Author: admin

“I didn’t know my tongue could do that!”

Colt Perkins – Age five – Commenting on How he Helped to Facilitate the Loss of his First Tooth

“And I’d end by saying, have no fear these are NO WHERE near the best years of your life.”

Brad Paisley in his Song “If I Could Write a Letter to Me.”

On Saturday Jan and I went to a very fun production of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in which our niece’s children were the stars. Well okay, Kaleb was a “town-animal”, and Annika was a “trial spectator.” Annika actually had a line and Kaleb knew where to stand (for the most part) so they were stars to us.  The idea was that the three bears filed a criminal complaint against Goldilocks for breaking and entering and for willful destruction of property for the damage to Baby Bear’s chair. It was very cute. Kaleb, age five, did not seem to be nervous in any way, in fact he seemed a bit, distracted. What could distract a five-year-old while on stage in front of hundreds of his adoring family and friends? (Okay maybe like sixty or seventy.) Kaleb had TWO loose teeth. Those loose teeth occupied a lot more of his attention than the play.

Loose teeth were a bit of an epidemic in our family this year. Colt and Natalie both lost their first teeth. Garrett also lost another tooth, but did not experience the extreme trauma that his two younger cousins did. (See above quotation expressing Colt’s amazement at the whole process.) Those two were not in any way amused when their older cousins or uncles or aunts volunteered to remove them at no charge. It was very cute and reminded me that every generation goes though the same rites of passage. But is it really the same these days? I’m not sure.

One of the very best things that can happen to a grandpa on vacation is for a grandchild to sit on your lap and actually talk with you. I had this treat this year with the aforementioned Natalie. We did not discuss her tooth issues. We were talking and listening to some songs playing from the playlist on my phone. As we sat there, I was absent-mindedly whistling along with the tune. I realized that Natalie was observing me very carefully for a minute or two. And then she told me. “I wish I could whistle. I have tried and can’t seem to get it. I Googled instructional videos on how to whistle and watched them carefully, but I haven’t been able to get it yet.” I was taken aback. Here is Nattie, aged six, with access to Google and the knowledge of how to use it to search out an instructional video!!! I was amazed at her acumen to come up with the idea of a whistling instructional video and for her initiative to find it and try it. I found it amusing and charming, but also a bit unsettling. Oh, I know that our grandchildren are very computer literate starting at a young age. This feat is probably a lot more impressive to me than it is to her parents or teachers. But does this seem right? Does this seem good? Are things all different these days?

I have been thinking about this a lot in the days following vacation. This fall will bring about a lot of changes for many of our grandchildren – going from high school to college, going from elementary school to middle school, going from kindergarten to first grade, going from preschool to kindergarten, etc. We also have a college senior who is beginning the home stretch to her degree and is now seriously contemplating entrance into the job market as well as an upcoming wedding.

A lot of these changes that our grandkids have to navigate through are not fundamentally different than what we and our children went through. Heck, I remember especially how difficult the transition from elementary school to middle school was for me. And really, we ALL had a first tooth lost incident, didn’t we? It strikes me that we should take some comfort in knowing that we all have figured out a way to navigate these challenges and no doubt our grandchildren will too. But it also seems to me that as we recall the trauma of these life events with the knowledge that you CAN get through them, there is a tendency to minimize how hard it is today, when you are the kid in the middle of the challenge without the benefit of hindsight.

Our grandchildren begin to experience the pressure to succeed in preschool and before. They are evaluated in many ways at very young ages. We try to help them capitalize on their strengths and to overcome their weaknesses. We worry about how the preschools and elementary schools that they attend are rated. Will they be properly prepared for kindergarten? Will they be properly prepared for elementary school? For middle school and high school? Will they gain admittance to the best colleges, universities and technical schools? Will they excel in music and sports? Are we doing enough to help them to be well-rounded?

Most parents do a good job of not too-directly transmitting these pressures to their children. But even at young ages our kids know that they need to succeed. And if they forget any of this, they are reminded of it constantly on the feeds that they get from television and their own social media. Am I measuring up? When I was a kid, bullying was somebody that shoved you around on the playground. You just need to fight it out, or in my case get a big brother to punch the trouble making kid. Bullying today is much more pervasive and pernicious. The pressure to succeed at every level is more overt and intense. And unfortunately, our kids can become very discouraged and convinced that they are NOT going to succeed in life at a very young age.

What could a grandparent do? There is a phenomenon that allows grandparents to communicate with grandchildren in ways that their parents cannot. What could I try to teach them at age seventy-four?

• I may be old, but I remember losing my first tooth. It won’t really hurt very much. Trust your Mom and Dad, they want what is best for you. And the tooth fairy WILL come.
• Doing the best that you can in school is really important but remember that school is just a PART of life. Some would say it’s a SMALL part of life.
• Run the race as best you can but remember there will be a lot of runners that will be slower than you – don’t become too enamored with your results.
• Run the race as best you can but remember there will be a lot of runners that will be faster than you – don’t become too discouraged with your results.
• When you get into trouble, lean on the ones that you love and the ones that love you – your family.
• Your family can take a lot of forms, hopefully it is your biological relatives, but families come in a lot of various forms.
• This too shall pass – Enjoy your successes and celebrate them. Celebrate the love of your family and the good times there. But remember, difficult times will come. I wish that wasn’t true, but I KNOW it is.
• This too shall pass – The hard times that you might be going through in elementary school, in middle school, in high school, in college – I know it is hard but just keep pounding away. Do your homework the BEST that you can. Go to school tomorrow. You will get through and there will be better times ahead. You have a lot of people who are on your side, especially Grandma and me, rooting for you and praying for the best for you.
• These are NOWHERE near the best years of your life!!

