Aaaahhh, freak out!

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I come from a long line of worriers. They had a lot to worry them. Many fled poverty in Europe, working hard in America to be Americans, pushing back the fear of famine and freeze with every push of a mop or swing of a hammer. Fathers died too young, leaving their families in disarray and terror. The national economy tanked. World Wars broke out. Recessions, depressions, lost babies, feuds, failed businesses. Worry, worry, worry.

And people say, stop worrying. It's bad.

Okay! 

Actually, I agree that I should. When people say worrying is your mind pretending to solve a problem without actually doing anything, like expecting to walk to Pittsburgh on a treadmill, I say: Yep! When they say worry is worshipping the problem, I say: Right you are. When they say worry is just fear hiding just out of reach so you can't attack it with courage, I say: You betcha! When they say worry is a tool of the devil, I say: Amen!

And I still don't know how to stop worrying. 

Maybe the problem is that worry does feel like you're doing something. It certainly has one redeeming quality, in that it is motivational. Only an idiot wants to be the grasshopper: 

One fine day in winter some Ants were busy drying their store of corn, which had got rather damp during a long spell of rain. Presently up came a Grasshopper and begged them to spare her a few grains, "For," she said, "I'm simply starving." The Ants stopped work for a moment, though this was against their principles. "May we ask," said they, "what you were doing with yourself all last summer? Why didn't you collect a store of food for the winter?" "The fact is," replied the Grasshopper, "I was so busy singing that I hadn't the time." "If you spent the summer singing," replied the Ants, "you can't do better than spend the winter dancing." And they chuckled and went on with their work.

Aye, aye, Aesop. 

Also: Ants are jerks, but we all know that.

The problem is, worry has no internal stopping mechanism. Once you engage the worry, there's always something it can find to act upon. That's where I run into trouble. Everything may be looking rosy, but there's always some possibility you can dread, and if all else fails there's death and taxes. 

Alcohol used to be a good solution, but it ended up causing even more worries. So now I just have to find a healthier means of dealing with it.

When they say: If you're gonna worry, why pray? If you're gonna pray, why worry? And I say: 

Well, I say, you're right. But it'll always be like a second language to me, because my people were worrier kings from ancient times. 😨😱👑

Monday go to memein' time!

Some Thanksgiving memes go get you sparked up for the Thanksgiving week. Clip, share, throw away, I don't care. Hope you laugh.

I have my doubts about some of those dishwasher commercials. And how much water do they think we're using to rinse a few dishes, a 55-gallon drum?

Okay, this last one's not Thanksgiving, but I've been hoping to put this together for a long time.

heh

Pour one for the big guy.

Readers of a certain age will remember President Jimmy Carter's beloved but somewhat bumbling kid brother Billy Carter. Billy seemed much more like a good ol' boy than his big brother, and that in an era that honored rural down-home working folks.

Typical of Billy, though, he got in trouble. He once peed on an airport runway in full view of the press; worse, he got a $220,000 loan from Libya after registering as a representative of the country. That led to a Congressional investigation into Billy's influence peddling, which kind of ruined his good-ol'-boy-ness. It's not a good look for American small business owners and sons of the soil to represent OPEC nations. 

But while Billy's star was in the firmament, he inspired and recommended a beer called Billy Beer, sold in fine stores everywhere. 

Sure, the Secretary of the Treasury signs the money, but does he get to sign beer cans? No way.

Anyway, I've come up with a real winner of an idea. There's a little-known relative of the president, a son named Hunter, and I hear he likes to have a drink or two himself. I think we can make a deal to get him to endorse something like Billy Beer, maybe a malt liquor. Maybe a "fortified" malt liquor, you know? The way some delicious wines like M/D 2020 and Wild Irish Rose are fortified. And of course he would be paid in Fredcoin, the world's most Fred-like crytocurrency. 

Here's a mock-up of the label:

Trying to think of a good slogan, like "It'll Get You There" or "Throw Away Your Laptop and Forget Your Troubles" or "It's Like Kissing Your Sister-in-Law." I'm sure we can come up with something better. 

I'll be reaching out to the younger Biden soon to see what we can work out. Apparently Congress is just great with influence peddling now, so I doubt anyone will give him a problem on that end. And you know, they tell me that this Hunter fellow is a successful painter, which is great. My bathroom could use a fresh coat -- maybe we can add that to the deal.

Regrets, I've had a few.

An article in the London Sun, linked on the New York Post site, reported a hospice nurse's experience with her patients, particularly the four most regrets they have revealed to her at life's end. Julie, an American nurse, had posted her observations on TikTok. 

Julie posted the video in the hopes that people watching would take away her advice so they would not have the same regrets when looking back on their lives.

     The nurse responded to a question which asked: "What kind of regrets do you hear? I feel like in the end, everyone's going to have regrets of some sort."

     She said: "Most people at the end of their lives have regrets about not appreciating their health.

     "Not appreciating being alive, the little things.

     "Working their life away.

     "And not spending more time with family."

It's hard not to see the wisdom in that. The story continues:

From her patient's confessions, Julie has learned to "Be in the moment, live presently, be grateful, don't take for granted your health, and little things about living life.

     "Don't work your life away if you don't have to, or make it so you don't have to.

     "Spend time with those you love, not necessarily family, but those you love and make you feel loved."

Sure, that's fine. However, most of us do have to spend most of our waking hours working at something, or traveling to and from work, or working on our domiciles, or plain running errands. And that's okay, actually. Work is important to mental health. Everyone needs a purpose. If that purpose is selling Chryslers or mopping floors to feed the family, supporting ourselves independently, preaching the Gospel to save souls, or organizing charity events to help the poor, or any other honest work, that shouldn't be disparaged as a waste of time. Of course, looking back on one's life, it's easy to think about all the dull hours spent in these pursuits, but that doesn't make them useless. To me, looking at it that way disparages one's achievements, no matter if -- or perhaps especially if -- those achievements are humble.

