A small light.

The smallest window in the house is in the laundry room, which faces the side and does not provide much visibility for anything. However, I still stick a light-up angel there every year, because you can see it from the street as you come down the hill. The front windows are accounted for; the east side of the house has no windows at all. On the west side is just the one tiny window, and it has an angel in it. 

One of the oddest memories of Christmas I have is sitting in the backseat of the family's car on the way home. It was a few days after the holiday itself, and we'd been to see family friends -- and stayed out late, much later than we normally did, hours after midnight. I remember it was cold, maybe cold enough for Mom to recommend the blanket that we kept in the back of the car, which was made of rubberized plastic and had frozen and was not much help.

It seemed like the whole town, the whole city was asleep as we pulled away. Houses were dark; if anyone still had Christmas lights up, they had unplugged them. It was all just black, bleak, cold winter to look forward to now. 

I recall seeing one light, though, in the window of a large house before we got to the main road. I used to think it was a Santa Claus face, outlined in green lights, but as time goes on I am not certain. What I do know is how it made me feel -- some joy, some peace, but mostly longing for that one holiday light in that one small window of that dark house in that whole dark town. I have forgotten what it looked like, but I have never forgotten its effect on me. 

Christmas was not over, it said; in fact, in a crucial way, Christmas is never over. Sometimes the smallest things have the largest greatest strength; no amount of darkness can dim the smallest light. The tiny miracle of Christmas opens the door to all the others, and it is Christmas every day. 

So I wish you a very happy, peaceful Christmas, today and all of your days. Thank you for reading, and best of all things to you. 

America’s sweetheart.

Baby dog Izzy was a total menace to society as a puppy. 

It was something most parents and probably most dog owners go through -- the kid is acting like a lunatic and seems bent on growing up to be a psychopath. He won't listen, or he just doesn't care. You wonder what it's going to take to get through to the little crazy person. Sometimes they never grow out of it -- you can only hope that they become sane enough to focus their insanity toward useful goals, like professional demolition, MMA fighting, or terrorist elimination. 

But most of the time, a change will come over the little beast, and you have something more normal, something less feral, something that responds to kindly instruction and doesn't go berserk at the slightest thing. 

We had our doubts about Izzy. Very strong doubts. 

The Menace at rest

We kept wondering if he was ever going to stop doing exactly the wrong and most destructive thing at every turn. We kept wondering if he was going to remember anything he'd learned for longer than it took to swallow the treat. We kept wondering if he was going to stop biting us. Was going to stop trying to grab food off the table, off the counters, or even off the stove. (He managed to light a stovetop burner once, which requires pushing in and twisting the knob -- childproof knob covers appeared shortly thereafter.) 

Maybe when his baby teeth are out. Maybe after he gets fixed. Maybe after his first birthday. Maybe when he's past pup puberty. Maybe never. My wife loved and loves him so much, yet she got madder at the little jerk on at least two occasions than she had ever gotten mad at previous puppies Nipper and Fazzy. She got madder at this puppy than she'd ever gotten at me, and I'm not joking. 

And then? Suddenly Izzy seemed to connect. It was like a Man's Best Friend switch got thrown, and he was no longer a wild animal that was tolerating confinement. Suddenly he was a sweet and playful dog, and has remained so ever since. He's not only sweeter than our earlier beloved boys; he's the sweetest, most friendly dog either of us has ever known. 

Don't just take my word for it. The lady who sometimes does the mail route pulled over one day, yelling about what a cutie he is, and as he sat politely, she gave him a Milk-Bone. The UPS man pulled over to say hi. The Amazon driver went out of his way to make friends with him. If delivery people are so in love with our dog, that says a lot. 

He's even polite with other dogs. Sure, if it's one he already knows, he'll strain the leash to go say hi. But he doesn't bark. If it's a dog he doesn't know, he'll wait quietly to get a chance to greet. Kids will come running, asking if they can pet him. He loves to meet people.

All this is why I started calling him America's Sweetheart.

