girl is not conventional in her preferences I suspect she'd be upfront about it...so the lack of up-fronted-ness suggests that's not a thing, Yet.

The Young Man (I can't really call him "The Boy" anymore; he's an adult even while his sister retains a lot of "Girl") is, well, who he's been, too. He's taking classes at the local community college and is doing well there; GPA 3.7 when last seen.

For some odd reason he seems to be gravitating towards earth science/geology. Dunno how seriously to take that. I've told him he's a legacy at Portland State University for geology, if he is thinking of going that route. He seems unimpressed.

He's still gaming multiple hours in the day. He also still games his unique way, which involves lots of shouting and screaming, cursing, and (now and again) making literal monkey noises, which always makes me bust out laughing. Whatever happened to the stereotype of the dudebros gaming in silence broken only by occasional grunts?

(FWIW, when I showed her these last year my Bride winced at his. "A little too on-point..." was her comment.)

As for the Bride:

She's still "Miss Debra", beloved School Secretary at Astor Elementary.

A little sadder because her equally-if-not-more-beloved Work Wife Miss Chris retired at the end of the 21-22 school year. Still grouchy about how the District is being exceptionally shitty towards the clerical staff and paraprofessionals represented by her union.

Busily sewing, including her side-gig technical editing for the "Seamwork" line of patterns.

But slowing down, just like I am. She's eyeing retirement, which I simultaneously understand and dread, since what we'll do with both of us around this place all day I have no idea...

And me?

Older. Slower. A bit more creaky - surprising how little arthritic buildup it takes to make joints uncooperative! - and less speedy.

The contract work I was doing last spring and early summer finally ended and the outfit that hired me, after a couple of abortive offers, has faded out. My old employer still throws me a bone now and again, but that, too, appears to be waning.

My Guard retirement is a lifesaver; it's surprising how far $1,200 a month will go if you only spend it on things like gas and the occasional book. I'm thinking of cutting the Social Security wait short and applying at 66-and-a-half this spring - frankly because I think the fucking Republicans will run the table next fall and the plutocratic sonsofbitches will raise the qualification age to 70. It knocks the payday down significantly, but locks it in so keeps the greedy bastards' dickbeaters off it.

Otherwise I have lots of time to read. I've also been binge-watching stuff I've missed before, ranging from oddball anime to movies and serial shows. 

I'm still plugging away at kendo, despite being the slowest and clumsiest kendoka in the dojo. What's really frustrating is that the proper kamae, the basic fighting stance, demands an upright position; back straight, head up.

My back is...not straight (see "arthritis", above). I have to constantly think about my posture, which doesn't help when I'm trying to whack someone with a stick (or not get whacked...).

It's good training for me. But I spent years being as strong if not stronger and faster than my peers. It's very humbling to do the things your body did handily once only to find that that body is no longer as responsive.

Then there's the whole "kitchen and bathroom remodel" thing...but that's for another day.

Hope this brings us all up to date. Gotta go wrap some presents not; back in a bit.

Pause in Operations

I'm working on a Battles piece for Yarmouk (636 CE) - which is already way too long for the source material - but have hit a rock and can't finish up until I get my hands on more reference material.

Because there's an issue with the sources.

The Wikipedia article, standard starting point for any Internet-centric research, appears above the usual standard; well-researched, detailed, and well written. So much so that I almost binned the idea of writing this one up and turning to Frontiers 1914.

Being me, I went ahead and started pulling up as many of the primary sources as I could and ran into a real head-scratcher; nobody else I could find, and I mean NObody, provided the level of detail for the fight that characterized the Wiki article. Primary, secondary, both...nobody was saying the same stuff.

Quite the opposite, in fact; many secondary sources' central thesis was "we just really don't know exactly what happened because the primary accounts don't say or are contradictory".

Now the author(s) of the Wikipedia piece seem to have leaned heavily on the work of David Nicolle, specifically his 2000 Osprey title "Yarmuk 636 AD". So presumably Nicolle has the goods - and if he does I'm guessing they come from the primary source I cannot for love or money find on-line; the 12th Century CE/6th Century AH work The History of Damascus (Arabic: تاريخ دمشق, Tarikh Dimashq) attributed to Ibn Asakir (Arabic: ابن عساكر). 

If the stuff in the Wiki is right, it almost has to come from our boy Ibn Asakir; I've got the other major Arabic works (and the other side of the hill, the Byzantines, produced little of value I've found) and neither the Kitab Futuh al-Sham nor the Futuh al-Buldan say anything remotely close to or as detailed as the tactical-level detail in the Wiki.

I've got Nicolle on order, but it's not due in for another week or two. Until then I'm forced to suspend operations on Yarmuk.

Speaking of suspending operations.

The Fire Direction Center is unusually well-staffed right now because the employer (in one form or another) of half the staff, Portland Public Schools, is on strike.

Normally you'd think an old lefty like me would be stickin' to the union and, yes, I have a lot of sympathy there for a couple of reasons.

First, because the union position makes a lot of sense. Smaller class sizes, more prep time, increased staffing for stuff like Special Ed. Even the wage demands aren't whopping out of line given the cost of living her in Portland proper. This ain't fucking Idaho.

