Baltimore Diary

Plans.

Homer: OK, Marge, I'll plan everything: we can have the reception at Moe's. Wait. Why not have the whole wedding there? We'll do it on a Monday morning. There'll be fewer drunks.
Marge: Homer, don't be offended, but I've obtained a court order to prevent you from planning this wedding.
Homer: [looks through the papers of the court order] Well, these seem to be in order. I'll be out back in the hammock.

—The Simpsons, “Lisa’s Wedding” (3/19/95)

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My mom, she was a planner. She made plans for the organ donation, for her funeral, for her burial. And she did most of it when she was about the age that I am now.

She clearly didn’t plan to die this year. She had plans. And the more I talk to people, and the more stuff in the house that I look at, the more I see that she did not think she was anywhere close to being done with life.

She was contemplating buying a second house near me so she could visit more often.

She was looking forward to attending my annual Pig Roast in July.

She was working on a shopping list the night before everything went to hell.

And I guess that’s the funny thing about plans; they don’t always go the way you want them to. She planned out most of her funeral but she didn’t count on one of the funeral directors being rather insensitive with his constant interruptions when I was talking to him. She probably didn’t count on the communications snafu that almost caused us to miss our chance at a last goodbye, or the one that temporarily left her body in limbo between the hospital and the funeral home.

I’m told that one of the symptoms of grief-based depression is hostility. I’ve been told that on my best days I can be kind of acerbic; lately it’s not taking much for me to get downright snotty. Some people just assume that you know everything that’s going on; other people don’t really care whether you’re familiar with the procedures; still others are exposed to this sort of thing all the time and just plain forget the way it affects the people who receive the direct impact of these events. Sorry guys, but I haven’t lost many mothers before this one. I’m having a little trouble with the vocabulary and I’d appreciate a little guidance. I’m scared, is what I am, and I need to depend on strangers who are professionals in these areas to get me through some of this.

Mom put a lot of responsibility on me; she told me that she thought I was the one who could handle it; that I was the level-headed one. I told her that it’s a pretty dark day when I’m the voice of reason, but I understood where she was coming from. It’s not that she couldn’t trust my brothers to deal with these things; it’s that she knew that I was the one who would get it done first and fall apart later.

I’m sitting in a public park as I type this, because I just needed some time to be by myself and contemplate things. That’s it for now; I’m still processing. Thanks for following along.

Holding Pattern

Homer: Now, we play the waiting game..
[pause]
Homer: Aw, the waiting game sucks. Let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos!

—The Simpsons, “Mr. Plow” (11/19/92)

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In our last episode, I was about to get on a plane to Florida because my mother had a severe stroke and my brother was coming apart. For all the bitching I did in the airport, the plane trip itself was uneventful. Because I bought one of the last tickets, and therefore was one of the last to get a boarding pass from Southwest, of course I didn’t get a great seat (center seat—which I hate—and way toward the back), but the company was pleasant enough and I managed to stay occupied with my Kindle. In fact, I was so deep into reading (and my ears were quite pressurized besides) that I didn’t even hear the “turn off your electronics because we’re landing” announcement; a flight attendant had to give me the heads-up.

I got my luggage and moved to the car rental counters, and that went without a hitch as well. Once I got on the road I called my brother (hands-free, thank you ) and let him know that I’d landed and would be at his place soon, or should I go straight to the hospital? He told me to come to the house.

Shortly after he hung up with me, he got a call from the hospital saying that my mother’s blood pressure had dropped and maybe he should come in. He waited for me and we both made our way to the hospital. After a few minutes with a security guard who was having trouble with the Visitors Pass Badge software, he let us through and we headed up to her room. By now it was nearly 2AM.

The figure in the bed was my mother, and yet it wasn’t her. About four IV bags led to a single line inserted in her arm. A ventilator tube was in her mouth. This wasn’t sleep, it was something else again. Shaking her wasn’t going to do any good; this much was obvious. Of course, there weren’t any doctors in the area at that time, but I spent a few minutes with an RN who gave me the score: we’d been called because her blood pressure had gone way up; they gave her some medication and it went way down; by the time we arrived it had more or less stabilized. In short, she’d had a hemorrhagic stroke. Based on the scans, it was likely that something had been going on for awhile, on the order of more than a day. and it finally manifested itself on Friday morning when she wasn’t waking up. According to the neurosurgeon, she continued, operating would have had no positive effect on her situation. While there was some breathing on her own when she was first admitted, it was quite irregular and that’s why the decision to insert the tube was made. In short, we were looking at a very poor prognosis, her time remaining being on the order of somewhere between hours and a few days. My brother and I sat with her awhile and went home to get a few hours’ rest.

“A few” turned out to be far more accurate than I meant it to be; I slept for exactly three hours. Not wanting to disturb anyone, I stayed holed up in my brother’s guest bedroom for another hour or so, mostly reading and contemplating things. When I finally emerged, it turned out that everyone else was also up. We got our act together and headed toward the hospital. First stop, however, was my mother’s house.

One thing in which I struck rather lucky was in the fact that my mom planned ahead for a lot of things, including this eventuality. She’d pre-paid for her funeral, so nearly all of the expenses are covered. She’d set up trust funds for family members. She kept telling me that I was to be the executor of her will, and on and on. At one point over a year ago, I said to her, “Mom, this is all great but I have no idea what it means.” I don’t want to know how much I’m getting after she dies, I need to know who to call, where the accounts are, and so on. Finally she arranged an appointment for the two of us to meet with her attorney. During that meeting she assigned power of attorney to me and set me up as her healthcare proxy. She also signed a Living Will on that day and made some modifications to her Last Will, including a provision that my grandmother be permitted to remain in the house as long as necessary, should she predecease her mother. That was this past December. Prescient, no?

The next day, we returned to the hospital, along with my grandmother, my nephew and my sister-in-law. By now I had the legal documents in my hands and the doctor—who had rather poor bedside manner but I appreciated his candor—went through some of the details and explained them to me. The bottom line regarding the Living Will was that it didn’t really apply in her case because of her condition. This wasn’t someone in the last stages of cancer or a traumatic brain injury where she was able to continue on her own without machines. This was someone, he explained, whose prognosis is Nil. There were no miracles in this case; this wasn’t someone who was going to squeeze your finger on command, then blink their eyes and wake up. At this point, he said, we were due to be approached by a representative from a company called Life Link, which is a local outlet for organ donation, since my mother was listed as an organ donor on her driver’s license. At that point I decided that we really didn’t need everyone hanging around and being on some kind of Deathwatch until the very end. I suggested that my nephew, sister-in-law and grandmother say their goodbyes and go home, and my brother and I would stick around.

