Arizona Backs Down After Our Visit

Last Friday, Deb and I drove to Tucson to see our youngest daughter. It was our first visit to the Grand Canyon state in more than a year. Much like the rough and rugged terrain we traversed the politics of this final member of the continental forty-eight hasn’t undergone any noticeable change. Our trip was not at all about politics, but rather a matter of deeply held family values.

The gallows outside the Tombstone courthouse
remind gays and straight alike that
Arizona means business.

We were surprised to find our extremely reliable daughter was not at home when we arrived. To her credit we were a half hour earlier than our previously estimated time of arrival—but estimates are just that. So, when Deb called Courtney and found she was at the nearby Chili’s, we opted to join her and her roommate and a fellow case manager for an extended happy hour. While we discussed mental health issues, since all three of these young Arizonans worked in the field, we consumed another round of beer, a large platter of chips and salsa, some warm pretzels and a 2 for $20 special. At the time, we had no idea we were at the center of the controversy the governor of their state was facing. Although I have no idea what the religious values of the Chili’s ownership or corporation might be, the young man who works with our daughter and kept me laughing from the moment I sat down made it quite clear he has no romantic interest in our daughter because “she has a vagina.”

Saturday evening, a co-worker of Courtney’s roommate brought beer and a chocolate cream pie to share while we watched the Wildcats of Arizona devour the Buffalo of Colorado on the basketball court in Boulder. She also shared pictures of a woman she would like to become romantically involved with, if she could get her away from the debilitating relationship she has with her current girlfriend. When the game on TV was clearly over, she joined the rest of us straight folk for some raucous board games.  As far as I could tell her sexual orientation influenced my board game skills in about the same dramatic fashion as it imposed itself on my religious liberty.

The Earp Brothers, Doc Holiday and Big Nose Kate
get ready to reenact the shootout at the O.K. Corral.
Was one of them gay?

Sunday, my wife and daughter sated my appetite for visiting historical places by accompanying me to Tombstone. Arriving a little after noon, we watched a nineteenth century fashion shoe with a lot of petticoats, carpet bag purses, parasols and boots in the middle of the main street. We were fortunate to meet a man coming out of a saloon who lives a short distance from the courthouse. He guided us through a maze of construction.

At the courthouse, we toured the building and its display of guns, pocket watches and other artifacts. Before going outside to the gallows, we looked at the illustrations and read the account of the thirty seconds that made Tombstone famous. Controversy surrounds the shootout at the O.K. Corral, where Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and Doc Holiday killed Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers. The truth may be a far cry from what I learned growing up watching Hugh O’Brian play the supposedly heroic lawman in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp from 1955 to 1961, but the tale definitely impacted the economics of this city and quite possibly the state, to say nothing of Hollywood.

Courtney and I get ready to catch the last stagecoach
out of town.

Monday, as we drove home, we stopped in Scottsdale, outside of Phoenix, and had lunch with my cousin at Chompies, a New York style delicatessen. Although Stuart is the only relative to run for public office, as far as I know, our discussion centered on our children, and the controversial bill sitting on the governor’s desk never came up. As I said, this trip was about family values, not politics.

Yesterday, Governor Brewer to avoid economic disaster vetoed the bill that would have allowed discrimination against gays in the name of religious liberty.

Blame It On The Sixties

Last Sunday I turned sixty-three. My mother took me to dinner. One of my daughters took me to dinner a week earlier. The other two called. My cousin from Georgia called and so did a close friend from Milwaukee. My sister and brother sang Happy Birthday on my voicemail. A couple friends from Minnesota visited and we walked around the manmade lake a half-mile away and grilled lunch in the backyard. It was a good day.

Back in the sixties I couldn't move like Jagger
but friends told me I had lips like him.

I am fortunate to be able to recall such events. While the details will fade over time, I—at least to this point in time—can usually hold on to the essence of what took place on a given day or period of time. Of course, if I can’t I can always blame it on the sixties. For it has been said, “If you can remember the sixties, you probably weren’t there.” Actually, people my age didn’t get exposed to the substances supposedly responsible for both the literal and metaphorical cloud enveloping that period of time until the decade was nearly done. Contemporaries of John, Paul, George and Ringo, who celebrated their fiftieth anniversary of arriving in the states and playing the Ed Sullivan Show just a week before my birthday were already floating several feet off the ground by the time I graduated high school in 1968. In all honesty, the only reason anyone remembers their arrival is thanks to the CBS archives and the many press conferences the group held.