Second, because the District has fucked this up five ways and Sunday. They've been imitating the worst habits of higher ed, staffing up the Head Shed and shafting the troops, and then bullshitting the line dogs about that. This spring as they handed a raise to the assistant vice-superintendants with which Big Pink (the District HQ) teems they axed damn near all the lowly Educational Assistants over at my Bride's workplace.

That's just stupid.

But.

Here's my problem; the District's base position - that there's just no money for all the teachers' asks - isn't really wrong.

The State of Oregon has been chronically underfunding public schools for decades. A lot of that goes back to the anti-tax Eighties, when scumbags like Don McIntyre roamed the Oregon Earth like fatheaded dinosaurs, conning the gullible Public into cutting taxes to make sure Phil Knight could afford a second airplane.

A lot more goes to the ridiculous way that funding is allocated.

The state took over public school funding in the wake of lawsuits that pointed out - correctly - that basing school funding on county property taxes was inherently unfair and unequal. Poor people living in shit places had no money to begin with, so their schools were shit, and their kids ended up poor. Rich people? Not so much.

But then the state turned around and handed the money out on a headcount flat rate.

Every kid in your classroom got you, say, $4,000 a year. Yeah, there were some extras, including Federal dollars from stuff like Title 1, but the big slug came from the state general fund.

You see the problem there?

That's not that much better than the old system. The nice well-bred white kids in Lake Oswego get four grand each and are then backed up by Mummy and Daddy's money and tutoring and camps and enrichment and fuck-all else.

The poor kids in Southeast Portland?

Yeah.

And even within a single district that's a problem. The nice wealthy enclaves that feed high schools like Portland Public's Grant and Lincoln and (what-I-still-think-of-as-Wilson) Wells do just fine on the base handouts. 

The feeders for our daughter's Roosevelt, or Jefferson? Given their huge population of poor kids and English-as-a-Second-Language-kids and kids with family problems and learning issues?

So ideally places like Jefferson and Roosevelt and their feeder junior highs and elementary schools would be on a "base x 1.3". And real snakepits (Hi, George Middle School!) would be on a "base x 1.5" that would provide the extra staffing and teaching (and social work and community support) they'd need to help get those kids through K-12 and out with something like a 21st Century education.

So ideally both sides of this strike - District and teachers - should be on one side of the picket line and the State government on the other. The solution isn't in rearranging the deck chairs; it's in rebuilding the fucking boat.

But that risks getting the Oregon Taxpayer - that skittish, ignorant, tightfisted sonofabitch - worked into a snit.

The GQP, of course, will fire off every flare in the "taxes are theft" pyro locker, because they hate non-Jesus schools anyway.

And the Richie Riches who pay most of (but not really enough of) the taxes will squeal like piggies in a sty because their money is going to Those People, when government's only job is to keep Them far enough away from Us so that we don't have to deal with Them.

(see: "Homeless Crisis").

So the problem is that there's no obvious solution to the strike between the striking parties. To get there requires Oregon to choose to put money into poor people and brown people (and troubled people) and the nice wealthy white untroubled people who HAVE the money would sooner eat dirt.

WASF.

That's cheery, isn't it? Yeah, and I'm not even going to get started on fucking Gaza.

Lemme see if I can end with something cheeery.

Oh, yeah; these came in the mail:

I ran into this little manhwa (the Korean version of what in Japan would be called "manga", a serial comic) several years back and was utterly delighted.

It's a silly and funny isekai-type romance; our heroine (who's kind of a glum college student IRL) is in proper fantasy fashion somehow transported into the world of her favorite bodice-ripping novel...but as one of the minor characters.

Which is just as well, because the protagonist - the eponymous "Duke" - is kind of scary and obsessive about the heroine. So our girl Ripley - at least, now shes "Ripley", the redhead in the picture - just decides to get drunk and have fun at the party scene she's emerged into. Which is fine....

Until she wakes up in bed with Scary Duke Zeronis, the two of them having just had both of their "first night" (which Ripley has no conscious memory of - girl, you gotta know when to stop drinking!) and thus, at least to the Duke, having plighted their troth and consummated their bond and become mates and holy shit is she in trouble now.

Anyway...our heroine desperately tries to find ways to convince her new inamorato that She's Not The Girl He's Looking For...but in ways that don't trigger his touchy pride. 

And he, meanwhile, is being slowly gentled and broadened by this red-headed whacko by whom he's being led around.

It's all very cute and funny and sometimes touching and mostly just vastly entertaining.

The Webtoons site went sorta dark after the end of the online series; sometimes the stories do that - my guess it's related to where the artist/writer is hoping to sell a print version like this. So I had been stymied when I'd hoped to re-read some of my favorite bits.

Until now! So, yay!

Something to curl up with now that the rains have returned. At east until Nicolle shows up.

And speaking of things showing up in the mail, this:

I think I mentioned that one of my retirement hobbies is returning to a sport I played decades ago, the Japanese fencing called kendo.

I'm not very good, mind. My body is damaged and so I'm both slow and clumsy. Small children can beat me.

But it's not about winning; it's the discipline and training, trying to be the best kendoka I can be.

The thing in the center of the photo is a shinai; a wooden "sword" made from bamboo staves used to practice the parts that involve actually hitting people.

(There's a different sort of wooden sword, called a bokken or bokuto, that's actually shaped like a katana, the "samurai sword" you think of when you think of this stuff.)

