Year end reflections on 2010

Our winter started in the last ravages of 2009 as everyone knows but they play a part in the story of 2010. The week prior to Christmas we received an early snow of over 20 inches. It was our greeting to winter.

Under normal circumstances those of us in Baltimore expect that every four or five years we will get a lumbering storm that will dump large amounts of snow on us. While my youth spent in Michigan provided me with far colder temperatures that started earlier and lasted longer, they rarely gave us a 20 inch snowfall.
Christmas Eve and the day itself provided us with warmish and torrential rains that obliterated all vestiges of the snow that had fallen only a few days before. New Years Day also was a day of rain so we had no indication that a rather remarkable snowfall ever occurred.

January came and I have little to remember it by. We did have an unusual (at least it was unusual in the not so distant past) warm spell in mid month which was exactly when I had a meeting in West Virginia some 100 miles to the west. It was a good time for it as it made the pleasant drive all the more nice.

While trying to refinance my house I had some serious basement improvements to make and so my spare time was doing lousy construction work on my basement. Most every dreary evening and weekend was spent tearing out old drywall and replacing it with cheap paneling. My effort was not at improvement but at the appearance of improvement. I knew it, the inspector knew it and most of all the finance company knew it. At any rate the sham worked and I refinanced late in the month.
Then February came and with it devastating snows. I have chronicled this back then on these pages. It was devastating and cost me a lot of money in property damages and it was beautiful. The awesome ravages of nature have a dual edge. While they so often ruin what we have worked hard for, they remind us of their power and glory and they regurgitate the earth and its many semblances in too often beautiful ways. We cannot complain about Mother Nature though we would like to. We cannot complain because there is no one listening. The wrath of nature is what we endure but not something we control.

February was not brutal in its temperature but it was in its precipitation and so I took a lot of house damage including my (beloved) porch roof; the one that shaded me for afternoon grilling or morning reading. I wanted to replace it with a vine canopy and that is slower growing than I assumed. I think it will take off in 2011 as I have added a lot of new Swedish Ivy to the mix late this summer.
In one mid February week we received something like 42 inches of snow. This meant time off of work and being home with the heat on all day. It meant over consumption borne of an ennui that is known as cabin fever. It means shoveling snow several different hours of the day. I imagine myself to be pretty hale but in reality age reminded my back and my knees that these tasks need to be done in moderation. I held a motto during that week and that was “Don’t make shoveling of snow the last thing you ever do”.

I took a brief vacation in very late February going up to New Hampshire to see my friend whose wife traveled to British Columbia either to ensure she would not see me or to go to the winter Olympics. So often when I go visit them the precipitation flows and this time was no different. Since it is enough north of here there was plenty of winter left. It rained or snowed pretty much every minute I was there. The electricity failed and we ended up spending a night in a Manchester motel. It was a nice visit but a fairly lousy “vacation”.

March was uneventful for me. The typical weather (which is truly awful) was not there. Rather than the 38 degree rain that seems to last forever we pretty much segued into spring pretty decently. In mid February I quit cable television and found myself devoting more time to reading and garden preparing. I had big plans for a garden this year and its relative failure will be explained soon. I think March and April were the calmest times of 2010 for me. I revel in early spring as it brings with it the mud and birdsong and smell of last fall’s leaves in early decay. During that time I make a birthday gift to myself every year by recording a pre-dawn hour of the newly arrived birds in my yard. During that time the birds are heading north and so many short timers alight in my yard.

This year in early April we hit 90 degrees for a few days; it is less unusual all the time. I finalized the garden prep and at the end of the month planted the tomatoes and peppers. It was also warm enough to clean up the mess that left from my collapsed porch roof and the collateral damage that occurred with that fall. At the very end of the month I was brevetted to Chief Information Officer for four months. This role was on top of my normal role so I was filling in two jobs. There is nothing so thankless as that since so many more people can be displeased with the jobs that have to be tweaked to make any semblance efficiency. As one might imagine, this means many less personal hours and many more devoted to work. It also included routinely working in Washington DC making my daily travel go from about 2 hours to 5 hours.

Then came May and the onset of the most brutal summer (in so many ways) that I’ve ever experienced. It was hot when I left the house at 5:15 am to go to work and it was hot when I arrived home at 8:00 that night. Not only was I too tired to go to the garden for maintenance, it was too hot as well. My central air conditioning broke and I had no resources to fix it. It was in May that my youngest daughter moved out and got her first apartment. It was in May that I was alerted to an urban rookery of Yellow Crowned Night Herons which became my passion for the early summer. Even that had some tragedy however as in June, only a week after the newest chicks had hatched, the nest disappeared and its place was only the white paint dung on the branches that had held it.

It was in May when my oldest daughter took her sister’s room for the summer. I had company for much of the season and that provided a relief and a release. I could let go of much of the pressure I was under, with the intellectual exchange that always goes with a conversation with her.

When her sister got her own apartment I was able to provide her with materials and enjoy my truly guilty pleasure of haunting yard sales and buying things that I do not need. Her first apartment bombed due to the lifestyles of her roommates but she got a second one that worked out much better.

