Sunshine

Tuesdays With Morrie? How 'bout Months With Menopause?

2011-05-24T06:54:00.000-07:00

Every time I hear one of my friends from the north say they moved down here because they were tired of the harsh winters, I want to ask, "Have you ever been in South Carolina in August??" It's like Hell sends its left over heat here. As a matter of fact, wet T-shirt contests didn't originate in bars, they were just a natural progression from sweating through three sets of clothes in a day. I, therefore, love air conditioning.

For years, I kept the thermostat somewhere between 65 and 68 degrees in the summer. Walk in my house from the hot, humid, oven-baked air outside and your glasses would immediately fog over. Walk out of my house into the heat and condensation would form on your body like a mini weather system in the tropics.

But now that we're enduring "the change," my thermostatic antics seem like child's play. My temps now seem sauna like compared to those my lovely bride needs to battle hot flashes. I'm pretty sure they store corpses in a morgue at a higher temperature than we keep in our house. The kids walk around in sweats in July. I feel like I need a thermal suit and snowshoes just to reach the bed at night, and I've told Myra on several occasions that when the St. Bernard with the whiskey barrel around his neck comes looking for survivors, please point him to my side of the bed.

Is there any wonder why I get whacked in the shoulder on a regular basis?

Okay, here's today's recipe:

Crab Dip (Easy peasy, but it looks gourmet; sure to impress your friends--especially the ladies!)

1 block Creme Cheese (not the tub. Has to be the block)
1 jar of seafood cocktail sauce
1 small can of crab

Take a fancy smancy glass plate and place the opened block of creme cheese in the middle.
Cover the block with the cocktail sauce
Spread the crab over the top of the sauce

Serve with famcy smancy crackers and just wait for the compliments.

The F Word (Which May Turn Out to Mean Food! Mind Outta the Gutter...Tsk, tsk)

2010-11-23T13:34:00.000-08:00

I'm a fan of the Pioneer Woman, so today we're going to talk about her, young adult books, and food. First, the Pioneer Woman, a lady named Ree Drummond, was raised in Oklahoma, moved to L.A., had dreams of becoming a ballerina, and so on her way to relocating to Chicago (I think), she stopped in her hometown. While in a bar, she saw a handsome hunk of a cowboy and before she new it, she was married, gave up her grand jete' for a truck named Chevrolet, and moved out to the ranch. She began a blog and about eight months into it, she started including recipes. Now she has a NY Times bestselling cook book. So I decided to steal her idea and I'll do the same at the end of the blog. No, not fall in love with a cowboy. This ain't Brokeback Mountain. I mean include a recipe (which I see Michelle and Jessica have done, too. Pioneer Women, perhaps?)

Young adult books...I'm in the midst of writing book two in the Austin Files series (Betrayed was book one). I'm struggling with the authenticity of the dialogue and with some of the situations my characters find themselves in. A person in my writers group is also writing a young adult book. She's a very strong writer and has decided on total realism, including having her characters use profanity--including the dreaded "F" word (gasp!) She realizes with that in there, she'll never get into school libraries, but she's wondering if it's worth the risk. Opinions anyone? Fellow authors? Parents?

Finally the recipe. I'll include one with every blog now and include (if I remember) the person's name who originally gave it to me). Of course anyone can make these, but I intend them for men such as myself who are the chief cooks and bottle washers in their homes. As Myra told me on day two of our marriage, "If you wanna eat, you better learn how to cook."

The Best Fruit Dip Ever

From my friend Bill Mellin

1 tub small tub of soft creme cheese

1 cup powdered sugar

Kahlua to taste

In a bowl, mix the creme cheese and sugar. When thoroughly mixed, add about a teaspoon of Kahlua and taste the mixture. Don't let the alcohol overpower the sweetness of the other ingredients. Stir until it has the consistency of cake frosting.

Put the mixture in a small serving bowl, set it in the middle of a tray, and surround it with hard fruits like apples and pears. You can dip strawberries or spoon some of the mixture over softer fruits.

Enjoy!

The G Spot

2010-11-16T08:17:00.000-08:00

Two days ago, Alexey (my son) and I saw a commercial for T-Mobile's new 4G phone. With it, you can watch movies, television shows from the Web, send texts, check email, and have a video chat with someone who also has a 4G phone and thus video chatting capabilities (not to mention being able to annoy the crap out of everybody else in the restaurant, coffee shop, airport, bus, or train with you, your phone, and your loud mouth)

Alexey proudly announced he was quite satisfied with his 3G iPhone.

In response, I had some questions and one apparently boring soliloquy:

#1- What does the "G" stand for? Does it mean gigabyte or generation? I've never been quite clear on the concept.

#2- (and here is where I think I lost Alexey)--what's with this video chat thing? I mean, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone so we didn't have to be standing next to each other to talk. But with his invention we did have to stand next to the telephone waiting--sometimes endlessly--in order to to talk to the person to whom we did not want stand next to. When we could no longer stand sitting by the telephone waiting to talk to the person we no longer had to stand next to, somebody invented a cell phone. And now the cell pones have video chatting so we can "virtually' stand next to the guy we don't physically have to stand next to in order to talk to him.

So my question is, if we've come to this, why not save the radiation exposure and just go find the guy and talk to him?? It's like the phones that do the voice-to-text thing where you can dictate a TEXT message. If you're going to all that trouble, just use the damn phone to CALL the person!

When I was 12 and out playing at Clay Neal's house, as it got dark, my mother would step out on to the screened porch, cup her hands over her mouth and yell my name across the half acre of woods that separated our houses until I answered. Today, my son sends me a text message when he's ready for me to pick him up from where ever he is.

For all this introspection and history, I got from Alexey a blank stare, a "Whatever," and a "Like I said...3G does everything I need."

So much for parenting.

A New Way to Blog (For me anyway!)

2010-11-12T08:37:00.000-08:00

My last post was three months ago at the end of August. It's tough to keep a blog audience when you're that unreliable. My apologies. I'm going to try to be more consistent, and I'm going to do that by trying a new way to blog.

A friend of mine has had great success and picked up a number of followers by sticking to three topics, so I thought I might travel down that road. I like politics (or rather making fun of politicians). I like writing about my kids. And I suppose I should do some stuff on writing and books since that's the impetus for having a blog in the first place. I promise to try to be funny (What did the girl from West Virginia say on her honeymoon? "Not so hard Daddy or you'll crush my Malboros!")--my friend, Shalee, says that's a sick joke, and she's not even from West Virginia--or at least poignant.

So let's try politics first:

"No nation ever taxed itself into prosperity." Ronald Reagan

"We've demonized taxes. We've created almost the idea that they're a metaphysical evil. It's rank demagoguery. To stand before the public and rub raw this anti-tax sentiment, the Republican Party, as much as it pains me to say this, should be ashamed of themselves." Former Reagan budget director David Stockman.

I used to say that if I could keep the Democrats out of my wallet and the Republicans out of my bedroom, I'd be a happy man. When Bill met Monica, Newt Gingrich dumped his cancer stricken wife while she was in the hospital, and Sanford trekked the Appalachian Trail all the way to Argentina, the "party of values" tag line died for both groups. So that leaves us to talk about taxes.

The Republican mantra has been to limit government and to leave money in the taxpayers' pockets so they can decide how to best spend it. In South Carolina, we tried that with Act 388 that slashed property taxes for school funding and replaced it with a penny sales tax. The result? A massive loss of school dollars, teacher furloughs, staff layoffs, larger class sizes, and a moratorium on building depserately needed new schools.

Mark Sanford limited our government all right, and his limits threw hundreds, if not thousands, of mentally ill people out of residential treatment and onto the streets. And it's only the legislature that has kept him from destroying public and higher education.

We could easily cut all our taxes, but you might want to rethink that as your fat-cat ass is having a heart attack and no ambulance comes to take you to the ER because nobody funded emergency services--those damn evil taxes!

Want some tax cuts? Here are a few suggestions: Let's not give a football coach a taxpayer-funded $100,000 bonus for doing what should be his job every season--winning the SEC East--while at the same time you're laying off adjunct faculty.

When you're looking for a way to fund public transportation in the city, let's not pay a consulting firm $100,000 taxpayer dollars for suggestions any of your riders could have given you for free.

When you're laying off city workers, increasing their insurance premiums, and stealing away their vacation, perhaps you could eliminate the job that has a person riding around in neighborhoods leveling fines for simply leaving trash roll carts out past 7:30 pm on the day of service. (We have an actual city ordinance prohibiting it).

Tourism is the number one industry in this state, but the City of Columbia, in an effort to get tourist dollars, has a poor history of pouring bucket loads of taxpayer money into losing ventures and putting citizens in the position of making up the difference so that the entrepreneurs who should be taking the risks don't lose money. Do the Three Rivers Music Festival (never made a profit), Air South (bankrupt), MayFest (tanked), or the city-financed hotel (illegal) ring a bell?

And what about the $30 million in taxpayer funds S.C. State University got to build the Clyburn Transportation Center, which was supposed to be completed TWELVE years ago. The missing money is now under a state police investigation. Lovely.

Now please, my dear elected officials, tell me again how so very hard it is to find places to cut your budgets.

Having a Right vs. Doing Right

2010-08-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

The Mosque--or rather, Muslim Activity Center--at Ground Zero. I've decided to join in on the side of tolerance. This is the United States, after all, by God. All of us have First Amendment rights, so if Ms. Khan wants to build a mosque within a block of the worst terrorist attack in the history of this country, so be it.

In fact, I have taken inspiration from Ms. Khan, Imam What's-his-name, and Mayor Bloomberg and would like to proudly announce my plans for a Ku Klux Klan Activity Center on some property I own adjacent to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was gunned down.

It will be a place of inclusion where all of our interactive demonstrations will be taught in a purely historical rather than social context. I mean, who wouldn't benefit from learning how to properly tie a noose--strictly for demonstration purposes, of course.

Come on by for a burger and fries at our historically segregated lunch counter where you can pay with cash printed by Jews who control all the banks. In the fall, we'll have S'mores melted by the fire of a burning cross!

So my snide comments aside, here's what confuses me. If a young girl is continually molested by a man and she grows distrustful of men, perhaps even unable to have an intimate relationship, people GET that. There are volumes upon volumes of literature in psychiatry journals that explain why she'll NEVER trust men.

But if I distrust Ms. Khan and the Imam because I can't get out of my head the horrific image of those planes flying into the World Trade Center buildings--an attack done in the name of radical Islam, I might add--or the buildings themselves literally melting into dust, then I am being insensitive. Me? Right?

I read some whiny letter the other day that said, "It's like distrusting all Christians because of what Timothy McVeigh did. YOU wouldn't do THAT, would you? Wah, wah, wah..."

The hell I wouldn't. I distrust anybody who uses religion to justify something that otherwise CAN'T BE JUSTIFIED!

But I guess we're back at square one...we'll just have to agree to disagree. Nah...I'm with you. I'm tolerant now. Say, if the KKK thing takes off, my next project is a Museum of American Bomb Making on a lot I just bought in Hiroshima...

Whether it's right or not, it's my right.

Just Sayin'

2010-07-29T12:24:00.000-07:00

I looked through my SPAM folder the other day...over 100 messages. The thought occurred to me that we could cut our spam in half if someone would come up with an organization that could offer me a HUGE PENIS and a degree in medical coding at the same time. Just sayin'...

Patriots and Demigods

2010-05-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

I am a writer. I interview people. I write down what they say, throw in some twenty-five-dollar adjectives, and a magazine prints it. It can be a yeoman-like way to make a dollar, I admit, but every once in a while it provides a benefit beyond measure—I get to be in the presence of heroes.

There have been three times in my life that I have been around people when it dawned on me during the conversation that I had no right to be in the same room or breathe the same air.

The first time was when I interviewed Charles Murray, a WWII veteran and recipient of the United States of America’s highest award, the Medal of Honor. The second was when I spoke with Dr. Everett Dargan, an African-American cardiologist. Dr. Dargan is smarter than half the people in all of South Carolina, yet when he finished his medical training in the 60s, he couldn’t even walk in the back door of the “white hospital.” But he persevered, and despite an oppressive environment and monumental sacrifices, he established one of the finest cardiology practices in the state and has become a sought out mentor and medical school professor.

The third time occurred this past Saturday evening.

I attended the Palmetto Patriots Ball sponsored by the Midlands Chapter of the Blue Star Mothers; patriotic, upstanding, forthright women who also bear the unfathomable burden of having children in the military deployed on foreign soil. These soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen are the bravest South Carolina has to offer. Surrounded by their mothers who are rightfully proud of their children, but who, at the same time tread upon a precipice of fear for their safety, I quickly surmised where these men and women in uniform inherited their bravery. I’m a mama’s boy of the first magnitude. I can sense these things.

At the dinner I was flanked by Gold Star Mothers as well. These are members of the Blue Star group whose children have died in the service of our country, who, as Abraham Lincoln put it, gave “their last full measure of devotion” to make you and me free. The emcee, the gracious and classy local news anchor Hannah Horne, recognized the families and read aloud the names of their fallen loved ones. A staff sergeant at my table and a Marine captain at the table next to me, both in full, formal dress uniforms, broke down in tears. So did I.

I did not deserve to be in the company of these distinguished men and women—these heroes.

I’m often told that, because I have taken on the mantle of a writer of “young adult” fiction, my blog should reflect topics that address and capture issues meaningful to them. Not so much on the flip side of that coin, but perhaps on the periphery is a piece of advice my good friend and fellow author Shannon Greenland gave me once when I asked her about writing for young adults: Never underestimate the intelligence or sophistication of your audience.

I have taken Shannon’s advice, and each time I speak to a group of young people, I try my best to respect that advice and talk to them like fellow adults. So here it goes boys and girls, some hard lessons—my glass slipper—that I took from my night at the ball…my night among patriots and demigods.

• These fighting men and women don’t endure 105 degree heat so that we can drop out of school, lie around on our butts and let our parents or the government take care of us. They fight so we have economic justice, an opportunity to succeed.

• These men and women don’t live in the sand so that we can trade or use drugs, get high and not give a damn about ourselves or the lives we impact by stupid behavior. They volunteer to be away from home so that we have the freedom to pursue our American dreams. The average time of deployment, by the way, for WWII fighters was eight months out of four years of enlistment. For Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, it’s 45 months out of 48.

• These Gold Star Mothers didn’t sacrifice a child they raised from infancy so that we could feel free to engage in politically polarized infighting, to smear our opponents, to accuse another of being unpatriotic simply because we disagree with their ideology. Their children died in the desperate hope that their deaths would mean something, that we would come together as one nation...one nation of people with disparate beliefs and customs and cultures, but one nation whose people are, again quoting Lincoln, “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” As I recall, someone once summed the concept up as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

• With so many in the world who despise the freedom of expression and economic opportunity that Western culture represents, our military service men and women have taken the fight to our enemies rather than having our enemies visit us here. In return, don’t you believe we should quit spilling each others’ blood in gang fights and drug wars, or because our egos won’t let us walk away from a meaningless fight?

• Our service members didn’t leave home in hopes that we would honor them. They left to fulfill a duty, to answer a higher calling, to defend our liberties. Saying thank you is not enough recompense, but I realize that there is no way in the world to repay the debt we owe these courageous men and women…and above all the mothers who unselfishly lent them to our service so that we might be free. Perhaps the best way to try to repay them is to live our lives in a way that honors, rather than defies, their sacrifice.

Beside my plate at the banquet table lay a medallion that read, “If you can’t stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them.”

I stand behind them not only out of gratitude, but because to stand in front of them would require their kind of courage, a brand I’m not sure I have; and especially not the brand their mothers, who have given the best of themselves, possess.

So to my Citadel family Russ Mease, Allen Blume, Dave Eubanks, Marc Gould, Ken and Alison Sigmon, Ken Riddle, Dean Costas, Mike Sammons, Verne Prosser; to Stuart Epting and Andy Nesbit; to my brother Mike Morton; to all of you who have put on a uniform and served so valiantly so that I can live my life in peace…thank you. And especially to your mothers, thank you. God bless you. I do not deserve to breathe the same air.

Recharging

2010-05-24T06:59:00.000-07:00

The place of my eternal bliss is The Citadel campus. It may sound strange that I have chosen this piece of ground as a place of refuge, a place of contentment, a place to re-charge my batteries when life has sapped me of all my strength. This was the place where lean and tall young men—whose shoes were spit-shined and whose brass belt buckles could blind you if you stared straight at them—screamed at me, the “fat load” as I ran or did pushups. They swore I’d never finish, but I earned the ring.