The bamboo version is supposedly the result of an Edo-period sensei trying to come up with a way of training sword-fighting that didn't involve clubbing the living shit out of students with a heavy wooden stick.

When I picked the sport back up a year ago I dug up my old shinai from back in the Nineties. It was a bit dry but still serviceable, quite the tribute to the makers, whoever they were.

But the poor thing is getting worn out with new use. So I finally retired it and got a replacement.

It feels very new and lush after my old stick. Now I just need to do all the sanding and oiling and suchlike that you're supposed to do to prepare for simulated combat.

Somehow the idea that you have to break down something brand new and fiddle with it to make it work right seems very old and "traditional", so properly kendo, which is about as "old and traditional" as it gets.

So I've got to break out the sandpaper and furniture oil and sit down with it. Very satisfying in a sort of tactile way. Go figure; I'm just like that.

Now if I can just recall the sequence of the Bokuto Ni Yoru Kendo Kihon-waza Keiko-ho...

Mamma Mia!

At the end of a very long day - which involved driving some 150 miles and spending the day pestering people playing with dirt - it was "sing-along night" at my daughter's high school production of Mamma Mia!

Surely you at least know that this ABBA-fueled jukebox musical is a thing, right?

Well, the kiddo's school theater group has been staging it all this past week, and mileage be damned, last night is was my parental duty to go see it.

I've confessed my love for the art form in general, but this particular example is...well...not one of my favorites.

I'm not a huge ABBA fan, for one. Which isn't to say that I don't and can't enjoy bop-along silly helium dance pop - the reaction that Scissor Sisters I Don't Feel Like Dancing provokes in me is embarrassing in it's total lack of decorum -  but outside of the title song I've always been pretty immune to the charm of the Swedish quartet.

And the book is frankly idiotic beyond the "usual idiotic" level of musical books.

But being a good parent I dragged my filthy ass into the big theater to see what the Girl and her dramat pals had come up with.

And came away pleasantly surprised.

It was a damn good production, for one thing, especially held up against my memories of wooden high school versions of Oklahoma! and Bye Bye Birdie and the other typical school-musical chestnuts. The set, sound, and lighting were damn near professional-grade, the choreography and blocking were smooth and both integral to and advanced the plot (such as it is - it's still a deeply stupid book...).

The ABBA songs weren't nearly as irritating as I remembered, except for the second-opening number; having the daugher Sophie sing Honey, Honey to her absent dad? Ummm....creepy much? Yyyokay.

The piece that made it really not just tolerable but enjoyable, though, were the two female leads; Lily Russell as Donna, the mother, and Rosa Workman as Sophie, the daughter.

They were both solid actors doing good work in their parts. But what their performances really reminded me was of the difficulty that an actor in musical theater has that they don't share with either their straight-theater or concert/gig singer counterparts.

A musical actor has to act with their singing voice.

That's goddamn hard. That's what makes the art so much fun for people like me who enjoy it; seeing people who are good at that difficult skill execute it well, and Lily and Rosa did that last night. They made their otherwise-ridiculous characters into real people for two hours on the stage, and invested you in them by the power of their singing voices.

Obviously opera presents the same challenge, but there you have the help of having your songs written by people like Verdi or Mozart or Wagner and not Björn fucking Ulvaeus.

(And that's why, incidentally, I have such contempt for the current slew of "singing shows" like The Voice and American Idol; they force the idea of singing into a power-pop ballad mold to the point where many listeners assume that "good singing" is "belting a ballad at the top of your emotional range".

Well, Mamma Mia! does have one of those - Donna gets the star turn with The Winner Takes It All - and Russell belted it nicely and got the expected roof-raising ovation.

One thing I should add here; the Girl herself.

She’s a musical fan and totally gets how lame a jukebox musical like MM is (we both love good productions like Wicked or Sweeney Todd) so she’d been positively cackling with schadenfreude at leaning on the whole “support the kid’s efforts” parental guilt to make us sit thru it. It’s actually worse for my Bride because she loathes the whole musical genre, good, bad, or indifferent.

But she's also a kiddo so, like all kiddos, wants loving attention and approval for her efforts.

So we went, and, surprise, it was fun, and the Girl danced in the aisles during the encores, and everyone went home happily humming "Waterloo".

And if there's no better purpose for the silly thing?

The Mamma Mia! did just what it was supposed to do.

Not A Day Goes By

I woke late this morning.

Well, late for me, used to the cold and dark of 4:00 or 5:00am on days when a drill rig or contractor was waiting, but I'd had another night of broken bad sleep. Between the knees and the Little Cat (who continued her tradition of rising loud and proud several times a night) I was still tired and disoriented as I made the coffee and checked my phone to see what had happened overnight.

I found that I no longer shared the Earth with Stephen Sondheim.

It's strange-funny how life and time transmute us and the world around us.

The Girl is a high school sophomore, and if she can be categorized as part of a high school clique - and I assume there still are cliques; jocks, nerds, stoners, normies - she's a "dramat", part of the thespian society which is delightfully strong in her otherwise-fairly-sketchy-urban high school.

