Archive for the 'Deep' Category

Deadman’s A-Z Guide to Living: Gray

Published February 21, 2012 Deep , Universal Leave a Comment
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Gray is usually such an unattractive color.

The safe, uninspiring choice in fashion and design. The gloomy, unwanted harbinger of storms and aging.

It is the definition of blah-ness. An easy metaphor for deep sadness.

But at least in matters of politics and policy, gray happens to be a most beautiful color.

Indeed, gray is the color of the lens through which I view almost everything in this complicated, crazy world of ours. To me, it signifies empathy and thoughtfulness. And when followed, it often leads to necessary compromise, or – at a minimum – mutual understanding.

It is a mystery why people so often see this world in black and white, why they hew to rigid ideologies as if the very idea of keeping an open mind, of seeing multiple sides to key issues is an anathema, a sign of terrible weakness to be avoided at all costs.

Don’t get me wrong: Seeing things in shades of gray doesn’t mean you just straddle the fence and refuse to pick sides. That is hardly helpful and rarely appropriate. No, you still take stances, and you fight for them. And there may be, on rare occasions, controversial issues which you view in black and white – gay rights being one that comes quickly to mind – where compromise isn’t possible. But in general, when you see things in gray, you allow yourself to appreciate the logic that usually exists in the opposing view and you strive for middle ground where most of the workable solutions will be found.

Give me almost any controversial subject on the political landscape today – Abortion? Taxes and deficit reduction? Universal health care? Oil drilling? - and I can likely offer up a very reasonable argument for either side.

Take abortion, for instance. You will find perhaps no issue that polarizes people more than this one, and the intensity on both sides can be rather frightening. But all of the ethical, logistical, moral, medical and political debates concerning abortion are astoundingly complex, and for the life of me, I cannot fathom how pro-life and pro-choice activists refuse to respect and appreciate the other side’s point of view.**

Now I didn’t always disdain ideology; I used to be a pretty hard-core liberal, president of the Young Democrats club in high school, and even within the last five years a co-founder of one of the most liberal blogs on the Web. I still lean left politically, I suppose, especially when it comes to social issues, but in general now believe effective answers don’t often fit into easy slots and that rigid ideology leads people to overly simplistic group-think.

It may seem a bit hypocritical, but if I had the time, skills, and/or motivation, I would love to start a new political organization in this country: The Gray Party. The Grays would stress open-mindedness and freedom of thought. We would consider each issue separately and place great value on scientific data and research in determining policy. We would encourage healthy and respectful debate. We would embrace compromise and seek the middle ground as much as possible. If we even had a platform, it would be fluid and flexible, and party members would be free to take or leave whatever portions of it they wanted, without fear of reprisal. We would nominate the wisest, most qualified people in this country and demand of them only that they use their intelligence and vote their conscience while in office.

Yeah, I know: Totally unrealistic. Apparently, I dream in gray as well.

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**Abortion is in fact an issue utterly surrounded by ‘gray’ areas, including a well-known, oft-discussed one surrounding the viability of the fetus, a key factor in the crucial Supreme Court Roe v Wade decision.  The Supreme Court argued that a woman’s right to privacy – and thus her right to do what she wished with her pregnancy – was paramount up until the fetus reached a point of viability outside the womb. Alas, a ‘gray area’ in viability exists between the 21st week of pregnancy (before which no fetus is viable) and the 27th week (after which almost all fetuses are viable). The initial decision pointed to the end of the second trimester (week 28) as the cutoff date, but that has since been repealed as medical advances have moved up viability. But viability will likely always remain an imprecise ‘gray area’, one more reason why the abortion debate is such a complex one that it bewilders my mind when I listen to rabid activists on both sides.

When does life begin? What about personhood? Surely at some point, abortion becomes a form of murder. And should fetal dependency/viability really be the decisive factor regarding abortion’s legality when even after birth, a baby would quickly die without proper nourishment and care; yet in our society we view infanticide as one of the most horrific crimes imaginable.

On the other hand, the fact is, very few abortions happen after the point of viability, and are then often only done to protect the life of the mother. Even if you insist that life and/or personhood begins at conception, you’d have to admit that an early-stage fetus bears little resemblance to a healthy baby. For the first several weeks, there’s no heartbeat and no separate blood supply. Vital organs are non-existent or barely formed. A great number of fetuses will miscarry during early pregnancy without any intervention. So how is it not preferable that a woman who cannot or doesn’t want to spend all the necessary time, effort, love, money and care into gestating, delivering and raising a happy, healthy baby make the decision to terminate the pregnancy at an early stage.

Personally, I think many (but not all) abortions are selfish, awful events, and greatly admire women who choose to go through an unwanted pregnancy and pursue adoption instead. But I’ve done my share of selfish, awful things in my life, so who I am to judge. And while I believe it’s a million times better to see a pregnancy terminated early than an unwanted baby raised in a hostile, unloving environment, it’s frankly none of my business, or society’s business for that matter, what a woman does with her body. I agree the situation becomes much more complex after fetal viability, and generally have little problem with states’ restrictions on such later-term abortions, as long as the health of the mother isn’t threatened.

In short, it’s complicated. Shades of gray everywhere! And it seems as a nation we’ve stumbled upon a very workable, if fragile, solution, where abortions up to a certain point are legal and must be allowed, while states in more conservative parts of the country have a certain amount of flexibility, through various mechanisms, in restricting the number or type of abortions performed. The situation may not please everyone, and certainly doesn’t please the extremists on both sides, but that’s kind of the point.

Deadman’s A-Z Guide to Living: Fear

Published January 29, 2012 Deep , Personal , Uncategorized , Universal Leave a Comment
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I mulled over a lot of options while thinking about what to write about for the letter ‘F’. Faith, friends, family, fun, freedom, fatherhood are all topics I want to expand on at some point during this process, but in the end I chose ‘Fear’ because overcoming one’s fears is probably the single most important thing one must do to live the fullest, most productive life possible.

In small, rational amounts, fears are generally fine things, and certainly serve their evolutionary purpose, alerting us to possible threats and dangers, and preventing us from attempting feats which could prematurely end our lives.

Alas, fears don’t often come in modest doses; they prefer to go big, to expand into paralytic phobias, wiggling their way deep into our psyches, crippling us from doing things that could dramatically enrich our lives.

It’s fear that will prevent you from asking your high-school crush to the prom.

It’s fear that will keep you from majoring in theater.

Fear will have you settle for the first job offer thrown your way. Keep you stuck in your hometown.

It is why you won’t buy that stock, start that business, kiss that girl, write that novel, visit that city, join that group, forgive that enemy, fight that battle, take that leap.

It’ll convince you to avoid a confrontation and refuse a challenge, to shirk commitments and shrink from changes.

Fear is the bitter-tasting wellspring for jealousy and hate and cynicism and regret.

In the end, fear will only leave you wondering what might have been.

Overcoming one’s fears, however, is no simple task; I certainly have few answers. This is strictly a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ piece.

I mean, I know how silly most of my fears are, how freeing it would be to rid myself of them, yet they still cast a very strong shadow in my life.

I may have outgrown or pushed aside out of necessity certain of my fears, but mostly I have failed thus far to do something which I know is of utmost importance.

It’s all quite sad, and I’m sure you’ll find more useful assistance within modern psychiatry or on the shelves of your local bookstore’s self-help section. Or perhaps conquering one’s fears merely requires accessing a reservoir of inner fortitude I don’t have or haven’t yet been able to reach. I only hope you will be more successful.

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Now for your amusement and education, I’ll quickly rundown a small sampling some of my more prominent fears – rating them on their intensity, rationality and impactivity (not a word I don’t think but should be) – and hopefully you’ll be able to see how destructive fears can be. Remember, this is merely a small taste of my fears, plenty more where these came from.

FEAR OF SNAKES, SPIDERS and OTHER CREEPY CRAWLY THINGS

Intensity – Low. So ever since I can remember, I’ve always hated bugs. Could never watch nature shows about creepy things, certainly couldn’t stomach it when such creatures dared enter my childhood home, dismantling its aura of safety and security in one fell crawl. If I would see in my room a spider (they were the most prevalent threat in suburban St. Louis living), my plan was always the same: Immediately flee the scene in search of my mother or father to have them get rid of the offending creature. If neither parent were home, I would not return to the scene of the crime for many hours, at which point I would just pray that the bug had the decency to crawl to my brother’s adjoining room.

Thankfully, over time, this particular fear has dissipated. Granted, I still get the chills and make that crinkled-up face when I encounter a bug. And I still strongly believe that civilized man and creepy crawly things should keep to their own natural habitats (thus my aversion to almost all outdoorsy activities, most notably camping).

But I now have a wife of my own, who is at least as averse to creepy, crawly things as I am, and removal of such creatures now justifiably falls to me, the supposed man of the house. I generally succeed in the task, with only minimal shrieking.

Rationality – Medium. True, those creepy, crawly creatures generally mean no harm, and most couldn’t do harm even if they had the desire, but a small number can be poisonous and/or spread disease. And let’s face it, all of them are rather unhygienic.

Impact – Low. Even at the height of this fear, it was never particularly paralyzing. It did perhaps prevent me from pursuing my dreams of becoming an exterminator.