I chose her because she chose me as one of her sons. Ghosts of thousands of my footsteps litter the parade ground. My sweat and tears watered its blades of grass. And in the end, I graduated a Citadel man.

I go there now and listen to the echoes of my past, the cadence called by our commanders, the cannons as they fired at Friday afternoon parades. I drink in the smell of the freshly mown grass on the parade ground crisp with the scent of wild onion. I even breathe in deeply the musky scent of the pluff mud off the marsh. It is here, in this place, that an overweight mama’s boy became a man, and it’s here I reaffirm my manhood every time I visit.

A Mother's Love

2010-05-10T07:59:00.000-07:00

Ekaterina braced her frail body against the gusting flurry of wind and snow, holding her baby close to her bosom. Her head wrapped in a woolen scarf and bowed low, she stepped with caution, bracing her footfalls against the cragged, crumbling walks that lined either side of Malnikov Street in downtown Novosibirsk.

The sky was leaden and the clouds full, bursting with flakes that drifted earthward like goose feathers falling from a burst pillow. It was the first snowfall of the season.

The temperature, a freezing 26 degrees and made colder by the wind’s arctic fingers, penetrated all the layers of her clothes and gripped and shook her bones. Frozen droplets of snow pelted Ekaterina’s face but melted quickly, for her heart pounded and her cheeks burned with nervousness at what she knew she must do.

Baby Alexey snuffled and whimpered against her breast. She had wrapped him in napkins, the only insulation she could offer him against the icy chill.

She had no work. But they had survived the summer on tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and cabbage stolen on moonlight raids in gardens of the old government collectives. Nursing provided the baby his sustenance. Now the Siberian winter was settling in and still she had no work. Soon Alexey would need nourishment she could not give. Men and women were starving. A baby stood no chance. She knew what she must do.

She stepped quickly off the sidewalk into a bustling department store. The tile floors were slick, streaked with soupy gray slush tracked in from the street. Powerful, roaring blowers pumped heated air into the dimly lit store. The dry heat combined with that of a hundred bodies wrapped in thick winter coats made the building stuffy and hot. It was Russia, the place of extremes. Ekaterina felt light-headed and constricted. Her breath came in labored puffs, her hands damp and pasty.

Her eyes focused on a dark-haired woman standing by the perfume counter. Lips pursed, the lady studied the gallon-sized containers of henna colored, fragrant liquid. She wore an expensive dress and a gray woolen overcoat with a black fur collar.

She seems kind, Ekaterina dared tell herself. So she stepped forward, approaching her.

“Hold my baby a moment, please?” she asked in a plaintive voice, her eyes downcast.

“Da,” was the polite, if somewhat bewildered reply.

Ekaterina gently laid the baby in the woman’s arms. She gave a sad smile and a solitary blink of her long eyelashes taking a loving look at the child she would never see again. Walking in quick steps around the perfume counter toward the back door of the department store, she dashed into the street, never turning to look behind her. She stumbled toward home wracked with indescribable anguish, her sobs echoing off the ice covered pavement in a wasteland of grief and sorrow.

***

I have been a mama’s boy since the beginning of time, my time anyway.

Love is too weak a word to describe my feeling for the woman who nurtured me from a prenatal recombination of genes and raised me to adulthood. Worship is closer, but lacking still the full measure of emotion.

I come from that peculiar brand of Southern boys who believe their mothers are saintly goddesses descended from on high. We convince ourselves that our mama’s exist untainted by the impurity of carnal passion. We do not pretend to have been conceived without benefit of original sin. Our births are not mysterious, but the realization that the secrets of our existence lay in the primal act of sex and involve the women who sang us sweet lullabies by the crib casts upon our psyche a pallor of numbing incredulity. We simply choose to believe that life begins for us at the innermost reaches of our memories of Mama, home, and family.

My mama was beautiful, always smiling and genuinely happy. I inherited her large, ruby cheeks, and all of us—my brother, my sister, and I—all share her sense of humor and her gift of compassion. Mama had brown hair and soft, silky skin. How I loved her tender hugs in arms that I knew would keep me safe and warm forever.

When I was fourteen and my father died, Mama held our family together. My sister was a new mother herself, establishing her own family. My brother was a U.S. Marine. So Mama had only me at home to raise, and I was a sheltered young man finding out for the first time the complexities and heartbreaks of being an adult.

In a time when dysfunction became the standard, I exulted in my family’s ordinariness. We went to school; we got jobs; we suffered failed romances; we dealt with them and we got married to those who loved us best. We were normal people living in a commonplace world. Heartache and ecstasy visited us with the same regularity. Life was good.

Then life kicked me hard in the stomach. Mama developed terminal cancer.

I’m not convinced that our brains are equipped to process such information. My stomach turned sour and the spit in my mouth tasted like vinegar. The cells of my skin ached and rational thought became impossible. I wanted to kill her doctor for his prognostic accuracy and, at the same time, beg him to save her.

For weeks I tried to balance the scales of cosmic justice. I voiced how unfair it was that a woman who not only had done no harm, but also who loved without measure or bias or judgment should have to die so young. I found not one apologist for fate or God. I found no one who could tell me why she must die, this woman who, reveling in vitality, danced each day with the angels of mirth and mercy.

We had many moments to say the things we always knew there would be time to say. In secret, my wife and I decided to adopt after many years of trying to start a family. For us the road to parenthood began in the same place it does for many couples the lonely abyss of infertility. That road was strewn with every pothole, sinkhole, and rut imaginable. But the obstacles only strengthened our resolve. God made me to be a father, of that I was certain.

Infertility is a thief that robs its victims of any joy. It is the unholiest of conditions bringing on a perpetual sadnessthe challenge being not just avoiding a frown, but trying to evade a permanent look of despair.

The medical tests, shots, and infusions are cold and sterile and belie the devastation behind every failed attempt. Every month when we realized my wife wasn’t pregnant, it felt as if someone died. The feelings of inadequacy and failure overwhelmed us, and the weight of their impact tested the endurance of our marriage.

After trying for so many years to conceive a child, I cannot comprehend the emotion behind giving one up for adoption. But thankfully two women, whose names I will never know, whose faces I will never see, had the courage to give up their children for better lives than they could have given them.

In 1998, the effort seemed hardly worth it any longer. Financially drained and our nerves frayed and, we knew only that we still desperately wanted a family.

Time, we felt, was running short for us.

First we chose adoption. Then we chose Russia.

We had told no one. One day at Mama’s bedside, to give her a glimmer of hope, to cause her to hold on, I told her our news. She smiled and told me we would make remarkable parents.

Eyes blurred with tears, my chest heaving sobs, I cried, “Not as good as you. You can’t die. I’m too much of a Mama’s boy for you to leave me alone.”

She reached out and touched my hand. Her grip was weak, but reassuring; her skin soft and cold. “You’ll have to be strong,” she said. “I don’t think I can hold on much longer.” She closed her eyes and fell asleep, gently slipping away toward the inevitability of her condition.

I loved her more than anything, but love alone couldn’t fight the happenstance of nature. Mama died ten weeks after her diagnosis. I was devastated.

I was not there for her at the end. While my brother wiped her face clean of the black bile she vomited and stroked her hair, I stayed away. While my sister lovingly held her hand and whispered words of sweet comfort to soothe her fears in her final moments, I chose to be gone. I, the 6’4” ex-cop emotionally affected by little, lay shivering in my bed, covers pulled over my face, weeping because I could not bear to watch the woman I loved so much die.

In the weeks before her death, Mama told everyone who visited her about the grandchild she would never get to see. She gave me parenting advice and she told me to love my child with every breath in my body as she had done me. She told me that she “left me a little something” and maybe it would help with the adoption.

We only knew our child would come from Russia and only then after we completed mountains of paperwork and passed a myriad of background checks. We did not know if our baby had been born or if it would be a boy or girl, healthy or frail. Only God knew.

If I had ever lacked faith in a living God, that faith would have been renewed, oddly enough, at my mother’s passing. I expected to feel anger. But I somehow felt comforted, a strange, inexplicable calmness.

Three weeks after my mother’s death, the “little something” arrived, a check from her life insurance company for the exact amount of the cost of our adoption, though the policy had been taken out years ago.

Three months later, we waited breathlessly for the videotape of the baby selected for us. We plugged in the tape and waited wide-eyed until the images appeared. And then there he was. A beautiful blond baby boy named Alexey. I felt shivers creep from my back to the top of my head when I read from the form his birth date—Mother’s Day 1998. Somehow Mama was there guiding this process. Somehow she knew. God had brought us full circle and completed our family.

I do not know who Ekaterina is, nothing of her age or history. I know only that she is a courageous woman who gave up the most precious part of herself so her baby would have a life more abundant than she could provide.

I pray each day that my mother’s heart is glad and that the same angels who watch over her now reach out to Ekaterina. I pray that they touch her, embrace her with tender, encircling arms and give her peace in knowing that out of incredible sadness, goodness and mercy have overcome. Two sons lost their mothers, but in the loss, the sons found each other and live in peace and love and harmony.

But that’s not the end of the story. For more than two years we felt truly blessed by the addition of Alexey to our family. Today, he is a sensitive, caring little boy with a generous hug, a joy for life, and a laugh that melts my heart. So positive was our experience with him that we decided in 2002 to add to our family with another child.

Again we filled out reams of paperwork.

Again we waited anxiously.

Again we were rewarded.

In 2002, we traveled to Russia to meet our daughter. Siberia was everything one might imagine in the winter—below zero temperatures, several inches of permafrost covered by another foot or more of snow.

We drove up to “our” orphanage. The smells, the sights, the sounds—none of it different than it had been three years ago. In a room called the “Winter Garden” painted with scenes from Russian fairy tales, we met a little red-haired, rambunctious toddler who in fewer than four weeks would become our daughter, Nikki.

She hugged us. She played with the toys we brought. She bossed around the other toddlers in the room and redistributed their toys. She gave us no choice: we fell in love immediately. She has been in charge since that first meeting.

We have felt the hand of the Almighty in each of our adoptions. But we literally felt the chills run down our spines when we discovered that Nikki had been sleeping in the same room and crib as Alexey had been three years earlier. For all of us, her adoption was, without question, meant to be.

Today we are a family—my wife, a little boy, a little girl, and me. Yes, we have a house with a fence and a dog, and Alexey is pushing hard for a kitten. But the joy does not lie in being a typical American family. With two Russian children, that we certainly are not. No, joy comes from giving and receiving unconditional love, from feeling whole and content, and from finding each other across the miles.

At bath time in my house, amidst the trickle and splash of water, I sometimes kneel by the lip of the tub and reach into the water for a wash rag and bar of soap. As I scrub away the day’s dust, errant colored pen marks, and watercolor self-decoration from their tender skin, I look deeply into my children’s eyes.

Peering back at me I see the face of God.

I am awestruck by the faith and trust he has placed in me. Through their eyes, their soulful, soulful eyes, He seems to say, “These are my gifts to you. Love them well.”

Silently I answer, “I will.”

A Surefire Cure for Hypertension

2010-01-25T07:07:00.000-08:00

If there is a blood pressure medication manufactured, I'm on it. Ranexa, Tekturna, Lisinopril, Clonidine, you name it. But I've come to find out that the cure for hypertension was sitting right at my feet the whole time: children. Pre-teens to be exact.

No, it's not their charming nature or the fulfillment of life they inevitably bring or the high points of the philosophical considerations of mortality and legacy. It's simply this: they hide my salt shakers.

About every fifth time I go into the Publix, I buy the hermetically sealed plastic salt & pepper shakers. I've got so many pepper shakers on the shelves that the weight of them threaten to topple the pantry. If I were living in the time of the spice trade, between the pepper and three packets of saffron rice that have been sitting there for three years, I'd be freakin' Genghis Khan

But guess how many salt shakers sit in the pantry waiting for me to add a pinch to my brussel spouts? Not a damn one.

In the south salting everything comes in second only to deep frying everything. Sure we put salt on beans and vegetables and in soups and stews like you'd expect. But I also use it on cantaloupe, honey dew, watermelon and apples. My dad even used to give a generous shake into his Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I can come home with a container of Morton's iodized and before I'm done unloading the groceries, it'll be gone. It's like David Copperfield has just zoomed through my kitchen. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to find a salt shaker. It's usually tucked into the seat cushions on the couch. I know the things exist because every time my son or daughter decide to eat in my bedroom while watching television, I have to rake out a handful of salt from my bed before I lay down. Why go to Myrtle Beach when I can get grains in my crack just by going upstairs?

I even found a salt shaker in a potted plant once. The kids swear it fell in there off the table above it. I think they lied. I think they're planning some survivalist exercise where they low crawl through the den, sip water out of the dehumidifier and eat the salt straight out the shaker in the plant to keep their muscles from cramping. It's really the only explanation.

It's gotten so bad that I have my own top shelf, private stock--a single salt shaker placed high up in the top of the cupboard where the kids can't reach. But my wife can, which is only a problem because I think she believes the dishwasher monster must have moved to the cabinets. That's the only reason I can think of that she won't put a damn thing in either one.

I know the origin of the word salt--that it was so valuable that soldiers got paid with it, hence the word "salary." But here's a note to my kids: it ain't the 14th century, you're not Marco Polo. Salt is in abundance now, so much so, that it's the reason the Morton girl logo has an umbrella--so she doesn't get hit by the salt raining down from the sky!

So take heed, kids. The next time one of you takes one of the 400 salt shakers we have and don't put it back where you got it, I'm gonna have Copperfield saw you in half.

Cult of Personality--The Rise of the Bubble Gum, Rock & Roll Video Church

2010-01-20T06:37:00.000-08:00

I was at a minor league hockey game in Chicago once when a friend noted that the only guys to play hockey at that level or in college were Canadian boys who weren't good enough to go pro right out of high school. I think about that every now and then when my wife drags me to the new religious craze: video church.

Video church starts with head-banging rock & roll and screeching lyrics. It's deafening. It's earsplitting. It's what stodgy, WASPish people used to call devil music, but these, ahem, musicians throw in words like "king" and "savior," and capitalize the "H" in "He" and "Him" and suddenly you have a praise song. I've heard if you play their music backwards, though, you hear, "I'm not good enough to be in a real band..."

Perhaps I sound stodgy, too. I prefer "traditionalist," but who wants to split the numbered hairs on my head? I'm not new to video religion, though. My father religiously (pun intended) watched every Billy Graham Crusade that came on television, even if we had to watch it through a snowy TV screen and cipher his message through static. (This was pre-digital cable, for my young readers.) I was such a Graham devotee that I was 23 years old before I realized you didn't have to hum the third verse of "Just As I Am." But in video church, you're more likely to hear a grunge version of "Up on the Rooftop" than "Silent Night." I mean, would it kill them to sing "How Great Thou Art" every now and then?

This latest phenomenon is based on the Rick Warren mega-church concept, with a main "mother" church and several satellite congregations hyperlinked by computer video. It's like a conference call with God. The first video preacher I saw came across as an arrogant ass--kids who masturbate are going to hell; stay-at-home fathers (like me) don't seem to fall on the Godly side of his get-into-Heaven checklist; and if you disagreed with him, then you, in his words, "Had the right to be wrong."

The last video preacher I saw gave copious lip service to saving souls for Jesus, but his emphasis seemed to be on growing his church's membership to greater than the 15,000 it has now. In my opinion, that's not saving souls; it's putting butts in seats. It's what carnies and pro wrestling promoters do. He made four points during his sermon, one of which was that Jesus is not our "Snuggie." Jesus' purpose is not to comfort and provide succor, it is to agitate and irritate us into making changes in our lives. Hmm..."I am your rock and your salvation, a fortress that cannot be shaken" (Psalm 62:2). "My power will rest on you when you are weak," (2 Corinthians 12:9). I rather like Jesus being my Snuggie, my shield, my protection, my comfort but what do I know?

Video preacher 2 said he wanted sinners in his church--broken people with hurting souls, people who spit and cuss and drink and need a good dose of the Lord. And bless him for that, I wholeheartedly agree. But in the same sermon, he invited "religious, churchy people,"--those of us who prefer "Amazing Grace" to "Bongo Jed and the Jesus Freaks;" those of us who find more inspiration in the Apostles Creed than cutesy little sayings on the church's roadside digital billboard--to leave. Yes, to walk out. These people weren't welcome in flashing strobe light, heavy metal, simulcast church.