A while after they left, the representative from Life Link arrived. What she told us about the mechanics of the donation process was a little different from what the doctor told us, but it made sense. Here’s what happens: after we give the final consent for them to collect organs for donation, we complete a medical history questionnaire. Then Life Link obtains two letters for the file, called “Brain Death Notes”. The time stamp on the second note becomes the Time of Death for the patient. At that point she essentially belongs to them: staff stays with her the entire time and they take over the pretty much everything. Tissue and blood samples are collected for testing and screening, and types are determined for cross-matching to potential recipients. The recipients are notified to get to their transplant center ASAP. When everything’s in place, they set up a time to bring the donor into an operating room. The sterility conditions for this OR are more strict then typical, because they want to reduce the risk of infection as much as possible. Once the organs are harvested, the ventilator is disconnected.

Now, this whole process takes about 24 hours total. We didn’t know that earlier; we thought that she’d be disconnected not very long after we had the initial meeting with Life Link. So the closure to this was being delayed another day for us. Not so great in the short run. They promised to call once the OR had been set up so that, if we chose, we could visit once more. What they couldn’t tell us is what time they’d make the call; it all depended on the other pieces falling into place. The call could come at 4AM or it could come at 4PM. So we were essentially on standby, waiting for the end.

This afternoon, I got a little impatient and curious and called them to find out what was up. The person who answered the phone said she’d get in touch with our coordinator and she’d get right back to us. Five minutes later, a young lady named Inga was calling me up. As it happened, she was just about to call to tell us that the OR would be ready in about 90 minutes. I told her that we’d be coming down. This time around it was just my brother and me. Inga told us to take as much time as we needed. I let my brother go in first and let him say his say. Then I went in.

I’m not going to share what I said to her; I spill enough of my secrets here that you don’t need that too. But I’ll tell you that, even if the timeline didn’t work the way I expected it to, I’d managed to be a little selfish in the way I set things up. I needed my sister-in-law and my nephew out of there. My grandmother—oh, my god, my grandmother. She just buried her only other child a couple of months ago. This is such a perversion of the “natural order of things” that I still haven’t fully wrapped my head around it. But she really didn’t need to be around at the end, so she needed to be out too. With my brother and me, I made the point of sending him in first, for numerous reasons but there’s still a selfish one in place, and I’ll own that. As the oldest brother (there’s a third brother who could not get there in time; we were in constant contact with him throughout this), I got to be with her first, therefore I was taking the “privilege” of being with her last, as well.

When I emerged from the room, my brother was barely holding together about ten feet down the hall. I went to Inga and her assistant, Matt, and told them that we’d be going. They thanked me for our generous gift, “and thank your brother, too,” Matt said, nodding down the hall. “Make sure you thank her, too, “ I said, pointing my thumb backward toward the room. Matt promised he would and I joined my brother. We hugged each other for a long minute and then he voiced the same thing I was about to say:

“Let’s get out of here.”

Up, Up and Away

Mr. Garrison: Gentlemen, imagine being able to travel safely at incredibly fast speeds and not having to go to the stupid fart face airports.

—South Park, “The Entity” (11/21/01)

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This afternoon I received some bad news from my brother: my mother apparently (they’re still doing tests, etc. ) had a stroke and it doesn’t look good.

When I got home, Wife was through the door right behind me, already in “Go” mode. She told me to start looking for flights to Florida. In my head, I was preparing for a lengthy drive. But the bottom line is, she’s right and I need to get there as soon as possible. I’m already feeling guilty about the fact that I’d planned to call her last night and got distracted. I don’t need to drive to Florida and discover that I didn’t really have enough time to do that.

I started looking at the usual travel aggregators but wasn’t having much luck because, after all, I’m looking to fly out the same day. So she suggested that I go directly to the airlines’ websites. As it happens, our local airport (Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Smith Kojak Pinocchio Redwyne Khaleesi Continued on Next Sign Airport) is a major hub for Southwest Airlines. As a result, that’s the website I went to and, sure enough, I found a flight this evening: 8:20 departure, 10:35 arrival. Not bad, but we have to book and leave almost RIGHT NOW. While I was online, I also booked a rental car; we don’t need any more distraught family members driving the streets of Pasco County. It’s bad enough the locals are doing that.

For those of you far from the East Coast, or reading this in the future, a tropical storm is riding the coast, which means that pretty much the entire southeast corner of the USA is getting rained on. Consequently Wife had to drive me to the airport as quickly as possible in a driving (heh) rain. So I’m already looking forward to trying to get out of Baltimore on a Friday night with the rest of the tourists and families going on summer vacation; now we’ve got this. And naturally, because half the world is trying to get out of town, it was impossible for Wife to drop me off anywhere near the entrance to Southwest. We were actually outside the canopy, getting rained on when I took my bag out of the car and hugged her and the Wee One goodbye.

OK, so on into the terminal, where I got a little pleasant surprise: even though I’d already checked in online, I had a bag to check. Turns out that Southwest has a line for people who are in just such a spot. The bad news, of course, is that while the line isn’t long at all, I couldn’t get to it because of a couple of self-entitled, over-packed morons who were in the wrong line and were in a state of temporary paralysis about where to go, even though a Southwest employee is standing there telling them where to go. Finally they move there eighteen bags enough so that I (and the people behind me) can get through, and I get my bag checked without trouble. The person who checked my bag, however, took note of my flight number and informed me—with just a little too much cheer—that my flight has been delayed, to 9:05 That means an 11:40 arrival. Fabulous. So now I’m going to be in the terminal for longer than I’ll be in the air.

Next up, of course, is the TSA check. I’m an experienced enough traveler that I don’t wear a belt to the airport, I wear shoes that slip on and off easily, and I have a TSA-friendly bag for my laptop, so I don’t even have to take it out of the bag. I just open it out flat and push it through the X-ray. I want this as quick and painless as possible. Of course, given that I’m traveling on a Friday night and not, say, a weekday morning, it’s all kids and dawdlers and first-time flyers and EVERYBODY MOVE ALREADY DAMMIT. When I finally make it through the scanner, I grab my shoes and my laptop bag and I move into the terminal about a hundred yards before I even think about putting the shoes back on. Sure, I look a little weird but at least I’m not milling about in anybody’s way.

Of course, this is about the point where I realize that I brought my iPod and my laptop but I don’t have any headphones. This means that I have to buy overpriced airport headphones and they’re probably going to be buds, which I really hate because they’re damned uncomfortable. I go into the electronics store and I can’t even get across to the girl in the store that I’m looking for over-the-ear style clips. She keeps pointing me to the big honkin’ cans that also cost about fifty bucks. I give up but discover that, in the newspaper stand where I’m buying Tic-Tacs, they have discounted Skullcandy phones (buds, natch), so I spring for a pair. They’re actually not bad, comfort-wise. Go figure.

