Ricardo Federico Blog

A Requiem for Saints

2011-12-11T11:09:00.001-08:00

There is a certain intersection in the town where I live, occupied on one corner by an old, white stone church with tall and ornate stained glass windows. Several of the windows are cracked or broken and these have been fitted with Plexiglas which has itself become clouded with age. The faces of the saints adorning these covered windows are occluded like that of a priest in the confessional, visible but not clearly enough to discern an expression or mood.

I have often found myself wondering if—given a choice—the saints wouldn’t rather take their chances against the weather and vandals by being rid of their encasements and living, as it were, exposed to the elements of the real world. What an existence it must be to have attained beatification only to find oneself caulked in behind so much formed and lifeless plastic, protected to the extent that the very color of your being—that distinct quality of design that defines your form and purpose—is dulled and obscured to passersby.

They have hung for years like this, these patient and faded saints, until I hold little hope that they should ever again feel the warmth of unfiltered sunlight. A pity, I think, as I look at them through my car window, waiting for the traffic light to change.

Seeing the Truth

2011-11-25T08:14:00.000-08:00

Sitting in my car on a rainy afternoon waiting for red to become green, I saw a young woman leaning against the porch of a house, strands of rain-damp hair clinging to her forehead and a backpack draped over one shoulder. Her face was canted toward the ground, her shoulders low. When she raised her head I saw fine features, a slim nose, and cheeks that were sunken a bit, perhaps with worry or want. But my attention was drawn to the girl’s eyes, both of which were rimmed with blue-black circles that gave her the appearance—at once comical and dark—of a raccoon.

Standing beside the girl but garnering none of her attention was a young man talking on a cell phone. He, too, sported a back pack over one shoulder and likewise focused on the ground as he talked, stealing nothing more than a glance at the girl while nodding gravely to whomever carried the other end of his conversation.

The girl’s shoulders rose slightly, fell again as she exhaled. Her gaze followed her breath back to the wet ground and settled upon something there that I wish I could have seen too. What was it she looked upon in her resigned numbness? What rain-soaked kernel of unwelcome truth lay on the ground at her feet, already taking root, tormenting her with the finality and dire urgency of youth?

The light turned green before I was ready. I did not want to leave this girl I did not know, whose privacy was somehow forfeit by virtue of her story playing out on a street corner. What had happened to her, and what yet would? Was the boy her abuser or her savior? There was no spark in the girl’s eye to hint at one or the other, only wet bangs plastered against pallid skin and bruises that went deeper than their stain revealed.

Moonrise

2011-10-30T17:45:00.000-07:00

Long after everyone else has gone inside I sit before the fire, stirring the coals and blowing on them like a bellows until the embers glow bright red and burst into little fountains of sputtering flame. I scoot closer to the fire, nestling in the cocoon of its warmth while clouds parade over in their silent march, riding high winds. Far beyond those winds the stars begin bursting to life like silver coals in a great celestial blaze.

My fire wanes, the air grows crisp. I inhale an unlikely elixir of fallen leaves and the wood smoke that clings to my clothes and hair. Something moves in the woods, the skittering sounds of a small animal magnified in the dark. I edge closer still, until my legs are overwarm, but it is a great comfort against the night. The tree frogs which sang so boisterously all summer are subdued tonight, their song halfhearted. They, too, feel the chill.

The blinking light of a jet cuts the sky high overhead, no sound to mark its passing. Huddling before the last dying embers of my fire I look up into the trees and see a new light, full and round and unquenchable, as the moon at last rises above the treetops.

Image courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

Just Listen

2011-10-16T19:27:00.001-07:00

Driving in to Rocky Mountain National Park in early October I was greeted by sweeping montane meadows where golden-hued aspen mingled with stands of lush, green Douglas fir, lodgepole, and ponderosa pines. Cloud shadows raced effortlessly up the mountain slopes. I followed Trail Ridge Road west toward the Continental Divide, stealing glances at the park map for places that stirred my imagination—names like Spruce Canyon, Arrowhead Lake, Thatchtop, and Tyndall Glacier.

I drove higher, compelled to get “up there” and get my feet on the ground. After several stops for photographs I pulled into the parking lot of a place called Hidden Valley. The name sounded good to me and the setting looked even better. I shut off the car, put on my hiking shoes, and walked to the trail head. Standing on a wooden bridge over a stream splashing its way down the valley, I couldn’t resist sending a quick text to my wife. “In RMNP,” I typed, “Breathtaking!”

I smiled when I saw the triangle and exclamation point on the screen, telling me the message couldn’t be sent because I had no signal. I realized no one could reach me and I couldn’t check any of my e-mail accounts, browse the news, watch the weather, or read the ESPN line on tonight’s game. I took a deep breath, felt the prickling warmth of sun on my face, and started walking up the valley. With the sound of the first crunch of gravel beneath my shoes time held its breath, waiting for me.

I followed the trail up the valley past a few picnic tables, a smattering of people enjoying the sunny afternoon, and some deer grazing along the path. The little stream, a few feet across at its widest, tumbled along beside me. The air was light and crisp, redolent with the sweet aroma of spruce and fir. The farther I got up the trail the fewer people I encountered.

The trees, however, which had been riding a shoulder of stone to my right as I ascended, crowded in close. The trail was pinched to an abrupt end where the tree line met the creek, spruce boughs extending over the water’s edge.

I stood on the bank, looking across at a glade awash in brilliant afternoon sun. I crossed the creek, settled myself on a small boulder, and focused on the sounds of the valley. It took a few minutes for me to realize there were none of the typical noises competing for my attention: no car engines, horns, or thumping subwoofers; no airplanes, no human voices, no ring-tones, beeping, or electronic buzzing. When was the last time I had not heard any of those things? In place of all this white noise was the hushed, undulating music of the creek, the water forging along on its timeless way; the whisper of the wind stirring treetops all around me, a forest hundreds of years old that had seen warm, serene days like this one and winter storms that piled snow high up on the boles of the trees.

When I thought I had catalogued everything I could hear, I tilted my head toward the sky and closed my eyes, the sun glowing red through my eyelids. From somewhere high above came the faint screech of a bird on the wing—a goshawk, perhaps. I drew a breath and tried to absorb what my senses were registering, the still and quiet majesty of it all, but it was like trying to swallow the ocean. I had stumbled into something that dwarfed and engulfed me. The sensation was disconcerting, invigorating.

Sitting alone in the sunshine of this subalpine valley I allowed myself a little while to stop thinking and problem solving. When I had grown sufficiently still and quiet, I heard a whisper seeping from the rocks, the stream, the trees, the ceaseless blue sky with the goshawk wheeling far above. It turns out this hard, unforgiving landscape of granite and rarified air, which I found both intimidating and intoxicating, had all along been asking nothing more of me than a willingness to settle in atop a boulder and listen—just listen—to the splash and trickle of water, the breath of the wind, and the rhythm of my own heart.

Not According to Plan (A Writer's Confession from a Photo Walk)

2011-08-06T20:21:00.000-07:00

We poured out of our vehicles at seven AM on a humid, overcast Saturday in August, gathering at the local college campus for a photo walk. It had been scheduled for weeks so the morning forecast was, of course, for showers. Even though we needed rain, we still wished it would hold off for at least another hour or two.

I looked around at the members of the group as they adjusted shoulder straps, attached lenses, sipped on coffee or Mt. Dew. While the others are passionate about photography, I consider myself a snapshot dabbler at best. I know precious little about the art and craft of taking photographs but am absolutely inspired by a good shot when I see it. So I dubbed myself the unofficial scribe of the group and packed my voice recorder, notepad, and pen. My presence thus justified, I was ready to fulfill my self-assigned role. I did have my point-and-shoot camera on my belt, though—just in case.

We moved away from the parking lot and began, with some trepidation at first, to drift apart. As the others relaxed and let their eye lead them from one shot to the next, I hesitated long enough to scrawl the words “the walk” in my notebook. I was ready to annotate, to chronicle, to journal. Yes, I thought with a particular sense of mission, the writer will linger at the periphery and observe the photographers doing their thing.

* * *

As it turned out, the rain did hold off and the seven of us (maybe there was some luck in our number, if you believe in that sort of thing) had a great time. We hung out at Starbucks for a while afterward, which I suspect surprised no one in the group, before heading our separate ways.

When I got home, “the walk” was still the only thing written on the notebook page. Some scribe. I knew I was interested in taking pictures, or else I wouldn’t have gotten a camera in the first place. Still, I honestly did not expect to be so thoroughly seduced by the unique thrill of seeing an image coalesce from the backdrop of its surroundings—of having one scene leap out so starkly from everything else that it demanded to be framed, captured, memorialized for the eye to linger over and the soul to explore.

So it was with the lambent glow of a lamp cast upon the leaves of a sheltering elm, the sky dark and ominous beyond. From a technical perspective it may not be a very good photograph; I’ll leave that for others more qualified to decide. I’m more interested in understanding what it is about this image that strikes me so. Maybe it has something to do with the juxtaposition of light and shadow, those fundamental visual building blocks. Or maybe the stormy sky and glowing lamp trigger something more visceral—latent concepts of vulnerability and safety, perhaps.

Regardless, I’ll admit to being smitten—excited about an image or two that I managed to capture and eager to see what the rest of the group brought back as well. I had a great time, so much so that I’ve already forgiven myself for being an unworthy scribe.

The Heart Follows

2011-07-11T07:39:00.001-07:00

On a trip to Jackson's Orchard last weekend I wandered around with my camera, snapping whatever caught my eye. When I got back and scrolled through the photos, I was drawn to a few in particular.

Looking at these, it occurred to me that what I was photographing went beyond the scene, image, or object captured. Instead, I was looking into or beyond what initially drew my eye.

The shaded bench offered a welcomed respite from the sun, yes, but the trees around it did much more, the green frame of their branches pointing my eye toward the winding gravel roads beyond. The roads meander, join, and arc gently around a shimmering pond before disappearing into the distance.

Staring at the farthest reach of the road I realize that's where my eye keeps ending up - wandering, meandering, exploring what's around the next bend. Always savoring the scene before me and then exploring where it leads next. Where the eye is drawn, it seems for me at least, the heart follows.

Good Medicine

2011-05-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

“It'll be okay,” my wife says, trying to hide the frustration in her voice. We've been sitting in the nursing home parking lot for five minutes, the car cooling in the crisp winter air. We got up early this Saturday morning and drove an hour-and-a-half north to visit my seventy-eight-year-old grandmother. Now I sit with my hand on the door handle, struggling with what lies ahead. I'm grateful my wife came with me. In fact, it's the pressure I glean from her presence – that guilt at having dragged her all this way just to sit in a cold car – that finally breaks through the fog of my anxiety.

“I know,” I say at last, then take a deep breath and get out.

As soon as the glass doors swoosh open we see some of the more independent residents in the lobby. A few are in wheelchairs but most are sitting on couches and chairs, their visitors nearby. One little girl occupies an old woman's lap, the woman beaming while the girl's parents sit stiffly on a love seat. Only the little girl is talking.

Everyone in the room looks up as the sound of the door and the accompanying blast of cold air announce our arrival. Their desperation is palpable. Residents and visitors alike seem to be starving for any taste of the outside world they can get. For visitors, the freedom swirling amidst snow flurries outside the window is close, no more than a decision and a few steps away. For the residents, though, the place they occupied freely for decades now exists only beyond the glass – to be visited rarely if at all. They rushed away their precious time out there as the years flew by, just as we are doing now. And now they have nothing but time in here and precious little to do with it.

My wife and I check in at the visitor's desk then continue down the main hall. Here and there residents shuffle along holding the chair rail for support and we soon encounter familiar characters from a past visit: a frail woman in a wheelchair, propelling herself along the hallway wall by inches; a woman in a bright red housecoat with one matching slipper and one bare foot, staring at a painting on the wall; a stooped man with long legs and a shambling gait. He doesn't look at us but raises a hand as we pass. I realize he is the first male resident we've seen and am reminded that the majority of nursing home residents are female. By and large the men die first.

The scent of chemical sterilant permeates everything, barely masking the odors that lurk just beneath like fetid water under thin ice. We pass one room and are startled by a sudden moan from within, as though our passing has triggered some alarm. The sound forms a haunting lament that could be someone's name. Where are you? It says. Why am I alone?

My wife's hand closes around mine and we press on, dragging the fading dirge along behind us like a sea anchor.

At the end of the long hall we turn left and arrive at the section where the dementia patients live, the corral for all those minds betrayed by Alzheimer's and its variants. The staff member at the nurse's station smiles as she greets us. We tell her who we're there to see and she reads the room number to us from her computer screen. A few moments later I knock on the open door to Grandma's room.

“Grandma? It's Ricky.” From the corner of my eye I see my wife smiling. I haven't used that version of my name for nearly two decades but it's how Grandma remembers me.

Grandma sits in her rocking chair, the one my uncle brought from her house so she would have something familiar. She spent lots of time in that chair in the years after Granddad died, and in that respect little has changed with her move to the nursing home. She is rocking and looking out the window where the wind blows snow flakes against the pane, the brilliant morning sun illuminating the crystals like glitter. Grandma doesn't hear me, or isn't ready to leave whatever place she is exploring at the moment, so my wife and I stand quietly, studying her. She has worn glasses nearly all her life, the same pair for as long as I can remember, and her pupils dart restlessly behind the stark line of her bifocals. I follow her gaze out the window, to the courtyard with the empty bird feeders swaying in the wind and the cold concrete bench, and I realize she is watching things we cannot see.

Grandma blinks, stops rocking and turns to face us. She smiles, a natural reaction at seeing her two visitors, but there is an undeniable lack of recognition on her face.

“Hi Grandma,” I say, stepping forward and reaching out to her. She takes my hand without hesitation but her eyes keep searching mine – looking for something, anything to illuminate the darkening paths of her mind. I can see her struggle as she shuffles through the deck of her scattered memory, assigning me first one identity then another from nearly a century of faces.

I sit on the edge of the bed beside her and smile. She still holds my hand, almost wringing it in her desperate, flailing search.

“I'm Ricky, Grandma. Your grandson.”

