Old Friends, Old Stories, and New Hope

My friend Jack spent a few days with us last week. Jack lives in Washington's Pacific Northwest and flew to the Midwest to visit a shipmate from our Navy days who lives near Omaha, Nebraska. From there, he rented a car and drove north to spend some time with us.

The last time I saw Jack was in the spring of 2018, when we traveled out west to visit my brother Bryan and his wife Sue near Portland. Before that visit, we hadn't seen one another in close to forty years. We only had a few hours together that day, so it was especially nice to have several days this time to catch up on what’s been happening in our lives.

We spent a lot of time reminiscing about our days serving together in the Navy aboard the USS Fresno, where Jack was a quartermaster (navigator), and I was a radar operator. And we shared some weed. I recalled the time Jack, Speedy, and I got busted for smoking a joint on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii in 1978. We were sitting in the sand, chatting, when I noticed a guy stumbling past us like he was drunk. He got alongside us, then abruptly turned toward us, flashed his badge, and confronted us about smoking weed. He told Jack to take what was left of the joint and his bag of weed and dump it into the Pacific. 

The part of the story I'd forgotten, but Jack reminded me of, was how he tried to hang on to a little of the pot by hiding it from the cop. Unfortunately, the cop caught him. He slapped Jack across the face twice, then made him go back and dump the rest. I'm thankful we weren't arrested. It's quite possible my career path would have taken an entirely different course had I ended up with that on my record. As it turned out, the cop was actually a pretty cool plainclothes officer, and we were just knuckleheads.

I also recalled for Tammy and Jack the story of my last night aboard the ship, when I asked him to play a song he and a friend had written. I recorded it down in the berthing compartment we shared with about ten other sailors. The song is called The Whale Song. The following day, December 11, 1979, I flew home to Minnesota.

Two days ago, we held midterm elections here in the U.S., and the results were better than I'd hoped for, with Democrats taking control of both chambers of Congress! People had been talking about a blue wave of Democratic voters, but we got a blue tsunami instead! I was optimistic that Democrats would do well, but I didn't let myself take anything for granted. Although some races are still too close to call, Democrats have gained at least 30 seats in the House and secured control of the Senate. It was a stunning rebuke of Trump and his administration, and it means he'll face a much stronger check on his power during the final two years of his presidency. For that, an entire nation and the rest of the world can breathe easier. We're ready to move on from this dysfunctional, divisive, and dangerous era.  

With the election having gone the way it did, I feel confident that I can put away my 'anti-fascist' T-shirts that I've been wearing to the gym and when I'm out running errands. I prefer not to feel the need to wear that sort of thing, but the times compelled me to. I showed up at the gym yesterday wearing a yellow T-shirt and blue shorts—normal stuff. It felt nice. 

Did you know that there's an opposite of doomscrolling? It's called joyscrolling, or hopescrolling. I've been doing my share of that lately.

That's all I've got.