I apologize!! Apparently, YOUR BLOG CREATOR was working too quickly – and got the date of the Democratic Convention wrong. The Democratic Convention convenes in Chicago on August19. I referenced the date for the Republican Convention. Mea Culpa!! The wavering Democrats have more time than I thought for their nomination, but one date that I am NOT misinformed on is Election Day – November 5, 2024. That date is rapidly approaching.

“There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.”

Tennessee Williams

“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, in direct proportion to its importance and in inverse proportion to the time available.”

Edward A. Murphy Jr. – American Aerospace Engineer – Murphy’s Law along with Ebeling’s Corollary

In February of this year, I wrote a blog entry entitled “Mae West Can’t Help Us Now”. (See February 17, 2024 entry.) In the article I asserted that whoever constitutes the power brokers in the Democratic party, needed to get their act together and find a presidential nominee other than Joe Biden. I was convinced of this because of the public perception that President Biden was an elderly gentleman who has lost the quick intellect and cognitive powers that are required to lead the most powerful nation in the world. The immediate impetus for that writing was the comments Department of Justice Special Prosecutor Robert K. Hurd made in his report regarding the possibility of charging President Biden for violating the Presidential records keeping laws. Hurd did NOT recommend charges but in the report detailed several encounters with President Biden that cast him in an unfavorable light, as a well-meaning but declining elderly man. There were many like me who called for a new nominee at that time. But a funny thing happens with the passage of time. The story died down and the public became preoccupied with other things, like our convicted felon former President Trump and his numerous trials.

And then came the ill-fated debate between the two elderly gentlemen who want to be the Commander-in- Chief of the world’s most potent military, the keeper of those nuclear codes and a few other sorts of unimportant tasks. Now the subject is at the forefront of the public discussion again. What has changed? Well, nearly five months have passed. A Trump-friendly Supreme Court has given him more protection from prosecution of wrong-doings as President while another court convicted him of a felony while other cases are pending. Five months have passed in the rapidly shrinking election season, in which the candidates can make their cases to the American people. What hasn’t changed? President Biden is NOT any younger, his cognitive abilities and intellectual stamina have NOT improved. In the five intervening months there weren’t any glaring in-the-public-eye events highlighting that. But I would make this case: The fact that we didn’t see them, doesn’t mean that they didn’t occur, and more importantly, it doesn’t mean that they won’t happen again, and probably happen soon as the grueling campaign takes its toll even on younger men.

In the 2020 election I pleaded with anyone who would listen, that we needed to vote for Joe Biden. As I said in February, I LIKE Joe Biden. He is a fighter for what he believes but he is also someone who has demonstrated that he sees the need to compromise at times. He was a politician in the best sense of that word – somebody who does not let their own passionate worldview block them from actually getting something done. It is the old definition – politics is the art of the possible. There are lots of things on which I DON’T agree with him BUT I believe he has served his country well. Yet even if his present critics are wrong, the voting public sees him as not being up to the job. I don’t think he can beat our former, convicted felon, philandering, lying former President Trump. And while I have concerns about what a 2025-2029 President Biden might do or not do, I much more greatly fear what a 2025-2029 President Trump will do, the things that he has SAID he will do. Can a new nominee prevail at this late hour in the process? I really don’t know, but I am becoming more confident that Joe Biden can NOT.

President Biden has asserted that HE is the person who will decide whether or not he will stay in the race. Of course, that is TRUE depending on what “staying in the race” means. But there is this thing that the Democrats do, their national convention. And one of the things that they do there is to endorse a presidential candidate. But the delegates to the convention have plenty of time to think about this, there are SIX WHOLE DAYS until it starts. The wheels of politics usually turn very slowly, and President Biden’s nomination may be all but decided. But somehow, some way, we have to head off the upcoming November decision that we may be forced to make, between two soon-to-be octogenarians, one of whom is a convicted felon among many other things.

If you hold the most powerful position on the earth, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to give that up, if you think you can keep it. None of us wants to think that we are not at the top of our games (trust me I am seventy-four). But in spite of the allure of trying for a second four years in that most exalted position, I would make the argument that in our present environment, stepping aside would be the most courageous and the most patriotic action that Joseph R. Biden could take. This is BIGGER than one man, we are talking about the future of our country and the future of the world.

Life is a succession of lessons that must be lived to be understood.
Helen Keller

In September of 1998 we got one of those calls that every parent dreads and fears – your child is ill or injured and you need to come. We’ve had a few of these, this one concerned our oldest, Melissa. She was in extreme pain from some sort of kidney issue and was in the emergency room in Menominee, Wisconsin. Jan and I rushed over and transported her to a better equipped hospital in our insurance system in Eau Claire. They determined that she had a severe kidney infection, the first of many, and put in a stent. She was hospitalized for two days until she was stable, and we were referred to Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, MN. After several exams and a CT scan there, we learned that Melissa had a “duplicated renal system”, and one kidney was malformed and had little function. Her first surgery was in January of 1999. You don’t expect a diagnosis like that for your twenty-one-year-old, but we reasoned that one could live successfully with one kidney.

Unfortunately, this was only the start of Melissa’s long journey of kidney issues – issues affecting both kidneys. There were times that she was so full of stones that the urologist stopped counting, so many that removing them would have caused even more damage to the kidney. After lots of treatments and surgeries over the years, in 2018 she was advised that while not imminent, there would come a day when she would need a kidney transplant. She, her husband Chad, Janice and I attended a daylong seminar at the M-Health Fairview Clinic on the University of Minnesota campus. They felt that Melissa would be able to postpone the procedure for perhaps four to five years. Although from time to time she still had issues, we felt that we had been granted a reprieve. Two years ago, her kidney markers fell to the level at which she was eligible to join the kidney transplant waiting list. We were taken aback and there were tears, but we knew this was coming. You could say that this was bad news, but you need to remember that it is not automatic that a kidney transplant will help the patient and that the patient is a viable candidate. We were blessed in that Melissa was declared eligible.