FEAR OF FLYING

Intensity – Medium. I am still not convinced man should ever leave terra firma. I’m not a fan of the ocean, spooked out by its sheer vastness and by all the unknown, unseen things living in the blackness below (the fact I am not a strong swimmer doesn’t help), but my fear of the water pales in comparison to my fear of flying.

This fear has actually intensified over the years – I never enjoyed flying, but now I dread the days I must travel the friendly skies. For me, the worst part is takeoff, as the process of fighting gravity and achieving flight just seems totally unnatural and full of hubris to me, like it’s doomed to fail because we’re somehow disturbing nature’s laws or god’s will.

I think I’ve just seen one too many disaster flicks, but I just cannot fathom a more dreadful way of dying: Being trapped for several minutes in a plummeting, shaking vessel with nothing but the sound of screams and chaos to keep you company as you wait for the inevitable crash and the horror that will surely follow. (Well, perhaps drowning would be worse, but with some flights you have the chance of a water crash landing, making it a 2-for-1 special in worst ways to die).

Rationality – Medium. Now I know the stats that say flying is by far the safest mode of transportation, but I still believe the absolute horrific nature of what goes down in a plane crash justifies my fears on some level.

Impact – Low. So far, I’ve been able to just bear down and deal with the white knuckles. I’ve pretty much gone everywhere I’ve needed to go, including a couple of long trips to Europe and China. But with a new daughter, I sure do wish at least one set of grandparents lived within train distance!

FEAR OF DYING

Intensity – High. I’m pretty sure I was like most kids, completely unconcerned with my mortality. But ever since my maternal grandfather got sick some 20+ years ago, I began to be consumed by thoughts of death. Despite the fact that my paternal grandfather was the only close relative who died relatively early (mid-5os), I was convinced that I was going to die young. I think what I fear the most is the process – I don’t know what it’s going to feel like to die, but I assume there is going to be a lot of pain and suffering involved (I imagine it being like the worst flu you’ve ever had and you just don’t get better – though obviously a sudden death would be much different). I saw both my grandmothers die and it was an awful process, one that I think as a modern, evolved society we could handle a lot better. Many nights I keep myself up with thoughts of death and dying, often with me as the main subject. Unpleasant stuff, to say the least.

Rationality – Medium. You would think that this would be one of the more rational fears to have. Everyone does, in fact, die at some point. It’s likely to be quite painful. You don’t know the where or when, so there’s a disconcerting lack of control over the matter. And unless you’re a person of deep faith (in religion or science), what happens afterward is more than a little frightening to ponder. But actually, and partly because of all these reasons, death is a highly irrational thing to be afraid of – and certainly not worth wasting the precious minutes of living worrying about death often involves. It’s going to happen – you don’t know when or how but it’s likely going to suck – and you won’t know what comes next until it does, so why not appreciate your life and good health while you have them.

Impact – Medium.  Here’s the crazy thing – while the pain of death is certainly a major reason for my fear of it, at least a part of what I fear is that I will die with unfinished business and view my life as a waste of time and energy. But it’s my fear of dying, along with all of my other fears, that often prevents me from fully living. How utterly asinine.

The solution isn’t to ignore our mortality, either, which is what I find myself – and a lot of other people – doing, maybe as a kind of survival tactic (I know it’s somewhat contradictory for a person who fears death as much as I do, but even today, when I read about someone near my age who dies – an alarmingly more frequent occurrence – I feel oddly detached from the news, as if death was this surreal concept that won’t ever affect me or those closest to me). Instead, I need to respect death, come to grips with its finality, its inevitability, and its ultimate meaning, and use that understanding to better take advantage of the finite, glorious blessing that is life. Respice finem.

FEAR OF REJECTION/FEAR OF FAILURE

Intensity – High. These are actually two different fears but they’re closely related enough (and this blog is way too long already) that I’m lumping them together. Being rejected means being dismissed out of hand, without even being given the shot to prove yourself – think of the woman at the bar looking for the escape route, or the potential employer tossing the cover letter in the trash. Failing is even worse; It means you are given a chance but fall short of people’s expectations. Think of the woman several months later dumping you, or the boss firing you. In the former case, you fear people think you’re a fraud. In the latter, you know people think you’re a fraud. And in my life, both fears are omnipresent, and hugely paralyzing.

Rationality – Low. The worst part is these fears make little sense. First of all, only the rejected can give rejection its power. Who cares what other people think of us, our looks, our personality, our talents? You will never please everyone so you shouldn’t take rejection personally. Dismiss it. Scoff at it. Reject rejection. And as far as failure is concerned, it’s virtually a prerequisite for success. I defy you to find a successful person who hasn’t been waylaid by a significant failure at one point in their lives. The only trick is not letting failure stop you, which is, of course, a trick much easier said than done.

Impact – High. No fears have done more damage to me than these two. And while I won’t ever know the full extent of the opportunities that I may have lost because I was too afraid of rejection and/or failure, I do strongly believe I never reached my full potential because of these fears.

Deadman’s A-Z Guide to Living: Evil

Published January 7, 2012 Deep , Universal Leave a Comment
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“I may hate the sin, but never the sinner.”

I first encountered that quote many years ago while reading Irving Stone’s Clarence Darrow for the Defense, and it has stuck with me ever since, upsetting me in a way a throwaway line in an obscure book rarely does. (Many folks, myself included, believe the quote or one like it was something Jesus said in the Christian bible, but it’s actually a paraphrase of something written in a letter written by St. Augustine – Ghandi also referred to it in his autobiography.)

How can one separate the sin and the sinner, I wondered.

Just read the history books, studded with crimes committed on such a grand scale that you question how we could possibly be an evolved, enlightened species.

Or watch the news, and see the just-as-horrific, but much more intimate, personal acts of violence and cruelty happening right now, right down your block, acts which you are ultimately just as powerless to stop as those in the history books.

With all the evil menacing the world, how can one allow for such a distinction between sin and sinner? Surely, they are both worthy of our scorn and anger and – if there is justice in this world – our punishment …

A couple of months ago, I was watching Bob Costas interview Jerry Sandusky, the ex-Penn State coach accused of committing terrible sexual atrocities against numerous young boys who had been entrusted to his care. The coach was trying to assert his innocence, but it was an incredibly damning performance, full of odd pauses, incongruous justifications, and frankly, sheer lunacy. In my mind, he was guilty of something, and if only a fraction of the alleged crimes were true, then this was clearly a very evil man, deserving certainly of our hatred, not to mention of the harshest punishment imaginable that a civilized society can dole out.

But upon reflection, I realized something important: I couldn’t relate to this guy at all. The things he allegedly did, the way he was trying to explain himself, his entire thought process, it was all completely foreign to me. How could I possibly understand him? I wasn’t attracted to little boys. I couldn’t go around committing acts of tremendous brutality on innocent kids, and then find ways to justify my actions. And then I thought of another quote (also widely misattributed to the Bible):

‘There but for the grace of God, go I”

I mean, what if, for whatever reason – whether because of a genetic predisposition or something that happened during my childhood (or both, which appears to often be the case with true pedophiles) – I was only attracted to little children.

How awful and how difficult would it be to have to go through life constantly denying a key part of one’s essence and the pleasure associated with sexual satisfaction? Would I be willing to resist the temptation to act on my illicit desires? Probably so, but only because my conscience wouldn’t allow me to hurt others, even if for my own benefit, a trait I attribute to the extremely constructive nurturing I’ve received … something which Sandusky almost certainly did not have.

So I saw the situation in a new light. I was fortunate to have a strong, normal upbringing, showered with love, instilled with high morals and values, taught the power of self-esteem and the difference between right and wrong. Just as importantly, I was wired to accept all those lessons and internalize them – to do and be (mostly) good.

Sandusky, on the other hand, clearly has faulty wiring. Assuming he is guilty, he was cursed with an abnormality, a disease, which I was blessed to not have. He also likely had a destructive childhood, or at least destructive events within his childhood, that made it too hard for him to avoid the disastrous consequences of his disease and/or made it too easy for him to justify those consequences.

The same can be said for the vast majority – if not all – of the people who commit similar atrocities. That’s not to say we should forgive these people; certainly that is a difficult thing to ask, especially if we or our loved ones have been personally victimized by such evil deeds. Nor does it mean we should be lenient in our treatment of those people. If anything, this mindset may call for harsher punishments: If genetics is the root cause of evil, then redemption and rehabilitation are virtually impossible; and if nurturing is to blame, the best modern medicine and psychiatry has to offer won’t likely accomplish much either.

No, we may not forgive or show mercy, but we can perhaps understand evil in a more constructive light.

I was recently reading  an article in New York magazine about Levi Aron, the Hasidic Jew who kidnapped, murdered and – in a subsequent panic – dismembered an 8-year-old boy in a crime that generated a great deal of local publicity for its grisly nature and unusual circumstances. At the end of the piece, the distraught father of the boy is cursing Aron, and a fellow Hasid is trying to comfort the dad with a passage from the Talmud.

“I told him he shouldn’t hate,” the man said, “because God is in everything.”

