I Think I’d Rather Take the Train

If we are what we drive, what is a person who takes public transportation?

 What we drive says a lot about us. We might be economical and practical, or big and flashy. It seems that guys who take up more than one lane in their huge pick-up trucks are the same ones who take up extra space by spreading their legs when they sit down.

Uh …

What were we talking about? Oh, yes.

I don't know if what I drive says all that much about me. I've always liked trains. When I was a kid, I had lots of toy trains, including an HO gauge model railroad around which I built an entire town with trees and a lake. Now, I get a little thrill when I'm on my way to work and the highway aligns with an RTD light rail train full of commuters.

RTD is the Regional Transportation District - metro Denver's public transportation system.

The irony of admiring the sleek light rail from inside my car isn't lost on me.

I like my car too. I sometimes think of my silver Altima as a high speed bullet train, gliding at super speeds between my home in Denver and my office in Highlands Ranch, with Mount Fuji looming nearby (hey, it's my fantasy). Until, of course, I have to brake for wall of stopped traffic caused by the woman in the left lane who is too busy talking on the phone to pay attention to her speed, or what lane she's in.

When I lived in New York City way back in the previous century, I didn't need a car. I almost always took the subway to get around town. It was fast and cheap. It also smelled like urine and sometimes broke down, but several decades later I choose to remember only the good things.

Early in my Denver days, I sold my car and moved around exclusively by RTD. That was before light rail was on the scene. I saved a bunch of money and lost a lot of time. Unlike NYC subways, the busses in Denver were agonizingly slow. While light rail is faster, it usually doesn't go exactly where I need to.

To get to work on RTD, I either have to drive or take a slow bus to the train, after which I transfer to another bus. It takes an hour and a half, one way. That seems even longer when there's a cold winter wind blowing through my coat while I wait between rides.

Mass transit saves money, is better for the environment, cuts down on traffic, and engenders a sense of community by enabling people to interact. But I'm pretty typical. For all my bluster about riding the rails, 98 percent of the time you'll find me alone in my automobile.

Parents Leave Us Many Things

The note on the counter said, "12 lis tgs." It was in my late father's handwriting. It freaked me out a little bit. When did he write this? Then I remembered. The reminder to get my 2012 license plate tags had been written the night before - by me.

Last week, my family and I combed through 50 years of my father's and mother's belongings. Since Dad's death in April, we've been trying to sort out our inheritance - investments and property, and less valuable items such as dishes and photos and Christmas decorations.

We inherit a lot of things from our parents, some of it material, some not. My handwriting is a genetic inheritance - perhaps the shape of my hand bones and the way they hold a pen.

I like to think I have the best traits of both my parents. From my mother, I have a sharp sense of justice and a deep well of common sense. From my father, I have a love of teaching and reading, and I can cook pretty well. From both of them, I have a good sense of humor.

Inherited traits are not always something to be proud of, however. For example, I have received my dad's total lack of athleticism, stunted mechanical ability, and general absent-mindedness.

Some of my traits I don't think came from either parent. For example, neither would ever forget to renew their license plates.

Sometimes, we go out of our way to be not like our parents. The worst thing you can say to a spouse during an argument is, "You sound just like your mother." I took great offence once when this insult was hurled at me. I am way more reasonable than she was when arguing.

I don't have any grand conclusions to make from this, except that inheritance isn’t just about money and stuff. You also get the benefits and pitfalls of someone’s genes - and if you're lucky, a sense of humor.

The Get Off My Lawn Guy

When I was a young man, I was the cool gay guy. People would ask me how they should decorate their homes. I never had any idea, but it was nice to be asked.

Now, I've become the older, less attractive, "get off my lawn" guy. You know - the grumpy old man who lives on the corner and has a fit whenever neighborhood kids cut across his lawn while they are playing. No matter how much he yells, the kids ignore him and keep running across his grass while he grumbles about the downfall of society.

Ok, I live in a condo instead of a house, and I'm not on the corner. But I still seethe just inside the screen door until I can take it no more.

I hear the whispers of the children. "Stay away from that door. That guy doesn't like kids."

In my defense, I don't hate kids. Or more accurately, I like most kids but not all - just like other people.

It's not the simple act of children playing and laughing outside that sets me off. A happy child is a joyous thing to see.

It's when, for example, they start screaming that I begin to get irritated. Here's a question: do little girls scream all the time because they are socially conditioned to or is it somehow biological in nature? In any case, during all the running around, there's always one little girl screaming her head off. It literally hurts my ears.

But what really gets me out of my recliner and on the front step is rock throwing. Thanks to brilliant landscaping around the condo, the bushes are planted amongst decorative stones which fit perfectly in a child's hand. Most conveniently, these bushes are right outside my ground level, breakable, windows.

Aside from being grumpy, I really have no recourse with the children. Their parents aren't supervising and I'm not allowed to. After I recently advised a herd of young people that throwing rocks at my window is not ok, I was visited by an angry mother who felt compelled to protect her child from me. I don't know where she was during the actual rock throwing.

Maybe she was supervising some of the other neighbors.

Warming Climate Increases Fire

When I first moved to Colorado, back in the last century, forest fires were rare, and they didn't start breaking out until July. Now, they seem to break out just any old time of year and several can burn at once. There are currently so many burning around the state that they aren't even saying how many any more.

Wildfire is licking at the outskirts of Colorado Springs. The High Park fire, the second largest in the state's history and the most destructive in terms of property, burns just outside of Fort Collins. Many homes are destroyed. Domestic animals are homeless. The Larimar County Fairgrounds have become a shelter for displaced horses. Evacuated humans haven't known whether their homes are still standing.