In the US, the National Kidney Foundation working with the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) maintains and manages the kidney transplants waiting list. There are about 25,000 kidney transplants per year with several hundred thousand patients on the transplant list. Kidney transplants come from either living organ donors or deceased organ donors. A live donor kidney transplant is considered the best option for people with kidney disease. As you would imagine UNOS carries an awesome responsibility with keeping this priority list – literally life and death responsibility. They work very hard to ensure that deceased donor organs are distributed fairly. Decisions on who should get what kidney are based on a combination of blood-type and antibody matching, time with kidney failure, and a few other factors that give people priority on the list. One of those factors is how “sensitized” the kidney recipient’s body is. Melissa was highly sensitized.

Once you are added to the national organ transplant waiting list, you may receive an organ fairly quickly or you may wait many years. In general, the average time frame for waiting can be three to five years at most centers, but it is longer in some parts of the country. Obviously wait times depend on how many donors are out there and how hard you are to match. In some cases, a patient who needs a kidney can find a donor on their own who is a match for them, and the process can go very quickly thereafter. Sometimes a recipient can find a donor, but the donor’s kidney is not a match for them. In these situations, a kidney “paired exchange” or “paired donation” may be possible. That is, the donor gives their kidney to ANOTHER recipient whose identity is unknown to them, and their paired recipient is elevated on the list, to find a matching kidney from an unknown donor somewhere else in the US.

As Melissa’s blood markers fell to alarming levels, several family members stepped forward to see if they could provide a kidney for her, her biological sisters and a cousin. Unfortunately, from that group only Melissa’s biological sister Becky was an eligible donor, and she was NOT a match for Melissa. But she was willing to enroll in a variation of the “paired exchange” program, called advanced donation/voucher. In this process the donor goes first, and the recipient receives a voucher for a transplant later. This greatly sped up the process of finding a match for Melissa. Shortly after Christmas, as Melissa’s blood markers fell further the process began to accelerate. Becky was scheduled for her donation surgery on March 13 and Melissa’s transplant surgery was scheduled for April 2.

As you can imagine there was a flurry of planning, vacation and sick leave days scheduled, finding a place for Becky’s kids to stay etc. etc. March 13 arrived, and Becky was admitted early in the morning at the M-Health Fairview Hospital also on the U of M campus. Family members gathered in the waiting room for the five-hour surgery. It was a great success, and all of the waiters breathed a sigh of relief. But there was this other emotion, for that kidney went from one operating room to another where it was received by a forty-eight-year-old woman from somewhere in Minnesota. And as I write, I really can’t tell you what that emotion was, other than to say that it was humbling, heart-warming, joyful but somehow solemn. Becky was discharged just a day after her surgery, perhaps a bit too quickly according to the nurse that I sleep with. Becky’s recovery was/is slow in coming. She struggled with pain and nausea for several days. She is on the right road but it’s a road that is longer than any of us thought it would be.

Somewhere in Colorado, early in the morning of April 2, a donor whose identity we may never know, unselfishly donated a kidney. That kidney had quite a day. After leaving its previous owner it was transported, perhaps by ambulance, perhaps by helicopter to the Denver airport for a ride to the Minneapolis St. Paul International airport. From there it was taken by helicopter to M-Health Fairview on the U of M campus. Melissa was admitted at noon and was in surgery by 2:00 PM. Members of the same family waiting group watched for updates on the automated charts and also waited breathlessly as the transplant team relayed progress to Chad on his cell phone. Reports first came when Melissa entered the operating suite, then later reports that the kidney was on-site, later on when she was ready for transplantation, when the organ was in and connected, when it actually started to produce urine and finally when she was ready to be moved to recovery. There were shouts of joy and high-fives all around.

Melissa must be breaking all of the good records for kidney transplants. So far, her surgery has been a great success. She was discharged in just three days. Her kidney markers are better than they have been in fifteen years. Her pain is manageable, she is recovering very nicely. Yes, she has a long road ahead of her. She will be on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life. Especially for the next year she will need to be very careful about contracting illness, especially water borne illnesses. But at this point it is hard to see how things could possibly be going any better.

Melissa and Becky have both given rave reviews for the transplant team at M-Health Fairview. These people are world class. But in a wider sense, Becky was reflecting on the amazing level of effort it has taken for this miracle, the facilities and equipment yes, but especially the people. This must be a cast of thousands. Of course, our unknown heroine in Colorado and the heroic sister that we know in Minnesota have to top the list, but Dr. Ramanathan and his staff at the University were also heroic in their own way. Also consider the people who our daughters have consulted with at the National Kidney Foundation and UNOS. And there were hundreds of other doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians, certified nursing assistants, records keepers, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, kitchen and facility workers, schedulers, cab drivers, airplane and helicopter pilots and on and on. It is truly amazing what a concerted effort it was and humbling to consider how blessed we were by these people.

On April 2, after receiving the great report on the surgery, we held on for a while in the waiting room, awaiting the notice for when Chad would be able to go back to see his wife. As we were seated in the waiting area, we heard an announcement over the intercom summoning everyone who was available to participate in a “Walk of Honor’” on one of the wings of the upper floors. We were reveling in all of our great news and didn’t really pay much attention to the announcement, except for Janice. Our eyes met and she said, “Do you know what that is?” I said no and asked for an explanation. She told me when a very ill patient who has agreed to be an organ donor has reached the point at which they can no longer sustain life on their own, they are wheeled down the halls of the ward, with all of the hospital personnel and family silently standing by in tribute to them as they are transported to the operating suite for the removal of their donated organs.

Amidst all of our joy, it occurred to me that there was another family just like us, in another part of that hospital that was having the opposite emotions. They weren’t joyful and hopeful, they were broken, grieving, sad and despairing. I wished I could touch them and take some of that pain from them by telling them what a gift their loved one was making to perhaps MANY families. Would knowing that have made a difference to them at that moment? I’m not sure. I doubt that at that moment it would. It didn’t for me.

