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To The Much Weary

5/23/2020

TO THE MUCH WEARY

By JAMES GROB

I'm not as strong as you are
Not as strong.
I cannot carry all that you can
But perhaps I can carry a little
So that you only have to carry a little more.

I'm not as smart as you are
Not as smart.
I cannot figure everything out
Like you can
But perhaps I can figure a little
So that you only have to figure a little more.

I'm not as good as you are
Not as good.
I cannot give my whole self to the world
The way you can
But perhaps I can give a little
So that you only have to give a little more.

I'm not as strong as you are
But perhaps I am strong enough
Strong enough.
If you can't
Perhaps we can.

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On punishing salon owners for breaking the law ...

5/20/2020

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Even if I buy the story that this person has no other alternative but to open her business in order to feed her family, which I don’t, it’s simply a matter of the basic principals of business and capitalism.

Is she the only salon owner in her community? Highly doubtful. I’m guessing that some of the other salon owners in the city have families to feed as well, and yet, they followed the rules.

This person chooses to not follow the rules, and gets away with it. So by scoffing at the law, she gains a competitive advantage over all the other salon owners who did the right thing and obeyed the law.

Somehow this person’s children are more important than all the other children in her town?

That is anti-business and anti-capitalist and anti-American. It is immoral and unethical, and anti-Christian.

Put it simply — I own a nice bar, you own a nice bar across the street from me. You follow the rules and don’t serve minors in your bar. I say screw the rules and serve anyone with the cash to pay.

Someone calls the cops on me, the cops check it out, say yeah, I broke the rules, but I’m a good guy with a family to feed, so they’re leaving me alone.

Now you can break the rules, too, and the rules mean nothing, or you can sit there and watch me put your ass out of business.

Or, worst of all, you break the rules and the cops choose to enforce them on you while leaving me alone.

This is all completely beside the fact that the rules, in this case, were put in place in order to prevent hundreds — and possibly thousands — of people from dying a horrible, excruciating death.

If you let someone break the law, you’re hurting all the good people who obey the law. If you get away with it, it is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what our forefathers intended -- a Nation of Laws, not a nation of men, filled with favoritism to gain competitive advantage.

If you choose to break the law, and get caught doing so, you should accept the punishment. That's America. Love it or leave it. See how well your salon does in Russia or China.

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A Walk Along The Cedar

5/7/2020

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Photos from a walk along the Cedar River in Charles City, taken the evening of Wednesday, May 6, 2020 at dusk.

(Photos by James Grob.)

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When the theater is on fire, you don't go to the movies

5/6/2020

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When the movie theater is on fire, and the fire chief tells you that you can't go inside, he is not infringing on your civil liberties -- he's protecting your life.

He's also trying to keep you and your fellow little cupcakes-in-arms from stupidly spreading the fire from the theater to the restaurant next door, to the bakery, to the car dealership up the road and to all the other shops on Main Street.

He's also protecting the other firefighters who might have to physically go in to save you, the EMTs who might have to keep you alive, the doctors and nurses at the hospital who might have to take care of you. He's also making sure that a hospital bed and medical supplies are available for someone else who needs them.

You'll have every right to go to a movie again, you sweet little cupcake, once the fire is out and the theater is cleaned up.

In the meantime, every minute you stand there and argue with the fire chief is a minute he could be working to make the theater safe for you to go to a movie again.

He's not infringing on your civil liberties, he's keeping you and all your friends alive so that we all can continue to enjoy our civil liberties.

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Don’t stand so close to me

5/5/2020

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Charles City Press, 5-5-20

Honestly, the guy would’ve been too close even if there wasn’t a pandemic going on.

I was in line at one of the local convenience stores, and everyone in there was doing their best to follow all the COVID-19 rules. Some people were wearing masks, a few were even wearing gloves, and everyone was keeping a distance from everyone else.

Well, almost everyone.

The proprietors of the business had made it easy — the floors were marked off with tape, showing people where to stand in line, six feet away from the others. I needed some cookies and some marinara sauce and something to drink, and I was waiting my turn.

I probably didn’t actually need those things, but I’d taken a walk for exercise and the walk had led me there and I figured that while I was there I’d pick up a few things that I didn’t have but wanted. So to be completely honest, this shopping trip wasn’t actually essential.

But hey, sometimes I’m a rebel.

Not as daring a rebel as the young man behind me, though. When I say, “young man,” you have to realize that I’m 52. I’d guess the gentleman was about 10 years younger than me. So I consider someone in his early 40s to be a “young man.” Your results may vary.

The young man was so close behind me in line that I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. He was a sturdy fellow, much shorter than me but barrel-chested, with a shaved head and a beard. He was holding a case of one of the more popular canned domestic malt beverages available on the market, as well as a package of what I think was beef jerky.

