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.

Twenty-three

 Hey, you! C'mere, let me give you a hug. You're not too big for that yet, are you?

Of course you're not. You're, well, still tiny, still only one day old. This one day, twenty-three years ago, when you left us, your mom and I, just a day after you arrived.

The only place your grew up was in our hearts.

This day, and all those before and after. The days I dreamed of and hoped for and never had. Dreamed of all the things we'd do together; good...and bad, happy and sad, cheerful or angry or bored or silly.

They never happened, did they, dearest?

Now there's only this day, the day you climb up the dark stairwell and sit beside me as I cry.

Because I still miss you.

Oh, yes; there's your little brother and little sister. Yes, they're great. I love them to pieces, and always will.

But today is about you, the big sister they never had, the little girl and young woman I never got to know.

This year was even harder because I'm not just missing you but missing your mom. The first time in twenty-three years we haven't had a partner to console each other, a friend and lover to give and receive comfort. 

I called your mom today. Told her that she was in my heart, and hoped that she could find some solace in that, find some peace. It's hard on her, y'know. She carried you closer than her own skin, slept behind your heartbeat for three-quarters of a year. She dies a little every time this year thinking of and missing you.

And so do I, in a different way.

Because every year, every time this day comes, I look into the darkness for the tiny flame that was your too-brief stay with us, to remember you, to grieve for you. To wish against all the years that we had another chance, knowing we never will. 

To have the years of you, child and girl and woman grown, father and daughter, loving and beloved.

So. Sit beside me for a little while. I promise I won't try and hold you when you have to go. But just now, for this time, just for this day, let me sit and dream the dream I dreamed, the dream of the you that never came.

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

Twenty-two

Oh, hey. I almost didn't see you there, sweetie.

C'mere. Siddown for a bit, can you? I'm just finishing this up, I'll be right with you.

That? Oh, it's some sort of IPA. Yeah, cliche, I know. Hey, I like 'em well enough, now that the Northwest is mostly over the "can you top this" bitterness craze. Go ahead, try a sip.

Yeah? Well, it was seven bucks at Grocery Outlet. Probably a reason for that, eh?

It's been a long year, hasn't it?

Retired? Yeah. Still working into that. Your mom is running in circles over at school; more to do, fewer to do it. Kid brother still gaming 24-7, baby sis ready to spread her wings and fly off to college...

Would you be there now?

Getting ready to graduate? Doctor, lawyer, beggarman, thief? Would you be working, instead? Putting in your forty hours behind a wrench or behind a desk?

Would you be cadging a drink from me like this, nasty hoppy IPA or what?

How much else would we have shared?

Your younger siblings share almost nothing with me. Your sister and I are both theater buffs, but she's very different from me in every other way. Your brother? I don't get him and never have.

And I never got the chance to know you.

I wish I had. I wish I'd been able to grow with you, to share your happiness and sorrow. To know you, as I had hoped, all those many years ago. But this day came, and went, and so did you, forever one day old.

I don't miss you the way your mother does. For her you're a huge hole in her heart, a part of her she'll never find, the end of her dreams for and of you.

I miss the you who never was. The little girl, the young woman, the strong daughter who, in the best way of fathers and daughters, stood by me into the grave and carried my memory beyond it.

Instead, we have yesterday, and today, and then you'll be gone again. Here, have another sip. Yeah, it gets a little better after a couple. Still not very good. Seven bucks worth.

But let's have a last round, you and I. And grin and shake our heads and look away, and when I look back you'll be gone.

Until the next time, love. Goodbye. I love you. I miss you.

Goodbye.

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

The Government in all its majesty...

 Spent a big part of yesterday here:

The reason was classical "DMV 101"; the Social Security Administration had somehow input the wrong birthdate in my daughter's SS data and as you know if you've ever dealt with...well, any bureaucracy anywhere, your birthdate is part of the golden ticket to get anything done.

The problem came to light when I contacted the SSA to arrange one of the oddest pieces of federal largess (and let's not forget that I worked for these rascals a loooooong time, so my N is pretty large for "odd pieces of federal largess") I've ever come across.

I started my retirement benefit application last month, and it turns out that if 1) you're receiving Social Security and 2) you have a minor kid who is either a) younger than 18, or b) still in high school, said kiddo gets some cash from her Uncle Sugar, too.