I’m not a religious man, so I don’t know about God’s relationship with evil – if He is responsible for the awful atrocities that permeate our world, then he is not worth my faith or devotion. But I do agree that hate isn’t the appropriate emotion for dealing with evil men.

No, Darrow had it right. You can hate the sin, but you should pity the sinner.

Pity the sinner, and be thankful that you are not one of them.

Deadman’s A-Z Guide to Living: Distractions

Published December 19, 2011 Deep , Personal , Universal Leave a Comment
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The ability to focus.

In this modern world of tweeting and texting, channel surfing and Web browsing, instant messaging and status updating, that may just be the most vital skill necessary for success.

It is also, alas, something I entirely lack.

For instance, the astute reader of this blog (yes, I understand there should be readers first before I attempt to categorize them) will notice that this post is being written several months after my last post, a pace that is quite shameful.

Let’s just use very round numbers and say it’s been 80 days since my last blog posting. That’s 1900 hours. Let’s assume that 17 of them every day (less on the weekends, more on the weekdays) are consumed by necessary activities (e.g. child care, working, housework – no snickering, mrs. deadman - sleeping, showering, eating, etc.), which leaves about 560 hours of free time. Here’s how I believe a reasonable breakdown of that time was spent:

  • Facebook games – 100 hours.
  • Other Facebook activities – 20 hours
  • Fantasy Football/Watching Football (or other sports) – 240 hours
  • Other non-Facebook, non-fantasy football Internet activities – 100 hours (and only some of that porn!)
  • Dumb, mindless TV – 70 hours

Ok, maybe i kid a bit, but even if I’m in the ballpark, that leaves less than an hour a day for what I would consider productive use of my free time: exercising and playing sports, reading, thinking/meditating, going out with friends, doing crossword puzzles, watching intelligent TV, chatting with the Mrs., having sex, chatting with the Mrs. while having sex, etc. Totally pathetic and certainly not enough time for me to devote to maintaining an interesting and regularly updated blog, let alone to getting me anywhere closer to achieving my long-held dreams of being a successful fiction writer.

When I was in high school, I had this classmate and baseball teammate who wasn’t the most intelligent, or the most athletic, the most intellectually curious, or even the hardest working, but he seemed to excel at most everything he did because he could be extremely focused when he needed to be. I mean, how’s this for focus: In a math class during our senior year, he showed me his dayplanner, which really was more like a lifeplanner because in it he had mapped out a great deal of what he expected the rest of his early years would look like. Among the predicted highlights: President of the United States in 2020.

Now so far, the guy hasn’t been elected to any public office, but given Barack Obama’s meteoric rise, there’s still time. And his resume sure is an ideal one for the job. Here’s just a brief, incomplete synopsis of what he has accomplished so far:

  • Graduated from Duke University as an Angier B. Duke scholar
  • Worked as an undergrad helping war refugees in Croatia and Rwanda
  • Became a Rhodes Scholar and got his master’s and Ph.D. from Oxford
  • Won numerous amateur boxing medals (and has run a sub-3 hr marathon)
  • Joined the Navy as an officer in 2001 and became a SEAL in 2002
  • Deployed four times as Lt Cmdr, including stints in Iraq and Afghanistan
  • Earned numerous military awards, including the Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
  • Started and still serves as CEO of a charity/mentorship program for returning veterans.
  • Has written a couple of books, including a NY Times Bestseller on his experiences as a SEAL and humanitarian.

Clearly, focus doesn’t have to mean just being engaged in one activity. You can still have – and be successful within – a broad array of interests, but I guarantee you this guy wasn’t spending much time watching reality TV or playing Farmville when he was writing his thesis, or training for his boxing tournaments, or fighting in Iraq.

Now I’m sure the ability to focus has always been an important skill to have, but advances in technology have without question made it even more necessary. We’re now always connected. Distractions are everywhere. Hundreds of TV channels to watch, thousands of emails to read, millions of Web sites to visit (and now the ability to watch, read and visit them at nearly any time on nearly any device from nearly anywhere).

Perhaps the economists are right that technology has made us more productive at work – certainly it has allowed me as an investor to do tons of research much faster than was ever before possible – but I believe it has also eroded our ability to focus, especially over longer periods of times. I actually sometimes feel like modern technology is this actively negative force, maliciously keeping us from focusing on the things in life that truly matter. Technology perhaps helps us engage more fully with the world around us, but it also keeps us from engaging more meaningfully, making us like addicts who now crave – indeed, cannot function without – the quick cuts, the flashing lights, the 140-word summaries, the instant gratification.

I think at times about pulling the plug, going somewhere far away (at least a metaphorical move if not an actual physical one) and getting back to the basics: Reading, writing, raising a family, and just trying to find more productive ways to spend the precious days which remain. I think about that at times, but then I think about how much I’ll miss all the diversions, even if they’re fleeting, and all the connections, even if they’re only surface deep. And then I think … and then I think … now where was I?

Deadman’s A-Z Guide to Living: Charity

Published September 30, 2011 Deep , Personal , Uncategorized , Universal Leave a Comment
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I basically do everything ass-backwards when it comes to charity.

They say you should give generously. I don’t give nearly enough. I’m not religious, but there is a laudable Judeo-Christian tradition of tithing, which means giving up 10 percent of one’s income to charity (Well, the original intent of the tithe meant giving 10% of one’s income/production to God via the temple – and still means that for many Christians – but has now evolved to encompass charitable giving more broadly). I have no clue if the tithing is meant to be before or after taxes (I’m thinking post-tax), though I often fall well short of that 10 percent goal in either scenario. Heck, many years, I probably don’t tithe my tithing obligations (1 percent, for those not good at math).

They say you should give eagerly. With joy, even. I almost always give reluctantly, feeling a lot like Oda Mae Brown in Ghost when she is forced to give up that million-dollar check to the nuns on the street. I also get more than a little annoyed when people call my house to ask for donations. I try to be polite and respectful as I know these people are just doing their jobs (or even volunteering) and following their scripts, but I find the intrusion terribly annoying. It’s particularly galling the way they keep badgering you when you tell them ‘No, thanks,’ and they just keep moving their requested donation down in increments, to the point where you feel like the cheapest schmuck in the world when you tell them, ‘No I cannot give you $5. Now, please leave me alone.’

The truth is, though, these telemarketing calls are usually quite successful – I am a sucker who has trouble saying no, and usually wear down and give up something just so I can get off the phone. But this surrendering makes me even madder because I feel like I’ve been beaten at a game somehow, and I just know these yeses will only lead to more calls in the future. Which it does – barely a week goes by where I don’t get somebody calling me up asking for money. I now try to avoid answering any number which isn’t recognizable on caller ID, as these bastards always know to block or disguise their names, but once these guys have your number, they will NEVER stop calling until you pick up the phone.

They say you should give anonymously. This makes a ton of sense, as publicizing one’s charitable contributions is more than a bit gauche and tawdry. If the sole purpose of charity is to help others and do good in the world, then you should have little need of attaching your name to donations. But me, I always want to make sure people know when I have given and if at all possible (and impressive a figure), how much. When friends or family ask me to give to a cause, I have never once checked the ‘Donate Anonymously’ box that often accompanies the online forms. And when there is a donation number that will get my name in some sort of stupid brochure, I try and make sure to hit it.

Giving anonymously also prevents the recipient from feeling indebted or humiliated upon receiving aid. A noble idea, and yet one of my favorite ways of giving charity is giving dollars (or worse, pocket change) directly to panhandlers on the street. Why? Because it gives me an immediate sense of satisfaction, hearing their ‘God Bless Yous’ and seeing their genuine looks of appreciation. But do I stop and think about what little good those dollar bills or quarters are actually going to do and how low and beaten down these people must feel that they’ve been forced to beg for my meager assistance in the first place. Yeah, perhaps they are just happy to have the money to find their next meal (or their next score – I make no judgments about how a homeless person finds whatever small happiness he can get in his life), but surely they must also at times feel a tremendous loss of dignity at what they are being forced to do, and the fact that I am getting self-satisfaction out of the small gesture basically negates any of its inherent goodness.

They say you should give more than money. Money definitely helps, but donating one’s time and effort often provides a much more meaningful impact. I fail miserably here as well. One time about a decade ago, I sponsored an inner-city student to help him attend a well-run Catholic school. My brother provided the majority of the financial assistance while it was my main job to help guide him and his family through the process, and make sure the kid was adjusting and succeeding in the new environment. But I was a single guy living it up in Manhattan, and here too, I gave the minimum amount necessary. I made little effort to help him improve his faltering grades, or to give him advice on how to get into college, or to make any kind of lasting impact that could have affected his life beyond his graduating high school. It was yet another example of good intentions gone bad, and I have regrettably lost touch with the student and his family. I also have rarely volunteered my free time for charity since then.

Yet, despite my numerous shortcomings in charitable giving – my poor track record, my questionable motives, my begrudging attitude – I just don’t feel you can do charity wrong. You can do it in better or worse ways, and I resolve hereby to try and keep improving my technique with each passing year – to give bigger and smarter and eagerer.

On the other hand, I am not embarrassed to acknowledge that giving charity also makes me feel good.  The desire to give of oneself to help others is one of the things that separates and elevates us as a species. Whether it’s done because the Bible says doing it will get us into heaven or because natural selection has made empathy a defining human trait, charity is a key ingredient of a successful and well-lived life.