He noted that people in "regular" churches walked around with a glassy-eyed, Stepford Wives demeanor. Maybe so, but it struck me as we walked in to the theater, er...church, I witnessed a young woman offer to take a young child to the youth center. She said it with all the sincerity of a "let's do lunch" invitation you say to a college friend you just bumped into after 15 years. In the South when you utter the phrase "How are you?" and make the last word in that phrase eight syllables long, you can tell it's not from the heart...really. When the couple replied their daughter wanted to go to the service with them, the young woman told her the church had a policy of not allowing kids younger than 6th grade age inside. "Suffer the little children to come unto me." Who was it who said that? I can't quite place it...oh, yeah...HIM. Besides, it's tradition in Southern churches for people to bring fussy babies into the sanctuary so the rest of us can talk bad about them later. It's true.

I've noticed a pattern in these video church preachers, Rick Warren included. Narcissism. Video preacher 2 summed it up nicely the other day when he told the congregation that he promised his church would be a one man show. He said, by that, he meant Jesus. Sometimes people reveal more about themselves than they realize. It appears to be a one man show all right.

It's important that we go to a church as a family; that we receive salvation and accept the grace we're offered, but I'll ask the question out loud I've asked myself a dozen times this year: If I've got to listen to a TV preacher, why can't I stay home on the couch in my boxer shorts and watch Jimmy Swaggart?

Feel free to put someone else's butt in my seat.

Amen.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2009-12-16T12:41:00.000-08:00

Here are the facts:

I wrote a book titled Betrayed.

I dedicated it to a young man, Austin Whetsell, who drowned while on a church mission trip.

I decided to dedicate 100 percent of the proceeds of book sales to Austin's memorial fund

Austin's father is close friends with Katon Dawson, the former S.C. GOP chair and runner up for the national post

I asked Katon, who I assumed had a large email list, to send out an email on my behalf in order to generate sales.

He did.

It rubbed some Republicans the wrong way, to say the least. It's almost like they're eating their own young. I'll let you read the posting at www.fitsnews.com/2009/12/11/dawson-email-irks-some-republicans/. But here's a sample: "Using someone else's personal tragedy for self promotion should be illegal."

As you read through, you may notice that some in the party of accountability and transparency (that's said tongue-in-cheek BTW since none of the Republicans quoted as being upset identify themselves) are more "irked" that Katon sent them an email versus the email''s content. I suppose it's much too difficult in this crazy, fast-paced world to scroll down to the link that says "Unsubscribe."

No, no. It's more democratic to let the voice of dissent be heard.

I have felt bad for Katon all week. He did me a huge favor for nothing more than the asking. To have petty little wimps who decline to identify themselves air their infighting in a public forum is simply pathetic.

My name, dammit, is Sam Morton. I have a book to sell. I'm right proud of it. Any money I raise goes directly to the Austin Whetsell Memorial Fund at Lexington Presbyterian Church in Lexington, S.C. The fund uses the money to continue and support its mission work around the globe. I really hope you buy it, but if the simple act of asking you offends, then for the sake of my friends, QUIETLY pass it on by.

Things That Make You Go Hmm...

2009-12-02T17:23:00.000-08:00

Things I wonder about:

1) I wonder why some people don't get my humor:

Me to the McAlister's Deli cashier: May I place a take out order?

Cashier: May I get a name?

Me: Why? Don't you have one already?

Cashier: (Blank stare).

2) As I posted on FaceBook last night, I listened to the President's speech and wonder, if it's Pockeestahn (Pakistan) and Tallybahn (Taliban), why is it not Afghoneestahn?

3) If we want to win the wars in Afghoneestahn and Iraq and also, as the President promised, to deplete our nuclear arsenal, wouldn't it make sense just to dump all the nukes on these two countries? Kind of a "two-birds..." deal?

4) I wonder if Nike would consider changing its slogan to "Just Do Her" on all its Tiger Woods merchandise?

5) If Trey Cyrus was not Miley Cyrus's brother, I wonder if he would be working at a Sonic drive thru rather than opening for her in concert? (No, never mind...I don't wonder about that. It's pretty much a given).

Five Things That Piss Me Off

2009-10-30T19:51:00.001-07:00

Mitch Albom may have his five people he’ll meet in Heaven, but I’ve got five things that are pissing me off in the here and now. I realize from a macro point of view that none of this means anything. All these complaints are confined right here to my little house, but I believe they are rather universal concerns so here it goes:

Volume: This term may take on an alternate meaning when I have teenagers, but for the moment, I’m talking about how much trash one garbage container can hold. Nobody in my house, including me, is a physicist, but even I know that when the trash can is spewing trash, it won’t hold any more. Several times I’ve had to dig my hands through thrown away food because everybody pushes so much garbage in the thing that the liner gets crammed two-thirds the way down the can. No more. We’ll all die from mold spores before I do that again.

Spills: To my son—when you splash spaghetti sauce on the trashcan lid, it’s easier to wipe it away while it’s still moist. Daddy’s tired of chiseling dried tomato sauce.

Lights: The light at the top of the stairs doesn’t go off by magic and even if it did, the Light Fairy don’t live here. Need I say more?

Laundry: When there’s no laundry basket in the bathroom…GO GET ONE! I mean unless you’re going to grow up to be a serial killing dry cleaner and plan to hide bodies under stacks of shirts and towels, four-foot tall piles of clothes aren’t really that useful.

Laundry (Part II): I don’t mind washing, drying, folding, or even putting away, but the least you can do is BRING ME YOUR DIRTY CLOTHES! Put ‘em right here in my grubby little hands and I’ll do the rest. Want to go to school stinky or even naked? Test me on this.

Have a nice day.

Of Steampunks and Hanukkah

2009-10-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

When famed archeologist Howard Carter first peered through a small hole into King Tut’s tomb, Lord Carnarvon asked him if he saw anything. He replied, “Yes, wonderful things!” This is how I felt this past weekend when Nick Valentino introduced me to his brand new novel, Thomas Riley, and a genre of fiction called “Steampunk."

Nick and I were staffing the Echelon Press booth at the South Carolina Writers Conference. He’s an extremely nice guy, very approachable, and passionate about his book. He should be. I began reading it and didn’t want to stop. Now bear in mind, one’s job at a book festival or writers conference is to greet your patrons warmly, answer questions, and try to sell them books from the table. If I seemed a bit grumpy to any of the folks who stopped by the booth, my apologies. I was simply irritated because I had to put Thomas Riley aside in order to serve you. That’s how good this book is.

For those of you who, like me, haven’t a clue about what steampunk fiction is, Nick describes it as alternative history, Victorian era characters who invent and use some very forward technologies—think James West and Artemus Gordon in the old Wild West television series. It is appprently the new rage among teen readers. Nick’s book has air pirates, dirigibles, fancy inventions that his characters use deftly, action, and lots of adventure. As I read it, I kept hearing the Indiana Jones music playing in my head!

Though he didn’t write it specifically for teens, Nick is marketing the book as a young adult title. It would make a nice stocking stuffer for Christmas for anyone in your family who loves high adventure. You can buy it at Amazon.com or directly from the publisher at http://www.echelonpress.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=202.

After getting home from the conference, I took my kids to Halloween Express to buy some accessories for their costumes. On the way, Alexey said Halloween was his second favorite holiday, coming in behind Christmas.. Nikki said she really didn’t like Halloween and it didn’t even make her top three. I asked her what her favorite holidays were.

She considered it a moment, index finger over her lips, before she said, “I celebrate Christmas, Easter, and Hanukkah.”

Shalom, y’all.

Stimulus Cash and Research

2009-10-20T06:29:00.000-07:00

Myra’s injured foot and the care she requires have renewed my interest in a subject matter that first appeared when our children were toddlers. I want to research a scientific phenomenon. I’m not certain what branch of science my investigation would fall under, but I’m leaning toward theoretical physics.

What I have observed, both today with Myra’s injury and years ago as a parent of pre-school children is this: there is a wedge of space ranging from three inches to six inches at its highest. It is the space created just before your butt hits the seat of the chair you’re about to sit down onto. At that very moment the person dependant on your care determines that they have to have something “before you sit down.”

This urgent matter of life and death did not occur to them 20 seconds ago when you were in the kitchen, nor can it wait until the next time you’re up. Oh, no, no , no…if you don’t get up right then to retrieve the Diet Coke, Kleenex, cell phone, computer power cord, whatever, then the world will simply stop on its axis and mountains will crash into the sea. Sure the person might back pedal a bit and say, “Well, next time you’re up would you get…” But you can hear the cosmic implications in the passive/aggressive tone of voice. “Well, next time you’re up…” readily translates into “I guess I could strain and struggle and hobble my crippled self over to get it.” The guilt becomes overwhelming and you pop up off the chair like it is a trampoline.

The wedge of space must have a name, and I want to know what it is. President Obama, may I have some money please?

"...A DOUBLE CHEEEEESE BURGERRRR!!!

2009-10-12T08:19:00.000-07:00

I’m waging an economic war against McDonalds, and not for the reasons you might think. Sure they serve unhealthy food, deep fried and slathered in sauces that flow with death rivers of trans fats. But I declare my war for another reason—the company’s insidious plot to bring America to its knees.

The McDonalds (or MACK-Donalds, as my father and grandmother used to call it) near my home used to be my barometer for the national economy. When times were bad, smart people got laid off from real jobs and in desperation sought employment with Mickey D’s. As a happy result, though, other patrons and I got superior customer service.

When economic times were brighter, the company hired whatever riff-raff that dragged through the door and could make a pencil mark or two on an application.

Obviously, I am neither an expert in economic liberalism nor the works of Adam Smith. My economic theory has failed, and in its desperate crumbling, I have undergone an epiphany of sorts: McDonalds is not out to serve us, but to destroy us.

How are they doing this you might ask? By giving stupid people—truly stupid people—a way to make money without requiring even a smidgeon of intelligence. McDonalds is the bastion of ignorance.

What other conclusion is there when you order two snack wraps, a double cheese burger and a tea—repeating the order not once, but twice, and then repeating it a third time while arguing over the check—and wind up driving away with three snack wraps and four chicken McNuggets? It borders on the surreal.

They don’t even require their employees to read. They put PICTURES of the different menu items on the register keys, for God’s sake.

McDonalds not only contributes to the overall educational malaise of our already intellectually deficient state, it contributes to the rise in drug distribution—anecdotally speaking, of course. The question often cited by the do-gooders of our fair country when trying to curb drug use is this: “Kids say all the time, ‘Why should I work at McDonalds for minimum wage when I can sell drugs and make more money?’”

Why indeed? Why would a kid with even a modicum of reasoning ability even walk into a McDonalds? Faced with such a quandary, who wouldn’t choose to sell a “McDarvocet” versus a McDouble?

I have eaten at the McDonalds in the Atlanta airport where every employee is Jamaican. I’ve eaten at a McD’s in London. I’ve even eaten at one in Moscow where nobody spoke English, and in all received great service. But walk into a McDonalds in America (or perhaps just any one in South Carolina) and you can feel the IQ level in the room drop by 30 points, and your order will be wrong 70 percent of the time—guaranteed.

Encourage your children to study and study hard. Education is the key to restoring America to its prominence. Unfortunately, education and intelligence are the two things you will find lacking at the nation’s favorite fast food restaurant.

Join me in my rant and boycott of the Golden Arches. We walk through them at our own peril and toward our own doom.

Toes Can Be Tasty

2009-10-07T08:20:00.000-07:00

So Myra’s foot surgery was a success, though to look at her appendage in all its purple, swollen glory, only the surgeon himself would dare say, “It looks good!”

Alas, it appears I am the one who now needs foot surgery of my own—to remove mine from my mouth.

Myra’s taken care of me numerous times over the course of my many ailments, so I am gratified to be able to help. I can’t seem to relieve her pain, but at least I can get her water and her medication, get her food, and help her move tenuously from the couch to the lavatory and back.

So I was truly only joking yesterday when I ran to the bank to make a deposit. A teller in the bank knows Myra and asked about her. I gave my report. Then the coup de grâce came when she asked, “And how are you doing as the caretaker?”

I said, rather jokingly I thought, “I’m just glad to have a few moments to spend around people who can walk!”

Just then, as the last four words of that sentence came out of my mouth, emerged from around a corner the only permanently disabled employee the bank has—a woman who uses a walker. And I wonder sometimes why Nikki has no brain-to-mouth filter. Go figure.

Nikki, The Caretaker

2009-09-28T17:04:00.000-07:00

So tomorrow is the big day. We, or better said, Myra goes in for surgery on her ankle. There may be screws involved. She will definitely have a device called an external fixator hooked on her foot. Ouch.

In the four weeks leading up to the surgery, she’s been in a cast of some sort or other. Her movement has been restricted and slow. The kids and I have done our best to wait on mommy hand and ah…foot.

We went in for our pre-op visit with the surgeon today. I think Myra’s a little nervous, but leave it too Nikki to solve that problem. We were on the way to dinner tonight—Myra can’t eat after midnight and the surgery is not until 5:00 tomorrow afternoon—when Myra said to me, “Thank you for taking such good care of me.”

I said, “You’re welcome.”

Nikki piped up from the back seat, “And me too?????”

“Yes, Nikki, you too.”

Then Myra said to me, “You’re a good caretaker.”

I said thanks again and Nikki asked, “Me too???”

“Yes, Nikki. You too.”

Nikki replied skeptically, “Really? ‘Cause I don’t hear you sayin’ me too!”

Woe be to the poor emasculated sap who becomes her boyfriend.

Playing Footsie

2009-09-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

When our kids were small and just beginning to walk, we’d have them “sit & scoot” up and down the stairs, afraid they might fall had they tried maneuvering on toddler legs. It’s been a throwback to the past this week, as my wife, in a cast up to her knee, has had to sit and scoot her way up and down between the two floors.

She says we have to come up with a better story, but truly her injury involved no alcohol of any kind. She simply missed a step walking from the higher level of a deck to the lower at Myrtle Beach. She’s always had weak ankles, but she was doomed this time from the first forward motion. Her heel caught the edge of the step, her toes caught air, and gravity did the rest, bending, twisting, and turning her ankle inward. She fell completely to the ground. Even Snap, Crackle, and Pop would’ve winced.

I’ve noticed something about my wife in the past 23 years: when she’s in severe pain, she rocks back and forth like an Orthodox Jew. She also cusses like a sailor. This particular injury had her doing both and dropping an “F” bomb here and there. All in all it was like watching a Hassidic porno flick, except she still had her clothes on.

I pulled our van up and off we went to the Grand Strand Emergency Room. It’s quite obviously the place to be whether you are suffering from severe sunburn or a heart attack. The waiting room even smells like coco butter.

They were indeed efficient, taking us right back and packing ice around Myra’s ankle. We had to fill out the typical admissions paperwork, but oddly enough, Myra’s answer to every question the admissions lady asked was, “Can you give me something for the pain?”

Lady: “In the last six months have you been outside the country or been in contact with anyone who has been outside the country particularly to Canada or Mexico?”
Myra: “Can I have some drugs, please?!”
Lady: “Would you like me to get you a rabbi or a perhaps dreidel?”
Myra: “Dreidel, schmeidel! How about some valium, *&^%$#-er?”

After four tries with two nurses and three IV needles, they find a vein, in goes the liquid Percocet, and Baptist Myra returns. We were confident we’d receive good care, though I did overhear a conversation between two nurses that gave me pause to question the competency of one:
Nurse 1: “I got to bring my grandbaby back with me after my visit with my daughter.”
Nurse 2: “Ahhh, isn’t that nice. How old is he?”
Nurse 1: “He’ll be four-and-a-half in February!”
Me (to myself): “WTF?”

Myra’s x-ray showed no fractures. But her foot was swollen up like a baking potato and her toes looked like little sausages (Did I mention this fall took place just as we were about to eat dinner?). Kind of made me hungry for wiener schnitzel. Myra didn’t care. She was counting the imaginary butterflies on the ceiling.

So now we’re home. We’ve been to see the good looking orthopedic doc and we’re in a cast. We’ve had cat scans and MRIs. Ligaments are torn and it looks like some bones have shifted, but she insists on doing the “Butt Scootin’ Boogie” up and down the stairs.