While I talking to the nice SSA person about that I insisted that her birthdate is X/XX/XX, and the SSA person said, no, it's X/YY/XX. And I looked at the paperwork in my hand and, when we agreed that we disagreed, committed to showing up with said daughter in tow to fix the problem.

So off we went, paid for parking, and entered into the maw of the SSA.

As someone who (see above) has spent a fair amount of time sitting in various US government facilities I have to give the SSA people their due.

The place was clean and well-maintained. The rent-a-cops running the security screening were professional and polite. And the process was orderly enough, given the wild quiltwork of humanity it had to deal with.

THAT was a real novelty to the kiddo. She's not sheltered, and I think she gets that there's a lot more to city life than our little patch of North Portland. But to spend several hours in the Greyhound-station confines of the downtown SSA waiting room? 

That brought those things pretty close.

Was it the dude having some sort of loudly prolonged attack of some sort of scary-sounding respiratory problem in the men's can? The family with multiple crying infants? The frankly-scary-looking dude with more metal in his clothing that I have in my legs?

No, I think it was the elderly lady who had a long, heart-rending breakdown at Window #2 because her landlord (I think) was demanding her Social Security card and she'd tried repeatedly to have one mailed to her but hadn't received it.

She was very forcefully desperate, the unseen bureaucrat behind the glass was subvocally unable to help her, and all this drama played out in front of The Girl, who is very tightly buttoned about drama in general (and especially for a Theater Kid, which is one of her personas...). I think she was a bit shaken about someone's hardships being played out right in front of her.

Plus the guy with the dog...well, you get the idea.

We finally got called to Window #2 nearly at the end of the day, laid out our documentation, got the birthdate corrected with little or no palaver, and celebrated with a stop at St. Honore for a pastry treat. Bureaucracy, hurrah!

Now I just need to go pick up the p-work from her high school.

But before I go I think it's worth noting this...

I have no idea who the hell "Jesse Kelly" is when he's at home. but my guess is he's some bog-standard "conservative" who gets wood dreaming of the social contract of the Gilded Age.

But the notion that the "country cannot be saved" unless We the People return to the pre-New Deal era of widespread common poverty and aristocratic plutocracy seems to have become one of the few actual "policies" of these people.

Which, BTW, is why I applied for these Social Security benefits now rather than waiting until 70 when the real fat paycheck comes due.

I don't trust these bloated hyenas not to pull this fast one when they and their Orange King get their dickbeaters on the levers of power. 

I want to - as best I can - lock in the paycheck I can get, not the bigger one that relies on the social engineering skills of the MAGAt Horde.

I know I keep beating this drum, but if the American Experiment has ANY value at all, it's as a test case for the promise of the Republic to be for all of "We the People" and not - as designed by the Framers - for "the rich, the well-born, and the able".

That promise is a hell of a big ask.

It relies on We the People to be true citizens, to work hard to understand our government, even down to the guy behind Window #2, and make informed, intelligent decisions about how that government works.

To not fall for the "conservative" bullshit about "government is the problem". To make that government work for Our best interests, not those of the wealthy, or the corporate "persons", or the various power-brokers and lobbyists for this and that.

One of the reasons those Framers wanted to restrict the franchise was because they doubted the ability of the mass of the People to do those things.

I can't help but wonder.

But for now, well, the pastries were good. And the Girl gets some college money.

Now you'll excuse me, but the goddamn drywall guy is supposed to be here and I need to let him in or we'll be another day behind schedule.

Thunder on the right hand

I was still only partially awake - as much as you can still be asleep with eleven-point-six pounds of cat on your sternum - when the light flashed beyond my closed eyes.

"That's lightning" I thought muzzily and, after a long, long pause, the low grumble of thunder confirmed it.

Between that moment and the giving in to the furry supervisor's demand that I get up and deal with the whole Lack of Food Crisis several more thunder rolls broke through the usual background morning sounds; birdsong, the tap of rain on the downspouts, the sussuration of tires in the street out front.

As a child of the East Coast and Midwest I miss those thunderstorms as only you can miss something that is too far away to be a nuisance and too distant in time to be a bad memory. 

The "thunderstorms" here in the Northwest lack conviction. They are more often like this morning's; a subdued series of distant rumbles punctuated with the occasional flash, usually fading after less than a half hour.

