Tom Bodett's Blog

New Year's Restitution

2012-01-01T09:23:00.003-05:00

It's said that resentment of other people is like you drinking poison in hopes that they'll die. So in the interests of starting fresh with this brand spanking new year I would like to ease the petty resentments built up over the past twelve months:

Driver in the white Subaru two months ago on Western Ave. -- please forgive me for whatever it was I did that caused you to pull up beside me and the boys on the way to school then scream through the window while you flipped us off. I in turn will stop searching for you and fantasizing how I'll punish you. We're good now.

I forgive all of you who have written me with your cancer and car crash stories to get my autograph or a book which you put on eBay two weeks later for seventy-nine cents. It's embarrassing for both of us and I know you'll forgive me for trying to bid up the price.

To the coyote who ate our cat -- we forgive you. Everybody has to eat. And just so you know; our new cat is nothing but gristle. And she carries a gun.

To all the mice in the basement -- this isn't over yet. Be afraid. Be very afraid. (the author apologizes for this ungracious remark, but it needed saying.)

To the inventor of the blister pack -- I'm sure you are insanely rich and living somewhere surrounded by personal assistants who open your products for you. I therefore forgive you for not understanding the carnage you have spread through the world as we try to break into your clever achievement with teeth, knives and screwdrivers - dislodging dental work and self-administering deep puncture wounds and jagged lacerations.

Santa Claus, I forgive you for bringing our 8yr old a full drumset. He's actually pretty good and it's more fun than you'd think to play old Credence songs with a third grader.

And the weather. I'm so done with being annoyed about you. The rain all summer; hurricane Irene; that other storm-with-no-name right after; the balmy fall and snowless Christmas; and today -- the first glimpse of a new year shrouded in fog and still as an action toy trapped inside a blister pack. I'll break into it somehow. And start anew. And mess some things up. And apologize about a year from now. Forgive me.

More about The Moth

2011-11-22T09:06:00.003-05:00

As some of you Twitterers might know, the story I did for The Moth last month in Burlington, VT is the featured podcast this week. It's about me and my dad and some of the things we did and didn't do for each other before he died this past year. You can download it at the link above and you can also find it at iTunes. If you like a good story - even if you don't like mine - subscribe to the weekly Moth podcasts. There is some amazing stuff going on there.

Standing on that stage in Burlington and telling such a personal tale, almost a confessional, in front of 1500 strangers was one of the highlights of my performing life. Until the moment I walked in front of the microphone a big part of me thought I was making a mistake. It was too personal. It was too revealing of a very low point in my character. It would make me choke up.

It was all those things and more and has made me very happy. If my dad had been around to hear, he would have been ashamed from the criticism and embarrassed of the praise and I realize that I could not have told the story before now. I've told parts of it before -- you can hear the extended story of my college drop-out and near-death accident that followed on Exploded, a fragmented monologue I performed almost 20 years ago. But I never got down to the conclusions of the experience because 20 years ago I did not yet know what they were.

Scars, it's said, are the tattoos of experience. But they are often a hieroglyph, and it takes some study to figure out what they say to us.

Waiting for the Clown Car

2011-09-25T09:47:00.004-04:00

It's Sunday morning and I promised myself I would do a blog entry today. Not because I have anything to tell you. Not even because I feel some professional obligation to entertain or enlighten -- if that were even possible. I promised to blog today the way a manic-depressive promises that today is the day he will get out off the sofa and do the dishes. Not because the dishes really need doing -- they've been there all week -- but because doing them will get him on his feet and moving again.

I recognize that my blogging and tweeting habits look like a manic-depressive cycle. Perhaps in some deep brain chemistry=inspiration=ironic construction=mildly entertaining remark, it is. But I don't think so. The truth of the matter is that for varying periods of time I find the world delightfully inept and the people in it endearingly flawed. Myself included. During these stretches I feel a great camaraderie with my fellow human beans and am compelled to sit ringside with you at the circus pointing out the antics of our fellow clowns as they dance around the elephant poop.

And then there are times when all there is is elephant poop. So I promised myself I'd blog today just to see what happens. Maybe the clown car will come and nine of them will pour out with shovels and brooms to clean up. With any luck one of them will step in it.

Can't Get Here from There

2011-08-30T11:39:00.004-04:00

It dawned on me today, about dawn, that my failure to post anything regarding our recent flooding out here might be taken as an indication that we are in peril. Let me assure those of you who have expressed an interest that my family and I are high, dry, and enjoying an oddly pleasant stretch of post-Irene sunny weather. Our little town of Dummerston was by and large spared any great damage, and our historic covered bridge - the longest span in Vermont - is still spanning the West River, which two days ago was within 6 feet of the deck. If you've seen the footage of some of the other area historic bridges that did not fare so well you will appreciate, as we do, the pessimism of whoever it was decided to place our bridge 8 feet or so above the 100 year flood mark. When you see a 150 year old bridge floating down the river you can rest assured you are having a 100 year flood.

Although Irene let our town off easy, those around us are not doing so well. There are bridges and roads out all over the county and the old Yankee koan You can't get there from here is not as paradoxical as it used to be. At the moment, and probably for the foreseeable future, our neighbor towns of Wilmington and Bennington are best reached via Montreal, Canada. Downtown Brattleboro is still digging through the muck on their lower end and I believe you can now buy mud boots at Sam's Outfitters with mud already on them.

I serve on our local Selectboard and as a seasoned municipal official of little or no influence I was alarmed to discover over the weekend we have some rather awesome powers to declare local disasters and close and open bridges. I'm not sure I ever declared anything before Sunday, but I found it enjoyable -- oh, and humbling. You're always supposed to say humbling as an elected official when you exercise awesome power. Closing and opening bridges is kind of fun (and humbling) too, but you can overdo it in a hurry. The townspeople took it upon themselves to move the road cones on the covered bridge out of their way on Monday morning, and they're pretty much driving around everything else too. If that's not a sure sign of being back to normal, I don't know one.

Home from Home

2011-08-20T13:17:00.004-04:00

A picture's worth a thousand words, so this entry will be short. This is my boy holding a rainbow trout in front of our rented RV at Quartz Lake in interior Alaska two weeks ago. We just returned from the best visit to our former home state since it became our former home state.

I cannot write one more word before thanking and praising the good folks at Adventures in Alaska RV in Fairbanks. Suzanne, Bill, Debbie and Faith could not have been kinder or more generous to us and if you go to Alaska and don't rent an RV from them you should seek mental health counselling. That's all I have to say. Check them out.

We arrived home last evening so jet lagged that our eyes were crossed. It is almost two in the afternoon and the boys are still asleep -- dreaming of fish, I hope, and grizzly bears and caribou and moose and wolves and spongy tundra and open-hearted old friends and every other wild wonder we've spent the last two weeks falling in love with all over again.

The poet Robert Frost once defined home as "The place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." I believe there is more to it than that. Home should be the place where, when you go there, they don't have to take you in, but do anyway.

Thank you all our dear Alaska friends. We miss you every single day.

This Website Sucks

2011-07-26T21:38:00.004-04:00

A helpful reader wrote to me this week basically saying, "Love your stuff. Your website sucks". Okay, he didn't basically say that. He said that exactly. I know he's right about this web page. Bodett.com has sucked for quite a number of years. If websites could have mullets, this one would. I haven't updated the design of it since, let me think -- ever. The reason is that I'm lazy and uninspired when it comes to electronic media. I see other websites and they look interesting and cool and there is always new content to check out. Mine lays here like one of those Chinese restaurants you pass everyday but have never seen or met anybody who has eaten there. Perhaps this site is also a front for a human trafficking network. Impossible, because that would be interesting and this is not.

What I need is somebody who is more interested in me and the stuff I do than I am. I don't say that in some sad sack Eeyore way. I just no longer have the vanity it takes to drive a self-promotion vehicle responsibly. Modesty is to the Internet what fuel economy is to NASCAR: The losers circle. Losers circle…hmm. Can you do that on google+?

Memory Safe #5 Karl and Penelope

2011-05-28T09:16:00.003-04:00

For those not riveted to this site for breaking updates -- and by that I mean you -- let me explain the Memory Safe. Whenever I can't remember something I always knew, such as the name of a band, the author of a favorite book, or a college love, I wait until I do remember it and then write a few words about it in this space. It's my way of doing battle with a noticeably deteriorating memory.

I haven't made an entry in awhile -- a good sign -- but I had two in one day this week: Karl Rove and Penelope Cruz. I'm less alarmed about Karl than Cruz. I've had something of a crush on her for years. It's a source of teasing between my wife and I. She has her Russell Crowe. I have my Penelope Cruz. We've given each other special dispensations to take advantage of any opportunity that may arise with these people with the highest confidence that there will be no such opportunities. I saw a woman go by in a car in South Carolina the other day that reminded me of Penelope and I couldn't think of her name. Am I losing that lovin' feeling? Probably not. What I'm losing is my mind.

Taping the show that night in Charleston a joke came to me that included Karl Rove. I had the joke. I had his impish face and that oddly affable presence. I didn't have the name. It finally came to me and I used the joke, but the subject had pretty much moved on by then. The one time I actually needed Karl Rove in my head and...nothing. The joke, if you care, was Karl Rove ordered the Rapture to be cancelled when he realized how bad it was going to be for the Republicans. There. I feel better. But I'm still not over Penelope.

Memory Safe #4 Gentle On My Mind

2011-04-09T11:29:00.002-04:00

John Hartford. I almost forgot John Hartford. I saw him dance on salt at Alice’s Champagne Palace in Homer, Alaska many years ago. He laid down two sheets of plywood with mic pickups underneath and then poured salt on top of them so he could soft shoe around in his big cowboy boots. He played the fiddle and sang all the familiar songs: Tall Buildings, Gentle on My Mind...I don’t know what else. I barely remembered him today even though at the time I couldn’t believe that John Hartford himself would be playing at a bar in Homer, Alaska. He was not the only great to end up on plywood at Alice’s. David Bromberg, Jerry Jeff Walker, John Prine, even Taj Mahal – who I opened for with sheetrock mud still on my pants from work that day. There are only two reasons that any of them would be there: They really really wanted to be in Homer. Or somebody made them do it. Those are the only two reasons anybody is there.

Memory Safe #3 Sour Grapes of Wrath

2011-03-29T08:19:00.006-04:00

Harry & David, the fancy Oregon fruit producer has filed for bankruptcy. I hadn't thought about that place in a lot of years and I couldn't help feeling a little shadenfruede when I heard the news this morning. Let me explain.

In 1975 I dropped out of college and headed West on my Woody Guthrie/Hank Williams/Bob Dylan vision quest thing. This involved sleeping in a lot of Interstate ditches, smoking other people's cigarettes, and looking for the worst possible jobs available. Picking fruit, of course, qualified. It was Cesar Chavez, John Steinbeck and David Allen Coe all in one basket. I stood in line for over an hour at the Harry & David orchards in Medford, OR to sign on. My fellow applicants were a mix of hippies like me, Latinos, bums, roughnecks and teenagers. I was healthy, strong and willing to work and was already forming my questions about work hours, housing, and how many weeks of employment Harry & David might be willing to commit to me.

When I finally stepped up to the table the conversation was short.

Foreman Guy: Any experience?

Me: Doing what, picking fruit?

Foreman Guy: Yes, picking fruit. That's what we do here.

Me: I assumed this was an entry level position.

Foreman Guy: You assumed wrong. Move along. Next!

I walked away in a daze. I'd just been denied a job as a migrant laborer. Granted, the country was in the middle of a huge recession with sky high inflation and unemployment, but still -- I couldn't get a job picking fruit.

I found a no-experience-necessary job planting trees for Weyerhaeuser in the Cascades a few days later. A good life followed and here I sit thinking about that long ago rejection. Had Harry & David given me that job I might have excelled at it. Moved up. Been the foreman guy. Maybe moved into management eventually. Secured an equity position in the company. And today I'd be bankrupt.

Sour grapes taste kind of sweet sometimes.

Memory Safe #2

2011-03-27T09:23:00.002-04:00

1974

I did not forget the motorcycle. This much I know for sure. Jane got back in touch in ‘95 and told me her best memory of the two of us was the weekend we took my motorcycle from East Lansing to Warren Dunes on Lake Michigan. I remembered the weekend. But we’d hitchhiked.. She insisted there was a motorcycle. She remembered what it looked like. I’ve never owned or really even learned how to operate one. The closest I came was when I dumped my roommate’s Triumph on the yard of our dorm. Maybe Jane had seen that – I don’t remember the timing of it all -- and put the rest of it together from dreams. Jane’s father pulled me aside a few weeks later, after I’d thumbed over to Gross Point to see her. He told me to never under any circumstances hitchhike with his daughter again. I didn’t do that or anything else with Jane again as it turned out. I wonder how he would have felt about a motorcycle?

Memory Fail Safe

2011-03-26T10:09:00.004-04:00

Memories fail. This is a fact of life. Having watched my father's memories erode almost completely over a fifteen year period, it is one of the most frightening rewards of getting older, which we all do. Day by day. Month by month. Year by shockingly short year.

A friend of about my age once said to me that it felt like his head was full: every time he learned something new, something else had to go. A new PIN? There goes his childhood zipcode. The names of a colleague's children? The middle name of your own brother. I don't know if memory works that way, but his theory supports what I've been seeing too.

But I refuse to go gently into that good night and in order to preserve these fading scraps of my happy life I have started a Memory Safe. Every time I have one of those senior moments where something I knew just the day or hour before is no longer at my command, I write it down and a little bit about it. Sometimes it takes me a whole day to recall the lost scrap. Sometimes -- since much of the faded glory is culturally rooted -- I look it up on the Internet. By doing this, and by writing a few lines about the thing, I hope to keep it safe. To keep it in the safe. So far it appears to be working pretty well and I would recommend this to any of you who also find yourselves caught in the spaces between the the things you know.

I'll be posting some of these safe deposits in this space and invite you to post some of your own in the comments. I'll get us started with this one.

Silent Snow, Secret Snow

Conrad Aiken. That’s the guy who wrote that. I read this story in high school and never got it out of my head. It's about a kid who wakes up either listening to, or imagining he is listening to, a snowstorm piling up outside his window. I think of it every time I see a gentle snow falling. Every time I hear a muffled step in fresh snow. Every time I wake up and the world seems too quiet. Or too impossible to navigate. It’s interesting why some things stick with you. Is it exceptional writing? Or is the memory primed by something in your life at the time you read it that makes it indelible? Either way it’s worth looking at the parts and pieces of a story or song or picture that haunts you.

Leaving the Light On, Act II

2010-12-31T07:08:00.012-05:00

I wanted to show you what I got for Christmas*. It's a 22 kilowatt photo voltaic solar array and it's just what I wanted! I haven't been this excited about a gift since that BB gun in '63 and I expect to do far less damage with this one.

Let me explain that we live here in Vermont on top of a bald hill in a great big energy sucking house crammed full of electronics, washers and driers, wood shop, voice studio, and two little kids who never met a light switch they couldn't turn on and leave that way. We use on average 200o kilowatt hours of electricity per month which has been generated by an aging nuclear plant situated about 10 miles from here, some coal plants in Ohio, and a dam in a river somewhere up in Quebec. Now it's all being generated out in our field by sunbeams. Our carbon footprint has gone from the size of a cross country snow shoe to a sporty little Keen hiker. And boy has it put some spring into my step.

I've always enjoyed sunny days. Who doesn't? But now I ADORE them. In fact I'm starting to think that this business of the sun affecting our serotonin levels is quite literal and immediate. Take this graph, for example, of our power production on Wednesday and Thursday.

On dark and cloudy Wednesday I was feeling kind of low, as illustrated above. Yesterday I sure did perk up with those clear blue skies and, presto, my mood is perfectly represented on this read-out. I can't wait to show this to my therapist if I ever get one. It could be soon. Using graphs in your blog is one of the early warning signs of trouble, I'm told.

We have what is called a grid-tie system, which means that we are still connected to the grid and selling our surplus power back to the electric company who actually pay us more for our wattage than we we pay them for theirs. It must be because ours is such a happy power. And we will produce about 20 percent more than we use on a yearly basis.

Our little monitor also tells us how much carbon emissions we have avoided. Since we went online on December 17th we have saved 1227 pounds of CO2. Think about it -- that's nearly 6 Congressmen!

I'm pretty much guaranteed to be remembered as the guy who leaves the light on everyplace he goes. It will be in my obit. It might be on my gravestone (although I've promised to haunt my family eternally if that happens) In any case, I want to add a subscript to my inevitable epitaph: "He left the light on, and didn't stink up the planet doing it!"

Oooo....the sun is coming up. I have to go. It's looking like a very good day.

*I say "gift" because Federal Tax Credits and Vermont State rebates paid for enough of the costs to make the whole thing feasible and possible. Check it out.

All for the Better

2010-11-25T09:33:00.005-05:00

I once woke up in the intensive care unit of an Oregon hospital with 20% of my body oozing with electrical burns while a doctor explained to me that I would probably lose my right arm. Then he said, "You're a lucky young man."

What he meant, of course, was that I was lucky to be alive, but I had to laugh at the suggestion that being in my crispy condition was somehow a fortunate turn of events. I've come to appreciate over the years since that I was indeed a lucky man and still am. Things generally go my way. Even when they don't, I end up better off than I would have been had I gotten what I wanted in the first place. I've become one of those "it's probably all for the better" people. I'm not quite religious enough to claim it as God's Will, but I suppose that is just another way of saying it. Only as I write this do I realize the link between the word better and gambling. It's all for the better (or bettor) suggests that whatever the outcome of any gamble made -- whether climbing a power pole or climbing in the car to head to Grandma's for Thanksgiving dinner -- we betters are enriched by it.