Yesterday I stopped her just before she began her descent. I looked her deep in the eyes and said to my wife whom I love dearly, “Wait! Let me spray some Pledge on your ass and you can polish the stairs on the way down.”

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and yes dear friends, I am still limber enough to duck a flying crutch while being told to go to hell by my Hassidic Baptist bride.

Joke of the Day

2009-09-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

One Sunday during the middle of church services, the devil walked into the sanctuary and up to the pulpit. Everybody, including the preacher ran screaming from the building, except for one man who sat in the third row, arms crossed, leaned back and relaxed.

"DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" the devil shouted.

"Sure, I do," the man said. "You're Satan."

"AND YOU"RE NOT AFRAID OF ME?"

"No," the man said. "I'm not."

"WHY?"

"Because I've been married to your sister for 30 years."

Jenny, Jenny. Who Can I Turn To?

2009-08-31T13:39:00.000-07:00

My wife sent me an email the other day informing me she had signed us up for the First Ladies’ Walk for Life to benefit breast cancer research. This is at least the 10th year we’ve signed up—I’ve got the XXL t-shirts with the pink ribbon logo to prove it. But since heartbroken Jenny barreled out of the Governor’s Mansion last month, I’ve noticed something a little hinky in the advertising.

The commercials airing now no longer call it the First Ladies’ Walk. They have pulled a little switch and are calling it the Palmetto Health Walk for Life. Jenny said she was going to maintain her responsibilities as first lady of the state. Perhaps, though, she has another Vogue cover to pose for. Or maybe she’s planning her next “spontaneous” news conferences in the driveway of her beach home so she can tell us again how committed she is to saving her marriage, yada, yada, yada…

So I say we trash this whole “First Ladies’” thing—City of Columbia First Lady Beth Coble has been noticeably absent from the commercials, too—and go in an entirely different direction. I propose we rename the event the First Mistress’s Weenie Walk for Cancer.

Think about it. It would be a PR person’s dream. For the first five days of advertising, we could swear up and down we were going to have the walk on the Appalachian Trail. Then we’d confess to having it in downtown Columbia after all. If we could possibly persuade Governor Sanford to participate, he could step out bold and strong and say he’d take no donations to the event unless he could fire and replace the committee who planned it (if that’s too local a reference, Google Sanford and the SC Employment Security Commission). Then he could file a lawsuit threatening not to take any donations unless the planning committee agreed to cut its budget by that same amount of money.

We’d enforce a rule that you have to walk with a partner called a “sole” mate. Whoever could elude security and pop back up at the mansion unannounced would be declared the winners.

Then the guv could apologize over and over and over for whatever.

After the walk, we could all meet back at the mansion to eat some crow, roasted weenies, and “Im- peach” cobbler. It’s making me giddy just thinking about it.

When the actual walk happens, Jenny, I don’t know where you’ll be. In your individual news conferences, you and the guv both have begun sentences with “The Bible says…” I get the feeling that both of you believe you’re closer to God than the rest of us. I’m pretty sure the Bible says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Maybe you could put aside your pathetic marital difficulties, and your obtuse pontifications on them, for two hours to help save some people who are DYING.

Just a thought.

The Dog Ate My Homework...Or Something Like That

2009-08-28T05:35:00.000-07:00

I knew I was in trouble the first day of school this year. On the way, both kids were excited, and a little bit nervous. You can tell Nikki’s excited because she talks—constantly. She talks constantly anyway, but Monday, she was talking like a squirrel on helium—a sort of high-pitched chatter. When she gets this way, I always think about lending her out to the CIA to help break high-level al Qaeda operatives.

I would do it, too, but they probably couldn’t have her back by bedtime, unless they have one of their secret prisons in West Columbia. Which they very well may. There are a lot of inexplicable things over in West Columbia people don’t know about like a knick-knack place that also sells fresh peaches and tomatoes. No other produce—no okra, or green beans, nothing, but I digress.

As a lawyer friend of mine from Memphis says when he meanders from his main thought, “So, anyway…” Nikki brings home her math homework. She does it. I check it. Now granted, I ain’t exactly Pythagoras, but I seem to remember that 14 minus 9 does not equal 15. I’m thinking she may be the next Bernie Madoff or perhaps the next Cash for Clunkers Czar.

We erased. And erased. We put 9 in our heads and counted up to 14. We got it right.

Then today there was a note from her math teacher in her agenda (that’s what my kids’ school calls its assignments book): “Nikki needs to turn in her summer work.”

I cringed. I had thrown it away when we were done!

When the report cards come out for the last day of school, they come with a packet of summer assignments: reading and math. The reading comes with specific instructions on whether or not book reports are required, and if so, they are due on day one the following year. Ironically enough, the instructions for the more specific of the two disciplines, math, are more ambiguous.

The kids get one math problem per day to complete over the summer. Our general “M.O.” is to do a week’s worth in one sitting. I distinctly remember asking my son, Alexey, on the first day of school last year whether the teacher had collected his summer math work. No, was his answer. I remember it because I felt rather bitter—not at having them take the time to complete it—but at having held onto all summer for the purpose of turning it in.

I moved it from one pile to the next, mixed it in with my papers, and unmixed it again. I attached it to the fridge with a magnet, only to have it fly halfway across the kitchen every time I opened the door in search of the queso dip—all just to by “psyched” by the math teacher in some great game of “arithmetic” chicken.

Only it appears this year, I am the one who flinched. Like the final scene of “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark,” I can hear the ominous dirge in my head. I can envision zooming in on the wind-blown, sun bleached, missing math papers in some large anonymous landfill. Scribbled in No. 2 pencil in the answer block for June 26 is the equation, “16 + 21= 8.” The papers are covered with caramel candy apple goo, crumpled, and anchored to the dump by a large clod of dirt. Never to be seen again.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation by Sam Morton

2009-08-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

My wife and I like to watch Criminal Minds. She records it and we settle onto our plush little corner of the couch, remote in hand, to watch it after the kids go to bed. Each episode begins and ends with some obscure quote by Yeats or Coleridge or some other literary figure we avoided studying in college. It sets the philosophical tone of the episode.

Here’s an example: “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” Joseph Conrad said that.

I’d like to offer my own quote to set the tone for today’s blog: “Any man who does not embrace death has never been on vacation with his in-laws.”

I’m not talking about my wife’s immediate family: mom, dad, sister, two brothers and their wives and kids. I’m talking about all them plus close to 50 more relatives. As people all over the world have said, “There ought to be a law.”

My wife and I have had this discussion a number of times. Granted neither one of us is a trained sociologist, but here’s the point I’ve made to her repeatedly (usually during or right after a family vacation): You spend the first 18 years of your life trying to get away from these people. Why then, do you spend the next 40 trying to “get the family together?” It’s like a forced marriage.

Her counter is that I’m male, and therefore stupid, and should just shut up. “It destroys one’s nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.”—Benjamin Disraeli.

The vacation rules were, as I understood them, that we (since Myra set up and administered the Yahoo group site for the trip) would say, “Tuesday at 10 a.m., we’re going to the Washington Monument.” Or to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, the “shining phallus on the hill.” Then others could join us or not. The choice is theirs.

Now, I’m not a trained sociologist, but it seems to me if you’ve thrown the plan out there and all 50 billion of your relatives have traveled from their home galaxy to be with family, ah...we most likely gonna have a crowd. So here, my friends, is the salient question:

How do you get 50 trillion Fraileys (yes, they’re like bunnies. Every time you turn around, there’s more of them) to move at the same time, in the same direction, toward the same destination?

The answer: The same way you divide any number by zero: It is a mathematical impossibility. IT CAN’T BE DONE!

My family gatherings are much simpler. First off, as my daughter summed up one day, “So, Daddy, let me get this straight. Other than you, Uncle Mike, and Aunt Cathy, pretty much everybody in your family is dead?” Bingo, kid. It’s called heart disease. Other than about a dozen aunts, uncles, and cousins, she hit the nail on the head.

I have one cousin who “don’t take to people.” The last family reunion we had, he climbed up a tree and “throwed up.” That’s why we don’t have family reunions anymore.

When I was a kid, they were fun because we had this older relative who had Tourette’s. In the middle of a sentence, he’d throw his head back and let out a sound like a whooping crane. Everybody called him “Whoop.” The reunions were simple affairs—Big K Cola, big bags of generic Kroger cookies, potato salad, and ham and cheese roll-ups (“the hardest part is takin’ the plastic off the cheese!”).

Even Whoop probably wouldn’t come to a reunion with people throwing up from the trees. And he damn sure wouldn’t come to one with 50 gazillion people trying to be at the same place at the same time. Just an observation.

“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.” ~Erma Bombeck

Hamster Wars--The Final Chapter

2009-07-23T07:30:00.001-07:00

In all the sound and fury in the saga of my daughter’s hamster(s), a good story got lost. My son got a hamster on the same day. His hamster, Gibbes, never got out, never got away, and never bit. He played on his wheel. He would let you pet him. He was great. My son cleaned his cage, played with him, and bought him little hamster toys.

Sadly, our faithful servant, Gibbes, bit the dust last week. I guess the ceremony we’ve gone through in the last few months with grandparent funerals has had some sort of effect. Alexey, 11 years old, planned and executed a grand funeral for his furry friend.

Last Thursday, Gibbes was interred at, ahem…”Harlington” National Cemetery on a hill overlooking Gran and Pop Pop’s house. His flag draped coffin (a wooden cigar box. The flags were the kind you wave at parades. Alexey removed the sticks) was borne to the graveside by a remote control tank. He was awarded the honor of a “flyover” by an Air Hog remote control helicopter, a 21-firecracker salute, and the firing of four skyrockets from Pop Pop’s barbecue pit. Alexey eulogized his friend, placed him in the grave and covered him with dirt.

Aside from the humor, I’m truly proud of the way my son reacted to losing his first pet. It’s not an easy thing. There were some tears, but almost immediately, he began formulating a way to honor his fallen friend. That’s respect, and that’s a good thing.

Because Gibbes was so small a creature, I suppose the mourning period is as proportionately short. Yesterday we went (at my peril) back to PetSmart to look at guinea pigs. Yikes!

Anthony Labrozzi. A Man's Man

2009-07-09T13:22:00.000-07:00

We lost another hero Tuesday. Col. Anthony Labrozzi joined his beautiful wife, Anne, in Heaven. He, battle-worn; he, who answered his country’s call to honor; he, whose life was riven by the plowshare of not one but three wars, has reported in to the angel of angels, the Prince of Peace.

For us, the tears flow. Our eyes are blurred by the moisture of grief, though we know the Colonel is in a place of everlasting grace. And once again, he is with his beloved.

He was a man of action, a soldier’s soldier; a man of spit and polish, and above all, order. The Colonel and Anne blessed this world with four children—Scott, Steven, Tina, and Cara. I was not privileged enough to know his sons. I only know that they are men like their father, stout of faith and strong in the love of their families.

It has been my honor for more than 25 years to know his daughters. I have been to his house at most once in my life. It is a house carpeted with love. His kitchen table is infused by the gentle perfume of tens of thousands of baked cookies and roasted turkeys, absorbed through year after year of family time. His hallways echo with the laughter of his children as they grew up and now with the peals of chatter from his grandchildren. And who can forget the endless summer splash of the pool? This is the life for which he fought, and it embraced him in thanks and goodwill.

Men of the Colonel’s generation use words like honor, liberty, freedom, justice, compassion. For them, these words had tenor and meaning. He and his compatriots took enemy fire for them. Like many of his breed, he was a quiet man—stoic and proud. Yet at the same time, he found a way to be immensely selfless.

If a man’s legacy is judged by the children he leaves behind, then the Colonel’s is secure. His daughters are by no means stoic. I’m rather certain neither one knows what the word means. They are just the opposite—effusive, loving, demonstrative, compassionate to a fault. And these…these are the lives the Colonel fought for. May God bless him.

No one truly leaves this world until there’s no one around who remembers him. We remember Colonel—though our recollections may come to us amidst a flood of tears or through the gauzy haze of time—we remember. We bid you peace now, peace and gentle slumber. Your battle is won.

Oh Governor, My Governor!

2009-06-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

My publisher tells me that because I have a young adult novel coming out in October, and because this blog is a mechanism to promote the book, I should veer more toward topics that appeal to tweens, teens, and their parents and away from more “adult” topics and language (i.e. my rant against KFC a couple of months ago).

I agree; however, I have gotten call after call asking me when I am going to blog on Governor Sanford and his revelation of his affair. Karen, I promise to be a better teen blogger, but really, the phone is burning in my hand. It is less personal than it is political, so here it goes:

If you’re keeping score, Mark Sanford has slept with his wife and a woman from Argentina, but that’s in addition to the 3.4 million South Carolinians he’s screwed. I don’t know if he has had an erection that has lasted more than four hours, but he really should see a doctor.

Truthfully, I couldn’t care less about his dalliance. Didn’t care about Clinton’s. Don’t care about this one. As a matter of fact, The State newspaper has patted itself on the back so much about its “investigation” and WIS-TV has covered this situation so thoroughly that I’m praying for a category 4 hurricane to form off the coast just to give them, and us, a break.

This bizarre episode began when people began questioning Sanford’s absence. He, according to them, abandoned the helm of state government for six days. Here’s a news flash people: we haven’t had a governor at the helm for six-and-a-half YEARS. This guy couldn’t give two hoots (how’s that for PG-13?) about the people of South Carolina and he’s done his level best to prove it over the two terms of his office. We’re just too stupid, too good-ol’-boy, too backward, too set in our ways to try it Mark Sanford’s way. As Conan O’Brien said, “he even outsourced his mistress.”

And while he’s been maneuvering politically, espousing his libertarian philosophies, waxing poetic on the sovereignty of the state and the executive branch of government, we’ve managed to acquire the 2nd highest unemployment rate in the nation, an Employment Security Commission too distracted by Sanford’s power grab to be effective, a 39th-in-the-nation education system further threatened by his refusal to take stimulus money, and rising tuition costs eroding our access to higher education.

I know I’m going to tick off a lot of people by saying this, but right now if Mark Sanford could make any of those situations better, he could “dally” with a barnyard full of monkeys every night for all I care. But the point is he can’t. If everybody else (with the exception of your total of 17 friends) says the sky is blue and you say it’s purple, insist it’s purple, threaten to replace people who claim that it’s anything but purple, and yet people still say it’s blue, governor, then maybe you—you, you, you!!—are the one who needs to re-examine his premises.

Sanford was politically emasculated long before Jenny Sanford’s statements to the Associated Press. So my take? If you’re not going to resign, then go sit in a corner somewhere and shut up. Go to a ribbon cutting or two, host a Christmas reception at the mansion, go violate a few more environmental regulations at your mama’s Coosaw plantation, REALLY go hiking along the Appalachian Trail, preferably after the bears are done hibernating, or follow your heart and move to Argentina, but leave us toothless, cousin-marrying, moonshine drinking, fiscally irresponsible, heftily unemployed South Carolinians alone! Have a nice day.

Not That I'm a Perfect Parent, But...

2009-06-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

My son is going to baseball camp this week at the University of South Carolina. Ray Tanner coaches the team there and I doubt you would find anyone, even among his toughest opponents, who would say anything less than complimentary about him. Alexey scored a run and caught a pop fly today. Pretty good for a kid who had never held a baseball bat in his hands eight months ago.

There are so many kids in camp they have them divided into eight squads. Toward the middle of the day, the counselors will pair the squads for scrimmage games. In the one closest to me, one kid hit a ball he obviously thought went foul because he stopped running midway to first base. The counselor said it was a fair ball and by that time the first baseman had retrieved it and stepped on the bag. The hitter was called out.

The ball may not have been foul, but the kid was. He looked all of nine, but he took off his batting helmet, slammed it on the ground, and began arguing with the counselor who promptly benched him for the remainder of the scrimmage.

At the end of the camp, the kid came toward his grandfather who asked why he had acted so poorly. The kid screamed at the man telling him it was a fair ball. When his grandfather said, “Well the umpire called it the other way,” the kid, again screaming at the top of his lungs, said, “Well he’s a LIAR. He’s nothing but a LIAR!” And then, bat bag in hand, he stormed off.

