If you believe Juliet when she said “Take yer name and stick it where the sun don’t shine because I’m not getting screwed out of a good screwing on accounta your father thinks my father is a Veronese dickwad” (or words to that effect that also mentions “a rose” severally and sequentially), a name is just a name.
There’s a new name in my life: Owen North Case, born on Feb. 18, a strapping chap with lungs to suit his bulk. Almost ten pounds, this little bucko looks to have all the makings of the kind of son any one would want, if they did want. And this guy was so wanted. By mum and dad most certainly, and then unsurprisingly by some grandparents who had yet to experience the continuation of the race on such a personal note.
A grace note really. Though he’s but a few days old I have actually met the 12th generation Case to be born on this soil. It gave me pause to think that it has taken almost 400 years for Owen to get here. Every 33 years, or so, one of his ancestors was born (I am just twice as old as my 32 year old son). Those grand-cestors went about the serious business of staying alive through all the wars and plagues that could have winnowed the line with consequences so dire as there might never have been a Smoking Jacket. But the name lives, and the lad’s incipient blog, The Burping Cloth, is already as old as he is. It is most fortunate that we share the same great editor.
There was no agenbite of inwit that made my heart leap when I laid my eyes on his big blurry blue ones over this past weekend. Having been the father of brand new babies I knew that the digital count and a pronounced in-and-out motion of the chest was the main concern. When Sonny Jim came out, in an upscale University hospital, I believed the Doc when he brushed off the gargantuan dents in the skull as “temporary, and typical” when a baby is yanked out with forceps the size of Harley handlebars. “A fine little football player” was the first thing I heard. And when it registered, I remember thinking that it was an odd thing for the young female anesthetist to say in the ‘70s. But rather than rendering gender, she was thinking that his head looked like it already had a helmet on.
Now that was a trip. Though I have treated myself to a generous helping of the recreational pleasures of that long ago Learycal day, I could never quite describe the feeling that I did or didn’t experience when I saw that brand new life form tautly drawn from its mother. Holey Moley! eh Heth? It was almost like a death. It is so hard to fathom what you just saw with your own eyes and at the same time absorb the ineluctable consequences. For days it would come back to me in a flash (as they say) going about my normal routine. The fact that I owned a little baby startled me.
It wasn’t like when Jess was born and I was 23 and took it in stride as my due. We brought her home in a pink card board box from the hospital that had “Baby Case” written on it, even though she was the only kid born that week in North Cornflake. I suppose that’s better than “Jess-icka.”
But, when Sonny was born ten years later, I was in a totally different mind set. We had tried for a long time, and though I love “trying” we started to think maybe we had to seriously consider what we would do if no baby wanted us. After an anguishing year we got the thumbs up and so I had the rest of the nine months to worry myself foolish about the plausible what-ifs. Though never religious after I gave up the cloth (I was a Latin spouting alter boy till I was 16 – don’t even go there!), I started trying to brown-nose god by asking to be made strong if the toe-count was off, or any other limiting thing might happen that would make our baby less perfect than he actually turned out to be.
The delivery was a soulless hell for his mother on account of the extra hat size for all those brains and she had to stay in the lying-in till the stitches came out. I think I did most of the right things in a sincere effort to show that I understood and cared. But there is no freaking way any man can fathom what women go through. You can only try by imagining what it would feel like for you to pass a flaming porcupine.
Now the torch has been passed and I know that little O is in the best possible hands. In April he will move to Chicago. After pre-school he might think about becoming a community organizer. And perhaps he could go into teaching at some future date, say at the famous eponymous University out there. After that he might even just want to … I’m just sayin’, run for office.
Lighten up. It could happen.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
A NH winter morning
It’s not bad enough that we’ve got snow UTYA and the temperature has been 50 degrees below freezing most of the days of official winter and above 32 only once in recent memory. In fact it’s three above zero right now and it’s about to get a little cooler in here.
Rising before dawn, I turned up the heat and put on the coffee. Then I came in here to check the news and get my feet warm where the oil burner blows right on ‘em. Only not today. I noticed with a white knuckled dread that the familiar thrum of fossil fuel being turned into bone warming BTUs was absent.
