A Day in the Life of Chaos

I think the true measure of a man or of a woman for that matter is what they do with the entirety of their life.  No snapshot in time is good enough.  Only looking back at what they did, how they gave, how they treated others is it truly possible to pass judgement. As sparks fly in American presidential politics I think it is important to look back at our past presidents within living memory and consider what kind of men they were.  I think if anything is a true measure of the person it occurs in the post presidential years.  These are the years when these men whom reached the pinnacle of their own egos and power have to find a new voice and a new role.  They have spent their lives climbing in office and suddenly they can go no further.  They reached the zenith of ambition. I am not ashamed in the least at my liberal leanings and perhaps the error of my entire premise is that I approach it from a liberal perspective.  Liberals tend to focus on the we not the me and on humanity as a

This past weekend my niece gave birth.  She produced a tiny creature of six pounds nine ounces that gurgled and scowled like all babies do when they greet the cold reality of the world.  When I looked at the wrinkled face I couldn't help but remember my theory that we go out of life the same way we come in.  Her face looked like the wrinkled scowling face of an old person.  She wore diapers and a nurse had to wash her.  She won't eat solid foods.  Someone will carry her around and pay for her needs.  Why is the expected for an infant yet indignity for the old? Welcome to the world of parenthood I thought as I stood on one side of the hospital room looking at my niece laying in her bed.  Around her sat friends and relatives excited about the new arrival.  One girl her age held the baby for a few moments before squirming away confused on what to do.  As joyous as it all seemed there is a dark side to this story.  You see, my niece is sixteen years old.  With a person so young n

Sometimes I think that the rings of a tree are the perfect metaphor for our lives.  When you look at a tree from the outside the only thing we notice is how fat or skinny it is.  How short or how tall.  Sadly as humans we are not Sequoias spanning the ages and when our tree is cut and ceases to live we find the story of its growth between each ring.  Some are pitifully narrow while others are wide signifying a lot of growth during one year of it's life.  I think if I was a tree a close analysis would find one short period spanning a single year from 1987 to 1988 where there was enormous growth. I lived in Vienna, Austria during this time attending a foreign study program. After extensive research into foreign study possibilities I had decided on the Institute of European Studies.  It seemed the perfect opportunity to combine living in Europe with cultural awakening, the forbidden cloak of Eastern European Communism and just being independent, far away from home.  Eager to pursue

They say when you learn to ride a bicycle you never forget.  While technically this is true, there are times when I truly wish it was not. I like to think of myself as a 44 year old man in reasonably good condition.  I mean I have pudge but it isn't excessive.  I am energetic and I like to take long walks.  Wait, that almost sounds like a personal add on Match.com.   I most certainly am not an Adonis but in truth I never was.  Ahh  Adoinis... that symbol of all that it is to be a man.  Sheltered by Aphrodite as a young man he represents virility and strength.  Beauty and grace.  He also has a nice pecker that in the case of the Roman version pictured was not hacked off by Pope Pius IX when he set about removing all depictions of the male member in the Vatican and covering them with a fig leaf..  Over Christmas my father and son convinced me to go on a mountain bike ride with them.  Columbia, SC is blessed with a beautiful mountain bike trail park and it seemed like a good idea.

Sally Goodloe Christmas and the New Year is a time of reflection. In truth it is simply an artificial line in the sand yet for some reason, it serves as a bookmark, the end of a chapter and the beginning of a new one.  A book is a wonderful parable for life.  It has a beginning and an end, a start and a conclusion. When it comes to an end we place it on a shelf where it eventually becomes forgotten.  Perhaps someday, someone will pull the book down and re-read the story, bringing the characters to life once again. We all change in life.  Day by day, hour by our we age and the exterior shape we once occupied ceases to exist.  Despite this fact, sometimes things in life are hard to accept, even hard to look at.  They can be things we love or things we hate.  Either way, there are times when the healing process is so slow the reintroduction of them into our lives takes time.  Sometimes it never happens and we end up dying with the ghosts of our past.  Sally Goodloe

