Category: Reclaiming the Family

Tenacity of Purpose

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I had my oldest grandson over today.  I spent about three hours in the morning clearing snow from the driveways and the afternoon and evening watching a science fiction tv series that he liked.  It’s called “Murderbot” and it’s about a cyborg that figures out how to override the “governor” that forces him to obey and protect humans.  The series is based on books that my grandson read and liked.  It was somewhat a black comedy because the cyborg finds humans incredibly annoying and so he is sorely tempted to do them harm from time to time.  He is also disgusted by most human speech and emotional activities, finding affection and sexual behavior especially nauseating.

And so the plot puts him in contact with a group of humans that can only be described as woke hippies.  They’re constantly virtue signaling about their sexuality and politics and thereby annoying the “SecUnit” (security unit) almost constantly which triggers him to complain internally and that provides most of the monologue of the show.

And the SecUnit is further incensed when his actions to keep the hippies safe requires him to kill cyborgs and humans who are actively hunting.  The audience sees the absurdity of this squeamishness but the hippies are just too pacifistic to understand.  But by the end of the season, they learn the value of fighting back and SecUnit becomes a valued part of their group.  Well, I can’t say I didn’t despise the hippies but the cyborg was an amusing protagonist.

Afterwards we talked about fiction publishing and how short stories are currently shared on the internet (for free).  He mentioned a story he was reading that had a character that finds a sentient being that resembles a tin can but is possessed of tremendous cosmic powers.  I told him it reminded me of a short story called “The Sack” about an omniscient being found by humans on an asteroid that could answer almost any question and how that becomes the cause of an interplanetary battle.

Then we talked for a while about joining the work force because he graduates college in May.  I told him a story about some mistakes I made during a job interview and how maybe they worked to my advantage in the long run.  And we talked about crafting a resume.  I had a story about how maybe insanity may have played a hand in one of the first jobs I got.  A distant relative added some text to my resume using the phrase “tenacity of purpose.”  And this phrase was mentioned by my prospective boss’s boss as one of the things that attracted them to my application.  At a later date I could confirm that both the relative that came up with that phrase and the manager who liked it were both certifiably insane.  Maybe that was a good thing.  But it has to make you think about how bizarre circumstance plays a role in moving our lives in the directions they go.  I told my grandson to use that phrase “tenacity of purpose” with care since apparently it attracts the crazies.

An interesting day.

Merry Christmas Day 2025

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Well, here we are.  We made it to the end of the year and now we get to spend a few days reflecting on the year and looking forward to the next one.  Christmas Day will be a family gathering here at the Compound and we’ll be stuffing ourselves with rich foods and desserts and basically enjoying each other’s company for the day that the kids and those who are young at heart wait all year for.  It sounds like we’ll be lucky and have a day without snow.  The grass is still covered with the two inches that are left over from the last few days but the driveways are pretty clean for the cars to get in and out.

Camera Girl has worked mightily for the last few days shopping and cooking and baking up a storm and there will be a roast beast and lasagna and all the fixin’s.  My oldest grandson is graduating college and we’ve been talking about applying for jobs and also all of the latest technical innovations in the computer and information fields.  He told me about the computer that is now available that uses a chunk of brain cells to play pong.  That had me shaking my head.  But I’m sure crazier things are in the future.  Maybe someday they’ll grow an entire brain in a vat and then the Matrix will be for real.

Well, I’ll try to look in on the site sometime tomorrow.  But here’s hoping everyone has the best Christmas Day they can.

Merry Christmas to all of you and yours.

Maybe I’ll Swing Down to Mar-a-Lago

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Today was an interesting day.  The younger grandkids came over with their mothers to make Christmas cookies with Camera Girl.  In addition to the real cookies, they also got to make “sugar cookies.”  This is some kind of sweeter cookie dough that they then adorn with multi-colored granulated sugar and other impossibly sweet ingredients like chocolate sprinkles.  And they didn’t just sprinkle it on.  They poured it on like cement coming out of a truck.  It was horrifying.  No one but a child could stand the saccharine sucrosity of that unholy concoction.  But of course, no one would force me to ingest that mess so I smiled indulgently and feasted on a few of the legitimate confections that were created in the kitchen.  And they were very, very good.  Sure, they’re not good for me but it’s Christmas and this is the time to overindulge.