Deadman’s A-Z Guide to Living: Ben ‘Boozie’ Zlepper

Published May 9, 2011 Deep , Personal 3 Comments
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Ben ‘Boozie’ Zlepper was my grandfather. That’s the only way I knew him, which is to say, I knew hardly nothing of the man and absolutely all I needed to know.

He had a life before I entered it, of course, but only the barest bits and pieces have made their way to me through the years. An immigrant from Russia who came to the US in 1922 at the age of 8. A solid athlete who boxed and played baseball. A working-class man, impoverished for much of his life, family hit hard by the Great Depression. Ran a neighborhood clothing store while my mom and her brother were young, barely making ends meet. Enjoyed some modest success as an insurance salesman later in life, pushing product in some of the poorest sections of St. Louis City. Stuck in a volatile, love-hate marriage.

The Young Boozie

Those are the facts I know. Mere fragments of a long and active life. Insufficient. Unrevealing. A poor snapshot unworthy of the dashing young man you see to the right. The full story worthy, I’m sure, of a more complete telling, but that is not the one I have to tell.

I can only talk about the man who was my grandfather, my Zeyda, and hope that will be enough.

In my last post, I talked about aging, and discussed at length the kind of old man I hope to become. It would have been much simpler to have just written, ‘I’d like to be my grandfather.’

For I remember my Zeyda (the only one I ever knew – my dad’s dad died before I was born) as a supremely gentle, fun-loving man, who rarely spoke ill of others, hardly complained about anything, and loved most of all to dote on his kids and grandkids.

I remember the way he would shuffle slowly into our house. I remember kissing him on the cheek, enjoying the feeling of his stubble on my skin.

I remember his clothes, the classic older man getups – the polyester plaid pants, the velour shirts, the white shoes, the thick heavy coats, and always the smooth brown packer hat.

I remember his laugh, a melodic tone that alluded to a bit of mischievousness and had just a touch of the gravel that comes from a lifetime of smoking.

And boy, do I remember his smell. A musty, masculine odor, like the smell of clothes that have been hanging in the closet too long, mixed with a tinge of the stale cigar smoke that coated his clothing long after he gave up the habit (well, he gave up the smoking but never stopped chomping on those unlit cigars).  Tough to describe, his smell is probably the memory that lingers most strongly, seems to rise up out of nowhere whenever I try to conjure up those days.

I remember the way he would always immediately try to sneak me a $20 bill when my Bobba wasn’t looking. Twenty dollars was a windfall for a young kid, especially back in those days, and I always felt guilty about taking the money (though never guilty enough to refuse).

I remember the way he would either go sit on the La-Z-Boy recliner in our den, often eventually falling asleep while Wheel of Fortune or the ballgame played on the TV, or he would go downstairs and ask mom to put on the Kenny Rogers album while he sat on the couch and there, too, inevitably end up asleep (‘The Gambler’ was his favorite song and I can’t hear it today without thinking of him).

He was there for me whenever I needed him, offering advice – but only when asked – encouraging me at every turn, so obviously filled with nothing but love and pride for me and his other two grandchildren. I remember a lot about him, but I wish I remembered so much more.

At my Bar Mitzvah, the cameraman passed a microphone around my family’s table, offering everyone the chance to speak. But my Zeyda was a shy man, of few words, and on the video you can only see the back of his bald head shaking as he declines the opportunity. I wish I could go back in time and force him to say something, anything. Maybe I’d even get a laugh.

One day when I was a freshman in high school, I came home on the verge of tears because I had found out I had been cut trying out for the baseball team. Zeyda called and we chatted for a bit. He told me my coaches ‘don’t know shit,’ which made me laugh despite myself. We didn’t talk long; he never was one to overstay his welcome.

But something also seemed off on that call – his sentences were often incomplete, his thoughts scattered. I didn’t think much of it until later that night when my parents called to tell me Zeyda had had a bad stroke.

I didn’t know what that meant, having a stroke, so I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when I went to visit him. That certainly wasn’t my grandfather lying there in his bed, wrapped up in wires and tubes, staring blankly into space as my family gathered around. He barely moved or made a sound, except to offer up the occasional grimace, arising from some mysterious source of pain or discomfort. I sat near his bedside, unsure of what to do or say. Should I touch him? Did he recognize me?

Near the end of the visit, my dad started giving a rah-rah speech, telling Zeyda that he was OK, that he’d get better if he was willing to work at it. I know he meant well, but the optimism seemed out of place and made me even sadder. I looked at my grandfather, who displayed zero response to what my dad was saying. I understood on some level that for the first time in my life I was staring at death and all of its implications, and it was too much for me. I started bawling. Not just a few tears, but total waterworks, to the point where I couldn’t see anything out of my eyes.

And then all of a sudden, in the midst of this, I felt a rough finger brush against my eyes. It was my grandfather, reaching across his body, over the bed, futilely trying to wipe away my tears. The gesture, of course, made the tears flow even harder, and I felt – but couldn’t see – my grandfather take my hand, bring it to his lips and kiss it. By this time, everyone in the room was crying.

The gestures, his first meaningful acts of recognition since the stroke, gave us a sense of hope that things would one day return to normal.

They never did.

Through the sheer persistence and devotion of his wife, who seemed to prefer the silent, compliant and needier version of my grandfather, he lived for about another 10 years, shuffled off from one dreadful nursing home to the next.

I know it’s totally selfish, but I feel those last ten years blurred and irrevocably damaged the images and memories I have of my Zeyda, at least of the one I preferred to remember.

It is true that occasionally and especially early on, there were moments of relative lucidity, when he would remember our names and seem happy to have his family around. Even later, near the end, there’d be rare glimpses of the old Zeyda, like the time he tried to grab the gams of a particularly attractive waitress at a St. Louis Bread Co. restaurant.

Mostly, though, he would sit uncomfortably in his wheelchair, his face scrunched up in a perpetual scowl, and displaying a temper with nurses I had never seen before.

He no longer wore his hats. He no longer had that smell. And the laugh, of course, was gone for good, in its place only an echo of happier times, growing fainter and fainter with each passing year.

I can still hear it sometimes, but only barely.

Deadman’s A-Z Guide to Living: Aging

Published March 29, 2011 Deep , Personal , Universal 1 Comment
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It’s funny how easy it is to go through life and barely take note of the fact that you are getting older.

And that you will one day be old.

Obviously, as a society, we are obsessed with aging. We are encouraged to fight the scourge of old age at literally any cost (despite the unattractiveness of what, alas, remains the only other option). We revel in stories of 94-year-old marathoners, we ingest the pills and slather on the creams that promise even brief sips at the fountain of youth, and we continually push back the timeline that once heralded Old Age’s onset (i.e. “60 is the new 50″).

Still, the aging process happens slowly, and even for someone like me who is unhealthily preoccupied with matters of mortality, imagining oneself as actually being old is an impossible task. I look in the mirror, and despite the thinning hairline, graying beard and emerging wrinkles, I just cannot see a version of myself which resembles the images I see when I think of my now-deceased grandparents.

But while I can’t picture an old-age me, I sure think about it a lot more now that I have a daughter.  Just calling myself a dad makes me feel about ten years older. I often daydream about what I’ll be like when my little baby girl has her bat mitzvah, or graduates college, or gets married – ‘events that may be closer than they appear in the mirror’. I put actual, scary numbers on the ages that correlate with the milestones (50, 60, and hopefully not much older than 80 in the above examples) and what was once an abstract and nebulous concept feels much more concrete.

And this gets me thinking about what kind of old person I want to be. I’ve obviously seen and dealt with all types of old people in my life. Hollywood may want to convince us otherwise, but look around, they’re everywhere. And frankly, a lot of them suck. Disrespectful, I know, but for a group of people who are supposed to have accumulated all this wisdom, so many of them seem mean, short-tempered, full of regret – canes in one hand and supremely bad attitudes in the other. (And by the way, I’m talking about the old people I see out and about on the street, not the ones who may be in hospitals or nursing homes with legitimate reasons to be so cranky.)

Maybe they’re upset because they no longer ever have a moment when they’re not in actual physical anguish or maybe it’s just they feel life has passed them by, that most of their friends have died and no one cares about them (except for the politicians who count on them as the one motivated bloc of voters who consistently make decisions at the ballot box based almost entirely on self-interest).

I know I shouldn’t judge given I haven’t walked a step in their orthopedic shoes, but whatever the reasons, being so bloody unlikeable seems a poor way to live life. True at any age, but especially so when a visit from the Grim Reaper is likely ‘nigh. To try and combat what may just be a natural inclination to turn nastier and less patient as the years go by, I have come up with a few rules that I hope to follow if and when I officially become an old man.

1) Move to a warmer place.

At one time not long ago, I scoffed at the tendency of old people to migrate en masse to someplace like Florida, believing it something akin to waving the white flag on life. Seasons needed to be experienced to be appreciated. How can you truly enjoy spring if your winter is nothing but a rainy, slightly less hot summer? Just as the inevitable harsh setbacks of life must be endured and overcome, so too, I reasoned, must the harsh winter.

