Author: fifteenkey (Page 15 of 95)

This post is brought to you by New England Coffee Colombian Supremo.

Recently I received a blog matter request via Facebook from my friend Christine:

“I would like Leo to write a blog on “decaf” being essentially just a reduction in caffeine, but yet not close to caffeine free — can’t anything be straight forward and not just marketing to make you think you are doing something right…”

My initial instinct was to research the outrage of “de-caf” actually containing caffeine, but that’s been pretty much covered here. Yes, the average “decaf” contains about 10% of the caffeine in full-on Joe. By the way, New England Coffee’s decaf selections are 97% caffeine-free via a “direct solvent” process. Their website states, “The green bean is softened by steam and then flushed with methylene chloride to remove 97% of the caffeine.” Wow. I can just see the commercial… A beautiful woman looks seductively at the camera as she sips with perfect painted lips from a steaming cup. Her gaze heats from the pleasure as she pierces your soul and says, “Mmmmm… methylene chloride.”

Personally, I don’t get the decaf thing. As I sit here pre-dawn, sipping my first cup and feeling more and more “ALIIIIVEEEE,” I’m thinking, “What’s the point?” OK, so Joe and NoJo aside, Christine’s bigger question is, “can’t anything be straight forward and not just marketing?” We’ll answer that, right after this.

We’re back, jacked up on Joe, and sadly, the answer is largely “no,” not in the world we live in. I contend our capitalist system requires sustained economic growth and one of the most effective competitive tools to control the masses in the battle for ever higher revenues and profits is marketing, and its ancillary practice, advertising. So, as long as there is a profit to motivate them, entities will continue to bombard us with their multi-media messages to persuade us to not vote for the other guy, ask your doctor if [insert pharmaceutical here] is right for you, sue someone who’s potentially done you wrong, or buy their (not so) decaffeinated coffee.

There are some things still outside that giant silo of spin, and most occur in nature, although that’s not to say those things aren’t exploited. I think about this scene from last week. It was stunningly beautiful and didn’t need any commercial to promote it. That is until I took a picture of it and plastered it on Facebook as a reflection of me. “See? I took that. Doesn’t that make me good? Cool? Worthy?” I just wanted to share it, but there’s a subconscious need for us to stand out from the crowd, to compete for attention, to advertise. Maybe it’s just me.

Oh, and Christine, you’re doing quite a bit right. Now it’s time for another damn fine cup of coffee.

A couple decades ago, my wife gave me an engraved doorknocker for my birthday just like the one pictured here. It bummed me out and I wasn’t very good at hiding my feelings. I’m still not. It was a feeble swing and a miss at life that day. I didn’t get it. I do now.

I know I could be wrong; we likely don’t remember out childhood literally as it happened. As we look back, we probably get some of the foundation right, but many of the details blur as they hurtle down our creaky neural pathways. Still, in conversations I’ve had with my brothers, none of us can recall hearing “I love you” from our parents. I don’t need to get into the “why’s” of their silence, but I don’t judge them. Through the years I’ve pieced together much context of their lives and understand from where they came. Suffice to say, neither of my parents heard “I love you” much, if ever, during their childhood. I don’t know if they ever spoke it to each other. I do think some of it was a generational thing, especially for emotionally repressed 1950’s dad.

In spite of the emotional vacuum from which my youngest breath was drawn, I don’t recall ever having trouble saying it to women. Not that I spewed it like Cupid’s fountain, but when I felt it I could say it, so when we had children they heard that affirmation constantly, and still do. That was easy, unconditional love. An interesting phenomena I’ve witnessed over the years has been the crumbling of those old walls built to protect the heart and keep pain locked away. When Megan was about 3, or Maddy’s age now, she’d bop her little blonde pigtails toward her Nana and let fly with a carefree, “I love you, Nana.” Early on, my mother would choke up, unable to speak. She’d hug the tiny child, snap off something jokingly sarcastic, and sniff herself back to composure. Today none of us ever end a phone call or visit without telling each other, “I love you.” Even my dad says it now. Every call. Every visit. We still do “man hugs” though. Let’s not get carried away.

On Sunday, someone I love received his 90 day “chip” to mark a milestone of sobriety. He’s confronting emotions soberly for the first time in over 30 years and it’s both painful and exhilarating to observe. He gets choked up easily these days, but he’s allowing himself to feel; to experience this life across its entire emotional spectrum. He’s no longer hiding in a safe corner, anesthetizing himself to emotional deadness with drug or drink. As we said goodbye after Sunday’s call, I encouraged him to just focus on the success of day 90 and the hope of day 91. Then I said, “I love you.” I know his recovery will never be complete, and he will have moments of no light. When those moments come, I want him to know he is loved. There was a painful pause, and then a tear choked, “Yeah… I love you, too.”