Grandma's shoulders settle as she releases some of the tension. She nods and smiles, guarded recognition seeping across her face. We have done this before, though, and I resist the relief that tries to wash over me. I know it will not last, and the frustration will start all over again – one minute from now, or five; ten, if she's having an exceptional day.

“Ah, Ricky,” she says, squeezing my hand and smiling. Her eye catches my wife. “And who is this pretty thing?”

“This is my wife, Cheree.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” Grandma says, waving a hand as though it was silly of her to ask. “How have you been, dear? You have always been the most beautiful girl.”

Cheree blushes then leans past me to give Grandma a hug, which is returned with gusto.

“I'm good,” Cheree says, “How about you?”

“I'm fine,” Grandma replies. “They take good care of me here. I have my aches and pains, of course, but don't we all?”

“Are you eating okay?” I ask. She looks like she has lost weight, her once plump figure being swallowed by her clothes.

“Oh, my!” Grandma says, “they expect you to eat ten times a day. I swear, sometimes I think they're fattening us up for Thanksgiving turkeys!”

“But you're not fat, Grandma. You're getting skinny.”

Grandma's face transforms with girlish delight and she smooths the front of her polyester blouse, embarrassed.

“Well, that's very kind of you, Garland.” She sniffs and looks out the window again, the rocking chair resuming its steady, creaking rhythm.

There is an awkward silence as I collect myself. So, today is not a good day.

“I'm your grandson Ricky,” I say with practiced patience. “Uncle Garland died years ago, remember?” The doctors have said the healthiest thing is to keep bringing her gently back to reality, however tempting it may be to let her roam freely through the maze of her confusion.

She keeps looking out the window for a long moment and when she turns back I have my answer. No, she does not remember. She cannot make herself remember. It is all gone again, washed away as quickly as it came. Her eyes are wide, confused. She looks almost cornered – a wild animal plucked from all that is familiar and planted among strangers in a strange place – desperate for the familiar and helpless to find it, just as I am helpless to show her the way. My shoulders stiffen and I feel the sting of tears. Cheree puts a hand on my shoulder.

Minutes pass with only the sound of the rocking chair to mark the passage of time. I lower my head and study the laces of my shoes, counting the eyelets over and over. What good are the visits if Grandma doesn't know who I am, or has forgotten we were even here by the time we pull out of the parking lot? I have pelted Cheree with these unfair and impossible questions more than once, since I cannot arrive at any reasonable answers on my own. Then, as now, Cheree knows what I will not accept: that there are no answers.

When I look up again Grandma's gaze has returned to her new familiarity, the one constant in her fickle, slippery world. She stares out at the courtyard, her face once again placid.

There is a knock at the door and we turn to see a neatly dressed, white-haired woman, her face bright.

“I'm sorry,” the woman says, in a beautiful southern drawl, “I didn't realize you had company, honey. A bunch of us were just wondering if Gwen could come down to the lounge and play, but we can do that anytime.”

Grandma – Gwen – smiles but says nothing.

“Gwen, this must be some of your family,” the woman says.

Grandma's smile falters and I catch the feral flash behind her glasses.

“Yes,” Grandma says, “This is my, ah...”

I turn to the woman and extend my hand. “I'm Ricky, her grandson. Pleasure to meet you. This is my wife, Cheree.”

“I'm Evelyn,” the woman replies, shaking our hands in turn. “and it's good meeting you, too. Thank you so much for coming to see Gwen. We absolutely love her to death around here.”

“Oh, Evelyn,” Grandma says, “you're too much.”

Evelyn's face lights up with inspiration. “Hey, Gwen,” she says. “Why don't you bring your visitors down to the lounge and play for us? We need to get you out of that old rocking chair more often, you know.” Evelyn winks at us and I like her already.

“I don't know,” Grandma says. “I don't quite feel like playing today.”

“Poppycock!” Evelyn shoots back. “You just don't wanna get your lazy backside out of that chair. Well, I'm here to tell you it's high time you did just that. Now, grab that strapping boy's arm and let's go.”

Grandma shakes her head and tries to resist but Evelyn will not be denied, still shooting us occasional winks as she expertly pushes Grandma's buttons. It occurs to me that this isn't the first time Evelyn and my grandmother have gone through this drill. Finally, Grandma puts out her hand and lets me help her up.

After some primping at her bathroom mirror Grandma is ready and the four of us set off down the hall, Evelyn leading the way and announcing to everyone we encounter that Gwen is going to play. When we get to the lounge I am surprised at the crowd. There must be at least fifty people gathered: patients, visitors, staff – all milling about and talking. It's the weekend and there are a lot of people there like us, visiting family members. And along one wall, where Evelyn is leading Grandma with unerring purpose, stands a piano – a Baldwin upright with worn keys and a Christmas wreath perched on top.

I hurry ahead to catch up with Evelyn. “Are you sure she's up to this?” I whisper. “I mean, she's confused and I don't want her to get any more upset than she already is. Putting her in front of all these people...”

Evelyn cocks one perfectly-drawn eyebrow at me and smiles. “Honey, playing that piano is the one thing she can do without thinking and worrying. When she sits at that stool she doesn't have to put a face to a name, a place, a time or anything else. Her heart and her fingers do it all on their own.” She pauses and looks at my Grandma, walking on my wife's arm, patting Cheree's hand and carrying on a pleasant conversation. “Nope,” Evelyn says tenderly, “This is good medicine for her – the only medicine she's got. Now you be a good grandson and watch, then let me know if Miss Evelyn doesn't tell it straight.”

* * *
In the early 1950s my grandmother played piano with a country-western act called Odis Blanton and the Blue Star Rangers. They played a circuit throughout western Kentucky and northern Tennessee, cut an album in Nashville and had a long-running weekly radio show called the Farm and Home Hour. But all that was before I was born, and over the years I grew accustomed to seeing my Grandma rub at her arthritic hands, complaining that “Old Arthur” was none too kind. And while there had always been a piano in Grandma's house while I was growing up, I only heard her play it a handful of times.

So it was that I braced myself against another frustrating moment for this woman I loved so much, but for whom I was able to do so little.

Evelyn pulled out the piano stool and patted it like a proud instructor about to show off her prodigy. Cheree helped Grandma ease onto the seat then stepped away, joining me along the wall at the edge of the crowd. Evelyn leaned in and whispered something to Grandma, then gave her a little hug.

For a while Grandma just sat there, staring at the keys with her hands in her lap. I found Evelyn in the crowd and shot her a worried look but she just nodded, her expression confident.

Finally, Grandma raised her hands, studying them for a moment as though discovering something new. She kneaded her fingers and there were more than a few chuckles from the crowd at the loud pops that followed. Grandma winced, then settled her fingers on the keys and her gaze on the Christmas wreath. She licked her lips and struck some keys, the random notes echoing through the crowded lounge. I steadied myself and was suddenly struck by a hard, convicting question: was I worried she would be terrible for her sake, or mine? Cheree's hand found mine and she squeezed, even though I didn't deserve it.

When Grandma launched into her first song it was as if time were banished, so utterly was she transformed. There was no hesitation, no warm-up, not so much as a stray note or missed key. And what she played was no slow, simple beginner's song but the the music she had pounded out for years with the Blue Star Rangers – raucous, high-energy songs like Steppin' High, Wide and Handsome, the “B” side to their record Dixiana. In the crowd there were those like Evelyn who had known what to expect. These folks smiled, nodded and clapped along enjoying my Grandma's enormous talent. But the rest of us were left slack-jawed.

Once started, Grandma quickly hit her stride. It was amazing to watch as she tapped her foot and worked the pedals, her arthritic fingers somehow dancing across the keys. Her whole body found the music, moving inside her overlarge clothes as she played, oblivious to everything but the magic she channeled. More of the crowd began clapping to keep time, even the most stalwart among them relenting to the energy flowing from this single, gifted woman. This woman I claimed as my grandmother, but who in this moment I realized I did not even know. This woman who had kept me as a child when my mother worked, who cooked meals for me and shushed me while she watched The Guiding Light – this musician I thought wasn't up to playing in front of a crowd. This woman I pitied because she couldn't remember my name.

I did not hold back the tears. This time I let them fall, for me and for Grandma. I let them fall for how complete Grandma was when she played and how the music let her transcend all the frustration I had been too shallow to see beyond. I let them fall for a friend like Evelyn whose wisdom prevailed over a grandson's worry. And I let them fall for that soft hand still clasped inside mine, its warm tenderness ever a perfect fit.

In loving memory-

Gwendolyn Dalton

Words

2011-05-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

For as long as I can remember I have been enamored with words, deriving great pleasure from how they are crafted into sentences, paragraphs, and stories that entertain, enlighten, and resonate. Beyond the satisfaction of wordsmithery, though, I’ve also come to realize that words are the way I organize my thoughts and (sometimes) make sense of what’s going on not only in the world but in my head. If I can capture some little bit of what I see, learn, or feel and share it with others, then I’ve succeeded—and can rightly call myself a writer.

There are those, myself included, who sincerely believe there is no more noble calling than to paint the truth of the human condition using the pallet of language and the brush of composition. Henry David Thoreau put it more eloquently, of course, in Walden:

“A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;—not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.”

Indeed. May I always be found fashioning those choicest of relics, carved from the very breath of life. Words.

Insubstantial

2011-05-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

It was around two in the morning when we woke to the sound of wind whistling and whipping around our front porch. The fist of the storm pounded against our bedroom windows, making the glass groan in the pane. I pulled Cheree close, fearing one of the windows might give under the strain. Instead, what we heard next was a prolonged creaking that seemed to come straight out of a Foley artist’s horror movie repertoire. It sounded like a huge door swinging slowly open on a rusty hinge, and it was followed by the distinct sound of splitting wood. Last came a whoosh that was all but swallowed on the wind. We wouldn’t be able to see until the next morning, but we didn’t have to. One of the Bradford Pear trees in the front yard—the set we’d talked about cutting down since we bought the place, but that had grown as tall as our two-story house—was now laying outside our bedroom window, atop the smashed remains of Cheree’s prized hydrangea bush.

We lay there, listening as far out as we could for what might be racing toward the house. We desperately needed some trace of warning before something bigger or stronger bore down upon us. What was it all the tornado victims said afterward? It sounded like a freight train, like a dozen freight trains. Is that the sound I was hearing, a deeper and infinitely more ominous rumble growing from the frenzied screams of the wind? Whatever it was lay just beyond the insubstantial wood and siding of our home. It occurred to me that I had never thought of our house as thin and insubstantial, but that’s exactly how it seemed to me as I strained to hear past the squall.

I was maybe ten years old when the storm hit our hometown. The news said a tornado had been spotted out on the north side, where it ripped up a trailer park. My great aunt and cousin were at our house for the evening and, although we watched the radar on TV and listened to the weather warnings on the radio, we never had to withdraw to the basement. Things didn’t get so bad at our house. My aunt and cousin lived in a rented mobile home, though—on the north side of town.

Once the brunt of the storm had passed we loaded up in dad’s car and headed out to check on their trailer. The gusting wind blew rain against the windshield, the wipers playing out a rhythm of squeaks and thumps. As we turned from the road into the gravel driveway, our headlights played across a scene we couldn’t process at first. The rented trailer had been picked up, flipped over, and slammed down onto its roof in the exact spot where it had been parked. The axles and wheels pointed up into the night sky like the upturned feet of a dead bird and the whole thing had been compressed, flattened so that the wheels stood only about eye level to my father.

We walked around the wreckage, straining to see in the dark and blowing rain, looking for any of their belongings to salvage. Frankly I don’t recall how anyone reacted. I don’t even remember looking at any of their faces, so mesmerized was I by the incongruent condition of the trailer. Here was a place I had visited, had eaten meals in, now reduced to its most basic components. Rendered a shattered pile of aluminum, vinyl, steel, and plastic, the trailer home lay in the rain like an affront to memory, bearing no resemblance to the place I remembered. Wasn’t this where the living room had been?

In my mind I see the overturned trailer every time the weather warning sirens go off or we hear the wind hammering our neighborhood. So now, laying here with my wife and listening to the storm rage outside, my mind constructs a collage from all the tornado footage I’ve ever seen, compressing it all into one deadly highlight reel. That’s what I’m seeing in my mind’s eye, bearing down malevolently upon us from a swirling, tortured sky. With the sound of a hundred freight trains, I think. I pull Cheree closer still, and hope that by holding tightly to each other we can somehow make ourselves feel more substantial.

Photo courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

IS

2011-04-24T09:32:00.000-07:00

is kevjumba a heterosexual bear wrestler
Few things in recent memory have provided more brow-furrowing periods of deep thought than this question, at least for the few seconds until I looked it up on Wikipedia and found out that kevjumba really is a heterosexual bear wrestler. This, of course, led me to wondering if kevjumba’s enormous YouTube popularity is fair to any homosexual bear wrestlers out there who aren’t getting equal billing. Or does the colorful title mean that kevjumba only wrestles heterosexual bears? Hmmm…

is daniel tosh gay
Come on. I mean, can’t a guy just have ‘happy thoughts’ without risking the label? I’m just saying.

is hank green awesome
I guess that sort of depends on who you’re asking. His brother John? Probably. YouTube? Absolutely. Fox News? Hmmm…

is facebook shutting down
omg!!!!! Of course not. If it did then how would we get all of our past posts sent back to us in random, repeating e-mails that land in our inboxes months after we’ve forgotten what we even cared about back then? :)

is it down
Now I’m scared.

is pneumonia contagious
Not among some species of mice.

is bronchitis contagious
Chronic or acute? Ha! It doesn’t matter.

is darren criss gay
Ah, back to the important stuff. Darren plays a very sincere, believable, and likeable homosexual on a phenomenally successful television show. Aside from being a young, accomplished actor of stage and screen, he’s a classically trained violinist who also taught himself guitar, piano, cello, mandolin, and drums. Of course we have to believe he’s gay.

is anyone up
Question or invitation?

is justin bieber gay
He’s a disturbingly successful, marginally talented teenage sensation awash in his own persona. Of course we have to believe he’s gay.

This is it, I realized. These are the things that matter to us, the deep questions that haunt us at night when sleep will not come. This is what we’re asking, what we’re searching for during the day when we’re tired of doing boring work stuff but it isn’t time to go home yet and our computers are still on.