You see, my first wife Pam died unexpectedly thirty-five years ago. Our family was gathered in a waiting room, just like those at M-Health Fairview and there was no rejoicing there. Recently my sister-in-law and I were searching for some records regarding her death. We found the notice from the Minnesota Lions Eye Bank that both of her corneas were transplanted to others giving them the gift of sight. Pam’s mother faithfully copied down the words of another letter from the Hennepin County Medical Center addressed to me over thirty-five years ago. The letter noted among other things that both of Pam’s kidneys were transplanted to patients, one to a forty-two-year-old female and one to a fifty-two-year-old female both of whom were doing well.

It is amazing how long it takes me to learn some of life’s lessons. For thirty-five years ago there were families who were rejoicing as ours wept.

After all of these years, I think knowing this DOES help. It sometimes takes me a long time and the right circumstances to learn life’s lessons.

“Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.”
Mae West

We learned on Thursday that President Joe Biden will not face criminal charges for taking classified information about national security matters with him when he left the vice presidency in 2017. Special U.S. prosecutor Robert K. Hur said he would not be bringing charges.

This whole business with how high-ranking elected officials handle classified documents puzzles me. And apparently neither this nor the allegedly much more egregious violations by former President Trump are isolated cases. President Reagan in particular has been cited as someone who carted off eight years of stuff after leaving office. What is it with these people? They have boatloads of staff people who know (or should know) what the law requires. Is this just carelessness, misunderstanding, or is it pure hubris?

Hur made several differentiations between the Biden case and the Trump case. In general Biden was a cooperative violator and Trump was the opposite, probably even obstructing justice. I don’t want to get into that at this point, there will be plenty of others to scrutinize this question when Trump’s case finally reaches the courts. My concern is much more immediate.

I believe, and I think many Americans believe, that the choice we may well have to make in November is very disheartening. Among our three hundred and forty million Americans, are these two the best we can come up with?!?!? Do I have to choose between a man who flaunted every presidential norm in his first term, is charged in over ninety civil and criminal cases and routinely shakes down his apparently blinded supporters to pay his legal bills (among many other things) AND a man who is seen by many, by virtue of his age, to be a risk to our country if elected again?

The bottom line of Hur’s report is that Biden won’t be prosecuted. I have read the executive summary of the report and skimmed the balance of the other three-hundred-fifty-some pages. This is virtually the ONLY positive thing that a Biden supporter can take from it. Consider the following assertions:

• President Biden really did willfully retain and disclose classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. Yes, he is not going to be charged, and others including Trump have done much worse, BUT HE STILL DID IT.
• Hur said that Biden cooperated and would likely be difficult to convict. “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Geez, just what we want for the person holding the most powerful position in the world, a well-meaning, doddering old man.
• Later in the report Hur said that Biden “did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).”
• Hur goes on to allege that “He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died [May 2015]. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.” Can this really be true? It’s hard to say, but given some of his recent public appearances one could doubt.

President Biden is livid about these assertions and denies them vigorously. I certainly would do the same if I were in his position. Both parties routinely accuse the others while in power of weaponizing the Justice Department. Yes, Hur was a Trump appointee at one time, but he was assigned this task by Attorney General Merrick Garland. It is hard for the little people like me to really know, but based on the fact that both parties have from time to time complained about Garland, he might be the closest thing to a straight shooter that we have there.

But I am going to ski right by all of that. I am a fiscal conservative, although some would call me a radical because I still can’t understand why we couldn’t and shouldn’t have a balanced budget. There are a lot of positions on which I don’t agree with Joe Biden, but I like him. Heck, I even voted for him. And I hope that I am not being unfair. But regardless of the veracity of these reports, the Democrats have got to act now to find another candidate. The American voters DESERVE better alternatives than these two flawed men. We can’t even follow Mae West’s guidance. Both of these guys have been tried before. As a discouraged conservative I have no hope whatsoever that the Republican party can free itself from Trump’s iron grip to do anything but to endorse him. But by heavens, whoever constitutes the power brokers in the Democratic party have got to spring to action. Someone MUST convince President Biden that it is in the best interest of the nation to identify a more acceptable Democratic candidate to stand for election. I believe that there are MANY who, if they get going right now, can defeat our philandering, crooked, himself-aged, criminal former president. I just fear that Joseph R. Biden may not be one of them.

“Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.” –
Mae West

We learned last Thursday that President Joe Biden will not face criminal charges for taking classified information about national security matters with him when he left the vice presidency in 2017. Special U.S. prosecutor Robert K. Hur said he would not be bringing charges.

This whole business with how high-ranking elected officials handle classified documents puzzles me. And apparently neither this nor the allegedly much more egregious violations by former President Trump are isolated cases. President Reagan in particular has been cited as someone who carted off eight years of stuff after leaving office. What is it with these people? They have boatloads of staff people who know (or should know) what the law requires. Is this just carelessness, misunderstanding, or is it pure hubris?

Hur made several differentiations between the Biden case and the Trump case. In general Biden was a cooperative violator and Trump was the opposite, probably even obstructing justice. I don’t want to get into that at this point, there will be plenty of others to scrutinize this question when Trump’s case finally reaches the courts. My concern is much more immediate.

I believe, and I think many Americans believe, that the choice we may well have to make in November is very disheartening. Among our three hundred and forty million Americans, are these two the best we can come up with?!?!? Do I have to choose between a man who flaunted every presidential norm in his first term, is charged in over ninety civil and criminal cases and routinely shakes down his apparently blinded supporters to pay his legal bills (among many other things) AND a man who is seen by many, by virtue of his age, to be a risk to our country if elected again?