And on that note, one of the reasons I find it hard to live in the moment is that the moment can suck. "Yay, I'm living in the moment as a proofread the most boring book in the history of books." "I'm living in the moment while I'm wiping dog hair off the toilet." "Mhmhmsm mhmsh momnbent whilemn bbrushing muh teef." Similarly, no one wants to live in the moment in the dentist's chair.  

Still, the point is taken that we shouldn't be so busy providing for others that we neglect the others. My dad and a lot of dads I knew growing up were like that. They worked like dogs and then felt like the kids hardly knew them, and vice versa. My dad even said as much once to my cousin's husband.  

Anyway, I expect I'll have all those same regrets if I linger on a deathbed rather than suffer a quick demise, like getting thrown off a cliff by an enraged author. ("How DARE you correct my speling?!" "It's 'spelling.'" "AAARGH!") 

Being a special and sensitive soul, though, I plan to have some extra regrets as well. Such as:

• Leaving the oven on
• Not saying goodbye to my dry cleaner
• Leaving the car running outside the emergency room door
• Janet Schnorbuss (forgive me, Janet!)
• All the people I ran over on the way to the hospital
• That time I swam naked in the fountain at Charlotte Premium Outlets and told them my name was Stiiv 
• That awful All-You-Can-Eat Wednesday at Schnitzel's Hofbrau
• Lying to the dog (I still had the ball, Fazzy)
• Not buying Apple in 1999
• Pulling Wanda's hair in class (you'd think a college senior would have a sense of humor about it though)
• Rumple Minze -- let's leave it at that
• Taking the Work Hard Challenge (turns out putting your nose literally to the grindstone has its drawbacks)
• Investing in Acme Corp.
• Swimming with electric eels at Ocean Mystery World Park
• Reading a Tom Robbins book
• Anvil paragliding

So many regrets, and yet, so many joys. Life! Sweet mystery of life!

New Year's devolutions.

I was inspired yesterday by this meme on the Great Lileks's comments, posted by our friend Mongo:

I find this is pretty true for me as well. In that spirit, I've decided that my best course of action is to resolve to do exactly the opposite of what I ought to do this year, in the hope that it will result in me doing what I ought to do as I break the resolutions as normal.

In that spirit, I hereby resolve:

📅To gain at least thirty pounds, if not more, by letting my diet go to hell and exercising as little as humanly possible. 

🙌To do as little work as I can while seeking lower pay all the time. 

🥳To stay away from church and avoid all forms of spiritual growth, stuffing myself instead with pop culture and stupid timewasters. 

🔔To allow my dogs to run wild and undisciplined, and do whatever they please with no training from me. 

📅To neglect family, friends, and all other personal relationships to the point where they wonder if I died.

🙌To let my finances fall into complete disarray and spend, spend, spend. 

🥳To let the house go to hell and stuff every room with garbage like I'm auditioning for a hard case episode of Hoarding: Buried Alive.

🔔To be as rude to my fellow man as I can without getting beaten up or killed.

📅To achieve nothing more intellectually challenging than sitting through an episode of a Real Housewives show. 

That should do it. Check in next December to see how it's going, if I live that long. 

Bad New Year's I have known.

I've been thinking back to New Year's Eves of the past, partly because I am thinking this could be the first year since toddlerhood that I don't make it to midnight. I've been dragging around all week, the weather is gloomy, I'm still on the anti-neuropathy drug that makes me sleepy, and I have two dogs that will want to be up early in the morning no matter how late I stay up at night. And let's face it--I ain't no kid anymore. Who is? If you were ten in 2000 you're in your thirties now. 

Looking back, I realized that while I had some great New Year's -- a couple of parties were legendary, including one we threw while our parents were out of town -- a lot of them were pretty bad. 

Times Square, 1937. No, I wasn't there. I've never been there for New Year's. 

One year I spent New Year's in a dumpy hotel in New Jersey with my parents. It was supposed to be a party atmosphere, but it actually seemed to suck joy right out of the air. Passing cars would feel a joy drain. Another year, when my folks were older and living in Florida, I was visiting for the holidays. Both of my folks were asleep by ten, right in their chairs. I loved my parents, but they weren't a ball of fire to be with for a young guy on New Year's Eve. 

On the other hand, as I've gotten older myself, I'm no ball of fire either. I enjoyed watching the Thin Man marathon on TCM for a few years with my wife; they skipped it last year but are back to it tonight. I also thought of a New Year's long ago when I just hung around with a friend's younger cousin all night, talking about comics, Dungeons & Dragons, playing video games, and watching TV (1967's Camelot was on, and as bad as I'd always heard). He was a good kid. We met up again a few New Year's Eves later but it wasn't the same; his interests had drifted and so had mine. 

Good or bad, though, one thing I have always done on New Year's is make it to midnight, at least since I was a little kid. Not sure about tonight. I guess we'll see. But I expect to be here on the 2022 side of things, and God willing it will be a good year for all of us.  

Fred's Book Club: Such Tripe!

It is Wednesday, which is Hump Day, and that means it's time for the Humpback Writers, our serious book feature with the silly name. To date no actual humps on the writers have been detected, despite our best efforts. In fact, today's author/artist, while being a bit advanced in years, still has no sign of back problems, as one can see on his Web page. 

Yes, today we're profiling British cartoonist Bill Tidy, and specifically one book-length installment of his long-running cartoon saga, The Fosdyke Saga (a takeoff on the novel and TV series The Forsyte Saga). And if you stay to the end of today's post, you'll see an interesting connection between this comic strip and a notorious case currently in the papers.