Still dark, I grabbed a flashlight and slipped on Bean boots because I have to go outside to enter the cellar through the bulkhead. I had kept it shoveled all winter for such an emergency but some of the frozen stuff had calved off the roof and now needed to be broken up before it could even be shoveled. I got a shovel from the garage and came back to the task. When I finally snapped the door open it flipped a quart of snow into the boot of my sockless left foot. I think I cursed.
In the cellar I pressed the little red reset button and went back into the house to enjoy my cold coffee. The furnace stayed on only long enough for me to get boots off and my foot dry. Back on with boots, jacket and gloves and I reentered Dante’s refer and mashed the stupid little goddam red button. This time I waited. It went off and I mashed and it went off and I mashed and then, hateful silence.
I have on a sweater, long johns and slipper socks. I don’t even want to know what the inside temp is.
Twice this year I have been up on the roof to shovel the couple of feet of snow that accumulated. You have to get at this stuff while it’s fluff or it’ll turn to cement in the rain and only a teenage back is up to the task. Of course the little pirates get $50 an hour so it is good to get it done by one’s self. Now I can’t even push it off the roof anymore because the snow is stacked up to the eaves. The guy who plows the drive came back with his front loader and back hoe so that he could redistribute the Andes that have closed in our driveway so that even the Cooper can’t turn around. He doesn’t get quite as much as the teen hijackers but it ain’t cheap and according to the Farmer’s Almanac I expect he will be back before the croci crack through the last piles at the end of April.
Okay, now I’m getting those nose icicles you see on little kids and if I wasn’t heading to Phil’s later I would be tempted to pour a schnick into the last cup of coffee. We both have jackets on as we wait for the oil man who was scheduled to come today anyway. Florida sounds awfully damn good. Umbrella drinks at Ocean Alley on the boardwalk watching the ocean liners go by and that woman with the Harley bod who skates backwards with a monkey on her shoulder and very little else between her skin and the sun’s rays. Or Isla Mujeres, though I’ve never been there. I just know it’s hot and always five o’clock. Round trip for under three hundred bucks or six hours of roof shoveling. My fingers are numbing. I still don’t want to know how cold it is in here. This is what happens when typing with gloves on. Not bad, eh? My Christmas scarf dhelps too. It’s two and a half hours since I called the oil company. Nopt dmuch you c an do. It’s just one of the things you almost l;earn to live wioth, like the roof shovelers. I just lookef and the temp is 48, INSIDE!!
Oh ho! Do my wondering eyes deceive? No, it is the big yellow truck that I called for three and a half hours ago. No explanation why we weren’t on auto delivery as we had contracted for. Very nice man. Very apologetic. I had to put the baseball bat away. “I’m just the driver. You’ll have to call headquarters in Montreal to find out how they missed it.” Right. All is forgiven. Sweetness and light prevails.
Rising before dawn, I turned up the heat and put on the coffee. Then I came in here to check the news and get my feet warm where the oil burner blows right on ‘em. Only not today. I noticed with a white knuckled dread that the familiar thrum of fossil fuel being turned into bone warming BTUs was absent.
Still dark, I grabbed a flashlight and slipped on Bean boots because I have to go outside to enter the cellar through the bulkhead. I had kept it shoveled all winter for such an emergency but some of the frozen stuff had calved off the roof and now needed to be broken up before it could even be shoveled. I got a shovel from the garage and came back to the task. When I finally snapped the door open it flipped a quart of snow into the boot of my sockless left foot. I think I cursed.
In the cellar I pressed the little red reset button and went back into the house to enjoy my cold coffee. The furnace stayed on only long enough for me to get boots off and my foot dry. Back on with boots, jacket and gloves and I reentered Dante’s refer and mashed the stupid little goddam red button. This time I waited. It went off and I mashed and it went off and I mashed and then, hateful silence.
I have on a sweater, long johns and slipper socks. I don’t even want to know what the inside temp is.