And later on, my proof copies of “The Sniper” were delivered by the Amazon truck.  He brought them to the bottom driveway and then had to skate across the ice that had melted from the snow and then refrozen over-night.  I apologized to him for the hazard but he laughed it off and said he’d seen much worse today.

Now these “proof” copies have a watermark across the cover that says “not for resale” or something like that.  But seeing my work (or Jake Barter’s anyway) in the flesh, as it were, was kind of fun.  After all, what could be more official than finding your product inside of an Amazon box?  Why, that’s the very definition of American commerce in the twenty first century.  Thank you, Jeff Bezos!

And after a cursory inspection it looks pretty good.  The cover art is clear, the text lines up well on the pages and the paper feels right.  I’ll page through it and make sure nothing is missing or marred.  But I think everything looks like it’s a go for next month.  I’ve applied for Author status on Goodreads and I’ve authorized my marketer to set up my ad campaign and choose the keywords or whatever they call the bait that’s meant to entice the algorithm to catapult me to viral ubiquity.  I wonder if this magic requires the sacrifice of a hecatomb or at least a black lamb.  All of it seems like black magic to me.  But I figure it’s definitely worth my while to give the whole thing the old college try.  After all. What has Brandon Sanderson got that I ain’t got?  I mean other than $41.7 million dollars of Kickstarter funding, that is.  By February I may be waist deep in royalty checks.  Movie studios may be fighting each other to get me to sell them the movie rights.  I’ll probably get a call from the White House begging me to use my vast clout and get involved in the negotiations to end the Ukraine War.  I’ll probably spend a few hours in Oval Office advising Donald about domestic and foreign affairs and signing autographs for Marco and J.D.  Who knows, maybe I’ll swing down to Mar-a-Lago and advise the President on how to lower his golf handicap.

Well, we’ll see.

We’ve Got to Have Priorities

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Christmas Cooking, Sony A7 III, Sony 90mm f\2.8 macro lens

Well, Christmas has arrived.  No not the Day or the Eve.  We’re still four or five days away but the reality has landed.  On Sunday, Camera Girl and her daughters and granddaughter will be making Christmas cookies all day.  Now this is a major event in the holiday.  When it happens, I can grab a cookie or two with every cup of coffee she serves between now and Christmas (and even a while after).  So, this ushers in the end of reasonable eating habits until the end of the holiday.  I approximate I’ll put on five pounds between now and then.  And at my age that’s a burden because losing five pounds is painful.  It’ll take three or four weeks to shed it.

But I have to admit it’s worth it.  Christmas dinner will include both roast beef and home-made lasagna.  And I have already seen the ingredients for ricotta cheese cake and several half gallons of very good ice cream.  I even complained bitterly until she stocked up on some Klondike Bars.  I know for a fact that several of the grandchildren love them and I refused to miss out on a chance to spoil the little guys.  As I’ve stated before, I believe my chance at immortality depends on their good opinion of me after I go to that big website in the sky.  So, I groused about the ice cream and voila!  I saw them in the groceries yesterday.

So yeah, I’ll eat too much rich food and will be pretty groggy by December 26th.

But it’s worth it.  After all, the next real holiday after this is Valentine’s Day and that’s a month and a half away.  Plus, that’s just one small meal.  The next respectable eating marathon is Easter.  And whether that’s the end of March or the beginning of April that’s an eternity away.  We’ll even be close to the end of winter and that’s an eternity away from right now.  So, I’ll begin enjoying myself with those cookies and I’ll continue with my holiday movie viewing ritual and that should insulate me from whatever insanity is breaking loose in the “so-called” real world.  And it’s working I’ve skipped right over the psychopaths shooting up innocent people at colleges and on beaches and wherever else they want to target humanity.  I’ll just let the other pundits address these depressing abominations.