When I was a kid, I loved comic strips, especially the funny ones. What would prove to be my favorite form was not the straight gag or the adventure stories, but the rarest and most difficult -- the continuing story that still had a daily punchline. Strips like Thimble Theatre and Little Nemo were known for it, but they were long gone. It was a vanished breed in my youth, at least in America, but across the pond Bill Tidy had been writing and drawing one since 1971 for the Daily Mirror. The Fosdyke Saga featured the various adventures of the Fosdyke clan, Britain's greatest tripe-selling family, and their ongoing struggles in the Edwardian era and beyond, especially against the nefarious rival Roger Ditchley. The adventures centered around selling tripe, promoting the public's awareness of tripe, inventing new uses for tripe (tripe parachute!), fending off various wicked persons, and acquiring rare tripe-related objects for their tripe museum (on the book cover above you can see the South American tripe pyramid, composed completely of dried tripe). 

From the front matter

I bought the above book (the last in the series) at the Forbidden Planet store in the Village. While a lot of the humor (or humour) was lost on this young American at the time, I still thought it was brilliant, funny, endlessly inventive, and a veritable a circus of great characters.

Tidy maintained interest with cliffhangers and rotating storylines. In one adventure in the book above, adventurous son Tom Fosdyke has been dispatched to the Arctic Circle to seek the Arctic Tripe Snake!

Meanwhile, in Manchester, youngest and strongest son Tim has had a breakdown following a plot of Ditchley's to convince the Fosdykes they are haunted! Unfortunately the doctor leaves much to be desired....

Meanwhile Jos, head of the family, is stuck in a pub, where he is spying on a devious plan to rob a bank and pin the blame on his own horse, the mighty and faithful Tripeworks!!!! (!!!)

I loved the format and desperately wanted to create a comic strip like that for the American market. Unfortunately by the time I was coming of age, newspapers were starting to die and the comics pages were shrinking, a shadow of what they once were -- and that was before the Internet just about delivered the coup de grace. 

But that came much earlier for Tidy at the Mirror. In 1984 the Mirror was acquired by Robert Maxwell, MP, who didn't think Bill Tidy was funny, and cast him out. Tidy had been at the paper since the fifties, so this was a pretty big blow. The thing that saddened Bill most was that he'd planned to extend the Fosdyke adventures much longer:

“It was a very sad day when, with forty years of the Fosdyke story told, the Mirror’s new management decided to axe the strip [in 1985]. Fosdykes at Dunkirk, The Salford Blitz, the place of tripe production in the Marshall Plan, the possibility of free school tripe under the terms of the 1944 Education Act. All these stirring events are ready chronicled and simply need the light of day — a nation waits.”

But alas, that was the end. The Fosdyke saga, which had been adapted into radio plays, a TV show, and a stage play, came to a close. And people wonder why hardly anyone eats tripe anymore.

Here's the kicker I mentioned at the top: Robert Maxwell, who later annoyed New Yorkers by buying the Daily News, perished in 1991 in a bizarre incident where he apparently fell off his yacht naked while peeing in the ocean (as one does). Murder and suicide were ruled out (hmm); death by heart attack that caused drowning was the coroner's deduction. Maxwell had defaulted on a fifty million pound loan, which set off a feeding frenzy among his creditors, and his publishing empire came to the same fate as did he, minus the peeing.

More recently, Maxwell's daughter Ghislaine has been much in the news. As I write, she still faces serious charges for her dealings with the late Jeffrey Epstein, who probably did not kill himself. That story is, shall we say, tripe. The question is whether she can bargain her silence for freedom, based on the high rollers that went to Pedo Island under her watch. 

But on goes Bill Tidy, drawing and doing many other things, and God bless him. His is the kind of saga one should emulate, not that of the strange and awful Maxwells. 

Fred's Book Club: Look Before...

Good day, persons of book interests, and welcome to the latest edition of the Humpback Writers, the book feature that falls on Hump Day, but as far as we know has no actual hunchbacks among the writers. I keep asking but they refuse to acknowledge one way or another. Of course many of the writers are no longer alive to return my calls, but today's writer, England's own Jonathan Stroud, is alive and kicking. And leaping.

Stroud is best known, and justifiably so, for two of the great fantasy series of the modern day, the  Bartimaeus books and the Lockwood & Co. books. The Bartimaeus books are set in an alternate world where magic works because of the use of the capture of extra-dimensional demons, such as the snarky narrator, Bartimaeus; Lockwood & Co. stars a company of ghost-hunters in a London where dangerous hauntings have suddenly erupted. Both series are full of humor and suspense and genuine frights. They are targeted to young adult readers (that is, teens), as is today's one-off title, but I'd recommend them to any adult as well. 

The Leap is a different sort of fantasy novel. It takes place in current times, but tells a much more personal tale. At the story's beginning, a boy named Max has drowned in a mill pond. Max's best friend, Charlotte (called Charlie), almost died trying to save him. During the event she saw strange and horrible things -- and no one believes her. And it's not surprising that they don't:

And then I noticed other things moving in the water; pale thin women with long hair streaming like river moss, who wrapped their arms around him as he spun in the waters of the mill pool. 

I swam toward them, and they turned, and Max's face was white and his eyes were open, but I knew he couldn't see me anymore. He smiled and the women smiled with him, and they could see me all right -- they were looking at me with eyes as green as buried pebbles.

Charlie's single mom and her older brother are terribly concerned about her, of course, even though she stops trying to tell the truth and goes along with the usual psychologists and grief counselors. She is sure that something strange has happened to Max, but can't understand what. Then she starts to have exceptionally vivid dreams, beginning with coming out of the water and finding something shocking:

I bent down to the nearest print. It was crisscrossed with lines and had an oval imprint in the heel. Crouching there, I bit my lip until it bled; Max's Nike trainers had that pattern in the sole. Before I straightened, a vague dread made me scan the sand for a few yards on either side of Max's trail, but there was no sign that anyone else accompanied him.   

Where is Max going? Why is Charlie having this dream? 

Night after night, Charlie follows the trail, hoping to catch up to Max. Then one day she wakes up and finds that the cuts she sustained in the dream are on her body, and thus somehow her dreams are real. Which means Max must be alive somewhere.