I’m not praying that the kid won’t show up tomorrow. I’m praying that he can't. If there is a shred of discipline in this kid’s family, his ass will be redder than a stop sign and he’ll be pulling belt leather from between his butt cheeks for the next six weeks. Either that or his parents need to take the kid to psychologist for some anger management. Passion for the game is one thing. Disrespect is another.

I’m glad Alexey got to witness it, though. From his wide-eyed look, I could see that he knew this was unacceptable behavior. And as unfortunate as the incident was, I’m glad I saw it, too. It makes me appreciate the wonderful young man and young woman who are my children.

(Okay, that’s too cheesy an ending…I would liked to have seen grandpa beat the kid’s ass from one end of the stadium to the next. I bet Ray Tanner would've liked that, too. I’m just sayin’.)

Elvis Is Dead. So is Twitter. And Karen Has Me in Her Sights!

2009-06-12T07:37:00.001-07:00

This week I raised the ire of my publisher, Karen Syed, by posting to our group site a link to an article from Technorati.com that indicated 95 percent of all bloggers and Twitter account holders abandon their accounts after a short while. Karen is a big Twitter fan.

I respectfully disagree.

Used correctly, I believe Twitter could—I stress could—be a great communications tool. But when I log on, I get “fewer than 140 characters” about people sitting in traffic, stopping for doughnuts, or even going to the john. And I care about this crap (pun intended) why?

I mean Ashton Kutcher—never mind that he’s married to someone on which I used to have a crush—hypes Twitter for God’s sake. That right there should tell you this technology is evil.

But I’m willing to be proven wrong (even through the blogosphere I can hear the snarky comments about how I should be used to it). So here’s my challenge. Send it to all your Twittering friends: Get me 500 Tweets on my account between June 15, 2009 and July 15, 2009 and I will donate $200 to the American Heart Association in Karen Syed’s name.

Hold on, as pitchman Billy Mays would say, “But wait, there’s more!”…get me 1,000 Tweets in the same time frame and I will deliver the check to my local AHA representative wearing a thong, a wig, lipstick, and what my wife calls “hooker shoes.” I will have it photographed and posted on FaceBook. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth going all the way, baby.

Fewer than 500 and I challenge Karen to post Tweets to all her friends declaring, “Citadel graduate Sam Morton is a technological genius!”

Find me at: http://twitter.com/sammorton429

The Case of Mayor Bob's Oddly Green Colon

2009-05-26T14:08:00.000-07:00

I unashamedly admit that I used to be a hardcore fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the one with Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean Luc Piccard, with Data, Troy, LeForge, Riker, and Worf. In one episode, a god-like character named “Q” takes the Enterprise and her crew to the beginning of life, that period of time where cells came alive and divided, giving them a glimpse into the primordial soup that eventually ended up as humans.

I have heard the term “going postal,” or the more up to date term “going educational,” since it first exploded (pardon the pun) into pop culture. Last week, though “Q” didn’t pay me a visit, I believe I got a glimpse into how such wildly violent episodes begin. Let me set the stage:

We had just returned from Virginia from two funerals (Myra’s grandparents). Just before our departure, I put our van in for an oil change…let’s be clear—an oil change. One alternator, two pinched belts and $520 later, we got our van back. While the van was in for its, ahem, oil change, I leaned against the kitchen counter wondering what else could go wrong. Looking up, I got my answer.

Let me be brief: one attic heating and air system, two malfunctioning overflow pans, five gallons of water through a wall and two ceilings in four rooms. Need I say more?

Let’s see, oh yeah, Nikki got sick and puked on my legs.

I also got word that a friend and Citadel classmate had inoperable cancer and was not expected to live through the week. (He died Sunday).

Then I walked out of my house and sitting on my trash roll cart was a fluorescent green tag. I, according to my city’s zoning police, had put my trash cart out too early. I am subject to a $500 fine and confiscation of my roll cart and would have to pay $75 to get it back.

My fair city has a $28 million budget shortfall. It has had three incompetent city managers in five years. It has had one incompetent police chief (who got promoted to city manager) and another chief who disobeyed his own procedural rules and left under fire. It has not closed its financial books in the past three years, does not know how much money it actually has or owes, has paid some of its bills twice and some never. For three years, we gave more than $300,000 to a music festival that never made one penny’s profit. Our state police staged a raid and seized our own water plant for forging records on water purity.

And yet my too early roll cart is the biggest problem it has for the present.

Alexey, my 11-year-old son, asked me the other day what I would change about my growing up if I could. I told him I was always an appeaser and I wish I would have learned a lot earlier in my life to tell people who pissed me off to go to hell.

It may have taken me longer than most, but that’s the message I left my mayor on his answering machine right after I told him where he could shove his little green sticker. I left him my name and address in case he wanted to discuss it. Mr. Emerson had it right when he said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Beam me up, Scotty. There is no intelligent life in city hall.

Hitler and the Pole Dancer

2009-05-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

My sister and my mother-in-law both tried to warn me. Several of my friends with older children tried their best to tell me, too. “Watch what you say in front of your kids. They soak it up like sponges.” But did I listen? Of course not.

Thus we have these nuggets from the last week:

As many of you know, my wife’s grandparents died within a week of each other. We drove to Virginia for both funeral services and stayed at one of the new “suite” hotels that are all the rage. It had an indoor pool and we had about a half dozen kids aged 2-12 years old with all the assembled family. My daughter asked to go swimming and by asked I mean she jumped up and down tugging her mother’s shirt sleeve, yelling, “Pleeeeeeeeeease?” When Myra said yes, my daughter was naked in a flash, ready to put on her swimsuit.

We have kidded Nikki for years about becoming a pole dancer due to her “heightened” sense of fashion, shall we say. Once she came down stairs wearing knee high black patent leather boots, a cheerleader skirt that was way too short, and a top that on an older girl would have been aptly called a sports bra. She expected to go to the mall this way. I said to her, “Nikki, a hooker from Jersey just called. She wants her clothes back.”

“Huh?” she said. She wasn’t listening, but apparently, my son was.

When she so rapidly took off her clothes in the hotel room to get ready to go swim, I said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody get naked that fast.”

My son Alexey—dry wit that he is—said, “Yeah. That’ll serve you well in your later career.” She stuck her tongue out at him and got in her bathing suit.

At the funeral home, the half dozen cousins were sitting down waiting to be ushered in the chapel. Nikki had been in to see Grandpa in his casket, a decision we didn’t make lightly. When she came out tears in her eyes, she sat beside a cousin and said, “Grandpa is in Heaven. Jesus is taking care of him.”

The cousin very pointedly said, “Uh-uh…Jesus is a baby, so who’s taking care of him, huh??” Theology 101 or perhaps one too many viewings of Talladega Nights.

Later one of the adults told me that Nikki, still a bit teary-eyed, sat down beside her and said, “Grandpa fought in World War I against Hitler. Grandpa is in Heaven, but Hitler is in hell ‘cause he killed 600 people.” (Math is not her strong suit).

At least she listened this time.

Goodbye to The Colonel and the Lady

2009-05-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

I usually try to be funny on these postings. With every other blogger weighing in on everything from politics to the economy, who needs another uninformed rant? But today I want to take a minute to honor a couple of people. There’s no humor here—sorry to disappoint.

It’s been a tough week for my wife who has lost her paternal grandmother and paternal grandfather within a week of each other. Homer and Betty Frailey were married nearly 30 years. They were divorced just as long. Every wedding and graduation in the family had the potential to be a tense affair—at least that’s what the rest of us thought—but these were classy people who appreciated what most of us often don’t realize: it was never about them. The events were about the people at the center of them.

Lt. Col. Homer Frailey, USAF (Ret.) was a hero. He served in not only WWII, but also Korea and Vietnam. As a friend of mine likes to say, you can only poke a snake so many times before you get bit. Grandpa put his life on the line in not one, but three wars—not police actions, not “conflicts,” but full blown wars—for us, for our liberty, for us to have the ability to live with a reasonable certainty of safety, for us to have the freedom to go to a park, a mall, a ballgame, or even to hold a protest sign against the very country he fought for. That’s what heroes do. But you’d never know it. He was as humble a man as you’d ever want to meet, even if his jokes were corny. He never expected accolades or congratulations for doing what he saw simply as his duty. Heroes never do.

Betty Frailey was a firecracker of a woman. She may have minced meat for a pie, but she never minced words. Grandma had a presence about her. She was no nonsense, direct, and suffered no fools, but she was also a loving, compassionate, pillar of strength. She liked confidence and if you had it, she loved you. She was a hero, too. After eschewing a career for herself to get transferred from one air base to the next in every part of the word, or worse yet, after having to stay behind to raise four hellion, er…rambunctious boys while her husband went to war, Betty discovered upon her divorce that she was not entitled to any of her ex-husband’s military benefits. She didn’t think that was fair, and though she never benefitted personally, she testified before the United States House of Representatives to help gain spousal benefits for those who followed her. She never told me that story. She never told me how good of a swimmer she was, or how she taught swimming to hundreds of kids. She never told me she was a lifetime volunteer with the American Red Cross. Why? Because she never made it about her.

It just wouldn’t be a blog of mine without some humor, so now that Grandma’s gone, maybe it’s okay to confess. After our wedding reception, with the bubbly still flowing, Grandma wanted to see what presents Myra and I got. She unwrapped every one. The problem was she separated the cards from the gifts. So if you got a very impersonal, “Thank you for our wedding gift. We always wanted one,” note from us, now you know why.

Colonel, thank you for a lifetime of service. Thank you for our freedom. Grandma, thank you for always making feel a part of your family. Thank you for always telling it like it is. We’ll miss you greatly. May God bless you both.

Going Blond

2009-04-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

When my daughter was an infant, she had flaming red hair. Gradually it has become blonder and blonder. I think I see why.

She likes to scroll through the phonebook on my cell phone looking for names she recognizes. Sometimes when she sees a name she doesn't know, she'll ask me about it. We do this periodically. She doesn't have great memorization skills. We had this little back-and-forth in the van the other day:

"Daddy, who is Becky M.?"

"I told you sweetie. That's Claire's mom. Remember?"

"Oh, yeah."

Click, click, click.

"Daddy…who is Sam Evans?"

"For the fourth time baby, he's Daddy's friend from The Citadel. He's the funniest guy I know."

Scroll, scroll, scroll.

Then she had an "aha" moment. I knew so because she said, "Aha!" I looked in her direction. She must have thought I'd been holding out, keeping her from the grandparent she never knew. Her gaze and her tone were accusatory.

"So Daddy…who is this Papa Johns?"

My son's eyes rolled so hard, I thought he would do a back flip in his seat. He had to be thinking "Damn!" because that's what Daddy was thinking and came close to saying out loud.

"It's the pizza place, Nikki! What are you thinking?"

"Oh," she said. And it wasn't even an I'm-so-silly "Oh," either. It was a That-explains-it "Oh."

Then it dawns on me that perhaps she's the smarter between us. Perhaps she's doing this on purpose. Hmm…

Dance Dance Revoluton

2009-04-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

Last night my kids’ school held its annual Father/Daughter dance. Nik and I have been going since she was three, and from the very first one, these things have reminded me of every Kappa Kappa Gamma mixer I ever went to with my wife when we were in college. It goes a little something like this:

Walk in and register

Stand in line (FOREVER) for a photo that you have to buy

Girls see each other

Girls scream

Girls hug

Girl (in this case my daughter) hands me her shoes and runs off to the dance floor to dance the Electric Slide with her girlfriends

I sit down at the abandoned boyfriends’ (in this case, fathers’) table, eat mildly warm chicken fingers and cubed Swiss cheese, and talk sports with two people I don’t know.

At a certain point, generally when the screaming hits a pitch that sends dogs howling for 20 miles in either direction, the DJ will play something slow, usually Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers or Unforgettable by Natalie and Nat King Cole, and instruct the girls to dance with their dads. It’s fun and cute.

After that song, the DJ usually cranks out some rock ‘n roll from the 70s, and not disco either; it’s something like Lynard Skynard or 38 Special, something that has no regular beat and no natural rhythm. You can’t dance to it unless you’ve been smoking dope. I noticed last night that when the DJ puts on 70s rock, that’s apparently the universal signal to go get something to eat. The dance floor gets more deserted than an AA meeting at a beer festival.

Thankfully, my kids’ school ends at 8th grade, so up to this point I’ve been spared the drama of my date (in this case, my daughter) leaving me for two hours while she consoles one of her drunk girlfriends in the bathroom because that girl’s date also got tanked and called her something less than virtuous. I always hated that because the girl usually cries until she pukes, and even though you’re not the one who called her a name, you’re insensitive because you want to leave…or maybe it’s just because you have a penis. Who knows? But…I digress…

I bought photo package D. It comes with an 8X10, two 5X7s, and about 8,000 wallet-sized photos. Let me know if you want one.

Caca Del Toro. Confessions of a Copy Boy

2009-04-17T11:35:00.001-07:00

I write for several magazines, most of them local, but to keep my style fresh, I read a lot of national publications and try to mimic the writers’ styles, pacing, rhythms, etc. I figure if these guys are good enough to be in Newsweek, Real Simple, or even People, then they’re worth studying. What I’ve noticed (and I mean years ago, not just recently) is the amount of crap (editors call it filler or fluff) in these publications.

I started to call this particular blog post Mythbusters, but since that name is already copyrighted for the TV show, let’s just call it the Bullshit-o-meter. Here we go:

The Helpful Hints articles: You know the ones I’m talking about… “Red or black paint bottle caps make dandy replacements for lost checkers;” or “You can use a worn out ironing board cover to make pot holders, mitts, or hot pads…” One even suggested covering wire hangers with fabric or wood to make a nice gift. Yeah…try that giving me that one for Christmas. You’ll need a butt surgeon. Bullshit rating: 10

The best helpful hint I’ve ever heard comes from my friend Tom Poland, another magazine writer. Tom saves all his junk mail that comes with postage paid return envelopes. At the end of the month, he takes the flyer from one piece of junk mail, stuffs it in the envelope that came with another piece, and mails the junk to the people who keep uselessly filling his mailbox. It’s a genius idea and a lot of fun, too!

This one is from Women’s Day and it’s for businesswomen who are on the road a lot, but who also miss their families terribly. The writer suggests to take along a framed picture of your kids and place it on your hotel room nightstand. Also to “maintain normalcy and a sense of stability” for the kids, set aside a certain, specified point each night that you will call your kids and have family time.

You can always tell when a writer has never worked in a business. Has this guy never heard of business dinners or late night meetings when you’re trying to bring a project into production? What happens when mommy is too busy cajoling the IT guys to make her 8:00 o’clock call? Are her kids going to dive headlong into drug abuse or prostitution? Maybe join a gang?

This rates up there with all the articles for people who are so busy that they actually have to schedule time for their spouses and kids—I mean literally key it into their PDA. By the time you get to the point where you feel it necessary to have your administrative assistant schedule family time, your kids and spouse hate you already. If you’re that damn busy, get a divorce and buy a cot so you never have to leave the office. Bullshit rating: 25 (on a scale of one to 10).

I was in a doctor’s office years ago and read a People magazine whose cover said “Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston: Hollywood’s Perfect Couple” Bullshit rating: Do I even need to say it?

I waited so long so see the doctor, that I found an issue of Us that was published about a year after the People. It said “Friends Say Brad and Jen’s Breakup Longtime in the Making.” (I’m not kidding…this is true). The same issue said that masturbation helps boost your immune system. This one’s isn’t bullshit. I haven’t had a cold in 12 years, but I got a pretty mean case of tennis elbow and rotator cuff tendonitis. Anybody got any helpful hints?

The Spelling Lesson

2009-04-14T05:58:00.000-07:00

In one of the Star Trek movies (the second one, I think) Spock called them “colorful metaphors.” Nikki, my seven-year-old, calls them,”Ooooo…bad words.” Not just “bad words;” you have to add the “Ooooo” in for effect. My son Alexey can’t stop laughing long enough to call them anything.

I spent four years as a Citadel cadet and 12 years right after that as a cop. As I usually tell people that in those settings, if you weren’t using “colorful metaphors” about every third sentence, you just weren’t having a conversation. I mean, it rather loses something in translation when you try to get a confession from someone by threatening to throw his “patooty” in jail. To quote the great modern philosopher Weird Al Yankovic, it sounds just a bit too “White and Nerdy.”

So I suppose it’s no great surprise that at ages 10 and 7, my son and daughter have heard their fair share of the seven words you can’t say on radio. It does become a sad state of affairs, however, when you get to use one as a spelling lesson.