I’ll concentrate on coming up with a decent line of conversation with my grandchildren and providing a chance for my children and their spouses to relax for a few hours while I distract their children with desserts and black and white movies.  That seems like a worthwhile endeavor in this crazy world we inhabit.  I won’t think about the plans at the state capitol to raise our taxes to make up for the Biden dollars that aren’t flowing in any more.  I won’t worry about the attempts to make homeless encampments permanent all over the state.  Instead, I’ll compare the relative merits of the various cinematic portrayals of Bob Cratchit over the years.  Yeah, Cratchit should be next.

Thanksgiving 2025

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Tomorrow is Camera Girl’s D-Day.  The family comes over for a twenty-six-pound turkey and all the trimmings.  I counted up the individual food courses and it came close to thirty.  So, this is ridiculous and I asked her if she wants to start cutting back on all this preparation or get the daughters to help and she shook off the suggestion as heresy.  Apparently, she lives for this.  And I’m glad.  I think we all would miss something if she didn’t put this particular menu together in the traditional way that everyone in the family now looks at as the only way to have dinner on Thanksgiving.  The grandkids have never known a different menu at Thanksgiving and that’s going back over twenty years for some of them.  All in all, that’s an amazing track record.

Of course, one day things will change.  One day the grandkids will start families of their own.  And they won’t be able to come to our house every year.  Or maybe we’ll just get too old to run Thanksgiving.  But for now, we live in that golden era where all the grandkids think this regime is eternal.  And I’ll let that be the party line.

Tomorrow we’ll gather for the feast and sit down at 2pm.  I’ll have the honor (!?!) of carving the turkey and sitting at the head of the table as pater familias but all the power is vested in Camera Girl as boss of the kitchen.  She will be scurrying around making sure that the various dishes are available to people at all sections of the table (or tables, the crowd spills over onto a couple of smaller tables added onto the main table) and truth be told I don’t think she even eats a mouthful of food for the first forty minutes of the campaign.  But once the table is completely stocked and everyone has filled their plates for the first time she will settle into her seat and stay there until dessert is needed.  And this will be an assortment of home-made pies and other desserts.  The only thing I always insist on is the availability of several gallons of good quality vanilla ice cream.  Inevitably there will be several other flavors represented; chocolate chip, strawberry, even heretical flavors like cookies and cream.  But for me the gold standard is vanilla.  It is a pure element, possibly the quintessence of the Thanksgiving dessert.  And my grandchildren agree with me vehemently.  There was an open revolt one year when vanilla ice cream wasn’t clearly visible on the dessert table.  I joined in their cries of protest and Camera Girl was forced to head into the basement to the back of the freezer where the vanilla was hiding.  Since then, there’s been no more nonsense about it.

And after we’ve stuffed ourselves with turkey and fixings and dessert, the grandsons and I will head into the living room to watch our holiday movies.  Typically, we’ll bust out the Laurel and Hardy version of “March of the Wooden Soldiers.”  Afterwards I’ll try to put on one of the versions of “A Christmas Carol.”  I think they feel that the Alistair Sim version is definitive.  But we’ll see.

So, the site may be kind of quiet tomorrow but it’s for a good cause.  Happy Thanksgiving to all you folks out there.  Enjoy the day.

What We Need is a Baby Boom

photog Current Events, Reclaiming the Family, Trump

There are fifty million Americans between the ages of twenty and thirty (ball park).  That’s twenty-five million couples to provide the next generation of Americans.  The problem is they won’t get married and have kids.  Why?  Well, several reasons.  Feminism, internet porn and the cost of living.  The first two are more in the way of being negative drags on the process of marriage.  But the last is more like a road block.  The cost of housing is too high and the mortgage rates are too high.  Okay, that is the current situation.  But this has to be fixed and right away.  The clock is ticking and all those twenty-five million female biological clocks are winding down.  And this is the last chance to fix this before America just sort of fades away.  What’s needed is a baby boom.