Her actions in the waking world become increasingly distressing to her little family, who find her doing things like searching around Max's house, upsetting his mother and father. The crisis and the suspense build through the book. Something very strange is going on, and Charlie is determined to find out what -- but the farther she travels, the more it looks like her own life is in jeopardy.

It's a moody story, so well and richly written that it's hard to believe it's just over 230 large-print pages. Stroud is simply an excellent wordsmith with an imagination to match. 

If you like fantasy novels but are not convinced that The Leap is your cup of tea, do try one of his other books. I have not yet read them all but I've enjoyed all that I have. 

Rating Jacob's kids.

We're getting biblical here, folks! By that I mean we are looking some personages of the Bible and rating them by what could possibly be the dumbest criteria available -- their names.

Specifically I'm focused on the twelve sons of patriarch Jacob, who has name issues too, as he was also called Israel. What's up with that? Run out on the landlord and change your name? Har har. Okay, that's even too dumb for this blog entry.

Here are the boys, in their birth order. Now, remember, we're not ranking them based on who they were or what they did, although that may get a mention; this is all about how cool or dumb their names are to our modern ears.

1. Reuben
2. Simeon
3. Levi
4. Judah
5. Dan
6. Naphtali
7. Gad
8. Asher
9. Issachar
10. Zebulun
11. Joseph
12. Benjamin

Now, the examination:

Reuben: Eldest son of Jacob and Leah. Made one crucial error: forced himself on his dad's concubine. That cost him Dad's blessing, as it will. But then again, when the brothers planned to kill Dad's fave, Joseph, Reuben tried to save him. As for the name, many Americans may associate Reuben with the manager of the Partridge Family. Not as old-fashioned as other Genesis names, but not popular either. Great sandwich, though, even if the origin of it is disputed. Ranking: So-so.

Simeon: Also called Shimon, but we're only looking at the Simeon version. And I think we can all agree that through no fault of Simeon's or any one else named Simeon, it sounds like the adjective for apes and monkeys (simian), which is inviting playground horror, especially on the monkey bars. Also, Simeon was a vengeful boy, along with brother Levi, but we'll get to that. Ranking: Poor.

Levi: Best known now as the name of Mr. Blue Jeans himself, Levi Strauss. Interestingly, Levi Strauss's name at birth in Germany was Loeb; he thought it didn't sound American enough when he emigrated to the states, so he changed it to Levi. And yet Levi sounds olde-tyme and foreign now. I think there used to be a lot more Levis in America. The original Levi and his brother Simeon pulled a fast one that got them in Dutch with Dad: When their sister was raped, and the villain's father wanted to make things "right" in the Old Testament way by arranging their marriage, Levi and Simeon insisted that it could be so if their whole town agreed to be circumcised. Owie! "While the men of the city are incapacitated by the pain of the surgical procedure they have just endured," says My Jewish Learning, "Shimon and Levi swoop down and massacre one and all. Jacob has been deceived into complicity with the diabolical and immoral behavior of his hotheaded sons. He has been duped into inclusion in a council of lawlessness bent on the angry slaying of men." Doesn't have much to do with the ranking of the name, but maybe it's why Levi isn't more popular. And I'm glad I don't live in Old Testament times. Ranking: Below average.

Judah: Nothing wrong with Judah, but since a portion of the nation of Israel became known as Judah in 930 BC and was referred to that way in the New Testament, it tends to be thought of as a name properly used by Jewish people rather than goyim, which limits its popularity. Place names can be that way. The names Jude and Judd likely come from Judah, but we're not concerned with derivations today. Ranking: Just okay.

Dan: Hey, that's a fine name. Usually a nickname for Daniel, but if you named your boy just Dan, most people would never know he wasn't Daniel. But you would know. Ranking: Goodish.

Naphtali: I think you'd have to be pretty hard-core to name your son Naphtali, either hard-core biblical or hard-core pretentious. The name means "My Struggle," which might appeal if his mother was in labor for three days with him, but so does Mein Kampf. Plus, it sounds way too much like Natalie. Ranking: Rock bottom.

Gad: Gad, on the other hand, means "Fortune" or "Luck," which is good. But it sounds like W.C. Fields taking the Lord's name in vain. Also, the name may have come from a pagan goddess, which makes it stranger. And it is a verb meaning to move around restlessly and pointlessly, which makes it a poor name for a man with a serious career, like mortician or septic tank engineer. Just seems a little silly. Ranking: Meh.

Asher: I'm not crazy about Asher, but I feel like it has more modern acceptance than most of the others. I've heard of boys named Archer and Fisher, and those seem like career-defining names, or hobby-defining games anyway. How does one ash? Well, that's not what the name is about. It means "Happy," which is nice. Ranking: Above average.

Issachar: Got to tell you, I like Issachar. As names go, it may be my favorite of the twelve. Dramatic. Manly. It lends itself to Izzy, which is a better nickname than most. But while it can sound cool and interesting, it can also sound fusty and weird. Maybe it depends on the kid. Still, I'm in Issachar's corner, although I am sure I would never be allowed to name a son of mine Issachar Key. Ranking: Good.

Zebulun: And this is my second-favorite name. Jacob clumped the best near the end. To anyone not versed in the Bible, this could seem like the name of a planet from Star Trek. "Stardate: 8137. Tuesday. We arrived at the planet Zebulun V to retrieve the Federation ambassador. Then it all went to hell." Zebulun means "Dwelling," which sounds kind of homebodyish, and its obvious nickname, Zeb, calls to mind a wacky old toothless farmhand. Then again, so did names like Zack and Zeke not long ago, and they've had a renaissance. Ranking: Needs improvement.

Joseph: Now we come to Mighty Joe Young, the hero of the closing chapters of Genesis, the interpreter of dreams and Pharaoh's BFF. Of all the sons' names, Joseph is the most normal and even boring to modern ears. Joe Six-pack, Good ol' Joe, Joe Bloe, Average Joe. But was this the case before the twentieth century? There's never been a Joseph I, King of England; the Roman church has never had a Pope Joseph; we've never had a president named Joseph (not yet, anyway!). It's still a grand name, the name of my Confirmation saint, but maybe a little too common even now. Ranking: Way up there.