Formal attire in the sixties was a clean
t-shirt and a tie. I wonder whatever
became of those pants.

Marijuana and other elicit elements were only a third of the equation. The other components, usually placed on either side of the aforementioned, are sex and rock and roll.  Not that there wasn’t sex before the sixties, just it was rather sterile up until that time—similar to the way it becomes once a person reaches his sixties. By the end of the decade twin bed sales plummeted along with bras and girdles, while the magic potion for wiping out unwanted pregnancy, which became known simply as “the pill,” soared in popularity. Looking back it’s easy to see why the war in Vietnam was so unpopular. Who wouldn’t rather wear rose-colored glasses and wallow in free love rather than slog through some mosquito infested marsh thousands of miles from home?

The last part of the equation was the music. Although it is usually described as rock and roll, probably because of its close correlation with the experimentation occurring in sex and drugs, there was a strong hint of folk left over from the previous decades that permeated the lyrics, if not the sound. Not only did Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger influence Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel, but folk infiltrated Beatles, Stones and Byrd’s hits, too. Sadly, this matters little today since most people who have reached their sixties can’t recall three items on their shopping list let alone the second verse to a song by Manfred Mann.

At sixty-three the dazed look doesn't require any special substances.

I feel fortunate to have reached the start of yet another year. Despite losing most of my hair, acuteness in my vision and the upper register of my auditory perception I am still thriving. Wait a second. What did our mechanic say it is going to cost us to keep our twelve-year-old car running? Well, maybe I’m not thriving, but at least I’m still surviving. Let’s see, how did the lyrics to that Beatles song go?

“Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I’m sixty-four?”

  

Welcome Aboard

For a couple of months last year there were nearly daily reports of some catastrophe on board a Carnival cruise. Earlier this year both Royal Caribbean and Princess cruises announced outbreaks of flu among their passengers.  So, why would anyone ever want to go on a cruise? Well, that’s where we are.

Deb and I standing on the beach at Catalina Island
with the Carnival Inspiration (our ship) in the background.

Prior to this week our daughters, siblings and most of our friends had been on at least one cruise; but, not Deb and me.  When friends, who have been at sea around twenty times before, invited us to join them on a special Carnival promotion ($73 apiece—the taxes per passenger), we could hold out no longer.

We rode with Jim and Sue to the port in Long Beach. A porter took our luggage. He was the last person we needed to tip since the cruise line automatically charges a daily tip rate ($11.50 per day per person) to our credit card. It was also the last cash I needed to use except for the beer and nachos on Catalina Island and the taco and churro at Ensenada.

Looking up at the ship's atrium.

Before we boarded the ship we had our picture taken a dozen times. We have had our picture taken a couple hundred times more and who knows how many more before we disembark for the final time tomorrow.  One gets the feel of being a celebrity but more red carpet style than paparazzi.  For example, today when we got off to visit Ensenada a pirate placed a parrot on my shoulder and a mermaid put her arm around my waist—no long lenses or chasing us down a street.

Once aboard on Monday, before the safety drill and firing up the engines, we found ourselves in the brasserie piling mounds of food on our plates. I had not even finished my third pasta salad when a waiter asked if he could get me something else. Then, swiftly got it and removed my empty plates. It would only get better.

A guest flew in to join us for the sunset.

At dinner the young man who waited on me at lunch became one of two assistant waiters who worked with our evening waiter to make sure our plates were never empty and our soiled dishes were immediately removed. My meal began with a fairly ordinary dinner roll, but quickly moved ahead to roasted butternut squash soup, flatbread, fried calamari, Caesar salad and a flaky salmon filet with a miso sauce delicately spread over it. I barely squeezed in the cobbler before we had to hurry from one end of the ship to the other for first time cruisers entertainment orientation. The cruise director introduced a couple comedians, who did a few minutes of their family friendly routines and a song and dance troupe that recaptured the Motown sound and ended their performance in the ship’s atrium, an open area with glass elevators running from the seventh to the twelfth deck. Deb and I checked out the twelfth deck because it has the gym where I would attempt the next three mornings to work off some of the calories ingested the previous night.