Picture this: The four of us are trying to pull out of a Toys R Us in a very traffic-dense shopping area. We’re packed in the Ford Windstar. Mommy is driving, and somebody cuts her off.

“Idiot!” she yells slapping her palm on the steering wheel.
“Well, at least you didn’t use the ‘S’ word,” comes the accusatory, less than angelic voice of my daughter from the back seat.

Realizing I’m about to get busted, I dive in full force. “Um…which word is that, Nikki?”
“You know…” She glares at me.
“Sandwich?” I ask.
“No.”

“Song?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head and making her reply a two-syllable word.
“Stupid?” I say, venturing into deeper waters.
“No, Daddy. You know…’s-u-n-b-i-c-h!”

Ta-da! The winner of today’s spelling bee is…not Daddy.

Venus...Goddess of Love That You Are

2009-04-03T08:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I discovered I’m not even smarter than a second grader. The school my kids go to is excellent. The teachers, some of the most caring professionals I have ever had the privilege to meet, immerse themselves in educating their students. What’s more, they are as demanding of us as parents as they are of the children. I like that. I believe it results in just the right emphasis on and investment in education. And they come up with some creative ways to teach.

My daughter has been studying our solar system. She had to read a book about Venus, but her book report was not of the written kind. She had to make a model of her planet and note cards with facts she learned from her reading.

Teachers aren’t the only relentless professionals. My wife is one, too. Consequently, I often get to be “Project Dad.” I remember when I was in elementary school, we blew up a balloon, encased it in papier-mâché, let it dry, and then painted it blue and white to create “Earth.” I learned early on that crafts weren’t really my thing. Suffice it to say had I been the creator of the universe, we would not have to worry about global warming because there would be no globe to begin with. So why, 40 years later, should Venus be any different?

None of that nasty, wet plaster of Paris crap for me. No… Hobby Lobby sells floral forms and Styrofoam balls in various sizes, one of which would make for a very nice Venus. A little matte gold colored spray paint (because, according to the book, Venus is tan or perhaps a nice taupe—see I told you I watch Bravo TV!), and we should be rockin’ and rollin’, right?

So who knew spray paint freakin’ dissolves Styrofoam?

Did God know this when he created the real deal? Is that why it took Him seven days? Because SIX hours later Venus still wasn’t dry and it was crumbling in places?

Note to self: spray paint, Styrofoam—bad

.
“Project Dad” has learned a few other things along the way:

1) When CVS is out of poster board, Staples has it and in the color you need, but the single sheets will be out and you’ll have to buy the 12 pack with no conceivable use for the 11 other pieces in your lifetime, until of course you tire of them curling up next to the piano and you throw them out. THEN, you’ll need a purple poster.

2) Poster board and foam core are NOT the same thing!

3) It is indeed foam core and not foam cord, and if you ask the pimply-faced kid at Staples for the latter, you will receive the most condescending zit face stare down of your meager existence.

4) The term “washable markers” doesn’t necessarily mean the color disappears from your heirloom lace dining room tablecloth, “WHICH WAS A PRESENT FROM MY GRANDMOTHER!” It means the stray marks get wet in the washer and baked on in the dryer. (Does yelling something make it more factual? Perhaps that’s another blog).

5) “What’s wrong with regular paper and thumbtacks?” is not the proper response to the teacher’s requirement that the science project be presented on the three-panel presentation board available at your local office supply store.

Venus made it to school this morning, though with a few more paint-induced craters than the real thing. Mercury wasn’t so lucky. I saw it skittering across the parking lot as the kid who made it tripped on the sidewalk. The planet now has a flat side. Perhaps now we stand a chance at a decent grade!

Saved from the Embarrassment

2009-03-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

Tonight is the big night—the debut of the Timmerman School production of The Little Mermaid ballet.

Tuesday night, we had dress rehearsal. No, I didn’t get to do my “Lobster Rap,” but to the utter dismay of my daughter, I did go buy a pair of size 13 ballet slippers and I put on my old wrestling tights. I am, after all, playing the role of King Triton.

Again, I mortified my little princess, but fate, it appears, has stepped in to save her from total embarrassment. I will be unable to wear the tights for the performances. I have been out of the professional wrestling world for nearly 10 years. It has been that long since I have slipped on my gear, and apparently, I have become a little rounder. (Taller would make me feel better, but let’s be honest here).

I put on my tights, excited to do that once again, a thousand memories sailing through my brain—Ricky Steamboat, Wahoo McDaniel, the Super Enforcer, the Patriot, the Dorton Arena (my first television match), the Winthrop Coliseum, The Florence Civic Center. The first sign that they weren’t quite the fit they used to be was, as I slipped my arms through the straps, I felt my genitalia push up into my abdominal cavity. I’ll suffer anything in the name of art, even becoming a castrato, I told myself. However, when the waistline of the leggings kept folding over threatening to drop down around my knees, I knew I was done for.

Then my daughter practically begged me not to wear them because she didn’t think it was right for me “to have my boobies showing.”

I agree.

Hey, Governor...Examine Your Zipper!

2009-03-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

Allow me to recycle a lawyer joke: Do you know why South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford wears a necktie? To keep the foreskin from flipping up over his face. That’s right. My governor, my leader, the steward and chief executive of my state is a walking, talking, giant penis.

He has said on a national stage that he will turn down $700 million of federal stimulus money headed toward South Carolina. His favorite metaphor, which he has used on the local news as well as in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal is this: “…if you’re in a hole, the first order of business is to stop digging.”

Yes, I could stoop to make another anatomical reference from that comment, but I’ll refrain. I will continue the metaphor, though, and say this to my governor: “If you’re already in a hole that’s over your head, you might as well join everybody else at the bottom.” When it gets cold, they just might share a blanket. If you’re hungry, they may feed you, but you’ll get none of that perched upon your “principled”, self-righteous ledge, and you won’t be any better off. Does that make sense to you, there Dick….er, Mark?

To understand the Gov, you need a little background. Several years ago, he got voted into Congress. His hallmark was sleeping on a couch in his office rather than renting an apartment at taxpayer expense. He also abided by a self-imposed term limit. Those were, in total, his greatest accomplishments.

How much of the legislation he proposed got passed? Zero. When the vote came up to support a breast cancer stamp for the post office, out of 435 members of Congress, three voted against it. Guess who was one of the three? This is principled leadership?

Here’s the real deal. Mark Sanford is the eighth-grade kid with the horn-rimmed glasses who always ran the projector; the panty-waste, math geek know-it-all who was always standing there to say, “I told you so.” He’s so taken with watching the bottom line that had he been a civil rights marcher in the 1960s, he would have checked his wallet for bail money before he ever hoisted a sign. He’s principled all right; it’s just that his principles and his vision are limited by dollar signs.

In his inaugural speech, did John Kennedy say we would put a man on the moon by then end of the decade if we had the budget for it? No. Did Ronald Reagan say, “Mr. Gorbachev, if you have enough money, it would be nice if you considered spending some of it on taking down this wall?” Somehow I remember that line as more commanding, decisive, and powerful.

What is so utterly stupid about Dick’s stance on the stimulus money is this: if we don’t take it, the $700 million will go to another state and WE WILL STILL HAVE TO PAY IT BACK as if we had received it. Some right-wingers across the country have hailed Sanford as the new conservative messiah. They want him to run for president in 2012. I wish him well. Anything to get him the hell out of here. A word of advice, however. If you draft him to run, make sure he brings his eyes, ears, arms, and legs. Otherwise, you’ll just get the walking penis, and you don’t want him screwing the country like he’s screwing us.

Vegetarian Vampires...Yeah, Right

2009-03-23T07:44:00.001-07:00

Far be it for me to judge a book by the movie extracted from it. And who am I to criticize Stephenie Meyer, an author whose sales are more in the 50 million range versus the (perhaps) 50 books I sold last year? So let me stick to the movie itself.

To steal a line from my younger friends’ texting…WTF???!!?

A VEGETARIAN vampire. Gimme a break, but if Meyer’s (and the producer’s) visualization of a “vegetarian” vampire is one who sucks only animal blood, then let’s see it. I know it’s rated PG-13 for the tween crowd, but even most of them have seen hyenas tearing into a zebra on Wild Kingdom. Once or twice the film shows blood on the vampires’ lips, but damn, I’ve seen more blood than that when I cut myself shaving.

Trashing nearly 100 years of movie tradition and probably another 100 of vampire lore, the undead in this flick CAN come out in the sun. The only reason they don’t is because when sunlight hits their skin, they glisten “like diamonds” and people would immediately know they are different. Ahhh… Wrong again, bucko! Everybody knows vampires don’t come out in the sun BECAUSE SUNLIGHT KILLS THEM. Just like silver bullets and wooden stakes to the heart.

Then there’s the scene where Bella (the love struck human) visits vampire Edward’s home. It’s not a LAIR…oh, no. It’s a 7,500 square-foot mountain villa with lots of glass, sculpture, and bright colors. It’s straight out of Architectural Digest. When Bella expresses surprise, Edward says, “What were you expecting? Coffins, dungeons, and moats?”

Well..ah…YES! Because (again as everybody knows) vampires sleep during the day in COFFINS because SUNLIGHT KILLS THEM.

And what’s with all this leaping around in the treetops crap? Did the vegetarian vampires eat a family of flying squirrels? Hey Edward, you’re UNDEAD, not superhuman.

And speaking of Edward, British actor Robert Pattinson who played the part said he based his accent and portrayal on James Dean. If there’s a sequel, here’s a tip. Go back and watch East of Eden or Rebel Without a Cause a few more times. The way you played it, it was as if you were auditioning for the next Queer Eye. There’s angst, and then there’s just being a puss. Guess which one you were.

All of this sarcasm just to say this. It’s not that Stephenie Meyer’s characters, at least as they are portrayed in this movie, aren’t interesting and believable, they’re just not believable as vampires any more than if I threw on an eye patch and called myself a pirate. But if I did and made a movie, there would be blood, and swords, and swashbuckling (whatever that is), and my movie would be rated (wait for it), “Aaarrrrrr!”

So Who Fiddles While Your Uterus Burns?

2009-03-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

Madison Avenue may be ruled by men, but in my little corner of the universe, the advertising, marketing, and communications industry where I have spent the last 12 years of my career is dominated by women. Women understand that all buying decisions—from your brand of soap to multi-billion dollar acquisitions—are determined by emotion. Women emote better. They communicate better; therefore, the industry is commanded by some extraordinarily talented and intelligent females.

As a result, I have had plenty of women co-workers, many of whom have become my friends. I contend that I’m one of a handful of straight men in America who watches Bravo TV, so at lunch, I can talk with the best of them about Project Runway, Top Chef, America’s Next Top Model, and Sheer Genius. I even do a pretty mean Tim Gunn impression that has brought my sexuality into question a time or two. That’s okay. I’m secure.

The downside is that my XX chromosome buddies often forget there is an XY chromosome combination at the table (namely, me) and sometimes the conversations turn to things only women should talk about. I have discovered, for example, that if you’re trying to get pregnant, some people suggest putting your feet up after sex to help the sperm swim downward. Others advise taking a certain cough medicine to thin out the membrane that the sperm swim upon.

Here is my take on that: eeewwww! Yuck. Pass me a barf bag. It’s probably the male coming out in me, but I don’t need to know how the car is made, just tell me where to stick the key, if you get my drift.

It was icky enough in 9th grade science class. Do we really have to talk about this kind of thing now over sushi?

I took an English course at the University of South Carolina once. One of my friends there asked me to tell the professor she wouldn’t be in class one day because she was going to try out for a part in The Vagina Monologues. Can you say that kind of thing out loud?? Is it simply for shock value? I just told the prof she was sick. It was easier.

Today at lunch one of my friends explained how tomorrow she will have her uterus burned.

Pass the ketchup, please.

It will stop her period.

How nice. Cancel that ketchup. I don’t want it anymore.

But enough ranting for today. I must get back to writing. I’m working on a play about a guy who wants to be a urologist. It’s called I Studied for My Testicles. It’s only equitable that I get my turn to talk about it, my friends, next time we go eat hotdogs. Turnabout, they say, is fair play.

Surrounded by the Junior League

2009-03-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

So at long last we get to baseball game number 2. Four weeks have past since game 1. Two have been cancelled by weather, and one because the league officials didn't bother to check the standardized testing schedule before they made out the game roster.

According to the calendar, spring begins next week. It's been overcast all day. Tonight a fine mist chills the air, forms little ice crystals, and makes the surfaces of the aluminum bleachers as slick and cold as an ice rink. For the second little league game in a row, we've broken out the coats and blankets and paid for hot chocolate.

To top it all off, tonight I'm surrounded by the junior league.

Umpire: "Batter up!"

Coaches and assorted team members: "Come on Joey. Good eye. Outta the park, baby!"

Buffy, oblivious that her son is pitching: "I rushed right over from tennis. I don't USUALLY play singles, but we have so few who are willing and Grace Anne practically BEGGED to put me in the line up."

Umpire: "Ball one"

Muffy: "Yes, Grace Anne and I were having a triple latte mocca frappacina ice at Starbucks on Tuesday and she said she had agreed to play. I was practically bowled over that you agreed. How wonderful, Buffy. By the by, how's Chad's business faring in the current crisis?"

Umpire: "Ball two."

Buffy: "Oh, he had to let go a few of his Mexicans, but he'll get by."

Umpire: "Ball three!"

Mary Margaret: "I'm glad to hear that, Buffy. Phillip is not doing so well. We may even have to cancel little Avery's tennis lessons (tear up, sniff, sniff). She's okay with it. I'm sure she'll manage somehow with ballet, violin, and French lessons...but I think she'll miss tennis. You know how she loves to whack things."

Let me hear you utter that sentence when she's 16.

Umpire: "Ball four. Take your base."

Buffy: "Oh, look. The referee is sending that young man on to base. Wouldn't it just be marvelous if they used racquets instead of those sticks?"

Tonight, there's not even the drone of an Arctic rescue plane. Someone please hand me a visor, (and perhaps a vodka tonic) so at least I'll blend in...

Maybe It's Just Me

2009-03-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

I paid a nice long visit to my cardiologist today, long partly because of the time I got to spend in the waiting room. I have the same attention span as my kids and after a while, I started looking around in search of something to do. The first thing I noticed was a dearth of magazines, which, as a writer for a handful of periodicals, rather irked me. The second thing I noticed was a Gideon Bible on every single end table in the place.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a Christian, but aren’t we sending the wrong message here? Bibles in the cardiologist’s office? Following that logic, shouldn’t they allow funeral home calendars and catalogs from casket companies, too?

It’s all a little too “Last Rites” for me.

The Language of Sex

2009-03-07T09:24:00.000-08:00

The American Dialect Society routinely names a “Word of the Year,” a new entry into the American English language that is emblematic of the tone, the atmosphere, or the “buzz” for that year. The Word of the Year, for example in 2007, was “Subprime.” Doesn’t that sum it up nicely? Just the sound of it makes me want to rouse a mob with torches and pitchforks and head over to my nearest banker’s house.

In 2000, the ADS also chose a word of the millennium. It was the word “she,” which prior to the year 1000 did not exist. The Old English word for the fairer sex in 999 AD was “heo.” It changed, according to scholars, because it sounded to much like “he,” and a gender who won’t even wear the same color dress that another woman has on to the same event, just couldn’t have that. Oh, no sir-eeeee.

(“Sir” came from “sire, by the way, which means “senior” because men, allegedly came first to the earth, but that’s a man thing and really doesn’t matter, so to all my women friends, just forget I mentioned it).

Yep, like a superhero, they just added an “S” to their chests, and what a nice “S” it was. And rather than faking the big “O,” they just dropped it all together.

Linguists say all language is metaphorical. If this example isn’t a metaphor for life, I don’t know what is.

2009-03-05T07:05:00.000-08:00

In general, I try to say something light and funny here just to make this blog interesting reading. I’ll continue to strive for humor, but today I want to say something a little more serious about my fellow authors from Echelon Press and Quake.

These comments (like my last posting, which I hope you found somewhat funny) flow out of the recent book festival. Just last week, someone (a PR Professional), told me that all communication is a performance. I agree, but for it to be effective, I believe it has to be sincere. So many times at these festivals, authors assume some holier-than-thou personas. They appear to believe that because a publisher has published their book or books, they are somehow a notch or two above the hoi polloi. They expect a line at their signing tables.