The bottom line of Hur’s report is that Biden won’t be prosecuted. I have read the executive summary of the report and skimmed the balance of the other three-hundred-fifty-some pages. This is virtually the ONLY positive thing that a Biden supporter can take from it. Consider the following assertions:

• President Biden really did willfully retain and disclose classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. Yes, he is not going to be charged, and others including Trump have done much worse, BUT HE STILL DID IT.
• Hur said that Biden cooperated and would likely be difficult to convict. “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Geez, just what we want for the person holding the most powerful position in the world, a well-meaning, doddering old man.
• Later in the report Hur said that Biden “did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).” Is this really true? I’m not sure, but some of his public appearances could make you wonder.
• Hur goes on to allege that “He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died [May 2015]. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.”

President Biden is livid about these assertions and denies them vigorously. I certainly would do the same if I were in his position. Both parties routinely accuse the others while in power of weaponizing the Justice Department. Yes, Hur was a Trump appointee at one time, but he was assigned this task by Attorney General Merrick Garland. It is hard for the little people like me to really know, but based on the fact that both parties have from time to time complained about Garland, he might be the closest thing to a straight shooter that we have there.

But I am going to ski right by all of that too. I am a fiscal conservative, although some would call me a radical because I still can’t understand why we couldn’t and shouldn’t have a balanced budget. There are a lot of positions on which I don’t agree with Joe Biden, but I like him. Heck, I even voted for him. And I hope that I am not being unfair. Regardless of the veracity of these reports, the Democrats have got to act now to find another candidate. The American voters DESERVE better alternatives than these two flawed men. We can’t even follow Mae West’s guidance. Both of these guys have been tried before.

As a discouraged conservative I have no hope whatsoever that the Republican party can free itself from Trump’s iron grip to do anything but to endorse him. But by heavens, whoever constitutes the power brokers in the Democratic party have got to spring to action. Someone MUST convince President Biden that it is in the best interest of the nation to identify a more acceptable Democratic candidate to stand for election. I believe that there are MANY who, if they get going right now, can defeat our philandering, crooked, himself-aged, criminal former president. I just fear that Joseph R. Biden may not be one of them.

“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep
‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – 1863

My friend Garrett sent a season’s greeting email to me this morning mentioning among other things that he hadn’t seen a holiday posting to the blog. My blog production has lagged this year. I could blame it on our move but there may be more in play here. I often find myself without a burning desire to comment and I have found that there is nothing so difficult as writing when you have nothing to say. (There are those who maintain that I have nothing to say even when I THINK I have something to say!) One of the writings that I normally undertake at this time of year is the update letter that we enclose with our Christmas card. I dutifully set out to create that document a couple of weeks ago, quite proud of myself for getting it done PRIOR to the 24th which is when it normally goes into the mail. I reported on the happenings in our family, with a somewhat extensive section on the move which occupied our lives from May until October.

Janice typically reviews and edits my work before printing and sending. But I was taken aback this year when she VETOED the letter! I asked which sentences or paragraphs needed amendment. She said, “All of them.” She then shocked me even more by volunteering to prepare the letter herself. This would be a serious disruption of the holiday division of labor that we have painstakingly negotiated over our decades of marriage. I do the letter and print it, SHE selects the photo and gets that printed at Walmart, etc. etc. It was clear to me that there must be something pretty egregiously wrong in the document for her to propose this unprecedented action. I asked if she could describe where I was going wrong. She said that the letter was no fun and had way too much complaining. There was no GOOD NEWS in it.

I hate it when she is right. At our Christmas Eve service last night, Pastor Brett had a six-word sermon. The six words were – “GOOD NEWS, GREAT JOY, ALL PEOPLE.” Janice was right in reminding me that our friends and loved ones don’t need to hear bad news about our move (and by the way that pain was TEMPORARY). They are actually more like me – they want to hear GOOD NEWS that makes them happy. Well, I can cut out the long and sad stories about the lost stuff, the closing difficulties, etc. etc. but I would argue that bringing good news these days is not that easy (see Israel-Gaza-Hamas, Russia-Ukraine, conflicts in Sudan, Somalia, and other countries). And how about our friends, one of whom is in home hospice care while her husband was simultaneously in the hospital having lung surgery, or our friend who is still recovering from a brain injury from this summer while her husband is in the hospital for colon surgery? There is a lot of bad news to pick from.

It really is THE question. Where IS the good news? Well, our son-in-law Jake traveled three weeks to India and China this summer and he came back safe and sound. And so did our son-in-law Nick, our daughter-in-law Stephanie, our daughter Melissa, our son Ian, and the whole Olson family. It seems that one of our kids is ALWAYS in the air somewhere. It’s GREAT news when they return home safely. But we don’t very often note that and give thanks. And there was lots more good news than that. I guess my point is that there are bad things happening but so many more GOOD things happening as well. What will we focus on?

I choose to believe that there is a Greater Power, and that despite the sadness that sometimes threatens to overcome us, because HE is still alive and running the universe, ultimately the good news will far outweigh the bad. Or as Longfellow said in the poem he wrote at a particularly low point during the Civil War corresponding with a particularly low point in his personal life, “God is not dead nor doth he sleep, The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail with peace on earth, good will towards men.”