For the next several months I awoke to the oppressive heat in order to work 10 or 12 hours and come home with the knowledge that the job I have held for over 9 years was coming to a close. As an employee of Veterans Affairs I am under the Federal Government. I have been a “term” employee for all of those years and that means that at various intervals I have to re-apply for my job. Military veterans (of which I am not) get priority points in the hiring process and it was determined that based on the point system, I was not qualified to do my job. This is a job that posted my work record as “Outstanding” and one that gave me a raise shortly before my final day. There ultimately was a happy ending and I am not selling apples. The whole ordeal was long and torturous and very ironic. The ironies I may describe in some other posting.

Just to make the summer more challenging my daughter borrowed my car and totaled it on the 4th of July. Since I still had payments on it and it was an old car, the premium I got from the insurance company was not enough to try to buy another car especially in the rather dire employment situation I was in. That story too had a happy ending but believe me when I say that it was difficult to see a happy ending to anything at about July 30.

There are friends and family to come to the rescue and be the safety net one needs in stressful times. There was my friend from Severna Park who provided a vehicle with no strings (and I returned it with little gas because I was so self absorbed with my own worries that I forgot to load it up upon return) attached but more importantly some sagacity and moral support. There was my friend from New Hampshire who also lent the moral support but also sent me a check for enough money to tide me over for months (fortunately for both of us it sits in a drawer only saved as a memento of the value of friends). There was my friend from Redford Michigan checking up on me and my status with routine. There was my sister who stopped her work day to pick me up from the airport and drive me for a few hours to my parent’s house. The reason for that trip was because my mother was giving me her car with no other reason than to help when I needed it. There was my boss who twisted, tweaked, strangled and wrenched the system to assure me that my job status would be restored after only a week of unemployment. It was not actually restored as my status changed so that I became a permanent employee without the dark cloud of reapplying ever to enter the picture again.

All of those folksy witticisms that are meant to calm worrying people in dire straits do not work. We are not thankful that others are worse off than us nor do we care about it being the darkest before the dawn. We all know that. All the well meaning adages do not mean as much as heartfelt concern and practical solutions and I am reminded that those things come from friends and family.

When I am despairing I fluctuate between moods of hopelessness and planfulness. I think the very worst things for a while then position them against some option that is pretty future oriented even if it includes drastic lifestyle changes. I spent about 90 days in that yo-yo ride of emotions and in the end I am where I was before the 90 days. I am working my job with the security an old man like me needs and with the complaints that an old man like me has merited but here is the difference. I figured on so many different future options I now realize that if things go south for me I have a bagful of opportunities to explore.
Thanks everyone for your help.

I did get some odd comfort during the summer and that was the arrival of a ground hog, first found in the next door neighbor’s garage but feasting on my overgrown yard in full view of my kitchen window. The animal was mostly unfamiliar to me when I saw it for the first time. I correctly guessed the species but that was close to dumb luck and I researched it to assure myself as to what it was. Well a groundhog is about as cute as it gets. It is like a mouse to the 12th power. It is an avid eater discriminating towards softer green shoots and since I was not a good gardener or landscaper this year there was plenty of good vittles for this creature. They were good enough for it to move to a dwelling beneath my deck. Around 4 or so every afternoon (well at least weekends when I was more apt to be home to see it), it came out to dine. When I imagined that it was sated or nearly so I would make my presence know only to see it flee. A running groundhog is sort of like a cartoon. The enormous amount of fat would bounce heavily as it leapt away and to its supposed safety. So there you have it; some cheap entertainment.

Then it was mid September and during my week of unemployment I spent some time in Pittsburgh visiting a friend. One might wonder why Pittsburgh and the answer is that it is about halfway from my home of the last 30 years and the home in Detroit where I spent most of the previous 30. So lifelong friends and I can meet there with minimal inconvenience and if one does it right, Pittsburgh can be wonderful; for instance mid to late September when the weather seems to be annually divine. The second is to stay right downtown so that the rivers are there and in this last case, the city fireworks going off nearly straight overhead on a warm fall evening.
Fall is the right time to be in Maryland. The temperatures are soothing, the colors great (towards the end of the season). It is fairly dry so birding hikes are not cumbersome. Really though, a trip to Ithaca, NY really should be in the works and for me it was. I visited my friends there in early October and the drive and weather were as sublime as they have been in the past. Driving along the Susquehanna for a long while and entering the mountains in northern PA then into NY for the last 40 or so miles to Ithaca are spectacular that time of year. Visiting my friends there is always a much needed respite and this year it was spent visiting the cheese open houses and vineyard open houses that dotted Lake Cayuga that particular weekend. When I rule the world I will never be thwarted from another early October visit for friends, weather and the other things that come with it. I nearly forgot. I love the Ithaca Farmers Market and that is always part of the itinerary.

