Sensationalism

As I write this, midday on Tuesday, July 9th, country music superstar Randy Travis is lying a few miles away in a Plano, Texas, hospital fighting for his life. He was admitted last Sunday with cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart muscles caused by a viral infection. At last report he was listed in critical condition.

All of this is being dutifully and accurately reported by the local Dallas and national news media outlets but many of them can't stop there. They can't just tell you the guy is seriously ill and then move on to the next story. Most insist on harkening back to last year when Travis, who lives near Pilot Point, north of Dallas, was arrested twice for offenses related to public drunkenness.

Randy Travis is a very famous man. His arrests were news last year but not now.

Yet, everywhere I looked on the Internet and on TV news this morning I saw Randy's ugly mug shot, the one where he's scowling, sporting a cut over his nose and a black eye. It's a picture taken nearly a year ago when the very sad side of Randy's personal life became humiliatingly public.

It was news then. It's not now. 

Now, Randy Travis is fighting for his life and that alone is apparently not dramatic enough to satisfy the reporting instincts of people who seem to wish they were writing movies rather than news. The media accounts are conflicted, disguised as sympathy while piling on the retelling of Travis' bad behavior nearly a year ago leading the reader/viewer to tie it to his current life-threatening condition.

The implication is clear: Randy Travis is a drunk. He did this to himself. And, from what I can learn by researching viral cardiomyopathy, long term alcohol addiction can, in fact, be a factor. Randy's doctors haven't said that it was and by law they can't. So, without attribution the journalists just suggest it by retelling the story of Travis being cornered drunk and naked one night last year, resisting arrest. Not long after that he reportedly got in a fight.

The nasty mug shot is exciting. Let's bring that back!

And, in our reporting we must sound very sad and noble about it all because it is our uncomfortable duty to impose on this great, though tortured man's privacy and dignity and to reveal his personal demons again, with heavy judgmental implication.

These days it's not enough to simply report the facts, we must give you context and lead you toward a conclusion, suggesting what you should think and how you should feel.

You are the public, after all. You have a right to know.

Update, July 16th, reported by TMZ:

Randy Travis' heart issues which landed him in the hospital a week ago ... are NOT the result of drug or alcohol abuse, according to his doctors.

Doctors at the Texas hospital where Randy is getting treatment just said -- based on images of Randy's heart -- it's more likely that a family history of cardiomyopathy is to blame for his ongoing heart trouble.

Our Ladybug

For the second time in less than four months I find myself writing about the loss of a pet.

Lady came to CarolAnn and me a few years ago when her master died of old age. Homer was a wonderful neighbor in Glendora. Whenever he went to visit his family out of state Lady stayed with us and gradually became a member of our family. 

From the beginning she was the sweetest animal we've ever known. We loved Cricket more at first because we had loved her longer. But Lady came to us gently, quietly; satisfied with our kindness and patient with our distractions. 

When Cricket died this past February, Lady became the light of our lives.

These pets. They crawl into our hearts and nest there. They ask nothing of us except love and security. In return they give us the most purely selfless devotion that can exist in flesh and bone.

They won't quit on you, no matter what.

When your heart aches they flood it with comfort. 

Lady died as she lived: quietly, with gratitude and never a complaint.

If you ever had a dog that loved you, you know the love of God. 

  

No biggie.

May 6th - AC stops working in our Toyota Sienna minivan.
May 7th - Toyota dealership fixed AC, $759.45.
June 7th - AC stops working again.
June 8th - Toyota dealership determines the new part broke and they don't have another one. They tell me to bring it back Tuesday, June 11th.
June 7, 8, 9, 10 - Hot days, driving with no AC. Then, back to the dealership...
June 11th - They still don't have the part. Nobody ordered it. They'll call me in the morning.
June 12th - They did not call. I called them. Yes, they have the part! Bring in the van, we'll fix it and give you a free rental car.
June 12th - I take the van back to the dealership. They have the part but no rental car. Guy says they will call me tomorrow. I drive home with no AC.

...to be continued...

But here's the point:

Three or four guys dropped the ball and I will be talking with the service department manager soon. Still, this is life. Stuff happens. People screw up everyday. I sure do.

I'm home now in the air conditioned house. I'm healthy. My family loves me. I'm happy. The stupid AC will get fixed sooner rather than later.