But as I turn the page on one of the most miserable New York City winters ever, I am thinking such a migration may be in the best interests of all involved. Cold weather just sucks, and I’m sure it sucks worse when the blood flow weakens and the bones turn brittle. Kids should know seasons, but for the old, it’s just not necessary. Hell, even autumn, once my favorite season, now seems little more than a particularly apt metaphor for the death that is rapidly approaching.

Plus, being someplace warm and comfortable should make it easier to follow the rest of my rules.

2) Join a senior living center.

The time will likely come when you no longer can or want to handle the aggravations and responsibilities of maintaining your own house. And as long as you’re going to migrate someplace warm with the rest of your old fogey peers, you might as well join one of those senior living communities.

Don’t get me wrong, nursing homes are still atrocious, foul-smelling waiting rooms for the Other World that are to be avoided at all costs, but there’s plenty to appreciate about a well-maintained assisted senior living center. My dad’s mom lived and thrived for many years in one of those places when she was older.

I mean, what’s not to like? You get most of your needs taken care of, and even if you’re lucky enough to still have a living spouse or some other family members in the area, it’s nice to have folks you can count on for support or social activities. They’re like fancy dorm rooms for the aged, minus the rampant sex and drugs (though I understand the male-female ratios are pretty favorable at these places for the men who manage to make it that far).

3) Act young.

I’m not talking about being in denial about being old – that’s lame – but there’s no reason why you can’t do most of the same things you liked doing when you were younger. For me, that will mean doing stuff like playing video games, eating Lucky Charms and going to the batting cages.

Granted, you won’t have the same energy level, but there’s no reason why you can’t enjoy life to the fullest extent possible. For instance, take the simple evening stroll, a relaxing and healthy bit of exercise perfect for the older set. But why not spice it up a bit and put some pep in that step? Listen to some music and break out some random dance moves, pet passing dogs, high-five passing neighbors, take a ride on an unoccupied swing in a playground (as long as there aren’t any little girls around cuz that’s just creepy).

BTW, as a related aside, never, ever say ‘Goddamn kids these days”. Oh, you’ll think it often, I’m sure (I do even now), but try to refrain from expressing it (even if in jest). Instead, why not try and keep up with what the younger folks are doing, what technologies they’re using, what shows they’re watching, what music they’re listening to. You might not learn anything, you might not like what you see or hear, but then again, you just might. And either way, it probably won’t hurt you.

4) Take a class.

Pottery or poetry, I don’t care, but don’t stop learning. I probably will take a photography or screenwriting course. So many incredible things to learn in this world, and by the time you’re old, you’ll have forgotten much of the stuff you once knew anyway. You could take a class at an organization that caters to older folks but I’ve always thought it’d be fun to sit in on like a community college class, stimulated by all the young minds (and young bodies – oh yes, I will be a dirty old man).

5) Don’t complain, especially about your health.

This will be the toughest rule for me to follow as I love to complain, especially about my health. But really, no one wants to hear it. It’s depressing, and unless you’re very sick, not worth lingering on.

Even if you are in pain, focus instead on inquiring about others and appreciating the blessings you do have.

6) Vote (selflessly) or Die!

Unless we’re talking about choosing your senior living center’s board president, never make a decision at the ballot box based on self-interest. I’ve always found it ugly how politicians feel they must cater to the aging electorate (and its powerful AARP lobby) and believe it’s one of the main reasons why this country never seems to solve its pressing financial issues. Have faith that the younger generations will respect their elders and take care of you, but when it comes time to vote, just ask your child or grandchild who they’re voting for and do likewise.

7) Treasure your memories while you make new ones.

Alzheimer’s is perhaps the most evil of all diseases as before it kills, it takes away the things that make us who we are. So if you’re lucky enough to be old and have most of your memory intact, treasure it. Take a moment often to think about the past – pore over yearbooks or photo albums, watch some old videos, read long-packed cards and love letters. On lonely nights, really try to relive a pleasant memory you once had – the night of your prom, the birth of your first child, etc. – and embrace the pictures and voices that come flooding back to you.

Of course, don’t dwell on the past to the point where you forget that you are still living, that new memories can still be made, if not so much for you then for the ones who still love you and will remain after you’re gone.

8) Be grateful for help.

Older people are certainly deserving of respect and entitled to a fair amount of assistance, but they should never forget to be thankful for the extra help received from loved ones and/or strangers. Gratitude is probably something folks of all ages could use a bit more of, but I feel I’ve too often seen a stunning lack of manners and appreciation from older people, who should obviously know better.

9) Avoid hospitals at all costs.

I know I’ve already ripped on nursing homes, but hospitals aren’t much better. Obviously they serve a purpose and sometimes can’t be avoided, but I’ve heard and experienced so many stories of people going into a hospital for a simple or routine procedure and getting stuck in an never-ending string of unfortunate – and often unrelated – complications. Perhaps it’s just to be expected that sickness leads to more sickness, but certain things about hospitals trouble me greatly. They are overcrowded and understaffed, fertile environments for infections and bacteria, often limited by severe financial strain and an overworked, sometimes incompetent, usually arrogant team of medical professionals. If at all possible, stay away … unless you’re visiting a sick friend or having a new grandchild (and even then, leave quickly).

10) Know when to call it quits.

Granted, a lot of what I’ve written so far is more than a bit flippant. It’s easy to say I will move someplace warm, act young, be thankful, avoid hospitals, treasure my memories, etc. but the sad, hard truth of aging is that if you live long enough, you will likely lose control over much of what transpires in your life. Bad things will happen and a proper attitude will only go so far in making things bearable.

I remember my grandfather once watching one of his peers move around a shopping mall with a walker and swearing he would never use such an undignified contraption. A few years later, he had a massive stroke and never walked without assistance again. I was devastated when he had a difficult time remembering my name, but though it seemed a small, silly thing in comparison, I hoped at least that the stroke’s utter brutality had the decency to also take away his ability to remember his resistance to walkers.

Personally, I hope I will have enough control over my life that when the time comes when I can no longer recognize or appreciate the joy that life can bring those who are open to it, when pain or sadness overwhelms all that is good, that I will have the ability – and the courage – to call it quits (and also someone in my life who will love me enough to respect that wish and help me move on).

This may sound grim or even barbaric, but I think it is quite the opposite … To end one’s life with a small measure of dignity is in some ways the best we can hope for. I have written about this before, but I believe it is ludicrous the way our society views death and end-of-life issues.

Of course, right now the only states that acknowledge the right to die and let humans give each other the same amount of respect and dignity we give our pets are Oregon, Washington and Montana, not exactly warm-weather climates. Guess I may have to rethink rule #1 …

The Alphabet Game: The Deadman’s A-Z Guide to Living

Published February 9, 2011 Deep , Personal , Universal 2 Comments
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When Mrs. Deadman and I want to amuse ourselves while whittling away some time, we often play the alphabet game. It’s quite a simple affair. Most of you are probably familiar with it, but for the rest of you, this is how it works:

Someone picks a random category or topic (say, ‘Clothing Store Chains’ or ‘Diseases’). Then, the other person (you can play with more than two, but surely you can find better ways to pass the time if you’re in a group) thinks of an answer belonging in that category and starting with the letter ‘A’ (say ‘Abercrombie and Fitch’ or ‘Alzheimer’s'). Then you continue down the alphabet, alternating answers as you go (Typically, you skip ‘Q’ and ‘X’ because those are virtually impossible unless your topic is medical TV dramas or lame musical instruments). If one of you can’t think of an answer that fits, the other one gives it a shot. You don’t really keep score or anything, you just know when you’re not pulling your weight and then get mad at the other person for being so smug and clever.

The Mrs. and I have played The Alphabet Game riding trains, walking the dog, lying in bed, and most impressively, while dancing our first dance at our wedding (neither one of us was at all comfortable with all those sets of eyes upon us, and playing the game ended up being a great way to speed up those awkward few minutes. And as a bonus, on our wedding video it just looks like we were having a fun, thoughtful conversation. BTW, the topic was ‘Our Wedding Guests, by First Name’).

In any case, I’ve had trouble for some time staying dedicated to this blogging thing. Ok, that’s putting it mildly, and having a 5-month-old daughter has only made it worse (Plenty more to write about, of course, just not the time). So in a desperate, Hail-Mary attempt to get back into the writing habit, I figured why not play my own little version of the alphabet game. Maybe it will give this blog some structure and keep me motivated.

Every week or so, I plan on writing a post on a subject that begins with a different letter, methodically going down the alphabet (and probably skipping Q and X).  Sometimes the blog will be about a nebulous concept, sometimes a specific issue or person. Sometimes it will be a short piece, other times long. Sometimes serious, other times not so much. Sometimes when I’m feeling lazy and there’s a timeless topic that fits, I may just reprint one of my earlier blog posts (not like anyone’s read them … or, sadly, will be reading this). That’s the plan, anyway.

Now when I finish (not ‘if’ dammit, but ‘when’), I’m not sure what I’ll have, aside from hopefully 24-26 blog posts that are somewhat interesting, at least to members of my immediate family. I’ve always assumed my life would be a short one and I’m oddly obsessed with issues of death and mortality, so especially now that I have a daughter, I guess mostly I hope as a finished whole, the series will stand as some sort of silly personal legacy, helping to define who I am, what I care about, and why I rock (and if never finished, it will stand as an even more appropriate legacy of why I don’t rock).