My youngest moved to Olympia, WA on November 2nd. I encouraged her to do this all the while knowing that I will miss her dearly. She and I have been through a lot together. She is pretty far away. Thanksgiving has for many years been my favorite day. Not so much the last few but I still get the aroma of the day permeating the house. This year my oldest daughter and I went to some friend’s house for the feast and that worked well. On the home front I bought a small turkey and cut it in half. I made a small traditional meal on Wednesday night. I chopped the rest of the parts up and cooked them in a mole sauce. I gave my daughter much of that for future dining and froze some (after one meal of course) for my own future.

Her being out west reminded me of how precious our relationship has been. We went through a divorce, tumultuous teen years and her enlightened moments. She has a pragmatic and utilitarian perspective. As an analytical and empirical thinker she has been able to see through the nonsense clutter thrown at us continually. She growing up and making life plans as she ought to. All the same I will miss seeing her but she is not my “child” any longer.

Then as always, December arrived. The first 10 days much colder than normal but at least we had strong winds on many of those days. Our first hint of snow was on December 5th and the first that coated the ground even for a few hours was on December 10. It did not last long but the cold did with the exception of a dark and dank Sunday that actually returned for 15 or so hours to the 50s. It was an example of damning with faint praise in that while the day was warmer, it was an uglier day than those that preceded it and succeeded it. What has marked December has been the severe winds and the unusual early cold. We are having late January weather before winter has actually come to be.

I write this on New Year’s Eve and realize that the year was a difficult one but I got all I really need from it as I approach dotage. I want to stay fresh and never go stale.

I always enjoy the holidays and likewise glad when they are over. I ask little of them and my return is simple. This year the extent of decoration was decorative stockings taped to doors and chemically reproachable scented candles. It included a dinner of stuffed duck with Teutonicaly prepared sides. The duck failed but everything else was good. The remaining duck became “Grandmother’s Duck Noodle Soup” and that did work.

That was Christmas Eve and on the day itself my local daughter and I went to a dinner with friends at an Indian Restaurant. That is a good way to end the Christmas Holiday.

I’m very leery about associating people’s names to events and particulars on the web. If I were everybody it wouldn’t matter but alas I am not. Every one of you who is reading this know yourself as you read. Thanks to everyone and you folks in particular.

My first adventure with Great Courses

For several years I have been inundated with advertisements for the Great Courses. The company even sends out a sampler CD every few years. The two that I remember were on Gnosticism which holds no interest to me but I enjoyed the lecture. It was cogent and the instructor easy to listen to. The other was on some phenomena of physics which appeals to me far more. In this case the instructor spoke at such a rapid pace I could hardly hear him let alone take notes. I was left undecided as to the efficacy of these “courses”.
They are not exactly courses. They are lectures of approximately 30 minutes each and include a .pdf that is an overview of each lecture. They come on DVD and I suppose you could view the instructor though for the life of me I do not understand the value of that. Audio is fine for me.

An allure to the Great Courses that has stuck with me was in its advertisement that suggested that some of the best times of our lives was when we were in an educational environment and were learning new and intriguing things. That rendered a fairly romantic image in my mind of someone from centuries ago living in a student’s barrack without enough heat and reading by candlelight. Well I am not Liebniz or Dostoyevsky but I did really enjoy being a student and sitting at a desk with a coffee (and…well yes cigarettes) and poring over material that was inspirational in its newness.

I did not buy their product for many years and finally did recently. I chose the cheapest route which was a download of 12 lectures. The subject was the Making of the Constitution. This is a subject in which I am more than moderately acquainted with and have an abiding interest in. The lecturer was professor emeritus (I have a suspicion that most of their lecturers are emeritus) Daniel Robinson. His style was easy to work with. Never hyperkinetic and often restating his case using different word in order to emphasize his takes on the situation or person. Robinson was clearly a traditional conservative (to the extent that one lecture juxtaposed Paine and Burke with Burke coming out the favorite). His presentation of the events and heroes of the events leading to the ultimate Constitution was well made.

Another suspicion of mine is that Great Courses is intent on presenting a pretty conservative bent on its wide array of classes. I have only taken one but I read the catalogues routinely. I liked it well enough to take another after the holidays. The next one will be in the hard sciences-probably biological in nature so I am not in over my head. It is harder to put an ideological spin on a hard science. Should an attempt be made to put any ideology on a science course I would end my efforts to make use of Great Courses.

I enjoyed and learned from Robinson’s lectures but was put off by two aspects of the formula. The first is that each lecture was introduced by pompous classical music of the Thomas Arne ilk. It may have even been an Arne piece but I don’t remember as I write this. Everyone has heard it. The second problem was the applause that accompanied every lecture. I was an undergraduate once and a graduate student twice.

In general we had about four emotions towards our instructor. They were mentors; they were decent profs; we did not care one way or another and finally we thought they failed as instructors. I never once heard a clap or a boo. Perhaps Leibniz or Dostoyevsky were obligated in their day and place to so honor a professor, I never was.

Anyway my first venture into Great Courses was worth my while so I will give it two more tries. Should the next one be unsatisfactory I’ll make my ongoing decision based on the third. I never buy anything with two straight bad experiences.