So I’m sitting in front of Arby’s, waiting for them to call my flight (any minute now, I figure) and dealing with an unreliable wi-fi signal so I can head south and…I don’t know. I guess I'll figure it out on the way.

Mug Protocols

Captain Stemkowski: Don't drink my coffee from my cup, Jilette!

—No Mercy (1986)

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I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Florida. My uncle died last week, and his memorial service was scheduled for this past Saturday, so Wife and I made our plans, got in the car and headed south on Thursday evening. We left Baltimore at about 6:30 and stopped in Manning, South Carolina at about 3:00 AM Friday, where we crashed in a motel for about six hours, then had breakfast and hit the road again. There was a pretty bad accident on I-95 that stopped traffic somewhere in the realm of Ridgeland. We were maybe a hundred yards back from the accident so it was pretty easy for us to see the helicopter land on the highway and then fly right out again. They don’t waste time when that bird is on the ground, I guess. At any rate, we managed to get to my mother’s place in Port Richey by 6:30, almost exactly twenty-four hours after we left home.

I got re-acquainted with my cousins, one of whom I hadn’t seen in literally years, and introduced my wife to them, and the tone was as merry that night as it was somber the next day. I’m starting to turn into a go-to guy when it comes to saying stuff at funerals, so I prepared something on Saturday morning and—because my brother’s printer didn’t have any ink in it—I saved it to Microsoft One Note and read it off my tablet instead.

But I’m not going to tell you anything about my uncle, or his memorial service, or anything else I might have done in Florida (which wasn’t much, really). I’m here to vent about the Mug Protocols.

This actually started…oh my gosh, about twenty years ago. I was staying at my grandmother’s house, and we’d just returned from a restaurant. Everyone was in the mood for some coffee, but I’m a tea drinker. So I put the kettle on for tea and started up the coffee maker. The hot water was ready first, so I grabbed a mug from the little mug tree that my grandmother had on the counter, put the tea bag into it and poured the hot water in.

A minute later there was some murmuring over what I’d done. Apparently I’d grabbed the “wrong” mug. I looked at it again: it was just some mug, the first one I saw on the mug tree. It was a giveaway from Duval Federal Credit Union, and it read “Duval Federal, You’re Incredible!” on one side. It’s possible that they think this phrase has an internal rhyme to it; I don’t really know. What I do know is that I’d inadvertently taken my stepfather’s traditional coffee mug and soiled it with my tea. After some questioning I discovered that everyone in the house had a mug that was “theirs”. Most of them didn’t even live there, but that was no matter. So every time I made a cup of tea, I’d check with everyone to ensure that I was using an unclaimed mug. This was the beginning of the Mug Protocols.

At some point, while I was down there (back then), I was in a dollar store and I spotted a Christmas-themed latte mug. I wanted a Christmas mug for school, so I picked it up and took it back to my grandmother’s, fully intending to take it home at the end of the visit. As frequently happens to me, I neglected to bring it home with me, so my grandmother just put it away in the cabinet. The next time I came down, everyone made a point of noting that “my” mug was in the cabinet on the top shelf. By this time I’d completely forgotten about the mug, so I had no idea what they were talking about until I opened the cabinet and saw the Christmas mug up there. At the end of that trip I left the mug behind again, and again I forgot about it until my next visit. In the interim, though, they’d all got it totally ingrained into their heads that this was MY mug and nobody else was to use it. Once I left, my grandmother stashed it away until I came back.

Several years later, my grandmother decided that she was getting too old to live on her own, so she moved in with my mother. In order to do this, she had to divest herself of nearly everything in the house—furniture, bed linens, glassware, cookware, you name it. Whatever wasn’t getting sold or given away was going to go either into my grandmother’s bedroom in my mom’s house, or it was going into a storage locker. And those lockers fill up fast.

I actually managed to get a couple of things from this purge, but my one regret is that I didn’t get my grandmother’s cutting board. It wasn’t a genuine cutting board; it was actually a cut-out from a Formica countertop where they removed the piece of counter so they could put the sink in. It was a deep red (red countertop!), and was a rectangle with curved corners and a hole drilled through it, and then a cut from the hole to the edge. See, they’d drill the hole, and from there they’d use a jigsaw to cut the main hole in the counter. The picture at left is for an oval sink, but I think you get the idea. Either my grandfather or my uncle had rescued it from a construction site about a million years ago, and my grandmother took it and used it for a cutting board for years and years. And even all those years later, despite the abuse from thousands of knife cuts, the countertop/cutting board still looked pretty good. But I spoke up too late, and it was gone.

So the first Christmas after my grandmother moves in with my mom, and I’m there for dinner, and after dinner we’re going to have some kind of dessert and, of course, hot beverages, and I reach into the cabinet to pull out a mug for my tea. Of course, without even looking and the first mug I grab is Duval Federal. Nope, can’t use that one but I’ll leave it out for my stepfather. “How about this one? Can I use this one?” Yes, that one’s fine. Then my stepfather pipes up, “You know, your mug is in the other cabinet.”

“Oh, yeah!” my mother exclaims. “Look in that cabinet over there, on the top shelf.” The cabinet in question is actually on the opposite side of the kitchen. I open it up and there, on the top shelf, is “my” Christmas mug. They were all very pleased with themselves for saving that mug when they were getting rid of all my grandmother’s other stuff, and for holding it aside for my use.

But here’s the kicker: when I went down this past week to attend the memorial service, after Friday’s dinner I start pulling mugs out of the cabinet and I start asking “Is it OK to use this one? How about this one? After all, I don’t want to violate the Mug Protocols. Is there one designated as mine?” My brother says “Yeah, I’ve got your mug,” and shows me a souvenir Baltimore, Maryland mug that my mother bought about ten years ago when she was visiting. “You want it?”

“No, Brother, I really don’t care. I just don’t want to upset anyone with this mug business.” And that’s when it somehow turned into MY quirk, that I just had to have a certain mug or things could get ugly for everyone.

“You know,” my mother said, “your tall mug is still in the cabinet up there, if you want it.”

“No, Ma,” I said. “I’m not drinking out of a Christmas mug. I really don’t care what I drink out of, so long as it holds my tea. It’s you guys who get all up in arms if I use the wrong mug.”

They’re not hearing me, I think. I’m just going to have to continue to observe the Mug Protocols. Either that or quit drinking hot beverages when I’m in Florida.

Quick Exit. Much too Quick.

Rob: Songs at my funeral: "Many Rivers to Cross" by Jimmy Cliff, "Angel" by Aretha Franklin, and I've always had this fantasy that some beautiful, tearful woman would insist on "You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" by Gladys Knight. But who would that woman be?