She's not a dramat-dramat, not an aspiring actor with all the baggage associated with that. She's a  "techie", running her sound booth or light board for the shows. In fact, she has a fairly side-eyed view of actors, whom she blames for insisting on missing their cues or marks and messing up the tech. After the fall musical she came home cussing the actors so vituperatively that we ad to watch the Mel Brooks The Producers for the moment that Zero Mostel tells Kenneth Mars; "Here! Take the pistol! Go to the theater! Kill the actors!"

Because of her enthusiasm I've been pulled back into a world I left forty years ago; musical theater.

When you stop to think about it, the American musical is a very weird thing. How do you explain a particular subset of live drama where at random moments the actors break into song? Is there anything even remotely similar in real life?

But if they're good, musicals can be powerful in ways that no straight play can be.

Stephen Sondheim created those sorts of musicals.

In the late Seventies and early Eighties I was, like The Girl, a sort of peripheral member of the college Green Room and the people who hung around it. I had a bit part in Romeo and Juliet, not for my acting chops but because I fenced and the director wanted some realism for the opening fight scenes.

 
It was though the Green Roomers that I found musical theater, and the towering figure at that time was Sondheim.

Keep in mind that in the Seventies and early Eighties a Broadway ticket was an expense, not an investment. You could get a pass to a matinee for twenty bucks, and if you hit the TKTS booth in Times Square even an evening performance for maybe twice that - a bit of a stretch for  a college student but not insane, not the eighty or hundred dollars (or more..!) you'll pay now.

So I learned musical theater at the feet of Sondheim.

Oh, sure, I went to see the other sorts of stuff showing in the late Seventies; Nine, Side by Side, Barnum, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (and is there ever a property that has worn less well..?) and, in 1979, Sweeney Todd.

Sweeney was a thunderbolt, a revelation, that you could tell a story - a grim, dark, convoluted, intensely gripping story, through song alone. Dialogue was minimal, just bridges between the numbers, and the songs themselves were jewelboxes; rich, melodic and harmonic while at the same time jarring and atonal and as dark and twisted as the tale itself.

I was enthralled, in my cheap matinee seat in Row GG.

So, a convert to the Church of Sondheim, I waited impatiently for his next work of genius. That came two years later, and I couldn't wait for Opening Night. I scored preview tickets for Merrily We Roll Along.

 
I knew that the original was a Kaufman and Hart property from the Thirties, something about a dramat who makes it big by selling his soul, but that was all I knew other than it would be Sondheim and Hal Prince, those colossi who bestrode the Broadway world while we petty men crept between their legs to marvel at what they wrought.

So, dressed in my "business casual" that was as dressy as I could afford to fit in with the Broadway crowd, I waited eagerly in the dark for the curtain to rise.

It did...and that was the high point of the show.

What's peculiar is that Merrily seems to have grown in the telling. It's been revived several times, successfully, and is supposedly considered among the better Sondheim/Furth properties - perhaps not up there with Pacific Overtures or Company but better than The Frogs...

The 1981 production was a resounding disaster. 

Even a theater noob like me could sense it coming, as the muddled story and interchangeable cast struggled through the backwards-chronology towards the first act curtain. The intermission applause had a tentative quality that boded poorly for the second act which turned out to be as poorly received as the first. Along with the rest of the audience I was sort of stunned. This was a Stephen Sndheim show? The book, not the songs, was largely the problem, attempting to lift the story from the cynical opening to the sunshine-y final curtain and largely producing, instead, the sort of grim, forced brightness of a Hallmark commercial pitch.

The original run notoriously closed after 16 performances, the worst a Sondheim show had ever done up to that point.

I read that the failure of Merrily hit Sondheim hard. He considered abandoning Broadway altogether. And, indeed, his Broadway work was greatly reduced; Sunday in the Park with George in 1984, his first collaboration with James Lapine and Into The Woods three years later.

In a life that has featured as many failures as successes - as I imagine many, probably most lives do - it may sound odd that the immediate memory the news of that Sondheim would never again write the music and lyrics for a musical play brought to my mind was that of one of his great failures.

Even in failure, though,the enjoyment of musical theater I'd come to, largely though Sondheim's talents, never left me so that so many years later I could sit and enjoy Wicked and In The Heights with my neo-dramat daughter.

Is there a point to this ramble?

Perhaps only that we touch each others lives in odd and unpredictable ways; that the life now ended touched me, and mine touched my child's, and here we are, waiting in dark for the curtain to rise on another production for another day.

Pathways - taken, untaken, known and unknown.

 So it took the Boy about month - no, really, closer to three weeks - to discover what pretty much every young person getting out of high school over the past twenty years or so has learned; that low-skill, low-responsibility, entry-level commercial/retail wage work sucks ass.

Long hours (usually bad hours - he's got the 2-to-10 shift almost every workday so far...), poor pay, and the work itself is both mind-numbingly boring and irritatingly un-slide-throughable - you can't sort of glide along with it, you have to pay attention, but what you're paying attention to only requires about 10% of your intellectual capacity, leaving a ton of headspace for being irked and bored.

It's not that it's a "bad job". It's that it's a bog-standard "low-skill, entry-level" job that requires the entry-level person to be willing to spend a considerable time doing the drudge work before moving up to, say, produce, and he's the lowest of the low new hires.

Plan B, now?

Begin taking "fire science" classes at the local community college with the eventual goal of full-time professional employment with one of the big municipal departments.