As I wrestled with the enormity of these questions that define us as a society, I got tired and fell asleep. No, not really. But almost. Then I sat up straight—something that rarely happens—and said something profound like “aha!” I jumped back on Google and, with way more anticipation than the situation warranted, I slowly typed in those two letters that just hours earlier had changed my life: I – S.

And that’s when I had my epiphany. Well, that or the bean soup I had for lunch was kicking in. What I saw was that our culture is not static, not by a long shot. Ours is a dynamic, evolving society that constantly and nimbly redefines itself based on the predominant philosophical tenor of the moment. For what I witnessed was nothing short of a cosmic re-shuffling of the deck of fate. The really important question had ascended, assuming its rightful place at the top—leaving me to wonder if there’s any hope that he can fend off THE QUESTION much longer.

The biebster, of course. How do I know it’s THE QUESTION? Duh. It yielded 51,400,000 results in 0.07 seconds.

I’ll check back tomorrow. I have to know. Whether or not he is.

The Tao of Macro

2011-04-03T17:07:00.000-07:00

Look closely and a tree's growth rings tell a story of wet springs, dry summers, and transformation. Examine a stone to see the individual sediments that time and pressure have metamorphosed into competent rock. Gaze into a shimmering droplet of dew and feel yourself teeter on the edge of infinity. Take a look at any good macro photograph and your eye is drawn deeply into the subject, your imagination ushered past the threshold of the object and into the very heart of things.

Tao is both Named and Nameless

As Nameless, it is the origin of all things

As Named, it is the mother of all things

That journey into the heart of all things Named and Nameless is why I tend to favor macro photography, which takes an outwardly simple object and reveals its inherent complexity, beauty, and depth. A good photograph draws us in, helps us concentrate on one thing, one scene, until the rest of the world blurs and our attention settles. When this happens we can see more than we would have expected, but achieving it requires a willingness to see beyond the outward, physical components of wood, water, or stone. We must become sensitive to what lies beneath, beyond, and throughout.

A mind free of thought,

merged within itself,

beholds the essence of Tao

A mind filled with thought,

identified with its own perceptions,

beholds the mere forms of this world

Look closely. Examine. Gaze. Release your long-held perceptions and behold more than the mere forms of this world. Let your heart be stirred by the sight of swirling wood grain or eddies in water, the texture of stone, and the pattern of flame—and you behold the essence of Tao.

Images courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

Excerpts from the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Translated by Jonathan Star

Captivated

2011-03-21T18:39:00.000-07:00

Crooked boughs herald the rising Moon, framing it and marking its uncanny progress through deepening twilight. The glowing orb dances among the branches as the wind makes a whispered rush through the trees. I am powerless to look away. I do not want to. Everything I believe about life and nature and the infinite fabric of the universe is conveyed in this single, sublime moment.

Proponents of lunar capture theory believe the Moon was an independent body, wandering innocently through space, when it traveled near enough to Earth that it was caught in our planet's gravitational pull. This time, it seems, it is the Moon that has captured me.

Call of the Hawk

2011-03-12T09:23:00.001-08:00

I stepped outside on a Sunday morning to walk the dogs and found it unseasonably warm for February, the sky heavy with gray clouds that matched my mood. It was a particularly difficult time at work, with a project load unlike anything we had ever seen. My every moment seemed claimed, life consumed by an endless torrent of trivial urgencies. The worst thing was that I could see no light at the end of this particular tunnel, nothing to reassure me that the storm would retreat. I knew it must, eventually, but when you’re struggling to keep from drowning it's difficult to see past the next crushing wave.

Standing in the back yard with leash in hand, yawning and trying to shed the residue of my dreams, I found myself already fending off thoughts of what the day held. The weather forecast was for rain, but what did it matter? I would be inside working on overdue reports all day. I sighed, hoping to ignore the burden for just a few more minutes, when I heard the piercing cry of a red-tailed hawk.

It turned out there were two of them. I stood with my face upturned, watching and listening as they screeched and glided over the field beside our house. Drawing a deep breath, I saw their distinctive shapes wheeling in the quiet morning sky, silhouetted against the clouds that stood sentinel over man and hawk and fleeing prey. In that moment the veil of my own troubles parted enough for me to see that we were all joined, connected in our individual activities – functioning separately yet together. A drop of mist, not yet heavy enough to be called rain, touched my cheek. I smiled. The Tao had announced itself as loudly as ever it would.

That week I dutifully confined myself to the upstairs office and worked on those overdue reports, the window open onto our back yard. It seems the hawks had taken up residence nearby, for I heard their cry from time to time as they hunted. When I heard them I would go to the window and press my face against the screen like a schoolboy pining for recess, inhaling the scent of the day and looking for the hawks. Sometimes they were on the wing, sometimes perched in the high branches of an oak; occasionally I could pick them out but more often I couldn't. It became a game, rushing to the window and trying to spot our new visitors, but now I realize it was more than that. Their presence sustained me, connected me to something bigger than my temporary, blinding troubles.

The reports – once so critical – have been delivered and will be forgotten soon enough. Likewise, the hawks seem to have moved on. I haven't heard or seen them for a few days now but I still find myself looking toward the sky or growing quiet when I’m outside to listen for an extra moment or two, just in case. I miss them a little, but I also know the hawks were here when I needed them most.

Image courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

A Simple Thing

2011-01-26T18:50:00.000-08:00

It was a simple thing, really. Just a few seconds in a span of millions, and not even noticed by most of the other people watching. It doesn't matter though, because I still can't tell the story without stumbling on the words and tripping over the lump in my throat. The funny thing is that I'm not even sure why it affected me that way. But wait – I'm getting ahead of myself.

My wife, Cheree, and I have three children, two of them boys – brothers separated by nineteen months and, well, a few other things – things like physical build, disposition, academic capabilities, interests, and talents. The older brother, Dalton, is a drummer; his younger brother Cameron plays guitar. Dalton is considering going into the military, while Cameron wants no part of it.

One thing the brothers have always shared, though, is an interest in sports. They've played baseball and basketball in recreational leagues, soccer in a competitive traveling club – sometimes on different teams and sometimes the same. Regardless of what and where they play, they share the natural competitiveness of being brothers. I've seen it on the field, on the court, in the yard, and in the driveway. I've heard it play out in long, tension-filled drives after some particularly fierce contest or another. They've come to blows before, which is never a pretty thing to see brothers do. I'm glad to say, though, that they have always reconciled. Eventually.

This season they are sixteen and fourteen, Dalton already taller than me, Cameron looking me in the eye. They are growing taller, stronger, better at whatever it is they are doing at the time. This winter the thing they're doing is basketball, and they're on the same team. While this makes things easier on my wife and me, it definitely breeds tension between the brothers.

Dalton is obsessed with basketball. He tells me not to say it like that, but I haven't found a better way to put it. Anyway, I have to admit he has some game – a shooting forward or two-guard who can drain the three, feed the open man down low, or go in the paint and work the boards himself. He can score and he knows it, and isn't bashful about calling for the rock.

Cameron is all guard, low and quick and extremely intense. He's not loud or showy, and opponents can make the mistake of overlooking him – at least until the first time they bring the ball down on him. Oh yeah, he can run a fast break too – something his wicked defensive skills regularly afford him an opportunity to do. His thing is steals.

So on this particular day my wife and I are watching the boys play, the gym full of all the familiar sounds: the squeak of sneakers on hardwood, the referee's whistle, the scoreboard buzzer that's so insanely loud it leaves your ears ringing every time it goes off. It's late in the game and the other team has made a little run to make the game close. Our team just scored and Dalton is getting back on defense as the point guard for the opposing team crosses mid-court on the dribble. The guard looks up, scans the floor to size up his offense and start a set. A second later Cameron is crossing mid-court headed the other way. With the ball.

Dalton, his long strides eating the court, shoots past Cameron, as does the frustrated guard who has just been relieved of the rock. It's a two-on-one fast break, my sons fanning out to either side to split the lone defender.

In the bleachers, I nod. I know Dalton will show for the ball, ready for his trademark not-quite-dunk layup where he smacks the backboard for effect. He has his eye on the game-high score. I watch Cameron wait for the best moment to pass, to ensure that the defender won't be able to interfere. From all the games I've played, all I've watched, the moment about to unfold becomes certain, crystalline.

And then Dalton does the unexpected, cutting back toward the middle of the lane, his wide wingspan completely blocking out the smaller – and now surprised – defender.

The brothers make eye contact and exchange the subtlest of nods. Cameron sweeps left and lays it in for an easy two. My boys turn to head back up court, giving each other a quick low-five as they pass.

It was a simple thing, really. Just a few seconds in a span of millions, and not even noticed by most of the other people watching. But I saw it.

More Than A Dream

2011-01-16T12:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday would have been Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 82nd birthday; tomorrow, as on the third Monday each January, we observe Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In honor of the man and his legacy, I offer this piece I originally posted last year. It's one of my favorites. I'd love to hear what you think.

I was not yet born when Martin Luther King, Jr. shared his dream from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August of 1963, but the vision and passion of the man and his words resonate for me still – as they do for so many millions of other people. Dr. King would have been 82 this week, and as we take pause to consider his legacy we should consider how it has – and still can - affect ours.

Sure, the dream stirs and moves us. How could we call ourselves human and not be moved by the beautiful, fleeting glimpse he painted of a world where peace and love triumph over fear and oppression? Like Dr. King, we must refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. And like Dr. King, we must realize that we cannot walk alone and we cannot turn back.

But we are fools if we let ourselves think that Dr. King was just a dreamer of dreams, an inspirational speaker with a gift for raising the passion of a people. He wrote. He preached. He traveled. He marched. He sat in jail cells. His ideas were radical, controversial - even revolutionary for his time. He did all these things because of the dream that his children would one day be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

Dr. King was 39 years old when he was assassinated, stolen from us by hate and fear and a bitter smallness of spirit. But despite the tragedy of his death he left us something transcendent – something that surpassed the sum of his short life and even the iconic image we would ultimately paint for one of our most beloved martyrs. I’m speaking of The Dream, of course – that grand and powerful and unstoppable seed of hope he thrust deep inside every one of us. Not just with a speech but through the way he lived, the way he put feet to what he believed. The gift that Dr. King gave to us was far, far more than a dream.

Fore! Word

2011-01-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

In honor of the first tournament of the 2011 PGA season (the Hyundai Tournament of Champions kicked off today in Maui), I offer the following snippet from my own illustrious golf career.

It’s been over a decade and they still talk about it, still ask me to recount the stories in the break room or at company functions. Oh, well. Everybody’s gotta have a legacy. I just never pictured myself as a golf legend.

It was a charity scramble for a children’s home and the turnout was big, with well over two hundred golfers clogging the registration area. By the time our foursome checked in and bought all the Mulligans we could get, the air around the practice tees was alive with the whoosh and ting of Big Berthas launching Titleists into the great beyond. I fished around in my secondhand Wilson bag, tied my stiff new shoes again, positioned my glove just so in my back pocket—anything I could do to make it look like I knew what I was doing.

That’s when I saw him: a man with one arm and one leg, standing in one of the tee slots and addressing a ball. As I watched, he started his backswing without so much as a wobble and came through strong and clean, making perfect contact. There were maybe two dozen golfers swinging at the time and this guy outdrove most of them. It was beautiful to watch, and it renewed my faith in the human spirit—his if not my own.

“Better take advantage of the free balls and warm up!”

It was one of my teammates, a project manager at our company and a regular at golf scrambles. I’d heard him referred to as a scratch golfer and I hoped that didn’t mean he had some embarrassing personal habit.

“Definitely,” I said, “Just waiting for a slot to open up.”

One of the guys swinging away up there apparently heard me. Stooping to pick up his bucket of balls, he scooted over to the edge of his slot and waved for me to come up.

“Come on,” he said. “There’s plenty of room for two each in these. No sense waiting.”

It was a wonderful gesture, and I was caught. I snagged my driver and bucket of balls then trudged up the berm to squeeze in front of this very kind stranger.

“Morning,” he said, smiling. “Beautiful day for a round.”

I nodded and smiled back, somehow managing to hide my panic. I felt like everyone was watching me as I fumbled to set a ball on the tee, the rhythm of solid ball strikes ringing all around like games on a carnival midway. I’d been to driving ranges a half dozen times in preparation for this scramble but had yet to master any semblance of consistency in my swing. I started my address, mentally running through the steps I’d read in the Golf Digest article. I bent my knees a little, waggled the club head near the ball…and bumped it off the tee.

Laughing nervously, I bent to set it back.

“I’m not very good,” I said to no one in particular.

“Oh, you’ll do fine,” the friendly golfer said from behind me. “Just give it a whack.”

When I was finally ready I came down strong, set on releasing all my simmering anxiety in a solid, blistering drive that would boost my confidence and show all these guys that I wasn’t a complete loser.

My stroke was so far off that the toe of the club just barely nicked the ball. I had put some serious juice on that swing, though, and in a moment that would come to define me as a golfer the ball somehow shot off the tee ninety degrees—straight away from my stance rather than down-range—and slammed into the left ankle of the guy in the slot ahead of me.

“Shit!” he shouted, grabbing for his ankle and turning around to see what idiot had just clipped him.

“Oh god, I’m sorry,” I said.

But he was already shaking it off, conjuring a smile and shrugging his shoulders to ward off the unwanted attention he was getting.

“No worries,” he said. “Just caught me by surprise.” He nodded reassuringly, sniffed, and turned around to resume his practice.

I sighed, thinking that at least I’d gotten that out of my system on the first swing. One can never underestimate the power of positive thinking. I teed up another ball and went into my address again, stealing glances at the back of the guy I’d just hit and wondering whether his ankle would swell. I took a deep breath, thought of the one-armed, one-legged guy a few slots behind me for inspiration, and swung again. This time the ball cracked into the Achilles heel of my victim’s right foot.

He half-dropped, half-threw his driver onto the astro-turf and spun, his eyes wild for an instant. I braced myself, thinking he would charge me. Golfers in the adjoining slots paused, watching to see what would happen.

“Sorry,” I muttered, my face burning as I headed back down the berm. I didn’t even pause to collect my bucket of balls.