I disliked him immediately, not because of how he looked or anything he was about to purchase, but because he was really close. Really, really close. With each of his breaths tickling my neck, my base urge to just punch him in the throat increased exponentially.

This is unusual for me, because I’m not the type of person who punches people in the throat. I neither condone nor recommend such behavior, in any situation. It’s unkind and disrespectful, and kindness and respect are important to me.

It would’ve been so easy, though. This guy’s hands were full. He could not have blocked my punch. He didn’t seem spry enough to avoid it, especially if it came as a surprise.

The guy didn’t appear to be packing heat. I wondered if he knew karate or tae kwon do. That could be a problem for me. Maybe I should ask him. If he didn’t, I could punch him in the throat with one hand and smash the jar of marinara sauce on his head with the other. I figured the others in the shop would applaud in approval, because they had to be as annoyed as I was with this dude.

Of course, I did no such thing. Life is not a Chuck Norris movie. My mommy didn’t raise me to hit people just because they’re really annoying. I grew up in a Christian household. Aggression will not stand. Always resist the inner demons of your nature.

Plus I didn’t want to spend the night in jail for aggravated assault. And sometimes when cops arrest people like me, they hit them with a taser gun or spray pepper spray into their eyes, and I did not want to be tased or peppered. I just wanted some cookies, marinara sauce and something to drink.

So I turned to the guy and smiled, pointed to the where the floor was marked off, and in a non-threatening way mentioned something about keeping a six-foot social distance.

And he got mad, and it became clear to me that he had deliberately staked himself out that close to me because he wanted someone to say something about it, he wanted someone to confront him. He was looking for an argument — not necessarily with me — he was looking for an argument with anyone.

He loudly ranted and blustered for nearly a full minute about how the whole COVID-19 hysteria is all hype, how it’s fake, and he has his rights, and freedom, and media conspiracy, and liberals, and government oppression, and on and on and on. His rant was filled with obscenities that shouldn’t be printed in a community newspaper.

I’ve got a voice, I inherited from my dad, who inherited it from his dad. I use it rarely, but the few times I have, it has temporarily stopped time. This voice comes from the same place inside me that sometimes tells me it would be OK to punch someone in the throat.

“BACK UP!”

It echoed. It boomed. It pierced.

Then silence. The loudest silence you’ve ever heard.

It interrupted the rant. There were two other words in there, one which can’t be printed in any newspaper, community or otherwise.

Everyone in the shop heard it. So did the people out at the gas pumps, filling up their tanks.

The young man backed up. He obediently stood on his mark. He also shut up. He tried to give me an intimidating stare, but it didn’t last long. He looked down at his feet. He was embarrassed. He was meek. He was at a safe social distance.

In the post-traumatic hush now permeating the store, I paid for my cookies, my drink and my marinara sauce and went about my way.

There is no lesson here. There is no metaphor, or higher message, or clever play on words to wrap it up.

Just keep your distance, man. That’s all I ask. I shouldn’t have to explain why. Stay a few feet away from me.

Stay a few feet away from everyone.

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A hot day in the spring of 1977

4/28/2020

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On a day like today over 40 years ago, you and about a five of your buddies rode your bikes down to the corner grocery store and bought a bunch of packs of Bubble Yum and Big League Chew and some of your favorite cold pop in glass bottles.

Then you went to whoever’s house had the biggest yard, with one baseball and two wooden bats and three gloves (one of them a 40-year old first baseman’s mitt), and played some mutant type of 2-on-2 baseball game, with ghost runners and one of you as the all-time pitcher for both teams. One of you called the play-by-play.

Every single one of you belted a bunch of home runs, because you were all awesome. At some point, someone took a line drive to the noggin, and everyone pretended to not hear him cry, and someone said, “You’re OK, shake it off,” and it was forgotten.

Then you went into the house, because one of the bedrooms had a newly-installed window air conditioner, bought from a rich friend who had bought it last year at Sears, and you were hotter than hell from blasting all those dingers. After 25 minutes of zen-like coolness, every fuse in the house blew and you all had to help your buddy’s mom replace them, because as nine-year olds, you definitely should have been fiddling with electric wiring.

Then, once the lights were back on, you discovered that your buddy’s mom had a freezer full of those Freeze-Pops packaged popsicles, and each of you polished off three or four of them and showed each other your tongues, because those cold, refreshing bastards turned your mouths into different colors.

Then you all went outside and a bunch of other kids in the neighborhood suddenly showed up — girls and boys, young kids and old kids — and you all played your neighborhood’s modified version of “Ghost in the Graveyard” until the street light on the corner came on.

Then you all had to go home, take baths, watch “Charlie’s Angels” and go to bed — except some of the older kids, who hung around under the street light and talked and laughed and swatted gnats as the world got dark, until someone’s dad came out and chewed everyone’s butts, and the day was done.