Daley
Love Is Spoken Here

Tonight the family gathered round the glowing plasma for some teevee time. “The Empire Strikes Back” kept us entertained, although we were moreso by all jokes we were making about it. During one of the every ten minutes, twenty minute commercial break, a burger ad came on excitedly touting the value proposition of the “BK Stacker” family, consisting of anywhere from one to four 2 ounce beef patties, bacon, cheese and some dressing:

• 650 calories
• 43g fat
• 18g sat. fat
• 1g trans fat
• 145mg cholesterol
• 38g protein
• 29g carbs
• 7g sugar
• 1020mg sodium

I’ll give the BK Marketing folks some credit. They describe the “BK Triple” as a “mountainous monument of meat.” That’s poetry. Anyway, when meat mountain scaled the screen, the following conversation ensued:

Megan: “Oh, that’s gross!” Dad: “Megan, there are people grabbing their car keys right now.” (Laughter)

I always look for reasons to quote great lyrics, and today’s title is from the Drive By Truckers, “The Righteous Path.”

Since the holidays I’ve been pinching pennies a bit, saving for Paris in the Springtime. Exactly ten days ago I did a quick(en) review of my short-term finances and it looked like I had an extra $800 or so in checking that could be moved to “le fonds France.” After dark, I walked out along the short front walk to check the mailbox, its long slender pole-neck finally out of the snow sweater it had been wearing for a couple months. I pulled out a Victoria Secrets catalog, about 14 credit card solicitations for Megan and… ugh… my heating oil bill for $673.05. I’m not complaining. I can pay it and don’t need to re-fi my house to do it. I wonder how other families less fortunate than mine are coping with the rising costs of heating oil and gasoline.

There are far too many families that can’t pay and can’t save because offshoring and the Wall Street theft of 2008 have swelled unemployment and depressed wages. A Culpepper salary survey pegged US salary increases for 2009-11:

2009 1.66%
2010 2.38%
2011 2.91% (projected)

In stark contrast to Wall Street bonuses:

2009 $20.3B
2010 $20.8B (Average bonus $128,530)

Love him or hate him, Michael Moore isn’t afraid to state a point of view. Recently he was in Wisconsin to support the union workers there. He said:

“America is not broke. Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages and settle for the life your great grandparents had. America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it is not in your hands.”

“It has been transferred in the greatest heist in American history from the workers and consumers to the banks and portfolios of the uber-rich. Right now this afternoon just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined… most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer bailout of 2008 now have more cash, stock, and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined.

“I’m trying to keep focused on the righteous path.” Amen.

Leaving my office I began to think about this post. A little button in my head was pushed. It is round with tapered and slightly shaded edges and a right facing triangle. Immediately precisely arranged zeroes and ones streamed out splices of a Bob Seger song. First words were “On the road again,” but then the song jumped across a couple deep, black grooves to “There I go… Turn the page.”

Odd. I know the song popped into my head because I was thinking of a post title, and it really doesn’t take much to push that button anyway. Anyway, this post isn’t about turning the page in the sense Seger sang about, but a page turner by Cormac McCarthy, “The Road.”

The book was recommended a few months ago by (Work)Joyce, so I downloaded bits of a sample to my Kindle and read it while climbing stairs yesterday. Joyce suggested I could relate to the story of father and son survivors touring the charred corpse of earth, courtesy of Mutually Assured Destruction. Kindle samples vary. Some are long and rich. Others barely get you to chapter 1. This stretch of “The Road” stomped stairclimbing me in less than 20 pages. Here are three that kicked me hard:

“He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

Son: “What would you do if I died?”
Father: “If you died I would want to die too.”
Son: “So you could be with me?”
Father: “Yes. So I could be with you.”
Son “Okay.”

“You forget some things, don’t you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”

It’s bleak but right now irresistible. Gotta go turn the page.

Before my face was kissed by the cold, fresh air, I could see through the tall cafeteria windows that a sunset was happening. It wasn’t a “10” on the awe scale, just some pleasant refraction sketching an outline around low, puffy clouds of gray-blue. Many of us are fortunate to see so many sunsets in our lives that few stick in our memories, and most of the time we remember more about the place and who we were with than the exact colors and style of nature’s curtain call.