Benjamin: Benny's original name was Benoni, "Son of My Pain," from his mother's agony at giving birth to him, the act that killed her. Naturally, Jacob preferred something less horrible, especially since he was fond of Benjamin's mother, so he changed it. Ben was the only full-blood brother of Joseph, for what that's worth. Anyway, yes, great name. Ben Franklin made it an American classic. It works in multiple ways, too: Ben is great for a serious leader, Benny for a wily jokester, Benjy for a cute kid brother, Benjamin for a stuffed shirt, Jamin for ... Ska improv? French ham? Ranking: Top drawer.

All right! Let's put the names in the processor and see what we got:

1. Zebulun
2. Issachar
3. Joseph
4. Benjamin
5. Asher
6. Reuben
7. Dan
8. Levi
9. Gad
10. Judah
11. Simeon
12. Naphtali

There you go! Now if anyone asks you which name was the fifth-best among Jacob's sons, you will know. Be here next time when we sort out everybody in Judges 2! 

Suits me.

One rainy night in June, my parents loaded the family into the car and drove off to buy me two suits. I had recently graduated from college. This was another gift, after so very many they had already given me.

Along the way a tire blew out. Dad got the car to the side of the road. I was going to help put on the spare, but Mom wouldn't let me. I had dress shoes on; I was going to be measured, going to try on jackets and pants; I had to stay neat and dry. My poor dad got soaked jacking up the car with us in it, changing the tire, somehow always keeping his cigarette lit no matter how hard it poured.

At the venerable clothing store, I was given the workup by the tailor. No off-the-rack here. Not when it came to formal and business wear. Colors were chosen -- one black, one blue with pinstripes. Chalk marks flew up and down the legs and arms like drawings of little birds. Maybe a tie or two selected as well. Ready in a week. And so was my kit prepared for the launching of my brilliant career.

It was an era where no man on earth would have gone to an office-job interview in anything less than a suit and tie and shined-up shoes. But even then, my parents' gift seemed very old-fashioned. I wasn't the first in my family to graduate college; although my parents had never gone to college, I wasn't even in the first in the car that night to have graduated. It was not that they were stuffing me into a uniform and insisting I bring home the bacon. It was that they were proud of me, something they didn't say in words, but that gift, that rainy night, showed me their pride more than anything words could have said. I wore both suits at least once a week for years as I commuted into Manhattan and went to work.

I bring this up because I gave away the blue suit yesterday.

The black suit was a lighter, almost summer-weight fabric, and eventually I wore it out. The blue pinstripe was stronger, and it survived everything but my appetite; I got too fat for it. I always swore I was going to drop the weight and wear it again, but I never did, even when I was jogging, even when I gave up beer. Nowadays, following my back injury, I can only do gentle exercise, if walking two big burly dogs can be gentle, and without exercise I have never been able to drop anything more than a few pounds. It was time to let this suit go.

Here's the thing -- I have plenty of old clothes that need to go. Others can use them; some of them are in very good shape. Some I've never liked even if they fit. Why should I keep them? And a suit, cleaned and still in good condition, ought to be in every man's closet. I have suits that fit. Someone could use that blue pinstripe; in fact, I just this morning saw an article on a charity that needs suits. But for years I wouldn't part with it, mostly for sentimental reasons. Yesterday I decided it had been long enough. My parents have been gone for quite a while now. My suit may be a little out of date, but there's nothing wrong with it. So I put it in the clothes collection box down at the church.

I hope it brings someone else good fortune. It certainly was always good for me. When I wore either of those suits, I always felt like a million bucks, or at least a few hundred grand.

Now I'm looking at other things with which I can part. Funny, but when I let that suit go at last, my first thought was, I think I can let anything else go now, too.

Wait for it.

Lent is a time of testing and trial and waiting, but Easter is the great celebration at the end. Well, it may be a celebration spiritually, but physically, we're still enduring testing and trial, and most of all we're still waiting.

I had high hopes in the president's earlier wish that things would be normalized by Easter, but my wife was less optimistic, and also correct. This is bad for the churches, of course, and businesses that rely on a boost from Easter. I think I feel worse for all the families for whom the holiday is a time to get together and do fun things like brunches, Easter egg hunts, and run screaming from men in scary bunny suits. Traditions!

We would have gone to the vigil last night, although I was beat by the end of the day and would have had to slug down an enormous mug of coffee. It's worth it. Even our medium-size parish is home to majesty at the Easter Vigil. The church is dark, the pews are full, the candle light works slowly up from the back as the announcement is sung that Christ is the light that has broken the darkness, and soon the whole place bursts into light singing hallelujah. I love it -- even though it plays heckin' heck with the dogs' schedule and makes me stay up past my bedtime.

Instead we will watch Mass online today. Although sometimes it feels like I'm isolated, I know we all are; the priest will be almost completely alone, maybe with a lector present.

Oh, well. Lord give us patience, and let's pray as hard as we can that we can get back to our lives, and that this damn Chinese coronavirus will be gone for good long before Christmas. Amen!

Best of the quarantine!

We present today the ten best ideas (so far!) for families (and others) stuck at home together during the quarantine.

Animal Fun
Players reenact the talking-animal classic Animal Farm. Who wants to be Napoleon? Who's Boxer? Who's Benjamin? Squealer? Game continues until players get bored or mad or the counterrevolution begins.

Backseat Driver
Everyone piles into the car. The driver will turn at every intersection in the direction shouted from the backseat. Oh, the places you'll go!

Shut Up in the Backseat
Everyone still in the car. No one say a goddamn word until we get home again or else. And never contradict Mommy in front of a police officer again.