We all have secret little measures that we use to guide and gauge our lives as we make our own journey along the path from birth to death.  They are hidden signposts that measure our progress in our personal journey through life. Henry Winkler "Fonzie" One of mine can be found in a very auspicious place.  It is a face I used to watch along with much of America from the dinner table.  One night a week I remember turning around a TV cart with our color TV to face our dinner table while we ate.  So much for idyllic family communication right?  The show was Happy Day's and each week we would tune in to follow the antics of Richie, Potsie, Ralph Malph and of course, Henry Winkler aka The Fonz.  Happy Days ran from 1974 to 1984 and was a kind of generational show that in truth was simple minded and stupid.  Near the end of the shows run the Fonz traveled to California to jump over a shark pen with his motorcycle spawning the phrase "jumping the shark."  It is the

Last night I was sitting with my son.  With fourteen years of age under his belt he was responsibly doing his homework while I at forty-four I was playing a video game.  I was hacking my way across Oblivion when I felt his finger touch the skin behind my ear.  I imagined I must have had some ugly black piece of crud, perhaps a remnant of nuzzling with the dog.  "I don't like that."  He said. "What is it?" I asked him. I wondered, did I have a cancerous spot or something?  He pushed his finger against my skin again pulling it flat. "It's a wrinkle.  I don't want my pop to grow old."  He said hugging me.  "I have gotten used to the age spots you used to not have yet now do but I don't like this wrinkle." He noticed the distress on my face and added in a consoling way, "I guess you are only in your forties Pop, you are not that old." When you are a child everything seems new.  The girls you know have skin still

Today I was on my way to work driving my blue Nissan Cube 25 miles an hour down a four lane street.  In front of me there was a work truck with a large sticker in the window that said "OBAMA" with a communist hammer and sickle and a subscript saying, "United Socialist States of America." On the radio President Obama was giving a speech talking about wanting to create more jobs and save the middle class.  Suddenly I look to my side and see a giant F-something pickup truck changing lanes on top of me.  With inches to spare I honked my horn jammed on my breaks and he pulled off only to finish his merge in front of me.  I noticed the driver had a cellular telephone on his ear.  He turned, looked at me and gave some pathetic I am sorry wave.  I lowered my window and yelled out without obscenity, "GET OFF THE PHONE!" The man responded by turning, flipping me the bird and yelling back, "WELL FUCK YOU THEN!"  He then resumed talking on his phone. W

Alfredo (L) Me on (R) Today is the last day at work for one of my best friends.   He is not so old, 53 I think.  Despite his relative youth, in the world of special agents and law enforcement personnel, a special deal is made.  They are allowed to retire with only 20 years of service.   This is largely because the years of long hours and professional stress are expected to take their toll on the body and cause many to die younger.   Being a civil service person but not an agent I need to have 30 years of service and be nearly 57 years of age before I can walk away.  In the overall scheme of things it is still a great deal.  This in a world where many people today wonder if they will ever be able to retire.  I think about this every time I see an elderly woman serving fast food at Chick-fila or an elderly man bagging groceries at the Publix. When you think about it, we spend most of our lives working.  Over the years many of us spend more time with our co-workers than we ever do w

I have been having an ongoing conversation with my father about the Occupy Wall Street protests going on around the nation and how they compare to the protests of the 60's.  I was born in the 60's, 1967 to be exact and less then a year later Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were both dead.  I wish I could say I remember it but I believe I was likely more concerned with the flavor of my creamed spinach.  As a result in order to gain perspective I have turned to someone that was much more cognizant of the changes going on in the nation.  In an odd way, we tend to remember the period with some nostalgia yet my father reminds me that it was the seeming hopelessness of it all that drove both him and my mother independently of each other to migrate to Alaska. Bloody Sunday, Selma AL I wanted to know if the protests of the 60's as undefined and counter culture as they were, had an impact on public policy.  My father's conclusions were that they did and he listed a