We know these things instinctively, but tend to lose of track of it as our days roll along from one news cycle to the next. If any of us were in a car crash and there were minor injuries and the car was totaled and an entire week derailed, most of us would end the story we told of it with "...we were very lucky. We could have been killed." That's what I love about us. But it doesn't last. Lawyers get involved. Newspapers present the tragic saga and name the negligent party. Can you imagine any plaintiff's lawyer standing up in a courtroom and saying, "Your honor, we seek no damages in this case because my client feels very lucky to be alive." ? Never happen. By the end of that story everybody is a victim, nobody feels fortunate, and that wonderful moment of grace and gratitude we experienced at the simple fact of being alive is buried under a pile of grief and regret.

So, for today, for Thanksgiving, I invite us all to look around our lives and find that moment of grace. It's all for the better, and we're lucky to be alive. Easier for some of us than others, but not impossible for anybody.

Sign of the End Times?

2010-10-10T14:41:00.004-04:00

This is a picture of me standing on stage at Carnegie Hall on Thursday. Photo shop aside, this is probably one of the most unlikely photographic compositions since the Elvis-meets-Nixon shots. We taped a sold-out performance of Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me with Mayor Michael Bloomberg as guest and Roxanne Roberts and Charlie Pierce holding down the panel with me. It was the singular highlight in an already very fortunate life. Carnegie Hall has a certain evocative architectural effect something on the order of what one feels on entering St.Peter's Cathedral in Rome. The spirit soars, the knees weaken, and a unaccountable form of scoliosis takes hold -- as evidenced by the photograph above.

Thanks New York for such a warm and indelible reception. Truly a dream come true.

Legal Notice

2010-09-23T06:53:00.003-04:00

I just learned that Man Van is how Chrysler is actually referring to their new mini van. I was using it to be ironic, and now it can no longer be that, so I herewith denounce and deny all Man Van references made in this blog or by me in other public places. From now on that beautiful thing of Asian descent I drive is to be known as the Manivan. It's a clean title. I googled it.

I also claim the term Manivan as my own juvenile creation this 23rd day of September in the year of oh Lord, Two Thousand and Ten. You can use it, but you must to do so with knowledge of my superior sophomoric wit.

Signed: Tom Bodett Title: For Whom the Bell Tolls

It Takes a Man to Drive the Van

2010-08-28T09:04:00.010-04:00

I reported at length on the pending purchase of the Man Van, but I have not told you how my life has been working out in the three weeks since. Well. I'm happy to report that life is good. Very few material objects in this world can actually make you happier, but I've now identified three: Sharp tools. iPhones. 2011 Toyota Siennas. I could make myself delirious with pleasure by bluetoothing my iPhone to my ManVan while driving to the hardware store for a new chisel. I may do it. Today.

Yesterday I put a ball hitch on the van. Doesn't that sound manly? It is. Now I can pull things around with it. I could pull a small boat if I had a small boat, which I don't. I could pull a snowmachine on a trailer if I were ever to get such a thing. I could pull a large camp trailer for a very short distance. Mostly, I will pull an empty 1-7/8" chrome ball around demonstrating the potential to do any or all of the above. It would be a place to mount the Truck Nuts, I suppose, but I no longer have the, uh, will or desire to do it. I do have a 4x6 utility trailer to pull around which I can fill with garden soil for the wife's beds, mulch, stuff for the landfill. But I have to admit it doesn't look that great on the back of the van. Like putting a backpack on your grandma. Love the old lady. Love the pack. Best to keep them apart.

The van is the singularly dopiest looking vehicle I've ever owned. And this from a man whose first car was a 1955 Pontiac Star Chief. But, like the Star Chief, once you slide behind the wheel you are in a rather massive world of your own mounted to a liquid ride. It is a gas bubble of pleasure in a flat water world. The ManVan also reminds me of the bulging Bonneville Grand Safari my parents owned throughout my high school career. I could fit all of my friends and three strangers in that car and often did. With a seating capacity of 7 in the ManVan, I can almost accomplish the same thing today. If the folks' Grand Safari had the second row captain's chairs and fold-out footrests of the ManVan, my crummy friends would be in it still.

My friend who also owns a ManVan (I'll call him Bo because that is his name) agrees that the van is a continual source of pleasure and -- being Men of a Certain Age, married with children -- we are not inclined to worry about our masculine bona fides. In fact, quite the opposite. Bo knows that real men don't need the props. Ditch the Mustang. Park the Navigator. Take a walk on the mild side, boys.

It takes a man to drive the van.

Uncle Ted

2010-08-11T08:48:00.004-04:00

Former Senator Ted Stevens died yesterday in a plane crash -- the traditional death of real Alaskans. Stevens, aka, Uncle Ted, and Senator-for-Life made Alaska what it is today: the site of the largest per capita federal spending in the country. He did this by shamelessly demanding more huge, expensive, and often ludicrous pork than anyone else in the US Senate. No small feat. As his Senate seniority grew, so grew the pork pie. This endeared him to Alaskans in such a way that even though a merciless and smelly Federal ethics and corruption trial in the midst of an election year did cost him his Senate seat, it was a squeaker. But Senator Stevens also secured the loyalty of Alaskans by taking care of them. Not just with bridges, airports and radar installations. But with passport problems, tardy social security checks, and tributes. He was famous for his angry outbursts on the Senate floor, but that was the only place he did that. He was a warm, sharp, approachable politician when on his home turf. Almost everyone who's lived in Alaska for more than a few years, regardless of their political views, has a happy story about Uncle Ted. Here's mine.

I was on my first book's publicity tour in the fall of 1985 -- a complete and beer-soaked rube with a hardback tucked under my arm and one foot back in Alaska and a small construction business. I still had roofing tar jammed under my fingernails as I signed books in Boston, New York, Philadelphia. On the way to Washington DC I got word that Senator Stevens was planning a reception for me at the Capitol. To put this in perspective take the meager, oddball celebrity I have today and divide it by 162. In the firmament of American stardom I was one dim blink of a passing satellite. And a United States Senator was throwing me a party.

He'd invited the Washington press corps and many of them came to the ornate room in the old Capitol Building, not because of me, but because he'd invited them. I was ignorant at the time of the prominence of most of them, but I do recall chatting with James Fallows for a few minutes at the bar. The most comfortable conversation I had was with the bartender himself who was embarrassed and actually said to me, "You should go talk to someone else." Then the Senator swept in.

I was meeting him for the first time, but Stevens put his arm around me like we were old war buddies. He introduced me at length and without notes to the assembled press and asked if I'd read something from my book. After I'd read a couple of things, the Senator worked the room with me at his side. He didn't stay long and the party broke up soon after he left, but the glow of that day remains even now.

I disagreed often, if not always, with Stevens' policy positions but I voted for him every six years and would have the last time too were I still an Alaska voter. I owed him that. A lot of Alaskans who disagreed with him felt the same way. However the world may remember him otherwise, Ted Stevens was a first rate politician and exactly right for the time and the place in which he lived.

Ted Stevens' death in a plane crash, for all its tragedy, is the perfect ending to his story. Had I thought of it I would even have wished it for him. Rest in peace, Uncle Ted. And thanks again.

Trading Up

2010-08-05T08:48:00.003-04:00

While waiting over two weeks to close the deal on my triumphant conversion to a Man Van, my motoring life has stalled in limbo. I'm driving the same good truck I was a month ago, but it seems a worn copy of its former self. Like being on a date with a girl you know you're going to break up with, it's the inversion of the first date when you are looking for all the qualities and signs that this was meant to be. I've definitely moved into the I don't know what I ever saw in you phase. And the truck knows it.

The driver's door gives up a pathetic little squeak when I open it. Something is rattling in the console -- a nervous tick I never noticed before. It seems to be collecting more dirt than usual. The rock dot on the windshield is spidering. This rig definitely knows it is being dumped and has stopped taking care of itself. When our favorite song comes on the radio I swear the engine lugs. What, you and your car don't have a favorite song? What kind of American are you?

Americans love their cars. Until we don't. First cars we always remember. Cars we might have had for awhile but didn't really deserve we remember. Trade-ins just get added to The Number -- no more indelible than your roommate's girlfriend's friend from Grand Rapids, or that bartender in Harrisburg.

So, fare-thee-well Toyota Tacoma double cab with the five foot bed, I hardly knew ye. Hello Toyota Sienna. Park it anywhere. Make yourself at home. Afterall, it is a three year lease.

Man Van

2010-07-24T10:44:00.013-04:00

Okay. Here it is. I can't live with the private shame of it any longer. The jokes. The insensitive comments I hear about others like me. I'm married. I have children. I drive a tractor and know how to build a house. You might never have suspected, but today is the day I'm coming out. Yes -- I want a mini-van. In fact...here it is: I bought one. Leased, actually. Maybe I'm still just experimenting?

The quiet longings started about a year ago. I'd be in some strange city with a group of colleagues and we'd all pile into a rented mini-van with the luggage neatly stowed. "This is roomy" I'd think, sinking into one of the second row captain's chairs. "And comfy."

The feelings would fade whenever I'd see one going down the road. Can I really be attracted to that? I'd assure myself I could not and my trusty Y chromosome would take control once again helping me to picture the diesel cans in the back of my pick-up. Sheets of plywood. Bags of Ready-Mix.

But then something started to change. Some of the mini-vans did look good going down the road. They were broad, sturdy looking, dependable. I stole a look inside one in a parking lot and found lazy-boy style chairs in the back. Lazy-Boy Chairs. The lumber yard delivers, I reminded myself. Maybe I could love a mini-van...

What finally pushed me over the line and out of the glove box was a friend's coming out. Like me, one would never suspect he was a secret mini-van fetishist. He owns a construction company. He fishes. Married, kids, dresses like a bum. He lives in New Hampshire, for Godsake, where they proudly drive around with "Live Free or Die" on their license plates. And now that license plate is on a stunning South Pacific Pearl Toyota Sienna with the bisque interior. Two years ago I would have recoiled and tried to intervene. But all I did was wonder what other interior colors were available.

And now I await delivery of my Predawn Gray Mica Sienna. I'm going the distance with it: Splitscreen DVD, navigation (what, ask for directions?), bluetooth, JBL 10-speaker sound, all-wheel drive...it's a van for a man's man. It's a Man Van. I want to get a vanity plate with that on it. And truck nuts.

So there it is. Love me for it. Hate me for it. I love my van. Now don't make me pull this thing over and come back there.

Getting Greased

2010-06-10T14:19:00.007-04:00

I’d lived in Alaska for thirteen years before the Exxon Valdez oil spill and for about twelve years after so I can’t claim it was the reason I left. Looking back on it now, though, I can honestly say that it made it possible to leave. I can only explain that by telling you why I went there in the first place.

The America of the mid-seventies was depressing. Vietnam had ended, but badly. Unemployment was high and inflation higher. A few years later President Carter summed it up pretty well during the Arab Oil Embargo in the famous speech in which he cited our national malaise. Malaise was right. The highways were long litter buckets. Lake Erie was dead. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was so polluted that one fine day it caught on fire. Our President, Ford, had not been elected but appointed by a disgraced Richard Nixon. “Rubber Ducky You’re So Fine” was on the Hit Parade.

That was what I left to go to Alaska. When I first set foot there as a twenty-one-year-old pilgrim it represented all that was pure and right. Even the summer wind smelled of crisp ice. Everything-- the people, the forests, the weather and the endless days -- were a force of nature to be reckoned with. It did not suffer fools. Hard work paid premiums. Carelessness did not. The ground shook, the mountains smoked. There were moose in the yard and bears in the woods and a glacier it seemed in every valley. Pure, white and innocent. Not innocent like a puppy. More like a polar bear – beautiful, indomitable, and alluring -- and it would kill you without malice or pause. I loved that place. I wouldn’t have known how to leave it if I’d wanted to.

Something of that purity and innocence and allure was gone after the spill. So was the indomitableness of it. The oil cleanup was only successful in that Exxon successfully convinced the distant American public that it had done its job. It had not and the 900 miles of oiled shoreline in Alaska are unrecovered to this day. We’d been greased. Like the Gulf of Mexico is being greased right now.

The pictures and news reports and press statements from the oil company and the government over the last many weeks has brought all of this back to me again. Some of you reminded me of a story I’d done a long time ago featuring the Alaska spill.

When the Exxon Valdez went aground in Prince William Sound I was doing a radio program called “The End of the Road”, which featured a variety of characters not unlike many of my friends and neighbors in and around Homer, Alaska. Not being in possession of an oversupply of imagination, most of what happened in the world around me ended up happening to my make believe characters. The following is the story I told on one of those radio shows in that ugly spring of 1989.

I dedicate this story to the people of the Gulf coast whose hearts are being broken and futures rewritten. All I can say is that you don’t get over something like this, but you do get through it.

Fritz’s Farewell

Fritz Ferguson leaned against his rusted half-ton in the turnout at the top of the hill and looked one last time at the tranquil bay that stretched before him.

It was a flat gray day. Not the most flattering light for this parting shot. The overcast was high, but it still clipped the tops off his mountains across the water. It was a level cloud line so clean you wouldn’t believe the mountains even had tops if you didn’t know better.

Fritz knew better. He’d been to the tops of more than a few of them. And he’d skied the glaciers, hunted the hills, fished the bays, clammed the coves, and so much more in his fifty-three intimate years with this magnificent country.

When he’d come, there was nothing here but this. The fine little town that now lay below him had been only a wish and a prayer for himself and a few others to come – Argus Winslow, Bud Koenig, Ruby McClay. Good friends and good people. Oh, he’d known the best of people here.

He thought of Meredith, his native wife of fifty years, only two years gone now. His gaze found their holy place, Eden Cove, where they’d met and where they’d eventually fallen in love. He closed his eyes to blink back tears and a much younger Fritz Ferguson stepped onto a quiet little beach.

He’d rowed his dory to the far side of the bay to get a little distance from his homestead with all its endless improvements, and the other homesteaders with all their endless impoverishments. He’d lain back in the sand and gravel, still breathing hard, and looked up to the spruce trees towering around. Listening to the silence. Smelling the sweet air, he’d dug his fingers into the rocky sand.

What he’d felt in his hands shot him up as if given an electric shock. In each of his sandy palms he held a half dozen sweet little butter clams, the cuisine supreme of the low-tide larder. He dug his hands in again and came up with a dozen more. They virtually boiled from the sand. Fritz had seen some pretty darn nice clamming beaches, but he’d never seen anything like this.

He was soon on his knees digging like a gold-struck prospector, and laughing like one too, dredging what would come to be several buckets full of steamers . That’s when he heard a small sound from the woods.

He stopped his digging, tensed, and listened. This seemed to make the noise even louder. A noise he couldn’t identify until he looked up and saw the refreshing, round, and giggling brown face of a young native woman just inside the tree line. She had a pail of fresh blueberries on her arm, and the smile that remained on her face even after her laughter had stopped is what captured Fritz’s heart and what would prove to hold it for five decades to come.

Fritz opened his eyes to shake off the memory and looked across the bay once more for Eden Cove. His eyes weren’t as good as they used to be, so it was hard to tell from this distance, but it looked like Eden Cove lay just about where the group of boats was centered out on the dark water. They were oil-skimmer boats, a common sight lately, and they looked to be working his cove over.

A bitter rage all too common in these days since the oil spill swelled again in his three-quarters of a century old frame and he forced himself to look away. He looked to that quiet little town and thought of the others, those who would stay to help clean this up and who would live here happily – as he no longer could. And he remembered back to that meeting, the first one, the one that changed everything and everybody. The one that let all of us know why Fritz Ferguson couldn’t live here anymore.

It was at the big town meeting about a month ago. The oil company had put it together to the let the local people have their say. The spill was three weeks old, and not only had very little of it been recovered, but nobody really seemed to know where it all was. All anybody knew for sure was that it was starting to show up here. The townspeople themselves, tired of waiting for the officials to do anything, had started the construction of emergency protection booms all on their own. The arrival of these officials did little to calm anyone’s anxieties and only seemed to raise the hackles of most.

The visiting experts sat at long folding tables in the front. There was a coast guard officer, looking solemn and competent. There were two bearded biologists from state and federal wildlife agencies. There were open-collared representatives from the DEC, EPA, DOT, and every other jumbled combination of three-letter agencies they could find.

But all the real attention was focused on one hangdog and nervous-looking oil company representative in the middle. There was no doubt he was tired. He’d just arrived from similar town meetings farther up the coast, and Fritz could tell he pretty much knew what he was in for.

The room was full of many dozens of deadly serious people. In the front row with Fritz was Lars Luger, his meaty fisherman’s hands working their palms together in his lap. Emily Flannigan sat beside him literally huffing as she continually blew a strand of loose hair out of her face. Argus Winslow was there, his big junk dealer arms folded across his barrel chest, looking more unpleasant than usual. He was looking to fight with someone. Fritz had seen Argus look that way too many times. Ruby McClay was with Argus, looking every bit as ornery as he.

Tamara Dupree sat next to Fritz, and when she made eye contact with the oilman, he saw a shiver go through the poor man’s frame. Bud Koenig sat on the outside chatting amiably with Pastor Frank. Bud never seemed to get rattled by anything, and Fritz was glad to see him here. It calmed him and made him feel better about what he was there to do.