I suspect that some of these folks are well meaning, but have fallen victim to their own visualization of success—you know…if you’re going to be taken seriously as a member of the literati, you must act the part and believe in yourself. I had one tell me Saturday that he had sold 27,000 copies of his book in just the first three months of last year, yet the publisher had only sent a $4,000 royalty check thus far. (I mean really, Muffy!!!—that’s me being snide and funny)

Seeing these authors makes me appreciate the people with whom I share the Echelon booth. We’re all real people. Certainly we think our books represent the best products at the show. If you don’t think your book is the next blockbuster, then you don’t need to be out there selling it. It's really up to us to make a compelling case that our books are the best ones out there. Still we seem to approach selling with a level of respect for our readers as well as our fellow authors that, to me, is remarkable.

We expect a line of people at our table because we’re fun, accessible, and engaging. We’re kind of like the NASCAR of authors only without the cool suits, fast cars, sponsors, big rig trailers…well, you know what I mean!

Every time I attend a book festival with any combination of Echelon authors, I am blown away by their sheer talent. I’m grateful to be counted in their ranks, and more importantly from my standpoint, I appreciate the humility and respect with which we all treat each other.

Postpartum Book Festival Blues

2009-03-02T11:37:00.000-08:00

We just finished a run at the South Carolina Book Festival. As usual, despite the weather, it was a great event. We sold well. Everyone seemed to have a good time.

Now, maybe it’s just me; maybe I’m just tired. I know we’re supposed to have our game faces on. We smile. We compliment the lady on her beautiful necklace just to engage her in conversation to hopefully make a sale. We ask the gentleman, “How did Carolina do in the game last night? Did Zam score plenty?” for the same purpose.

Here’s my quandary. I sometimes ask, as many of my fellow authors do, “What do you like to read?” (hoping, of course, they will say “Police thrillers,” so I can sell them my book!).

Then there’s the kicker: “Oh, I don’t like to read,” or the curt alternative, “I don’t read books.”

Say what? Then why are you at a BOOK FESTIVAL????!!!

Jackass.

Do philatelists hoping to add to their stamp collections root around football stadiums filled with half-drunk, rowdy, popcorn-and-Coke-laden, jersey-wearing fans? Do sci-fi enthusiasts head over to the Kenny Chesnee concert dressed like Darth Vader hoping to meet some blue-skinned chick with horns coming out of her head?

Hell no. They don’t go to these places. So why, then, are you in a room filled with books and authors if you don’t like to read? Isn’t that like watching Telemundo and not speaking a word of Spanish?

It’s not just South Carolina with our lack of interest for anything that doesn’t involve a gun, liquor, or a four-wheel drive vehicle. We get that response in Chicago and Los Angeles, too.

I got a tip for you. Why don’t y’all start your own “I Don’t Like Books Festival?” You can gather in a room full of empty booths and sit around not reading a damn thing to each other. You’d LOVE an event like this.

Maybe it’s just me…maybe I’m tired. I’m going to take a nap!

Sam's Parenting Tip #37

2009-02-25T12:46:00.000-08:00

When you are in the car with your kids and they are bickering—and I mean incessant, constant back-and-forth arguing over nothing important at all—I have a great solution I discovered (and tested) yesterday. I’ll likely use it repeatedly just for fun or until they quit griping at each other, whichever comes first.

The kids will be so focused on each other and who is "right" they’ll never see this coming. As they are engaged in heated, irritating debate, pretend you’re about to have an accident—take in a sharp breath, slam on brakes, and scream!

It is freakin’ hilarious, and it stops all conversation, including the argument!

Of Governors, Pennies, and Chicken

2009-02-23T08:03:00.000-08:00

***WARNING***

If you're offended by bad language, and I mean terrible, awful, yucky four-letter words, SKIP this entry. There. If you read it and still wind up getting pissed, it's on you, my friend.

********************************

Every time I visit the closest KFC to my house, I think about Dick Riley, President Clinton’s education secretary, an incongruous thought, I admit, but here’s why.

When I was a kid in the 70s, Riley, then our governor in South Carolina, told us if the voters would approve a 1 cent hike in our sales tax, he could direct that money to our schools and within a matter of years, we’d have a state chock full of geniuses.

Now a lot of you know that we have a saying here in the Palmetto State—“Thank God for Mississippi”—since they are perennially ranked 50th in education in the U.S. After nearly 40 years and millions of pennies in sales tax, we’re still number 49. All the proof you need of this failed policy stands behind the counter at KFC in West Columbia.

Every time I go to this place, they never have original recipe. It’s always a 20 minute wait while it cooks. Set aside the fact that original recipe is what made the Colonel and the restaurant world famous, all these people sell is chicken! What the hell do they think the “FC” stands for in “KFC?” I’m not asking them to explain string theory. All I’m asking for is CHICKEN!!!! Bone in, skin on, rolled in flour with the Colonel’s special spices and dropped into a freakin’ deep-fat-fryer chicken!

You would think that after million of pennies given to their school districts one of them would occasionally glance at the rack under the heat lamp, and when he or she sees only 10 or so pieces left, would say “Drop some more chicken.” Hell, they wouldn’t even have to say it. They could bang a metal spoon on the countertop—one bang for original recipe, two bangs for extra crispy. Use grunts, smoke signals, sign language, I don’t care, just cook the damn chicken!

So why in the midst in an economic crisis, two wars, a crumbling Social Security system, and any number of healthcare crises, am I worried about KFC? Simple. Without going into the compelling reasons why, my diet consists mainly of grilled chicken, anything you can make out of ground turkey, broiled fish, and lots of fruits and vegetables, so every five months or so when the mood hits and the blood sugars allow, I WANT MY ORIGINAL RECIPE FRIED CHICKEN, dammit.

Yesterday, I wanted original recipe. Yesterday there was a 20 minute wait.

Dick Riley, you can bet all the pennies in your pocket, if I ever come across you, pal, I’m going to beat the livin’ shit out of you. Have a great day.

2009-02-21T15:03:00.000-08:00

Parenthood is awesome. Last Saturday I had ballet practice. Yes, ballet. I am King Triton in my daughter’s ballet company’s production of The Little Mermaid. Just to jazz things up, I prepared a rap to perform and auditioned it for the instructor:

I’d like to talk to you about my frustration
With crabs and the shrimps and the other crustaceans
Those tropical fishes, they got the groove
And that freaky jellyfish can bus’ a move

All the lobsters in the house putcha hands up!

It mortified my daughter.

Last night, my son had baseball practice, and at the risk of sounding like a whiner to my friends in places like the Poconos, it was 28 degrees outside. When it’s 28 in South Carolina, we deplete the grocery stores of all their bread and milk. We don’t drive. And we certainly don’t practice baseball.

Apparently we do—from 7-9 p.m. Did I mention it was 28 degrees?

I don’t know who was bitching more, the kids whose skin was becoming frozen to their aluminum bats, the kids whose fingers were cracking with each caught ball, or me. Good bet it was me. At one point I heard a plane overhead. I scanned the sky for it looking for skis where wheels should have been. God please let it be some arctic rescue operation, I thought.

Earlier that day, I had bought my son a cup. I also bought a jock strap and something they didn’t have when I played ball—compression pants. They’re like a tight-fitting pair of boxer shorts with a pocket for the cup. My son preferred the compression pants.

As the temperature dipped and wind began to increase, I looked for something to protect my frostbitten ears. You got it—the unused jock strap with its wide elastic waistband. I put it over my head, the leg straps dangling by my shoulders. Ahhhh…nirvana. Not pretty, but warm, by golly.

At some point, Alexey looked over at me.

I mortified my son.

I’m two for two this week. Ain’t parenthood sweet?

Truce Declared in Hamster Wars

2009-02-19T11:15:00.000-08:00

History, it is said, is written by the victors; or in this case, by the side with opposable thumbs.

At 7:26 a.m. Wednesday, the insurgent Bugsy the Hamster was nabbed in a recessed well where the seatbelt retracts in my truck. He was asleep. I had a pair of work gloves. He never had a chance.

He could very easily have become a casualty of our little war, but I am nothing if not humane and respectful of the creatures with which we share this planet, especially those that are supposed to be cute, cuddly and less trouble than a puppy. He had committed a number of crimes: desertion, evading capture, chewing through the wire to my cell phone ear bud. He certainly deserved whatever punishment I desired to mete out.

But Bugsy and I sat down for a little tête à tête, our own local Camp David Peace Accords of which even Jimmy Carter would have been proud. I signed a non-aggression pact. Bugsy laid his paw print upon a rodent non-proliferation agreement. All that was left was the prisoner exchange.

This time I imprisoned Bugsy in a 13-gallon plastic trashcan with sloped, slick sides. As an added measure of protection, I attached the can to the bed (not the cab) of my truck with bungee cord. He didn’t much like it, so I tossed in my phone ear bud with which, had it worked, he could have called someone who cared.

I pulled up to PetSmart and the pneumatic doors flew open as if they were some glorified Check Point Charlie. On either side stood a column of festooned employees, a marching band, and color guard to welcome home Bugsy, the conquering hero, the prodigal rat, their own little Nelson Mandela formerly imprisoned and persecuted by the human with the gas-guzzling truck. Bugsy trotted through his phalanx of supporters, the last of whom in her powder blue PetSmart smock scowled at me, ever defiant in my “1001 Uses for a Dead Cat” t-shirt. Sic semper tyrannis.

By the grace of God and the prevailing of a compassionate heart, peace reigns again in Hamsterland and in the House of Morton.

I AM Smarter Than a Hamster...No, wait...

2009-02-17T14:04:00.000-08:00

Thank you to my friends who sent in tips on catching the hamster, though I didn't get a chance to deploy them. I caught little Bugsy with one of the sticky traps.

My wife said she did not want three hamsters. "Take it back to PetSmart," she said. "You won't get your money back, but they'll take it in." Good idea, I thought.

The little critter came home in a cardboard box, so I decided to take him back in a cardboard box. When the scratching in the box ceased (a full quarter mile before reaching PetSmart), I thought he had just resigned himself to his fate.

Wrong!

For the two weeks he's been loose, Bugsy has apparently been sharpening his teeth and claws. He chewed through the box!!!

This could only happen to me.

Somewhere loose in my truck, little Bugsy is chewing through God-knows-what kind of wiring.

I tried the sticky traps again, one in the floorboard in front of each seat. Monday, I went out, anxious to see my catch. I found the two traps, one on top of the other glued together and the food gone.

Somewhere the hamster is laughing at the guy with a master's degree.

Not Smarter Than a Hamster Either

2009-02-13T16:14:00.000-08:00

I think I’ve made a pretty good case that I am not smarter than a 5th grader. This week, however, I have even been outdone by a hamster, a glorified rat. It’s immaterial how my 7-year-old’s pet got loose from his cage (or hamster condo as the folks at PetSmart call it. They are a sensitive bunch and “cage” is so…torturous in a right wing sort of way). Fact is, the little bugger is out.

For the past eight or nine days, I’ve caught glimpses of him, but when I reach to pick him up, he activates some heretofore unseen rocket boosters and dashes behind a bookcase, leaving me to bump my head and utter words no 7-year-old should hear.

I went back to PetSmart and asked about humane traps. From the incredulous look I received, one would have thought I had become unabashedly flatulent in the middle of their store. “Why sir, we don’t believe in TRAPPING anything,” the sneering ex-flower child clerk said.

Her solution: “Put out some food and bedding. Get up in the middle of the night (yes, she said MIDDLE OF THE DAMN NIGHT) and see where he might be making his ‘home’ so you might catch him napping in the daytime.” I can think of a thousand responses, and those of you who know me can probably accurately guess the first five that popped in my mind.

But why argue? It’s an $11.00 animal. He is dispensable, but then again so is the ice coming from my ice dispenser, the tubing of which I’m convinced the hamster will chew through, and then he will become a $75-plus-parts-and-labor plumber’s visit animal.

I found my humane traps—the kind that make the animal stick to them—a set of four for less than $5.00. They even had an anesthetic to calm the animal so he didn’t stress himself into a coronary waiting on me to get up at some point well past the “middle of the night.”

Wednesday morning, 7:15. One trap is completely missing. No trail of food. No “I scared the crap out of him,” pellets. No animal hair. No sticky residue. Nothing.

He’s not behind the bookcase; nor the washer; nor the stove; nor under the couch; nor behind the fridge. I half expected to hear Bugsy the hamster clomping around my house with a checkbook-sized rodent trap stuck to one foot like a snowshoe. No such luck. Just one missing rat trap; one missing hamster, and one humiliated, frustrated, head-scratching me!

Interview with a Pixie Chick

2009-02-10T13:23:00.001-08:00

Today, we’re talking with Briana Marie Fairchild, affectionately known as Brie. Brie is the leader of the Pixie Chicks, a quartet of girls in the high school marching band.

Q: Brie, I want my readers to really get to know the real you. What is it that makes you such a good, effective leader? Does the fact that your dad is away often have anything to do with your ability, some might say passion, for taking charge?

A: Probably that and being the oldest. I like order and for stuff to have a purpose, y'know?

Q: Why does it annoy you that your brother is taller than you?

A: Hello? I'm the oldest. Ben thinks height equals rank - so not true. Besides, waay back when we were small, Mom told me one day he'd be able to fight back - she was right.

Q: What is it about band that means so much to you?

A: You're part of a big, extended family.

Q: Is it the social experience?

A: It helps to have a place to fit in from day one in high school.

Q: Pretend for a moment that you weren’t in the band. What if the Pixie Chicks had never found each other?

A: Blasphemy! LOL How would your life be different? I'd still be in band, still part of that family, but the PC are like special sisters. They know everything about me and love me anyway.

Q: Related question…what are some of your favorite band memories?

A: Marching the Christmas parade downtown last year. It was freezing, and the only time we were grateful for wool uniforms. The hot chocolate and shoe sale afterward at the galleria was fun too.

Q: If you didn’t play piccolo, what other instrument do you think you’d like to play?

A: Bass drum.They have too much fun and the drum line's really ornery.

Q: Are the rumors true that band kids are wild and crazy? Any secrets you’d like to share…just between you and me and a few thousand readers?

A: Any group with 'geek' attached has to maintain some mystery, band geeks are no exception. Let me just say some things have to be experienced to be believed. And some things you can only experience if you're with the best - the BAND!

Q: Not everyone in high school is lucky enough to have a tight-knit group of friends. What do you think you get out of having Austin, Lana, and Claire as friends? What do you get from them?

A: Everyone needs someone and I think it's sad when kids close themselves off, or get shut out. Having the PC gives me balance when things go wacky. Good friends help you dream, but keep you from drifting off, y'know?

Q: A couple of fun things…complete these sentences:

If I could be anything I would be a…
A: ballerina.

If I could travel anywhere in the world it would be…
A: to wherever my dad is at the moment. He sees some cool stuff.

If I could meet anybody it would be…
A: My mom's mom. She died when I was too little to know her, but mom makes her sound totally awesome.

If I could have my choice of car it would be…
A: An older model Chevy SS - like the '69 Indy pace car. Those rock! But there's no way the 'rents will approve.

To find out more about Brie and her friends, log onto http://www.reganblack.com/.

In addition to The Pixie Chicks, Regan Black is the author of Justice Incarnate and Invasion of Justice.

The Price of Specificity

2009-02-09T07:56:00.000-08:00

Have you ever used the word “thing,” and people believe you were being deliberately vague, forgetful, or even deceptive? “Honey, we can’t go out with your brother and his wife Friday night. We’ve got that, ah…thing,” you say, snapping your fingers.

What is this ambiguous “thing” you speak of, your wife wonders (Sometimes aloud. And sometimes louder than others). She squints her eyes, furrows her brow, and purses her lips. It seems it could lead to your death, or emasculation at least, this lack of clarity. But are you really being obtuse?

Grammatically speaking, you are not. In Old English, “thing,” meant “assembly,” or a meeting of people, such as a case before the court or convening of parliament. Dutch (dinc), German (ding), Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian (ting) all have similar words with similar etymologies—“a specific matter before a court” that got generalized to mean “any matter” or any “thing.” Similarly, the Latin causa, meaning “specific legal cause,” evolved in Italian and Spanish into cosa, meaning (obviously) “thing.”