Pretend School
Mom and/or Dad, completely unprepared, will try to remember some algebra to keep their at-home students up to speed. Older kids can have fun with geometry or calculus!

A Spoonful of Sugar
Reenact the famous room-cleaning scene from the Disney classic Mary Poppins, except it's the whole house and nobody has any magical powers. And stop that singing! Here's your sponge.

Dad's on the Roof
Or is he? Dad's gone hiding on the property to drink beer. Your mission: Find him before Mommy kills him!

Pretend Naptime
You kids lie down and pretend to nap while your parents pretend to work.

Who Can Scream the Loudest?
Mom will let you know when to start playing this game, usually when she's about to go out and leave Dad in charge.

Annoy Mr. Wilson
Since you can't bug the neighbor in person, children will be challenged to pester him or her (whose name may not be Wilson) in creative ways without breaking social distancing rules.

We're a Happy Family
Convince the neighbors that you all get along 100% of the time.

That's only the top ten -- your contributions to helping the world stay sane will be appreciated, of course! Meanwhile, remember: Don't volunteer to be Boxer on Animal Fun Day.

Fred's Book Club: President Jr.

Hello, everybody, and happy Hump Day! That means it's time for another installment of the Humpback Writers, the Internet's favorite book feature hosted by me on Wednesday, as opposed to the other book features I host on Wednesday. (NB: No authors thus far have been known to have any back issues whatever, let alone hunchbacks.)

With Presidents Day coming on Monday, it seemed like a great time to look at this nifty history book by historian and editorialist Noemie Emery -- Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families. 

"This is a book that defies definition, in a genre few words can explain," she writes in her preface. "It is a social, political, and family history, but it is not the tale of a man, a movement, or a family. Rather, it is a story about a phenomenon -- the pressures placed on young men in a specialized setting -- as it works its way out over time."

I first encountered Emery in the pages of Russ Smith's NYPress, a free weekly that I looked forward to every Friday. Smith, a libertarian by nature, made this paper a fun read, filling it with local talent like Slackjaw, great cartoonists like Tony Millionaire (Maakies) and Ben Katchor (Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer), and opinion writers like Emery, Taki, and Toby Young. Of them Emery was probably the least flip and the most solid, an architect of prose with serious intent. I was thrilled to see that she'd published this book, back in 2007. (The NYPress folded in 2011.) Emery currently writes for the Washington Examiner.

The book focuses primarily on the fortunes of American families who had more than one family member at least take a shot at the presidency -- Adams, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Bush are the primary names featured, and reading it makes me glad that A) George Washington had no direct descendants and B) that so few of our chief executives really tried to get their kids to follow in their footsteps, or had children that really wanted the office. If nothing else it's a terrific lesson in the problems with hereditary succession.

Take the Adams family. We know that John and son John Quincy were brilliant but unloved one-term presidents. And the rest of the family was at various levels of screwed up, right down to petulant writer Henry Adams.

John Quincy Adams followed his father's path precisely, but his brothers, Charles and Thomas, were nothing like their father. "Charles showed a tendency to break under pressure," Emery writes, "as his parents pushed him along in his big brother's footsteps. John Quincy had been taken abroad at the age of eleven and rapidly dazzled the great men of Europe. Charles, taken abroad at age nine, had cried, become homesick and sickly, and been forced to go home. Sent to Harvard (of course) in the wake of his brother, he had begun to drink heavily and had shown his reaction to his parents' strict lectures by joining in some kind of campus disturbance, in which he had run naked through the college square." This kind of behavior would not be such a problem for later political families from Massachusetts, but they were of grave concern to the Adamses. Charles would die of cirrhosis at thirty. His brother Thomas just preferred to eschew everything and stay with his aunt and uncle on their farm.

Henry Adams, the grandson of John Quincy and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, may have been a fine scholar and reporter, but Emery has no patience for the man's smug self-pity as the tag-end of a waning family, "marginalized by no one but themselves":

Henry had the harder job of reconciling his belief that he deserved to hold power with the fact that he lacked the will to fight for it, and with his resentment of people who did. Raised to believe, as he wrote, that "a president was a given in every respectable family," he gave rise to stories while he was at Harvard that he sat in his room waiting for someone to draft him for office. When nobody did, he sulked.

The chapter on the Roosevelts was quite informative as well. I was especially taken with the plight of Theodore Roosevelt Jr., who was anointed by fans of his dad to be the man's successor, but while he had more will and drive than Henry Adams, he never had the political gifts of personality and charisma, except in military service. Plus, while Ted was in the army in World War I, his cousin Franklin grabbed the Roosevelt baton and started running with it:

Ted had the name and the descent from the hero, but Franklin was not without things that had evened the score and perhaps reversed it; he was six crucial years older; he had a history of working with TR in politics; he had run on a national ticket and had also held two public offices; he had a soothing, mellifluous baritone, whereas Ted had the high-pitched squeak of his father; and he was tall, slender, graceful, and almost too handsome. Ted was smaller and always looked agitated, with overlarge features in too small a face.

I've lost nearly all respect for FDR over the years, for the way he helped keep the economy lousy through stupid, socialistic ideas and for his disrespect for American political traditions, but this book also shattered the halo of his long-suffering wife, St. Eleanor. When Ted Jr. was running on the Republican ticket to be New York's governor in 1924, Eleanor attacked him, and with gusto, at the state Democratic convention. She also personally arranged for a "car dressed as a papier-mâché 'teapot' in which she trailed Ted as he made campaign speeches," trying to tag him with the Teapot Dome scandal from the Harding Administration, with which Ted Jr. had no direct involvement. And this vicious treatment of her blood relative was not even in direct aid of her philandering husband, but rather to promote Al Smith, Franklin's political patron.

Ted would wind up dying of a heart attack at age 56, a month after leading troops on D-day. Brigadier General Roosevelt proved to be a smart, courageous, and popular leader, and is buried with honor in Normandy.