How do you make that happen?  Well, it’s quite simple.  We need a moonshot for a baby boom.  The government has to do a bunch of things:

  • Bring back good paying jobs for men (Trump is actually working on this one already).
  • Make houses affordable (this involves two separate things; lower interest rates for young couples buying their first house and incentivize home building)
  • Government incentives to married women staying home and raising kids.
  • Federal tuition vouchers to allow parents to take their kids out of the public schools.
  • A propaganda program to convince young women that working in an office is slavery and that raising kids is the most important job in the world (because it is).
  • Get rid of no-fault divorce.
  • Tax incentives to corporations to hire married men.

I call this a moonshot because it will cost trillions.  Between the mortgages and the tax incentives it will be as expensive as the GI Bill of Rights after WWII and the Great Society rolled into one.  But it’s a matter of necessity.  This country is bleeding out.  We’re already shrinking from the point of view of children and that’s even considering all the immigrant kids walking around today.  Another generation and immigrants will be all that’s left and that won’t really be America anymore.  It’ll be post-America.

So that’s the direction our leaders have to be going if they want to keep this experiment going.  Some of this stuff is being put in place by Orban in Hungary.  Trump is working his way in the right direction but it will take more than a few years to institute.  But first it has to be on the radar of the people in charge.  I know there are people aware of the critical problem of population loss.  But unfortunately, the millennial generation is the biggest part of the problem.  They’ve been brainwashed into thinking there are already too many humans.  So, it’s not clear which side will win this fight.

Personally, I hope to see as many great-grandchildren as possible in my family.  Maybe I’ll have to start an incentive program of my own.  Maybe I’ll sell the Compound and buy a multi-family that I can turn into condos for the grandkids.  You’ve got to start somewhere.

Goodbye Summer 2025

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So, Saturday (09AUG2025) is a big family party at the Compound.  Another grandson graduates from high school and begins college.  The next, next generation become adults and have all the same decisions and experiences in front of them.  And Camera Girl and I continue our campaign to get to play with progressively more distant descendants.  The hunt for great grandchildren is now the thing.

But the main thing is that I’m just providing the infrastructure; the indoor and outdoor venue and the grill.  The graduate’s parents will bring and cook the food and organize the kids’ activities and lifeguard the pool.  I’ll just be one of the kids tomorrow.  I intend to spend a portion of the event with my brothers talking about how passing the torch to the next generation feels for them.  There has been a threat of putting on a Shatner-Khan adjacent event.  Maybe put on one of his greatest hits.  If it happens, I hope it’ll be “Terror at 20,000 Feet.”  There can be nothing more definitively Shatner than that.

But I hope to spend most of the day eating burgers and dogs and potato salad and peppers and sausage.  And then playing pool with the grandkids and shooting the breeze with family that I don’t see very often.  This will be the last get together for the summer.  And everyone is getting older and travelling even the modest distances between us becomes more challenging every year.  So, these parties become more important.

I guess most of us are on the Trump train so there will be some Trump gloating going on.  We’ll keep it sotto voce because even among my close relatives there are a few folks of the other persuasion.  And I don’t see any need to start a fight.  Family solidarity is more important than scoring political points at a party.  That’s for sure.

A couple of days ago the goofy looking weather man on the Spectrum channel (my cable provider) told us that it looks like a very nice week with temperatures in the 80’s, low humidity and plenty of sun.  But then, just to prove he’s a jerk he went into a little spiel where he defined just how much daylight we lose over the course of August.  And just to show that he was intentionally spreading misery he finished off by saying, “But most people don’t like to be reminded of this sad fact.”  What a creep.

