Being Over Forty

When I turned 40, some friends threw a birthday party for me.  There were the usual gag gifts, including a cane with a bicycle horn on the handle, a box of Depends and a neck lanyard with a notepad on which was written, "Old Fa.."  We all drank and laughed and teased each other shamelessly for hours.  It was all great sport.

There was no sport in this past weekend, for someone stole my cellphone.  

It's my fault.  I was out of town, laid it down for a minute, and when I went to retrieve it, the thing was gone.  I checked with Lost and Found repeatedly over the next few hours, and each time they swore that it had not been turned in.  I think they lied.

Terrified, I called my cellphone carrier.  After straining for a half-hour to understand the "customer service representative," he (I think) relented and killed the phone.

I got back to town and immediately went to the cellphone carrier's store.  A cheerful 12-year-old f .. er, allowed me purchase a replacement at a laughable discount.

The next few hours were spent at home, restoring the new device.  I soon concluded that single-malt scotch was invented for just this occasion.

The new phone wanted passwords for everything: mail, social media, subscriptions, etc.  Being a proper technology consumer, I used different passwords for most things to guard against identity theft.

Being over 40, I could recall very few of those passwords.  So, being over 40, I had written the information down and stored it in a safe place.  But, being over 40, I forgot where that safe place is.  And, being over 40, I had suspected that this would happen one day, so there was a back-up copy, in code, stashed in another secure location: my underwear drawer.

I visit that location daily, and had often wondered what that envelope was.  It was addressed to "Dumb A.."  Inside were several pages written in gibberish. I quickly figured it out.  Funny how terror sharpens the mind, even one over 40.

The new phone is operational, charged, synced up, backed up, GPS tracked, and encased in a booby-trapped Hummer.

Now, to find that lanyard ...

May Elephants Never Forget

After President Obama won reelection, some fool posted a photo of the American flag hanging upside down. That is not what he thinks it is. It is a Naval sign of distress.

I've held off commenting on Mr. Obama's reelection and -- more to the point -- why the GOP got shellacked until I could calm down.

As the misnamed "fiscal cliff" looms, here's what I think.

The GOP lost for the same reason that Ronald Reagan abandoned the Democratic Party in 1962: the party lost its soul. Back then, Reagan said he didn't leave the Democratic Party; the party left him.

And clearly, the GOP left a bunch of others, too, despite the billions spent by corporate and industrial PACs to malign the incumbent as a communist, socialist and mongrel -- among other sins.

Make no mistake: Barack Obama won four years ago on his personal appeal to the masses, especially the underclass, and not on his credentials.

He won this time because you guys came across as extreme right-wing nutjobs. You let Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Fox News define you.

You publicly declared that your Number One objective the past for years was to make Mr. Obama a one-term president. Really? Since when is your job to scuttle the presidency?

That alone disqualified you. You lost this election a long, long time ago. Worse, you didn't realize it 'til the Wednesday after the election. Your state of shock was laughable.

What you should have done the past four years was everything you could do to help this thinly-qualified president by leading us out of the financial crisis that he inherited. Remember the balance of power thing? The U.S. was in crisis, and you idiots abdicated your responsibilities to help. All you did was hinder. You assigned blame (wrongly) and pointed fingers like a bunch of 4-year-olds.

I've talked with enough Republicans and Democrats in Washington over the years to know that there are some fine people who have sacrificed a lot and work hard to do the people's work.

It is time to prove your worth.

Address this fiscal cliff prudently and quickly. We don't want brinksmanship; we want wise leadership.

Follow Harry Truman's example: stand up straight, look us in the eye and tell us the truth.

Unlike you, we can handle it.

Taste

Shortly after my wife and I were married, she announced that she was going to buy me some clothes, as it was painfully evident that I had no taste. No husband of hers was going to wear that in public. Or that.

And that thing? Oh, Hell, no!

My protests fell on deaf ears. I was dragged to the mall, where we spent precious dollars on name-brand clothing which I was raised to believe belonged only to the well-to-do.

It has been thus ever since.

As a result, my closet is as nearly idiot-proof as is possible. When I was getting up at 2am to do morning-drive news, I would basically dress in the dark so as not to disturb her sleep. This meant that any pair of slacks had to go with virtually any shirt. It was a sight to behold.

Wearing name-brand clothing -- and having a reasonable supply of it -- usually means that it lasts longer, so that you actually get more bang for your buck. Go figure.

Over the past few years, I have become a brand buyer. I tried it once, liked it, and found that most everything this company makes is of good quality. More important, it passes muster. And yes, it lasts longer than lesser brands.

Morale: Taste cannot be taught; you either have it, or you don't. If you have it, be thankful. I don't, but I surely have the next best thing.

I'll be wearing my tasteful new shirt to work this week.