—High Fidelity (2000)

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A few months ago my friend Aime (it’s pronounced the same was as “Amy”) wasn’t feeling very well. She went to the doctor and got checked out, and the doctor ran a few tests. When they came back, she was pretty startled to learn that what she thought was some discomfort in her back was, in fact, pancreatic cancer. What’s more, she was already at Stage IV. Those of you familiar with cancer probably already know that there aren’t any stages beyond IV, so this wasn’t good. In the case of this particular brand of cancer, it’s not uncommon, because the symptoms don’t usually manifest until it’s pretty far along.

Aime went through some of the usual steps for getting treatment. She started a chemotherapy regimen and ultimately retired from her job with the school system as a disability retiree. A few weeks later, we threw her a retirement party attended by a small circle of friends of her choosing. That was three weeks ago. In between, there were visits to her house from me and/or Wife, during which we talked about some of her plans for the future, specifically late-stage care and who would take care of her grandson, of whom she had guardianship.

A week after the retirement party, Aime’s brother invited her out to a bar where a friend of his was playing in the band. Because driving was difficult for her, Wife and I picked her up and took her down to the Ram’s Head Tavern to see the band play. The band (called Bushmaster) was pretty good, playing some bluesy rock, and her brother purchased a copy of their CD and gave it to her. About 90 minutes into the evening, she said that she wasn’t feeling well and she needed to get back home. On the ride home, she asked me to play the CD. It was short enough that we were able to hear it twice between the bar and her home. Our goodbyes that evening were brief. She was going to her brother’s for Thanksgiving, and we’d visit her for lunch on Saturday the 24th.

Lunch didn’t happen. I never saw her again.

Aime wasn’t feeling well enough to go to her brother’s, so she spent Thanksgiving at home. On Friday morning her son visited her and then went out on a couple of errands. About two hours later he returned and found her. He called Wife, who stopped her Black Friday shopping immediately—as in, left a pile of stuff on the floor in the middle of the store aisle—and spent the rest of the day with him. I’d been laid low with a horrific back spasm (I’m not prone to these, and suddenly it occurs to me that this may have been a sign from somewhere), and Wee One wasn’t feeling well, so I stayed at home with her.

Despite Aime’s diagnosis, this was a huge surprise. We knew the clock was running, but I don’t think anyone had an idea of just how fast it was going.

 

I have a couple of friends who I see once in awhile, over a long period of time, but Aime is someone I’ve had frequent contact with since I first met her through America Online’s chat rooms back in 1993. Consequently I considered her to be my oldest friend. It was because of her that I moved to Baltimore when I was dealing with some ghosts and demons of my own up in New York. When I made that move, it was in a car that she’d given to me because she’d gotten another one. It was because of her that I got to see the beauty of southern Utah (and picked up a speeding ticket while I was at it), the showers of the Flying J Truck Stop in Omaha, Nebraska and the St. Louis Arch whipping by at 70 MPH. It’s because she and I shared a rental property for two years that I (and she, for that matter) was able to get the money together to purchase my first home. It was her prodding that led me to bake a couple of obscene cakes about ten years ago, largely so we could embarrass her then-teenage sons. It’s because of her that I keep the house stocked with Jack Daniel’s, in case she wanted a Jack & Diet Coke. And at my parties, she usually did want just that.

Aime had some reach; she had friends in a lot of different places that I don’t think anyone suspected. Aime tended to make friends with lots of people but she wasn’t especially gregarious in a crowd. It was a quiet sort of thing, and she was able to offer up all kinds of support to people who might not get it otherwise. As I scroll through her Facebook wall, I see names and locations from all around the country; people she’d befriended in one way or another and all of whom cite some level of support she’d given them. One of them, in fact, was dealing with her own recent loss of a friend to the same form of cancer and was getting encouragement from Aime.

I’ve been very fortunate in my life that I haven’t had a lot of close-up experience with death; I’ve lost some older relatives, of course, and some other acquaintances who weren’t especially close from either a personal or a distance standpoint, so while it’s not exactly new to me, it’s not something I’ve had much opportunity to get used to. I’ve always been glad that I’m alive and absolutely furious about the fact that I’m going to die, and some of that anger carries over to the fact that I’m moving into a part of my life where it’s going to happen around me more frequently.

This post is feeling pretty disjointed; I think I’m still processing this whole thing. Aime’s been cremated and there’ll be a memorial service later this week, but who knows if the reality will set in by then.

Goodbye, Aime. You’ll be missed by me and by many, many others.

Deep In The Heart

C.J. Cregg: USA Today asks you why you didn't spend more time campaigning in Texas and you say it's cause you don't look good in funny hats.
Sam Seaborn: It was "big hats".

—The West Wing, “Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc” (9/29/99)

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A couple of weeks ago, my school flew most of the teachers out to a conference located in Salado, Texas.

Salado is about an hour north of Austin and about ten miles past the middle of nowhere. The reason we went there instead of bringing the conference to Baltimore is that the total costs were nearly identical, so why not make it a combination conference and retreat?

Naturally, this kind of event took a whole lot of planning. And the first step was to get us all into Salado. This turned out to be more complicated than anyone suspected, since there aren’t very many flights (if any) that go directly from Baltimore Washington International Airport to Austin Bergstrom Airport. Everyone in our group had to take two planes to get there. And since you’re talking about something like 30 people, we’re also talking about multiple itineraries. And, as it happened, my itinerary (and that of seven others) was one of the less direct ones.

The first leg of our flight was from BWI to Newark Airport. This was the plane we took to Newark:

I was pretty sure that we were going to see Indiana Jones in one of the seats on this thing. However, the flight—which got off a little late—made really good time and actually got into Newark a few minutes earlier than scheduled. It really wasn’t a bad flight, especially considering that I was in an exit row seat on the aisle, with an Air Marshall sitting next to me. It is, however, a little disconcerting watching the propellers spin up, and later on spinning down again. Also, on this plane you can SEE the wheels retracting.

The flight from Newark was also delayed, as were all westbound flights out of Newark. We were never told why but guessed it was weather-related, given all the storms we flew over. Thunderstorms are pretty cool to see when you’re over them. Once we landed in Austin (12:20 local time), we met up with some folks coming in from another flight and we all got on a shuttle bus to Salado. Where, of course, our driver got lost.

OK, that was kind of mean. That’s not quite what happened. What did happen, however, is that the exit he expected to take was closed because of construction. Out there, it’s a bigger deal than it is here: if you miss an exit, or it’s , the next exit is usually no more than a mile or two and the detour is easy. In that part of the world, the exits are between five and ten miles apart, so we’re losing about 20-30 minutes on the detour. And it’s already 1:30 in the morning (2:30 in our East Coast heads). So the driver took the next exit, drove for a little bit, then had to stop briefly to consult a map and make sure he was on the right track (which he was), then continued to the conference center.