Whatever this ends up being, it sure as hell won’t amount to a Guide to Living, since that is like Tony Robbins-pompous and can’t really exist … and if it could, I certainly wouldn’t be the one to compose such a thing. I can’t imagine anyone more clueless on the topic of proper living as me. Deadman’s A-Z Guide to Living just sounded good to me.

So let’s get it started … sometime soon, of course.

Lucky Dog: A Lesson on Living, Loving and Loss

Published April 24, 2010 Deep , Personal 2 Comments
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My brother put his 18-year-old dog to sleep yesterday.

My sadness today is profound, almost overwhelming, and I am trying to figure out why.

Obviously, the dog himself, a terribly sweet, ridiculously cute cocker-beagle mix, is the primary reason. He was my brother’s dog -  there’s no denying that – but he was really my first pet as well, my roommate and companion for the eight-plus years I lived with my brother after college.

When I came home from my first real job, he would greet me with that wagging stub of a tail and the butt jerking uncontrollably from side to side. I would lie on the floor, and he would pin me down, licking my face til I could stand it no longer.

I took him for walks every day. I taught him roll over – a trick we had to retire several years ago when it became too demanding for his aging frame – and play dead – which he did pretty well, except for that dang wagging tail, which couldn’t help but anticipate the forthcoming treat.

Lucky gave my life joy and meaning, structure and responsibility.

However, I moved out on my own five years ago, and while I saw Lucky at least once a week and would occasionally watch him when my brother left town, I was no longer much of a caretaker for the dog.

It was my brother who really had to put up with Lucky’s growing eccentricities – like the way he would whimper for hours on end and his increasingly picky appetite (a sure sign of sickness as this was a dog, after all, that would once eat the grossest things the New York City streets had to offer) – and who near the end had to give him the daily injections of IV fluid and clean up all the household accidents as his kidneys started failing more rapidly.

So while some of my connection to Lucky might have been lost over the years, I’m sure some of my sadness also stems from how intensely I feel my brother’s loss. I was there with my brother as he made the correct but horribly final and painful decision to give Lucky a peaceful end, and as he held the dog’s body in his lap one last time. And at least some of my pain and sadness must stem from knowing how badly my brother is hurting right now.

And I think there is something else that is making me sad. Something a bit more esoteric, a bit more selfish, and yet just as deeply felt: Lucky’s death in a certain way marks the passage of an era for me. I first met that dog when my brother, who had adopted Lucky a few months earlier, picked me up at the San Francisco airport when I moved there after college, armed with nothing more than a suitcase full of clothing and a journalism degree from Northwestern University. It was such an exciting time. My life and all its wonderful possibilities seemed ahead of me.

And for the next decade and then some, from one coast to another, from one job to another, Lucky was a part of that growing-up experience. It’s been fascinating to see all the people who’ve been part of my life the past 14 years – high school and college friends who came to visit, new friends, co-workers and colleagues, family members I got to know for the first time – who met Lucky and felt compelled to express their own connection to him on Facebook.

All those people who have been in and out of my life, and all those days, it seems to have flown by in an instant, and I wonder sometimes if I’ve made the right decisions in my life, if I’ve taken full advantage of the opportunities given me, and whether i am happy with where I’ve ended up.

Yes, I am married with a great wife, have my own awesome dog and am expecting a baby daughter in the fall, and I know that challenging and exciting moments are ahead of me. But that special post-college time – when my life and its direction seemed a complete mystery, even to me – feels like it now has passed forever along with Lucky.

Yesterday, my brother, his girlfriend, her sister and I took Lucky to the park where he had spent so many happy moments. It was such a beautiful day, with a bright sun and mostly cloudless sky giving off the gentle warmth of early spring. Lucky seemed very happy, taking in the familiar smells, feeling the soft grass beneath his paws, enjoying all the extra attention he was getting (though I’m sure all of the petting was a bit uncomfortable on his sore body, he took it like a champ, there for others until the end.)

Keenly aware of how easily we can take time, and loved ones, for granted, I told myself repeatedly to appreciate these moments, absorb them fully, take it all in, the beauty of the day, the pain of the impending loss. We would never have it back. Not the dog, not the day, not the emotions. None of it.

Now, as I sit here less than 24 hours later trying to recapture those moments, the memories are already fading. Pictures are blurred, hazy, insufficient.

And if that isn’t a reason for profound sadness, I’m not sure what is.

2009 MOFT of the Year: Mrs. Deadman (of course!)

Published December 17, 2009 Deep , Personal 1 Comment
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It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these, but it’s that time of year when I must bestow the coveted My One Favorite Thing award of 2009. Last year, you may recall, Cottonelle Wet Wipes Toilet Paper won the 2008 MOFT, just edging out Barack Obama.

This year, there are so many worthy candidates. Certainly Obama was in the running again, as his January inauguration provided one of the more stirring moments of the year. But while infinitely better than what we had at this time last year, the Prez has been just a bit disappointing to me, so he’ll have to settle with his consolation Nobel.

Other early notable contenders for the 2009 MOFT included Reddi-Wip, the Oster Electric Wine Opener, Scramble (a perennial favorite), Phil Ivey, the St. Louis Cardinals, Dexter, our housekeeper Gloria, and Ingrid Michaelson. Meanwhile, a number of late dark-horse candidates in recent months have emerged, including the Wii (finally got one and it rocks), Modern Family, fantasy football, and even in the last couple of days, this hilarious, mind-fu** of a video.

But in the end, to be honest, it really was no contest. By far, My One Favorite Thing of 2009 is my brand shiny new wife! (She may in fact be even better than the Wet Wipes!)

For those of you don’t know, I married the now Mrs. Deadman on Halloween in Saratoga Springs, NY. It was quite a lovely and fun event if I do say so myself, with almost all of our closest family and friends in attendance.

While I so far am very glad I took the plunge, overcoming the commitment phobia that’s plagued me my entire life, i do have a couple regrets from that weekend. One is the DJ, who sucked so hard I am surprised there was any air left in the reception hall (she will certainly be a top contender if I get around to doing My One Least Favorite Thing of 2009 sometime next week).

Another thing I regret was not taking the time sometime during the night to give this little speech about my new wife. It was something I planned on doing, just like the Mrs. and I both planned on taking a brief moment to thank a bunch of people, but we wanted to try and spread out the speeches and toasts and let people eat and have fun, and then it just never seemed like the right time.

It really is amazing how crazy weddings are when you’re one of the key participants. The night just flies by, and you really feel like you have no control over anything. (Apparently, it wasn’t just the wedding night that didn’t go exactly as planned – Sorry Genghis!). No matter how many people warn you to try and appreciate the moment and be truly present, it’s basically impossible. You feel more like a character in a movie than a real live human being making perhaps the most important decision of your life.

But the truth is, we just should have done what we had planned. It was our wedding and our party, and we just should have found time to thank the people who helped make it all happen, and I should have delivered my little ode to Mrs. Deadman (which to be fair I had thrown together very quickly the week before.)

I guess instead, I will have to settle with posting it here and hoping people read it. So without further ado, here it is:

I just want to say a few words about my beautiful, brand-spanking new wife. Keri and I had our first date 2 years, 2 months, and 2 weeks ago from this very day. And I knew very early on, I had stumbled upon something special.

In fact, I remember one day, no more than a couple of months into our relationship, getting ready with Keri to go out and I found myself just staring at her for a few moments before eventually blurting out ‘How in the world did I get so lucky to have found you?”

“No seriously,” I asked, “how in the world have you stayed single long enough so that I could find you?!?”

I mean, here was this incredibly smart, extremely sexy and cool girl. Sensitive and sweet – with just enough spice and even a touch of the occasional vinegar to keep things interesting. Pretty and funny – not only appreciating my own sense of humor, which is tough enough, but also constantly making me laugh. And it all came bundled in this one little enticing skinny package!

So of course i thought there had to be a catch.

Now it turns out there was no catch, but as I said, this was very early on, so my question might have been a bit naive.

Because the truth is, it’s just that relationships are hard, very hard – and I think people in general – and especially as we get older – are too quick to throw our hands up in the air and throw in the towel when things get a little tough and the inevitable concerns arise. It’s so easy to just give up and move on.

But I think it’s OK when two people in a relationship sometimes have differences of opinions, competing philosophies. It’s healthy. Would be boring otherwise. It’s when we accept and maybe even embrace the differences that we grow as people and couples.

And there is no doubt I have learned so much from Keri over the past two years, especially about how to live a good life and be a better person. And honestly, it would have been impossible to move on because even during tougher times, there were certain things about Keri that stuck with me.

Like how genuinely scared and concerned she looked when she came to visit me in the ER after I had a little heart scare, tears welling in her eyes as I was hooked up with all these wires (probably worrying what the hell she was getting into).

Or like how she is with our dog, Oliver, the love and affection she showers on him – and this was most certainly not a dog person when we first met.