But he’s right.  The sun is lower in the sky.  It’s cooler than a few weeks ago and the sun is down earlier than it should be.  The leaves are starting to fall from the cherry trees.  The vegetable garden is definitely looking worse for wear and the flowers are starting to exhaust.  Last week the daylilies in the sheltered corner ran out of flowers.  There are still some smaller ones (Stella de Oros and orange ones) but they’re not the same.  The cone flowers will last a good long time but there aren’t anymore new flowers growing.  The only flowers still to come are the Montauk daisies and the wolfbane in October.

So summer is wrapping up.  The kids go back to school in two weeks and pretty soon the end of season Dunwich Fair with its First Selectman dunk tank (win at your own risk) and free werewolf neutering clinic will be upon us.  Well, it’s time for the party and goodbye Summer 2025.

Echoes of a Summer Night

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Only a single week of July left.  One last draught of fiery perfection.  Drink deep the heat and light and dark of real summer.  The lightning bugs flash from the grass and trees and trigger memories of a young boy collecting those living phosphors and watching them far into the night.  Where do those memories reside in my old brain?  What other memories do they trigger?  People who have been gone from this world for decades.  But I can still hear their voices and see their expressions.  Kind and cruel, smart and slow, funny and humorless, warm and cold, sane and mad.  And all these traits mixed in many combinations and proportions.  All those summer nights, all those years ago.

All those parties and occasions where we talked about the future and all the things we wanted to do and all we hoped to achieve.  And some of it we did.  And some of it worked out as we hoped.  But so many things fell by the wayside and some spectacularly so.  But those of us left must keep moving forward because there is no other way.  We just keep time to the beat of the days and seasons ticking by cycle after cycle trying to keep up with the pace and maintain a relevance with the waves of younger and livelier participants in the dance.

I was talking to my young granddaughter about her vacation in Maine.  I asked her what she liked best and she said she loved it all; the sand, the water, the sun, the amusement park rides, the carnival foods, the ice cream shop.  So, I told her the story of how we came to pick that beach; how an old friend, an old engineering friend who was more than thirty years older than me answered a question.  I asked him where I could find a nice long beach with white sand that wasn’t horribly crowded, expensive and pretentious like all the New England beaches I had tried.  And once we gave his recommendation a try, our kids went there for years while they were growing up and now her mom was doing the same for her.

As I was telling her I could see she didn’t think it was that amazing a story.  But I wondered if in twenty or thirty years she might be reminded of this story while she was talking to one of her descendants.  Maybe she’d tell her kids about their crazy old great grandfather who told stories about even more ancient people and events and always made sure there was some extra rich ice cream available for dessert and always had time to push a kid on a swing, pick berries or provide a butterfly net for catching lightning bugs.

Yep, summer is reaching its crescendo.  A few more parties and outings and then fall and the great seasonal ritual of death.  The fall equinox and Halloween and battening down the hatches.  I see that Guillermo del Toro has a Frankenstein movie coming out in November.  Maybe I’ll give that a try.

The Boys and I Give Superman (1978) a Try

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Because of the new Superman movie coming out I had a showing of the 1978 Christopher Reeve version for the two younger grandsons.  I was curious to see how they reacted to the somewhat slow startup to this version.  After all I think half the movie is gone before Superman actually dons the suit.  But from all appearances they liked it.

Now the youngest one is a very analytical viewer of science fiction and fantasy so he gave me a short lecture on why kryptonite kills Superman.  Come to think of it he gave me several lectures about various esoteric aspects of the Man of Steel; how he could fly, how he got from one galaxy to another so quickly, why he could never die of old age, how he was able to handle people without killing them by accident.  It was very interesting to find out he had worked out all of these theories in just the time since the beginning of the movie.

I could sense the greatest annoyance with the movie when Lois Lane was on the screen.  Apparently, the love story wasn’t intensely popular with this part of the audience.  But somehow, they soldiered through.  By the time Superman was flying around Earth at ludicrous speed to turn back time and save Lois from death I think they were prepared for the end.  I’m not sure they felt Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor and Ned Beatty as his mentally challenged henchman were sufficiently serious to be credible enemies for Superman.