The conference was called Capturing Kids’ Hearts, and it was held at a retreat/conference center called Summer’s Mill. We were even greeted by the sign:

We never saw the scrapbookers; who knows if they were even there.

The whole property consisted of a couple of buildings for meetings and such. The one we were using was open 24 hours and had the best wi-fi signal. There was a kitchen in there that was fully stocked with several different soft drinks (and please, help yourself): Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, regular and Diet Dr Pepper and something called Big Red.  Big Red is, indeed, red in color, but it tastes like what happens when you pour Sprite into your Cream soda. Some of us loved it; others found it to be pretty nasty. I was in the second camp. The conference area itself had an elevated platform for presenters, and the podium area had easy-to-use touchscreen controls for the projectors (there were two, slaved together so far as I could tell, so they both showed the same image), the microphones (up to three), a couple of other inputs (e.g CD, DVD, cassette), and lighting controls. With this last we could turn the fluorescent lights on and off, and run the incandescent lights at any one of four intensity levels. This all came in handy for us later on.

In addition to having free run of the meeting area, there was a game room which was outfitted with a counter and sink, a couple of tables for playing games (provided in the cabinets under the counter), a ping-pong table and an air hockey table. And, as you can see in the picture, the whole thing was decorated in a Coca-Cola motif. Why? We don’t know. Either Coke was sponsoring the space, or someone in charge just liked having Coca-Cola memorabilia. In fact, just out of camera range to the right there was an old, nonfunctioning vending machine that used to serve up bottles of Coke. Off that room was an exercise room, with a pretty good assortment of equipment if you wanted to get a workout. My big complaint about the workout room was that someone had yanked the emergency stop key out of the treadmill, and nobody could figure out how to get it back in place, so that never worked while we were there. The weight room and the game room were also available to us on a 24-hour basis.

Our rooms looked like motel efficiencies. There were two queen-size beds in each room, a full bathroom with tub, and most rooms had a kitchenette area with a small fridge, microwave and sink. But here’s the kicker: the closets in the rooms had the hotel-style security hangers, the ones with the tops that are permanently attached to the closet rod and a bottom part that’s useless anywhere but inside the closet.

Got that? The implicit message of this place is: “Want to use the conference center? By all means, be our guest. Have all the soda you want. Big ice machine, too. Take tons of ice. Fill the tub and steal someone’s kidneys if you like. Use our wi-fi to your heart’s delight. Play any one of dozens of games we’ve provided, anytime of the day or night. Want to work out? Use the weight room, 24 hours a day. Oh! We have bicycles you can borrow if you want to ride around the grounds or maybe explore the area a little bit. Go right ahead, they’re on the rack over there. Of course they’re not chained up.

“But we will be DAMNED if you think we’re going to let you take our hangers.”

So we flew in Monday night and we got right to work on Tuesday morning. Capturing Kids’ Hearts is part staff development and part group therapy, but it’s a pretty cool philosophy and, having seen bits of it in action last year, I’m eager to put the whole thing into action this year.

On Tuesday night, we tried to get a cab to take us into a nearby (= 10 miles) town so that we could lay in a supply of adult beverages, but the cab couldn’t find us, so we were out of luck. We had to socialize in a more-or-less sober state.

This reminds me: you always hear the jokes about how it’s 100 degrees out there, “but it’s a dry heat”. You know what? That’s not bullshit. When I left Maryland it was 95 degrees and just too swampy for anyone to endure; you went outside and all you could think about was going back in. In Texas it was 105 degrees but it took maybe an hour before we were uncomfortable enough to go inside. And one day, I woke up late and went from my room, to breakfast, to the first work session. When we took a break, I went into the bathroom and saw that my hair was a disaster. So I ran back to my room (about 100 yards’ distance) and stuck my head under the sink. Then I hit it quick with the towel to stop the dripping and brushed it. My hair was still plenty wet when I left the room. But when I got back to the conference center, it was bone-dry. Nobody knew that I’d completely wet my head, but everyone noticed that my hair looked much better. Now, THAT’S high heat with low humidity.

On Wednesday, they gave us an “on your own” lunch break and offered us a shuttle into town. This is what the “town” part of Salado looked like:

The cars are parked in front of some stores, but this is about as urban-looking as it got.

The other thing we saw in several places was bicycles, mounted to fences like you see in the picture to the right. We never did find out why that’s a thing in the Belton/Salado area, but apparently it’s a thing. Something we did learn, however, is that there were no adult beverages in this area: it’s a dry town. No liquor, no beer.

What’s that, you say? Could there be a loophole? Indeed there was. Wine was permitted. We found a wine shop connected to a local winery (Salado Creek Winery & Vineyard) and bought about 2/3 of a case, including something they called Lone Star Lemon. It’s like Mike’s Hard Lemonade but it doesn’t taste shitty. In fact, it’s quite the refreshing little wine. And because on paper we were at a “dry” event, the owner was kind enough to mark our box as being full of Live Snakes rather than contraband. Thus, “Snake Juice” became the code word of the day. I’m still not sure who really cared about whether we had any alcohol to drink, but okay.

Wednesday night, therefore, was a little bit of a better-lubricated evening for all of us and a lot of fun was had by nearly everyone. Nobody got sloppy drunk (wasn’t enough to do that), and after some playing of ping-pong and such, we all went back to the conference center for some Karaoke, courtesy of my laptop and the presentation system in the room. People would give me requests, I’d look them up on YouTube and we’d roll the video. Fun!

Thursday was our last day of the conference, and while we’d had a great time and learned a huge deal, we were all pretty much ready to head back home. Once again, there were no direct flights, so after the shuttle dropped us off at Austin Bergstrom Airport, we had to fly to Houston and then to Baltimore. Both flights were on-time and problem-free (see, United can get the job done from time to time), and we were back on the ground at BWI shortly after midnight. 

Next week, it’s Back to School for us, and the kids start on the 27th. For a summer where I wasn’t working, it’s been pretty quick.

In the Press.

Dennis Miller: I don't wanna go on a rant here, but America's foreign policy makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the First Battle of Antietam, I mean when a Neo-Conservative defenestrates, it's like Raskolnikov filibustered deoxymonohydroxinate
Peter Griffin: What the hell does rant mean?