May you find good news of great joy this Holiday Season – Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

I’m my own Grandpa
I’m my own Grandpa,
It sounds funny I know
But it really is so
I’m my own Grandpa
From the Country Song “I’m My Own Grandpa” written by Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe

Have you ever heard the old country music song entitled “I’m My Own Grandpa”? It was written in 1947 by Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe, reportedly based on a Mark Twain anecdote which described how a man could be his own Grandpa. If you read the lyrics, you find that a series of semi-plausible occurrences result in an absurd conclusion. This kind of reminds me of what is going on in our own US House of Representatives, most currently resulting in the removal of Representative Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. The reports about the machinations that have actually been going on for several months, often reference “House Rules”. I would imagine that taken individually, the various House Rules that come into play here make SOME sense. But when placed into action as a whole, they have resulted in an absurd and destructive outcome. To Wit:

• Following House Rules, apparently a single representative can bring a motion to remove the Speaker and get action on this motion within two days. And this is exactly what happened. Representative Matt Gaetz (D-Fla), apparently angered over what he considered to be an outrageous action by McCarthy over the weekend, filed the motion Monday and the vote was taken yesterday. What was the heinous crime that McCarthy was guilty of? He had the audacity to agree to a bipartisan vote to continue the operations of the US government.
• Following House Rules, up to the extraordinary actions of the weekend, a group of about ten representatives, representing less than two percent of the population of the country, successfully thwarted any action desired by the other 425 representatives to keep the government in business.

It is reported that there is great animosity between Gaetz and McCarthy relating to some personal slights last year. But apart from this, the goals of the dissidents have not been widely reported on. In this instance, they were enraged that the McCarthy would in any way commit the horrible crime of working with the Democrats to get a bill passed. But there has to be more to it than this, doesn’t there? And what are these “Rules” that everyone is talking about?

The authority for the House of Representatives to make rules for how they conduct their business is enshrined in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 5). Apparently the need for rules became evident very early on in our history. None less than Thomas Jefferson grappled with the need for rules and drafted a document laying them out in 1801 entitled “Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice”. At the beginning of each Congressional session (every two years), the party in majority in the House proposes “rules” for how the House will run. This is done by offering a resolution on the floor of the House, devised in advance by the caucus of the majority party, for adoption by the full House. Of course, the motion is guaranteed to pass because these days there is always absolute fealty to the party. The rules are mostly carried over from the previous session and include the so-called “Standing Rules”. The Standing Rules include what you would think, establishing committees, defining how bills are introduced, voting procedures, quorums and attendance, adjournments and recesses – pretty mundane stuff. But here is where the mischief starts, and it is notable that BOTH parties have a history of creating the rules in such a way that the other party is disadvantaged. For example, the Democrats changed the rules that had previously required that no motions to the budget bills could be made to increase the budget, with a new rule that allowed this. When the Republicans took the House, they promptly reinstated this requirement. This sounds like it is beginning to get complicated, but in reality, the summary document that wraps all of this together is more than complex, it is overwhelming. It includes the Standing Rules and believe it or not, it actually includes Jefferson’s Manual as well. When you add all of this together it results in a document called “The Constitution, Jefferson’s Manual and the Rules of the House of the Representatives” and is typically MORE THAN A THOUSAND PAGES.

But the complexity doesn’t end there. Each bill of any substance must have its OWN rules. And the bill goes nowhere until the Rules Committee establishes those rules. It is easy then to understand how powerful the Rules Committee is and how it’s majority party leader can move ITS party priorities along and thwart the goals of the minority party. There are few safeguards here other than the rules cannot be unconstitutional. This helps me to understand why having the majority in the House is so crucial to the political parties. It is very, very difficult for a single House member from the minority party to get a bill through the various committees unless the majority party agrees.

In preparing the rules this year and making preparations for who would be the Speaker, an interesting dynamic played out. A small group of Republicans demanded certain changes to the proposed rules, or they would withhold their support of the Speaker candidate that had been selected by the Caucus – Representative Kevin McCarthy. Because of the historic occurrences of the last couple of days we now know one of the critical rule changes that allowed McCarthy to be elected, namely that the Speaker could be put to a no-confidence removal vote if only ONE representative demanded it. This was a radical departure from past rules on no-confidence votes which sometimes required a majority of the majority party. But what were the other demands of the dissidents?

In general, they want to change the way Congress operates, to “drain the political swamp” as they say. They feel disempowered to influence things as individual representatives. They demanded more time to review bills before voting – seventy-two hours was agreed to. They wanted more rights as individual representatives to make amendments to spending bills on the floor of Congress (thus the amendment that passed to reduce Defense Secretary Lloyd Austins salary to $1.00). Much of the work on the budget happens at Committee level and the dissidents feel that this disempowers them. They wanted restrictions on how elected officials trade stock. They wanted term limits – twelve years is what they are seeking. They oppose the usage of so-called omnibus bills. These are unwieldy pieces of legislation that combine enough things that legislators like and just enough things that they hate that they can tolerate, to get things done. And they are impatient with the process that empowers the long-standing members both in their party and in the opposition party who actually KNOW what is in those hundreds and hundreds of pages of rules and how to use them to accomplish THEIR goal and to thwart the goals of newcomers with no seniority who DON’T know the rules as well or have the seniority to make things happen.

Well, taken on their face, these things DON’T seem all that unreasonable. I can fully get behind a lot of them, term limits in particular. So, what’s the problem? As usual things are a little more complicated than they appear on the surface. Given the absence of some of the guardrails included in the Rules, mischief would abound. I don’t think that most Americans would agree that reducing General Austin’s salary to $1.00 is good for the country. Some of the rules are in place for a good reason. The problem here is that the rhetoric and actions of the dissidents scare nearly everyone else in the institution, even members of their own party. And there is some reason for their fears, the concessions that were granted at the beginning of this session are already coming home to roost, with potential government shut-downs and the chaos of having the US House with an interim Speaker in mid-term.

If half of what Representative Gaetz has been accused of is true, and if he really wants half of what he sometimes demands, I want no part of him and hope that the Republicans who want to expel him are successful. But can there be a kernel of truth in what the dissidents are upset about? As much as I hate what has been going on, the chaos and uncertainty of things, I believe that the rule-making process does need be changed. Wise men and women from both sides of the aisle have understood this for years and in 2019 a bipartisan committee was established to explore how Congress operates and to recommend changes. The committee had a wide mandate to “investigate, study, make findings, hold public hearings, and develop recommendations on modernizing Congress” in a number of areas, including rules, procedures, staff diversity and more. The committee ultimately submitted recommendations for some modest changes but in a hopeful sign the Select Committee was reauthorized by the present House.