He rubbed the back of his foot and shot me a withering glare before turning back around.

“I’ve been playing for twenty years,” my scratch-golfer teammate said, shaking his head as I slammed the traitorous driver into my bag, “and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

There was genuine awe in his voice when he added, “To hit a ball a perfect ninety degrees like that—not once but twice in as many swings—that defies the laws of physics and probability at the same time.”

And so it was that, in a scant two strokes, my name became permanently ingrained in the golf lore of our company. I’ve long since sold my clubs and taken up disc golf, but there are still a few who remember the day I stepped meekly onto the practice tee and forever left my mark on the game.

The Geese

2010-12-20T18:07:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the first day of winter and to usher in the season I offer this memory from a winter not so long ago. It's one of my favorites.

A cold wind drives scattered snowflakes across the parking lot, stinging the corners of my eyes as I step out the office door. The late afternoon sun barely lights the sky as I escape from yet another business day, relieved at the prospect of getting home to my family.

I've just opened the car door when a familiar sound from above stops me, and I look up to see a small flock of geese flying almost directly overhead. There aren't many – perhaps three dozen altogether – but for whatever reason I'm still mesmerized by something that's pretty common this time of year. The geese are flying in their classic V-formation, alternately consisting of two or three sub-formations that constantly change shape in a peaceful, fluid dance a few hundred feet above the earth.

Watching them fly over, I lose myself in their passing. They are driven by instinct and experience to move, making their mysterious pilgrimage with great purpose and determination. I hear the honking among them and wonder what they might be communicating to one another.

My eyes follow the flock, my thoughts carried along on their wake. The geese disappear behind the rooftops and still I stand there, listening as the last lingering notes of their honking fade. A car passes on the street and a snowflake strikes my cheek. I blink and find myself staring upward into the empty winter sky. With the spell of their presence broken I realize how cold I am, and how alone.

Settling in behind the steering wheel I wonder where the geese will land, and when. As I pull out of the parking lot and merge into the home-bound traffic, I fantasize about following the geese on their journey to a placid, mist-covered lake to wait out the harshest weeks of winter before taking flight once again. I find myself on a pilgrimage of a different sort, though – comprising one link in an unbroken chain of commuters rushing toward the end of another day.

I drive home with the radio off – no world headlines, no stock market reports, no political commentaries. I take my time in the slow lane, relishing the last bit of color melting into the horizon, and I smile. I smile for the gift of solitude that I received this evening, courtesy of the geese.

Photo courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

For All of This

2010-11-24T18:50:00.000-08:00

Every day of the year I am over-whelmed by the things I have to be thankful for: a wonderful home that is what it is because of three remarkable children and an incredible wife I really don't deserve; two dogs who are convinced they aren't really dogs; a corner in which to read and write; a wonderful job; and friends who constantly redefine the word. There is so much.

In the third week of November each year the stakes are raised when I really take pause to reflect on these year-round wonders. This year is even more special. On Monday Cheree and I celebrated nineteen years of marriage. I celebrated by asking Cheree to marry me again next year, on our twentieth wedding anniversary. Thankfully, she said yes. I'm pleased to report that she didn't even take too long to think about it! I'm even more pleased to start planning for the beginning of our next twenty years together. And the next twenty, and the twenty after that...

For all of this - and so much more - I am thankful to overflowing.

Thanks to Ricci and Pat for the wonderful photo!

The Stuntman Cometh

2010-11-17T18:10:00.000-08:00

Coy Hanson and I go back. Way back. How far, you say? Back to that first banked free throw in JV basketball. Lots of miles covered since then, including our fair share of really hair-brained stunts. Hmm...there's nothing quite like lying on your back on a sidewalk and watching the rain come down through the glow of a street light, and not having the equilibrium or even the desire to get up. But that's another story. Right now, I want to point you to Coy's blog, where he's begun sharing some exploits he's undertaken over the years as his alter ego, Stuntman. It's good stuff. Just please, don't try any of these at home. Or among people you care about. Or generally anywhere in public.

http://coyhanson.wordpress.com/

Enjoy!

If Only

2010-11-07T18:05:00.000-08:00

It has been referred to as the war to end all wars. If only it could have been so. If only the severing of peace between nations that bloodied the soil across Europe could have really been the last such travesty that humanity perpetuated upon itself. If only.

After four years of fighting, an armistice began at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month – November 11, 1918 – the date that would come to be known as Armistice Day, a day to celebrate the end of fighting in the Great War. In 1954, after our sacrifices in World War II and Korea had taught us bitter lessons about the human propensity for conflict, the name of the holiday was changed to Veterans Day. November 11th was thereafter officially designated to honor American veterans of all wars.

This Veterans Day, I come as a veteran of a peacetime army to honor those who have gone to war or still wage it on our behalf, along with anyone who has ever made the oath to defend our constitution and our country. Thank you one and all. Know that a grateful nation appreciates, honors, and respects you – even though we have become overly lax in showing it. Know that we dreamers would have it so that we never have need of your willingness to sacrifice again. If only.

Photos courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

A Quarter Inch

2010-10-24T16:33:00.001-07:00

A quarter inch. According to the Kentucky Mesonet Web site, that's how much rain we've received at the Warren County mesonet station in the last thirty days. The wind has been up all day, throwing leaves and dust in our faces and putting the firefighters on alert. That's why I stopped what I was doing and called for Cheree when I caught the scent on the wind through our kitchen window.

I was so excited! I went to our back porch and listened to the rain as it struck the roof, the patio, and the grill, filling the gutters and gurgling through the downspouts. I'm grateful, but the shower was so brief and the ground is so dry. Until tonight, I didn't realize how thirsty I was for the sound, the smell, and the feel of the rain.

Photo courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

Footprints

2010-10-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I was on a walking trail, thoroughly enjoying my vacation and trying out some new shoes. It's been so dry lately where I live that the trail was extremely dusty and on my second lap I began to spot my own footprints in the soft dirt. Initially I was just fascinated by being able to recognize the imprint of the different treads, but soon I was looking for them, trying to pick my prints out from among all the others covering the trail. So engrossed was I in spotting the marks of my own passing that I found myself walking a dozen paces or more without looking up, and I chastised myself for missing out on the beautiful sky and early fall colors.

Later, after I had finished my walk and was waiting for Cheree to pick me up, I had time to think about why simply seeing my own footprints leading off to the horizon had distracted me so easily. Ultimately I chalked it up to man's obsession with legacy. Whether it's an architect's signature building, a photographer's masterpiece, a composer's opus – or maybe footprints on a trail – we humans are possessed of a deep desire to produce some lasting mark during our short stay in this world. Maybe we feel like that's the only way our existence can be justified, or that we can only derive meaning from our time here by building a little altar to ourselves. I don't know if it's as narcissistic as all that and the philosophical waters were starting to run pretty deep, so I was glad when Cheree pulled up.

Two days after the dusty trail walk, Cheree and I were on a different trail – this one in the Lost River Cave Valley. We were at one of the “blue holes”, looking at the weathered limestone and characteristic blue-hued water, when something caught my eye. It was a small white tag, the kind made for labeling and hanging keys, tied to a tree with twine. The end of the twine, several feet of it, ran down the trunk of the small tree and disappeared into the brush along the edge of the blue hole. The tag and how it was tied seemed somehow familiar, striking a chord that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

When I was in college, we did a lot of field work in our karst hydrology classes, especially Karst Field Studies; the field work often included conducting dye traces to determine groundwater flow patterns in the cave-rich area around Bowling Green. The dye receptors were suspended at places where the dye might resurface – very often, places like springs and blue holes. The sense of deja vu was unmistakable when I leaned out and turned the tag over to see if there was anything on the other side. There, someone had written in very familiar and meticulous block printing a dye receptor number and the letters CCKS – KFS. The acronyms, which I recognized immediately, stood for Center for Cave and Karst Studies and Karst Field Studies. The eerily familiar handwriting was very likely my own, as I suddenly recalled hanging a dye receptor at this spot during my Karst Field Studies class some seventeen years ago.

Even more surprising than the discovery was my reaction to it. If “thrilled” isn't the right word then “excited” will certainly fit. It was like treasure hunt meets time capsule: a chance stumbling upon evidence that I had stood on this same out-of-the-way spot nearly two decades before. A simple thing, really, but it still struck me as somehow more significant than mere happenstance. Maybe this and the time I spent watching for my own footprints on the trail two days before point to a deeper need to prove we've been here, and that we've done something more than just pass through. Whether I end up considering them my legacy or not, at least I took some satisfaction from things as small as footprints on a dusty trail or a tag and piece of twine on a tree.

Photos courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

Secrets of the Fire

2010-09-19T19:31:00.000-07:00

This Thursday marks the first day of autumn, although if the forecast is accurate the temperature where we are will make it seem a whole lot more like summer. Still, I can't help but celebrate the beginning of my favorite season. We're ready to turn the air conditioner off, fling open the windows, and enjoy some crisp, cool weather.

I'm also looking forward to hikes on some of my favorite trails, steaming bowls of chili, and fires. Campfires, bonfires, fires in our patio chiminea – it doesn't matter. I'm mesmerized by the dancing flames, flickering shadows, and glowing coals of a fire, losing myself in them time and again.

There's something primal about gathering and cutting the wood, laying the paper and kindling, and striking that first match. Then with great anticipation I sit back and wait for the fire to weave its magic. I have yet to be disappointed.

I offer, by way of example, this photo which Cheree took about two weeks ago on our patio. One of my sons sees in it a rose. Cheree spies a wizard. And I see both of these things, now that they've shown me. But as I sit in my chair, staring at the fire – sometimes long after everyone else has grown bored or cold and gone inside – I see more.

At first my rational brain registers the ebb and flow of fuel and oxygen once combustion has given birth to fire: the alteration of elements converged at the right time and under the right conditions. The flames consume, alter, effect a fundamental chemical change – rendering one ending from another beginning and leaving ash and smoke in their wake.

But within the leaping flames, crackling wood, and drifting smoke I soon begin to see more than mere fire. My stiff human reasoning yields, lulled by something deeper and more profound. And then I begin to sense the wider truth, the simple but powerful example for our own lives: like the unscathed wood before the match, we exist in a state which appears on the surface to be more or less stable. Then comes the flame and in a relatively short time the solid is rendered ephemeral, the potential energy inside released and carried away on the wind. No sadness, no loss. Only change – necessary and inevitable. One thing begets another, and the cycle that sustains us all moves along.

If I look to the fire this way, I find myself rewarded with far more than warm feet and clothes that smell of smoke. If I let myself relax and look deeply enough into the flames I see still more. I glimpse an endless river flowing with vision and memory, sorrow and hope – a running film of all the cave men, hunters, warriors, and pioneers who have hunched before a fire to warm their hands or cook for their families. And in seeing them it becomes clear that my existence, as full and fulfilling as it is in moments like these, is no less fleeting than all of those fire makers gone before. Yet I find no sorrow in that, only a profound sense of place and purpose and peace.

The fire burns low, letting the night's chill creep in. The spell of the flame weakens, casting the secrets of the fire into shadow once again. I blink myself back into the present, back onto the patio with a canopy of brilliant stars overhead. Standing to go back inside I steal one last glance at the chiminea where the embers still give off a soft and silent glow.

Photo courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

Granddad

2010-09-12T17:41:00.000-07:00

This year on grandparents day, I post one of my all-time favorites, a snippet of memory in honor of my grandfather, Relus Owen Dalton. Thank you, Granddad, for teaching me about the trees.

He shuffled from one tree to another, running his arthritic hand along each trunk in a gentle, reverent caress that I saw but did not understand. With effort he stooped and searched about until his hands came upon a fallen leaf. Grunting, he straightened and held the specimen a few inches in front of his face. He turned the leaf over and over, so close it was nearly touching his nose.

“This is a post oak,” he said, holding the leaf out in my general direction, “see how it has three big lobes at one end, then two smaller ones toward the stem?”

I took the leaf and studied it, trying my best to record how it looked while committing Granddad’s description to memory.

“This is an easy one,” he went on, “and not just because of the leaf.”

He scuffed his worn boot along the ground in a stunted arc, wavering on one leg until I worried he would fall. I moved to steady him but as I drew near he stopped, rolled the sole of his boot over something for confirmation, then pulled his foot away and pointed.

“Pick that up,” he said.

I squatted to see what he was talking about and came up with the acorn, placing it carefully in his outstretched hand and noting for the hundredth time the maze of deep lines in his skin. Granddad’s fingers closed on the dusty thing and he began working it carefully against a calloused palm as though he was holding a pearl of great price, his hazy, astigmatic eyes fixed upon something I could not see. He said nothing, the moment drawing out in a lazy summer symphony of buzzing cicadas and the drone of cars from a distant highway. I etched little furrows in the gravel with the toe of my sneaker and from my vantage point in the stratosphere studied the landscape of canyons and roads far below, an entire world coming to life with the few strokes of a shoe.

When Granddad finally dropped the acorn back into my open palm I blinked at the glint of sun upon this strange, new treasure. It shone with life now, the smooth, woody skin a deep burnished brown that faded to a lighter shade near its knurled cap. He had polished it with his bare hand, coaxing something grand from an object that moments before was half-buried in the dust.

“If you can’t remember the leaf, the acorn will always give it away,” he said, looking somewhere above my left shoulder. I was little more than a blur to him, as were the trees, cars and most other things in his dimming world; he had told me so. But he was smiling - the easy, genuine smile that spoke peace and contentment with the simple pleasure of showing his grandson how to recognize a tree.

Sometimes my young mind edged toward pity for Granddad: for his stiff, uncooperative limbs and his failing eyes; for the old Dickies pants and faded long-sleeve flannel shirts he wore no matter the season - these things that spoke to me of age and a life worn thin. But then he would smile. And in that smile his wrinkled skin, sparse gray hair and gnarled fingers were all rendered inconsequential, like dried leaves blown on fickle winter wind: there and gone in a single, fleeting gust. It was in those moments that I treasured him like he treasured the post oak, the fallen leaf, the acorn and me. No, there was nothing to pity in this old man. I just wish it hadn’t taken me so long to catch on. But youth can be a vain and ruthless animal, quick to judge and slow to comprehend. Of course, that truth becomes more evident to me with each passing year, as the gray spreads through my own hair and every winter brings a few new aches.