Tuesday, while the ship stayed at sea, we gavea couple of trivia contests—pop tunes and movie themes—a try and an art auction, where we sipped free champagne but failed to make a single bid. Then, we dressed for our elegant—khakis and a button down shirt—dinner. Since I didn’t eat the prime rib I had two lobster tails, and I had a roasted vegetable pie instead of the customary side dishes. No matter what I wanted the wait staff served it with a flourish and a smile.

Wednesday, I drove a golf cart around Catalina and today we boarded a bus through Ensenada and to Labufadora, the blowhole that didn’t blow—our biggest disappointment. We’ve been treated so well the whole time we feel like royalty, or at least Republicans.

One Hundred Eleven Million People Can’t Be Wrong

Last Sunday 111.5 million people tuned in to watch the 48^th Super Bowl. That’s more people than have watched any other single event in the history of television. As most prognosticators had predicted the first play from scrimmage was a snap that sailed over Peyton Manning’s head into the end zone, where running back Knowshon Moreno pounced on it to limit the damage to two points. That’s all right, the Broncos high-powered offense is known for comebacks. Right?—Wrong!  When Percy Harvin ran the opening kickoff of the second half back for a touchdown making the score 29-0, the question became whether the Rocky Mountain high team may set a new low, by being the first team in Super Bowl history to be shutout. Peyton ended speculation by completing the final pass of the third quarter for a touchdown followed by a two-point conversion. Those would be the only points they would score, leaving them only 30 short of their average for the year. The old adage, “Offenses win games; Defenses win championships,” seemed to ring true.

"What do you mean Rubber Ducky?
My mother told me I was a Seahawk."

Yet, in the aftermath of this lopsided game the thrill of being a part of this historic event seems to have lost none of its luster. Like the proverbial winter sports fan who comments about going to see a boxing match and a hockey game breaks out, the Super Bowl viewer with rare exception is less interested in the game than the spectacle. Although somewhat upstaged by the corruption and anti-gay politics surrounding the Sochi Olympics that start tomorrow, the selection of a New Jersey venue, which hosts both New York football teams, proved to be a brilliant move to generate discussion. Suffering the area’s coldest and snowiest days in a century a week before kickoff made people question the sanity of the decision, to say nothing of the controversy the colorful governor of New Jersey sparked when some of his staff deliberately delayed traffic on the George Washington Bridge because politicians failed to endorse his candidacy. C’mon folks, this is Jersey.

"Only Berke Breathed thinks I'm a Penguin.
The rest of the world knows I'm a Seahawk."

At our house my wife arranged the party. Now, Debbie likes football, even one-sided demolitions, as long as it’s the Packers playing and the team doing the demolishing wears green and gold. Of the two couples she invited, one doesn’t care about sports, and the other the wife is starting to learn about some of the rules governing football. My sister and nephew stopped by on the way to my mother’s house and ended up staying for the entire event. They prefer bowling. So, out of eight viewers we had two football fans. Case in point, when the one couple arrived we rewound the DVR to watch opera singer, Renee Fleming give possibly the best rendition of the national anthem ever performed at a sporting event.

"Those hombres don't reserve to call themselves Broncos.
They played more like Shetland Ponies."

The debacle that will haunt Denver fans for a few more days or weeks, depending on how their basketball and baseball teams tend to fair, allowed us to go back for seconds on the fish and chicken, as well as get an extra slice of Boston cream pie (and the Patriots weren’t even playing—not that anyone in attendance at our house would have gotten the significance). We were truly able to mourn the loss of actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman, appreciate the performance of Bruno Mars, and most importantly, analyze the quality of the commercials we normally zip past when watching our pre-recorded programs. Leading to the question, “Why do companies pay $4 million for 30 seconds of air time during this program?” Of course, then there is the more significant controversy concerning whether it is possible for a Labrador retriever puppy to have a loving relationship with a Clydesdale.