A Marriage Is As Fragile As China and As Strong As Clay

Yesterday was my 20th wedding anniversary. I usually trot out the old joke that, coincidentally, my wife's wedding anniversary falls on the same day, so we have taken to celebrating it together.

This year I'm not in a joking mood. My stupid body let me down again. Shellie had arranged to take the day off from work so we could be together. I was sick, and spent most of the day in bed napping. We had dinner plans at a nice restaurant that we had to cancel. I couldn't eat. Shellie had a Subway sandwich.

I usually take the opportunity on our anniversary to compose a poem or write something special, and I particularly wanted to do so for the milestone of our 20th anniversary (although we have been together far longer). Now it seems after the fact.

Shellie was understanding, but understandably disappointed, not so much for herself, as for me - and us.

When we were first looking at houses ten years ago, I was dead set on a ranch style - until we pulled up to the house which would become our home. I was not excited that it was two stories, but of course, we immediately fell in love with it. I approach each day with gratitude, and we count every day we have lived here as blessed.

Hindsight being 20/20, I could not have foreseen that I would become a paraplegic barely a year later. For the next few years I somehow managed to scoot myself up and down the stairs step by step. Then in 2012 I was diagnosed with cancer for the second time, and a PICC-line was put in. The nurses finally talked some sense into me (no small feat) about hoisting myself up and down the stairs with a catheter running the length of my arm and lodged near my heart.

We have since had to do something I stubbornly swore I'd never do - I would not turn the first floor of our home into a hospital suite. But due to the logistics of the house, we are forced to sleep apart. Now when Shellie comes down at 6:30 in the morning, we see each other for a few minutes before she leaves for work. By the time she gets home, after an hour commute, we watch a little TV, and by 9:00 she's upstairs settling down for the night.

I know many husbands and wives are separated by circumstances, military families come first to mind, but we are getting older, and we miss each other. The love is still there. The deep, abiding connection is still there. Even the kissing, hugging, and touching are still there (even though we're long overdue for a make-out session). But a certain closeness has been taken, a camaraderie lost.

Be that as it may, Happy Anniversary sweetie.

Love you, S

Nifty, Nifty, Look Who's Fifty

I feel an almost irresistible urge to watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, especially tonight, when it is being broadcast on ABC (I actually looked for it on CBS first), because it is the 50th anniversary of the show's first airing.

The year was 1966. I was eight years old, the perfect age to grow up with Halloween and the Peanuts Gang being synonymous. For the first few years, it was the perfect time to come inside, put on my jammies, eat as much candy as my mom would let me get away with, and watch TV.

As I got older, I would plan my trick-or-treat route with the same strategy a general might bring to bear on a decisive battle, so as to collect the most candy in the most expeditious manner possible. But I always arranged to be back home by 7:00. I would wolf down some dinner, watch what happens when you jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker, and head back out for a couple more hours of trick-or-treating.

The Great Pumpkin was a cultural event to be shared annually with other children all across America. The anticipation was heightened by the fact that if for some reason (say for example you were abducted by martians or eaten by an alligator), you, like Linus trying to find a pumpkin patch that's really sincere, had to wait till next year.

But what of the show itself? I love the minimalist animation style, the evocative pastel backgrounds, the primary colors of the characters, the free-form opening credits, the improvisational jazz score, the WWI piano music.

My wife has it set in her mind that I am Linus and she is Sally. Whenever she sees me, she claps her hands together, and little pink hearts pop up all around her head. However, when Sally says, "Oh, I'd never laugh at you Linus," is not what a humorist wants to hear.

That being said, I wanted to quickly share a few of my favorite moments from the show.

The first scene opens to the classic Vince Guaraldi tune, "Linus and Lucy," as Lucy picks out the largest pumpkin in the patch, and leaves it to her little brother to get it home. Lucy calmly spreads newspaper on the floor, sets the pumpkin on the papers, plunges a kitchen knife into the helpless vegetable, and proceeds to remove its guts, to which Linus exclaims, "Oh, you didn't tell me you were going to kill it."