I’m waiting my turn; I understand that now. Someday, if I have grandchildren, I will take them outside beneath the trees I hold so dear. I will touch the bark and let them see my care, my attention, my awe. I will show them the leaves and tell them how to recognize one from another as their energetic, wandering minds are distracted by a thousand other things. And I suspect at some point I will find my eyes drawn upward into the canopy while the children sigh and wonder what their grandfather can possibly see up there. But they cannot have the answer. It will not be their time. For my part, I will feel the life coursing through bole and bough, see the leaves fluttering in an afternoon breeze and making a kaleidoscope of the sun’s slanting rays. I will hear the whispered rustling of the leaves and in it my Granddad’s voice, level and wise.

“This is a post oak,” I will hear him say. And I will smile, peaceful and content despite the tears blurring my vision. If I am lucky, the young ones will see my face and sense something bigger at work here, something deep and timeless in their grandfather’s mysterious connection to the trees. Maybe, for a moment, they’ll even hear that other voice whispering from the leaves and forget their tinge of pity for an old man.

Photo courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

Hard Time

2010-09-05T13:05:00.000-07:00

I lay in an unfamiliar bunk bed, staring at the mattress above me and absently rubbing the stubble of my freshly buzz-cut head. It was September 1985 and my first night at Fort McClellan, Alabama. There were another dozen or so other Army recruits in the room with me. Some had already gone to sleep, their breathing, snoring, and coughing amplified in the close quarters.

It had been a busy day of in-processing for us, culminating in our first military haircuts. We were shocked to learn that we actually had to pay for this service; I think that first “on the floor and out the door” haircut took less than a minute and set me back $1.65.

Everyone was very polite and civil to us that first day, which consisted mostly of making sure paperwork was in order and such. There had been no drill sergeants yet. We all knew they were coming, we just didn’t know when. Which is a big part of what was going through my mind as I lay there in the dark - that and wondering what the next three years of my enlistment were going to be like. Suddenly three years sounded like a very long time.

Sometime after midnight one of the guys started crying. At first it was muffled, like he had his face buried in his pillow or something, but then he just let go. It was a pitiful sound, made all the more surreal by being crammed in a room with a dozen strangers who were now tied to the same fate as me and the crier.

“Shut up, man!” someone snapped from the darkness, “I’m trying to sleep.”

“Yeah, suck it up cry baby,” another threatened, “before I come over there and pummel your ass!”

Despite such encouragement the crying went on. At some point I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I remember is being awakened by urgent whispers. It was about 4:00 AM when I made my way over to the group of shadowed forms huddled around the window and saw that they were looking at several orbs of mysterious yellow light, bobbing out there in the dark like UFOs.

“Aw, man,” one voice lamented in a thick, southern drawl, “they’re runnin’ in the middle of the night. That’s bullshit!”

The UFOs, it turned out, were lanterns being carried by a platoon of men on their morning run. The lights bounced and flickered as the group ran and we watched in abject silence.

“That’s us tomorrow morning, guys,” someone said. “Better enjoy the holiday while you can.”

Later we realized that the crying kid’s bunk was empty. The haircut was as far as he got with our training class. We never saw him again – which is probably just as well, since they stopped being nice to us that day.

* * *

The shouts of “Drop!” pelted us from every side, rapid-fired with a healthy dose of spit. The drill sergeants were everywhere, circling in their infamous “round brown” campaign hats.

“Am I making you mad, recruit? Am I O-ffending your finer sensibilities?” One of them is screaming at me, his face inches from mine. “’Cause you look all sad, like you might cry or somethin’. Is that it? You gonna cry, recruit?”

I am not, in fact, about to cry. Not even close to giving him the satisfaction. I clench my jaw and stare at the U. S. Army emblem on the front of his hat. I can see every fiber in that brown felt, but I won’t look the drill in the eye.

The little bit of determination I’ve mustered is like chum in shark-infested waters and the drills can smell it. Another round brown shows up to join the one already harassing me.

“What are you doing standing there and holding that bag, recruit?” the first drill sergeant demands. “Lose it and drop!”

“Drop, drop, drop like a stone cold rock!” shouts the newcomer, his face contorted and veins standing out like cords on his muscular neck.

I shrug out of the straps of my duffle bag and let it fall to the concrete. I’m getting down for pushups when the first drill squats in front of me and screams.

“What are you doing letting your duffle bag fall like that, recruit? You’ve got precisely one second to recover that gear and return to attention!”

I stop midway to the pushup position, feeling their trap springing but determined not to let it close on me.

“Recruit!” the second drill, the one still standing, yells, “Why aren’t you giving me my push ups? Are you defying me? Oh, please tell me you’re not defying me, recruit!”

I arrive at a decision and act, snapping out five quick pushups even as they’re screaming more contradictory commands at me. Then I jump to my feet, shoulder the duffle bag and zero in on the round brown again, my chest heaving.

“Did I tell you to recover?”

Similar shouts are echoing all around me as the other recruits are getting the same treatment.

“Drop and give me pushups until I get tired - or until you show me what you had for breakfast.”

And so it goes, in a game that lasts until they deem it over and we are all winded, stumbling and confused. Pliable. Ready to move on to the next thing.

* * *

I ended up graduating from basic and advanced training on schedule, four months later. Far from being the fastest or strongest in my training company, I had nonetheless learned something invaluable: that I had never before been made to push the limits of my own physical and mental endurance.

It’s powerful stuff when you can reach deep inside and come up with metal, with grit you didn’t even know you had. Having been there I now subscribe to the school of thought that says we can’t know what we’re capable of until we’re truly tested - pushed to the point where the options become crystalline: pass or fail, stand or fall.

Whether in the military, sports, business, or family, the hard times shape us, help us see the better man we can become if we persevere. That’s why we have to embrace those tests and see them as opportunities when sometimes all we really want to do is walk away. I ran up against my first really hard time at Fort McClellan. So, I suspect, did the guy who cried himself home that first night. I didn’t even know his name but I still think of him from time to time. I wish he could’ve toughed it out. Not for bravado or machismo, but because I think it would have helped him in the long run, too.

Photo courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

www.chereefederico.com

Marking Time

2010-08-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

It’s 7:00 PM and I’m finally pulling away from the office. I arrived at 7:30 this morning, ate lunch at my desk, and am more behind now than when I poured that first cup of coffee. As I text my wife to let her know I’m on the way home I find myself wondering where we got our misguided notion that motion reigns supreme and the lack of motion is, correspondingly, inferior - that more speed begets efficiency and slowing down equates to slothfulness.

I think Roger L. Durham nailed a big part of it in his April 29, 2010 post on The Good Men Project blog, The Loss of Leisure: “Our country was established on a foundation of freedom, but we, to a large extent, have abdicated that very freedom to duty and importance and appearance and expectation and status. We are prisoners of our own success - or lust for success.”

While success can be measured in as many ways as there are success-seekers, the common thread that binds us all and levels the proverbial playing field is time. And before you can take advantage of time, before you can utilize, maximize, advantage, or leverage it (one of my personal peeves among many such dandelions that have sprung up on the lawn of our business lexicon), we must first divide and conquer. We have to quantify and measure the slippery thing.

Whether we credit the mystery-veiled denizens of Stonehenge, the Vikings’ crude lunar calendars, or modern timepiece purveyors from Rolex to Timex, humans have developed an entire industry, culture, and collective subconscious that is obsessed with marking the passage of time. Watch (pun intended) the clock: it tells us when it’s time to wake, when the workday (might) end, and – perhaps most importantly – whether the Big Game will go into over-time.

Our mechanisms for measuring time have evolved apace with the rest of our technology - from ancient sand and water clocks through sundials, pendulums and springs, quartz movements, and now the incomprehensible NIST cesium fountain atomic clock that is accurate to within one second in more than 60 million years.

But despite how accurately we can record increments of time and no matter how many nifty devices we develop for alerting us to its passing, how do we really mark time? True, throughout the day our attention is focused on the smallest increments - the minutes and hours we use to meter our overloaded schedules - but what happens if someone asks you when a significant event happened? In the language of human life how do we remember, and likewise relate, the truly important stuff?

Granted, September 11, 2001 is a date that few of us will ever forget, much like December 7, 1941 is etched onto the collective conscious of our grandparents or as November 22, 1963 will strike a chord with many of our parents; but ask someone what those dates mean to them and somewhere in the response you’re likely to hear what they were doing at the moment they first heard the news, and perhaps even who was with them. Hardcore history junkies notwithstanding, few people will tell you to the minute when something big happened. Those micro-increments, the ones we labor over with such intensity as we move through our hours and days, are called minutiae for a reason. It’s because they mean very little to us once they’ve passed. It seems what matters, what really sticks with us, is what we’re doing and who we’re doing it with.

All of which brings me to my point, the thing that I’ve come to believe after nearly a half-century in this place: all the wonderful mechanical devices and tools used to measure increments of time aside, the true “test” of time comes down to how we spend our lives. How do we live with and love those around us, our family and friends - or ourselves, for that matter? Right now, in the infinite potential of this finite moment, are we doing something we’re proud of and passionate about? Or are we just, well…marking time? I glance at my watch and shake my head. I’ll have to run that one by my wife and kids when I get home tonight.

So how do you mark time? I look forward to hearing how you struggle (or don’t) with the hourglass.

(Not Quite) Triumphant Return

2010-08-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

Okay, so like MacArthur I said I would return. And, finally, I have. Although, after over a month (that hurts just to write it), I'll admit to not landing with the literary juggernaut I might have hoped for - even hinted at, for that matter.

So here I sit, humbled and clattering away on my rickety Dell, with no great epiphany or breakthrough to share with you, no closet masterpiece finally ready for a breathless world to behold. I can only say that I'm back and that, having finally broken this dam of my own making, it feels quite good.

I shall return...again.

Delinquent Me

2010-07-18T18:44:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a few weeks since I posted and the only excuse I have is...VACATION! No, I haven't managed to actually be on vacation for a few weeks, but this past week was, blissfully, work free. It has been a wonderful time of relaxing, catching up with my absolutely B-E-A-Utiful wife, and - of course - writing.

Anyway, I've been contemplating some changes to the blog as of late and this might just be the time. I'll discuss with my creative/networking consultant (you know who you are) and go from there; I suspect there will be a shift in how and what I post moving forward. For all my many fans who have been patiently checking the blog to see my latest post, my unreserved apologies...but hang in there! The wait will be worth it.

Cheers,
Ric

Origami

2010-07-05T18:25:00.000-07:00

It's a weekday evening and I'm sitting at our kitchen table, making origami swans with my youngest son - who isn't so young anymore. We did this a couple of other nights recently, our repertoire to date consisting of a throwing star, a gift box, and the soon-to-be-completed swan - our biggest challenge yet. He's always been good at figuring things out and using his hands but I'm still impressed with the way he goes through something like this once on his own, learns a fairly complex set of steps and folds, then teaches me without using any instructions.

We're on something like fold number 92 but we're getting close. I can envision the swan that's about to emerge from this little mass of meticulously folded paper and I find myself getting excited about it. To tell the truth, it's only partly about the swan. The biggest thrill is doing something with my kids.

It's taken me a long time to learn but I'm slowly coming around to the fact that it doesn't matter so much what we're doing, so long as we're doing it with each other. I used to think my kids, or my wife for that matter, might be less than ecstatic at doing things together if they weren't "super duper" enough, or if enough planning didn't go into them. Ironic how that little bit of insecure control-freakishness cost me a lot of enjoyment.

I remember my wife telling me when we were first married that we didn't have to even necessarily be "doing" anything, so long as we were in the same room together. And like I said, for a long time I didn't get it. I still struggle with getting it sometimes. Even though I'm the husband and father I'm not always the designated entertainer. Sometimes all they want and need is to know that I'm there with them and for them. And those simple acts can be enough.

So I agreed to learn a new XBox game I had never played. Sure I sucked at it but that wasn't the point. This week we did some origami. Who knows about next week? I just know I'll count myself lucky if I get the chance to hang out, spend some time, and be there for this group of extremely cool people who are my family.

Ah, fold number 93. Check out these swans!

(...and thanks, Ree for another awesome photo.)

Loser Dad

2010-06-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

The baby wouldn’t stop crying and my wife was leaving. As a young stay-at-home mom she had not only been keeping our two young children all week but was also babysitting another toddler to help make ends meet. All week long my wife’s world had been one of crying, bottles, dirty diapers, sippy cups and housework. And now it was Saturday. She was, with my encouragement, treating herself to a few hours of shopping with her mom - getting out of the house, kid-free.

Our daughter was staying with one of her grandparents or at a friend’s house, I don’t remember which, leaving me and my young son. Whether he was colicky or cutting teeth, chaffed with a diaper rash or just irritable, he wouldn’t stop crying.

I looked at my wife pleadingly, hoping for some last minute advice or instruction. She glanced back through the screen door as it closed behind her, not without pity but beyond the point of being willing to bail me out.

I carried my son around our tiny rental house while he cried to beat the band. I talked to him. I tried distracting him with toys, food, and books. I even tried to calm his savage breast with music - on the radio at first, then, out of desperation, by singing to him - all to no avail. He wasn’t sick and had no fever. It was just Saturday morning alone with dad.

It’s hard to grasp, much less explain, how the sound and fury of that nonstop crying affected me. All the old fight-or-flight mechanisms kicked in as I floundered in my helplessness to calm him: my pulse raced, my breathing grew shallow and my reasoning dwindled proportionate to my desperation.

I was walking down our hallway on what must’ve been the fiftieth lap, bobbing him in my arms.

“Come on, guy, you gotta cut your old man some slack here. This is getting old fast.”

In response, he cried, catching his breath in ragged little gasps that frightened me. This was – believe it or not – before the age of cell phones. I couldn’t call my wife and, besides, she was shopping with my mother-in-law, the only other maternal resource who could have rescued me. The little guy and I were stuck. And we were both wearing thin fast.

“Come on,” I said, my voice an octave higher as the weight of alone-ness settled upon me.

The boy just kept on crying.