The oilman began the meeting by introducing all the agency people, and they in turn gave reports on the cleanup operations – where the slick had been last sighted, where the skimmer boats were, the bird, otter, seal, bear, deer, and fish reports, and generally detailed everything they were preparing to do.

It all appeared so feeble in the massive face of this disaster that it only seemed to rile everybody even further. Finally, the oilman sensed the right thing to do and stopped talking. He took a long, deep breath and asked for public comment.

Lars Luger was the first to jump to his feet. “I’m Lars Luger and I’m a fisherman. At least I used to be. The oil company sent me a check to pay for all the fish I ain’t catchin’ ‘cause o’ their darn big mess. Now, what I want to know is what I’m supposed to do with myself. I’ve been a fisherman all my life. I fish!”

Lars sat down and a rumble went through the crowd. The oilman may have been trying to come up with a response, but Emily Flannigan didn’t give him the chance.

“I’m Emily Flannigan,” she said. “I’m a mother.” She blew the strand out of her face again and addressed everyone at the table: “When the pipeline was built, the oil companies and environmental agencies assured the people of Alaska that a catastrophe like this could not happen. And that if a spill occurred, it could be contained before any damage was done. It is obvious we were lied to and that lies are still being told about the size and impact of this spill. What I want to know is how do we teach our children responsibility and integrity when the very leaders of our free market have no more integrity than snakes!”

The oilman seemed to get shorter in his chair, and Argus Winslow decided to enter the fray, but from a new position. He stood up, turning his back on the experts, to talk to the audience directly.

“You crybabies drive me nuts! You’ve been livin’ off this oil money for ten years. What do you think paid for that new school and hospital and all these roads you drive around on, burnin’ gas like a bunch of happy fools. If you’re gonna play with this messy stuff, sooner or later you’re going to get some on ya’!”

There might have been a riot over that had not Tamara Dupree shot right up, “I can see how a mess like this wouldn’t bother a man who lives in a junkyard!” She was cheered by the crowd into her own tirade. A tirade that lasted some fifteen minutes, outlining in excrutiating detail the long-tern environmental consequences not only of the present oil spill but of the manufacture and use of fossil fuels in general. She called for the oil companies involved to be forced to devote all of their profits to the research and development of clean energy alternatives until such time as the oil wells can be shut down for good.

Tamara was applauded long and loud mostly for sitting down again. Argus tried to get back up to say something, but Ruby McClay pulled him down on her own way up. Ruby gave a dry report on the impact of this spill on the tourist industry and how did the oil companies expect to calculate reimbursement for those businesses who suffer? She might have gotten an answer too, but she ended her talk by pointing a finger directly at the oilman and spitting, “You, mister, are going to pay for this!”

The oilman looked more than sufficiently beaten, and while he tried to think of something to say Bud Koenig stood up to save him.

“Ruby, let’s not be so nasty. Everybody, look, there’s no doubt the oil company has made a lot of mistakes here lately. But this man is here to help. Insulting or threatening isn’t going to do anything but hurt people’s feelings. This mess is bigger than any of us. It’s bigger than all of us. We can’t afford to be choosing up sides right now. We gotta work this out together because nobody wants that oil left in the water. Not you, not him, not anybody.”

Bud sat down, and what he said seemed to hang like a new thought over the room. It was this quiet moment that Fritz seized for what he had to say. He stood up slowly, showing his years, nodded politely to the oilman, then while fingering his hat, turned to his friend and neighbors.

“You all know me. I’ve lived here a long time and saw most of you come to town. As you know, I sold the newspaper last year after Meredith passed away. I figured I’d retire and live out my last few years just enjoying the scenery. It’s a little lonely without Meredith, but her memory was everyplace I looked, so that was okay.

“There’s this clam beach over across the way you might know in Eden Cove. That’s where Meri and I met and courted, and it’s still the most amazing little butter-clam beach I’ve ever seen.”

People looked at each other and nodded in agreement.

“We went over to Eden a lot, and always on our anniversary. We’d build a fire and eat clams until we couldn’t anymore.”

Some folks laughed nervously wondering what he was getting to here.

“Our anniversary was last week and I took the skiff over there by myself just to reminisce and such. When I come onto the beach everything seemed the same, then I started seeing all the blobs of oil stuck around on the rocks and everyplace. I reached my hands down into our beach and came up with nothing but stinky, black, sticky goo. Everyplace I dug it was the same, and what happened scared me.

“This rage built inside me that made me almost blind. It pounded in my chest and squeezed water out of my eyes, because I realized that no part of Meredith was left there anymore. She was gone. It was all gone. I’ve waited a week and it won’t go away. Every time I look over, it happens again.

“That’s why I come up in front of you tonight, to tell you I’m leaving town.” Fritz stopped, and a mumble of wonder when through the room as he tried to think of a way to finish.

“I’m not blaming anyone so much as just taking care of myself. I’m an old man and I can’t live out my last few years being this mad. I’m going back to family in Illinois where I might die of boredom, but at least I won’t leave this world full of bitterness.”

Fritz looked one last time across to Eden Cove but couldn’t see it. The memory of his farewell had clouded his eyes once again and all he could do was wipe his face and get in the truck. He drove along the coast and couldn’t help even after all these years but marvel at the seductive beauty of this land. His heart broke again recalling the prayer Pastor Frank had tried to offer up that same night.

Fritz’s announcement had been pretty much the showstopper. Nobody wanted to hand this poor man any more grief, and everyone grew silent. Even the panel of experts and the oilman seemed mired in solemn thought.

Pastor Frank stood and politely cleared his throat. Addressing himself to no one in particular, he referred to some notes in his hand. “If I might leave us with a benediction,” he began, and they all bowed their heads.

“Dear Lord, you have created for us a near-perfect world -- one of wonder and bounty, security and beauty. You have crafted a delicate ornament that shines in your firmament like a jewel in your holy crown. And you saved your best work for what we know as Alaska. The Great Land, and a land like no other. From the highest of our mountains and glaciers to the bottom of our abundant seas there is richness. In our carelessness and lust for worldly desires, Lord, we have tarnished this treasure. We have killed your creatures, and fouled your golden shores and it appears to be larger than we are…”

The pastor stopped for more than a pause and many people raised their heads to look at him. They saw his hand reach across to Fritz Ferguson’s shoulder and tears running down his puffy cheeks. He looked to his notes, more for strength than for words, then stuffed them back in a pocket as he tried to clear the emotion from his throat to go on.

And at that moment there were no oilmen in the room. Or agency experts or environmentalists or fishermen or mothers. There were only some small and worried human beings who felt with all their hearts the only words that the pastor could find to finish his prayer: “Oh, dear God,” he said. “We are so sorry.”

And after Fritz Ferguson took a last look at his home ground and turned his attention to the road, out across the bay the clouds were breaking up and a yellow sun pounded through to the sea turning it that mysterious and heavenly color of glacial aqua he would miss so much. A light as warm and bright as forgiveness. As if a penitent prayer from one little town were being taken into consideration.

“Give Me some time to fix this,” It seemed to say. “And don’t let it happen again.”

Old, Cranky, White Guy Tells All

2010-04-18T08:31:00.004-04:00

I reached an interesting new milestone this week. For the first time in my life I was referred to as an "old, cranky, white man". Please indulge me while I take a closer look at this accusation. First: Old. Debatable. When 60 is the new 40 that puts my current age of 55 at about the new 37. I have kids in grammar school. I have a mountain bike. On the other hand, my feet hurt me almost all the time. I get a lot of mail from AARP. I like movies about WWII. I would say the allegation of my being old is too close to call. Now let's look at cranky. When I'm loading the boys in the car every morning, certainly. Cleaning the crawl space under the mudroom? That's a yes. Whenever I find myself dealing with the person who accused me of being old and cranky -- always. Fair enough. The individual would have little evidence of my naturally sunny disposition. And, white man. Busted. Can't wiggle out of that one at all. Not only white, but 3/8 Irish white. Irish and German and Belgian and a dollop of Gallic blood to give me the perpetually misspelled last name I carry.

So let's review -- Old - maybe. Cranky - sometimes. White man - indisputable. I guess it's more true than it isn't. Rats. I was hoping to talk my way out of this.

Dwight Goes to One More Meeting

2010-03-01T07:02:00.006-05:00

Tomorrow is the first Tuesday in March, the traditional Town Meeting Day across Vermont. If you have never been to a real town meeting and think they are what you see politicians stage on television, you should make the trip to see one. At Town Meeting the residents of a town are convened as a legislative body who, under the guidance of a moderator and Roberts Rules of Order, hold sole authority over town matters on the agenda. Everything from fire trucks and road salt to budgets and even resolutions to impeach the President are debated and voted on. It is democracy in its finest and most concentrated form. The Selectboard -- the elected officers of the town of which I am a part -- sit impotently at the front of the room to answer questions and defend proposals placed on the agenda. This year the school board convenes in the morning, the town in the afternoon. There's a lunch in between prepared by the Grangers of ham and potato salad which we put on top of the morning's homemade donuts from Lester Dunklee. Dark stains appear on our dog-eared personal copies of the Town Report.

One of the highest honors a town can bestow upon one of its residents is to have the Town Report dedicated to them. This honor is usually reserved for long-serving town officers when they retire or especially beloved residents upon their deaths. Last year it was dedicated to my neighbor, Dwight Miller, who was killed the summer before last when his truck rolled over him while he was cutting brush. I was invited to write that dedication and I present it here once more in Dwight's honor and in celebration of the Town Meetings that meant so much to him and mean so much to all Vermonters.

Dwight Read Miller, Jr.

February 23, 1924 – August 23, 2008

In Fond Memory

“We were going to grow peaches up here in ’88,” says Dwight to a new neighbor while they stood on a breezy hilltop. The neighbor might be forgiven for thinking this was a twenty-year-old story, but as Dwight elaborated it became clear the year in question was 1888, and that when this walking warehouse of local history said “we” he meant every person who had ever farmed or thought of farming this land. And he was related to all of them.

What Dwight Miller and his ancestors and his progeny meant and mean to the Town of Dummerston can’t be captured in this modest dedication. Perhaps one day a shelf full of books will accomplish it. For now, some warm impressions will have to do.

Dwight was a “meeting man”. He belonged to more organizations, farming and otherwise, than most of us can name. But of all the meetings he attended none meant more to him than Town Meeting. He was known in later years to return from warm Florida vacations in order to slog through the parking lot slush to Town Meeting.

One never knew when or about what, but at some point or two or three in the meeting Dwight would stand up and speak his piece. It was usually a story followed by an opinion. Sometimes an opinion followed by a story. And sometimes you couldn’t tell which was what. This was a man who gave a lot of thought to a lot of things.

While versed in the traditions of his family and his trade, Dwight remained an innovator all his farming life and was forever puzzling out better ways to do what he’d always done. He had strong opinions but would change them when presented with information that proved him wrong. This didn’t happen very often. He had a lot of information of his own.

Not long ago the Board of Civil Authority was misguided enough to try to change the official polling place from the church basement to the school. This didn’t last. Never had a chance. At the very next meeting Dwight spoke passionately about the wisdom of leaving it be. When anyone starts a testimony at your meeting with the words, “In 1775 …” You know the rest of your evening has just been spoken for.

Philosopher farmer. Man of faith. Husband. Father. Grandfather. Singer. Chocoholic. Brush cutter extraordinaire. However you knew Dwight Miller, he knew you too. He paid attention to people. He collected friends like shiny stones. He kept track of people who shared his birthday and called them all every year at ungodly times of the morning like a good farmer would.

He once welcomed a new family to town with a parable. It starts off like a joke, but doesn’t end up that way.

There’s a farmer cutting brush alongside the road when a stranger rolls up in his wagon. The farmer tips his hat and asks the stranger if he needed help.

“I’m looking to settle here in town and wonder if you can tell me how the folks are around here?”

The farmer dusts his hat off and says, "How were they where you come from?"

“The worse sort,” replies the stranger. “Liars and gossips. Two-faced and mean. I couldn’t get away fast enough.”

“Eyup,” says the farmer, sadly. “That’s just the way you’ll find them here.”

The stranger shakes his head and rolls on.

A few days later another stranger in another wagon comes up the road and waves to the farmer out in the field. When he reaches the fence the stranger calls out, “I’ll be moving my family into town soon and I was hoping you could tell me how the people are around here?”

Once again the farmer asks in return, “How were they where you come from?"

“Oh, they were the best sort. I hated to leave. Do anything for a neighbor. Give you the shirts right off their backs.”

“Eyup,” says the farmer with a nod, “That’s just how you’ll find them here.”

Story or opinion? One never could quite tell with Dwight.

Town Meeting will not be the same without Dwight Miller and neither will the town. He cannot be replaced. He can only be remembered. And he will be – as the best sort.

To Bleet or Not To Bleet

2010-02-20T10:12:00.004-05:00

I haven't felt much like blogging lately. Or tweeting. I know that's not supposed to stop me. Thousands of determined blogger/tweeters -- bleeters? -- pound out their thoughts whether or not there's any need. The Twitter prompt "What's Happening?" can usually be answered with the blank that's already there. More of us should leave it at that.

Part of the problem is that when I'm doing something that is interesting to me I am almost never in front of my computer. It is where I sit when nothing else is happening. When I come across something startling, ironic or hysterical out in the world my first instinct is not to pull out my iPhone and pass it on. I imagine people on the other end of my bleets are absorbed in startling, ironic and hysterical episodes of their own and don't need second hand ones. That's why I am such a piss poor bleeter. I actually believe that you, dear friends and followers, have lives. Is this crazy or what?

So when I get into these drippy moods of mine that match the news and weather I lose complete confidence in my ability to entertain you. Come to think of it, it's not a lack of confidence that I will so much as a surety that I won't. So I spare you the attempt.

Roy Blount Jr. once described writer's block as the fear of writing something horrible. It can be a healthy fear sometimes my fellow bleeters. Embrace it. I'm going to go for a walk in the woods and look for something hysterical.

Thoughts on the Independent Voter from a Dead Gadfly

2010-01-27T06:56:00.002-05:00

"We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old -- reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

Not-So-Great Depression

2010-01-24T10:31:00.002-05:00

In case you're wondering why you feel that way, today is the most depressing day of the year. The British have studied this. If January 24 is the most depressing day it implies, of course, that there are others. If you are generally depressed it might tell you that of all the days you feel like that, this one is the worst. As if people with depression need any help deciding why any particular day is lousy.

I suppose you can put anything in a news story and it takes on some authority: The Democrats have lost their way. The Republicans have lost their minds. Balloon boy fantasizes about Angelina Jolie. How your cats are plotting to kill you.

Some things get to you more than others. It doesn't surprise that any young boy would fantasize about Jolie, mother figure that she is. Or that either political party has deteriorated in any imaginable way. Every member of the Democratic party could spontaneously combust and we would think, "that's just like them." Republicans could encircle the National Mall wearing only adult diapers while waving sharp sticks and we would shake our heads and flip back to Law and Order reruns. Cats plotting against you? Of course they are.

But I'm resisting the idea that today is the most depressing day of the year. I got up this morning and took a long snow shoe through the woods and back on a perfectly still, crisp, Vermont Sunday. Granted, some of you got up this morning and strolled down a warm sunny beach, but that doesn't depress me. You might have stepped on a sharp stone and got an infection. It may not be infected yet, but you never know. My feet are fine.

I was far more depressed last night than today. Take-out pizza and Night at the Museum II with the boys. Saturday nights used to be a lot sexier. I'm not too old to remember that. The prospect of tomorrow is more depressing than even that -- Monday. Lunches to make. Kids to prod and bully into the car. I think there is a doctor appointment in there somewhere. Tomorrow - yuck. Today - I'll take it.

Have a good day. Keep your eye on that foot.

Underpants Never Strike Twice

2009-12-28T08:48:00.006-05:00

If the foiled terrorist on flight 253 had tried to light his underpants on fire during the middle part of the trip, I wonder if they'd now be making us stay in our seats with our hands in our laps for that hour? In eight-and-a-half years of watching our crack security professionals' attempts to keep from happening the thing that just happened this one wins the prize. Some guy fiddles in his lap with some odds and ends he brought on board and nearly detonates explosives sewn into his underpants. If this were truly a viable way to bring down an airplane you'd think that people who are paid to sit around and think about these things would have thought that might be a possibility and put these restrictions in place before somebody actually tried it. It's not like it was a brilliant or unlikely scenario. Here's a not-so-brilliant and likely guess at how that conversation went at the TSA:

"Somebody could hide this powder in their underpants and detonate it on their approach into a major US airport."

"Yea, we know. Let's wait until it happens and then then make sure it doesn't happen again. At least not on the approach"

"What if someone tries it at the beginning of a flight?"

"We'll deal with that when it happens. It's not our job to prevent these specific things. It's our job to prevent these specific things from happening twice in a row. Relax. Have donut."

So now we'll all sit with our hands folded neatly over our throbbing bladders like a bunch of school kids for the last hour of a flight for no good reason except to demonstrate with what precision the people in charge of our safety can recognize what it was they missed the first time. Speaking strictly for myself this does not make me feel safer. This makes me feel like the people we're counting on to watch our backs have no idea what they're doing, or where this thing is heading next.

Travel well. And safe.