That's not a thunderstorm. Where's the crescendo, from far-off subsonic explosion through building flash-and-crash to the climax of blinding-strobe-and-wall-shuddering detonations overhead? And the decrescendo as the storm cell passes, the artillery of Heaven receding "...like troops to fall on other fields and streets"?

I still enjoyed the brief passage this morning, warm and dry and comforted with coffee in the cup as the minor-key thunder passed by.

The photo above is from the east deck during that morning, in one of those weird "the western sky is storming while the sun climbs bright out of the east" moments we seem to have more often than not in our springtime. 

"Sunshowers" they're called, and they're as close as we come to the towering storms of my Midwestern youth. Sad, really.

So. Blogging?

I'm working through another "battle" piece for May, this one the "Battle of Blair Mountain" from the coalfields of West Virginia. It's a real oddity, and I'm having a bit of a struggle finding extensive sources. We'll see how it works out.

As for the rest of life?

Well, we're working up to the biggest remodel we've ever done in the Little House, a completely new kitchen as well as a lot of bathroom upgrades. The whole thing is kind of on hold for the moment, however; the contractor seems to have over-estimated how much structural work they could do without additional foundation support. That wasn't in our initial - high, as it is - budget, so we need to look at that before we decide how to deal with the additional cost.

My Bride soldiers on in our neighborhood school, as Beloved Ms Debra the Secretary. Her friend and work-wife the Principal's Secretaryis retiring at the end of this year, though; she's a treasure, and will be sorely missed.

The Boy is in the local community college, doing what I have no idea. He seldom speaks, and never of his classwork.

The Girl is exploding all over; she's a star for her high school theatre tech staff, the Mistress of the Soundboard, she's going to a theatre getaway this summer, her ceramic art took third in the Potter's Guild show this year, and she finally passed her driving road test, so she's well on her way to freedom.

Me?

I'm knocking about, still working on and off, still writing about soccer and here about everything and anything. Still watching our national devolution into Weimar Germany with a sour distaste for the combination of stupidity and hubris that seems to be the 21st Century American Way. I'm glad, in a sense, to be close to the grave. Between climate and politics I don't want to see what this country will be in forty years.

Oh, well.

Paprika Plains is almost over and I'm off to the gym. If I find anything compelling to say I may be back in a bit. Or you might not see me again until Blair Mountain.

We'll see.

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.

Nineteen

It's so difficult to imagine you as a woman grown.

You were, you will be, always one day old, the day we gained and lost you.

But before I lost you, while you were still tiny, you grew strong in my heart and straight and tall in my thoughts. You were my grown girl before the day you were born.

I couldn't believe that day would never come.

 But it didn't, did it, love?

You never grew past that day.

How could I have guessed? How could I have known, that the hug I would give you nineteen years ago tomorrow would be the first and last we would ever share? That the only place you would ever grow would be in my heart?

I will always miss you, darling. But this day most of all, the first and last day I would get to hold you, hoping even as I knew I could not hold you, that you had gone on before me, impatient, to that place where all the stars go out.

But I know that, after all these long years, that you will always go on, and I and your mother will always be left here behind, empty of you and aching for you and grieving for the loss of you, both the you we lost that day and the you who would have been standing before me today; strong and straight and tall, my daughter, my dearest heart.

Let me hug you one last time before you go.

You're so big. I'm so proud of you. 

Goodbye, love. 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.

Upon the waters

Four years ago my father, the man I always called "The Master Chief" in this place, died.

My mother, his wife, lingered on another three years until she, too, died in the spring of the year, just a little over a year ago.

I sat beside them both in their final days, as their bodies followed where their...souls? Spirits? Minds? The part of them that made them who they were, the person that they had been, had already gone.

Both passed from that which I called "...the "sleep" of the hinterlands of life, that gray taiga where the living world meets the dead." to unlife full of years and - although no more ready for that passage than any of us is, or will ever be - full of lives well-lived.

Today a small group of their family - son and daughter, cousins, niece and nephew - and those relatives' beloveds gathered in a nondescript little rented room in a small town on the east end of Fourth Lake, the largest of the "Fulton Chain of Lakes" in the Adirondak Mountains of New York state.

The remnants of Jack and Carol - father and mother, aunt and uncle - stood as they had in life beside one another, only just as small rectangular boxes set on a table scattered with books of photographs and memories of the lives of the ashes within.