“Shit!” I called out to the ceiling, hailing my wife as though she were hiding in the attic, “Is this what you do every day?” Suddenly my hectic, taxing work week seemed shamefully easy.

My outburst startled the boy and yielded another burst of bawling. Where was he getting all this?

I wasn’t right for this job, I couldn’t do it. He had my number and he knew it, sensing my inadequacy like a big “L” painted on my forehead. I was Loser Dad, not even capable of calming my son.

“Come on, dude!” I hissed. I could feel myself bobbing him faster, too fast, but I couldn’t stop. And that only made things worse. He was absorbing all my angst, feeding on it like poison, and escalating. We were a turbo engine running out of control, headed for an ugly crash.

I hugged him to my chest, shaking my head as tears of frustration welled in my eyes. He didn’t like being restricted and his body stiffened, tiny muscles straining against mine in our first ever physical struggle. It was mano a mano on a micro scale, and the bambino was winning.

Loser Dad.

He began wiping his face back and forth on my chest, smearing little streams of snot across my tee shirt. I looked down through my tears and something clicked.

From out of nowhere I remembered how my wife and I used to take turns rocking or walking with my daughter in the wee hours of the night when she wouldn’t go back to sleep. We had learned through hard experience that, once the baby got the edge on you and had you frustrated, it was nearly impossible to break the cycle without handing her off to someone else.

OK, sure. So that makes sense. But who do I hand him off to when I’m the only one? Nobody. There is nobody else.

I emerged from the hallway and saw the playpen set up in the living room floor. I went straight to it and laid my son in that thing - crying, snotty nose and all. It was all I could do. I was, after all, Loser Dad. And I knew it.

I lay down beside the playpen, my face a foot away from his, and I watched my son through the white mesh fabric. I didn’t know a baby could cry that hard for that long, or what could make him do it.

Every so often I made myself speak in the most calm and reassuring voice I could muster, whispering stuff like, “It’s all right buddy,” or “It’ll be okay big guy.” Just little sounds to let him know I was there and wouldn’t leave him alone.

At some point his crying took on a different tone and his breathing became less desperate. He sniffed and coughed. He wriggled and kicked, but the crying slowed. He let out a series of jerky little sighs and blew a nice, big snot bubble. As indescribably gross as those things are, I could handle this one because it came when he was finally growing quiet.

The next thing I heard was the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway and a moment later my wife was slipping through the back door. What she saw was me on my stomach beside the playpen, red creases on my face where I’d fallen asleep on my arm. There was drool at the corner of my mouth. Our son lay in a heap against the mesh of the playpen, his wispy hair wild and his face crusted with salty tears and snot. He was breathing in steady, deep breaths.

“You made it,” my wife said.

“Yeah.” It was all I could say against the knot in my throat. I had made it. We both had. And I wasn’t Loser Dad anymore.

Hard Times

2010-06-13T15:54:00.001-07:00

I'm listening to an excellent book on audio right now, it's Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides and it tells the true story of American POWs in a Japanese prison camp near the end of World War II. Much like The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw, these true stories hit me hard, serving as stark evidence of the absolute worst side of humanity.

But these stories tell us something more. They show us that in the very heart of the abyss that is war we see what good can stand in the face of atrocities - what amazing, heroic, and utterly altruistic things have been done in response to the greatest wrongs. I listened to the stories of the ghost soldiers this week on the way to and from work and have been reminded of how easy I have it. Yes, I am inspired. I'm in awe of what these men and women did - both those that lived and those that did not come back.

Do I complain sometimes, whine a little about all I have going on? Sure, I guess we all do at some point. It's at times like that, though, when I feel like I'm in the middle of some difficulty or tribulation, that I envision 120 U.S. Army Rangers volunteering to trek 30 miles into enemy territory on the slimmest of hope that they can liberate their countrymen. And I want to find a shimmer, the slightest bit, of that same grit in myself. That's what legacies are all about. I realize today has really been an easy day for me.

Introducing: The Good Men Project Online Magazine!

2010-06-01T17:24:00.000-07:00

PRESS RELEASE (June 1, 2010)

Good Men Media today announced the launch of The Good Men Project Magazine, a timely and provocative online publication that explores issues facing modern men and that seeks to answer the question, "What does it mean to be a good man?"

The Good Men Project Magazine is part of The Good Men Foundation, a registered 501(3)c charitable organization designed to help at-risk men and boys. The magazine is a cross-platform, multi-media destination featuring compelling writing about parenting, sex, relationships, identity, ethics, humor, and health. The publication's contributors include top-tier journalists commissioned to provide feature content as well as volunteer writers and bloggers.

I'm honored not only to have had an essay published in the Good Men Project book, but to be an occasional guest blogger for the new online magazine. Click The Good Men Project icon and check it out when you can, and be sure to post a comment or catch me on facebook!

Ric

Three Cartridges

2010-05-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

The staccato crack of the final rifle volley echoes off rank upon rank of granite markers as the Navy Petty Officer First Class steps forward and holds up a white-gloved hand. He grasps three spent cartridges, still warm from the firing chamber. Seven rifles, three volleys – one solemn salute.

“These three cartridges,” the Petty Officer says, still holding them aloft, “represent the core values of the United States Navy: Honor, Courage, and Commitment...”

And so we struggle to begin our goodbyes, to bid farewell to one of our own. The flag is folded and presented to my wife, who moistens it with the tears of loss. Yet something in this ceremony whispers to our hearts of meaning beyond the pain, reminding us of all that is being memorialized this day. The seed is planted and we feel it take root. In sorrow we can still find pride; through grief we may yet grasp peace.

With the haunting sounds of the bugler we, too, are called home and begin already to find our way down the path. Those who have gone ahead lead the way, the lamp they shine at our feet is the creed they lived and served by.

Honor Courage Commitment

Master Chief Petty Officer Marvin C. Marshall
United States Navy (Retired)
June 19, 1946 – December 23, 2007
“Fair Winds and Following Seas”

I wrote this in December 2007 shortly after the death of my father-in-law, a former Marine and career Navy man whom I respected deeply despite our never having grown especially close; there was a bond between us that I believe went beyond the fact that I married his daughter. Then, as now, I offer this salute to Master Chief Marshall as well as all the other veterans past, present, and future. May we all learn something from the honor, courage and commitment of their examples.

Photo courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

Deepwater Horizon

2010-05-02T14:47:00.000-07:00

There's a fitness trail I visit a few times a week on my way home from work, and I enjoy the brisk walks I take there for more than the physical benefits. Those late afternoon or early evening jaunts on the trail often represent the first opportunity I've had to clear my mind since leaving the house that morning. I find that in a couple of miles I can literally walk my way out of the clouded, harried state I tend to slip into by day's end.

On one of the early turns of this trail, maybe an eighth of a mile along, there is a rip-rap lined drainage ditch. During one of my recent trips I noticed a discarded brown paper bag at the bottom of this ditch. I remember thinking that I should step off the trail, retrieve the bag and carry it to a nearby trash can. But I'm ashamed to say I just kept on walking, and I can't even say why. Maybe I slipped on that most slippery of slopes known to all of us with conscience enough to notice things that need doing and guilt enough to feel the sting of not taking action: maybe I bought into the lie that it was someone else's job.

As another side to the same murky coin, maybe I thought of the hundreds of other people who had passed this spot, seen the bag, and done nothing. It troubles me to consider that, deep inside, I might have been thinking that if no one else was interested in stopping, then why should I be? Or, to be a bit more judicious and better rationalize my own inaction, maybe all the other people walking and running by that ditch hadn't noticed the bag. Even if they had noticed it, maybe they just considered it to be someone else's job - like the guy who's paid to empty the park trash cans. Whatever the reason, rationale, or excuse, the bag was still there the next time I came by that spot. And I walked right past it again.

The next day it happened. The explosion and fire in which 11 crew members of the Transocean semisubmersible drilling rig Deepwater Horizon lost their lives occurred on April 20, 2010. I hold the loss of those crew members and the devastation to their families and loved ones to be the supreme tragedy. But shortly after the explosion and fire, when Deepwater Horizon sunk, we began to see the inky smudge of a quieter, more insidious harm boiling up from nearly a mile deep in that part of the oil-rich Gulf dubbed Mississippi Canyon Block 252. Crude oil, our most sacred of commodities, was gushing forth at an alarming rate from a severed pipeline on the ocean floor.

Within days we became versed in a new lexicon of blowout preventers, remotely operated vehicles, and chemical dispersants. We watched satellite imagery of what the growing oil slick looked like from space and complex models predicting where and how the plume would strike the myriad environmentally sensitive features in the Gulf. And we heard, sadly, how the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill will most certainly eclipse the Exxon Valdez catastrophe in scope and impact.

I became mesmerized by the unfolding events and the various Internet sites dedicated to covering them (check out http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/). I shared photos and breaking news coverage with my kids - from the unprecedented miles of petroleum absorbent booms deployed to the first oil-covered northern gannet, a seabird, captured on April 30th. If the gannet is lucky it will soon be washed down with that modern technical marvel: Dawn detergent. Really. That's what they use. And while it won't be the last haunting image of an oil-covered creature we see in the weeks to come, there's something foreboding and darkly intriguing about that gannet. It's the first. It's singular. And for now, we can handle it.

Like tons of other people out there who claim to have an environmental conscience, I have watched and listened, silently lamenting the repercussions that our human endeavors have once again had on the planet that sustains us so admirably. And I have labored over what I could do to show my solidarity with not only the gannet - which obviously doesn't have a care about me or what I think - but with all the Gulf residents, human and otherwise, who will bear the brunt of this story however it plays out.

All this was seething through my mind when I stood beside my car and stretched at the trailhead, limbering up for my walk. I struck out at a fair pace and as I approached the first bend my eye caught the rip-rap of the ditch. The clarity that overtook me was sublime. I wasn't in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or Florida and I couldn't deploy a boom, spray dispersant, or Dawn a gannet, but I could finally step out of my self-centered world long enough to climb down in a ditch and pick up a piece of trash. And so I would.

At least, that's what I was certain of until I approached the ditch and found that the brown bag was gone. Whether picked up by someone else or blown out by the wind I will never know. All I can be sure of is that I missed - not once, but twice - an opportunity to do something small and tangible and positive. And the saddest part is what it took to help me see.

Earth Day 2010

2010-04-22T19:01:00.000-07:00

Here we are on our 40th Earth Day, celebrating the progress we've made and - if we're willing to be brutally honest about it - considering what our current ratio looks like of steps forward versus back. I have been an environmental consultant for 16 years now, and feel like I've had a front-row seat to how well the bevy of environmental regulations have and haven't done, at least for the last decade and a half.

I've seen my share of corporate entities, forced by shareholder interest and profitability goals, seeking the slimmest margin of what it takes to remain "in compliance". And, thankfully, I've seen a generally equal number of companies trying their level best to wear the white hats and do the right thing.

And what do I come away with? That a spirit of environmental protection will never be forced by government regulation - that's for the minimalists who need a stick just to keep them from doing consistent, irreparable harm in their myopic quest for financial success. The real progress - the necessary goals, difficult implementation, and committment to something bigger than a profit margin - this territory belongs not to the board members but the community members. Just like that first Earth Day four decades ago, our role as stewards of the planet will echo most loudly when the voices are many, diverse, and passionately aligned around a common cause.

Hopefully we do not succumb to the skewed, market-driven logic that says the way to care for the environment is to commoditize everything from trees to carbon emissions, to create yet another financial market that puts a bar code and a price tag on the planet. What we need is another generation of concerned, engaged citizens who look around and see a place where they can do something good - a place they want to pass along to future generations with pride.

So whether or not you even knew that this was Earth Day, take a moment to look around at where you live, play and work. This is it: this is what we have and it's as grand and beautiful as anything you could imagine. But, hard as it may be, try to resist taking it for granted. I suspect I'll be doing this environmental consulting gig for some time yet, and I want to see the white-hats win.

Here and Tao

2010-04-21T18:00:00.000-07:00

If you've read some of my past posts you know that I have a deep interest in the Tao and the unique philosophy of living it invites us to explore. I first read the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu about two years ago, and have since devoured several translations, a few commentaries, and various related texts. While these books have fascinated me and opened my eyes to an entirely new way of thinking (at least to my westernized cultural perspective), I am convinced I have only begun to tap the slightest edge of an utterly unfathomable iceberg.

It is not, after all, about words. For words and language are just the tools used to build the boxes that we must force everything into so that another person can understand us. And where words often fail us in describing a fairly straightforward object or idea, they are doomed when it comes to explaining the deepest concepts and emotions - things like the Tao. Hence the opening stanza from the first verse of the Tao Te Ching:

A way that can be walked
is not The Way
A name that can be named
is not The Name

Still, I have had several people ask me in earnest what the Tao is, what has so intrigued me about this Chinese text that predates the Bible and speaks - in very sparse terms - to something I have felt deeply all my life. And I don't want to leave those questions unanswered - for myself as much as those friends doing the asking.

So watch for more posts from me on the Tao, as I try to explore and share the mystery.

Good Men Project Essay Contest

2010-04-11T16:26:00.000-07:00

In December 2009 I read my essay from The Good Men Project book at the Logan Public Library in Russellville, Kentucky. Afterward we shared a lively discussion and, as evidenced by what came next, struck a chord about the whole concept of what it means to be a good man (see my blog post from February 9, 2010). Monica Edwards, Public and Youth Services Supervisor at the library, asked me what I thought of a community essay contest to further the dialogue we had started at the reading. I liked the idea, which was also well received and supported by Tom Matlack and Larry Bean at the Good Men Foundation (thanks to you both!).

Monica recruited a diverse panel of judges that included a loan officer, library employees, a long-time community activist and the mayor of Russellville. We compiled our contest rules, set the cutoff date, and Monica set about getting the word out through the local newspaper and word of mouth with area high school teachers, adult education program leaders, and the detention center. I was even honored to do a radio interview with Don Neagle, on-air personality for WRUS in Russellville and member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame (link to the radio interview at http://www.goodmenproject.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/WRUS-Ricardo-Federico-Interview-1-29-102.mp3).