Let it Snow

2009-12-19T09:08:00.004-05:00

A classic Nor'easter is bearing down on New England. Unlike our urban brethren to the east and south who listen to the grave tones of their weathercasters' voices and crouch behind their snow shovels, Vermonters like this sort of thing. Kids dust off the sleds, skis get fresh wax, chairlifts lurch into action across the Green Mountains and town road crews start adding up the overtime. The only disappointment we're likely to feel in this most recent "historic event" is that the really big accumulations will peter out before they get here leaving us with a measly six or ten inches.

The downside is that my older son comes home from Seattle tomorrow via a series of eastern airports all likely to be closed by midnight tonight. That part's not so great, but he's young and resilient and I know I'll see him soon -- even if he does have the patterns of airport seating etched into his lovely face.

This week leading up to Christmas is always one of tender domestics and nostalgia. Cooking smells and rustling garland will conjure childhood memories thought lost. More innocent times project from every colored light. This is why it's called a season of joy and this is also why people get depressed at this time of year. Here's to more of the former and less of the last.

I will part with some shameless commerce. 'Tis the season, I suppose. Just in time for Christmas my publisher has released a new retrospective collection of mine called, It's Just Like I Told You; 25 Years of Comments and Comic Pieces. You can read about it on the home page, or just go buy and download it at any number of online sellers: iTunes, audible.com, Random House Audio and others. Thanks for coming around like this. I enjoy these little chats of ours.

Zhumbies

2009-11-27T12:08:00.005-05:00

Living as I do, and perhaps always have, on the far fringes of American consumer culture it is difficult for me to get my arms around the Black Friday madness. Especially the crazed appetite for these mechanical hamsters called Zhu Zhus. Why a synthetic surrogate for what is already a surrogate? Hamsters, it seems to me, are the pet we give to our children in order to avoid getting them a dog or a cat. "Prove to us you can handle the responsibility of a pet and we'll talk about a dog," goes the traditional refrain. Of course the whole thing is a set-up. Hamsters are about the least durable living species, if my experience is any measure. Step on one - dead. Let them escape into the walls - dead, stink. Put them in a Lincoln Log fort then bomb with D-batteries - mortally injured, soon dead. Take to fourth grade show-and-tell -- MIA, presumed dead.

If by some miracle a hamster survives and breeds, children are treated to the horrors of hamster moms eating their young. In other words, hamster ownership usually puts an end to any further talk of pets for several glorious years. A Zhu Zhu will not accomplish this. A Zhu Zhu, like its real-life counterpart, is unlikely to see the sun set on Christmas Day. But there will be nothing learned. It simply becomes another piece of junk in the toy box with battery juice leaking out of the underbelly. No horror. No shame. No somber funeral in the backyard. You might as well go pick out that stupid dog now.

My advice to holiday Zhu Zhu fanatics (zhumbies?) is to head directly to the pet store and surprise the little tykes with the real deal. Lie to them and claim it is a Zhu Zhu brought to life by Santa's magic, and look, it doesn't even need batteries!

Soon you'll be holding their little shoulders in the backyard saying last rodent rites and looking forward to two or three more pet-free years. Get 'em while they're hot! Or at least still warm.

(The author pre-emptively acknowledges that the torment or destruction of helpless animals is wrong and to leverage such cruelty in order to advance some twisted notions of entertainment is just as wrong and he feels as terrible about it as he did in the fourth grade.)

Don't Do It For Me, Oprah

2009-11-21T09:06:00.004-05:00

Now I feel bad. My previous confessional post about my Oprah regrets appears to have prompted her to throw in the towel completely. I knew as a big-hearted person that she would feel terrible about the circumstances behind my decision to decline an invitation to appear on her show, but O, taking it off the air? Entirely uncalled for. I'm fine. Really. It all worked out. In retrospect -- and at this point in my life I am all about retrospect -- not going on the Oprah show was one of the best moves I ever made.

Had I appeared on Oprah that spring of 1996 the book I'd just released might well have taken off and become something. Maybe not, but let's say for argument it did. That would have prompted publishers to line up with large cash offers for another book I didn't have in me, but would have committed to because I would have gotten all wrapped-up in the money and attention. Guaranteed. The resulting book deal would have demanded a fast-track turnaround to capitalize on all the buzz and would have derailed my life for a solid year. The book would have sucked and so would my standing as a father, husband and friend. I would have spent the money on a better boat and a larger woodshop I wouldn't have had time to use. Panned by the press, resented by my family, and distanced from my friends I would have bobbed in the bay alone on my better boat and wished I'd simply said no to Oprah. Which in fact I did.

So there, O. Happy ending. You like those, right? You know how and when to leave a stage and I -- in my little dim rim of the limelight -- did too. So, I won't feel bad about you canceling your show for me if you won't feel bad about me canceling your show for me.

Making It Right with Oprah

2009-11-13T11:26:00.006-05:00

Sarah Palin finally said yes to Oprah. Every time Oprah is in the news, which is nearly everyday, I suffer a cringe of shame and regret. Why? -- you might rightfully ask if you cared one whit about my regrets. A badly ended affair? An unpaid loan? A business deal gone south? No. I'm afraid much worse than any of that. To get this monkey off my back once and for all I will confess to you here and now that I once said no to Oprah. I shall give you a moment to collect yourself.

It was the spring of 1996. I had been on a three week publicity tour for my book The Free Fall of Webster Cummings followed by a two week roving television shoot for the PBS series Travels on America's Historic Trails. I was exhausted and homesick. My 11-year-old son and my fiance -- now my wife -- back in Alaska were on my mind constantly. I promised them the minute I got home we'd load up the boat and head across to the wild side of Kachemak Bay for a few days of being just us. There had been delays and schedule changes and they seemed dubious. I promised them I would not mess it up again.

The day I arrived home I went immediately to the garage and started getting gear together. God it was good to be home. The phone rang and a very nice producer from Oprah informed me in a congratulatory tone that Oprah wanted me on her show. I had a fishing pole in one hand the phone in the other. Oprah was a kingmaker even then. My book wasn't doing so well and certainly needed the juice. I let too much time pass, but finally asked, "When?"

"The day after tomorrow!"

"Where?"

"Here in Chicago. We'll pay all your travel expenses and have a flight booked for you in the morning."

It didn't seem like such a hard decision to make at the time. I'd promised my family. I was exhausted. I could taste the bay from where I stood.

"Is there another day we could do it?"

"No." She said, without ambivalence.

"Now or never?" says I.

"Never."

I heard later that no one says no to Oprah. And if you do you are dead to her. Or at least dead to her show. I don't know if that's the least bit true. I do know that book sold fewer copies than any of my titles before or since. It was remaindered only a couple years later without even appearing in soft cover. I still have about twenty cases of them in my basement.

So every time I hear her name my Oprah Shame Spiral begins to churn. Like today. And I work through it the same way I always do -- I remember three wonderful spring days across the bay with my family. Sure, there were plenty of those at many other times and only one Oprah, but that one needed to happen. More than Oprah did. That's true even now as I sit here actually in Chicago on my way west to see that same son. He's now 24 and I get as homesick for him now as I ever did.

We're going to have dinner tonight and I'll have to ask him if he remembers that one trip to the cabin. I'll bet he remembers it more than Oprah remembers me saying no to her. Ain't that right, O?

John Adams Calls Us Out

2009-11-06T14:54:00.003-05:00

I'm guessing most of you don't stop by this blog for erudition, but let me try this out anyway. I was sifting through some old notes today looking for something else and turned up this quote from John Adams which I'd scribbled down who-knows-when:

We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular governments. But there is great danger that those governments will not make us happy. God grant they may. But I fear that in every assembly, members will obtain an influence by noise, not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls.

That the great man saw this coming is no great comfort to me.

Dream Big

2009-10-11T09:48:00.004-04:00

People who share their dreams on blogs deserve a special kind of hell. What I have to say to those people is, move over. This one I cannot refuse.

Last night I was on a commercial fishing boat somewhere in a foreign sea off the coast of a Kyrgyzstanny kind of place. Peter Sagal, host of Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me was the skipper. The rest of the crew was made up of production staffers Michael Danforth, Ian Chillag, Eva Wolchover and Emily Ecton. My wife was on board as well but she was not my wife although I had a painful crush on her. As we were cautiously making our way through heavy fog in calm seas to make port Peter said, "Watch for dead floating Jews. They can be a problem here." They turned out not to be a problem for us. We made our way into the harbor of what we assumed would be a hostile and anti-Semitic village, but turned out to be exceedingly generous. They spoke English, accepted American dollars, and gave us rides to and from town to gather groceries. The local specialty was a gallon-sized square box made of raw salmon that you filled with vegetables and potatoes and then baked. We were all crazy about the idea and enthusiastically gathered ingredients from the local market. A local boy, about 12-years-old, fell in love with my-wife-who-was-not-my-wife at first sight and wrote a love ballad to her in the time it took me to buy potatoes. I bent down and told him to back off, while silencing his guitar with my hand, then realized I'd just risked turning the whole village against us. I went back to the harbor where everyone was gathered around an impossibly large swordfish lying on the dock in need of butchering. I produced a filet knife as big as a machete and peeled off a long, beautiful slab of swordfish. My-wife-who-wasn't-my-wife beamed at me. Take that, guitar playing love-struck local boy.

Calling Dr. Jung...

On the Couch

2009-08-29T13:12:00.002-04:00

I'm starting to think I have this blog to avoid seeing a therapist. I look at my last four or five posts and they are all in one way or another excuses and apologies for not blogging more.

I joke about being a lazy writer as if I'm not a lazy writer because in fact I am a lazy writer. Although I am not a lazy person. Quite the opposite. My life consists of a long complicated list of things to do that I will never get done. Literally. I carry a list in my pocket every single day and have since my early twenties. On the list today, for example, I am to pick up the dry cleaning, begin thinking about remarks for fundraiser next month, call Claude, hang chin-up bar for my wife, fix outdoor light switch, see Inglorious Basterds, work on Jeff's table and, oh look - update blog.

Obviously these things go in no particular order. Items like dry cleaning I don't even bother to cross off because it seems there is always dry cleaning to be picked up or dropped off and by the time I get around to actually doing it, it is there to be done. Things like begin thinking about.... are simply there to nag. I will never finish this list. I add tasks at half again the rate I cross them off and will certainly die with lots and lots of things left undone. I am guaranteed to die a failure in my own eyes. Neat trick, isn't it? For those of you wondering, yes, I was raised Catholic.

Probably because of this list I have a very unhealthy relationship with time and money. I know when I die it is quite possible I will have a few dollars leftover somewhere, but I am absolutely certain I will be out of time. Even if I know gas is ten cents cheaper at a station on the other side of town I will not go there because the two dollar difference on a tank of gas is not worth my time. And the sooner I fill my tank the sooner I can cross off get gas on my list. It has never occurred to me to put save money on the list. It seems so counter-productive and probably bad for the economy.

Of course it's just as likely that some day I will be out of money before I'm out of time and my list might say things like steal bread and rummage through dumpster. Go live with children is a possibility for future lists as is sell memoir, cheap. That will lead to the inevitable remember to write memoir and my life list will finally have reached its absurd and unavoidable conclusion.

Thanks Doc. See you next week.

Dog Days

2009-08-18T08:22:00.006-04:00

Why am I not posting more often? Because I am lazy. Lazy and hot. Lazy and hot and damp. We are in the dog days of summer and I am panting. One must think of things in order to sufficiently construct a blog entry and I cannot think of anything except: it's hot. The hazy air surrounding my house and hanging stagnant inside it is aggressively still this morning. Not only does it not move, but it resists being moved. These are precisely the conditions that existed at the dawn of time when a simple one-celled critter from a space rock began dividing and multiplying and evolving into swine flu, gladiolas and Justin Timberlake.

I feel like heading in the other direction. I am heading in the other direction. In an effort to cool itself my body has shut down all unnecessary functions and I am writing this using only my brain stem and a stick.

As they say down yonder -- It's not the heat, it's the stupidity.

Napping Saves Lives. And Fingers

2009-07-31T08:34:00.002-04:00

I was pleased to read in the New York Times yesterday that napping is okay. Not that anyone ever doubted it. Every year or two some major news outlet feels compelled to run a story about this obvious truth. I think the only people who denigrate the napper are those who can't nap themselves -- or won't allow themselves to. I've denied myself many a needed siesta for the sake of a deadline or some sense of higher purpose when, in fact, no purpose is ever served by a groggy servant. If I look back on just the last few years and count the accidents or near-misses I've had -- lacerated nerve on the bandsaw, rolled tractor, smashed thumb in hitch -- all of them took place at the time of day when I usually nap. I'd be far better off today if I had, and that's the way I look at each nap I take. I don't know on any given day what horrible thing I've spared myself as I tuck into my office sofa, but I can drift into a happy sleep ticking them off in my head: compound leg fracture, punctured eyeball, torn rotator cuff, write something really stupid in a blog and post it...

Zzzzzzzzz

Updating the Dated

2009-07-25T12:50:00.006-04:00

Many of you have sent me kind notes over the past many months requesting that my earlier audio programs be released on CD and in down loadable formats. We've been working on that and if you go to the Bookshelf page of this website you'll see that The Free Fall of Webster Cummings has recently made the transition as well as The End of the Road. My publisher and I have made the decision to release my first two books of commentary, As Far As You Can Go Without A Passport and Small Comforts, as a one volume compilation to be titled It's Just Like I Told You: Twenty-Five Years of Comments and Comic Pieces. Most of this material appeared originally as commentary on NPR's All Things Considered starting in 1984.

It has been interesting if not entirely excruciating to go back over this material. I'm reading it again with an eye toward culling some of the stuff that probably shouldn't have been there in the first place and some of the stuff that was appropriate at the time, but reads as dated and naive now. It's a squirmy task. Everything in those books was heartfelt once, but like the the sentiments you might find in your old high school literary magazines, it's not necessarily something you want to share with the world -- again. I also plan to add some commentary I've done since my All Things Considered years to demonstrate, I suppose, that I did learn a little something about something since 1984. Or at least since high school. Definitely since high school.

Technical Foul

2009-07-19T11:01:00.010-04:00

Okay. I've been faking it for awhile. Our server issues were cleared up over a week ago, but I somehow found it easy to stay out of this space. Pretend I wasn't home. Peek out the window to see who's at the door. This happens to me from time to time. I suppose it's a form of depression, but not the clinical kind. I think of it more as a technical depression, as in technological. In other words, sometimes all of this technology depresses me.

I have a complicated relationship with my high tech stuff. To be perfectly truthful I find it all irresistible. In addition to the standard fare of phones, DVD players, flat-screens, and iPods I own three computers all capable of mind-bending feats of art, organization, and calculation. I use them to type on for the most part. Sort family photos. Shop for used tools on eBay and Craigslist. There's nothing I use these computers for that I couldn't and didn't do before I had them. The difference is that it is so much faster and easier to do now. This ought to put time back into my life but it doesn't. It's so fast and easy I just do more of it.

And every once in awhile it all breaks down and I have to stop. That's what happened for a couple of days two weeks ago. My website went down. My blog crashed. My email server became unavailable. My excellent web guy and I spent way too much time on the phone with customer service people in exotic foreign locations. There were accounts to be verified. Passwords recalled. Indecipherable series of numbers and decimals appeared in my phone notes. I dropped my iPhone in the sink and the sounds stopped working. We think an electrical storm took out our WiFi router. By the time it was all fixed I was broken.

I took a trip with my 3-year-old to see my 24-year-old. I didn't take a laptop. I mowed the lower field -- finally. I started cutting the frame for the arbor to go over the pergola out back. I laid out a new fence line along the east side. I sharpened all my hand planes and scrapers to get back to work on a table for good friends that is six months overdue. I picked some raspberries.

And now I'm back feeling much better, thank you. I'll never lie to you again.*

*[asterisk denotes unidentified caveat to be named later]

Everybody Gotta Server Somebody

2009-07-07T11:55:00.003-04:00

My web host is going through some sort of mid-life crisis -- or perhaps a teen hormonal surge --and has stopped taking my calls. It has jazzed up its controls and protocols and left us here at bodett.com scratching our heads, trying to understand, and seeking counsel. We've lost some previous posts on this blog, and we're having trouble uploading new ones. Check back often, we'll get to the bottom of it soon.

Thanks

Tom

A Michael Jackson Kind of Day

2009-06-26T23:15:00.011-04:00

I was in my hotel room in Chicago yesterday afternoon force-feeding myself with breathless cable news stories in preparation for last evening’s taping of WWDTM. There wasn’t much hard news on. Every channel was focusing on the sad but not unexpected death of Farrah Fawcett from cancer. I turned off the TV and took a short nap. When I woke up and turned the set back on Farah Fawcett was nowhere to be seen. I don’t want to say it was as if she never lived, but it was certainly as if she never died. Now, the day belonged to Michael Jackson. And today does too, and probably tomorrow and it will go on until we’re so tired of hearing about Michael Jackson we’ll wish he weren’t dead. Plenty do already, I know, and for pure good reasons.

He was an exceptional talent, no doubt about it. My wife who is younger than me has shown me enough videos and played enough MJ songs today to remind me of that. I was a little out of his demographic to really feel the loss of him in the way she does. When John Lennon died I felt it. Elvis, not so much. The Beatles were part of my soundtrack on the way up. Elvis was just before that. Michael Jackson just after. I guess the people who make the music we listen to when we first start being affected by music are the ones we bond with. If I outlive Bob Dylan it will be a very bad day for me when he goes. Neil Young, same deal. These guys wrote my youth. Michael Jackson – he did that for a lot of other people.