It’s only been 12 hours or so and the hues exact position in the Crayola 133 is fading. A quick lookup suggests last night’s horizon wasn’t colored with any of the “standard 12.” Yeah, sure, they were palette mixed from the 3 primary shades, but from rapidly dimming recall, I’m guessing it was Atomic Tangerine or Bittersweet. Yeah, that’s the one.

My childhood memories evoke the long, bright days of endless summer. I’m sure some of the shortening days of increasing cold and darkness are buried in there, but the days I hold onto were warm and filled with light. As I looked at the glow seeping out of the sky last night, I wondered how many more I’d see, where I’d see them and with who. It wasn’t a bleak, morbid assessment. On the way home I chatted with my dad. He’s 77, in decent health and with fully functioning cognition. I told him how lucky he was. I realized the same about myself. At this point in life, it still seems about two minutes brighter every day.

When my own children were young, I did my best to make sure they experienced some of the fun things in kid life like ice shows. We saw some good ones like “Little Mermaid on Ice” and “Wizard of Oz on Ice.” Still, I remember peering from our affordable seats down to the icy edge and wonder, “Who are those people? How can they afford those?”

I know it doesn’t really matter. Through the dry ice fog of years, I think I can still remember July 27, 1967 when my Uncle Mitchell’s girlfriend (hot Italian brunette… I definitely remember that) took me to see the Monkees at the Boston Garden. We were about mid-arena in the balcony, and all I really recall is a blue bathed stage with human forms and girls screaming. I think I recognized a few chords of “I’m a Believer,” but not much else musically. It doesn’t matter. That is a permanently etched and beautiful memory. Hell, Kyle still talks about “Wizard” on ice.

My life has changed so much since those years of wanting. Monday is my daughter Megan’s 22nd birthday. I’m mesmerized watching what she’s become as a mother, as a professional with a dogged work ethic, but mostly as a person. Of course I think she’s smart and funny and breathtakingly beautiful, but it’s her huge, helping heart that stops me in amazement. She’s happy. Every parent’s wish come true.

Today she told me she’d like to take her Madison to “Toy Story 3 on Ice” for her birthday. I guess she remembers those shows warmly. After looking at Craigslist and seeing nothing on Stubhub, it occurred to me there might still be tickets on Ticketshyster. I went with “Best Available” for Sunday at noon.

LOGE12, row A…

That’s in the center of the rink in the first row.

I’m very lucky to not have to wish anymore. I have everyone I want.

Some 30 years ago I survived a road trip from Boston to Fort Lauderdale with my dad’s mom, Lillian “Lil the thrill” Daley. One memory that lingers, perhaps because the event itself did, is sitting in an orange roofed restaurant having breakfast for 3 freakin’ hours! I was waiting tables at the time (no, not at that moment), so I empathized with the poor waitress who wouldn’t be able to serve another 3-4 parties that morning because Lil wanted to drink 12 cups of tea from the same teabag, write postcards and affix ten cent stamps. Before she pushed her sub five foot firecracker frame out of the booth, Nana dropped about sixty cents onto the table while almost simultaneously emptying the sugar boat of all the white and pink paper packets. Out the door, I pulled the “Oh, I forgot blah, blah, blah” and dropped some paper of my own on the table.

I don’t think I challenged the saccharine stealing. I may have dismissed it as depression era hoarding behavior, but I’ll never forget it.

Recently our office Keurig coffee makers were all replaced by Flavia brand brewers. Word on the street is that employees were helping themselves to the little cone shaped coffees for use in their home machines. Oh, and they also were copping condiments (now available in white, pink, blue and yellow like Monopoly money) and the quarts of half and half! Man… If we can’t police ourselves to not break bad for home coffee breaks, aren’t we headed to some ugly, caffeinated sugar high anarchy?

I’ve had little luck getting anyone in this apparently widespread criminal conglomerate “lo zucchero famiglia” to speak out. They cite some crap about a “cane code of silence.” I did get one person to speak, but only anonymously. This particular individual’s rationale is that they “don’t drink coffee at the office,” and therefore “only take my share” as if they did. I asked what they’d do if they caught someone they managed “taking their share.” “Well, how many did they take?” Hmmmm… Sounds like some serious rationalization going on to me.

So, where do you stand on sweetener swiping? Theft or workplace benefit to be enjoyed at a home coffee establishment of your choice?

Nearly a decade ago, I used to push myself on the stair climbers at the gym by seeing if I could make it to the top of the 110 story twin towers in 30 minutes. I usually did. On March 10, 2007, I stomped out the $60 per month membership and purchased a used, commercial grade Tectric ClimbMax 150. I still use it. Regularly. It’s never been a clothes rack.