The essays we received represented an eclectic breadth of experience and perspective – all valid and all valuable. We as judges had our work cut out for us but we stuck with the approach we'd agreed on in our initial meeting; we would evaluate each essay in three broad categories: theme (how well the essay adhered to and explored the concept of what it means to be a good man in the 21st century); readability (how coherent and readable the essay was); and resonance (did the essay's central message or question linger after we finished reading). We all agreed resonance would be the “trump” category.

On March 25, 2010 the judges' panel met for our final deliberation and to rank the entries for the awards ceremony. We had a great time and enjoyed reading some really good essays but far and away the most enjoyable part was the ceremony. Third place went to the Page Family, who collaborated on their essay; second place went to Algie Ray Smith, a Logan County author; and the winning essay was written by Anthony Clayton. Anthony wrote his essay longhand from the Logan County Detention Center. In preparing for his essay, Anthony, a first-time father, spent “two days of extensive soul searching and exchanging of thoughts & perspectives with fellow inmates”. And his perspective certainly resonated with us. Anthony couldn't be there to accept his award personally, but a representative from the detention center was on hand to receive Anthony's Good Men Project book/DVD bundle as well as a cash prize donated by the library and area businesses.

The first- and second-place essays will be posted soon on the Good Men Project blog and Web site; I'll add that link as soon as they're up and ready for viewing. Check back soon so you can read them both, giving some thought to what these men are saying about what they think it means to be a good man in the 21st century. Then do what we should all be doing every day: ask yourself what you think.

Ricardo Federico
Contributing Author, The Good Men Project

Hoot Owl

2010-04-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

Beneath a pure black sky laced with a milky haze of stars, I stand on my deck and listen. Not far within the woods behind our house, a hoot owl has come to call. It is late and there is already a fine layer of frost beginning to form on the railings and planks of the deck. The usual, peaceful sounds are there waiting for me: the lowing of cattle in a nearby field, a dog barking in the distance, the fading hum of a car's engine on the highway.

But all the familiar things are overshadowed by the hoot owl’s singular, haunting call. It resonates deep within me, capturing my heart and stirring my imagination. Staring into the dark mass of trees I strain for a glimpse of the owl, something to compare with the image already formed in my mind. Perched high in a walnut, hackberry or oak perhaps, I can envision the owl looking back at me, its large, nocturnal eyes seeing the nighttime landscape as I would see in the day.

The owl calls steadily now, settling into a comfortable rhythm that knows no impatience while the wild, wistful sounds weave their spell. The stars grow brighter and the wisps of cloud blown across the moon’s shining face become more mysterious. The other sounds around me fade, barely noticeable as the owl keeps up its song. I listen and I dream, accepting the great gift of this moment and hoping beyond reason that it will not end.

This post speaks to something deep within me, a sense of the greater connection we share with nature and that (I believe) we too often take for granted or simply don't take time to notice. Can the simple act of hearing a hoot owl call from the woods on a moonlit night represent a profound and spiritual experience? For me, the answer is a resounding YES.

Mirror, Mirror

2010-02-21T20:15:00.000-08:00

I was eating lunch at a fast food restaurant when the manager – seeing the place was getting hit with the lunch rush – told the cashier to go out and collect trays from the dining room.

“He needs help,” the manager said, indicating with a nod the young employee in the dining room. Slender and in his late teens, the youth moved with a shuffling gate, half up on his toes. He carried his hands unusually high, with the wrists flexed so his palms curled in on themselves. His eyes, a deep and almost liquid brown, moved slowly, roving around the room in a dreamy gaze that swept continually back and forth. He wore his hat slightly crooked, the bent bill of it striking an angle above his face, which was fixed with an expression that appeared to be a discordant blend of carefree bliss and high anxiety.

The cashier sighed but did as she was told, retrieving an armload of trays by the time I got my food and settled at a table. As I ate I found myself watching the young man, my attention naturally drawn to him as he moved through the room wiping an occasional table here, taking someone’s trash there, but all the time giving the appearance of being a half-step behind. And there was always the manager, glancing in the young man’s direction from time to time - his attentions, it seemed, much more paternal than supervisory.

That’s when it occurred to me that I was fascinated by the young man because he was so obviously different from anyone else in the room. Sure, there was a typically eclectic cross-section of patrons: geriatrics, parents with obnoxious children, businessmen, tradesmen…all of us grabbing a quick bite as part of the race; taking our mandatory pit stop at lap 250. But this guy, the young dining room attendant, was not part of the race. By some design of fate, genetic coding or divine design he was incapable of the same pace as the majority of us rats; hence the need for the cashier to come collect trays and take up his slack.

So as I sat there eating and observing this young man and several of my nearby lunch companions, I wondered at my own fascination with him. Why was he so interesting when the other folks were not? Because he was different – from me and everyone else in there. Because his was, by no choice of his own, a different path. And that’s when it struck me that there was a good chance this guy really, really wanted to be more like everyone else – able to keep up, able to move faster, to walk without shuffling and straighten his hands without thinking about it. Maybe. Or, since I couldn’t get in his head, maybe not. Perhaps he was more content with his situation than I was in my “normalcy”. Then the light came on. I’m sitting here eating lunch with all these other folks and I want to be different. I want to do something else, something more than what I am. And the most frightening, frustrating part is that I have it within me to do it…anything. Yet I don’t.

And what of the differently-abled young man working the dining room? People aren't comfortable with what he is and they aren't comfortable with what he isn't. But most of all, I think, they don’t like how he shows them what they are and aren’t. That's when the idea struck me that he’s a mirror. As I finished my lunch and rejoined the race, I was left to wonder: is he a cracked mirror, offering a somewhat distorted reflection of reality – or does he reflect us and our flaws so well that we can’t handle it? Is he, I wondered, a perfect mirror?

The Mercy of Thin Air

2010-02-14T09:44:00.000-08:00

There's nothing more appropriate to talk about on St. Valentine's Day than a classic love story, and in her breakout novel The Mercy of Thin Air Ronlyn Domingue raises the stakes for the genre.

The story's arc, at once sweeping and tight, alternates between 1920s New Orleans and the present. Razi – Raziela Nolan – is genuinely and deeply in love with Andrew O'Connell. And he loves her just as passionately. Theirs is a love for the ages, as the cliche goes. But the excruciating twist here – wrought so skillfully and believably by Ms. Domingue – is that Razi is dead while Andrew is very much alive. Our sympathies swing madly back and forth as we try to decide which of the two we empathize with more.

Through poignant depictions of Razi's existence between, the novel strikes an artful, delicate balance – revealing the truest expression of love while exposing the selfish desires that motivate us all.

I highly recommend The Mercy of Thin Air to anyone with a willing heart and a mind open to exploring the ethereal possibilities between this life and what lies beyond. It is a rare treasure indeed.

The Mercy of Thin Air, a novel
copyright 2005 by Ronlyn Domingue
Washington Square Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-7880-5
www.ronlyndomingue.com

Good Men Project Daily E-mail

2010-02-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

Here's today's entry from The Good Men Project daily e-mail blast:

Good Men on the Air
Posted: 09 Feb 2010 04:00 AM PST

Ricardo “Ric” Federico, author of “Whatever It Takes,” one of the 31 essays in The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood, was interviewed recently on WRUS radio in Russellville, Kentucky. Click and listen to his conversation with morning host Don Neagle, a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame.
WRUS-Ricardo Federico Interview 1-29-10

The Father I Don't Want to Be

2010-02-06T15:41:00.000-08:00

The boy keeps shifting from one foot to the other, his head bowed. The man called him over to the bleachers as soon as the buzzer sounded to end the first half. The coach sent the rest of the team to get water, but for this young man it isn’t time for a drink yet. Not until dad has said his piece in front of the whole gym.

From where I sit high in the bleachers I cannot hear what is said, only see the effect the father’s words are having on the son. And I am not the only one to notice. Others around me have begun to watch, to shift uncomfortably and whisper to one another. The boy nods repeatedly, his shoulders slumped as he stares at his sneakers. My eyes are drawn to his hands, where he rubs his fingers against each other in an anxious frenzy. The father’s back is to me so I can’t see his face. But I don’t really need to; I can see his son.

I hope we all want our kids to do well, for them to learn life’s lessons and excel in whatever they choose to pursue. I know I do. But how successful are we in avoiding the slippery slope of tearing them down in the name of pushing them to do better?

Before I expend all my energy condemning this man I do not know, I have my own choice to make – my own mirror to check. This scene I have witnessed, the exchange that brought tears to my eyes in a crowded gym, should be a gut check for me and any other parent who saw it. What will we do to build character in our kids while not demoralizing them?

I can only speak for myself, and what I say is this: when my boys come off the court after their games, mine will be the voice of support, the words of encouragement, and the tone of pride. I want to be one of the handful of people throughout my kids’ lives that they can count on no matter what, one of their inner circle that supports them win or lose. That’s what I’m shooting for, anyway. What might help keep me honest is the memory of that cornered young man shifting from one foot to the other, staring at the floor while he listens to the father I don’t want to be.

More Than A Dream

2010-01-16T17:07:00.000-08:00

I was not yet born when Martin Luther King, Jr. shared his dream from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August of 1963, but the vision and passion of the man and his words resonate for me still – as they do for so many millions of other people. Dr. King would have been 81 this week, and as we take pause to consider his legacy we should consider how it has – and still can - affect ours.

Sure, the dream stirs and moves us. How could we call ourselves human and not be moved by the beautiful, fleeting glimpse he painted of a world where peace and love triumph over fear and oppression? Like Dr. King, we must refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. And like Dr. King, we must realize that we cannot walk alone and we cannot turn back.

But we are fools if we let ourselves think that Dr. King was just a dreamer of dreams, an inspirational speaker with a gift for raising the passion of a people. He wrote. He preached. He traveled. He marched. He sat in jail cells. His ideas were radical, controversial - even revolutionary for his time. He did all these things because of the dream that his children would one day be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

Dr. King was 39 years old when he was assassinated, stolen from us by hate and fear and a tragic, bitter, smallness of spirit. But despite the tragedy of his death he left us something transcendant – something that surpassed the sum of his short life and even the iconic image we would ultimately paint for one of our most beloved martyrs. I’m speaking of the dream, of course – that grand and powerful and unstoppable seed of hope he thrust deep inside every one of us. Not just with a speech but through the way he lived, the way he put feet to what he believed. The gift that Dr. King gave to us was far, far more than a dream.

Photo courtesy of Cheree Federico Photography

Ask The Question

2010-01-10T15:02:00.000-08:00

After a public reading of my essay from The Good Men Project, I leaned forward in my chair and asked for feedback from the crowd on what the Good Men Foundation is trying to accomplish. There were a few tense moments when I wondered whether anyone would be willing to share, then a woman in the back spoke up. A single mom raising two teenage boys, she said she was extremely grateful for The Good Men Project. She had come to the reading after seeing it advertised in the local paper because, as she put it, there just aren't that many good men around. She spoke without malice or spite, but with all the rock solid conviction of a person who knows what she's talking about. Still, she had come out on a cold Thursday evening in December to hear some guy talk about a book exploring what it takes to be a good man, and she brought an intelligent, painful perspective along with her.

Just as I have heard from the experiences of Tom, James, Larry and many others, I realized in that moment that we have struck a collective chord, exposed a thread pulsing beneath the “everything's all right” veneer of our male-dominated culture like a raw nerve in a root canal. And just as I have heard several interviewers ask Tom what we've learned, what the answer is to the question of what it takes to be a good man, I felt this woman's need for guidance. She is performing as both mother and father, a dual role she was never meant to be cast in, and she is doing the best she can. And while I don't claim to know the details of her situation, I feel safe in saying that she came to our reading because she is desperate to know that there are men out there willing to be leaders for her boys and all the other sons and daughters who – for whatever reason – have a similar void in their lives.

I'm not saying anything we don't already know, or that we haven't seen borne out in countless studies and statistics, but our society has been devastated by an entire generation of boys growing up without anyone to show them the ropes of what it takes to be a man. This mother with two teenage sons was probably doing a fine job by our altered standards. What kills me is why she's playing by a modified rule book in the first place? When did things get this far out of hand? Sitting in my chair in front of the group, an oft-borrowed phrase from the Old Testament book of Hosea came to mind: sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. That's one way to look at it: we are reaping the whirlwind from our brothers who in recent decades tripped and either couldn't or didn't want to get back up.

The weekend after my reading and this epiphany, the news broke about Tiger Woods' infidelity. I was sitting in traffic on the way home from work, listening to the news and hearing everybody from Leno and Letterman to the unnamed blogger issue an unbroken stream of Tiger jokes. And I shook my head. Am I getting that old, that I can't grasp how a man could do that to his family? Am I so small-town that I can't imagine the inebriating effect of super-stardom, of the anesthetizing impact of privilege? And here's the worst part: the news devastates us all the more because until this moment Tiger epitomized everything males in our culture tend to hold sacred: phenomenal success borne from relentless dedication (especially to a sport), enormous wealth, and a model wife (literally).

But what has me shaking my head, the realization that saddens me so deeply, is that Tiger just happens to be an extremely high profile example, the proverbial tip of a much larger, more pervasive, and terribly ugly ice berg. And yes, I realize that this particular contagion isn't limited to the rich and famous. Far from it. They just pay more dearly for their mistakes in the national spotlight while the workaday folks – like the lady at my reading – trudge through the aftermath without the spotlight or paparazzi.

So, an underlying theme I'm taking away from all of our essays, exchanges, events, blog postings, etc. is that the power to change and improve the standard of manhood begins with a willingness to learn about ourselves and each other through the honest exchange of our stories, and to daily explore the question of what it means for each of us to be a good man. It sounds like a cyclical answer but it's what we settled on in the discussion following my reading, and one I've heard Tom give in more than one interview: there is no one-size-fits-all answer. What's more important is that each of us resolve to get up every day and ask the question, then do something productive, something to contribute, something more than it takes to get by.

The Trail Beckons

2010-01-03T13:11:00.000-08:00

Cheree and I went out this weekend so she could show me some photo-graphy basics. Me being me, we of course ended up on one of my favorite walking trails. About half way up the first slope, the trail weaves a serpentine path that eventually disappears behind a stand of pine and spruce.