I expect it will take about three weeks before people start spotting him in shopping malls or in blurry beach photos from Tahiti. Michael Lives! will scream from the tabloids as you reach for your Tic-Tacs at the grocery store. A woman in San Antonio will see his face in a tortilla. Previously unreleased singles and outtakes of videos will sell millions. When artists die they lose control over all the material that wasn’t good enough for them. The really great ones know how to edit and cull. And, I suppose, they know when it's time to exit.

One happy thought to this whole thing: Jenny Sanford and her four sons. That big dumb media eyeball has swung away to brighter lights. One last good deed from the Gloved One. I’m sure Mrs. Sanford has given a prayer of thanks for that tonight.

We've Been Framed

2009-06-14T10:45:00.007-04:00

There is a strange and beautiful tradition here in Vermont. If you were to mill a pile of logs into heavy timbers, cut them into components of a structure of some kind, and let the word out that you're going to put it all together on a particular day -- a bunch of good people show up to help you do it. That's what happened here yesterday. The photo above shows about a third of those who came by. We're standing in front of the nearly finished product, which at that moment was lashed together with straps and come-alongs awaiting adjustment and timber pegs. On top from left to right are Neill, Gabe, Adam, and Nathan -- Adam, Gabe and Neill did all the cutting on and off over the past couple of months in the barn. On the ground is Jared who did the stone work, myself, and neighbors Claude, Chad and Andy.

Putting up a heavy frame by hand is an oddly satisfying sport. This is the second time we've done this here. The first time was for the barn you see in the right background in the picture above. Nine or ten pairs of hands guiding a few hundred pounds of hardwood into a place with tolerances of less than a sixteenth of an inch. It can be tricky. It can also be a real finger pincher.

The devil and the payoff is in the details. Every part in these pictures was figured, cut, and shaped over the course of weeks. They slid together with an Ikea-like grace with only a few diplomatically applied hammer blows.

And, as with all good things. The proof is in the pudding. What is it?

We'll build an arbor frame over top and encourage a bunch of leafy stuff (not the technical horticultural term) to grow over it. In effect, this is a very elaborate shady spot in the backyard built with goodwill and good people. There is no better place to sit in three states.

Black Locust Bloom

2009-06-01T20:24:00.006-04:00

The black locust trees are in bloom this week. The air is sweet with it. They are the last trees around here to bud and leaf out. They are a confounded tree top to bottom. The wood is so impervious to rot and pests that it can be used as if it were chemically treated. Better than creosote many claim. It is the preferred wood for fences and posts of all kinds and there are lots of popular bromides about it. "Locust lasts one year longer than rock". "A locust post will last longer than the hole you put it in." I especially like that one. Shortly after we bought this land I went looking for the property corners to properly mark them. Like surveyors. Not like dogs. The survey for the place was made in the 1880's and the boundaries mostly followed an old stone wall. All except one corner. The map said it was marked by a locust post. I looked and looked all through the bramble and brush and gave up day after day. But I was determined to find it and went down one last time vowing not to return until I found the post. And I did -- laying on the ground sound as a dollar and with no hole in sight. Lasted longer than the hole they put it in.

I spend half my time in our woods admiring the locust and the other half trying to kill it. It spreads in a variety of hideous ways and for the first many years of a black locust's life it is covered with nasty thorns. Clearing locust is blood sport. I have a six inch cut across my belly where one particularly tough customer tried to fight me off. I bested it in the end, but there is a scar. Locust will spread by sending out roots that pop up anywhere they please. Cut it off and it sends a different one somewhere else. Black locust will even hide in your luggage and take root in the cracks of sidewalks at your next airport. Okay, I made that part up, but it wouldn't surprise me to see a locust shoot coming at me from under the taxi stand at O'Hare on Thursday.

Where was I going with all this? Oh yeah. The locust trees are in bloom this week. It's a very pretty smell. And it will outlive me.

Take Five

2009-05-28T21:30:00.003-04:00

I heard somewhere that if any five people guess the weight of any individual they will always be right if they pool their answers and average them. Always. I want to find out more about this. Did they find that four people wasn't quite enough? Six too many? How steeply does the effect fall off? Can five people be collectively clever about matters other than body weight? We know that once you get into the 500's -- the size of the US Congress, for example -- the net wisdom is equivalent to that of a box of round rocks. In fact, it seems there comes a point when a group goes from wise to normal to flawed to aggressively stupid. Not only wrong, but destructively so. So if five is wise and 535 is destructive -- there must be some gradations in between. The Supreme Court is nine people, but perhaps this is because in any 5-4 decision we can be confident that the majority of five has nailed it. Our founding fathers were anything but stupid about such things. How many FF's were there, by the way? Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Washington...hmm.

I happen to serve on the five member board that governs our little town here in Vermont. We're pretty good together. We've never tried to guess anybody's weight, but I think we'd do okay at it. We come up with sound solutions for things like bridge decking, gravel crushing, and employee insurance plans. I think we could do more if given the chance. It might be interesting to try. What if the federal government simply jobbed out a couple of its more nagging issues to five member selectboards around Vermont and New Hampshire? Let's say here in Dummerston we look at the North Korea issue on Wednesday night after the new dump truck bids are opened. Maybe Newfane could take a crack at the Guantanamo thing. How could they possibly make it worse? Lebanon, NH would be perfect for health care reform. They have a hospital there and everything. Climate change? Toss that bone to the farmers up in Rutland. They know their weather. Illegal immigration? St. Albans up on the border -- our front line against the Canadian horde. Education reform? -- look no further than any Vermont town with a school in it. You could bankrupt forty-nine states (not counting California, that's a gimme) with the sheer complexity of Vermont's education funding formula. We know how to overthink education up here and any five of us could fix it. Right after we find Osama. And guess his weight.

Reform You Can Believe In

2009-05-20T22:49:00.001-04:00

I got an email today from the president asking me to help him out of a jam. Specifically, he said, “Tom I need your voice on health care.” I was kind of busy, but decided to take a cue from Governor Huntsman and do for my country what the president asks just because he asks. It’s the kind of American I want to be. No matter that I know nothing about health care reform and have nothing to add to the debate. That hasn’t stopped anybody else. So, Mr. President, here’s my voice.

The biggest thing people seem to fear about health care reform is that the government is going to get involved in our medical decisions and mess everything up. Step back and think about this for a minute. Our current health care system is unwieldy, mismanaged, unfair, expensive and inefficient. In other words it essentially is a government program already. We could make the switch over a weekend and nobody would even notice. Instead of calling some 25 year old business graduate at your HMO and arguing with her over the prescriptions your doctor thinks you should have but she doesn’t, you could be calling some 25 year old social science graduate in a government agency doing the same thing.

Insurance companies give a six inch thick manual to all the people who answer their phones. It’s called The Big Book of No. Somewhere in it is a reason to decline any request whether trivial or life-threatening. Sort of like the IRS or FEMA. Putting incompetent people into key decision making positions – a public sector specialty – would not fix any of the problems, but it would finally provide an understandable reason for them.

If you annoy your insurance company they can simply drop your coverage and stop taking your calls. What is a government run health care program going to do if you tweak them off – deport you? If you get a particularly surly government account manager or health care provider you can always write an angry letter to your senator or congressman. [I just had a moment of clarity about why the House and Senate aren’t wild about health care reform. You really are all alone out there on this. No wonder you wrote to me.]

In short, and in conclusion, Mr. President, nationalizing our health care system will accomplish one huge and unlikely thing. It will take all the fear, loathing and anxiety now directed in a hundred scattered directions around our health care world and focus it on one person: You, sir. But if you can take, I’ll do my best as well. It’s just the kind of American I am.

I hope this did some good, Mr. President. If you ever need me for anything else you have my email address.

Something's Bugging Me

2009-05-14T06:52:00.002-04:00

The brain, they say, is a muscle that can and should be exercised. Think meathead. To this end I've decided to think about one thing every day I've never thought about before. Today it's going to be the bugs on my windshield. Now that summer looms here in the country I have noticed an ever expanding sample of bug guts between me and the road ahead. It gets more difficult to avoid thinking about them. My early musings about these splatters led me to a question I can't answer or shake -- Where are the rest of these bugs? I see the soft insides, but with rare exceptions there are no crunchy parts. This leads one to the inevitable conclusion that our roads and highways are littered with bug bodies. Many millions of ecto-empties. For birds and other critters that live on these bugs it must be a depressing sight. Perhaps it is the lowest form of bird that works its way down the shoulders poking through bug shells like beer cans hoping for one little swig here and there.

This is what I have been thinking about, and now this is what you are thinking about. Don't thank me, but do let me know if you think of something new. We meatheads must help one another.

Pilates Appointment in Samarra

2009-05-05T09:37:00.008-04:00

I'm sitting in an Internet cafe in Vermont composing a blog entry on my MacBook. I have a cup of Free Trade Panamanian coffee on one side of my gleaming laptop and an iPhone on the other. My hat bears some indecipherable indigenous symbol from Guatemala. I'm wearing Blundstones -- the only shoes I ever wear -- and a Patagonia SPF-50 hiking shirt. I'm suddenly transported to an April day in 1975 in East Lansing, Michigan. I was hanging out in an off- campus beer pub at midday in my Roman sandals, bell-bottoms, flannel shirt and ponytail reading the collected indecipherable works of Ezra Pound when it suddenly occurred to me that I was an idiotic and embarrassing cliche. I made immediate emergency plans to drop out of college, hitchhike Out West, and become a hard-drinking-hippie-redneck-vagabond-itinerant-worker-Neal Cassady-Jack London-Woody Guthrie-anti-literary-working-class-hero. Cliche that you popular culture bozos!

My how time wounds all heels. As I sit here mortally re-infected with main stream cultural sensibility and style I realize there is no place to run this time. At least no place I'm willing to go. I'm reminded of the parable passed along by W. Somerset Maugham that John O'Hara used to title his novel Appointment in Samarra. This is all there is to say about that.

A merchant in Baghdad sends his servant to the marketplace for provisions. Shortly, the servant comes home white and trembling and tells him that in the marketplace he was jostled by a woman, whom he recognized as Death, and she made a threatening gesture. Borrowing the merchant's horse, he flees at top speed to Samarra where he believes Death will not find him. The merchant then goes to the marketplace and finds Death, and asks why she made the threatening gesture. She replies, "That was not a threatening gesture, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

Watch Your Back, Ashton

2009-04-19T09:19:00.009-04:00

Check your rear view mirror Ashton Kutcher. You may have crossed the magic million follower mark on Twitter and already racked up a couple hundred thousand more, but little reported was the addition of my one-thousandth Twitter follower and twenty-five more after that. Twenty-six now. Twenty-seven. Feeling the heat A.K? I also notice you are following eighty people and I am not among them. Your loss, buster. You'll never know what airport I'm flying out of, or what the weather is like around my place. You'd give up all of that just to keep me from having one more measly follower? [I don't mean to imply that you or any of my followers are measly. Although I suppose you could be if you did not have measles as a child.]

Anyhow. I have you in my sights. I'm not sure what you do, but I understand you are very popular from your work on That Seventies Show. I'll tell you what, I was that Seventies show. I had actual pimples in the early Seventies. I had friends who wore platform shoes with bib overalls. I had tinted lenses in my glasses. A girlfriend once sewed paisley corduroy into the seams of my bell bottoms. And this wasn't something I left with the wardrobe department at the end of the day. I went back to my dorm and slept in them. I carry these and other humiliations with what passes for grace and dignity around my house. You wouldn't know about that, but you could. Make me your eighty-first and my world becomes your world. Only without all the money and adoration.

Oh Peeps, We Hardly Knew Ye!

2009-04-13T22:05:00.005-04:00

This is a picture of perfectly good Peeps in the garbage. It wasn't my idea. I found them like this. Minding my own business, I opened up the drawer to discard a tissue and there they were staring up at me with those two little black eyes. Not as shocking as finding a live baby in a dumpster, not even in that ballpark, maybe not even in that solar system -- but at least sharing a galaxy. So innocent and helpless. Little bundles of marshmallow, food dye and joy. You'd thing they could at least be recycled. Maybe not. These are not a Hindu confection. They are born of a Christian Holy Day. They are not destined to come back in some higher form, such as a Snickers, then a Cadbury, then a chocolate mousse until Nirvana when at last they achieve real chickenhood. No, these little peeps get but one shot at it. Dead is dead. Gone is gone. Even the Rapture, I fear, cannot save these little preservative laden souls. They may rise, but they will still be weird marshmallow confections that are eaten at only one specific time of year in celebration of the Resurrection. And not one day later. Obviously.

Not Dead. Yet.

2009-04-05T10:22:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I received the following two emails about four hours apart:

Tom:

I'm not kidding. Some time in the last two years both my wife and I swear that we heard on the news that you died. I guess that's not true, huh?

Rick xxxxxx

St Louis, MO

Awhile ago I heard you passed away. I was very sad. I am glad that you are still alive. I always loved your Motel 6 commercials. Take care Mr. Bodett, and again, I'm glad you're alive.
Steve

Fresno, CA

This raises two immediate questions -- 1) Who is telling people I'm dead? 2) What happened yesterday to indicate I wasn't? More important, I suppose, than the answers to those are the concerns it raises for the dearly not-so departed. For example, should I get a publicist? I have never been much of a self-promoter and always assumed I was just as famous as I deserved to be whether up or down. But, I never figured I'd be one of those "I thought you were dead" guys. Granted, my professional output is down during these child-rearing years, but it's not like I'm, well, dead.

I suppose it's possible my publisher or a speculative bookseller [there's a redundancy] started spreading the rumor of my death in the hope of stimulating book sales. They severely underestimate my fans. If you, dear reader, were to learn of my death most certainly you'd figure my back list of titles would be out of print within a year and you would be able to pick them up at discount booksellers for twenty cents on the dollar. That's what I like about you.

Motel 6 might keep my death a secret for awhile; propping me up in the radio saddle like Attila the Hun until the whole thing started to smell. That scenario does raise the question of whether AFTRA and SAG require producer pension contributions for deceased performers.

I could go on and on about this, but it's Sunday and I have a lot of chores to do around the house. The trash needs hauling. The perennial beds need to be raked. The tractor needs grease. I've no time to be dead. In fact, to save time I've already composed a list of Last Words and today could be my lucky day. My favorite so far: "That jack looks a little wobbly".

Sleeping Off Those Extra Pounds

2009-04-02T07:12:00.003-04:00

I've recently become concerned about my weight. Not so much that I'm getting fat -- just the expected middle-age "thickening". My pants size hasn't changed in thirty years, but it's trying to and I refuse to budge. "Never give a inch" [sic] was the Hank Stamper family motto in Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion. I'm going to hang that in my bathroom. But, more of a concern to me than my actual weight is the wildly fluctuating readings on our bathroom scale. It's a pretty good one and has always agreed with the big butcher's scale at the doc's office. So why then does my weight vary up to five pounds in a single day? A couple pounds here and there would account for meals and water, but five? I've set a goal for myself of ten pounds, so having a margin of error of 50% is taking the fun right out of not eating ice cream and every other damn thing I want.

I wake up three to five pounds lighter than I was when I laid down. I can lose half the weight I want by sleeping for seven hours. Now there's a diet program you could sell! I then gain it back by working like a dog for eight hours. Shop work. Woods work. Office work. No matter. Here's those five pounds back. Theoretically I could meet my goal by skipping work and sleeping for two days. I'm not sure I could sell that plan around the house, but it's worth a try.

John Hope Franklin

2009-03-25T23:16:00.003-04:00

The prominent historian John Hope Franklin passed away today at the age of 94. He was a black intellectual who never compromised his dignity or his scholarship to fit some 'place' others thought he should be in. He often said that the racial slurs and slights he suffered never cut too deep with him because, "I knew something they didn't -- I was as good as they were."

My wife and I had the honor of sharing a meal with Mr. Franklin while he was visiting in our area. He sat next to me and spoke softly of fly fishing and Southern summers and how he doesn't like the cold anymore. I didn't really know very much about him then. I sensed he knew that, and I think it pleased him. He took an evening off from being John Hope Franklin the prominent black historian and got to be an aged fly fisherman talking weather with a rube.

A moment of silence, please, for the Professor. John Hope Franklin, they are all Southern summers now.

You Been Pwned. Woot. Woot.

2009-03-18T06:58:00.003-04:00

Awhile back we did a Motel 6 radio spot having some fun with the online gaming culture. In it I use the term "pwned", pronounced "powned", meaning "owned", or decisively defeated. I'd never heard the word before or since until yesterday. Ken Nichols, the co-creator and producer/director of AskANinja.com wrote to me very excited about this so I sent him the spot, which you can hear on his website. I gather this is really funny for some gamers, and probably excruciating for others. It would be like when your dad started saying "far out" and "mellow" in the early Seventies. As soon as that happened we knew those words were dead to us. Sorry, gamers. You just got pwned.

Preemptive Apology

2009-03-07T10:03:00.003-05:00

In today's show I referred to my elected position as a member of "The Board of Selectmen". This is the outdated though-still-official name in most towns of the local governing body now commonly referred to as the gender-neutral "Selectboard" We are no longer Selectmen. We are Selectboard members. I suppose it sounded quainter and weightier and funnier for me to use the archaic form in the show. Apologies to all my fine female fellow (fellow?) Selectboard members.