It is ironic that Representative Gaetz used a quirk in the rules to upset this culture of rules. It seems clear that the House MUST have rules for its operations. Many of the rules have been adopted for good reasons over the years. But when the rules are twisted to disempower duly elected representatives from either party, to allow a very small minority to block the will of the majority, to throw the institution into disarray, something must be done. Because we all know, we are NOT our own Grandpa. As citizens we can’t give in to the tribalism that is being advocated these days. We have to elect men and women of good will who want FAIRNESS in the process not ADVANTAGE in the process, men and women who will formulate and USE the rules to insure the welfare of the citizens. In all of the bluster between the parties and who gets their way, all of the discord and confusion, it seems like the welfare of citizens really isn’t a primary consideration. IT SHOULD BE THE ONLY CONSIDERATION regardless of what the rules say.

God only knows, God makes his plan
The information’s unavailable to the mortal man
We’re workin’ our jobs, Collect our pay
Believe we’re gliding down the highway
When in fact we’re slip slidin’ away
Paul Simon – From the Song “Slip Sliding Away”

“Of course I have heart problems, it’s an old heart.”
Pearl E. Soderholm (Jan’s Mom) 2021 at age 96

“Nobody gets to be a cowboy forever.”
Lee Marvin in the movie “Monte Walsh”

“Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.”
Max Ehrmann – From his Poem “Desideratta”

Many of you know that Janice and I have moved to a new house and sold our old house. This whole process, which started in late May mostly destroyed our summer. Packing and moving from a home we have lived in for thirty years was much more work and angst than we ever anticipated. For some reason, we thought it would be easier to order a “pod” for the boxes and storage tubs and hire a mover for the furniture and whatever else was left. We could pack and load boxes at our own pace and then they would come and pick up the pod, store it and deliver it to our new home where we could reverse the process. When I write this it DOES sound like a good approach. Of course, things rarely work out the way we plan. We filled our sixteen-foot pod and it became clear we would need a second. We found a home and bought it. Once you make that decision it quickly becomes evident that you are going to own two houses until you can get your existing house sold. So, the “at our own pace” thing kind of went out the window. And selling your house involves preparation – cleaning, decluttering, making minor (or in our case, pretty major) repairs etc.etc. All of those tasks immediately became urgent.

We made the decision to take out a small mortgage on the new home. I won’t bore you with the reasoning on that but let me tell you, we regretted it so often. If you haven’t applied for a home loan lately, you are in for an unpleasant surprise. That process took seven weeks, and it involved a level of detail submittals required that was SOOOO extensive. Thanks to our kids and grandkids, the move was completed. Thanks to a patient and helpful contact at the bank, the mortgage is complete. We ultimately found a buyer and executed a purchase agreement six weeks out. Preparing for and reaching the final closing was yet another excruciating process. We were still supplying documentation to the buyer’s lender twenty-four hours before the closing. Amazingly it all came to a successful conclusion. In case you couldn’t tell, we are exhausted, physically and emotionally. And the process even interfered with my blogging, thus the long time lapse since my last post. As I whine about all of this to people our age who have been through it, they all nod their heads knowingly. I ask myself – “Why did you think it would be any different for you?”

I have bored you before with a partial list of my medical adventures. I’m not going to repeat that, but would only note that I had my annual pacemaker check up a couple of weeks ago. My pacemaker is doing fine, in fact it’s doing so well that it decided to pace my heart a lot more than it used to!! I don’t think that news is overly alarming. After all, I’m seventy-three and as I often say, I have a lot of miles on me. I’m kind of like a 2003 Chevy Impala that has received regular maintenance, but still, it has 267,000 miles on it!! On some level aging makes perfect sense. You can’t hold back time. Time marches on. Blah, blah, blah. But on some other level this is so surprising to me and again I ask myself, – “Why did you think YOUR heart and its pacemaker would be different?” After all, as Grandma said, it’s an old heart!!

When jolted by some news that makes me REALLY confront growing old and my own mortality, a part of me says “Well that makes sense, that is what should be expected.” And then there is this other part of me that says “What the heck?!? I know that these things happen to other people, but I didn’t really think they would happen to ME!” As time passes it strikes me more and more that I am just like everyone else for most things in my life. We work our jobs, fret about buying a house, fret about the mortgage we take out when we buy it, raise our kids, fret about how they are doing, watch our kids get ready to move into the world, fret about how we will ever pay for their college, watch them stand on their own two feet and then begin to fret about our retirement and so on and so on. I realize that everybody is different and that no two life experiences are the same. But there are many similarities. In the heat of the battle every milestone seems so huge and when we get past them, we begin work on the next one. You know, we are gliding down the highway of life. Well maybe more like hurtling sometimes and crawling other times but so often we really don’t perceive that all of these road markers actually ARE our life. My Pop used to say to me when I told him about all of the great things I was planning to do in my life, “Take your time, don’t wish your life away”.

Are you depressed yet? Amazingly I am NOT. Mostly I am kind of okay with how things are going. I am trying to remember that I can’t do the things I did when I was a kid. Well okay, I can’t do the things I did when I was middle aged. Actually, I can’t do the things I did last month!!!! I know that we need to stay physically active, but I have found that my back aches a lot less if I don’t lift a lot of heavy boxes. So, I have consciously cut back on that. We don’t plan to move for a while. And when there is heavy physical work to be done, I get some help from the kids or hire someone to do it. And I know we need to be financially prudent, but I have grown to be okay with a balance sheet that isn’t growing every year. I love to run, but I have found that my back doesn’t hurt nearly as much if I don’t run every day, maybe three or two times a week is plenty. I know I need to keep busy, but I have learned to not feel guilty if I just sit down in my easy chair and read, or maybe waddle into the office and write something for Craig Common Sense. Oh, there is this other part of me that says, “You’re slip sliding away and you need to fight it!”. But I just reply, “No, I am gracefully surrendering the things of youth”.