I'm...very cautious about this.

First and foremost because almost every smoke-eater I'm run across has been a pretty serious jock. It's a job that requires a fairly insane level of both strength and aerobic fitness - the level that requires a jock-attitude towards working out.

This is a kid that, love him as I do, could make a sloth look perky. As far as I know the only muscle groups he's regularly exercised are the thumbs-and-forefingers of his gaming controller hands.

It's not that he couldn't change; anyone can do that if they want to hard enough. It's the magnitude of the change. He'd need to re-orient himself completely...to the point of almost being a different person. I'm not sure that he can do that - discipline and rigor have never been huge friends of his - and I'm very sure he has no idea how to even begin.

The second concern of mine is that I'm unsure...no, be honest - I've very sure he has no idea what this career entails. I'm betting he's done little or no diligence to find out what the best pathway towards this goal is, or even what the goal is. It's like he's ten years old and wants to be an astronaut.

I desperately want to sit down with him. I desperately want to map out a fitness plan and begin pushing him along it. I desperately want to find out what he knows about this and point him in the ways he can learn more.

I pretty much want to do the "Learn the pathway to your goal you must, young padawan, but the goal itself you must first find" thing with him.

But...

He's never been a kid who could be either led or driven. He's the king of Flat Affect, the ultimate in "listens with blank stare and then goes and does what he wants" kind of kiddo. I'm not sure whether I really want to spend a half hour I'll never get back trying to get some kind of response out of him that I'll never be sure is truly genuine.

He's eighteen. I get that this is the time for trying, for experimentation. 

My concern is that he doesn't seem to be "experimenting" very hard. I'm okay with him trying this or that...I'd just like to think he's learning more about this or that before he tries. But I'm utterly unsure that I can help him...not learn, but learn how to learn.

In the immortal words of Donald J. Trump; who knew that this parenting stuff would be so hard?

Boyz to men...

So this week the Boy jumped the low bar that is U.S. high school graduation.

I don't want to low-rate him. He did what he needed to do, so good on him.

The difficulty is...what now?

A high school diploma is the bottom-line of any sort of employment. He's not going anywhere exciting with that. And he's gone nowhere outside ten miles of his North Portland home for eighteen years. He has no idea what's out there.

The saddest part was that after his graduation, while his pals were hugging and taking selfies, he was walking home, alone, with his mom and sister and me tagging along behind,

I honestly don't know what to do.

He's going to do whats he's going to do, and I have no idea how to change that.

Talking about believing unbelievable things...

 ...here's the Little Cat being fooled by digital images of delicious prey:

I've seen videos of cats doing this, but I haven't before lived with a cat that was enticed by video images. Miss Lily loved to sit at the window and imagine massacring the feeder birds, but video didn't elicit the same response.

What was kind of fascinating is that The Girl played a whole series of these "cat video" clips, and the Little One's reaction to them was very different.

As you can see, the birds and rodents were boffo box office. She sat on the couch and followed the bird movements with her head as they flicked across the screen. But the rodents - a mixture of rats and squirrels - were utterly irresistible. She tried to catch them with her paw, and, finally, climbed up to the screen and tried to get behind it to where the rodents "were".

I'm not sure whether she was entertained by all this digital predation or just frustrated that she couldn't taste the sweet blood of her victims, but either way we all had quite the diverting half hour before we cut the cord, she looked at us with disgust, and jumped down to lick her backside.

Cats, go figure.

But now people? 

You'd think that almost two million years of evolution would make us harder to fool with digital simulation.

Eighteen

You're all grown up.

Now you're officially, legally, "grown". An adult. You don't need me anymore. You can do what you want, when you want to, and there's nothing I can do about that.

And that's hard. Because, first, you are and always will be my little girl. My baby daughter, my firstborn. No matter how old you grow. You don't remember my telling you this, but when you were, oh, something like fourteen you asked me when parents stop worrying about their kids and what they do, and I told you the story about Grandma Lawes and how she looked at me when I asked her that. Yep, about ten minutes after they zip us into the bag.

And second, because you will do goofy, stupid, scary, ridiculous things. You'll drive too fast. You'll drink too much. You'll fall for people who will be bad for you, or things that will be bad for you. You'll take dumb risks and fall into harm's way and - hopefully, if I and you are very lucky - you'll wriggle away through some special Providence or good fortune or pure dumbshit luck. And because you're "grown-up" all I'll be able to do is sit and wait and worry and hope.

Just like I did that day all those eighteen years ago.

What? No. Just something in my eye.

But now you're a woman grown. All those long years of diapers and lullabies and hugs and tears and drives to soccer games and quiet mornings and schooldays and hopes and fears have come to this.

Alone? No, no, never. You'll always have us, me and your mother. We'll always love you and care for you and care about you. We'll never leave you, even when you leave us behind.

Yes, lovie. You...what? Yes, leave us. You know you will. You already have. Yes. All those many years ago.

I know, I'm sorry, it's just that sometimes I forget how hard it was. Hard for us all. It wasn't what we wanted, love, was it? We came to that moment, and then instead of going home together you went on and we were left behind to miss you and mourn you.

It's still hard for us.

Because we never got to this day, did we?

