Category: Guest Post

Dementia/Family/Guest Post/History of Patent Annuities

WHY I READ THIS BLOG: ARTFULNESS FOLLOWS LIFE

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Today, I present you with another guest post from my friend Ned McDonnell who sends this missive to me from his current residence in Tunis, Tunisia.  Obviously, I am somewhat embarrassed by his praise of my writing.  I mean, I am just a schnook on the internet with a blog.  

But I did try to weave a number of connections into my stories of times past so that I was not just writing about my own family — hopefully, at times, I was leaning into yours as well.

I will post a brief update tomorrow about my upcoming post AFTERMATH.

People often ask me why I read the essays in James Olcott’s cultural blog, The Bernard Olcott Story, almost ‘talmudically’; examining each word, savoring each thought as if it were handed down to me from on high. Is it because I have known James – for better or for worse – for more than forty years? Yes, I have known him since 1975. But that is not it.

Beyond being classmates, is my avid reading due to James’s wit rivaling that of his distant cousin, James Thurber? Yes, I like to laugh. But that is not it, either. Perhaps, it is James’s nuanced analyses of human pitfalls and downfalls that cause me to stop and think about contemporary life’s latest version of the human condition.  My own meditations are noteworthy in this regard that does not quite explain my continuing interest.

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Dementia/Family/Guest Post

THE UNICORN IN THE GARDEN

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by James Thurber. Reprinted from “Fables For Our Time” as published on http://english.glendale.cc.ca.us/unicorn1.html

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Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. “There’s a unicorn in the garden,” he said. “Eating roses.” She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him.

“The unicorn is a mythical beast,” she said, and turned her back on him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn was still there; now he was browsing among the tulips. “Here, unicorn,” said the man, and he pulled up a lily and gave it to him. The unicorn ate it gravely. With a high heart, because there was a unicorn in his garden, the man went upstairs and roused his wife again. “The unicorn,” he said,”ate a lily.” His wife sat up in bed and looked at him coldly. “You are a booby,” she said, “and I am going to have you put in the booby-hatch.”

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Foreign Adventure/Guest Post/Sarah Cooper

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIVING IN NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO

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After living in New York for 5 years, ex-Googlester Sarah Cooper recently moved to San Francisco. Neither city is clearly superior, but there are some distinct differences…

Like Attitude…

Attitude

Sarah Cooper is a writer, comedian and creator of satirical blog TheCooperReview.com. Previously the design lead for Google Docs, she now focuses on writing and speaking on corporate and tech humor. Her first book, 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings, was published in October 2016 by Andrews McMeel.

In the spirit of competing places — see my write-up of New York vs. New Jersey — please visit Sarah’s complete New York vs. San Francisco analysis:

https://thecooperreview.com/difference-between-living-in-new-york-and-san-francisco/

 

1970s/Family/Father-Son/Guest Post

ALCOHOL IS ONLY 1% OF THE GNP

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While on the topic of fathers and sons, I post for your delight this week another guest post from my high school classmate Ned McDonnell.

Drinking alcohol was against the rules at our boarding high school.  Transgression resulted in an 10 days unanticipated visit home for the first offense.  You could surprise the folks by coming home!!!  And permanent banishment on the second.  Since I was on my way to Theologian studies at the Vatican, I was never subjected to this harsh process.

Unfortunately for Ned, he got busted.

This is his story about going home and the reception that awaited him there.

My Far-away Father

My father, John Gordon McDonnell, was an engineer by training and a World War II Navy drill instructor. That made him a tenacious disciplinarian with a very cut-and-dried view of life. After we moved back to Pittsburgh from Sydney in 1968, my father and I did little together since he no longer needed a jib-man on his week-end sailing adventures. For a perfect snap-shot of our ‘rapport’, listen to “Earache My Eye” by Cheech and Chong.

Big Bambu

The Plane! The Plane!

“Good afternoon, we are approaching Pittsburgh International Airport. Please make sure your seat-belts are fastened, seats upright and cigarettes extinguished. Skies are clear at thirty-five degrees. Thank you for travelling with Allegheny Airlines and we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving 1975. Go Steelers!”