It was the sort of barely-comfortable gathering you'd find anywhere a group of virtual strangers met to spend one last time with dead people.

Hardly anyone knew what to say, and only my sister had the courage to openly weep for the loss of our father and mother. Several of us told stories of Carol McMillan and Jack Lawes as we remembered them, or through memories of our times with them.

My cousin's (and her wife's) happy little Westie helped lighten the mood by being, well, a happy small dog. I had a flight to catch tomorrow morning so I left early, with the others still talking amongst themselves in the rustic room lit with the filtered sun of early afternoon.

I wandered down to the shore of the lake, the clear water bright with wavelets.

This place was particular to my father, who was born and grew up not far away and whose relatives had owned one of the many "summer resorts" along the north shore, although much more modest than the luxurious Gilded Age hotel my sister had booked for our parents' memorial.

I sat and drank a draft to their memory, to the place that my father had loved and had brought his bride to and she had, in turn, come to love.

When I wrote about my father's death four years ago I spoke of how adrift I felt that he was gone:

"As his living remainder I still feel as if I'm floating, weightlessly untethered, beside him. As if our conversation simply halted, forever unfinished, as he stood up and left without a word. He is no longer and yet will always be my father, the man who raised me, whose manhood was my measure as I grew to manhood myself. I find myself turning to talk of some daily commonplace with him only to find emptiness there, and the understanding that the emptiness will be there until I find myself where he has gone."

I won't pretend that I was gracious or cheerful about traveling cross-continent to stand beside the silent ashes of my father and mother. I won't be polite and say it was a pleasure, or that I wanted to make the journey. I was a right bastard, sis, and I made a difficult time more difficult for you. I'm sorry, that's the damnedest part of who I am.

But for all my bitching and moaning in the end I'm glad I came over those mountains and seas and spoke, in vain, to their silent ashes.

For, as I've mentioned before in this place; as children and parents we make an unspoken bargain.

As parents we will see our children into the world.

We will help them grow straight and strong, honest and truthful, kind and loving. We will set the path before them, the path into the world and through it, as best we can.

And then we, as children, will see our parents out of the world.

Love and care for them, listen to and treasure them, and, finally, see them laid down in death as peaceful and beloved as we can make them.

As they set us forth upon the waters we fulfill the promise that will see them home safe to harbor. And then be the quay where they came to rest; to bear witness of their voyage and the doings thereof, great and small, fine and coarse, large and little. That, in us, their memory will live as long as we do.

And so we have. So I have. I am no longer adrift, no longer bereft. I am without them, the people who helped make me who I am, but I will never be without them. I am their logbook, their testament, their living memory. I, my sister, those we love and tell of our parents and their lives.

It is ours now to take forward from here; mine, and all of us who knew them and loved them.

So I stand, at rest, by the waters of the deep cold lake where my father and mother have themselves come to rest. Their journey together, and their journey together with me and all their beloveds, is ended, and their great works, the works of their lives, are done.

Now they are ours to carry on.

Happy Day, you Mothers

Funny how it never really occurred to me until afterwards.

But you were always there for us, even when we - well, I - were rotten little bastards. You loved us, cared for us, corrected us when we were wrong and praised us when we did right.

You were a classic Fifties corporate wife and mother, but at the same time you were your own self; amateur actress, teacher, social liberal, mentor, confidant. Cubs fan - my childhood summers will forever be narrated by the sound of Jack Brickhouse drifting out of the big windows on the sunporch where you knit and listened and cursed the Amazin' Mets.

You did all that a worthy person does; you lived an upright and honorable life, you raised your children to do and be the best they could do and be, and you died full of years and honor.

I love and miss you, mom.

Margot Carol McMillan Lawes, 1926-2018

Sixteen

Hey, love. Come. Sit with me.

I miss you.

Well, I know. Yes, I miss you all the time. But this time, every year, I miss you a little more, because this was your birthday and birthdays are special.

No. I didn't get you anything. I'm sorry.

Well, sixteen is hard. You are not a woman grown but not a child anymore, either. It's hard to know what you like, you change so quickly. One day it was all sparkle princesses and ponies, then it seemed like just the next day it was CDs and clothes and new soccer cleats. It's hard for your dad to keep up with you, you run so fast now.

I don't know how you do it, as little as you are.