All a twitter

2009-03-07T09:17:00.003-05:00

I have joined my fellow Twits at Twitter and while I'm enjoying following the posts of my friends Peter Sagal, Paula Poundstone, Kyrie O'Connor, Scott Simon and others, I've yet to fully understand the medium. I can barely keep up with this blog of mine. Most of the reason for that is brevity has never been my strength. I'd rather take a beating than made to write a 100 word commentary. My regular email correspondents -- fewer all the time -- will testify that my replies often go "below the fold", and I'm confident many of my missives are opened, groaned at, and closed unread.

Twitter may cure me of this. You are only allowed 140 characters -- about as long as this paragraph. My twitter handle is TomBodett. Check it ou...

Democracy As We Know It

2009-03-04T06:56:00.005-05:00

I received an anonymous comment to my blog about our White House visit that went something like this, Wow! You can tell your children you were there to see the man who ended Democracy forever. That is a once in a lifetime event! I've avoided inserting politics into this otherwise pointless blog, but I can't resist addressing this sentiment. It seems to me these were the very kinds of statements being made by the Left when Bush was in office, by the Right when Clinton was in office, by the Left again when Reagan was in office...oh, and by the Right again when Carter was in office, and let's not forget Richard Nixon... Can we please stop this? Just because your choice is not in the White House does not mean the end of democracy as we know it. It only ends the government you exactly want for awhile. We can thank our Constitution and human nature for the continued existence of a petulant and self-interested Congress, an independent Judiciary and a free if underfunded press. Not to mention free and fair presidential elections every four years when we can work hard and vote to get people into the White House who do govern like we want it for awhile. That sure looks like democracy to me.

Being There

2009-02-27T21:41:00.002-05:00

We brought the boys to Washington DC for their first of what I hope will be many visits, and it couldn't have been a better reception. We were walking in front of the White House and spotted Paul Begala outside one of the gates talking on his cell phone. As we walked by I overheard him say these exact words "...the efficacy of progressive action..." I believe I'm not revealing anything out-of-turn. It was just a scrap of political gobleteygook from a professional Washington insider, but it was live political gobletygook. Be still my heart.

Then, something else we couldn't have planned in a hundred years. As we wandered across the Ellipse behind the White House the perimeter security noticeably tightened. A small helicopter swooped in low around the area, circled the Washington Monument and left. You could see staff and press forming up on the White House lawn and the suddenly out of the west came three Marine helicopters in tight formation. They turn toward the White House, fly right over our heads, then the middle one peels off and lands. We saw the President for about three-fifths of a second as he strode toward the West Wing. Everyone in the small knot of people around us were crowing with our good fortune. Us too. Without the boys on hand it might have been one of those notable cell phone camera moments you tell a few friends about. But this is one for family files.

An Open Letter to the President

2009-02-14T11:36:00.003-05:00

Dear President Obama,

As you no doubt know, my offer to now former Governor Blagojevich to accept the appointment to your old seat in the US Senate went unheeded. This was an error in the governor's judgement that I'm sure you would not want to emulate. Therefore, I am giving you the opportunity to name me to that vacancy in your cabinet you can't seem to fill to save your life. I would make a terrific Commerce Secretary. For one thing, there is little chance I will find myself in ideological opposition to your policies as Senator Gregg did. The very term "ideological" implies the presence of ideas and I can say with confidence there is none of that going on here. I also pay my taxes fully and on time and have done so for several years in a row.

Of course, taking a position in your administration would create a vacancy on the Selectboard of our little town in Vermont, which would have to be filled by appointment, and I suppose I would have to give up my office as a Justice of the Peace. None of this should affect the political tides in Vermont. This place is totally in the tank for you. Giving up the Justice of the Peace title will be a personal loss so I'm wondering if, when appointed, I could still bring the shotgun and badge and saddle coat to your cabinet meetings? It really is a terrific look on me and might help you in 2012 with the western vote.

In preparation for my new roll on your team I have spent the last several hours reviewing US trade policy. It has been enlightening. All this time it seems I have had NAFTA and Napster confused. It all makes much more sense now. I also notice we do an awful lot of trade with China. A mean, A LOT. They gotta be rolling in dough over there. Have you ever given any thought to borrowing some of it back?

As you see, I am a quick study. I mean there's not that much to me at all. Your vetting team should be done by lunch tomorrow and I can catch the Amtrak to DC on Monday. Let me know as soon as possible so that we can begin to manage expectations downward.

Your Devoted Servant,

Tom Bodett

Justice of the Peace

Presumptive Selectman

Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out

2009-02-11T13:27:00.003-05:00

This blog has a reader ironically named, Anonymous, with an existential remark in response to my last post. The reader says that with his or her consulting contract recently cancelled, he or she is out of work but not included in the unemployment statistics. Hence, I assume, the Anonymous. It begs the classic question -- If a person loses his job and nobody notices, is he still broke? My guess is, yes. Somebody should call the government. Anonymously.

Nagging Anxieties

2009-02-10T07:00:00.005-05:00

In an email to a colleague the other day I had occasion to disclose some of the items in my Nagging Anxieties file, which lies between Immediate Concerns and Don't Worry About It. It felt therapeutic and I thought the effect might be enhanced by revealing them here as well. So in no particular order: Colon cancer. Vladimir Putin. The Furnace filter. My lapsed Catholicism.

Mix and match! Add your own!

National Day of Norsemanship

2009-01-27T06:29:00.006-05:00

It is a strange time of year. This leg of winter is always a haul. The holiday spirits sag, the only other holiday in sight with even the slightest bit of fun factor is Super Sunday, which is not really a holiday or even a sporting event so much as a marketing extravaganza. I've always found it the most American of all of our national holidays in this way. For MLK Day we all summon our better angels for a few minutes in the car if the radio happens to replay the "I Have a Dream" speech. At least if you're a person of paleness. I've never once had a white guy say to me, "Happy Martin Luther King Day" or "Keep the Dream". It's probably a very different experience in African American communities, but I live in Vermont. I wouldn't know about that.

Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Veterans Day...let's admit it; for most Americans these represent three day weekends. We might hang out a flag here and there. Get misty-eyed during the closing credits of a rerun of The Fighting Seabees on TMC, but mostly we barbecue and take care of our yards. It's not that we shouldn't care more. We just don't. (Note to indignant readers: I'm making a cultural observation here not a scientific one. Plenty of people care deeply about the meaning of these holidays. Just not most people.)

Super Bowl Sunday, on the other hand, is made for the Anglo-Saxon race which has been, and for at least the next few weeks, will be the dominant influence on American culture. Super Sunday is all about violence and consumption. This is what the Norsemen were all about too: pillage, grab some women, pop the top on the local food stores, and kick back. This sounds an awful lot like the 4/4 broadcast beat of the Super Bowl -- 1) Shot of play action including grunts and flying spit. 2) Cut to cheerleaders, then scan the crowd for loonies and hotties. 3) Go to commercial for pillage. 4) Repeat. All of the same glands are firing which motivated the vikings (not the NFL team) as they sacked ancient London. By the end of the day we're likely to be wearing horns or cheese on our heads. For those of northern European descent this is as close to a day of ancestral observance as we get.

For the rest of us there is always the Sacred Riddle. This year it is XLIII. Any ideas?

Change is Coming

2009-01-21T08:41:00.002-05:00

Wow. Obama has been in office less than 24 hours and already my back feels better and my coffee is staying hot longer. Funny, he never mentioned these benefits during the campaign.

In honor of our new president I am commencing on some changes around this website. It's not really in honor of him. I was going to do it anyway, but 'tis the season.

You may notice this website over the next several weeks getting better and more up-to-date. Come to think of it, you may notice our federal government doing the same thing. But they truly are unrelated. I'm going to be moving this blog up to the homepage and plan to get more responsible about updating this and the commentary on the site so that if you happen to come back over and over and over and over and over, which of course you will, you might actually see something new.

Also, many of you are requesting CD or digital downloads of some of my older recorded works. Some of these are available now and those links will be appearing soon. The rest of it we're working on. There are a lot of archaic and nuisance rights and things involved in this. It all takes time and agents and sometimes lawyers to work out. In the meantime we're going to be marginalizing those audio works that are only available on cassette as that is for all intents and purposes a dead medium. Will it make a comeback someday like vinyl? Being that there is no audio advantage to it and the tape itself ages and becomes brittle, probably not. If you are one of the six dozen people still listening to cassettes, I hear Circuit City is having a heck of a sale on CD and mp3 players.

So don't be a stranger. I'll be doing Wait-Wait this weekend, and will fill you in on all the scrumptious back-stage details including who designed PJ O'Rourke's gown.

News from Jupiter

2009-01-07T07:45:00.004-05:00

Here is a news bulletin -- They've completely run out of things to worry about in Jupiter, FL. We should all move there. Twice in two days I've received emails asking if I am the voice behind a recurring sound bite on a local radio station that says, "Ya know sometimes I just like to strip down butt naked and jump into a pool of chocolate." They say it sounds like me. They did not say it sounds like something I'd say, let alone record, but one can make the leap -- so to speak.

I could formally deny it here and now, but this would give the teeming Jupiter, FL press corps the excuse to print, Bodett denies jumping into a vat of chocolate butt naked. I might as well have done it, if you see what I mean. If I did ever say it I was drunk. And I haven't been drunk in a very very long time. If I didn't say it, you're drunk, Jupiter, FL.

So, kind residents of Jupiter, go back to your lives. There's nothing to see here. Besides, the very thought of being in the same vat of chocolate as my butt is, in the words of my youngest son, icky.

Masterminding Revelation

2009-01-04T13:12:00.007-05:00

Lake Superior State University recently published it's annual list of words and phrases that should be banned from use. This year's batch is well-chosen and I agree that "Going Green", "Carbon Footprint", "Bailout", and "Wall Street/Main Street - among thirty others - have been used and abused beyond their ability to communicate anything. I have a couple of my own I'd like to add.

Revelers -- News stories over this past New Years weekend were filled with stories of drunks, idiots, and cretins wreaking havoc on polite society. But instead of referring to them as drunks, idiots, and cretins -- who did everything from drive snow machines into oak trees at 70 miles per hour to mooning and attacking reporters to critically burning two girls in New Hampshire by throwing white gas on a bonfire -- they were uniformly described as "revelers". I'm sorry, but a reveler is someone who blows a plastic horn with bucket on his head and kisses pretty strangers in Times Square at midnight. Someone who throws white gas on a bonfire in a crowd full of young people is a drunk or an idiot or both. These stories would have much more punch and deterrent affect if they told the truth. "Last night in upstate New York two drunken morons killed themselves when their stolen snow machine collided with a two hundred-year-old oak at the edge of Lake Such-and-Such." Or. "Sloppy drunks in Lake Tahoe bared their big white hind ends and slobbered on a female television reporter attempting to do a feel-good piece on local celebrations." Wouldn't you love to see that just once?

Mastermind -- This one has bothered me for years. Psychotic and scheming criminals of all stripes, if they manage to pull off a caper more complex than what a six-year-old could imagine, are universally anointed "masterminds". They are psychotics, sociopaths, schemers, scammers, sick puppies, even monsters. They are not masterminds. That title should be reserved for those among us who pull off the truly great works of our time. The Steves, Jobs and Wozniak, masterminded the user-friendly computer which became the Mac. Bill Gates masterminded affordable software packages that became ubiquitous and changed the way the world works. Nelson Mandela masterminded the end of apartheid. Warren Buffet is the mastermind of Berkshire Hathaway. Bruce Springsteen was the mastermind behind the E Street Band. Political genius, LBJ, masterminded the final passage of the Civil Rights Act. Barack Obama masterminded the most improbable ascent to the Presidency in our nation's history. These are truly master minds at work. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is not in that league. He is the sick bastard who thought up the idea of flying passenger jets into buildings full of innocents. How smart do you have to be to read an airline schedule and give a couple dozen psychopaths box cutters? Were the business people behind the predatory lending practices and toxic securities bundles of the past ten years masterminds, or greed-driven short-sighted deluded gamblers? Let's call a scoundrel a scoundrel and get on with masterminding a way out of this mess.

That would be something to revel about.

I Had a Dream

2008-12-26T11:07:00.003-05:00

When I was a house builder I would occasionally have epic dreams about building houses that would leave me dazed and tired in the morning. Those have dried up over the years and been replaced by a panoply of the usual fare: melting telephones, missed airplane connections, my old high school filled with images from Abu Ghraib (never mind). But last night I had my first product spokesperson dream. You'd think after 23 years of pitching Motel 6 that this would have happened sooner. I guess you don't really dream about the things you are comfortable with.

The only reason I mention it is because the dream was very real and very funny. I was standing in a recording studio reading the script off the side of a cardboard shipping carton. Not my usual studio technique. The product was Royanne Hardware. The tag-line, and punchline of the dream, was "Royanne. When you really need a screw."

For some reason this cracks me up. Not the line itself. It is not too far-fetched to imagine some local or regional ad agency coming up with that kind of jokey vulgarism for a hardware client. What's so funny is that my ungoverned sleeping self would fire valuable and declining synapses to think of it.

Of course, the next question someone of a quasi-spiritual/psychiatric nature might ask is, What does it mean? I googled Royanne and only came up with a town in the Alpine region of France. Might be some past life stuff going on here, you think? Some of my ancestors came from France, but a completely different part of it. Could one of them have taken a trip to Royanne needing a screw? Is there an entire unrecognized branch of the Bodett (Baudet, Beaudette, Bodette) tree out there seeking contact? Do they still live in the Alps? Are they rich?

This is what passes for visions of sugar plums dancing around in my head. Happy Christmas. Dream big.

Dear Governor Blagojevich,

2008-12-14T11:13:00.007-05:00

You may not know me, but I am a fellow son of Illinois. I was born in Champaign-Urbana, one of the loveliest of the hyphenated mid-sized metro areas. Champaign-Urbanites are quite proud of their hyphen, as am I. My mother was born and raised in Kewanee, as I'm sure you know, the Hog Capital of Illinois. You may have attended or been tempted to attend their annual Hog Heaven celebration each summer. My father is from the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. His father and mother are buried there and remain active in local politics. I'm almost certain they voted for you.

My reason for telling you all of this is now that you have been abandoned by Candidate #1 (and 2 and 3 and 4 and 6) I would like to be the answer to your Senate appointment problems. I have a clean history -- politically speaking. While I have absolutely no governing skills or experience, certainly that presents no obstacle to office in the Land of Lincoln. I also would undoubtedly make a huge mess of things, so the good people of Illinois would not have to go through any troubling change. For you I could arrange for weekly shipments of cigarettes and smoked meats once you are in prison. I would also keep your portrait hanging in all state buildings. It is hilarious, and good for employee moral.

Illinois has served me (not exactly in the way you have been served) and I would like to contribute in-kind. Particularly to your needs. Certainly you must be feeling a lot of anger and resentment toward US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and the constitutional republic he represents. So, what better way to extract your revenge than to appoint a completely clueless rube to one of this republic's most distinguished deliberative bodies? It will make them crazy. I guarantee it. Awaiting your learned reply I remain,

Your Humble and Expedient Servant,

Tom Bodett

Proud Son of Illinois

Christmas Tree. Oh, Christmass Tree...

2008-12-07T08:32:00.005-05:00

...Your lights are so unnerving.

Yesterday marked our annual family ritual known as, The Untangling of the Lights. Like millions of men and women across the western world we peered into a cardboard box containing the head of Medusa and proceeded to test and troubleshoot last year's Christmas lights. Let me tell you something -- I built a working Heathkit radio when I was 13. In high school, I installed the tape players in my friends' cars in return for rides and contraband. I've wired houses. Yet. It remains a mystery to me how a string of lights works.

I always buy the strings that say, "Keeps on working when one bulb burns out." This is not true. Entire random stretches of bulbs stop working for no apparent reason. You can change the fuse-so-small-you-can-lose-it-under-your-fingernail buried in the plug to no effect. Or, you can do what I do: Work your way methodically along the unlit bulbs to find the culprit. Wiggle the first bulb - nothing. Put a replacement bulb in it's place - nothing. Put the original bulb back in the socket and repeat on the next bulb. Do this six or eight times, then using both hands in a rapid circular motion, wrap up the entire string, slam dunk it in the trash can and go to the hardware store for another set.

There you will find a ragtag assembly of adults with the hollow eyes of The Thousand Light Stare scanning boxes for the holiday promise, "Keeps on working when one bulb burns out." And in a true miracle of the season, we believe it. Again. Like kids who find their Christmas gifts under a tarp in the basement on December 17th and still insist that Santa Claus is coming to town.

From Bad to Worse. Sometimes Not.

2008-11-10T06:48:00.004-05:00

We had a party at our house this past weekend. Having planned it weeks ago, we billed it as a "Post-Election Celebration and/or Wake" depending on how a person voted and how it went on Tuesday. Given how it went and given we live in Vermont, the first state to be officially called for Obama, it was about 96% celebration. It was the most cheerful crowd I've been among since my high school graduation and without the mood-altering substances.
It was only after everyone had left and we were left basking in the afterglow of an evening with our good friends and neighbors that I remembered a poem I had intended to read as a toast, so I'll share it here.
This little poem by Welsh poet, Sheenagh Pugh, has been permanently on my computer's desktop since I discovered it some ten years ago. For me it has served as comfort and companion during bleak days and I cannot read it even after thousands of times without feeling -- how else to say it -- Hope. I've sent it to many a struggling or heartbroken friend over the years, but this week it seemed to morph into less of a comfort than a promise fulfilled. I use it here without the author's permission, so please give proper credit to the poet if you decide to pass this along yourself.