Coming from a family of lawyers, and even a few judges, my wife and I delight in the line from the iconic scene where Lucy holds the football so Charlie Brown can kick it. Charlie Brown says, "I guess if you have a signed document in your possession, you can't go wrong." Of course, we know how that ends. (ABC saw fit to cut this entire scene for commercial space. Very bad form, but what can you expect from Disney?)

Two lines I often quote are spoken by Linus as he writes a letter to the Great Pumpkin. After a deeply philosophical and contentious debate with Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown says, "We're obviously separated by denominational differences." Alone with his thoughts again, Linus comments, "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin."

The show contains many special moments for me, as when Linus walks into the living room on his way to mail his letter to the Great Pumpkin, and Lucy is reading a copy of TV Guide - with her on the cover.

Toward the beginning of the show, the gang gathers at Charlie Brown's house. Charlie Brown has a little trouble with the scissors, but several of the kids are wearing ghost costumes made out of bed sheets, even Pigpen who arrives amid his customary billows of dirt. I always wind up thinking, there couldn't have been too many happy moms out there.

I also love the great WWI homage as Snoopy makes his way across the occupied French countryside, only to slip into the Halloween party through an upstairs window, just in time for Lucy to bob for apples. "Blech, my lips touched dog lips. Blech. Ech. Poison dog lips. Blech. Ech." As someone who routinely lets their cat eat off his plate, the humor is not lost.

I also like the fact that Peanuts creator Charles Schulz allows Lucy to show her more mature side. Again referring to the early scene at Charlie Brown's house, Sally struggles to get her costume on (another bed sheet ghost), and Lucy reaches out to help her.

One of the most touching segments in all of the Peanuts specials occurs when Lucy wakes up at the stroke of 4:00, peeks in her little brother's bedroom, gets dressed, gathers up Linus who's shivering from cold in the pumpkin patch, guides him home with her arm around his shoulder, gets him in bed, removes his shoes and socks, and tucks him in.

One character who is decidedly not happy at the end of the evening is Sally, who's been cheated out of trick-or-treats. "Halloween is over and I missed it.... I could have had candy, apples, and gum, and cookies, and money, and all sorts of things."

But Linus is undeterred, and as the rest of the kids head home, Linus says if the Great Pumpkin comes he'll still put in a good word for them, but then he realizes his mistake - he should have said when, not if. "One little slip like that can cause the great pumpkin to pass you by."

As we know, Charlie Brown winds up with a bag full of rocks, Sally missed the entire evening, and all that came to Linus' pumpkin patch was a beagle. The next morning, Charlie Brown and Linus lean dejectedly on a brick wall, and when Charlie Brown says, "Well, another Halloween has come and gone," I understand how he feels.

But what is it that draws me so strongly to still plan my evening viewing around a fifty year old cartoon? We've had it on VHS since our children were small, and now on Blu-ray. To tell the truth, we've already watched it once this season. So why do I feel like if I don't watch it this evening I'll have missed something irretrievable?

There's nostalgia, of course. I even like the candy and other Halloween themed commercials. But it's not just the show, it's the sense of the lost connection that held middle-class America together through war, assassinations, civil unrest, cultural upheaval, and a very chilling Cold War.

But enough of that. There are much more serious questions to address, such as - in the original airing of the show, how many times did Charlie Brown get a rock? Whenever I ask that question, I invariably get answers ranging from one to seven. The correct answer is three.

The Lesser of Two Evils

I posted this on Facebook today:

I can't think of a more appropriate day to post this than on the International Day Of The Girl 2016, a day set aside to celebrate and empower young women, and call attention to the issues (some may say plight) women face.

I am sorry it has come to this. I try to steer clear of politics on FB, although I think my leanings are pretty clear. I have seen some of these posts going around, and I have held back because they're so confrontational.