We never got to stand here, you and I, with you all strong and young and full of hope and glory. And me, all full of love, proud of you, and hopeful...and nervous worried and scared of losing you to all that goofy, scary, ridiculous stuff. We never got to be father and daughter, never got to live through all those days and years.

You passed through our lives like a shadow fleeing with the sun, to vanish with the coming of night. To...how did I put it all those years ago? "Who ran on the tiny fleet feet that never learned to walk but which carried you swiftly, so swiftly from darkness to darkness."

And once again, I stand here, alone.

Every year. You're here, the hole in my heart.

Then gone again.

Yeah, this has been a long one, hasn't it? Sorry. Well, hey, it's not every day your little girl is a woman. You gotta cut your Da some slack today.

Because after this you'll go again. For another year, another and another and another and all of them, until I join you in that place where you've gone, that bourne from which no traveler returns, that place you have to leave for now. Yes. Now. It's time. Let's say goodbye so you can go. No, you're not too big to hug.

So.

Goodbye, love, Goodbye. I love you. Yes, I'll think about you, my big girl, my own. Goodbye.

I miss you already.

Goodbye.

Bryn Rose Gellar March 1, 2002-March 2, 2002

Flown Away

Last Sunday I was bringing the Boy back from his first kendo class when I got the text message on my phone.

"Am at grocery store. Need you go home now. Missy just found Spots dead."

Spots Pecker Violet, as he was originally known, came home with the Girl back in November of 2013. He was a "hand-reared" blue-phase parakeet who was born in the little "BiZee Bird Shop" out in Beaverton.

Now my experience with pet birds up to Spots was limited to the Bride's companion, Oxey the Cockatiel, who blended in with me and Lily the Cat and Quinn the dog when we first moved in together back at the turn of the 21st Century, and a nastier, more snappish creature never lived.

He seemed to dote on mi esposa, clambering onto her shoulders and nibbling on her earrings, but he would hiss and bite everyone else, including his stepfather (that is to say, me...). He was grossly cagebound and nasty about it, and when he would get out of his cage he was nasty about that, too.

He could fly about as well as a paper airplane, fluttering madly while losing altitude until he ran into a wall or a window, whereupon he'd float to the ground and scrabble about on the floor, hissing and biting. He was so nasty that even the cats seemed intimidated. He really was a pill.

So I wasn't prepared for how sweet and personable the little budgie was.

He loved to climb on you, just as the cockatiel had. But he never bit. He would nibble; he loved the Bride and Missy's long hair, and he like to perch on my reading glasses and pull my eyebrows, which was incredibly ticklish but kind of fun. He was very patient, and would sit with you for hours, chirping and nuzzling.

He was a good little companion, and Missy was a good caretaker; playing with him and giving him the greens that he savored. We had to be careful, because the cats were unsurprisingly fascinated by him, especially Drachma, who would have caught and killed Spots if he could have.

Rotten cat...

Spots was Missy's beloved pet all through her childhood. He was her treasure, she was diligent and kindly, ensuring he got his playtime and healthy food and was kept safe and happy.

But children grow, and sometimes they leave their childhood joys behind. Missy is now a middle-schooler, a theater kid, has interests and friends outside the house, and slowly found herself visiting and caring for her little bird less often. Somethimes Spots could go days without leaving his cage, joining us only though his voluble chatter from his cage in the far corner of Missy's room.

Too late, she said afterwards, she'd idly noticed several days earlier that his chatter seemed less animated, and his movements less energetic.

But she told herself she'd check in on him later. And later became later until finally when she did go to him she found him lifeless in the bottom of his cage.

She was bereft.

There were shared tears, and we gave her lots of hugs and kisses. We grieved over him, and wrapped him in a soft cloth, and buried him out in the side yard, under the star magnolia, in what we call "Bryn's Garden". We got flowers for him, and still are pondering what to do with his vacant cage, a sad and empty reminder of the small life that is no longer with us.

And perhaps the most difficult part is that the Girl blames herself for not being more attentive, for not checking on little Spots sooner, for not saving him when he could have been saved.

And all I can do is hug and kiss her and tell her I love her.

Because she's right.

She could have, and that's a wound of the heart she will have to carry with her always, just one of a thousand tiny agonizing piercings, like the crown of thorns around the icon of the Sacred Heart, that will linger as long as she does, to remind her of that small moment of carelessness that led to her little pet slowly dying alone on his perch in the quiet of the empty room.

We are none of us guiltless.

But it is not the guilt itself; far too many of us stroll through life careless and reckless of the harm we do.

It's the knowledge of that guilt that weighs some of us down so heavily.

Old Man Yells at GPS

My daughter took her bicycle out in the pouring rain today to deliver presents to her friends, equipped with her backpack and her phone with it's GPS app.

An hour later I got a phone call.

"I'm lost".

After a frantic and irritable quarter hour on the phone I trudged out to the car and drove across North Portland to where she stood, wet and apologetic, and loaded her and the bicycle and her gifts into Bad Bob the Subaru and drove to where her friend lived. Turned out she was about right east-west (off by about a block) but way north, almost eight blocks or so. The Girl says that what happened was that the touch-screen started to sputter when it got soaked, and the GPS app kept jumping her around, telling her she was one block, then four blocks, then six blocks from her friend.