As DC-9s were wont to do, this smaller jet rocked in the coming winter’s wind. That weaving legitimated a creeping, contingent nausea. No, I was physically in good shape after the extra day on campus laying down the varsity basketball court and the wrestling mats, etc. in the School’s gym. My defiant manner of that moment failed to hide my gnawing shame of letting my family down by facing expulsion from prep school and dishonoring my family.

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2000s/Dementia/Guest Post/Plan B/Reflection

ENOUGH!

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By Jeff Flake, a Republican U.S. senator from Arizona.  From the Washington Post today.

As I contemplate the Trump presidency, I cannot help but think of Joseph Welch.

On June 9, 1954, during the Army-McCarthy hearings, Welch, who was the chief counsel for the Army, famously asked the committee chairman if he might speak on a point of personal privilege. What he said that day was so profound that it has become enshrined as a pivotal moment in defense of American values against those who would lay waste to them. Welch was the son of a small prairie town in northwest Iowa, and the plaintive quality of his flat Midwestern accent is burned into American history. After asking Sen. Joseph McCarthy for his attention and telling him to listen with both ears, Welch spoke:

“Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty, or your recklessness.”

And then, in words that today echo from his time to ours, Welch delivered the coup de grace: “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

The moral power of Welch’s words ended McCarthy’s rampage on American values, and effectively his career as well.

The rest can be read here.  Sometimes enough nonsense is enough.

2000s/Family/Father-Son/Guest Post/Parents

THE CLICK OF MY CAR SEAT BUCKLE

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Today’s guest post is written by another grandchild of Bernard Olcott, Grant.  In his essay, Grant sends the entire family up the Highway to Hell, seemingly always on yet another road-trip.  When not working as an investment analyst at Investure, Grant is a college student at Middlebury College.

I love cars. Well, I should rephrase that. I don’t know all the parts or mechanics of the automobile. I can’t say I have a clear picture of the new Ford Fusion in my mind. I’ve never been to a car show, and I’m only starting to understand the difference between a BMW and a Benz.

So why do I love cars? I love being inside them. I love the warm intimacy such an enclosed space creates between two people. I love the thrill of reaching a destination, the fighting over the radio station, the comfort of drifting in and out of a drowsy sleep in the back seat, and, especially, the long meandering talks, spur-of-the-moment debates, and random lectures shared among the four seats that draw my family closer and closer together with each click of the odometer.

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Father-Son/Guest Post

THE SECRET TO SURFCASTING

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Today, I bring you another guest post from Peter Cammann.  He knows a thing or two about fishing as his articles in in magazines like Field & Stream, Fly Fisherman Magazine, On the Water, Outdoor Life, and Vermont Life Magazine can attest. 

Peter’s post is a work of nonfiction about his own Dad, Fred Cammann.  Like me, Peter is from his Dad’s second marriage.

This story is of the Father-Son category.  I’ll be featuring more of these from an assortment of guest authors in the weeks to come.  Interspersed, naturally, with a few of my own as well.

Copyright 2008, 2013 by Peter Cammann

I did not grow up in a family that fished together. It’s true that my mother taught me the basics of the double haul cast during the summer I turned 12 (she handed me a seven and a half foot, five weight fly rod and bade me cast it into the heavily chlorinated waters of my grandfather’s backyard swimming pool, until I could do so without injuring myself or anyone within a thirty foot radius). In spite of this, “my people” were not of fishing stock. My two uncles were quite different stories. My father’s brother, George and I fished together quite a bit in the summer of 1969, when our family and his visited Montana, which was a real pleasure, although strangely enough, I have only fished with him one other time. My mother’s brother, Albie and I did a little surfcasting and hunting together when I was a kid as well, but again, infrequently.

My father, Fred had no real interest in the fishing, although he always encouraged me, in his own way. I remember something he once told me. “The secret to surfcasting,” he said when I was about 10 years old, “is that no one ever catches anything.”

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