As Jimmy Buffett said, "Life is just a tire swing."

Our silver anniversary

Our wedding carriage with the fringe on the top.

Yesterday was our silver anniversary. Carolann and I have been married for 25 years. Like everybody else who is blessed to reach this milestone we keep wondering, where did the time go?

25 years!

It sounds so long but lived so fast.

Our kids were kids. Jeremy had just turned eleven, Nathan was only seven. The four of us shared a Western wedding at Milhaus Ranch just outside of Nevada City, California, a June day that began overcast and ended with sunshine streaming through a tiny break in dark gray clouds; a single ray of sunlight that landed on nobody but the two of us standing before the covered wagon altar. At the time everybody said it was a sign of God's blessing.

Now I'm thinking maybe it was.

In our memories and photo albums 25 years is all a happy blur. We remember (or reinvent) the best of times vividly. The rough patches just seem like faint scrapes on a perfectly aging portrait.

Yesterday somebody asked the secret to our marriage. It's no secret, I said. We were good friends before we fell in love and we make each other laugh.

Milhaus Ranch, June 4, 1988

Very rarely we make each other cry.

A good marriage is like a carousel ride. You go up and down, around and around, accompanied by weird, happy music.

You laugh a lot.

And it seems like it will last forever.

Just ice cream

Last night I lost a crown while eating ice cream.

Let me repeat and clarify that: a gold crown fell off of a tooth while I was eating ice cream. Not while I was chewing on taffy or beef jerky...

Ice cream.

  

Not crunchy butter brickle ice cream; not nutty sundae, rocky road or Ben and Jerry's Preposterous Peanut Brutal ice cream...

Just regular chocolate ice cream.

And guess what? It doesn't hurt at all, not a bit. I have no need to rush to a dentist for an extortionately priced bicuspid emergency. The tooth has been dead for years. My whole mouth is dead, apparently. I'm just going to leave it be.

And that, friends, is the thin silvery lining surrounding the big black cloud of aging. When you reach a certain point pain apparently serves no purpose.

Willie Nelson famously said, "I've outlived my pecker." I'm pleased to report I have only outlived the nerve endings in my gums.

Yippee? 

First kiss

I got my first kiss from a girl when I was in third grade. That's what, about eight years old? That seems ridiculous, though I'm sure I was there.

Her name was Mary Alice Brannon and I recall her only vaguely before and after the moment she appeared out of nowhere and, for no reason I can recall or imagine, kissed me on the playground.

Let the record show I did not return the kiss, but I liked it. 

 

I don't remember if either of us said anything before or after the kiss. I don't remember if I thought she was cute before then, though I sure as heck thought so afterward. 

And let's stop for a moment right there and ponder something psychologists have no doubt picked apart into tiny, tasteless, tedious pieces:

How can pre-pre-pre-pubescent kids be instinctively attracted to a person of the opposite sex? Isn't there a biological component required to engage a chemical reaction that third graders haven't begun to physically develop? 

I didn't desire Mary Alice and I'm pretty sure she didn't have any such feeling for me, either. We were eight, we weren't capable of desire.

So, why was it a happy thing? Mary Alice kissed me on the cheek and I liked it. 

But, why?

She was a beauty, I remember that. She had long reddish brown curls and a light complexion befitting her apparently Irish surname.

If I was writing a sizzling novel of elementary school lust I'd probably describe her skin as "florid" and I'd throw in a passage about the flirtatious, dancing fire in her eyes. That's the way I remember her now, anyway. The experience of an eight-year-old sifted through five-plus decades of life is very sketchy and requires a dash of imagination.

Mary Alice had an older brother named Bradley, I remember that for sure. He was probably in fifth grade at the time. I steered clear of Brad because he was just too cool to approach, Eddie Haskell to my Beaver Cleaver. And, because I was afraid he'd find out what happened on the playground that day and beat the ever-loving snot out of me even though it was his sister who had kissed me, not the other way around!

But I didn't just fear Brad, I envied him, too. Brad was grown up (ten or eleven!) and cool. He lived in the same house as Mary Alice. He watched TV with her, ate dinner with her, went on vacation with her for cripes sake and probably even saw her every night and morning in her pajamas!