Assume

"Curiosity killed the cat." "Cats have nine lives." Which one is true?  Both.   Life is a gamble. I go for the "nine lives" part because of a strong curiosity.  It has served me well as a news guy, but it also is immensely satisfying personally. Was standing in line at a store check-out behind a man wearing a black silk head covering.  There were numerous elaborate tattoos on his arms.  "Nice ink," I said.  He turned around, looked me up and down and turned away.  Later, in the parking lot, he thanked me and said the tats honor a buddy killed in Iraq. Waiting for my food order at Schlotzky's, spotted four police officers at a table waiting on their order.  Walked up and posed a question that I'd wanted to ask for a long time: What's that radar-dome-looking thing on the roof of some police cars? A sergeant explained it.  I promised not to tell. Attended a lecture at SMU featuring Stephen Hawking.  The lecture hall was packed with physics and quantum mechanics and astronomy students.  Completely out of my league,  I took  lots of notes hoping to figure out the subject matter later.  Didn't help. Covering a shooting, arrived before the ambulance.  Asked the victim lying on his back if the wound in his abdomen hurt.  He said it didn't because it was only a .22-calibre bullet.  Did he know the shooter?  Yes, and the wounded man vowed to kick his butt later.  Why?  For being stupid, he said. I could have assumed that the guy with the tattoos was a thug.  Or that the police officers were to be avoided.  Or that the lecture would enlighten.  Or that the wounded man would curse such a question. What they say about the word, "assume," remains true. Mostly.

Church

I went to church last week and spent a few days there.  I go about twice a year.  It never fails to lift my spirits. My church has no steeple, no pews, no organ, no stained glass, no preacher. My fellow parishoners are bears, deer, wolves and other creatures, plus certain other humans. I discovered this church only recently.  A series of revelations led me there. One revelation occurred when I accidentally shot and killed a snowy owl.  I had never seen one until this gorgeous bird fell out of the tree.  From below, mostly hidden in the canopy, it looked like a vulture.  I have hunted before, but killing that magnificent creature broke my heart. Another revelation came when I was a boy learning the Bible.  When I read that God gave us dominion over the Earth and every living thing therein, the idea stuck. Aboard a 727 climbing out of Weir Cook Airport (now Indianapolis International),  I saw dirty grey air pollution until we passed ten thousand feet.  Decades later, it was noticeable up to nearly twenty thousand.  Yup, we humans sure know how to dominion. The Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound infuriated me, as it did many people.  For the next ten years I boycotted Exxon. Have you ever been to a landfill?  Actually climbed onto it, looked at it and smelled it? You've probably seen video of that giant collection of garbage floating in the central North Pacific Ocean.  Human stewardship at its best, I tell ya. Anyway, I spend a few days in the Rockies a couple of times a year.  And every time, I come away thinking, "You should go to church more often."

The Guard

There are of millions of National Guardsmen in the US, all of whom are in constant training. They are our neighbors, friends, family members. Every one I have met is a red-blooded American, proud to serve.

One whom I recently ran into is a 38-year-old US Army sergeant, here in town undergoing a month of training on upgraded attack and transport helicopter electronics. I didn't know that 'til he said he is from California. North Texas was really hot that day. "It's a lot hotter in Iraq," he said. "We have to work early mornings and early evenings to stay out of 140-degree temperatures. It's not good for the helicopters, either." He's to be deployed next month -- again.

There's the 26-year-old woman I encountered at a convenience store. She's a single mother from Oklahoma, and she's heading to Afghanistan next month. In civilian life, she works for an oil company full-time. She looked fit, and I wondered what she does in the military.

Then there's the 38-year-old woman training on new software. She was pleasant but offered few details. I see her around for a few weeks, then she's gone for many more weeks. Her duties are classified.

These are people just proud to serve their country. They don't like the over-used term, "hero." We civilians have no clue.

There's a calm about them. They don't brag, and they don't talk much to civilians about what they do in the service. You and I see them all the time but don't notice -- at the store, gassing up their cars, jogging -- doing the things we civilians do.

'Til one day you notice that you haven't seen them in a while. And if you knew they were military, and you knew they were to be deployed soon, you realize that "soon" has already happened. They're thousands of miles away, in some God-awful place on the other side of the world. Suddenly it's cold in your gut.

And you are humbled.

STS-135

The end of the space shuttle program is a bittersweet chapter in America’s space exploration program, but it’s not the end of it, and that’s exciting. Who among us can forget staying up all night to watch Neil Armstrong step off the LEM? Man will take another giant leap – on Mars, if not an asteroid first. You and I may not live to see that day, but our progeny will. Meanwhile, NASA is scheduled to launch a bigger and better Mars rover by year’s end to learn more about our sister planet.

Other spectacular unmanned missions continue. The incredible Hubble Space Telescope has sent back some of the most awe-inspiring photographs of all time since its 1990 launch. And the HST just found a fourth moon orbiting Pluto three billion miles away.

Another telescope -- Chandra, launched and shuttle-deployed twelve years ago -- looks billions of light years into the history of our universe using its X-ray vision (literally) to unveil never-before-seen wonders in that part of the spectrum invisible to us humans.

A NASA probe named Dawn just entered orbit about Vesta, the 3rd largest body in the Asteroid Belt. So what? Vesta may not be an asteroid. It’s huge (330 miles in diameter) and not just a rock like other, much smaller asteroids. It has a crust, a mantle and a core, like Earth and the other interior planets. It could be one of Earth’s cousins. Five percent of the meteorites that fall to Earth come from Vesta.

These are but a fraction of the projects still underway to help explore the eternal question that Ellie Arroway posited in that movie: Why are we here?

Because God put us here? Absolutely. With an insatiable curiosity.