I remarked that civilian GPS gimmicks had a randomizer incorporated in them so that Cletus and Ahab the bomb-makers couldn't outwit the military units tasked to catch 'em.

We arrived at the friend, who emerged in an exultation of dogs, handed off the prezzies, and retreated, wet and grateful, to the car and then to the Little House. Daughter has been curled up on the couch since then with her blanket and her treacherous phone, looking at cat videos.

I patiently explained to The Girl that once, everyone in Portland had a copy of something called a Thomas Guide in their car that guided them to their destinations.

I suspect she didn't believe me.

Si jeunesse savait. Si viellesse pouvait.

They've finally developed the boneless cat

And here he is, with Missy:

Drachma really is the sweetest kitty. He's not particularly a lapcat; I mean, he tolerates and even seems to enjoy being petted, but he doesn't really seek you out and cuddle with you in hopes of a pet.

But he's incredibly tolerant of being hauled around and mauled by the urchins. Practically every other cat I've ever worked for would have sliced the little mongers to ribbons for the stuff they do to him. Not Drachma. He simply lies quietly under their abuse until he's had enough, at which point he wriggles free.

I constantly remind the sprogs of this but they seem unconvinced. I await their encounter with a different, more typical, kitty and expect that they will be quickly disabused of their foolish conviction...

Just in case, here's the reference in the title.

It's actually sort of sad, a reminder of the time when Charlie Schultz bothered to actually cartoon and his creation was something other than a vehicle to huck insurance...

Fifteen

Well.

It's that day of the year again, isn't it, love?

That day where once, or twice, or a handful of times I stop and really think about you.

Not in the usual sort of passing way that has become your visits to me of late; the random idle wonder at the sight of a dark head in a gaggle of teenage girls, or the fleeting memory of a still small bundle of yellow flannel jammie.

But a dead stop remembering you as you were, and remembering me as you were to me.

Not the tiny day-old baby girl that was all that you would ever be. That was your mom, who carried you all those long and fretful months. But to me; the gangly girl you might have been, or the petulant and angry teenager I hoped you'd avoid becoming, or the compact dark young woman who would one day stand over my grave and remember me.

Instead I got to stand over yours, and now I am almost all there is; your mother and I and a handful of our friends, to remember you.

I'm sorry you never got the chance to grow up into all those dfferent people, darlin'. I miss those people and all the other people you might have been but never could be. I wish that I was going home tonight to find you pissed off and arguing with your sullen little brother and pushing aside your goody-goody little sister and shouting at you to lighten up and lay off your siblings, which says something pretty brutal about how much I miss the you I'll never get to know.

I do enjoy our little visits on this day, troubling as they are at times.

I wish you could stay for a while longer. But tomorrow you'll be gone. Again. As you were, and as you always will be, even though in your quiet and ephemeral way you'll be here as long as I am. That doesn't really count. Not next to the you that isn't here with me.

And, look; it's time to go already. Yes, I'll miss you. No, I'm sorry, you can't stay longer. Yes. I'll think of you again.

I always do.

Goodbye, love.

Goodbye.

Bryn Rose Gellar
March 1, 2002 - March 2, 2002

Slayride

Here comes Drachma the Merkitty pulling what Missy has labeled as "Drachma's Christmas Slay":

You'll note that the idiot cat encourages the Girl in her pranking by plodding along with this contraption harnessed to him instead of tear-assing around the room in proper insane cat-tied-to-a-box fashion:

And...there he goes.

He really is a sweet cat. But...Jesus, cat, show some pride! How the hell can I convince my kids that you are really a small but vicious domestic predator if you keep doing stuff like this..?

Friday Jukebox: Far, far away edition

This is because I'm on my third day of two weeks covering a grading job in Medford, down in Oregon's Dixie. I'm fairly dirty and tired and bored of eating bad food and living out of a suitcase and it's only the third fucking day, ferchrissakes. I tried to think of something more uptempo and realized I just wanted something slow and kind of dreamy and sad.



Here come the priests, each one wailing and bemoaning
Lordy, they got their heads bowed down
Here come the madmen, they're too excited for atoning:
"Burn the mosque," they're shouting, "Burn it down!"

Hard to believe that Carly wrote that something like forty years ago. Damn.

It's been something of a difficult autumn for me. The Boy is ever more difficult, apparently because he has some variation of "attention-deficit disorder" which, apparently, also makes you kind of an asshole. The real irking part is that he's only an asshole to my Bride, who is the sweet, loving parent (as opposed to the irascible, impatient, demanding, um, well, me...) and who has busted her butt to try and make things easier for him. Well, he's burning that bridge like a torch in the night and driving his little sister - who is a really loving little soul - completely out of patience with him.

The real problem with this is that my presence - even if I'm not looming over him in a sort of Evil Stepdaddy sort of way - seems to turn the little bugger's Asshole down to background noise. It's when I leave for an extended time - as I have now - that Satan's Child comes roaring back out. It drives me nuts, because my Bride takes the hammer and there's nothing that I can do.

And just in case I didn't have anything to feel sorry for myself about, my right hip has decided that being a small, nagging sort of irritation isn't really fun, so it's gone flat-out, full-throttle, shove-the-shank-in-and-leave-it-and-cripple-the-sonofabitch. I can still walk, sort of, with a really awful torquing sort of motion that resembles nothing so much as Igor in the old Frankenstein flicks. But it hurts, hurts like a bastard. I don't even want to talk about putting a sock on my right foot; sometimes I've been that close to tears as the simple act of putting a tube of cloth on a piece of muscle and bome less than three feet away from my hand is just flat out frigging impossible.