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

May You Live in Colorful Times

2008-10-16T07:12:00.003-04:00

The debates are over. There will now be three more weeks of revisionist advertising to wade through before the election. Most of us have had our minds made up for twenty years years and, short of our guy actually being caught on camera murdering somebody, they'll stay made up. And even that would depend on who they are murdering.

It has been an uncannily beautiful Fall in Vermont this year. It flies in happy contrast to the steady drum of bad news coming through my radio and television. Had similar events taken place in late Novemeber, we would all be swinging by the neck from these sugar maples rather than admiring them. Soon the rains will come and dampen the color. A couple of hard frosts and a wind storm will clean the trees of their leaves and drop a branch or two across our power lines. We'll sit in the dusky light of late October once again reminded of our own mortality and the winter ahead. And then we'll vote.

Enjoy this color while we still have it.

Northern Exposure

2008-09-06T12:14:00.004-04:00

If you listened to the show on NPR this weekend you might have thought there was static on your radio. That was, in fact, rain. We taped it outdoors at Millenium Park in Chicago in a steady downpour. Peter Sagal described it best on his blog. Besides the change of venue, this was an interesting week to be on the panel. The Republican Convention is always a deep well of material and the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin should have set me up with plenty of rude Alaska commentary, which I somehow failed to produce. I blamed it on distraction, but after some time to think about it I see it was actually a buried sense of loyalty I have to what I consider the place I came from. Alaska is a nutty place and Alaskans are the first to admit it. But only to each other. If "Outsiders" try to ridicule the ways of The Great Land they will be met with pissy defensiveness of the type you saw in Governor Palin's speech on Wednesday. I couldn't bring myself to indulge in all the obvious Alaska jokes about chainsaw art, oil, and Wally Hickel's famous pronouncement that "You can't have nature just running around wild." I'd better get over it if I'm to preserve what's left of my reputation as a humorist.
Once the news crews start to home in on the hairless underbelly of Alaska politics and begin interviewing the local characters, upstanding Alaskans -- and most Alaskans are -- will wish McCain had picked almost anybody else. Before you start hearing from the real whack jobs, here is a reasonable perspective on Sarah Palin here from someone who has known her for a long time.
The next sixty days should prove to be both interesting and nauseating. Like every other election year.

God Does Not Shop At Home Depot

2008-08-19T08:12:00.003-04:00

Here's how I know: Knocking down the remaining ducks of a house-wide renovation I discovered late yesterday afternoon that in order to get the gas dryer hooked up by the gas company today as scheduled I would need to drive to the Home Depot twenty miles away in Keene, NH in order to buy the needed vent pipe. I try to buy everything possible at our excellent local hardware stores and building suppliers, but they close early and Home Depot doesn't. So, I drive through a cinematic opening-of-the-scary-third-act kind of thunderstorm to Home Depot at nine o'clock last night. In short order, while heading to the check-out with a cart full of dryer parts -- I am not kidding -- the store is struck by lightning.

The lights went out momentarily, the emergency generators came on line and everything returned to the normal routines of selling deeply discounted mass-purchased building supplies at the expense of small town commerce. Any sensible God fearing person would at this point have fled the scene and returned to the grace and charity of local business first thing the next morning. But I'd driven all that way. And it was already in my cart. And their computers rebooted during my moment of doubt. So I bought the damn stuff at Home Depot.

Forgive me Lord. I know not why I do it.
And we can help.

Showtime

2008-07-07T11:06:00.003-04:00

A lot has happened since my last post. The Democrats have chosen a presumptive nominee, Angelina Jolie had some babies (I think) and my plumber got the rough-in done on the house. I have been in full-bore carpenter mode this summer and I'm happy to report I still have all ten fingers. One is bent at an ugly angle, I've torn a rotator cuff and developed a strange sensation in my right knee, but nothing out of the ordinary for an aging woodchuck. I'll get a break this weekend when I go out to Chicago for NPR. Nothing like going to work to get a break from work.

A drywall delivery is backing and beeping its way up the driveway. It's showtime.

Once More Into the Breech

2008-06-05T10:09:00.002-04:00

Sometimes it seems the only idle time in my life occurs at airports. I would hazard that ninety percent of my postings on this blog have been written in airport waiting areas. A few were even about airport waiting areas. This is the lowest form of introspection and humor. I’m not alone in this indulgence by any stretch. Comics and writers great and small spend so much of their lives traveling they are forced to write on the road and inevitably you end up with a lot of train, plane, and automobile jokes with some motel humor thrown in. Motel humor is my day job so I try to avoid it otherwise.

But I’m not going to write about sitting in the Washington/Dulles airport waiting for my delayed flight to Norfolk to do a WWDTM taping tomorrow night. I will tell you instead why I have posted so seldom as of late. Or perhaps it would be better to show you.

This is what’s left of our kitchen. We paid a crew of very talented young tradesmen to tear it to pieces and put it back together again in a different order. I’m playing the part of general contractor on the job, which means not only that I have to pay for everything, but I also have to figure out what everything is that I’m supposed to pay for and make sure it or he or she shows up when it or he or she is supposed to. Long ago and far away I did this sort of work everyday. For ten years. Let me tell you, it’s not like riding a bike. It’s more like solving quadratic equations. In other words, use it or lose it. Most days I feel like I’m solving some sinister Rubik’s Cube that changes colors as I go and bites me at every wrong move. Then while I sleep it arranges itself back the way it was.

The good news is that construction technology has come a long way since I tried to make a living at it. Cordless tools, high-tech plywood and weather seals, laser levels. If they’d had this stuff twenty years ago I might still be doing it. But, based on the frustrations and confusions of building that have not been improved upon, I probably wouldn’t be celebrating 16 years of sobriety if I was.

Free at Last. Free at Last...

2008-05-07T17:22:00.000-04:00

If you happen to have read the "Quote Me" piece, which has been featured on the homepage of this site for a shamelessly long time, you are aware of my conundrum concerning the misattribution of inspirational quotations. Thanks to fearless reader, Bill Osmet, the mysterious Allan K Chalmers has come in from the cold. Check out the link. He was a quite an accomplished scholar and a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Why this never came up on my previous google expeditions I cannot explain. My misspelling of his first name? Improvements in the search engines in the three years since I wrote the piece? Myopia? Whatever it was I'm more than happy to give credit where it is due. I've even found another Allan Knight Chalmers quote I like even more than the last one I co-opted, "A man gets thin if he does not read, becomes inaccurate if he does not write, but most of all loses a profoundness if he does not think."
As Einstein famously said, "I must a little think now."

Spring Colors and Sounds

2008-04-19T11:15:00.005-04:00

With cheerful colors finally appearing along the Vermont roadsides it is officially spring. Kubota orange, John Deere green and the the dusty rose of the occasional aging Ford or Massey Ferguson dot the hillsides with the promise of summer. We dragged all the attachments out of the barn yesterday and I took inventory of the broken and missing parts I needed to get everything to work. Lynch pins, shackles, top links and zerks -- a lovely list of alliterative parts my son and I went to fetch this morning. Soon I'll be able to york rake the road, bush hog the buckthorn, and stack the brush. I think what I like best about spring -- besides the weather and flowers if you're into that sort of thing -- is simply talking about it. A person can not say bush hog the buckthorn too many times.

Witness to Catastrophe

2008-04-11T10:32:00.003-04:00

According to CNN and other authorities, I am trapped inside of a national nightmare. I'm at O'Hare airport in Chicago in the midst of the airline meltdown, which according to CNN and other authorities, has created a refugee camp of surly passengers desperate to go somewhere, anywhere. I keep looking around for the horror so that I can bear witness to this headline catastrophe. I am in the B Concourse -- United territory -- and it looks like every other Friday morning I've sat here waiting for my ride home. I thought I heard small arms fire coming from the American terminal, but it turned out to be the popcorn machine over by the Starbucks across from the Hudson News stand. You know the one I mean.

A woman over by the window at B3 is reading People. I can tell by the "who are these people?" look on her face that she is not a subscriber. She only reads it in airports and dentist offices. There is a slow but annoying drip coming from the ceiling by the pay phone kiosk eight feet to my right. A parade of people have settled into the seat for as long as it takes to get dripped on and then they move. I should warn them, I know, but I am but an observer here -- reporting on this nightmare. I decide I will warn older people with bad hips, but nobody else.

My flight is delayed 40 minutes. A nightmare? Somehow I can't muster my "Flight or Fight" response to this. I don't get too worked up about this stuff anyway. Travel is all about managing your expectations. Whenever I leave home for a trip -- no matter where I'm going -- I assume I will spend the night sleeping in the back of a rented Celica at a snowed-in truckstop in Erie, PA. These things happen. That way, even if I end up in the back of a Jeep Cherokee at a snowed-in truckstop in Erie I can say to myself, "At least it isn't a Celica". If the truckstop is in Wyoming? At least it isn't Erie. A Motel 6 in Boise? It could be much much worse. And if I actually get to where I intended to go more or less at the time and on the day I wanted to go there -- which is usually the case -- I feel a pleasurable swell of surprise and delight.

Our long national nightmare is over. Somebody call CNN.

Big Foot Bunny Droppings

2008-03-28T08:15:00.005-04:00

The myth of the Easter Bunny endures one more season in southeastern Vermont. Like the Big Foot hoaxes in the West, large rabbits that poop chocolate and joy are a well-documented phenom in the Green Mountains.

This picture depicts what it might have looked like had the Shackelton Expedition been a family outing.

With another 6 inches of snow falling as I write, signs of spring are everywhere...but here.

Easter, LLC.

2008-03-22T11:24:00.006-04:00

As a Long Lapsed Catholic, LLC, Easter is a celebration filled with guilt, non-resolved resentment, and fear that my non-observance of the past 35 years has condemned by soul to eternal damnation. If this celebration took place in a darker time of year we would all be swinging by the neck from church rafters. But, it's springtime and we somehow muddle through these emotions by participating in the pagan rituals of the season: Easter egg hunts and leaving treats for an imaginary rabbit who brings chocolate idols in its own image -- and Peeps.

As a kid the Easter Bunny would always bring me a bow and arrow set, which by the end of the day had all the rubber suckers removed, the tips sharpened and the neighborhood cats on the run. My sisters got goofy hats that were worn just long enough for the family photo and then strangely disappeared. This oddness at home was amplified at church on Easter Sunday when the priest would wear gaudy robes, the altar boys were tense, and the sour throated choir ladies sang even longer and more painful hymns of little or no application.

Had it made one scrap of sense to me, had anyone bothered to bend down and explain it all rather than twist my ear to sit up straighter on the pew -- I might be a Catholic yet. Instead, I find myself wittling a tip on the end of a toy arrow, scanning the yard for cats and bunnies.

Missing Inaction

2008-03-19T13:42:00.003-04:00

I discovered only yesterday that my website has been down since the 12th. It seems my domain name had expired without reason or warning. Who knew these things had a shelf life? In any case, the situation has been resolved and I have purchased the rights to this silly business for the next 20 years. That should cover it.
Sorry for the trouble. Believe me, you didn't miss a thing.

Election Results

2008-03-04T22:01:00.003-05:00

With 100% of the ballots tallied, the brownies eaten, and the collapsible voting booths collapsed and stuffed back in the janitor's closet at the elementary school, this blog is prepared to call the open 3 year seat on the Dummerston, Vermont Selectboard for former road foreman, Wayne Emery, who is also the farmer who hays my field.
Today was Town Meeting Day across Vermont and marks the end of my 3 year term on the Selectboard, the last year as chairman. My last act as chair was to present the annual budget to the assemblage of local voters who were kind enough to approve it without too much fuss. If you've never been to a New England town meeting, you should try one. The term "town meeting" has become distorted with over-use as a term for an intimate I-want-to-listen-to-your-concerns staged political event rather than what it is: a legal assembly of local voters empowered to enact laws, raise revenue, and approve town expenditures. When convened the Town Meeting is a parliament of community members governed only by Robert's Rules and a gracious Town Moderator. It truly is democracy at it's best and a real hoot too. Donuts and coffee in the morning. Ham and beans with cole slaw and chocolate pie for lunch. You can put the whole room to sleep in the afternoon just by explaining the figures in the road maintenance section of the budget, which of course, I did.
I loved being a Selectman. I've learned more about roads, bridges, culverts, grand lists, tax rates, open meetings laws, and zoning than is probably good for a person, but what a way to get to know your town. I'll go back to it someday, but I need a little more time in my life for work and my boys and I'm certainly hoping it's less of the former and more of the latter.
And by the way, Barack Obama took Dummerston with 451 votes to Hillary Clinton's 183. I know because I counted them. CNN is calling. I have to go.

Why the Good Life Sucks

2008-02-15T13:24:00.006-05:00

I have a strained relationship with this blog. I created it as a way to have an immediate avenue to vent my spleen, wax poetic about my kids, or update you on exciting or self-deprecating developments in my life and career. That's all worked fine for the most part and would work even better if I had more bile to cleanse, if I was more comfortable talking about my children on the internet, or if I had the sort of life and career that actually developed.

This kind of thing used to be easier when I drank. I could write a twenty minute radio monologue two or three commentaries and a newspaper column every week before I stopped drinking 16 years ago. One of the most jarring realizations of sobriety, I'm afraid, is that you are not as righteous, poetic or interesting as you thought you were. It's a humbler, healthier way to think, but humble healthy thinking does not a writer make. Writers -- especially humorists and social commentators (know by their common name: Gas bags) -- grind out pearls from the utter irritation they feel with the world around them. When the world around us turns pleasant and fulfilling we have to either fake our outrage, like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter do, or we have to be quiet. Or, I suppose, find work with a greeting card company.

So, I can't decide whether to rename this blog, Tom's Special Sunny Place or to go start a fight with my wife. Of course, the very idea that I'm looking for the downside of having a pleasant and fulfilling life gives me hope that I'm every bit as neurotic and self-absorbed as I ever was and my best gas bag days may still lie ahead. Keep coming back.

Fringe Benefits

2008-01-30T10:59:00.000-05:00

I have lived in nutty places most of my life and still do. Actually, I live just outside of a nutty place -- Brattleboro, Vermont -- perhaps you've heard about it. They've been all over the news because of the recent successful petition drive to vote at Town Meeting on March 4th for the following resolution:

Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution, and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities and shall it be the law of the Town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro Police, pursuant to the above-mentioned indictments, arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro if they are not duly impeached, and prosecute or extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them?

Never mind that the measure has no legal standing, is extra-constitutional itself, and would be directing town officials to commit a felony. Those are details best left alone. They only ruin the fun.

Homer, Alaska, where I lived most of my adult life, passed an ordinance some years ago making it the nation's first Nuclear Free Zone. That means if you were, say, the commander of a nuclear powered attack submarine and needed to lay-up in the Homer harbor that you would be looking down the double barreled justice machine that is the Homer Police Department. Laugh if you will, but the measure has so far worked. The US Navy got the memo and have prudently steered clear. Just as I'm sure that George Bush and Dick Cheney will be steering clear of Brattleboro.

If you find this whole business distressing, disgusting or treasonous you are missing the point. The point is there is no point. I could get you 500 signatures on a petition in Brattleboro requiring all men to wear bowler hats, tip them when I walk past, and call me Charlie. This is the place that last year hired strippers -- uh, excuse me, professional dancers -- to stand naked on a street corner behind a banner demanding people stop wearing fur. The simple fact that somebody thought of that makes life here worth living.

By the way, if you're thinking of visiting, I see in the paper there is a Psychic Fair taking place this Saturday featuring aural photography, mediumship, creative transformation and shamanic healing. It starts at 11a and goes until 5p. As if we needed to be told.

January Thaw

2008-01-11T20:41:00.000-05:00

Last week Thursday we had a foot of powdery new snow on top of another foot of base blowing around the hilltop with temperatures in the single digits. When it is zero degrees -- absolutely nada degrees -- and blowing thirty in Vermont, I still cannot force myself to utter the phrase, "Boy, it's cold." People I know in Fairbanks, Alaska dust off their golf clubs when the temps rise above zero. That is a place where your truck tires can get so cold they break. I don't mean go flat. I mean fracture. School is not canceled for cold up there until all molecular activity ceases. So even though I can step out into that brisk Vermont breeze and feel my blood and entire reproductive plumbing charge inward toward my heart, I can't say It's cold. Only once all of my steadfast old Alaskan friends are either dead or living on Molokai will I confess in this or any public forum that it has been freaking cold out here.

But that was then and this is now. Within four days of our big chill, temperatures across New England reached near record levels. We logged fifty-nine degrees up here on Tuesday, but it's back in the thirties today. It's raining. The snow has turned to dirty ice. The driveway is the consistency of stone ground mustard. As they say up north, "You gotta love springtime."

Elusive Joy

2007-12-30T12:30:00.000-05:00

I apologize for leaving this blog with such a dark sentiment for the Christmas holiday, such as what was expressed in my entry of December 21st. Now that I've had my medications adjusted it is clear I was suffering from some sort of seasonal depression disorder. Like so many people I often forget this is a time of sharing and joy and gratitude for the embrace of family. Even if the sharing takes the form of massive credit card debt. Even when the joy of those around me appears almost entirely alcohol propelled. Even when the gratitude one expresses to one's spouse for the brocaded sweater vest that will never see the outside of a closet again rings false. And even when the embrace of family includes a lot of 11th hour reading of newsy Christmas letters from distant cousins and colleagues which, at our advancing ages, have become what I like to call The Gallbladder Reports. Even then. Yes. Especially then. My heart fills with the spirit of the season and the hope it represents.
Of course it is entirely possible that today I am simply feeling the afterglow of the New England Patriots completion of the first perfect season in NFL history. Joy. It's so hard to pin down.
Happy New Year to you all. I treasure this time we have together.