Mary Alice Brannon changed me forever. She injected an Adam and Eve aspect into my life I couldn't possibly understand at the time and still don't. But I do remember that moment.

She kissed my cheek and I liked it.

Though I have no idea why.

No worries

Like you, I worry a bit. Okay, maybe more than a bit. We all do.

We worry about our jobs and money, our personal relationships and whether our kids are healthy and happy.

We worry about big stuff like climate change and politics, we stress over little stuff  like our weight or a new gray hair.

Worry, worry, worry!

We even worry about that.

On  Friday September 12, 2008, 25 people got out of their beds long before dawn, prepared themselves for work, kissed their families good-bye, left the house and died. They were killed in a freak commuter train crash in Southern California. My KNX radio partner, Vickie Moore, and I told their stories with relative dispassion because that was our job but I never got over the soul-jarring realization that you can walk out of your home one morning and never return.

It happens every day all over the world, of course, but we never imagine it happening to us. Among all the trivial stuff we worry about it never occurs to us to be worried about sudden, dumb luck death.

It happened last night in the nearby, very small town of West, Texas, which one resident described on the radio this morning as "a Mayberry kind of place." There was a fertilizer factory in West which employed and supported a good portion of the 2,600 people who live in the town. It caught fire at 7:30 p.m. and 25 minutes later it blew away everything within a five block radius.

Now, almost 18 hours later, they're still looking for bodies, alive and dead. Texas officials tend to play their cards quietly. Ten hours ago they allowed that there may be as many as five to 15 deaths. Most likely there are dozens of others who died with no warning, people who hadn't even been aware of the fire but were close enough to have life literally blown out of them as if they were birthday candles while they finished supper, watched TV with their families and fed their dogs.

When things like this happen and my work day is done I wonder about that. What's it like to die with absolutely no warning? One moment you can be laughing and the next moment you're nothing.

There is no sense to be made of this sort of thing.

But today I'm not worried about anything. Nothing at all.

A true baseball story

It's early April. The North Texas wind is, as they say, blowing like a bandit. White, fluffy clouds are scooting east fast, and I have that comforting, aching feeling again, the one I've had every March and April of my life in memory.

Soggy dirt, wet grass and chilly afternoons.

Baseball season is back.

Roughly 47 or 48 years ago, when I was a kid of 13 or 14, I spent my summer days on a baseball field on Thomas Drive, one block over from my home with my buddy, Norm Miller. We always got there early and that's where we spent our days.

Sometimes we were eventually joined by other kids. Often we were not. Didn't matter to us. Norm and I would throw baseballs to each other, taking turns swinging for non-existent fences, absorbing imagined cheers from the imagined crowd.

We peopled our fantasy with our Northern California heroes of the early 1960s: Mays, McCovey, Cepeda, Marichal and Hart. We gave them reality by batting left or right handed as they did. We announced their advancement to the plate at Candlestick Park:

"The batter, number 12, Jim Davenport!"

That's how Norm and I spent our spring weekends and summer afternoons, in baseball heaven.

Late one afternoon a man wandered up behind the backstop and watched for awhile as I threw slow fastballs and flat curves to Norm, who was always a sucker for any pitch high and away.

Balding, portly and puffing on a cigar the man behind the backstop watched. Norm and I thought nothing of him until he finally hollered, "Hey! Mind if I take a swing?"

In those days it never occurred to any kid to say no to any adult request. It never occurred to us that his request was weird or that we should run for our lives and report the strange, fat, balding cigar sucker as a potential child molestor.

He just wanted to hit a baseball and we said, "Sure".

Together, Norm and I had acquired a kid's treasure trove of baseballs. We had maybe three or four between us. Some of them had their covers taped shut, maybe one had its seams intact. That's the one I picked up as Norm ran out to center field.

Something told me I needed to show this guy my best stuff. I was only 13 or 14 but on that particular day I had never been older and I had never played baseball with an adult.

I concentrated, made my best imitation of scraping my toe at the pitching rubber, peered in at the non-existent sign from non-existent Tom Haller and fired in my best non-existent fast ball.

"Thwack!"

The fat, bald guy slammed it on a line into centerfield and hadn't missed a puff from his cigar.

Two or three more times I threw baseballs as hard as I could and the old man peppered them around the deepest outfields, left to right. Poor Norm Miller was run ragged shagging them down.