We taught him some important commands, of course, but mostly we did our best with patience and love, and now I see that reflected in his behavior. And I guess that's my thought for the day. Patience and love can accomplish things you don't expect, if you're consistent -- even when you give up hope. I sure am glad now that we have this swell little dude. I certainly did not expect to say that thirty months ago. 

End of the year.

It's nice to shut the door on a year that didn't bring us what we'd hoped, or worse, brought us many things that we would have hoped not to get. Of course we know it's all arbitrary -- tonight 2022 ends, but the Jewish year 5783 started in September and the Chinese new year (it's a rabbit year) doesn't start until January 22. But I guess it's always nice to mark the end of an era and take a moment to assess our experiences and anticipate what's to come. 

I actually finished all my work assignments right at the end of the day Friday, so I have nothing new looking me in the face this weekend. My goals for the weekend: Get to church and sleep. Depending on the pastor, they may be combined. (Rim shot.) I will certainly feel obliged to stay up to midnight, which will mean an overtired puppy tonight and then an overtired both of us Sunday morning. But time and pee wait for no man or beast. On the upside, TCM has apparently listened to its viewers and has reinstated its marathon of Thin Man movies starting at eight tonight.

The past year did not have any personal highlights, and the lowlights were nothing worth mentioning, so I guess that's good. I have grievances, of course -- annoyances that I may compile in list form. Like a lot of folks I often dwell on the little things to avoid thinking about the big things. People will say "Don't sweat the small stuff!" but they will also say "Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves." Culture is contradictory to the point of insanity. 

So what are your hopes for the new year? Maybe regrets from the old year? Let's hear about them in comments. See you there, if I'm not too sleepy to read them.  

Fred's Book Club: Hopelessness and Survival.

It's Wednesday once again, which means Hump Day, which means it's time for the Humpback Writers, our stupidly named book feature that looks at books. We often like to look at the lesser known works of famous writers, or more obscure writers and books, but today we have an author and book that are quite famous, and for very good reason. We're featuring them today because January 27 is the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, as decreed by the United Nations. And the book is Man's Search for Meaning, by Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl. 

When you're in the publishing business you read an awful lot of books and articles on how to have a good life, but this is the only one I know of that was written by a man who spent three years in Nazi concentration camps. You're supposed to go to a spa in India and talk to a guru and then climb a mountain and stuff, right? Nope. There's a reason why those kinds of quests go many places but never get anywhere.

Dr. Frankl was a brilliant young psychiatrist when the Nazis rounded him up. In a very short time he lost family, career, and all the work he had done on a massive philosophical and psychological thesis. As for his friends:

It was the first selection, the first verdict made on our existence or non-existence. For the great majority of our transport, about 90 per cent, it meant death. Their sentence was carried out within the next few hours. Those who were sent to the left were marched from the station straight to the crematorium. This building, I was told by someone who worked there, had the word "bath" written over its doors in several European languages. On entering, each prisoner was handed a piece of soap, and then----but mercifully I do not need to describe the events which followed. Many accounts have been written about this horror. 
     We who were saved, the minority of our transport, found out the truth in the evening. I inquired from prisoners who had been there for some time where my colleague and friend P--- had been sent.
     "Was he sent to the left side?" 
     "Yes," I replied.
     "Then you can see him there," I was told. 
     "Where?" A hand pointed to the chimney a few hundred yards off, which was sending a column of flame up into the grey sky of Poland. It dissolved into a sinister cloud of smoke.

Long before reading this book I'd read Leon Uris's Exodus, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and other books about the Holocaust and brutal prison (and death camp) conditions. The thing that is so amazing about Frankl's book, that still intrigues me, is that he combines his horrifying personal story with clinical observation, all of which will go to the making of the book's conclusion about purpose and human life.

Seeing himself and others as subjects, he looks at the phases of psychological change in the camps. The first phase is shock, shock at the terrible thing that has happened, with thoughts of escape by any means, even suicide. Eventually would come the second phase:

Apathy, the main symptom of the second phase, was a necessary mechanism for self-defense. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one's own life and that of the other fellow.... It can be readily understood that such a state of strain, coupled with the constant necessity of concentrating on the task of staying alive, forced the prisoner's inner life down to a primitive level. 