“Perfectionism is the enemy of progress.”
Winston Churchill

We are selling our house and moving. This process has consumed our summer. I have missed writing and I hope to get back to it. Following is my first effort for the summer.

If you have read many of my little submittals, you may have heard about how some of my ancestors were among the first in America, settling on the Charles River in Massachusetts in 1666 or how my great-grandfather was a heroic sea captain who valiantly went down with his ship fighting for the glory of his native land. (OK, actually he was the captain of a ship taking a load of peas from Friesland to England when the ship was lost in high seas, but let’s not quibble, he was still heroic.) But there is also a story in my family about one of my great uncles. By all accounts Uncle was an industrious and talented fellow who made (and lost) a lot of money over his lifetime, ultimately going to the promised land of California. But it was only when I was in my late teens that I actually learned that good old Uncle had a bit of a shady side to him. He loved women, very much and very many. He was allegedly married five times. And a bit more scandalously, he perished in his seventies at the wrong end of a pistol fired by the very angry husband of the woman he was living with. It seems he was a wee bit of a scoundrel, albeit a lovable one. As time has passed, I have learned that there were other various miscreants in the diverse branches of my family tree. This is a part of MY history.

There is a lot of discussion these days about “revisionist history” and the inclusion or exclusion of certain parts of our history. This has mostly manifested itself in discussions about our country’s record regarding human rights, especially the human rights of Black Americans and Native Americans. We are spending a lot of time talking about whether certain statues should be allowed to remain standing in the southern US and whether a lake in Minnesota should be named after John C. Calhoun. Taken to its more recent absurdities, the Florida Board of Education recently approved a new set of standards for teaching African American Studies which includes the concept of “the personal benefit” of slavery to Black people. The reasoning here is that slaves learned trades and skills which could be used for their own benefit. (Hard to see how this goes inasmuch as they were in fact SLAVES with absolutely no freedom for crying out loud!) This followed legislation signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis referred to as the “Stop WOKE Act”. The goal was to push back against so called Critical Race Theory, but critics allege that it misrepresents our history, making our ancestors seem more righteous than they were. Some would argue that this really isn’t anything new – after all nobody in MY history classes ever talked to us about the Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa.

I doubt that any recognized historian would deny that for the first seventy-five plus years that slavery existed in our country and was in fact enshrined in our laws. Nor would they fail to recognize that in our hunger for more land in the 1800’s that Native Americans were pushed from the lands that they had occupied for centuries and confined to “reservations” with little regard for any human rights. Refusing to talk about this won’t make it any less true.
I’m not proud of many parts of my history, but I also won’t deny that they happened either. No one has labeled me a philanderer just because my great uncle was. I didn’t take advantage of any distressed and vulnerable ladies, and no irate husband has ever sought me out with a weapon. Is it okay that some of the actions taken by our country in the past were not good?

It seems to me that this feeling that we need to minimize or even deny some parts of our history is related to the prevailing political wisdom that we can never “give an inch”. We, especially those of us who are politicians, can’t own the fact that we are fallible and that there are times in our past when we made mistakes. Today’s political advisors would NEVER tell their clients to do that. Nooo, today’s approach when confronted with an accusation is to “deny, deny, deny”. This seems like such an unsustainable response and an unnecessary response. Imputed guilt based on my history is not reasonable and I would argue goes against one of the core values of our country. This is a place where any of us can be great, no matter where we come from or who our parents were. And America is a place where we can pick ourselves up when we fail and ultimately succeed. I believe that Americans are totally willing to forgive those who own their failures and missteps. I DON’T think they are nearly so forgiving to those who continue to “deny, deny, deny”, when their errors have been discovered. I don’t hold Governor DeSantis responsible for the fact that slaves existed in the state of Florida until the Emancipation Proclamation. He wasn’t a part of the decisions that made that vile institution a part of our society. No one, even the descendants of slaves, should affix responsibility for this sad part of our history to him or any other present-day politician.

Our REAL history is a very complex blend of bravery, social consciousness, greed, love, hated and complacency. Our history contains some very sad and I would even say EVIL parts to it. Our nation has been so far from being perfect. But I would pose the question – does it have to be? And even more pertinent, does our HISTORY have to be perfect? When the founding fathers were struggling to formulate the new constitution in 1787 the issue of slavery was already being agonized over. There were already abolitionists who abhorred slavery. Yet the discussion of slaves at the Constitutional Convention revolved around how slaves would be counted in apportioning the number of representatives allotted to each state in the House of Representatives. The compromise was the absolutely absurd rule that each black human being would be counted as 3/5 of a human being!!! How could the founding fathers that we revere ever discuss human beings in this manner, to say nothing of accepting the rule as a part of the agreement to adopt the constitution? Because at that point in time, it was the ONLY WAY that the union would be maintained and the country would stay together. The founding fathers were NOT perfect, but they still did so much amazing GOOD work. Seventy-three years later we entered into the bloodiest war that the nation has ever been in – a war among ourselves. WHY???? Because at THAT point in time it was the only way to keep the nation together. Were either of these actions right or good? I would argue that they were both so far from “perfect” solutions. But they are a part of what has created the greatest nation the world has ever known. Why do we feel the need to deny that they happened? We don’t validate them simply by documenting that they occurred.

I would argue that more than any nation in the history of the world, we have advanced the overall welfare of our citizens, to the greatest extent that was possible at the time. Have we failed? MANY TIMES. Have we succeeded? MANY MORE TIMES. We shouldn’t deny EITHER of these truths. The more pertinent question is where on the road to perfection we are? Or perhaps even more importantly – are we going in the right direction?