No one told you then that this was as great as life was ever going to get, but somehow, you knew that deep inside.

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Some Doobie Brothers

4/28/2020

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Fighting COVID-19, one small mess at a time

4/7/2020

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Charles City Press, 4-7-20

I didn’t even realize dishwashers needed to be cleaned.

I mean, you put the soap in and close the door and push a couple buttons, and then you hear the hot water splashing around in there, and I assume there’s all kinds of spraying and sudsing and scrubbing and rinsing going on, and if everything’s working right, the dishes are clean and shiny when all is said and done.

I never really thought about it, but I guess I assumed that while those dishes were getting cleaned, everything else behind that door was getting clean, too, including all the dishwasher parts.

But my wife begs to differ, and in the stay-at-home era of COVID-19, anything that can be cleaned, will be cleaned.

The dishwasher parts that could be detached were detached, soaked in the sink and rendered clean as the cleanest whistle before being reattached. The reattachment didn’t happen until my wife had essentially crawled halfway into the dishwasher — her legs sticking out — much the way you’d expect to see a mechanic underneath an old Chrysler, ratcheting and rattling away down there on the timing belt or solenoid starter or some such thing.

Anyway, the dishwasher is definitely clean now, as are 17 of our house’s 19 windows. I believe it was mentioned that there are plans for the other two windows, but I stopped listening after hearing that those plans included the necessity of me being somehow involved.

In the last couple of weeks, the car’s been cleaned, inside and out. The floors and ceilings and walls are clean. The cupboards are clean. The couch is clean. The books are clean. The clocks are clean. I even caught my wife cleaning the screen on my cellphone yesterday, when she thought I wasn’t looking.

Because of the coronavirus, now all the grocery containers that come into the house get cleaned with disinfectant before they’re put away. Even the disinfectant has been thoroughly disinfected.

It’s not just cleaning, though. Puzzles are now a thing. They are a great activity for couples, so my wife and I do them together — and when I say we do them together, what I mean is that my wife does them by herself, because I hate puzzles.

Check that — I don’t really hate puzzles, I just hate doing puzzles. I don’t mind looking at them, for a minute or so, and then saying to my wife, “looks like you’re almost done,” and then going to watch something on TV. I can tell she appreciates my authentic encouragement by the way she doesn’t kick me in the groin repeatedly.

There are things we can do together, as we stay at home, and we’ve done some of them. With no sports on TV, I’ve discovered that there are these things called “shows” that people put on, just so I’ll have something to watch. It’s very nice of them, and my wife and I have enjoyed many of them together.

Since we can’t go to church on Sundays, we watch the service online together, and this weekend my wife remarked that I’ve participated in church more in the last month than I had in the previous six months. So there you go — COVID-19 is sparking a spiritual renewal in me, perhaps pushing my soul toward salvation.

Unfortunately, when real church starts back up again, I won’t be able to put the pastor on “pause” mid-sermon while I go get myself another piece of cinnamon crumb cake. I’ll miss that.

We had a nephew get married last weekend. The ceremony was scheduled for June, but the couple decided to forget that big shindig, just have a socially safe and acceptable number of immediate family show up, and put the whole thing online. I’m no expert on weddings, but I’d say it was a beautiful thing.

My wife and I both love theater, and a couple of weeks ago we made some videos of ourselves acting out famous scenes in popular movies. We put them up online for all we knew to see, and encouraged our friends to do the same. Some of them did. Their videos were mostly better than our videos, and we felt proud that we’d helped break up some of the monotony currently in the world, at least for a little while.

We have friends who sing, friends who dance, friends who draw or paint, friends who play guitar, friends who just tell jokes — everyone has a talent — we are so grateful there are so many who express themselves artistically during this difficult time.

We turn to each other for hope, and it helps — maybe just a little, but it helps.

At some point, we’ll all be looking at this from the other side. Will we see ourselves as people who provided help, who provided hope, who behaved as humans should?

Were we strong? Did we endure? Were we smart? Did we care?

Were we kind? Creative? Loving? Did we hear, and if so, did we listen?

Right now, I’m not sure what we’ll see. Sometimes, it’s not the obvious mess that’s the problem — it’s the mess you never knew was there.

I am sure of one thing, though — dishwashers don’t clean themselves.

And right now, I have the cleanest one in town.

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Coming together, from six feet apart

3/19/2020

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Charles City Press

My youngest daughter turns 25 years old today and I don’t know what to tell her, other than “Happy Birthday.”

She currently lives and works in Seattle. She moved there a couple of months ago, before she realized the city was about to become ground zero for the novel coronavirus in the United States.

“I’m OK, Dad, don’t worry,” she tells me. And of course, I worry. A lot.