Frankl would find himself numb to the suffering of others, suffering that would have caused a horrified reaction at any other time in his life.

With the inescapable presence of suffering and death and injustice, Frankl got to see what kind of men survived and what kind did not. The ones who were smoking their meager cigarette ration instead of trading cigarettes for food or clothes were ones who had given up. The ones who believed they would be free by Christmas would lose hope and die when the day came and went. ("The death rate in the week between Christmas, 1944, and New Year's, 1945, increased in camp beyond all previous experience" -- an observation later echoed by Commander James Stockdale.) Ultimately the survivors were ones who had found meaning in their lives, something that made the unendurable endurable:

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."

And how does a man find this meaning? That was the subject of the rest of the book, his other books, and his career.

All I can offer here is a brief overview of this book, which itself is not long -- my Washington Square Press paperback runs just 179 pages, not including the extensive bibliography. It is very readable, though in parts shocking even to those of us who have read other accounts of the Holocaust, and ultimately very sensible. 

Frankl, who died in 1997, hoped that his hard-won lessons might enlighten mankind to avoid anymore such genocides, and even prevent nuclear war. In that, he admitted he could be overoptimistic, but one can never say he and his work were without meaning. I recommend this book unconditionally to anyone.

First Sunday of Advent.

I like this "Advent in Two Minutes" video from the Paulist Fathers at Busted Halo. "Faith shared joyfully" is their mission statement, and you get a little taste of it here.

 

I'm a fan of Advent. As the video stresses, it is a season of hope, unlike Lent, which is a season of repentance. People do give up things or take on good things during Advent, but that's not considered a necessity -- although it would certainly be nice to plan to be friendlier in this Advent, especially at a time when lockdowns and riots and politics have us at one another's throats. 

As for Loving Thy Neighbor, my Advent Eve Day got off to a poor start. (NB: There is no such thing as Advent Eve Day, although Advent started with the Vigil Mass yesterday.) My dog-hating neighbor, the cable thief destined to be led out of work with a raincoat over his head one day, was putting up wreaths on his illegal fence that divides our properties. He has not spoken to me in years except to yell at me once when his wife was not home to scold him. It just so happened that my dogs both had to water the lawn that afternoon -- I didn't even know Wicked Neighbor was there, but they spotted him right away. Probably the stink of wickedness on him. 

Anyway, Junior Varsity dog Nipper was on a leash with me, so he stayed by my side, but Senior Varsity dog Tralfaz, all 120 pounds of furry Fazzy fury, trotted up to the fence and unleashed a volley of barks. I didn't see the man's reaction, although it would have been satisfying to know he'd soiled his Fruit of the Looms. 

I called Fazzy away and got him focused on his task -- pee -- but gave him lots of praise and an extra-large treat for scaring the big jerk. 

So you see what I'm dealing with here, and I mean me, not that guy. Immanuel Kant famously said that "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made," and that's me down to my socks. 

Still, today is a day when hope starts again, and maybe I can hope and pray to turn the other cheek in the future. And not gloat when my huge dog frightens someone who really deserves it. 

Negative wishes for the new year.

Everyone likes to spread positive wishes for the new year. I would like to instead post some negative wishes for you, kind reader. 

By that I don't mean that I want bad things to happen to anyone. Au contraire! as the French say, and I even wish them well. Mais non! I just want to make wishes for bad things to not happen in 2020. I think we can all bumble along all right as long as nothing bad happens. But sadly, it often does.

Merde arrive

So here's my negativity, which I hope brings some positivity.

😱 May you not be struck by lightning. Or any Ford. Or any vehicle, for that matter. Or a brick. Just don't be struck by anything.

😱 May you not be so shocked at your surprise party that you have a heart attack, because then everyone will feel pretty guilty about it. Or they'll be happy that their evil plan worked, in which case you shouldn't fulfill their vicious desires.

😱 May you not put hot sauce in your eye.

😱 May you and your dog not be at the mayor's lawn when your canine chum decides to have an attack of the trots -- and you all out of waste bags.

😱 May you not turn into a giant shoelace.