Those of us living in city limits often fancy ourselves immune from wild fires which generally happen way off in the mountains. While the flames generally don't get into the city as far as my house, the effects of the fires occasionally do.

It's one thing to see aerial views of 100 foot flames on TV. It becomes more real when your eyes sting from smoke and you actually see ash blowing around in your parking lot. People with respiratory ailments really suffer, even 60 miles away.

One reason the fires are more serious now than in years past is because of the massive kill off of trees due to the mountain pine beetle. Huge swaths of forest have been reduced to the skeletal remains of dead trees, just waiting to be ignited by lightning or a careless smoker.

The beetles are so deadly because winters are no longer cold enough to kill them off, enabling them to thrive on a massive scale. With a temperature today of 104, I'm inclined to believe that the climate is indeed getting warmer.

 Fire suppression over the last century has changed the natural cycle of fire into potentially huge, deadly super-fires. Add global warming, a pine beetle disaster, and more people living in the mountains and you've got a recipe for trouble. Kind of makes me long for the past. 

Botched IPO Does Not Affect Cute Animal Pictures

Facebook has been in the news for its botched IPO rollout. It seems potential investors and advertisers have a few reservations about the popular social networking tool.

I'm not an investor in Facebook but I am a user. And I think Facebook is a good way to keep in touch. I'm get daily news from friends, family, classmates, and colleagues, and some people who I'm not sure I ever had any connection with.

Facebook is also a great place to see cute animal pictures. Many cute animal pictures. A constant stream of kittens, puppies, giraffes, rabbits, and turtles. I take some responsibility for this. I, myself, have posted pictures of my cats, but they are exceptionally cute.

Of course, Facebook also serves as a dumping ground for political views. It's as if people believe that when they post this stuff, readers will instantly change their minds.

I wonder if anyone's mind has been changed by seeing an unflattering picture of a politician with a caption describing his or her extreme views about a controversial issue. While my mind has not been changed by reading something on Facebook, I have unfriended a few people who post nothing but regurgitated political rhetoric. One person's constant anger was so toxic that I felt the heat from over a thousand miles away. While I agreed with her views, I couldn't stand to face her wrath in the daily postings.

I'm more interested in the joy of a friend who unexpectedly became a grandmother. I like seeing the progress on the pond another friend is building in his back yard.

Though it may be trivial, I like knowing what Peggy the dog is up to. Peggy does, indeed, take the cute animal thing a step further by having her own Facebook account.

I hope people will keep posting news of themselves or I'll have nothing to read about but the outrageous shennanigans of the "republican'ts" and the socialist leanings of "Obamacare."

Fortunately, today there's a picture of a baby rabbit sleeping on top of a dog's head with the caption, "You've got a FRIEND!" Very cute!

Is It Real? Does it Matter?

Does the grape flavoring in candy and pop resemble in any way the actual flavor of real grapes? Does Olive Garden have anything in common with real Italian food? When someone says, "Have a good day," do they really mean it?

What can we depend on to be real in this world? Or does it matter? If you like Olive Garden (which I do), does it matter if it's authentic? If wishing someone a good day might possibly increase feelings of positivity and good will, what's the big deal whether they mean it?

During the events surrounding my father's recent death, my siblings and I continually encountered strangers in public who either told us to have a nice day, or worse, asked us how our day was going. Each time, we cringed and joked that they wouldn't ask if they only knew. One waiter at an Olive Garden competitor was so insistent that we have a "fantastic evening," that one of us finally replied that we really couldn't do that because our father had just died. They peppy young man awkwardly expressed his condolences and turned to leave, but not before one last cheerful wish that we have a terrific night.

 I suspect wait-people get evaluated by how much they say that stuff to every customer, kind of like the number of "flair" items Jennifer Aniston is required to wear in the movie Office Space. (If you haven't seen Office Space, stop reading this, open up a new browser for Netflix, and put it at the top of your queue. Then resume reading this.)

I suppose the have a nice day habit is so ingrained, and in some cases, so required by the corporate script, that such wishes are unavoidable. And truly, there's no way to know whether a patron is having a day so terrible that a cheerfully expressed verbal wish would actually make it worse.

The alternative, I suppose, is that no one would ever wish anyone a good day. I think I'd rather risk being greeted with poorly timed, insincere good wishes than encounter deliberate surliness or indifference.

On Grief

Grief is disorienting. Something is missing. The world is off-kilter, like Earth's axis is tipping. It is not the same as sadness, though sadness often accompanies grief. Sometimes it's like shock. Numbness. Emptiness. Other times, there's a rush of memories, flashbacks, and the desperate thrashing feeling that something which was always there is now gone forever.

Grief is messy. It often produces tears and snot, and throws life into disarray.

Grief is not a disease. It's not an illness for which there is or isn't a cure. You can escape it for a while, but it will always return to run its course. Like a cloud, it hovers above, momentarily forgotten, until it starts to rain.

Grief isn't a bad thing. It helps us adjust to unwanted change.

Grief can be silent. It can be very loud. It can be lonely or it can be shared.

Grief lasts longer than most people think it should. When life calms down into a version of normal, others act like grief should be over. But you don't snap out of grief. There's no set amount of time and then it's over. It doesn't occur in five even, synchronous stages.

In fact, it could be argued that grief never totally ends. It may lessen in intensity, ebb and flow a little further away, but when that anniversary comes, or that reminder of the loss, the cloud hovers again.

Grief may slow us down, but it doesn't stop us permanently. We go on because we have to.

If we grieve, it's because we are capable of love. Love continues beyond grief and finds renewal in its wake.