Or how she makes me laugh by breaking out into one of her silly godawful dances, such as the infamous one-legged south-facing boogie (which perhaps if you’re lucky enough, she’ll share with you tonight).

Or how warm she is with all of my family and friends, who will invariably come up to me after meeting her and warn me, “Don’t you dare F this up, Darren!!”

It was just always so easy to envision Keri as my wife because she is exactly what i’ve always pictured when I thought about my life in this stage.

And the more I think about my original question – “How in the world did you stay single long enough so that I could find you? – the more I wonder if the answer is not just that relationships are hard, but that perhaps, this is the only way it could have possibly been.

That it, and us, and today were always going to be. Had to be.

And I am just so happy and thankful right now, so excited about our future … and I love you very, very much!

Ennui’s a bitch … and then you blog

Published November 27, 2009 Deep , Personal 1 Comment
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With a couple of exceptions, I’ve been gone from blogging for several months. I’ve rarely posted. I’ve barely commented. Heck, I’ve even stopped visiting the site on a regular basis.

I have a number of legitimate excuses – and some not-so legitimate excuses – for my time away. I did a lot of wedding planning. I picked up online poker again. I broke a wrist. I got married and had a minimoon. I fell behind work at my paying day job. Fantasy football started.

But mainly, my prolonged absence boils down to something much simpler, and in many ways, much more disturbing: I stopped caring.

I don’t know if it’s a case of issue fatigue or too much self-absorption, but I found myself getting increasingly uninterested with the world at large. Iranian election fraud? Hmm … Health care reform and town hall madness? Whatever. New Palin book? Of course. 10% unemployment? Them’s the breaks.

Lots of things going on right now that should have my hackles raised, my blood boiling, and my fingers typing in a mad blogger’s rage. But instead, all I feel is complacency and blahness. It’s not just dagblog.com I’m avoiding – it’s basically all news. The one event I got most excited about this week was Adam Lambert’s blatant display of homosexuality on the American Music Awards.

I’m trying to figure out why this is. My best guess is that the biggest news items of the day seem so familiar. The issues may be new – health care reform and Afghanistan strategizing, for instance – but the underlying themes – nasty partisanship and silly wars – seem so depressingly repetitive. I guess in some ways I feel cheated out of that change I thought I had voted for last year.

I’m not blaming Obama, of course, for my hacklelessness. I’m blaming myself for getting seduced by high and ultimately unreasonable expectations. Believing in change is a fool’s game. We are who we are – as people, and as a society.

It may not sound like it, but believe it or not, I’m pretty content personally. Sure, I wish I was doing something more fulfilling in my life (and is it cool for me to cop to both a healthy amount of excitement over Genghis’ new book deal and also a wee bit of envy??) but still, its Thanksgiving weekend, and I have a lot to be thankful for. Good friends, a decent-paying gig and a cool boss, lots of loving family members, a nice apartment, a winning fantasy football team, two new video game machines (wedding gifts that we still haven’t played yet – talk about complacency!) and especially a lovely brand-shiny-new wife.

So I figure this is as good as time as any to try and get back in the blogging groove. My Muse isn’t back yet really, but sometimes I guess you gotta force it. After all, being productive in life is mostly about establishing – or re-establishing – habits.

Now how about that Dubai debt crisis? That’s some crazy shit, huh? … Sigh, this will take some time. Ennui’s a bitch.

I’m back … and the Bear will be joining me shortly

Published October 8, 2009 Deep , Universal Leave a Comment
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OK, I know I’ve been a bad, bad, bad dagblogger for quite some time, but seeing as I’m getting married in less than four weeks, I’m giving myself a pass. (Today’s key word: ELOPE!!!)

I’ll be back more regularly by the end of the year, but for now, I just wanted to give you a ballsy prediction:

The market is nearing a significant short-term top. Nailing the exact timing is always difficult, but I expect we’ll be significantly lower by the end of the year, and certainly by the end of the first quarter of next year, I expect we will see market averages at least 15-20% lower than we have now.

Way back in March, on the day after the stock market bottomed, I wrote a piece predicting the rally could have legs. Now before I go patting myself on the back too hard, I must admit I’ve been surprised by how long the rally has lasted and how ferocious it’s been. But I suppose that’s the kind of combustible response you get when you combine a recovery from a near-death economic experience with trillions of dollars in government stimulus and bailouts and near-zero interest rates.

So why do I now believe the party is about to end? Well, for several reasons. First, my prediction is obviously influenced by my overall negative view of our economy. Employment is still ugly, consumer debt levels are still too high, the dollar is getting perilously weak while commodities like oil and gold are rising on an almost-daily basis. To stimulate the economy, we’ve pursued short-term measures like foreclosure relief, tax credits, and Cash for Clunkers, which have done little to resolve the structural imbalances in this country. The only thing we’ve really accomplished is burdening future generations of Americans with crushing levels of national debt. We may in fact see decent GDP growth for the next few quarters but that’s only because the comparisons will be so weak.

The overall bullish reaction to this better-than-expected – but still rather grim – drumbeat of news we’re getting is another reason I’m worried the good times are about to end. Take today’s action, for instance, with the market moving higher because of some new economic data. What are these promising green shoots of which I write??

Well, for one, tetail sales rose 0.1 percent for the month of September, according to a survey. This is the first sequential rise in sales in over a year, and apparently a cause for massive celebration according to the chief economist of the group that led the survey. “Let the retail recovery begin,” said Michael P. Niemira of the clearly unbiased International Council of Shopping Centers. “This is the start of a better performance and better fundamentals.”

Hogwash. With unofficial unemployment rates still in the teens and rising, I guarantee you this holiday season – and many holiday seasons to come – will be a big disappointment.

Speaking of unemployment, by the way, the market is also cheering the fact that the Labor Department reported that new claims for jobless benefits fell to 521,000 last week, the lowest level since January and, yes, ‘better-than-expected.’ Meanwhile, this still means that more than a half-million Americans lost their jobs, above the rate where overall unemployment would start falling.

i wouldn’t say the pundits and experts are universally bullish – which would be the ultimate contrarian indicator – as I do still see some skepticism out there, but I believe investor complacency is rising to dangerous levels while most of them try desperately to chase the market.

The final reason for my growing bearishness is more technical, but basically comes down to the fact that many of the stocks I look at are now approaching their 2008 highs. This is a little inside baseball, but basically it’s often the case that old highs for a stock end up being significant resistance points as investors who bought at those levels look to get out close to even. You see these ‘double tops’ often when looking at stock charts.

Since I believe that very little has been done to fix the economy structurally, I feel that 2008 levels will serve as a high watermark for the market for years to come.

Now don’t get me wrong. We’ve done a few good things to justify these higher prices. Inventories have been drastically reduced. Many companies have cut costs and yet kept efficiency and productivity levels high. The emerging markets like China and Brazil have shown a great deal of resiliency. And certainly the prospect for a total economic collapse – which seemed almost inevitable at the height of the panic – now appears very remote, at least for the foreseeable future.

But mostly what we’ve done is comparable to giving a sick, lethargic, malnourished patient a shitload of sugar and then celebrating the fact he seems more energetic. The sugar high crash is coming and it won’t be pretty.

Obama Disappoints Again … Health Care Reform Likely to Lose its Public Option

Published August 17, 2009 Deep , Universal Leave a Comment
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Boy, what a disappointment. According to published reports, the Obama administration is willing to give up a plan to create a government-run health insurance company – the so-called ‘public option’ – in order to get some sort of reform passed. Instead, they are now touting the creation of some kind of cooperative health insurance groups, which would be non-profit and owned by its members.

Now I don’t want to overstate the letdown I feel. If this is the only way some health care reform can get done, then fine. Something needs to be done, and the political realities on the ground are obviously quite tricky when you have a slim majority in Congress and even some of the Blue Dogs Democrats are barking like they don’t want to support anything that could increase our deficit.

And unlike getting pregnant, you can get ‘a little reform’ when it comes to health care. I’ll be relatively pleased if a bill passes that takes active measures to limit cost inflation by reducing waste or fraud or increasing efficiencies in the system and includes regulations forbidding insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions or dropping people when they get sick.

But I wonder how many other compromises will find its way into the legislation before it reaches the President’s desk. Already, DF pointed out a blog post that indicated the administration agreed to some fairly serious concessions to the pharma industry in order to get it to agree to close the Medicare doughnut hole in prescription coverage.

When it comes to this nation’s health care system, the patient is very sick and needs a very strong prescription. A placebo won’t do. If and when this plan finally passes, will it have any teeth in it?

Or will it just be another example in a growing list of measures that Obama has either avoided pursuing or gotten passed only after it was strongly watered down. A stimulus bill was passed, but only after its size had been slashed, and several of the more left-leaning initiatives removed. An effort to end military tribunals was abandoned. Energy reform and cap-and-trade (an interesting idea that will likely do far too little to reduce global warming) linger in legislative limbo. Meanwhile, Obama has been silent on immigration reform, avoids changing don’t-ask-don’t-tell, and decides to fight the release of torture photos.

The area where Obama has had his biggest successes has been in the economic arena, yet many of the initiatives there – such as forcing GM into bankruptcy and doling out hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money to banks and Wall Street institutions – hardly qualify as furthering the liberal agenda.