Today, a “thing” is a “whatever.”

It’s a handy term. Try it with your kids as you’re unstopping a drain, contorted beyond human imagination beneath the kitchen sink. “Hey, Susie. I need the thing in my toolbox that turns this little doo-hickey. No, the other thing. Not THAT one, the OTHER one, the THING right there in front of your eyes! Are you blind? Ah, Jeez, don’t cry!”

The word has been generalized enough that it is part of our elementary school fabric. Every school kid knows a “noun” is a “person, place, or thing.” But rest assured, “thing” can be very, very specific.

So next time, say it with confidence. You’re not making lame excuses. No, you’ve got a “thing” to go to! Try it at Christmas. “Honey, I don’t think we can go to your mom’s this year. You know, we’ve got that thing.”

Let me know how that works out for you. My wife didn’t buy it one bit. Grammar/schammer. My “thing” got handed to me. Have a nice day.

Expert Opinion

2009-02-06T19:20:00.000-08:00

A writer friend of mine sent me an email today with a link from some supposed expert who says that the concept of conflict in literature is a myth. This literatus (or literata as the case may be since I don’t know his or her gender) contends that powerful and successful fiction is about journey, transformation, detachment, and attachment. He cites everything from The Godfather to the Harry Potter books as proof of his hypothesis.

I at first had several questions about this proposal. Wouldn’t a journey, in and of itself, be a “conflict?” Why would one need to take a journey if not to conquer some fear or to test oneself? Transformation, now if that isn’t conflict, I don’t know what is. If ones moves from one emotional state to another, by definition there must be a reason, otherwise it’s simply called “multiple personality disorder.” I could go on ad nauseam, but why. The punch line is this simple 188 page writing “formula” can be your (or mine for that matter) for $199.00. Ah…now it all makes sense.

Remember, “expert,” those who can do. Those who can’t…

Respect and Appreciation

2009-02-04T07:43:00.000-08:00

Like my literary hero Pat Conroy, I wear the ring. I am a proud graduate of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. If you went to military school or served in the armed forces, you understand it’s tradition to be overly critical of those who follow behind you. Their experiences never quite match up to those legendary tough times you had to endure. Your boot camp was harder. Your plebe year (or knob year as we call it at The Citadel) was infinitely tougher than those wimps who dare even call themselves plebes in 2009.

I do my fair share of bashing.

When I was a cadet, our “air conditioning” consisted of a box fan in the window and an open transom to create a cross breeze. The result was a desultory movement of air saturated with humidity—the norm for Charleston, South Carolina for most of the year. Today, the cadets have central heating and air.

When I was a cadet, my classmates and I enjoyed what was then called the “Knob Lounge,” a single 2-by-8 board affixed to a wall under an overhang. The board served as a shelf where we could lay down our books and stand—stand but not talk—to enjoy a quick snack between classes and drill. Today, the “Fourth Class Lounge” is a well-appointed room in the student center complete with a television, comfy couches and chairs, and even a computer to check your FaceBook or maybe email mom to tell her how tough it is being a freshman cadet.

(Okay, I can HEAR the eye-rolling about now, but I’m getting to my point. Trust me)

Yes, I bash, but it is all in fun. It has to be because I am sobered when I log onto my college’s website (http://www.citadel.edu/) and look at the list of young men and women serving, and in some cases dying for, our country. Many are alumni who graduated well after me. They don’t know me. But they are serving to keep me and my family free.

Shane Childers graduated in 2001. He was the first person do lose his life in the current Gulf War. I don’t care what kind of knob experience Lt. Childers had. I care only that he put on a uniform and fought for me.

That goes for everyone serving, Citadel grad or not. If you were Citadel cadet, a former EMT for your county rescue squad, or a sorority girl at Alabama, it matters not. You have my immediate respect, my life long gratitude, and my prayer for a safe and peaceful return.

Dream Out Loud

2009-02-02T06:16:00.000-08:00

One can hardly write about dreams without paying homage to the most famous one of all. On August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King voiced his dream—he dreamed out loud. In one single address, he inspired millions and fundamentally changed the cultural fabric of our nation. His dream, like all others that yield momentous results, came to fruition at great personal sacrifice to him.

Every day we also have an opportunity to dream out loud; to muster our courage and momentum to fundamentally change our lives.

Listen to the words of Thomas Edward Lawrence. You might know him better as Lawrence of Arabia. “All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.”

Today, and with the dawning of each new day in America, we need to dream out loud.

A dreamer is someone who can see beyond "what is" to "what can be". A dreamer is a person who has the creativity and courage to try new things and overcome obstacles.

Courage and commitment are key.

Naysayers will try to crush your dreams. They will find dozens of reasons why you shouldn’t even try. They will tell you that what you are trying to accomplish will take too much time or require too much effort; that your goal is futile and unreachable.

I would rather defer to the words of George Bernard Shaw: rather than see things that are and ask why, “I dream of things that never were and say ‘Why not?’” A dreamer makes a difference in his own life and the lives of others, and can think ideas into reality.

It is human nature to believe that we live in the most technologically advanced age earth has experienced and that no discoveries remain hidden for us to find and make life better. But beliefs, even in the “absolute truths” of science, can confine and stifle creativity. Thank goodness for the dreamers of the world, for they dare defy conventional wisdom and conformity. They bring us new discoveries, new methods, new achievements, and a better way of life.

A lofty dream accomplished is a triumph of the human soul, a celebration of ingenuity, of determination, and the grit of the people who work to make it come true. As long as we are trying to achieve our dreams, setbacks are never failures.

The only sure path to failure is inaction. That is when creativity becomes disposable. A dream unspoken is merely a thought.

There is a commonality among dreamers who actually change the way things are done. The common thread is that they have given voice to their aspirations. They have dared to dream out loud. It takes a certain valor, and, yes, audacity, to do that, but when you expect nothing from yourself, you get exactly what you asked for.

Hundreds of years ago, people would look at the horizon and believe it represented the end of the earth. Today we know better.

We realize that just ahead of that point where the earth and sky connect, there is always—always—something beyond the horizon. That line, that sliver of air, is not the end. For us it represents boundless opportunity for new things and new ways—a chance to reinvent ourselves and the ways we get things done.

That is the living definition of a dream.

Dream with me. Take this journey by my side. Together we will change our world.

I'm NOT Smarter Than a 5th Grader Part Two

2009-01-30T05:52:00.000-08:00

My son, Alexey, is in 5th grade and the English major (me) gets to help him with homework. Now I truly, truly appreciate the process of learning, I do... but I have to say that long division is the most useless, pointless endeavor known to man. Isn't long division the REASON God invented calculators and accountants?

I mean if I want some sausage, I go to the Publix and pick up a package of Jimmy Dean. You won't see me scootin' around the backyard gutting a pig and grinding my own. See my point?

I guess if my freakin' LIFE depended on me knowing what 2869 divided by 936 is, I could wing it with a pencil, but damn... just hand me a TI-35.

Or more likely just expect a furrowed brow, "What the hell do you need to know that for?" glance!

Whew...I feel better.

Word Play

2009-01-29T06:14:00.000-08:00

It is fitting that misspelled often is.

Here are other common words prone to mistake:

accommodation, allotted, attendance, calendar, changeable, consensus, crucifixion, develop, ecstasy, forty, gauge, guttural, handkerchief, idiosyncrasy, inoculate, irrelevant, liaise, likable, liquefy, maintenance, mayonnaise, millennium, minuscule, moccasin, necklace, occasionally, occurred, pavilion, prairie, principal (versus principle), privilege, rarefy, repellent, resuscitate, rhythm, sacrilegious, separate, supersede, surprise, and withhold.

A few of these, like likable (likeable), have more than one accepted spelling. But most of the words appear only one way in dictionaries, and are butchered with noticeable regularity by those without the time, resources or motivation to check their guesses.

Good readers are not necessarily good spellers. Linguists have pointed out that the former is a more passive, receptive act while the latter is a more conscious, deliberate process that requires heightened “visual memory” to handle exceptions.

“It is possible to read by attending selectively to the cues in a text, recognizing just a few letters, and guessing the rest,” linguist David Crystal says. “It is not possible to spell in this way: spellers have to reproduce all the letters.”

Replacing every ‘o’ with an ‘x’ in a sentence underscores this: “Dx yxu just lxve a full mxxn?” The question about whether you loved the celestial body would probably still be understood.

A brain’s ability to fill in such gaps suggests that wrong or unusual spellings won’t necessarily prevent communication, although readers might have to wxrk hxrder tx figxre xut whxt the writxr meenz.

But sticking with a standard spelling is more than a gesture of courtesy. It can also telegraph a message about concern for accuracy, consistency, and seriousness of the message – an important consideration for many people, particularly if the message is meant for all time.

I am NOT Smarter than a 5th Grader

2009-01-27T08:29:00.001-08:00

I learned this morning that I am not--repeat NOT--smarter than a 5th grader. How do I know? Because I had to help my son, a 5th grader, correct a vocabulary test on which he scored poorly.

Piece of cake for a guy who makes his living writing, wouldn't you think? But I was done in by one word, one simple, three-syllable word--"dolorous." Apparently it means "causing pain or sorrow." Never heard of it. Never used it. I became bewildered (another one of the vocabulary words, but at least I had used that one).

I guess I should have taken a clue late last week when the same teacher gave him an assignment to use a compound subject and the verb "was." I thought that impossible. A compound subject, by definition, is plural and requires a plural form of the verb (e.g. "John and I were fishing in our favorite spot.")

It was not until I searched the Internet, the modern version of the Library at Alexandria, that I found indeed one can write a sentence with a compound subject and the verb "was." "Each boy and girl was assigned a specific task."

Apparently using "each" or "every" creates an exception to the agreement rule. Who knew?

So I've reached a pivotal decision in my writing career. I will resort to the time-proven adage that sex sells. My next book cover, regardless of the book's content, will feature a scantily clad (dare we say perhaps even "nekkid") woman, cleverly designed to obscure my dolorous ignorance of the rules of grammar on display on the pages inside.

Chances are even a 5th grader would buy that.

Hope

2009-01-21T06:15:00.000-08:00

I may sound more cliche (and use more of them) today than any other day in my life, but after yesterday's inauguration, I just can't help it.

My father thought Richard Nixon walked on water, and I...well I have been a Republican as far as I can remember--a moderate Republican, that is. If you want to know what lonely feels like, try putting that tag on yourself. Hard-line conservatives say we don't exist, that we're liberals in sheep's clothing, that we're RINOs--Republicans-In-Name-Only.

That's from the wing of the party that won't cotton dissent; from people who are so afraid of having their ideology questioned, who are so afraid of perhaps having to change their minds on the immutable truths of conservatism (naturally passed down on high from the big "G"), that they quash any uncertainty with the unequivocal sneer of damnable judgement.

Then there are Democrats of the same ilk who believe if you voted for Reagan or cheer on the Israeli's as they unashamedly kick ass and take names in the Gaza, you are a minion of The Great Satan--the United States of America.

But yesterday there was a sea change. The ground shifted beneath our feet. Our new leader stepped up to the podium and challenged us to come together as a nation. I intend to answer that challenge. I'm shedding my political labels, whatever they were.

I am not a Republican, a Libertarian, or a Democrat. I'm an American and my President is Barak Obama.

I didn't vote for him. I didn't campaign for him. But I will follow him. As I listened to his inaugural speech, something stirred in me yesterday as I'm sure it did for many people.

I have a renewed sense of hope and a willingness to make whatever sacrifices my President asks of me to make our country strong again.

To my conservative friends I say this: an army cannot advance if half its soldiers remain stubbornly rooted in place. A football team cannot score if the half back runs the ball in the opposite direction of his goal. Similarly, our nation cannot move forward if we are paralyzed in fear by the thought of new ideas, new approaches, and radical change.

The beauty of our republic is that it is self-correcting. In four years, if this President fails to lead us to a better place, we can transfer his power to another. But for now, my brother and sisters, I'm all in.

Lead on Obama. Lead on.

Inspiration

2009-01-20T13:00:00.000-08:00

KNOB YEAR

It was mid-August 1981 and I had just completed my third year as a
counselor at The Citadel Summer Camp for Boys. I had only left
Charleston three weeks ago, and now I was returning to report for my
knob year. Mama drove me down with my footlocker packed. I had to
audition for Regimental Band, but conventional wisdom said if you
had even been near a musical instrument sometime in your life, you
got put in Band Company.

I auditioned and was made bass drummer for the Big “Q”. Mama and
I ate together in the mess hall with all the other Band Company
aspirants. After lunch, we said goodbye. It was the second time in
my life I ever saw her cry.

I cried too.

I took solace in the fact that I was in familiar territory having been on
The Citadel campus since I was twelve. I felt it to be an intimate and
friendly place. Then I met my 1st Sgt., Dave Branton, and found out
how wrong I was!

That first night, I unpacked my belongings. Then at midnight, the
cadre forced us to change rooms and roommates, re-packing and
unpacking again. As I settled in with my second roommate, Allen
Blume, the door burst open close to two in the morning and the
upperclassmen forced us to move again. The third time being the
proverbial charm, I met Les Williams, my permanent roomie for the
remainder of knob year.

But the tone was set. From Hell Night through Recognition Day, fear,
uncertainty, insecurity, and terror reigned supreme. By the end of the
first week, a third of our freshmen class had quit. By year’s end, our
original numbers were down by half. But for those of us who gutted
it out—Les, Allen, Ken Sigmon, Russ Mease, Pete Lawrence, Ken
Riddle, Jay Strickland, Dave Eubanks, Jimmy Bowen, et al—we are
friends, blood brothers, soulmates all.

Not too shabby for a mama’s
boy from Rock Hill.

Moonlight and Magnolias

2009-01-14T07:27:00.000-08:00

In some of my speeches, since we apparently have some distinctive speech patterns here in the South--though it seems to me y'all are the ones with the weird accents--I incorporate the etymology of "buck nekkid."

"Nude" is when one is undressed for some artful purpose such as a painting or play.
"Naked" is when one is unclothed for something like a shower or doctor's exam.
"Nekkid" is when you don't have any clothes on and you're doing something you shouldn't
"Buck Nekkid" is when you don't have any clothes on doing something you shouldn't--and get caught at it!

The part I can't seem to figure out is whether I'm intrugued by the evolution of this phraseology or just simply fascinated with having no clothes on!

I'd say I salute you all...but really, we don't want to go there.

Good day to all.

Sunshine

2009-01-12T17:51:00.000-08:00

It is sunrise in paradise.

I lay in that halfway sleep between awakening and deep, peaceful slumber.
Coming out of the blackness of a restful sleep, I

Inhale the cool salt-scented air.

As the sun moves across the eastern sky,
It paints the landscape of my face, slowly

Beckoning me to awareness.

It is in that moment I realize the woman I love with

All my heart is sleeping just a few inches away.
She knows that I love her, but does she realize how much?

Does she know that I would sacrifice every material thing I
Own to keep her as my life’s companion?
Does she realize that every day I try to barter away ten
Years of my life just to be with her forever?

Does she know how beautiful I believe she is?
Does she understand that should the gauze of time ever
Fade her outward beauty, that I will love her stronger
And better and more intensely?

Does she know that I go to sleep and awaken with thoughts of her?
Does she know that with her everything is brighter and happier and

I am more content?

That without her I have no sense of purpose?

With her, the rain is sweeter
The flowers more colorful
The mountains grander
The oceans more majestic.

Without her, everything in the world lacks beauty for me.

Does she know that I believe her blood runs through my veins?
That my heart beats not only for her, but because of her?
Can she possibly understand that my definition of sadness
And despair is simply life without her?

Her face is beautiful in the sunlight.
She squints at me against the sun, a hand shading her eyes,
A light azure sky serving as a backdrop to her beautiful visage.
I who realizes that should life cease for me at that very instant,
I would die the most fortunate man in the world.

To be in her embrace is to be as close to Heaven as a

Human being can get on this earth.

As sun sets in paradise, the western sky is a rich palate of hues, from
Fiery pink to warm lavender to deep dark blue pricked with
Pinpoints of starlight.

With the rising and setting sun we
Mark our time in the universe.
Every thing has its opposite.

And the opposite of the regularity of dawn and dusk with its
Strictures of chronology is something ceaseless; unending; constant.
It is my deep, abiding, infinite love for this one woman out of the

Billions of people on this planet.

I wonder, does she know?