—Family Guy, “Peter Griffin: Husband, Father... Brother?” (12/6/01)

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So for the last couple of years, I’ve been doing a Memorial Day post that’s been largely photos, with a little bit of side information thrown in. This year won’t be a lot different, but let me start with a little history:

Memorial Day was originally the brainchild of a pharmacist in Waterloo, NY named Henry Welles. Noting that New York State had experienced greater losses in the Civil War than any other state, he organized a community-based memorial in 1866. A parade was held, and people gathered to decorate the gravestones of the men who had died. This became known as “Decoration Day” and spread to many other communities until, in 1868, General John Logan proclaimed May 30 to be a day of commemoration for the Union soldiers who died in the Civil War. Meanwhile, a judge in New York’s Court of Appeals (the state’s highest court) named Francis Finch was inspired by his tours of the South following the war, and wrote a poem titled “The Blue and the Gray”, which was published in the Atlantic Monthly. This led to a widespread interest in a national movement to establish a single day of commemoration for the soldiers who had died on both sides in the Civil War. New York became the first state in the Union to recognize Decoration Day as a holiday, beginning in 1873. By 1889, “Decoration Day” had become “Memorial Day” and was a national holiday celebrated on May 30 every year until 1971, when (like so many other holidays) observance was moved to the last Monday in May.

Some editorial cartoonists’ take on Memorial Day. I’ve tried to choose a bunch that didn’t take too left or right a slant. With one exception I think I succeeded. In that last case the overall message was the thing that shone through, and the political angle was a side note:

John McCutcheon, 1900. The caption for this cartoon is:
“You bet I’m goin’ to be a soldier, too, like my Uncle David, when I grow up.”

 

Robert Satterfield, 1919.

Hy Rosen, 1963.

Chan Lowe, 2003. Not much has changed in this arena, unfortunately.

Dick Locher, 2004.

Joe Heller, 2004.

Andy Wahl, 2007.

Kevin Moore, 2008.

Randy Bish, 2010.

Dave Granlund, 2012.

Joe Heller, 2012.

Steve Sack, 2012.

 

Thanks again to all who serve, and who have served.

Almost the Most Fun You Can Have in the Dark

Ted Mosby: That's it. I'll have to move to another country, one where they're not showing The Wedding Bride.
Robin Scherbatsky: Good luck, Ted. That movie has gone worldwide. It's huge.
Lily Aldrin: Maybe North Korea.
Robin Scherbatsky: No, I heard Kim Jong Il saw it and it's his second favorite movie, right behind one of him running in slow motion in a field of turnips.

—How I Met Your Mother, “The Wedding Bride” (5/17/10)

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It’s often fun to go to the movies, if only for the immersive experience that they provide. Plus, there’s the popcorn with the butter-flavored grease (or, if you went to the Senator when Kiefaber was running the place, “real creamery butter”). What I don’t like about them is the excessive hype. You really get the idea sometimes that the guys who are making the ads are being creative about what they pull out of the reviews. For instance, this comes from a real review of The DaVinci Code:

Akiva Goldsman, otherwise not particularly inspired screenwriter, does a solid job with surprisingly faithful adaptation. This is probably due to Brown’s source material not being something exceptional. The novel is nothing more than rehash of secret histories like THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY GRAIL, neatly packed with some New Age ideas and rather generic conspiracy thriller plot. Goldsman kept most of novel’s flaws, but he, thankfully, didn’t succumb to the usual Hollywood standards of sacrificing exposition in order to provide audience with more brainless action. The exposition is actually the best and most valuable part of the film, providing viewers with more food for thought than they were accustomed to expect from a Hollywood blockbuster. (draxblog movie reviews, draxreview.wordpress.com)

This becomes:

Akiva Goldsman…does a solid job…surprisingly faithful…something exceptional…the best and most valuable…film, providing viewers with more food for thought…a Hollywood blockbuster.

Sprinkle in a few exclamation points and you get the idea. So that gets to be a drag, so I’m pretty careful nowadays about the films I see, and more often than not I just wait until it’s on video or cable. Nice life for a former Communications major, huh?

Some films do manage to rise above the hype by living up to it, however. And we’ve all seen a bunch of the “One Million Greatest Films Of All Time” or whatever kind of lists, and they all bring something to the table, I guess. But they don’t necessarily convey what it is that makes the movies named so special. So herein, I present to you, in no special order, a list of Movies That Changed The Way Movies Are Made.

Citizen Kane (1941)

Kane is one of those films that gets an awful lot of credit for a lot of things, and rightly so, which is probably why it’s tough to remember that it was a box-office flop the first time around despite the good reviews it received. During its initial run, Citizen Kane lost about $150,000, which was roughly 20% of what it cost to make. And it’s not even that Orson Welles invented the techniques used in the film; in fact he didn’t. What he did do was use them to such effect that they became staples of filmmaking: deep focus (sometimes using special lenses, sometimes using in-camera mattes); curtain wipes, miniatures, J-cuts (when the audio transitions ahead of the picture in a scene change), flashbacks and montages. It almost doesn’t matter that the movie begins with a huge hole in the plot. I’ll also concede that it’s not such a compelling movie that it’s an automatic stop if I catch it while channel-surfing, but I’ll usually stick with it for awhile just to bask in the awesomeness of the film techniques.

Here’s a weird little Kane story: when I was in college and taking the “Art of Film and TV” course, we were assigned to go to the library and view the opening scenes of Citizen Kane so that we could discuss it in class next time we met. During the scene where Kane dies (not a spoiler, it’s at the beginning), the nurse comes in and pulls the sheet over Kane’s face. As she does so, the soundtrack for the clip we were viewing encountered a glitch, so that as the sheet came up, the music slowed and ground to a halt, so that we had a moment of silence in the film. It synchronized so well with the action on the screen, that those of us who hadn’t seen it before thought that that was supposed to happen, and we all marveled at this cool audio technique. It wasn’t until the next day, when the teacher showed the clip again as a means of review, that we saw something wasn’t quite right. “Hey! That’s not what happened in the library!” The teacher didn’t realize that the clip was bad and qsuestioned us about it. It made for a great discussion.

Seven Samurai (1954)

Wife hates this film, because of the subtitles (she doesn’t dig any film that’s mostly subtitles), but I love Seven Samurai. And I don’t understand a word of Japanese, but I like to listen to the actors speaking, so I’ll actually keep the volume up even though it isn’t really necessary. Most people know by now that it’s the inspiration for 1960’s The Magnificent Seven, but the biggest contribution by that film was its theme. Seven Samurai was probably the first film to bring a disparate bunch of characters together to achieve a common goal (cf. Ocean’s Eleven or The Dirty Dozen). It’s also the first film to give us the very end of the main character’s previous adventure before moving into the current one (cf James Bond and Indiana Jones). Part of the success of this story is that director Akiro Kurosawa wrote an entire backstory for any character who had a line. It clocks in at 207 minutes, but it’s worth the trip. Fun fact: the Japanese language has no definite article (“the”), so translation of the title into “The Seven Samurai” is idomatically correct, but not a literal translation.