But now I must join those in asking that if you intend to vote for Donald Trump for President of the United States, please Unfriend me (or let me know so I can Unfriend you).

This has nothing to do with Democrat vs. Republican. I have tons of friends and relatives who are staunch Republicans. But make no mistake. Donald Trump is no Republican. He is a dirty joke, nothing more. But the damage he can cause in four years as president is no joke at all.

I cannot imagine an America, or a world, in which Trump is president. The thought of him and his three ring circus of painted sycophants occupying the same halls as John and Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln (a Republican), and John and Jacqueline Kennedy is abhorrent.

Hillary represents institutionalized corruption, but at least her administration will maintain the status quo, giving us four more years to try to move forward.

Not voting is an inappropriate response, and while attractive, voting for a third party candidate (unless you are a member of that party) is misguided at this time. Voting for Hillary may prove to be the most loathsome act I, or any moral, thoughtful person, ever commit, but sometimes in life such decisions must be made.

I do not want to hear arguments (about Trump) to the contrary. If you post such a comment I will delete it and Unfriend you.

So let it be written, so let it be done!

Machigatta Ana

I'm not a big fan of golf. I consider it to be a rich, white man's game, steeped in elitism and exclusion. But I must admit, I do watch the four majors, and I love the 17th hole at the Players Championship. My dad was a golfer, and my younger brother Bunce was part of the regular Sunday foursome. Bunce and my dad shared a bond in golf, like so many other things, that I was not a part of. As a rule I do not find golf jokes funny, nevertheless, I always got a kick out of this one, but that says more about me than the sport.

A salesman on business in Japan decides he wants to try a Japanese hooker. They get in bed, and as he slides into her, the hooker shouts out, "Machigatta ana! Machigatta ana!"

The salesman gets all worked up by the encouragement and really starts going at it. The hooker keeps screaming, "Machigatta ana! Machigatta ana!"

Finally the salesman reaches orgasm, and with his final thrusts, the hooker wails," Machigatta ANA! Machigatta ANAAAAA!"

The next day, the salesman is playing a round of golf with three executives from his prospective Japanese customer. The CEO of the company hits a long drive which bounces up onto the green, rolls to the lip of the cup, hesitates, then drops in.

The other two Japanese businessmen heartily congratulate their associate, and the salesman, seeking to gain favor, grabs the man's hand and calls out, "Machigatta ana! Machigatta ana!"

The three men stop dead, the CEO turns to the salesman and says, "What do you mean, 'Wrong hole'?"

My Kingdom For A Broomstick

It's mid day, mid week, mid autumn. The sun is shining, it's 80 degrees out. I'm smoking legal weed, listening to the new Goo Goo Dolls album, air-jammin' in my wheelchair. God Bless America!

Hail October

I always like to kick off the Halloween season with this poem. It is my way of wishing you a joyous, healthy, and fun-filled autumn. And if you do fall, may it be into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker.

"Hail, old October, bright and chill,

First freed man from the summer sun.

Spice high the bowl, and drink your fill,

Thank Heaven at last, the summer's done."

~Thomas Constable

The Pen Is Mightier

Today's Google doodle is particularly interesting to me because many people feel my writing is a waste of good ink. Be that as it may, September 29th is the birthday of László József Bíró, the inventor of the ballpoint pen. When he presented the pen at the Budapest International Fair in 1931, it caused an immediate uproar on both sides of the Atlantic.

The fountain pen industry was not amused. Previously the province of bankers and well-heeled businessmen, Bíró made permanent writing accessible to the masses.

I always used a pen, even for math. The teachers hated it, but I loved the feel of it on paper, the consistent dark color (or red, or green), and I considered the "un-erase-ability" to be a challenge, not a hindrance.

Although the date of his death is recorded as October 24, 1985, the cause remains a mystery. Immediately following an investigation into Bíró being found dead on a park bench in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the files were sealed. It was rumored, but never confirmed, at the time, that Bíró's brain was pierced, through the ear, with a #2 pencil.