If you think this stuff is interesting, you ought to see what Emery has to say about the Kennedys. Too hot for this blog! Nah, just kidding -- she's a clear-eyed reporter with a talent for marshaling facts with brevity and wit. I only wish this book had been updated after the 2016 election, so we could have more from the Jeb! side of the Bush family tale. Not to mention the latest Great Kennedy Hope, pipsqueak Joe III, cooling his heels in the House since 2013 (but planning to take on Ed Markey for his Senate seat this year -- guess he got tired of waiting).

Unlike that Dickens book of the same title, Emery's Great Expectations is a brief tome, a mere 235 pages, but is packed with great stories and fascinating insights into politics, personalities, and the pressures of great families. But it's not a mere recitation of scandals; Emery weaves the tales to create a larger tapestry, following the theme of great political expectations in American history. As with most of the books in Fred's Book Club, I recommend it without reservation. In fact, I'm sending copies to Donald Trump Jr. and the Obama girls!

PBJ.

I don't get to the dollar store much anymore, but I found myself there last week, looking for something that they didn't have. C'est la vie.

But there's always something to get. This dollar store was Dollar General, whose model is not "everything for a dollar" but more like "everything for a round number." Nothing is $2.99 or .69 at Dollar General; it might be $3 or Two for $1, but it's round.

Anyway, I was lured out of my attempted Improved Diet Plan 2020 by this house-brand product:

Yes, I am six years old. The truth has come out.

No, there is a reason for this, and it has to do with a family story from about the time I was six or so. Not a tale of Dickensian deprivation, but I was the victim here!

Many of you may be familiar with Goober, a brand of peanut butter Smucker's has been selling since 1968. The gimmick is that the PB is combined in the jar with alternating stripes of jelly, either grape or strawberry. This came to my notice well into my PBJ-eating experience, and I was immensely curious about this technological dietary innovation. How did they get the PB and J in the same jar like that? Was it good peanut butter (who could trust Smucker's, a brand known for its jelly?), or just a lame way to move more of the flagship stuff? Was it much more convenient for making sandwiches, or eating right out of the jar, especially for a wide-eyed tot? And most of all: WAS IT AWESOME?

I had no way of knowing. My mom wouldn't buy it. My dad was a dedicated jelly-on-toast guy, so she thought it was dumb to buy this when we had to have jelly around anyway.

Okay, I could take that. Mom had to say no to us kids about 976,934 times a week, mostly at the supermarket.

Here's the cruel part. We were going to visit a beloved relative, one who had no kids of her own, and she asked mom what we ate. Thinking of me, my mother said PBJ; if you are what you eat, I was probably a good third peanut butter and jelly, a third Cap'n Crunch, and the other third all that useless stuff like fruit and lima beans and pot roast. So dear relative went shopping, was amazed by the edible technology on display in the Goober & Grape, and bought a jar. She was still curious when she got home, so she opened the jar had a little taste.

AND ATE THE WHOLE THING!

It was all gone before we got there. Every ounce. All we had was a funny story. Well, they thought it was funny. I laughed dryly, defeated. Ha. Ha.

Mom did not ease my disappointment by buying a jar when next we shopped. The rules of spending money were not ironclad, but they were at least leadclad. I don't remember ever trying it. When I was out of the house I didn't buy PB that much; at the time the jars seemed kind of pricey and I needed money for important things (beer). But when I saw this jar in the Dollar General, it all came flooding back. I finally bought my own.

And... it's okay.

The problem is not the quality of the ingredients but the gimmick itself. You can't get it out of the jar without mushing the peanut butter with the jelly, which gets the flavors get mixed up -- and the PB crushes the J. Layering it traditionally gives more balance to the flavors, allowing the jelly to shine. It wasn't bad by any means, but by diminishing the jelly taste it loses some of the benefit promised by the process -- PB and J, coequal partners in a brave new venture.

Also, the mushed peanut butter/jelly schmear looks bad.

Smucker's original may be better, might other store brands like Ralphs Yipes! Stripes! (yes really), but I suspect the issue I bring up is baked in the pie, so to speak.

Well, I may have been a little disappointed, but I think justice at long last was done. Or something.

A sandwich was done. And I ate it. And it was okay.

Sad Thanksgiving?

I know I may seem a little obsessed with food this week, doing two entries in a row already, but we are coming up on the holidays and I'm hungry. 

That said, I know that the holidays can be quite sad for people who have no family or friends, at least not close by, or who are suffering from ailments of all kinds. Sometimes we can't make things better even if we want to desperately. 

And some things make me wonder if they make everything better or worse.

You've probably seen little overpriced snack packs around, mostly in with the cold cuts. Hormel and Oscar Mayer  and Hillshire were out in front on this, apparently an adult version of longstanding kids food packs like Lunchables. Now Butterball, the turkey magnates, have jumped into the game with their own turkey-based snack products.

And it's sad. Or is it?

They come in three varieties as I write this, and two are Cajun Style and Citrus Teriyaki. Nothing sad about that, unless you're a turkey. But it's the Thanksgiving one shown above that made me sad.

It's not the interior of the snack, shown here:

What we have here is an almost Jetsons-style Thanksgiving meal: sliced turkey breast, dried cranberries, "stuffing bites," and a coupon at the top to buy more of the same. Not quite a meal, but it would see you through for a while. The turkey tasted good, as one might expect from Butterball; the cranberries were fine. The stuffing cubes really are croutons, even though seasoned with poultry seasoning, and belong on a salad. The coupon is acceptable, though small and easy to lose.

It's just that the idea of the Thanksgiving meal being reduced to this little snack pack seems sad, like it's saying, We know your Thanksgiving will suck so we made this for you.  Which is kind of nice. I wish every deployed American in the field on Thanksgiving Day could get one of these if he wanted it. I'm sure it beats the MRE.

Butterball was probably thinking this would be a little taste of our great American holiday for those who don't want the turkey dinner to be just a one-day thing. And maybe I should stop looking at the gloomy side of life and take that as such.