You are little, sweetie. Only one day old, dust and ashes all these years. The only place you grew was in my heart, and in your mom's, who hurts for you so much she cries out for you.

I miss you, too.

But I miss the you I never knew. The little girl frightened of scary noises. The busy tween. The rude teenager. And, now, the young woman, strong and sure, lit from within with promise, like a star, or a lighted window on a cold lonely night.

There's just this one night, though.

Your birthday, every year, when you come and sit with me. And that night, like every night I miss you, again, and wish I could kiss you, just once, before we have to say goodbye.

Yes, love. Yes, I will wait for you here again next year, my very dear.

Goodbye. Yes, love, I love you. Goodbye, sweetie.

Goodbye.

When I die choose a star
and name it after me
that you may know
I have not abandoned
or forgotten you.
You were such a star to me,
following you through birth
and childhood, my hand
in your hand.

When I die
choose a star and name it
after me so that I may shine
down on you, until you join
me in darkness and silence
together.

~ David Ignatow

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

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

The coveted Portland Public Schools Achievement Medal...

So...you know that there's a U.S. Army tradition called the "I-love-me" wall, right?

Since we can't get on-demand (or achievement-related) pay raises or promotions, soldiers get plaques or certificates or other gimcracks when we done good. These testimonials are usually hung up on the wall inside the platoon office, or in a barrack room, to remind us just how awesome we really are. Sometimes it helps when we suffer the inevitable fuckup and the First Sergeant calls us "oxygen-thieves".

Well...my ten-year-old daughter - with absolutely NO prompting or example from Daddy - created this:

Her very own "I-love-me" wall.

I trust that she'll be bitching about the chow, goldbricking her way through detail (or "chores" as they're referred to in fifth grade...), and coming to me with ridiculous schemes to go on extended TDY any day now.

Sniff! I couldn't be prouder!

Life is Life: A Master Chief story

When my father was dying last spring several of you asked me to tell you something more about him. I don't know...yes, I do know why that occurred to me this morning; a friend of mine just lost her mother and I thought back to losing my father.

So. You recall that I told you that my father the Master Chief was a proudly intellectual man, an engineer, with an engineer's dislike of obfuscation and insistence on precision in both word and deed. That made him something of an uncomfortable man to be around; he was perfectly capable of the sorts of small evasions and elisions that we use to lubricate our interactions with others, but one could never be sure if, or when, he might simply state an unpalatable truth. Not rudely, perhaps, or as a weapon of social combat, but simply as he saw it.

I'm not sure when this was - probably some time in the early Seventies when I was between puberty and young adulthood and full of the sort of rudely anxious certainty that seems to come with our early teens - but I was holding forth at dinner on the unfair requirement that I perform certain chores during the long summer vacation, in that that vacation time was itself limited and the requirement to put my own entertainment on hold even further seemed grossly burdensome, a needless reduction of my already-painfully-short free time. The Master Chief listened to this gravely, and nodded, and replied:

"Well, yes, but you still have more free time than you will ever have again in your life. After your school days are over you will never have this much freedom again. Not just less but much less. You'll probably never have more than two weeks vacation the rest of your life. You'll work at your job that means five days a week or more, no spring breaks, no summer vacation, no half-days, no two weeks a Christmas. Just work and two weeks a year."

This seemed appallingly, punitively unfair, and I said so. Was that it? School and work, work and school, endlessly and forever with only the thinnest of hopes of a rest? What was the point, then? What was the end? When did it stop?

"Once you're older, perhaps, if you've planned and worked carefully, there might be a "retirement" when you will have all the free time you could hope for." he noted. I wailed that this seemed even worse; the only hope for freedom was to hope to be to ancient to enjoy it. What hope then?

"Well, then you die." was his conclusion. Dinner done, he retired to his chair to smoke a pipe and mark up the paperwork he'd brought home with him.

My mother was horrified; "Jack!" she exclaimed, and hurried to reassure me that life wasn't that bleak. But I think that my father was well satisfied to remind me, hedonistic youth of the hothouse hedonism of the Seventies and the relative wealth that his work had brought us, that at bottom what mattered was living up to your promises, taking satisfaction from work and life well-done, and dying without regrets, without leaving your works unfinished.

And that was my father, or at least a part of him.

John L. "Jack" Lawes Jr. 1927-2015

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.