This is a view I've had many times before and I'm the first to acknowledge there isn't anything spectacular about this particular bend in this particular walking trail. But still, on this frigid winter afternoon there is an even keener edge to the blue sky, a clearer invitation in the gravel of the path: walk without thinking, pass without judging; live, breathe and be – without the need for anything to be better, faster or more. Let those things that hound your thoughts slough off and fall where they belong. Keep your stride and breathe, always remembering that you can only take the present step, only draw the present breath.

A breeze stirs the barren tree limbs and in that moment it occurs to me that all living beings start and end with the voice of the wind and the dust of the trail. In this glimpse of the paradoxical simplicity and grandeur of being alive, I sense a truth that transcends all beginnings.

Know That which is beyond all beginnings
and you will know everything here and now
Know everything in this moment
and you will know the Eternal Tao

This epiphany leads me to consider the predominately Christian culture in which I live, and – not for the first time – the fundamental issue I take with some of religion's basic precepts. I don't say this to hurt any one's feelings or to challenge their belief system, but because it lies at the core of who I am and what I believe: I think our religions with promises of perfection after we slug through our time in this dark, flawed world are wrong. In my spirit I have always believed we are part of a grand system of perfection right now, and that focusing on 'the hereafter' serves more to distract us from living as we should – in the moment.

Rather than a fractured, dualistic existence of “now” and “then”, can we not embrace the concept of our simultaneously grand and mundane role in the great, sweeping continuum of life? Can we not simply exist (and exist simply) in the here and now, without contriving all manner of possible outcomes over which we can join factions and vie for the 'salvation' of the masses? Salvation, it seems, comes in realizing how grand life is - while simultaneously grasping the humbling perspective that humans represent only one component of life.

The next person I meet on the trail is my brother or sister, born of the same power that flows through everyone and everything that is, was, or ever will be. Does that mean they have to believe, think and behave like I do? Absolutely not. To the contrary, I contend that we all have a decision to make and that this decision goes far beyond identifying what church, synagogue, mosque, or temple we attend on our particular sabbath – or indeed, whether we choose to attend any of those institutions. More importantly, I think, we must decide what to do personally with this moment and the breath we have been fortunate enough to take in it.

Through the course of Nature
muddy water becomes clear
Through the unfolding of life
man reaches perfection
Through sustained activity
that supreme rest is naturally found

For me, the Taoist teachings of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu come nearest articulating the deeper truths of my spirit. One could do much worse than pick up a copy of the Tao Te Ching and read the eighty-one verses of timeless wisdom it contains. It's the philosophy behind the Tao that I embrace; I hear it in the wind and see it in the dust of the path I walk.

Excerpts are from The Tao Te Ching, the Definitive Edition, by Lao Tzu, translated by Jonathan Star.

Great Evening, Great Company, Great Discussion

2009-12-08T18:32:00.001-08:00

This past Thursday night, Cheree and I visited the Logan County Public Library in Russellville, Kentucky for an enjoyable evening of viewing, reading and sharing. Cheree is the featured artisan of the month, and there is a sampling of her photography on display at the library through December. Please be sure to check out her blog at http://www.reecreations.blogspot.com/. Whether your preference is nature, macro, portraits, pets, or weddings, you won't be disappointed.

In addition to supporting the opening night of Cheree's exhibit, I was there to read two of my essays: "Whatever It Takes" from The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood, and an as-yet unpublished favorite entitled "Hey, Buddy". The crowd was small but the intimacy put us down a path of open discussion that I thoroughly enjoyed - and the topic of what it means to be a 'good man' certainly sparked interest. It was a truly wonderful evening and one I won't soon forget. My heartfelt appreciation to those friends and family who came to support us (and thanks for buying the books)!

And how could I mention The Good Men Project without reminding everyone that the books make excellent holiday gifts? Be sure to check out the links to the right for the Good Men Foundation blog or click on the cover art image to buy the book at Amazon.com. Proceeds benefit charitable organizations like Boys and Girls Club and Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

Good Men?

2009-11-29T19:21:00.000-08:00

What does it take to be a good man?

That's the question that spawned the non-profit Good Men Foundation over a year ago - an undertaking now come to fruition through a book and DVD entitled, The Good Men Project (Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood). The book includes essays from 31 authors who candidly explore and share where their own journeys have led in their ongoing - and oft-detoured - quest to become good men.

Please join me on Thursday evening, December 3rd at the Logan County Public Library in Russellville, Kentucky for a discussion on what it means to be a good man today - along with a reading of my essay from The Good Men Project, Whatever It Takes. The reading begins at 7:00 PM; copies of the book will be available and all proceeds go to benefit charities supporting at-risk men and boys. Click on the links to the right for The Good Men Foundation blog and the Amazon.com Web page where the book and DVD can be purchased.

I look forward to seeing you there, and reading your comments here. Let me know what you think.

P.S. Tuesday, December 1st is "Good Men Day". Help us get the word out about The Good Men Project to as many individuals and groups as possible.

Hard Lessons

2009-10-28T19:09:00.000-07:00

It's no surprise that much of my most heartfelt writing emerges from moments with my family. We can't help but test the sharp edges of life with those we love; it comes with the territory. Sometimes we come out unscathed and other times we bleed a little - or a lot. All we can do is try to keep ourselves open to what the moment has to teach us.

Let me know what you think. I welcome your comments.

Tears
Shimmering teardrops roll down soft, glittered cheeks, doing their best to wash away a young girl's pain. Her best friend is moving far away, and I cannot explain why. I can only console her with my presence, with my firm hug and gentle caress, as her 10-year-old body trembles slightly in my arms with the sobs that she cannot control.

After a few feeble attempts to say something profound or soothing, I realize that I am doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing: I am here. I can only guess at what’s in her heart, at how deeply her innocence is bruised by this turn of events. I can only guess because it isn’t my dear friend that fate seems to be ripping cruelly from my life; it’s her friend, her life, her heart. Her tears.

So I sit and hold her, pushing all of the love I can through my arms, my fingertips – everywhere we touch. I want her to be so enveloped in my care and concern for her that she is free to feel all of her pain. It seems cruel at first, to say it that way. But I want her to taste this moment fully. It’s life. It’s real. And I never want to discourage her from experiencing the pain that comes with loving. In my opinion, that would constitute a failure on my part. No, I want her to make friends, to be passionate about them, to live the vicarious life that only comes when we’re willing to be hurt. The real life. Abundant life.

So cry, sweetheart. Shed the tears that cleanse your soul and soften your heart for the planting of the next seed of love. Cry and I will hold you, all night if you need me to. Cry for the joy of yesterday with your friend, for the pain of tomorrow without her. And cry for all the promise of other tomorrows to come. I will be here. And whenever you need me to, I will cry with you.

I love you,
Dad

Public Reading and Photography Exhibit

2009-10-14T16:15:00.001-07:00

Please join us at the Logan County Public Library on Thursday evening, December 3, 2009.

6:30 PM: Welcome, refreshments and photography exhibit by Cheree Federico Photography http://www.reecreations.blogspot.com/

7:00 PM: Introduction to the Good Men Foundation and reading from the Good Men Project book.
http://www.goodmenbook.org/

Logan County Public Library
Central Library
201 West 6th Street
Russellville, KY 42276
(270) 726-6129

I Hold in My Hands...

2009-10-05T19:28:00.001-07:00

The mail ran today and in it were contributor's copies of The Good Men Project - an anthology of essays aptly subtitled, Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood. For a few minutes I was just glad to hold the book in my hands, having read, e-mailed, blogged and corresponded about it since summer. There's always a thrill at seeing one's name in print (at least for us writer-types), and I'm proud to have contributed to the collection.

But my interest and enthusiasm for the project goes beyond the obvious pleasure at seeing my work published. I have come to appreciate what Tom, James and Larry are doing through the Good Men Foundation, which was founded to provide assistance to at-risk men and boys. And now that I can hold the book, turn its pages and read the stories of manhood from a great cross-section of our ranks, I realize that assistance will go far deeper than the money raised by the foundation.

We need to read these essays and appreciate that we are in this together, no matter how disparate our backgrounds or fractured our history. We are men, and we can all benefit from this sharing of stories - with each other as well as our sons, daughters and anyone else with an ear to listen. Much rests with us - in our homes and communities, our workplaces and governments - and our legacy will be as straightforward as how we pass along what we believe, those things we said and did along the way for (and with) those we love.

So check out the Good Men Project blog and Web site (the urls are in the right margin). Read up on what the foundation is about. Then click on the book cover image to the right and buy a copy...or maybe a hundred.

Ricardo Federico, Contributing Author
The Good Men Project

2009-09-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

Thunderstorm

We whisper to each other, faces inches apart in the darkness: words of reassurance, words to distract and comfort. We can feel each other’s presence in the single bed, feel our breathing and sense our closeness. A particularly violent bolt of lightning strikes near enough that the peal of thunder is practically instantaneous, shaking the window in its casing and sending an equally profound tremor through the small body of my eight-year-old son. He has never liked loud noises like thunder or fireworks and awaking quickly to these sudden, late-night thunderstorms takes an especially hard toll on him.

I squeeze him tighter and remind him again that thunder is the sound lightning makes when it cuts through the air, nothing more. He answers and his voice is small, afraid. Part of me wants desperately to make that fear go away, to take it myself and swallow it so it won’t plague him anymore. That part of me is pure protector, seeking to shield my children from anything that causes them pain or discomfort. That part of me hugs him closer still, rubbing gently on his back to ease his trembling.

It’s okay, son. It’ll be alright. It’s only a thunderstorm. Dad’s got you.

There is another part of the father in me that knows better, though. That part of me understands that the constant, protective oversight I have provided for my children in their early years must evolve, must grow just as they are growing every moment. Life yields joy and pain in often disproportionate measure; their lives, if sincere and full, can hold no less. It is not mine to alleviate their struggles, to isolate them from any pain, but to equip them for a real life.

Understand what thunder is, son, and it won’t be so frightening. Know that I am here if you need me.

Another flash of lightning illuminates the bedroom for an instant and I am able to see the outline of his small body curled beneath the covers. He shudders again slightly but his breathing levels out more quickly this time. There is a delay this time before the thunder. The storm is moving on. He senses it too and I can feel some of the tension go out of him as his head sinks further into the pillow. I smile in the darkness. His tiredness, won during a day of hard play, is taking him again.

I give him another gentle, reassuring squeeze and whisper that I am going back to my bed. “Okay” comes his sleepy whisper from the darkness. I tousle his hair and slip from the bed, leaving him in the capable company of several stuffed companions as I begin making my way back to his mother’s side.

You did good, son. Sleep well. I’ll be right down the hall if you need me.

***

It's been a long time since any of my children were eight years old, and - while I haven't comforted any of them during a thunderstorm lately - I am learning that we're parents for life. It's only the kind of storms that change.

Down by the River

2009-08-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

So, what do you do when you get out of a business meeting early and you're facing a two-and-a-half hour drive back to your office? If you're like me, the first thought that comes to mind is the culturally conditioned response to capitalize on that unanticipated windfall of time, to leverage those few extra minutes into an advantage over all the competitors out there hustling up your share of the work. Make the extra call, plan the next contact, start drafting that overdue proposal; I could feel the competitive juices starting to flow and I reached for my phone.

Then I saw the sign.

"River View Park", it read. And for reasons I generally comprehend but can't quite articulate, I dropped my phone back in the seat, flipped on the turn signal, and hung a U-turn at the next light. A block in the opposite direction I flowed, against the formidable current of cultural indoctrination, and turned into the roadside park. Tucked in hard against a levee, the enclave of grass and trees clings to the east bank of the river, offering picnic tables, benches, ample shade and a palpable, transcendent energy.

The river drifts lazily by, the power of its passing deceptive beneath the languid surface. Sunlight patchy and bright illuminates lush green grass that contrasts with the turbid cast of the water. As the moments pass, the intersecting beauty of moment and place reveal other wonders: tree trunks animated by undulating diamonds of sunlight reflected off the river's skin; the pulsing rhythm of life in water and sky - silent, sure proof of the great hidden within the mundane.

I sat until the wonder had run its course and the spell was broken, until the clock reclaimed the remains of the day and the long drive ahead demanded my attention. I had come to find this place along the levee on a whim, or so I thought. I left with a renewed sense of the vast and sweeping current of life: constant, pure, and omnipresent, whether we would see it or not.

It was a good drive back.

Who am I to say that this is not
the most splendid of days -
I, who have no way of knowing
whether I will ever see another?

Ric Federico

Look Up

2009-08-11T18:33:00.001-07:00

OK, so what's the "ever skyward" caption about on the photo? I have always been a horizon watcher; that (sometimes) faraway intersection of earth and sky draws my attention in some deep way I don't even understand. My best guess after years of pondering it is that I glean some much-needed perspective when I get my eyes and attention off what's right in front of me - whatever bit of urgent minutia happens to be driving my actions at any given time.

I was driving just after dusk a few days ago and, in one of those unpredictable moments where we stumble upon something grand and beautiful, I looked up to see the first few stars just coming to life in the darkening sky. I stopped and jotted two words on my ever-present legal pad: look up. I was reminding myself that there are so many wonders available to us in every moment, when we are patient enough to see them, and I told myself I would explore the thought later. Life and busyness set in, though, and the scrap of paper slipped my mind.

Cheree and I were out in the yard this evening when I got engrossed in tinkering with the landscaping. It had just rained, only a brief shower that did nothing to relieve the oppressive humidity. As I focused on what I was doing, I became vaguely aware that Cheree was standing nearby. It took a few minutes but I finally realized she was taking photographs - nothing new for the photographer of the family - but I had to smile when it dawned on me what she was shooting. A beautiful double rainbow arched over the treeline behind our house, and she was snapping away. Within a few minutes it was gone, and I nearly missed it. I was almost too busy to look up.

Few Good Men Project Announces National Essay Contest Winners

2009-07-25T13:32:00.001-07:00

The Good Men Project is an anthology of essays about what it means to be a man in America today, sponsored by the Good Men Foundation, a charitable organization founded to support men and boys at risk. The foundation held a national writing contest and I'm proud to have had one of my essays, "Whatever It Takes" selected as a runner-up. "Whatever It Takes" will be published in The Good Men Project, which is due out in November 2009.

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