The old man smiled, dropped the cigar on the grass beside him and got down to business.

"THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!"


He slammed everything I had that came anywhere near the plate. A couple of pitches, the ones twelve or fifteen feet away, he let pass, easily ducking the ones that were boring in straight for his head.

It ended when the bat in his hand splintered. You could say it simply gave up, glued, nailed and taped together as it had been to begin with.

And when the old, fat, cigar-chomper came out to the field, grinning from ear to ear and offering to pay for the bat, we asked him -- with the ignorant innocence of youth: "Did you ever play baseball?"

He smiled again and took the wallet out of his back pocket. Then he carefully fished out a yellow newspaper clipping nearly twenty years old.

I'm sorry to say it didn't mean anything to me at the time and I remember nothing about it now. But his wallet also displayed his driver's license, and having never seen one from New York before it caught my attention:

Carl Furillo.

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Carl Anthony Furillo (March 8, 1922 – January 21, 1989), nicknamed "The Reading Rifle" and "Skoonj," was a right fielder in Major League Baseball who played his entire career for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers. A member of seven National League champions from 1947 to 1959, he batted over .300 five times, winning the 1953 batting title with a .344 average – then the highest by a right-handed Dodger since 1900. Noted for his strong and accurate throwing arm, he recorded 10 or more assists in nine consecutive seasons, leading the league twice, and retired with the fifth most games in right field (1408) in NL history.

I'm a morning person.

Did you know that people really do have biological rhythms which define us as morning people or night people? Neuroscientists have discovered some fascinating differences in how our brains are wired.

For one thing, night people apparently get stronger and more energetic as evening grows late. We morning people tend to hit our peak well before noon and then our energy and brain functions level off until drowsiness overtakes us just after the evening meal.

On the other hand, morning people are supposedly happier than night people! Who would have guessed that? I always suspected there was a party starting just as I was going to bed. That's apparently a large part of the problem for you owls. One study calls it "social jet lag," a disruption of circadian rhythms caused when you stay up late but are forced by responsibilities to get up early the next morning whether you want to or not.

(And by the way, your grumpiness really puts a damper on our bubbly morning effervescence. Try to keep it to yourself, okay?)

Here's one final scientific finding that supports everything we've long believed: the older we get almost all of us become morning people even if we were night people when we were younger.

Does this sound a bit suspicious to you? I believe the science but the more I read I keep coming back to a physical reality that circadian studies just don't seem to support.

I'm tired because I'm old. I wake up at four or five a.m. because I fell asleep in front of the TV ten hours ago.

Stick that in your MRI and smoke it.

Our little guy

I've been calling him, "Twirp" but I have to stop.

We found this Yorkie just over a week ago in a pet adoption center at the Dallas Irish Festival. He's eight years-old. The adoption agency told us he was a "surrender", meaning the people who owned him gave him up voluntarily. I suppose there are a thousand reasons you might give up a precious, loving companion but I can't think of even one.


His name was Fonzie, but we didn't care for that. So, after a couple of days of trying out different monikers we finally settled on a name that had belonged to Sharmayne's dog and fit him perfectly. We decided to call him, Gizmo.

He's a five pound bag of bones, too skinny, and he has bad breath. But he came with very official veterinary papers assuring us that he is healthy and has been through the gamut of examinations, procedures and vaccinations needed to offer a healthy animal for adoption.

Yesterday we took him to our vet for a checkup and to find out why he's so skinny. The staff cooed and pampered him, gave us some meds just in case he has a vile creature living inside his gut and feasting on the food we provide.

Gizmo. Not "Twirp", even though he keeps annoying the cat and confounding Carolann and me.

He's very well house-trained. He eats everything he can get his mouth on but for now he's still a bag of bones.

Gizmo looks at us intently with big, mysterious eyes.

He sleeps between Carolann and me. When we're at work we talk on the phone about how he's adapting and whether he and the cat, Cora, will learn to put up with each other.

We give Lady special attention now that Cricket is gone and she's the reluctant queen of our hearts. But Gizmo is finding room in there.

Our baby girl is gone and can never be replaced.

Still, it's nice to know that our hearts are big enough for a skinny bag of bones with bad breath and big, Margaret Keane eyes.