The Godfather (1972)

At the top of so many lists because of its compelling story, The Godfather improved upon the Gangster Movie genre in two important ways. Prior to this film, mafia films in the late 1950s and early 1960s were not doing well at the box office, despite all the star power they poured into them. Paramount head Robert Evans decided that the problem was that none of the people making these films—on either side of the camera—were Italian. Consequently they suffered from a certain lack of verisimilitude. It was at his insistence that most of the actors in the film were Italians. (Can you imagine Ryan O’Neal as Michael Corleone? It almost happened.) It’s a well-known story that Evans, upon seeing the first cut of The Godfather, sent Coppola back into the editing room to make the film LONGER. Evans was looking for “the spaghetti”, the family end of the story that ties the whole thing together. Later mafia films did the same: length plus a family of some sort. If The Godfather hadn’t happened, GoodFellas wouldn’t have come along to improve on the model.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

This is another film in the realm of Citizen Kane for me: it’s not necessarily an automatic stop, but it’s so beautifully shot, and some things are done so technically well that you have to admire this piece of work. 2001, like Kane and most of the titles here, is where we get to say “film” rather than “movie”, if you catch my distinction. Part of the attraction, again, is verisimilitude: silence in space, the design of the spaceship Discovery, the little mundane touches like the phone call home. Perhaps the only scene that’s deliberately funny involves Heywood Floyd nervously studying the detailed instructions on the Zero Gravity Toilet. What’s cool is that those are real instructions; it’s not as though Kubrick put some placeholder text on the sign because nobody could read it anyway. Click on the picture to get the full text. Sure, things like Pan Am and Bell Telephone don’t exist anymore, but those companies weren’t the point of the story.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

One of the things I really enjoy about this film is the “slow burn”. It’s a movie that takes place over a long period of time, and offers all kinds of tiny little clues with regard to the way the relationships are developing, what could come along later in the story, and so on. People who are easily bored could conceivably tune out quickly, but for those who manage to hang in there, the payoff is fantastic as the story picks up speed and refuses to let up. I don’t think that this film affected other films so much as it did the television industry. Shawshank paved the way for shows such as The Sopranos and The Wire, which took a long time to set the table and then knocked you on your back with the resolution. The plot line also gave us a denouement that we didn’t necessarily need, but allowed us to breathe a little and see the “ending beyond the ending”.

The Great Train Robbery (1903)

How did a film from 1903 change moviemaking forever? Because it was the first film to have a plot. It was a series scenes, laid out in a specific order, that together told a story. And if you don’t think it’s had any influence on modern-day film, consider the scene in the picture at left. Justus D. Barnes shoots directly at the camera—and therefore the viewer—in a scene that appears either at the beginning of the film or the end, (it was up to the operator where it went; all of the known prints have it at the end). It was a scene that terrified audiences, who weren’t used to the “language” of film yet, and reportedly got out of the way. Both Goodfellas and American Gangster did the same thing; Goodfellas does it right before the closing credits and in American Gangster it happens right after the credits. You could also argue that the idea of rounding up people in a public place and taking their money (rather than stealing from the train) had its influence on the diner scene in Pulp Fiction.

Incidentally, some people would put Pulp Fiction on a list like this one, but I’m not inclined to, mostly because while the nonlinear narrative was groundbreaking in its way, it’s not something that’s influenced the way other movies have been made, which is the criterion for this list. Oh, and Kane did it first.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Truth be told, I kept going back and forth on this one because I didn’t really like the film that much. But whether or not you like it, I think it has to be conceded that this film had two major influences on film making: first, they demonstrated that you can make a decent film on a very small budget and still manage to make a few bucks ($20,000 to make, $250,000,000 in earnings). Second, and perhaps a little more controversial, was the extensive use of the handheld camera. Now, in Blair Witch Project it makes sense, since the camera is proving a specific point of view throughout the movie. But this also inspired many other directors to take a similar approach to their own films, perhaps in order to give their movies a kind of cinéma vérité feel that they haven’t necessarily earned (Public Enemies, I’m looking at you). So there’s good and there’s bad in this one, but I don’t think anyone can argue that this one has had its effect.

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Not the whole film, but the one scene that takes place on the Odessa Steps. In this scene, the Czar’s soldiers march down a huge flight of stairs, firing into a crowd of people. At the bottom of the stairs are Cossacks, marching upward. People are shot, people are trampled, and a baby goes sailing down the stairs in his carriage. There are multiple points of view presented, numerous instances of parallel action, close-ups that emphasize the horror of what is going on, and ultimately we are lulled into feeling exactly what director Sergei Eisenstein wants us to feel. It’s a brilliant piece of propaganda that’s so good, it hardly matters that, in this otherwise historical film, the events in this scene never actually took place.

 

 

 

I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch, and I know a few of you are also former Communications majors. What would you add to the list, and why?

We’ll Always Have the Egyptian Theater

Major Strasser: We have a complete dossier on you. Richard Blaine, American, age 37. Cannot return to his country. The reason is a little vague. We also know what you did in Paris, Mr. Blaine, and also we know why you left Paris. [hands the dossier to Rick]
Major Strasser: Don't worry, we are not going to broadcast it.
Rick: [looks up from the notes] Are my eyes really brown?

—Casablanca (1942)

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This month marks the 70th anniversary of the film Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid. How this is the case, I’m not sure, since filming started in MAY of 1942 and the film wasn’t widely released until January of 1943.

Stories about this film are myriad: a lot of the writing was done during shooting, many times the actors weren’t quite sure what was going on, the film had a very low budget and had to make a couple of cost-cutting moves (perhaps most notable was that the plane at the end of the film was made of cardboard and used both little people and forced perspective to make it look larger; this also explains all the fog), the director’s Hungarian accent often made things tough for the crew, and so on. But the undeniable fact is that it all came together to create one of the finest, most perfect films of all time. Like so many others that get that designation, it’s a very rich tapestry of characters, plot, humor, danger, love, sex (mostly implied but that’s OK), drama, acts of heroism and complicated bad guys.

Last night, to mark the occasion of the 70th anniversary of it being six weeks before the first day of principal shooting—that’s all I can come up with for this date—Turner Classic Movies staged a nationwide big-screen showing of Casablanca. Locally, it took place at the Egyptian Theatre in Hanover, at the Arundel Mills Mall. So last night, I took Wife and Wee One out for A Sold-Out Night In Casablanca.

The Egyptian is the largest movie theater in Maryland and possibly on the East Coast. And, given the décor, they really took the name to heart: columns abound with hieroglyphics on them (they also have “cracks” in the facades to make them look older), a statue of Anubis guards the entrance from the parking lot, and there are murals of desert scenes everywhere. Once you’re into the theater area, it’s strictly a modern setting, with stadium-style auditoriums of about 500 high-back rocker-style seats. It’s a pretty sweet setup.