But by the time the (extremely long) credits were rolling they seemed to forgive some of the weaknesses of the production and wanted to discuss viewing (at least) Superman 2.  Apparently, they wanted to see the return of General Zod after I hinted that he was much more formidable a foe than Luthor.  So maybe we’ll have a second Superman feature this month.

It was funny seeing this movie for the first time in forty-seven years.  What struck me most was how odd Margot Kidder was as Lois.  The rest of the actors and actresses came across as much more professional.  Kidder seemed almost like a fish out of water.  Maybe that was the vibe they were going for.  Probably the worst acting and dialog was Marlon Brando as Jor-El; Superman’s Kryptonian father.  All of the exposition and lecturing about his duty to help humans and his fate is a bit boring.  But I guess some introduction is necessary to establish how he ends up as the man flying around in the suit.

My impression of Christopher Reeve in the movie is very positive.  He brings enormous likeability to the character and he does the comedy part of the role very deftly.  As far as the special effects in the film, this was 1978.  All of the effects are non-CGI.  To a modern audience some of them are less than overwhelming.  There is a scene where Superman is causing an avalanche to stop a flooded river from washing away a town.  But the scene is so obviously done with a miniature set using some sand and pebbles that it’s kind of silly.  But that couldn’t be helped back then.

All in all, the boys and I gave a thumbs up to Superman (1978).  Now bring on General Zod and “Planet Hooston!”

Summer Solstice 2025

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June 20, 2025 at 10:42 PM EDT is the Summer Solstice.  This is a point of inflection for my year.  For the last couple of months, the longer days temporarily color my mood brighter.  Added to this is the knowledge that the days are still getting even longer.  Even if the weather is often not optimal, I revel in the astronomical ascendancy of the Sun.

But starting on June 21st the days will be growing shorter.  Now granted this is the fairest time of the year.  The sun is tropical and the heat sears into my soul.  And this is like an elixir of youth for my tired old bones.  But psychologically I recognize that the rollercoaster has reached the top of the highest peak and for a split second it is poised between rising and falling.  Just long enough for us to look around and see heaven around us just before the bottom drops out of the ride and we plummet back to Earth.

And so, for the next two months I drink in every photon of sunlight and revel in kids free from school and looking to fill up their time with play.  I see that there’s a new Superman movie coming out soon.  Maybe it’s a woke nightmare.  Maybe Superman is a Biden/Harris supporter.  But maybe he’s still fighting for truth, justice and the American way.  I’ll find out.  And if it’s any good I’ll bring the kids.  We’ll spend way too much money on lousy popcorn and watery soda.  But We’ll get to debate the strengths and weaknesses of the 2025 son of Krypton.  Who knows, maybe he’ll surprise me.  Or maybe we won’t see it because the reviews are terrible.  But we’ll find stuff to do.

I have a feeling this is the summer we do some fishing.  Dunwich is mostly soggy so there are plenty of lakes and ponds full of what pass for bass and trout.  I think I can get most of them to cast a line in the water.  I haven’t been fishing in twenty-five years.  That’s a long time.  I think it’s time I did.

Objectively speaking, I’m a relic.  I’m much closer to the end of my life than the beginning and now I can actually feel it.  Even maintaining my present vitality requires discipline and work.  And even that is a matter of delaying the inevitable.

And yet, every day is a gift.  We interact with our fellow creatures and try to be useful and positive.  Encouraging the young and facilitating the efforts of those trying to make it a better place.  Those are things that even a relic can accomplish.

So, here’s the official beginning of Summer 2025.  I will do my darndest to make this a successful season for me and Camera Girl and the rest of the clan.  I’m looking forward to all of my rituals and all of the little joys of summer.  Barbecues, local baseball, fireworks, the Dunwich Fair, Fourth of July, Labor Day and all the rest.  We’ll make sure we feel the sun before it retreats back into the hell that is New England Winter.

At least, that’s my plan.  Enjoy.