My other daughter doesn’t want me to worry either. My kids have always been competitive, but they’ve taken it too far this time. While my youngest resides in what is arguably the most contagious city in the U.S. right now, my oldest resides in San Francisco, and works at the airport — in the international terminal, where flights originating in COVID-19-infected China are common every day, no matter what you’ve heard about a travel ban.

It’s as though they are competing for the “Dad Worries About Me More Than You” trophy.

They’re going to have to share it.

I’m supposed to be Dad. That’s “Dad,” with a capital D, meaning the guy with wisdom, with advice, the guy who knows things, who’s seen things, the guy who’s been there. Dad always has something for everything. That’s who my dad is. That’s who his dad was. That’s probably who your dad was, to you. Right now, that’s not me.

I’m 52 years old, and I’ve seen a lot of stuff, and I’ve dealt with it. I watched the Twin Towers fall, before my eyes. I’ve seen presidents shot, and seen them impeached. I watched the space shuttle explode. I saw the Berlin Wall come down. I watched Shock and Awe, stock market crashes and Great Recessions.

Pandemics, epidemics and killer flu outbreaks. Hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts and floods. I’ve seen cities burn, I’ve seen races riot. I’ve seen a continent starve.

I’ve seen friends and relatives die too young, defending their country. I’ve seen others die for absolutely no good reason. I’ve cried the same for all of them.

I’ve seen a lot of good things, too, far more often than the bad things. Way too many to list. They’re why I fight to stay alive — I don’t want to miss anything. It’s why I urge friends in crisis to fight to stay alive — I don’t want them to miss anything, and I don’t want to miss them.

I’ve witnessed a lot, but I’ve never seen anything like this.

I’ve never seen a time when everything’s canceled, everything’s closed, everything’s empty — because of a virus. I’ve never seen a time when we’re told to avoid each other, to avoid crowds of more than 10, try to stay six feet apart. I’ve never imagined a world where the best advice is to just stay home and stay away from everyone else.

No hugs. No handshakes. No high-fives. No interaction. Keep a social distance.

It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s harder than I imagined it would be. Honestly, it makes me ache a little inside.

Until now, I never realized how much my soul needs to shake the hands of those I meet, to slap the hands of friends I support — and to hold my loved ones close. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

I talked to a very wise person on the phone yesterday, for an article I was writing about the local Senior Center, which was shutting down due to COVID-19 concerns.

“It’s kind of a sad time for all of us,” she said. “It’s a good social place, and people really watch out for one another.”

She went on to say that she had advised the other members to stay healthy, take their temperatures, follow all the protocols and “if they get lonely, I suggested they call one another and talk. If we pull together, we can all get through this fairly easily.”

And that’s it, really. That’s the “Dad” wisdom I was looking for. Call one another. Talk. We can all get through this. This, too, shall pass.

There is no silver lining to suffering, and I’m not looking for one here. People are going to get sick. Some of them are going to die. Businesses are going to shut down. People we know are going to miss paychecks, they’re going to lose jobs. We’ll need to help these people, and some of them could be us. We’ll need to watch out for each other. Not really a silver lining there.

But what if we used this moment of universal vulnerability to cut out the societal rot of Randian self-interest and begin seeing one another — soft, breakable bodies and all — not as impediments to individual success, but as integral and impossibly precious builders of our collective happiness?

We need each other, now, more than ever. What if, by learning to care for one another, we learn that we’re ultimately caring for ourselves?

We can shake hands, we can high five, we can hug — and hold each other tight — from a distance.

It seems as though the world is forcing us apart right now.

Maybe six feet of space is a good distance for us to all pull together.

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We Didn’t Start the Fire (repurposed)

3/12/2020

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We Didn’t Start the Fire (repurposed lyrics)

By JAMES GROB

20 seconds, hands clean.
Influenza’s not so mean.
Call off plans for Disneyland.
Cancel Broadway shows.

Mike Pence calls the shots.
China was the starting spot.
South Korea. Baseball season?
The opener’s no-go.

---
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it.
---

Wipe with Lysol, mask your face
Don’t come over to my place.
Old dudes on pleasure cruises
Quarantined for months.

Testing kits in high demand.
Massive graves seen in Iran.
At least that bastard Weinstein
Is gonna be locked up.

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We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it.
---
Dow Jones drops like a brick, no March Madness, you’re too sick.
Donnie's lying like a rug, about the Coronavirus bug.

Tom Hanks got it, no NASCAR, Italy’s locked in a jar.
Toilet paper, hand spray, you don’t get no sick pay!
---
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it.

We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone, will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on …

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Forward>>

To The Much Weary

On punishing salon owners for breaking the law ...

A Walk Along The Cedar

When the theater is on fire, you don't go to the movies

Don’t stand so close to me

A hot day in the spring of 1977

Some Doobie Brothers

Fighting COVID-19, one small mess at a time

Coming together, from six feet apart

We Didn’t Start the Fire (repurposed)

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