😱 May you never forget that the little X on the text box means your text has run outside the print area, even when you're working on the design for the rear panel of the package.

😱 And may you never say, "I don't need to see it again; it's fine" when it is not.

😱 May you not be stuck in a waiting room with the The View on the TV and no way to turn it off.

😱 May the police officer never feel obliged to ask you to recite the alphabet backward, omitting vowels.

😱 May your babies not grow up to be cowboys. Or maybe that only applies to Ed Bruce.

😱 May your doctor not find it necessary to use the phrase "clinical trials" in your discussions.

😱 May you not discover the hard way why predators are preferred in wildlife preserves and not in, say, your living room.

And that's enough for New Year's Eve -- I can certainly think of more awful things that can happen (It Is The Way Of My People) but I'll just say, please let's all do our best to keep bad things at bay, and see you here next year.

Palm, tree.

It's Palm Sunday, a holy day I've written about in the past. The Mass is actually second only to the Easter Vigil in its length. I've headed into church some years when the crowds were running into the crowds from the previous Mass just leaving-- normally a half hour gap. (The local parish has since scheduled morning Masses with an hour gap instead.)

Today is also the first day of spring, which makes for an interesting contrast. Palm Sunday is a day in which the Passion is read, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem ending in the Crucifixion. It is not a day of hope; it may be the biggest day of irony in history. Spring, though, is a day of hope, and has been since the earth started turning.

There are similarities between the days too. Spring, of course, is when we hope to see the lazy deciduous trees start budding, although I am always disappointed. Palm Sunday also has a connection to trees, a very strong one.

Palms, of course, are central; palm branches were cut down and used to lay them across the path of Jesus and to wave them in honor, as for a mighty king. This led soon enough to a different tree, one whose wood became the cross upon which Jesus hung. And of course, the whole sacrifice was required to redeem us from the sin of those who ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Which made me think about my tree, the one I tried to save last September. While walking the dog I found an evergreen that was nearly strangled to death by a wicked pokeberry vine. The vine had completely grown up from the trunk through the branches, destroying the beautiful tree, leaving mostly branches bare of needles, brittle, broken. The few branches with green needles gave me hope that it might be saved.

I went back and chopped the vine at its base. It died. Yesterday I went to see if the tree had rebounded.

Looked better in pieces, but the needles were tipped with red and pulled out easily. Far too much of it looked like this:

I don't even know if there's any reason to hope for this tree, but I still do. It's not dead yet. It may be that the vicious vine was throttling it so long that its growth was severely affected, rendering it unable to survive with or without the crippling weed.

When I first encountered it, it was certain that it was going to die. At least I gave it a chance. But there is still plenty of reason to doubt if it will survive.

Tunnel.

Enough kvetching! I hereby declare 2016 to be the year we see the light, or at least the light at the end of the tunnel! 

I'm sure it's there.

I never quite believed anyone who says they didn't worry about the future, or at least for a long time I didn't believe such a thing was possible. I think it's a lot more rare than your affirmation-posting pals on Facebook would like you to think it is. I come from a long line of worriers; it is the way of my people. If we were not worried about immediate crises -- bills, stupid family members, hangnails, school tests, medical tests, etc. -- we could worry about the shadow of death that hangs over each of us. If that was not enough, we could worry about nuclear war, the next ice age, meteors, or just God choosing to roll up the carpet and call it a day while we were in the middle of doing the worst sin of our lives. There was always something to fret about.

I truly believe that more than 90 percent of the people who tell you they never worry are full of crap. Worry is a basic human reaction, a means of trying to control the uncontrollable. I don't say these people are lying to you, but they may be lying to themselves. The effort of keeping worry at bay has always worn me out; it was easier just to worry.

People whom I have met who really do seem to have licked the worry problem are both mentally and emotionally better balanced than I am, and generally have a much stronger faith in a higher power. I think I can count those people on one hand. I don't include people who don't fear the future because they have just given up on life; catatonia or suicidal ideation are poor cures for worry, if indeed they can be considered as such.

I don't think declarations or slogans are going to really turn my personality around at this stage. Any recommendations?