Short Days, Short Tempers

2007-12-21T13:16:00.001-05:00

Parents take note: It is illegal and wrong to bind your children with blue painter's tape and throw them through the back door into a snowbank. I thought this through at some length and came to that inevitable conclusion. It will be no mystery to you how the subject came up in the first place if you have or have ever had small children in your house in the days preceding Christmas. Their unstable little personalities go into complete meltdown until the China Effect eats every last vestige of celebration from your mood and household. We've threatened to cancel Christmas, to sue Santa Claus, to enlist them in the Marines (although Blackwater would be more remunerative), and to fill their stockings with sticks and rocks. Coal is far more expensive than these little monsters deserve. Nothing, of course, makes a scrap of difference in their behavior. So, we count the days until Christmas in some grim advent ritual and wait for each day to end. Bedtime. Peace. Today is the shortest day of the year. Good thing.

NFL Legend, Others, Dead

2007-12-14T19:37:00.000-05:00

I am writing this on my flight home from Chicago. If you’re reading it, then it means I made it. I have my doubts today. There is no evidence this is my final destiny except that also on board this flight, sitting four rows in front of me, is the legendary former Chicago Bears head coach, Mike Ditka. This is the second time I’ve run into Da Coach on this run. The first time I had the same fear, which goes basically like so: At this point in my career, after grinding my name and voice into America’s heads one commercial at a time for the past 20 years, I’ve got a fair shot at maybe a 3 line obituary in the New York Times. Nothing they have on file in advance -- like Henry Kissinger or Ike Turner -- but at least one where the junior copywriter will be compelled to Google me and check the spelling of my name.

But. Here’s the thing. If I were to meet my end while on a flight with a person more famous and accomplished than myself -- statistically likely and certainly the case today -- I will only be remembered for having had the misfortune to die within the same news item as the more deserving party. The crawl on the bottom of CNN will read “Former NFL coach Mike Ditka, 40 others, perish aboard tragic flight 666. The New York Times will say nothing about me in the obit section, but I will factor into the last line in the second-to-the-last paragraph of the news story, “Others killed or missing include folksy pitchman Don Burdett.”

That would suck. So. I hope you’re reading this.

Black Thursday

2007-11-23T09:09:00.001-05:00

It's that time of year again: That time when television and radio hosts and various commentators and bloggers throughout the land can begin their submissions with the tired old phrase, It's that time of year again.
Shopping is a skill not evenly distributed among us. While in Paris we wondered if they might sell little tin reproductions of some significant local landmark like, say, the Eiffel Tower. Using our uncanny acquisitive instincts we soon discovered that such things are available approximately every fifty feet (15.24 meters). We found two dandy ones and the boys were delighted. They make terrific blunt instruments for the sibling squabbles and I have another instinct there is an emergency room visit in store for the holidays.
Speaking of stores -- as good and awkward a transition as any -- today is known as Black Friday. Having grown up Catholic I can't hear that without thinking it is the day my mom would burn the salmon patties. It is in fact the biggest shopping day of the year, the day that retailers go into the red or black for the year, and the day we burn the faces off of our credit cards.
I'm torn. Do I do my part for global resource management and refrain from over-spending this holiday season? Or, do I contribute to the success of our economy and protect those at the bottom of the wage ladder -- the first to be hurt in times of recession -- through impulse buying and material gluttony? The first option is cheaper and more responsible, the second more fun.
Carpe Diem. It's on sale.

Tourist Points Out the Obvious

2007-11-16T06:46:00.001-05:00

Rita and I are in Paris for the week. I came over for Accor, the French lodging conglomerate which owns Motel 6, and we decided to take a few days to ourselves. Our two boys are at home with Nana and Papa so we decided the best way to take full-advantage of being alone in Paris is to sleep. It's a great place to sleep, but if we're going to do that we might as well be in Des Moines.

Yesterday we happened by a little cafe down near the Trocadero we had been to before. We remembered it because it remains the singularly worst restaurant experience of our 11 year relationship. Given the sheer volume of crappy places at which we've eaten in the course of our marriage this is really saying something. The waiter was a cartoon of a rude French waiter. We were about the only ones in the place and he wouldn't approach us to offer a table until I insisted. It was a beautiful warm day. We asked for a table outside but he put us in a dark back corner where he abandoned us to our thirst and hunger. Our feet were tired and we were beyond hungry and for some reason we sat still for it all, hoping beyond hope that someone would eventually bring us food. Someone eventually did, although I'm sure we had a little French expectorant with our bernaise that day. Yesterday, when we saw it again, we talked about going in and congratulating them for leaving such an indelible impression with us and giving us many laughs over the years, but we decided to let it go. Our feet hurt and we were hungry, and believe me, there are better places and finer people to meet in Paris.

Blog on Fire

2007-10-22T10:14:00.000-04:00

Every time I appear on Wait-Wait I get an additional seven to ten thousand visitors to this site for a day or two. Most of you check out the blog because 1) You think you might actually get some fresh and/or inside information about something. This almost never happens unless you consider my personal tractor activities something. 2) You really don't have time to read the longer and more thoughtful essays loaded on the home page. 3) There is no way you came here to buy a book.

I have been experimenting with this blog with the same sort of scientific focus employed by our ancestors as they explored the parameters of, say, fire. This would have amounted to sitting around and tossing things into the flames to see what happens. Usually nothing did. It just burned up. Same here.

Tune in next week for another exciting episode of Tom's Blog.

September Days

2007-09-17T11:48:00.001-04:00

This is a picture of wild turkeys in our field. I don't know what you call a group of turkeys. A flock? Herd? Gaggle? Google? Anyway, it's a bunch. Amazing critters, these turkeys. I can understand why Ben Franklin wanted it to be the national symbol. They wander around like cows until you move toward them then they melt away into the woods and you'll be hard pressed to ever see them again. If you surprise one they spread their gigantic wings and fly away as gracefully as swans. I've never seen one land.

It's been a regular wildlife park around here lately. In addition to the turkeys, we have daily visits from half a dozen deer, the coyotes howl in the woods at night and sometimes are seen hunting mice in the field. There is a wily fox who occasionally graces us with an appearance. He stunk up the place for half a night while enjoying a skunk for his dinner somewhere upwind of the place. Hoot owls fill up the night and I heard the strains of The Who's Teenage Wasteland the night before last. Coyotes.

There's just a tinge of fall in the trees and the cool nights have Vermonters sizing up their wood piles and checking the road culverts. I've spent half the summer on the tractor clearing trails for walking, skiing and snowshoeing. I like making trails more than I like using them, but sport is sport.

Tractor Games

2007-08-10T08:46:00.000-04:00

I was reading this week about a sporting event in Texas called The Redneck Games, which included heats in the mudhole belly-flop and mattress chuck. Vemont rednecks, commonly referred to as "Vermonters", have our sport too. Getting tractors stuck deep in the woods is chief among the summer competitions. The idea is to find a place in the forest most inaccessible to any piece of equipment bigger than the one you've got -- the only thing that can save you -- and bury it.

Of course, the next step is to find somebody with a bigger tractor, skidder, or backhoe and convince them to risk their machine to save yours. This is the real art of the sport and what separates Vermonters from Texans. It's all about tact, persuasion and charm. You anticipate the excuses and preempt them, IE: "Unless you're afraid you'll get stuck too." Works almost as good as cash.

Being a Kubota tractor owner makes things easier because John Deere owners love nothing more than to pull Kubotas out of the mud. There is a particular smirk unique to the John Deere pilot with a Kubota on the end of his logging chain. The common English phrase "Green with envy" refers directly to the Kubota owner watching the signature green Deere do what he could not do for himself. It makes us humble, introspective and desperate for a voice of our own. It makes us drive sensible cars and wear sensible shoes and send Socialists to the US Senate.

But, Vermont politics, that's a different sport for a different blog on another day. I think I hear the neighbor's John Deere coming up the road. Gotta run.

Stuck Inside of Hartford with the Chicago Blues Again

2007-07-26T09:53:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting in Bradley International airport theoretically on my way to Chicago, which is surrounded by violent thunderstorms. Air traffic is backed up all the way to Portugal and as I enjoy my suspiciously fresh-like banana nut-like muffin, I contemplate the meaning of it all. The TSA is especially stern and attentive today due to the discovery this week that terrorist market testers have been taping cellphones to blocks of processed cheese to see if this can get through security. Authorities think this may be a dry run for smuggling explosives at some later date. I believe a cellphone taped to a block of processed cheese is threat enough all by itself. Face it, when you hear the phrase "block of processed cheese" you think, Velveeta. Now, imagine it exploding. Dozens of innocent travelers showered in hot, atomized Velveeta. The psychological damage alone could leave hideous scars. Of course, it's also possible that taping a phone to a block of cheese is just a beta test for some new electronic wonder. The Cheeseberry, perhaps. Text message your mom for that nacho recipe with the goods right in your hand. I think you could sell some of those.
They just announced another one-hour departure delay to Chicago. I have to get there for a taping of WWDTM tonight. It's a news quiz. Maybe I should go buy a paper.

Top of the World

2007-06-29T17:28:00.000-04:00

It's been awhile between posts, but I have a good excuse. I've been back in Alaska with the family enjoying life at the top of the world again. This is the first time in over 30 years I've been in Alaska without owning anything here. I realized very quickly that if you don't own anything you don't have anything to take care of. Buddhists figured this out a long time ago and that's why they are always smiling. I have been smiling too -- kicking stones on the beach with the boys, borrowing boats to see the bay, and generally enjoying the good weather, fresh fish and most excellent company. Now, it's back to Vermont where my tractor waits quietly for me.

Life is Good

2007-06-01T12:48:00.000-04:00

In a flush of contentment last week I bought a tee-shirt that said "Life is Good" across the chest under a graphic of a spruce tree. When I got it home and took a closer look I saw that the phrase "Life is Good" has become a registered trademark of the shirt maker. This discovery took about half of my good mood away. How dare they trademark my hackneyed private sentiments!

But, trademarked or not, life is good. My older son graduated from college last weekend. It is a beautiful summer day in Vermont. The Red Sox have a ten game lead in the East, 13 1/2 over the Yankees, and tomorrow is the annual Strolling of the Heifers. Brattleboro, Vermont is the home of the Holstein Association which harbors the personal information of over 19 million cows worldwide. It's a heady responsibility for a small town and handled with aplomb, not to mention shovels. It is the most kid-friendly parade I've ever seen. Cows, tractors and jump rope drill teams are the main attraction. Every year Turkey Hill ice cream puts a giant plastic Holstein on a trailer and drags it through town. Every year we take a picture of it and put it in the center of our Christmas card. It's the small traditions that hold a society together and we do our part.

We had a fun Wait-Wait, Don't Tell Me this week in Chicago. Amy Dickinson and PJ O'Rourke, my favorite Republican, were the other panelists and graciously allowed me to win. I just bought PJ's new book On the Wealth of Nations at the airport to make me look smarter. Tomorrow I take pictures of a plastic cow.

Life is good. You can trademark that.

Mothers Day

2007-05-13T09:01:00.000-04:00

If this day were any more gorgeous our souls would swell to the bursting point, leaving a mess of the New England urban and village scene. Compounding the danger today is the deeply felt gratitude and admiration we have for our mothers and the mothers of our children. My wife Rita is a marvel of maternal instinct and energy. She senses issues going on in our boys that I wouldn't detect until I received an angry letter from them after they finally begin therapy at the end of their first marriages. I can sit in a room full of crying and complaining children and only hear about a third of it. Rita hears every grinding note in her bone marrow. I always regarded my ability to do this as a useful skill. It's not. It's a character flaw and I know it. That the mother of my children allows me this vanity is only one more small reason why I love her.
Happy Mothers Day to all of you moms. You humble us.

Ask a MAWG

2007-05-03T15:01:00.000-04:00

In the interests of derivative humor and to counter the realities of my daily family life where I am surrounded by Mexicans, half-Mexicans and Guatemalans who never Ask A Middle-Aged White Guy anything -- here is your chance.

May 3, 2007

Dear MAWG,

I travel often for my business and see a lot of MAWGs at airports. I have one question, why are you guys all so cranky?

Estuardo in Dallas

Dear Stu,

Two words: Sciatica. Melanoma.
Now leave me alone.

May 5, 2007

Dear MAWG,

I have made exactly the opposite observation as Estuardo. I have found that white people can't stand not talking and making dumb ass comments about the obvious. Say you're standing in the coffee queue and it's taking a long time. Some white guy always turns around and says to you, "It's taking a long time." If it's not taking a long time but it's a nice day they'll helpfully point out, "Nice day." Why can't you guys just stay quiet?

Ahmed

Dear Ahmed,

It is fear of being mistaken for foreigners. If we just stand there without demonstrating our command of English -- the internationally recognized language of diplomacy, commerce, and the 101st Airborne -- people might think we're Polish. Or German. Even French (Less common because of the shoes and skinny cigarettes). Saying, have a nice day to a stranger might seem like a useless inanity, but it is in fact our way of saying I am an American. Hear me roar. .. And please don't hurt me.

Best Day Ever

2007-04-21T09:04:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was the most beautiful day of the year across New England and the best day too. Not only did we bake and purr in 70 degree temperatures under sunny skies. Not only did we see the orange breasted robins of spring take off their flannel long-johns. Not only did we watch a crescent moon hung in a pin-point sky. Not only did the Red Sox come from behind and beat the Yankees at Fenway with a five run eighth inning. On top of all that I went out and bought a new tractor. Did I ever mention I wanted a tractor? I'm an American boy. Of course, I wanted a tractor. And now, fifty years after the first time I realized I really wanted a tractor, I have one.

I got the loader, backhoe, bushhog, and york rake attachements and have more things to bang my shins on in the barn than you can shake a hydraulic hose at. I am so happy. Everytime I think of my handsome orange tractor I get a rush of endorphins. As a kid when the first day of spring arrived I might venture down to the corner store for a popsicle. Later on it would be me and the girlfriend in a rowboat on the lake. Later still, perhaps a new mitt for the boys and a bucket of Tee Balls. Now I venture across the river to New Hampshire -- where all the manly arts still live free or die -- and buy tractors.

My college son had this insightful response to the news, "...nice going, Dad, but I have a feeling this thing is going to spawn more projects than it finishes." He's right, of course. That's the point.
Spring is a time of hope, redemption, horsepower and long long lists of projects.

Easter Sunday Blues

2007-04-08T09:26:00.000-04:00

It's a beautiful Christmas, er, Easter Day here in Vermont. A crust of snow glimmers in the field. A chill west wind brings the promise of fresh flurries. The boys are scratching at the walls -- trapped in the house by weather while suffering sugary Peep-induced psychotic episodes of angst and horror. I put the sleds away three weeks ago and arranged the rockers on the porch. They blew over.

Easter is a celebration of renewal, redemption and hope. Why do I feel like suffocating a meteorologist with synthetic Easter Basket grass? I've lived in the North my entire life and every Spring about this time I realize all over again that I am, in fact, insane. But the realization obscures and fades as the weather eventually does warm and the pastel colors of Spring crowd out the black and white realities of our latitude. Renewal. Redemption. Hope.
Neat trick, God.

Look, Ma

2007-04-01T10:38:00.000-04:00

Yesterday my four-year-old asked to have the training wheels removed from his bike and then promptly mastered the two-wheeler. He woke up today, put on his helmet, and headed out the door for more. I don't know why watching your children wobble away on two wheels feels so powerful. Honestly, it would feel little better if they flapped their wings and flew. Come to think of it, that's it -- little birds fluttering out of the nest. You swell with pride and fill with dread all at once. Mama birds must feel this too. The little ones are going to make it. Thank God. And they will soon enough be gone. Oh God.

Feeling Pretty

2007-03-10T10:09:00.000-05:00

Just back from a WWDTM taping in Aspen, Colorado. I'm not particularly out of shape but nothing will make you feel that way like a trip to Aspen. Those people look trim in insulated ski suits. If you have any body fat at all you are going to feel porky. Add to that the labored breathing inspired by the 11,000 feet of elevation and you get a true sense of your mortal decline. Nice place, though. Nice people too. We had a great show at the 100+ year old Wheeler Opera House -- one of the more charming venues I've been in. Adam Felber and Amy Dickinson were on the panel. Long time Aspenites Robert Wagner and Jill St. John were the Not My Job Guests. Check it out.

Grouse du Jour

2007-03-03T08:51:00.000-05:00

It's not as if we need another thing to support the reality of global warming, but I have one: We're forgetting how to deal with snow. We have had two snows this winter here in southern Vermont and both of them shut the schools, canceled public meetings, and moved dentist appointments. It didn't use to be like this. I grew up in Michigan where in order to have a snow day the cars had to actually be unable to move, perhaps not even visible. Short of that, people were expected to shovel themselves out, get their kids to school and their own butts to work. Tire chains, short shovels, and buckets of sand were an accessory in every trunk. Child-eating snow alligators were common. Okay, I made up that last part.

It may be that winters are so less severe than they used to be that we've lost our nerve and gumption to move and move through snow. And with the 24 hour news and weather channels so amplifying the drama of any kind of inclement weather that every dark cloud is a calamity in waiting, I think we've forgotten how utterly ordinary it is to live in snow. Four inches of the stuff closed the schools here yesterday. I'm sorry, but that's just embarrassing.