Twice this year I have been up on the roof to shovel the couple of feet of snow that accumulated. You have to get at this stuff while it’s fluff or it’ll turn to cement in the rain and only a teenage back is up to the task. Of course the little pirates get $50 an hour so it is good to get it done by one’s self. Now I can’t even push it off the roof anymore because the snow is stacked up to the eaves. The guy who plows the drive came back with his front loader and back hoe so that he could redistribute the Andes that have closed in our driveway so that even the Cooper can’t turn around. He doesn’t get quite as much as the teen hijackers but it ain’t cheap and according to the Farmer’s Almanac I expect he will be back before the croci crack through the last piles at the end of April.
Okay, now I’m getting those nose icicles you see on little kids and if I wasn’t heading to Phil’s later I would be tempted to pour a schnick into the last cup of coffee. We both have jackets on as we wait for the oil man who was scheduled to come today anyway. Florida sounds awfully damn good. Umbrella drinks at Ocean Alley on the boardwalk watching the ocean liners go by and that woman with the Harley bod who skates backwards with a monkey on her shoulder and very little else between her skin and the sun’s rays. Or Isla Mujeres, though I’ve never been there. I just know it’s hot and always five o’clock. Round trip for under three hundred bucks or six hours of roof shoveling. My fingers are numbing. I still don’t want to know how cold it is in here. This is what happens when typing with gloves on. Not bad, eh? My Christmas scarf dhelps too. It’s two and a half hours since I called the oil company. Nopt dmuch you c an do. It’s just one of the things you almost l;earn to live wioth, like the roof shovelers. I just lookef and the temp is 48, INSIDE!!
Oh ho! Do my wondering eyes deceive? No, it is the big yellow truck that I called for three and a half hours ago. No explanation why we weren’t on auto delivery as we had contracted for. Very nice man. Very apologetic. I had to put the baseball bat away. “I’m just the driver. You’ll have to call headquarters in Montreal to find out how they missed it.” Right. All is forgiven. Sweetness and light prevails.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Reporting on the reporters
Watching BBC news is a good idea every now and then if for no other reason than to understand it’s not all about us. There are the usual hot spots in the mid East but I only found out this a.m. that our only American airbase in the region (Kyrgyzstan) that supplies our troops in Afghanistan has just been sold to the Russkies for a couple of billion dollars. BBC made it sound like the US wouldn’t pony up the paltry sum, so the head of that country went for the best deal. Now we have to send our stuff through the Khyber pass, a no-fun zone to be sure.
Mind, the Iraqi war still costs ten to twelve billions a month but we’re supposedly winding that down. We know fewer people are dying and we have to assume that the Dexter Filkins-like patrols are not still going on so that our troops are measurably safer and there are cost savings in that. Couldn’t we have spared some money from there to keep that Kyrgy base for ourselves plus blocking Putin from getting it (I know there’s a real president, Medvedev, but he don’t count)? Plus, there is talk of putting in 20 to 30 thousand troops (government types have a tendency to round out numbers in the most obfuscating way) in Afghanaland who will surely be needing supplies.
This is apparently a bigger deal to me than it is to the ‘Merican media who can talk about Tom Daschle’s dilemma and parse the “I screwed up” statement until the cows come home. What crap! Iranians are now orbiting the earth, North Koreans are moving missiles to newly constructed launch sites, The Levant is totally screwed and Maureen Dowd is predicting that disgraced Daschle’s eye-glasses will become a new fashion fad.
It makes sense that with many major newspapers around the world having to trim their budgets it’s a lot cheaper to get stories by just calling or texting contacts to find how what Michelle O’bama wore to the second grade story-time with her husband. It’s a no brainer to just read what others have written and then disagree. And I do wonder how many ways one can disagree. It’s a bit like buying short in the market and hoping things turn out for the worst so your story will have a tinge of truth in it. Ooooh, the Prince of Peace said he was going to change Washington, but ... is he really?
Don’t these latest missteps in the first fourteen days of his administration prove that The One has been under the spell of Rev. Wrong all this time and has a secret cabal to destroy all that is good and holy in the land of the free? Rush doesn’t even want him to succeed. But at least I can understand that. If BHO does well, then the bilious bloviater is in a pinch to explain that to his adoring acolytes.