Because it was put together by TCM, the show itself begins with an introduction by Robert Osborne. This one, however, was more extensive, featuring interviews with some of the actors and production staff, including the woman at Warner Brothers who talked Hal Wallis into buying the unproduced play script. This was interspersed with LOTS of clips from the film itself. It got to the point where Wee One finally asked, “Are they going to show us the whole movie here?” From my standpoint, it seemed as though nearly everyone in the audience was not seeing the film for the first time, but I can imagine many of those clips being spoilers for someone who hadn’t seen it before. It also made it sound especially disingenuous when, at the end of the introduction, Osborne says something about, “Whether you’re seeing it here for the first time, or the hundredth time…”, clearly oblivious to the fact that the film was kind of ruined for the ones seeing it for the first time. (Frankly, I’m not positive that Wee One had seen the film in its entirety before last night; I know she’s seen pieces of it.) Most of those clips could have been cut shorter, or replaced with production stills, and nobody would have minded.

Wee One has been taking some art classes in school, specifically concentrating on pencil drawings lately, and this came through at one point during the film itself, when she looked at one particular shot of Ingrid Bergman with the gauze filters and the catch lights (they make her eyes sparkle), and said, “I want to draw her.” Then she pestered me to find a still from that specific scene after we got home. But for a kid with attention issues, she really stuck with the film. Even if she didn’t necessarily get all of the politics involved, she got most of the jokes, she caught a lot of nuances, she pointed out a couple of production issues (specifically Dooley Wilson’s piano “playing” and Bogart’s coat miraculously drying as he got on the train), and came away with a generally positive experience about a truly great film.

The Razor’s Edge

Woody Boyd: Most of my furniture comes from the interior of cars. I got to be careful when I shave, ‘cause objects may be closer than they appear.

—Cheers, “Rebecca Redux” (10/4/1990)

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I have two methods of shaving: either using a rechargeable electric shaver in the car (at traffic lights; I’m no fool), or while I’m in the shower.

In both cases, I don’t use shaving cream. You don’t do that with an electric shaver, of course. And when you’re in the shower, if you wait until the end, then the hot water and steamy air has saturated your beard enough that you don’t need it in the shower, either.

But this story, oddly enough, isn’t really about me. It’s about my grandfather.

My grandfather was a greenskeeper, one of the guys who takes care of golf courses. They get up very early in the morning. In my grandfather’s case, that was at roughly 4:00 every day, even on the days he didn’t have to work. He’d go out front and get the newspaper. Occasionally this meant waiting a few minutes for it to come flying out of the passing car that delivered them. He’d take the newspaper inside and open it up to the comics section first. “Always read the funnies first,” he’d say. “The rest of the news is so miserable that you should start your day with a laugh.” That’s advice I took to heart, incidentally. He’d read the paper and eat his breakfast, which was invariably a bowl of Special K cereal. I don’t know why he liked that cereal so much, but I do know that he was kind of bummed when they changed the shape of the flake. And then, off to work he’d go. .

But this story isn’t about my grandfather’s morning routine. Not exactly.

The point is, he had a job which required him to be out on the links around 5:30 or so in the morning, ensuring that the grass got watered, that the greens were trimmed (greens are done every day; tees and fairways less often), that the sand traps were raked, and so on. The course had to be ready to go when the first golfers arrived. So the only people that my grandfather typically saw were his co-workers, and the occasional early riser whose house backed on the course. He didn’t have to look good for anybody, so he didn’t bother shaving his face every day. Once every three or four days usually did the trick.

I guess it was because he did it relatively seldom, but my grandfather made a real ritual out of shaving. He had a shaving brush, but he also liked to use aerosol shave cream (Barbasol, specifically). He also used a safety razor, the old style where you twisted the bottom and it made the top open up, and it held a single blade that was sharpened on both sides. He’d remove the blade from a piece of tissue paper in which he’d stored it, and put it into the razor handle. Then he’d wash his face and apply the lather, keeping it shallow but really working it into that three- or four-days’-worth of beard growth.

As I recall, he made two passes with the razor. First he would go “with the grain”, essentially shaving downward on each stroke. Then for certain spots he’d reverse and go “against the grain”. But “with” always came first. If he cut himself (rare), he’d use a styptic pencil rather than the bits of toilet paper you see occasionally in older movies or TV shows. Styptic pencils are tough to explain, but if you have a pet whose nails have been trimmed a little too deeply, and you’ve seen the groomer dip the nail into that powder? Same stuff. Finish up, wash the face again and then rinse and dry off the razor and the blade thoroughly. Then, he’d wrap the blade back up in the tissue paper. This whole bit took almost twenty minutes.

Now, here’s the part that I presume belongs uniquely to him, but let me give you a little bit of backstory: my grandfather liked esoteric bits of information. Shortly after he and my grandmother moved to Florida, the St. Petersburg Times printed a map of the state with the different counties outlined. He took the time to count them and then cut the map out of the newspaper and stuck it to the refrigerator. For years—I’m talking at least fifteen years—I’d walk past the fridge and get a reminder that Florida has 67 counties. (Go look it up.) Why was he interested in that fact? I have no idea. But there it was, stuck to that Avocado Green fridge.

So the last detail my grandfather would do before he put everything away was, he’d take a pen and mark the tissue paper with a tally mark, indicating another use of the blade. For whatever reason, he got into a habit years earlier of counting how many shaves he got out of a blade, and it stayed with him until the end. For the most part, he’d get about a dozen shaves out of a blade before it got dull and started irritating him. Often he’d get more.

Related story: when my uncle—the same grandfather’s son—got married, his father-in-law was a career Navy officer. So his approach to shaving was a little different. Get in, get it done quickly, get it done well and get the hell out. What’s more, as a career officer he had to shave every single day. Needless to say, his razor blades didn’t last as long as my grandfather’s did. Every once in awhile, at family gatherings, these two fathers-in-law (is there a word for their relationship to one another?) would chit-chat, and, as my grandfather’s story goes, they got to talking about their shaving habits. As you do, I guess, when the alcohol starts flowing. My grandfather mentioned that he keeps track of the number of shaves he gets out of a blade, and cited some number of shaves that he usually gets. “It was bad enough when I told him that a lot of times I get 20 shaves,” he said, “but when I told him that I once got 83…”

“Eighty-three!” I said.

“Yeah, one time I got eighty-three shaves from a single blade. So when I said that to Carl, he didn’t say anything. He just looked at me and—” and it was at this that he pantomimed Carl, putting his hand to his forehead. Not smacking himself but rather just raising the hand and placing it there, as if testing to see if his head was about to explode. “Of course, he wasn’t going to get that many, because he had to shave every day. But every now and again, we’d compare notes. But I’ll never forget him putting his hand up to his head"—and here, he pantomimed it again—“because he couldn’t believe that number.”