I've come to dread these away-from-home trips just because I fear that I'm going to get up one morning and no amount of effort will let me put my sock on or tie my bootlace and I will have to go, barefoot, to some horrified stranger asking for help like a beggar in the marketplace.

My replacement date is now in March, because my current employer - for whom I worked for years back in the day has concluded that my "period of employment" dates only from my RE-hiring in February of this year. Which means I am ineligible for medical disability leave or paid benefits until after that date in 2016.

So I shamble around like some spastic zombie and curse my leg and my ill-fortune.

But enough self-pity, dammit.



I wanted to throw this up before I go, though; it's the full album from which I got the Karen Alexander song Brown Shoes I posted here a while back. If you're looking for something fun and uptempo, forward to 23:00 and the song Baghdad Ragman. You want hooky?

"Hussein the barber's got a razor like a saber, and
Hassan the butcher has a brother who's a baker, and
The whole bazaar it hums like a song, and
The Baghdad ragman comes with the dawn..."

Oh, yeah. I think you'll like it.

Thirteen

Thirteen years gone
But still in my heart,
New like tomorrow,
Sour like the hurt of a stolen kiss,
Dark, like shadows of loneliness.
I recall...
I remember...
I still feel... I know
Everyday the presence of your absence,
I endure the weight
Of the emptiness you left behind,
Thirteen years but still...
Even now still
I, in the silence of every breath
Pray, even if...
Just for a few minutes with you...
Again.
I never got the chance to say.
I never got the chance to say I love you.

~ Ezediuno Louis Odinakaose

Bryn Rose Gellar

March 1, 2002 - March 2, 2002

Out of the mouths

My kid used the word "worshed" the other day and I realized that I have several peculiar verbal tics. That's one of them.

For the English word to describe what you do with dirty clothes I say "Did you put your socks in the worsh?"

I don't know why I do this. I don't call folding money "corsh" or a mixture of meat and potatoes "horsh". It's just how I pronounce the word wash, and I don't remember why the hell I do it.

Now that I have had to actually think about it I'm embarassed by it and have consciously tried to amend my speech to the correct pronunciation, "wash".

Now that I think of it, I realize that I've picked up a couple of these odd verbal tics.

I use the word "arsed" in the sense of "worked up over" or "bothered to"; "It isn't something I got arsed enough about to get done...". This is a Britishism, and I suspect I picked it up from listening/reading about English soccer.

When I'm exasperated about something I will often say "Jesus wept!" as a way of saying "What a ridiculous fuck-up!" I do know wherte I got this; from reading that the two words are the shortest verse in the Bible. I liked that, and somehow it found its way into my speech.

If someone tells me something obvious, or something that I have already agreed to, I will often reply "There you go." (or if in rough company "There you fucking go."). This was my old drill sergeant SSG Layne's reaction to anything he agreed with (spoken, by the way, in his very distinctive Caribbean accent with the accent on the first word: "Dere you fokkin' go!") and it has stuck with me.

When I was little we had a cat named "Possum", and ever since all cats (when speaking to the cat) are "possum", as in "Who's da sweet fluffly li'l possum?" (said in babytalk voice while rubbing cat's chin).

The cats don't seem to care one way or the other but, then, cats should all be named whatever the sound of a can of cat food opening sounds like.

So. Those are my verbal tics, oddities, and peculiarities. I have no idea why this suddenly occurred to me, but there it is. Embarrassing, perhaps, but better than running around a comic convention in nekomimi ears, so there's that.

Do you have any of these odd little verbal tics, and, if so, what are they?

Cold Feet

Yesterday the cold wind blew in.

As I was saying; we get these clear days in the Black Months every so often. This type - when the polar high blows in off the interior - is the more common. Typically we get anywhere from a day to a week of brilliantly clear, frigidly cold days and nights before the Rains return in a horrid pelter of ice and sleet and automobile wrecks. Oregonians are awful drivers in any sort of slick weather; they won't stay home but they won't chain or snow-tire up, either. Portland becomes a sort of Fellini movie only with more dented chrome.

The hard crystal-sunlight is almost worth the bitter cold.

Yesterday was Veteran's Day (you're welcome, and I happily accept American Express, VISA and Mastercard...) and the kids had the day off. We were drilling up in the West Hills and from the look of it several of the surrounding residences contained daughters in the same grade; fourth or fifth would be my guess. This little troupe came scampering out into the cold about mid-morning, raced through our work site in the winter coats and jammie bottoms - the last in line barefooted - up the steps to one of the girls' home where they proceeded to bounce shrieking on the outdoor trampoline for about three-quarters of an hour or so.

The girls slowly bounced to a stop and, after a pause for discussion and the hunting of coats and slippers (for those who had worn them), trooped back through our part of the street en route to another girl's house.

As the last girl, the one in the sock feet, reached the sidewalk she paused for a moment and looked around at the stained-glass leaves glowing in the late morning light.

"My feet are so freezing." she said to no one in particular, and then sprinted down the street to catch up with her friends.