However, I think it might be smart for the Tofurky guys to come up with a similar snack tray. After all, fans of the meatless substance are the most likely to get sore about the food at the family feast and want to storm out and go eat something conscientious. I'd call that a win all around, actually.

No blog?

I apologize for the lack of a genuine blog entry today. Yesterday I was with a friend of mine and his birth mom who had been separated from each other for decades. They lived about 250 miles away and neither knew where the other was for a very long time.

This was pretty powerful stuff.

She had given him up when she was 17. You can say what you want about the social mores of the sixties, when that occurred, but in modern times it's still not a good idea to have a child at 17. The funny thing is, neither of them were railing against the society that caused them to be parted. They spoke about their own feelings, like having a piece missing for fifty years that has now snapped into place.

I don't know that I'd say everyone was crying, but everyone sure seemed to get pretty misty. Maybe that was just me.

You're not crying, I'm crying!
Oh, wait...

By the time that was over, the dogs were demanding attention, and with one thing and another, the blog entry I'd planned for today did not get written. Oh, it was a good one. In fact, I hope to run it tomorrow.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed your weekend at least as much as I enjoyed mine. The wife is off from work today, but your Friendly Neighborhood Freelance Editor will be grinding out two pieces that I've gotten sick of in the last week. Fingers crossed they will be out the door by tomorrow morning.

UPDATE: Things have not progressed today as planned, so tomorrow's blog entry is liable to be brief and not at all the thoughtful essay I'd hoped. But it will still brighten your day with your dose of Vitamin Fred, which four out of four fictional doctors recommend for better health! And vim!

On the family tree.

No voice on the line.

A loved one calls about your dearest elderly relative a thousand miles away. The rebound was temporary, shorter than expected; everything has fallen apart, gone to hell all of a sudden. All these years of work and worry have come down to this.

She can't speak. She can't communicate, but she can hear. I'll hold up the phone so you can talk.

What do you say?

Swallow, hard. Marshall thoughts. Come on, words, you goddamn stupid words, you've been my soldiers all my life, now get in formation one goddamn time when I really need you.

Hello?

I'm so sorry you're so... sick. 

I wish I could be there right now.

I hope we'll talk when... when you're better.

I love you.

We're all praying for you.

God bless.

I'll see you again. 

Good-bye. 

No voice on the line.

The message comes in the night -- she's gone. It's over. Whatever was to be done, it is done.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, goddamn worthless words.

Freedom from me!

I was cleaning out the ol' desk at home, a little task that's been, oh, maybe... 15 years in the making.

Hey, it takes me a long time to accumulate that much junk.

The proximate cause of this week's action was that I couldn't find my thumb drive backup, so I just dumped the three drawers on the floor.

I did find the object of my quest. Then I had to do something about the mess on the office floor. A mess that included old floppy disks, a billion paper clips, zombie ballpoint pens, and notebooks. Pounds and pounds of notebooks.

It's stuff I wrote ten or closer to twenty years ago. Oooh, maybe that short story I couldn't find is in there! Let's have a look!

Ugh.

After reading through them for a few minutes, I found a blank page and summed up what I'd seen:

Sometimes I forget the turmoil I've gone through, which hardly makes sense -- you don't forget the hurricane that ripped off the roof just because you had it fixed. These notebooks were part of my attempt to work through a lot of the doubt, terror, resentments, and self-pity -- OOOH the self-pity -- that I probably should have gotten past in my teenage years. I'm usually not this bad anymore.

I'm glad to say most of the issues that plagued me as regards personal relationships have been resolved. Some, not much I can do. But it's not so painful these days. As I've gotten older I've realized that people can only do what they can do, and even with the best will they can muster, sometimes they fall short, sometimes they can't change. Anyway, I've learned not to fight with dead people anymore. You can't win. You can't lose, but you can't win.

I guess it's good to know I've made progress, but bad to know how annoying I can be.

So, I decided to pack up all of the books and throw them all away. I hope I'm not that man anymore, and I don't want to drag his notebooks around like Jacob Marley and his chained ledgers.

I once put a question to a Catholic group like this: If you died and went to Purgatory, and part of your rehab involved watching a movie of your life -- every minute of it, everything you did and said, all of it (it's Purgatory; you have all the time there is) (maybe you could fast-forward through sleeping and bathroom breaks) -- how would you feel about it?

I think you can tell a lot about someone by their answer to that question. Some people were all gung-ho. Yes! I'll bring an eternal bucket of popcorn! It's showtime! Others were more pragmatic. There will be painful memories but if that's the cost of heaven, I will pay it. And then there were those like me. No thank you very much and could I spend a thousand years scrubbing toilets instead?

Sunday sloth.

Please excuse the lack of a decent post today. We had a late night with our dinner guests -- well, late for me and the dogs, who normally pack it in at 10 p.m. -- and I had no chance to prepare.

I admire people who always have company about the house, people who keep the place looking just good enough that no one ever thinks it's a dump. They always have the fixings on hand to whip up a lasagna or shrimp curry or Mulligan stew to feed fifty at a moment's notice.

I am not like that. I throw a dinner party for a handful of people I think I deserve a medal. You'd think I'd been hosting an Indian wedding for two weeks.

What I'm saying is: Don't come over.

No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that our normal state here is chaotic enough, but we like to pull it together for guests. The houses that were always fun to go to were in complete chaos all the time and liked it, so the more the merrier, right up to the cabin scene from A Night at the Opera.

But that's not how it goes around here. Families with eleven kids or something have to adjust to that to survive, with youngsters running in and out all the time. Sometimes I wonder how those parents keep their sanity. Sometimes I wonder how they keep their sanity when the kids grow up and suddenly there is no chaos anymore. You can get used to chaos.

That's all beside the point, which is: I had no time to write anything yesterday, and today I have no time or energy to write a post.

Hey, wait a second -- I DID write a post! It may not have been any good, but here it is all the same. Bully for me!