I’d had experience with the model from the late 90’s when we had a small gym in our NEC Littleton office. Ron and Steve always used the treadmills and I took the stairs. We were regulars until the day Ron stepped off his treadmill, let out a quick, pained groan like he had been shot, clutched his chest and crumpled to the floor. It was the first time his implanted defibrillator had fired to quell ventricular fibrillation. Ron was fine and is to this day, much to the benefit of many Seniors he helps with health care choices as a volunteer.

On delivery day in ‘07, I had the boys from Precision Fitness Equipment set it up in the corner of my home office with a perfect viewing angle to the HDTV in the living room. I didn’t really need the TV angle since my routine involved an iTunes “Workout” playlist and something to read propped up on a clear acrylic holder; a water bottle rested on the maple window sill just within reach, low to my right. I ascended, without actually ascending, 3 or 4 times a week until one day Megan entered to say, “Dad, Maddy needs her own room.” Like the Pittsburgh Pirates in any given summer, the ClimbMax was suddenly headed to the basement.

One half of my lower level is a half finished garage. It’s sheetrocked, but the half-assed contractor who did the job must have been trippin’ when he taped and mudded it because the seams look like Maddy did them with finger paints. I’ve never gotten around to fixing them and painting it. Anyway, that’s where the new set of stairs found home and since then I’ve stepped in sweltering heat with the garage door open and lately climbed in attire more suited for scaling that big mountain on the Nepal-China border.

I don’t know how many steps up I’ve taken in my effort to elude the ticking crocodile snapping from just below, but I’m still taking them and it always feels good.  I figure my consciousness or spirit, or soul may live forever, but the machine breaks down and I’m nowhere near ready for that. So I work out for reasons of vanity, but ultimately it’s because my heartstrings always tug when I hear George Bailey desperately tell Clarence in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “I want to live, Clarence. I WANT TO LIVE.”  I do.

A 3 hole binder of printed articles has largely been replaced by my Kindle, but the personal trainers living in my iPod still propel me. The crashing guitars and drums provide two-step rhythm while Patterson, Mick, Jeff and Eddie yelp words of encouragement. When I’m really rolling, I sing along. Sometimes it’s to push the cardio benefit, but mostly it’s so I can belt out my favorite lines like…

Nobody told me it’d be easy
or for that matter be so hard
but it’s the living
and the learning
that makes the difference
and makes it all worthwhile

Yeah, sometimes I sing my ass off while climbing it off.  It must look and sound pretty ridiculous to see and hear me huffing and puffing on a stair climber while breathlessly singing absolutely out of tune. But not out of time.

I’ll have to video and post that sometime…

[Note: I just noticed this is my 800th post on my blog. At the end of this month, fifteenkey.com will be six. The math says I’ve averaged 11 posts a month for six years, but in the last two months I’ve averaged only two. I’m wondering why.]

Often when I’m looking at my phone, I’ll hear a smart-alecky “Are you updating your Facebook page?” Yes, sometimes I am. It’s still fun and at times, very funny. Mostly though, I think it provides me just enough Cheeze-It sized narcissistic moments to keep insecure me somewhat secure that I’m a worthwhile human being. Or something like that. It’s also a great daily distraction to keep my ADD appetite satiated.

Facebook is an incredibly powerful tool to keep people connected, albeit superficially. I mean how else would I know of some of my Facebook “friends” “like” Rush Limbaugh?  Sigh… Still, what I love most about the social network is the humor of many friends there and the ability to share life’s moments with immediacy. How else could I have shared this, this and this almost as they happened? The book of face does give us some ability to document our lives.

My quandary is that’s what my blog used to be for, and it demanded more than 140 characters per serving. I’m trying to figure out if Facebook is stunting my other writing and otherwise sapping very finite creativity one short post at a time.  A good friend of mine who blogs is also doing so very sparsely these days, though twin boys may also be matching contributors.

There are some other possibilities why I’m not expressing here like I used to. There’s the work blog demanding a weekly post and a good deal of other work-related writing I do between weekends. Then there are these theories from Ernie Hemingway:

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates.” – Excerpt from Nobel Prize acceptance speech

“I have to ease off making love when writing hard as the two things are run by the same motor.” – Letter to Charles Scribner, 1948

Seriously, given the choice in that second one, I’m surprised the man wrote any books at all…

I guess I need to fight through my happiness and keep writing… Just not on Facebook.