I shouldn’t be talking about Rush though. Not when I see that J. T. Plumber is back in the news (truly) as a consultant to the Republican party. This guy gives me an eye ache as big as the one I get when I just see an image of Milorad Blago. Letterman killed him last night and he smiles right on through. He’s been kicked out and condemned. He smiles more. He is traduced by all that he sucks up to and he’s all hair and teeth. What a worthy subject for the news.
I happen to think that the media is in cahoots with Congress. In this latest House version of the stimulus bill, we are supposed to believe (again) that the need is crushing. To stall is to guarantee certain economic failure for us and the world. Yet the dumb Ds stick junk into the bill that predictably sets the Rs spinning dizzily in front of Capital Hill mics and the back and forthing is what gets reported. It is more fun to reduce a provision for family planning (a known cure for reigning in house hold expenses) to, “hundreds of millions for rubbers,” than it is to have an honest debate with historical facts and professorial prognostication to determine which really is better: two thirds stimulus to a third tax cuts, or the opposite. I listened to three guys discussing this yesterday on the way to work and they were fairly yelling at each other. Nothing was resolved after an hour of this poisonous prating.
One wonders if anything will ever be resolved. And then there’s poor Latvia.
Mind, the Iraqi war still costs ten to twelve billions a month but we’re supposedly winding that down. We know fewer people are dying and we have to assume that the Dexter Filkins-like patrols are not still going on so that our troops are measurably safer and there are cost savings in that. Couldn’t we have spared some money from there to keep that Kyrgy base for ourselves plus blocking Putin from getting it (I know there’s a real president, Medvedev, but he don’t count)? Plus, there is talk of putting in 20 to 30 thousand troops (government types have a tendency to round out numbers in the most obfuscating way) in Afghanaland who will surely be needing supplies.
This is apparently a bigger deal to me than it is to the ‘Merican media who can talk about Tom Daschle’s dilemma and parse the “I screwed up” statement until the cows come home. What crap! Iranians are now orbiting the earth, North Koreans are moving missiles to newly constructed launch sites, The Levant is totally screwed and Maureen Dowd is predicting that disgraced Daschle’s eye-glasses will become a new fashion fad.
It makes sense that with many major newspapers around the world having to trim their budgets it’s a lot cheaper to get stories by just calling or texting contacts to find how what Michelle O’bama wore to the second grade story-time with her husband. It’s a no brainer to just read what others have written and then disagree. And I do wonder how many ways one can disagree. It’s a bit like buying short in the market and hoping things turn out for the worst so your story will have a tinge of truth in it. Ooooh, the Prince of Peace said he was going to change Washington, but ... is he really?
Don’t these latest missteps in the first fourteen days of his administration prove that The One has been under the spell of Rev. Wrong all this time and has a secret cabal to destroy all that is good and holy in the land of the free? Rush doesn’t even want him to succeed. But at least I can understand that. If BHO does well, then the bilious bloviater is in a pinch to explain that to his adoring acolytes.
I shouldn’t be talking about Rush though. Not when I see that J. T. Plumber is back in the news (truly) as a consultant to the Republican party. This guy gives me an eye ache as big as the one I get when I just see an image of Milorad Blago. Letterman killed him last night and he smiles right on through. He’s been kicked out and condemned. He smiles more. He is traduced by all that he sucks up to and he’s all hair and teeth. What a worthy subject for the news.
I happen to think that the media is in cahoots with Congress. In this latest House version of the stimulus bill, we are supposed to believe (again) that the need is crushing. To stall is to guarantee certain economic failure for us and the world. Yet the dumb Ds stick junk into the bill that predictably sets the Rs spinning dizzily in front of Capital Hill mics and the back and forthing is what gets reported. It is more fun to reduce a provision for family planning (a known cure for reigning in house hold expenses) to, “hundreds of millions for rubbers,” than it is to have an honest debate with historical facts and professorial prognostication to determine which really is better: two thirds stimulus to a third tax cuts, or the opposite. I listened to three guys discussing this yesterday on the way to work and they were fairly yelling at each other. Nothing was resolved after an hour of this poisonous prating.
One wonders if anything will ever be resolved. And then there’s poor Latvia.
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