Why are liberals so friggin afraid of their own ideology? Can you imagine the Bush administration hemming and hawing the way Obama’s team has? They wanted tax cuts, they got it done. They wanted authorization to go to war with Iraq, they got it done. They wanted the Patriot Act passed, they got it done.

Granted, there’s very little on a political level that I want Obama to emulate from the Bush team. As someone who finds strict, unwavering adherence to an ideology a bit disturbing, I like the fact that Obama is open to compromise. Often, many of the most successful initiatives a president will accomplish come by reaching across the aisle in areas not normally associated with their side’s ideology (like Clinton’s welfare reform or Bush’s AIDS relief work).

But look, the folks on the other side had their chance. They messed up, and Americans voted for change. Not just change in process – in how things got done in Washington – but voted for change in policy, too.

Troubling public opinion polls and frequent displays of hostilities at town hall meetings shouldn’t matter much if you think the results of policy change will be successful.

Democrats now control both houses of Congress. There’s no justification for deadlock or watered-down, half-assed measures.

For at least the next three years, the Left has been given the opportunity to lead this country. It’s time they do just that.

Twist and Shout: Why the Politics of Anger Makes Me Want to Cry

Published August 13, 2009 Deep , Personal , Universal 2 Comments
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“…it is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”

I was livid when I first saw video from the health care town hall meeting that took place last week in my hometown St. Louis.  I had already seen enough similar footage from other cities, but the fact that these were in some ways ‘my folk’ infuriated me.

Ignorant rednecks, I thought, the whole lot of them.

Judging by their age and apparent socioeconomic status (yes, I was stereotyping), I couldn’t help but figure that many of these folks were already receiving a substantial amount of government-financed health care in the form of Medicare and Medicaid. I was convinced many of them were either paid shills of the health-care industry or just sheep lathered up into an unthinking rage by the reactionary talking heads that now populate the airwaves.

These people are the ones who have been chewed up, spit on and totally ignored for years. They have seen their jobs shipped overseas, their communities neglected. They may have a right to be angry but they should be venting their rage at the fat cats on Wall Street, who plundered and pillaged this country for a decade and then received trillions of dollars of our money, bailed out of the damage caused by their own incompetency and malfeasance.

But instead, of all issues, the thing that finally tipped these people over the boiling point was the prospect of trying to find a better way to provide health care for all of our fellow citizens, of trying to fix a broken system that eats up way too much of our GDP, that doesn’t work nearly as well as other less resource-rich countries, and threatens to topple our nation’s already creaky balance sheet.

Fucking uncaring, unthinking, rude, selfish idiots. That was what I thought of these people.

But now I realize that by thinking this way, I was engaging in their game, letting my emotions get the best of me. I was demonizing them just as they were demonizing Obama and The Other that frightens them so much.

Because here’s the truth: I have bought into The Politics of Anger. How could I not? It is now in full force. Everywhere. We should just call it ImPolitics.

We can’t have a rational debate anymore about anything without feeling the anger, letting it seep into our thoughts and words to the point where we no longer are listening to each other but shouting at each other. And when the issue at stake is something as important and as personal as health care, the tempers run even higher and hotter.

And while the extreme right may practice this form of politics with much more enthusiasm and effectiveness than most, they don’t have a monopoly on it.

Admit it, you think the religious right are a bunch of hypocritical assholes. You thought Bush and Cheney were evil. You’ve compared them to Hitler and the Nazis once or twice, at least in your thoughts. And this was before they abused the power of their office, led us into a war on false pretenses, and took away a number of our personal liberties. Perhaps you felt this way as soon as they were elected, when they clearly stole the election, using their mob tactics in Florida (some of those scenes in the election offices in Miami-Dade County certainly do have an eerie resemblance to the rage we’re seeing now).

I’d like to think I’m better. I have a sensitive soul and an open mind, after all. I appreciate fine art and literature and film and music. I can appreciate nuance, see things in colors other than black and white. I am enlightened. I know and appreciate how precious and short life is, and how we too often get distracted by issues that don’t truly matter.  For whatever we may think lies beyond, if anything, we should at least agree that we would make our temporal lives a lot more pleasant if we tried to understand the common humanity that links us all, binds us to the same shared fate.

But then I see the terrifying rage at these meetings, and it makes me wonder.

I know it’s the insult of the day to throw out the term Hitler and raise the specter of  Nazism whenever you disagree with your opponent. Both sides do it, and the inappropriateness of the metaphor has rendered it all but impotent.

But I wonder if the rage you see at these meetings doesn’t indeed spring from the same place that led us to a world where such a thing as the Holocaust – and all the other holocausts, the Rwandas, the Cambodias, the Bosnias, the Darfurs, etc. etc. – became possible, perhaps even inevitable. That perhaps the rage at these meetings, and the rage that rises in me as I watch, is the true realization of the common humanity of which I speak, and of which binds us to the same shared fate.

And then my rage dissipates, and is instead replaced by a deep sadness. It is much less fulfilling. I hope it is just as inappropriate.

Questions: The Regrets Edition (Part II)

Published July 28, 2009 Deep , Personal 1 Comment
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Great answers to Part I of the regrets column. Here are my other 5 top regrets.

6) I regret being afraid of dying. In some ways, I feel my whole life’s purpose is to finally accept (at least on a Zen-like level) the inevitability of my death. Instead, the concept so terrifies me that it has clearly kept me from being as adventurous and/or productive as I could have been. A little caution can be a good thing, perhaps, but to live without fear of death sounds so freeing. (To be completely accurate, it’s more the pain of dying than the actual being dead part that scares me).

7) I regret being shy around girls. Ok, so it’s all good as I ended up finding this great awesome girl, but oh man, I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have caught the eye of a beautiful girl and wish I had gone up to her and introduced myself, make small chat, throw her a compliment, ask her on a date, etc. but instead only watched her walk away and out of my life forever. If I had chosen not to do any of those things because I thought it would be too forward and ungentlemanly or even creepy, that would be one thing. But me … I was mostly just scared, especially of rejection, and that’s just silly. Only the rejected can give rejection its power (Oh yeah, that’s like Tony Robbins good!)

8) I regret not being more serious about my writing. Even as a young kid, I fancied myself a writer. I remember creating a whole series of short stories, including a choose your own adventure (damn I loved those), about a porcupine named Kong. I had people who liked and encouraged my work, including a teacher I had in elementary school who took a bunch of my stories and compiled them in a pretty cool bound package and helped get one my tales published in a young children’s magazine (still one of my all-time great thrills).

I continued writing short stories and small pieces throughout college, but as time passed, I grew more discouraged. I would read stories by the masters, by authors I totally loved, and bemoan the fact I could never be as good as them. I experimented with longer forms of writing, including novels, but could never finish my projects. My imagination was lacking. My vocabulary was inadequate. My characters were cliched.

But if my writing was inadequate before, it’s only gotten worse. Writing is a skill that must be honed like any other and I unfortunately have written very little over the past five years – aside from these blog posts, of course. I think I convinced myself that writing was not as enjoyable as it used to be, but I wonder if maybe there’s something more going on here.

Because sometimes I think of how envious I am of the people who seem like they know what they’ve wanted to do since the day they were born, who have passion about something and pursue it with joy AND single-minded determination, a lethal combination for success. And then I think back to how I would spend hours as a young kid holed up in my room, composing stories, getting lost in the process, reveling in my own creations, and wonder if for me writing should have been that thing, and – note the emerging theme – I just was too afraid to pursue it. That my imagination was lacking, indeed.

9) I regret not doing more for my fellow man. This one is simple. I give to charity a decent amount, but not nearly enough. But more importantly, I should be more generous with my time. On this site, I’ve often complained about the lack of compassion certain members of society seem to have for their fellow humans, and yet I cannot honestly say I’ve done much to make a difference in this world. I talk a much better game than I do, and worry I just may be more selfish than I’d like to believe. Even when I try to do something charitable, I often do it begrudgingly and with the minimum effort, like the time several years back when I along with my brother mentored an inner-city student and helped sponsor his private Catholic school education. I did so little to really help that kid succeed, and embarrassingly, have since lost touch with him and his family.

10) I regret not going to California to watch the Northwestern Wildcats play in the Rose Bowl. OK, this is a small one, but when I was a senior in college, the Northwestern football team came out of nowhere – after decades of being the doormat of the Big Ten – to shock the world with a miraculous year for the ages. In one season, they beat Notre Dame, Michigan (in the Big House) and Penn State to win the Big Ten and earn their first appearance in the Rose Bowl in fifty years.

I saw every home game that year, and even a couple of away games, and that season easily stands as one of the top three sports fan experiences in my life. Many of my college friends went out to Pasadena during the Winter Break to cheer the team on, but I was a rather broke student and decided it would cost too much money. So I went home to St. Louis and watched the game on TV with some friends and family.

What a joke. You don’t get opportunities like that often, and when you do, money should hardly ever be the deciding factor. I know the advice to save and prepare for retirement or a rainy day has its merits – and especially sounds sage in tough economic times like the current ones – but money is merely a means to an end, nothing more. Be prudent, but have fun and take advantage of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities when they arise. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

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