I grew up alienated from my hometown in South-West Washington State, and wanting to get out as soon as I could. Looking back, the alienation and dislike were probably exaggerated and amplified by romantic ideas about the rest of the world, but maybe not. When I go back to visit, it doesn’t really feel like a homecoming. The big fir trees where I played as a kid were cut down when they widened the road; my childhood home was first burned in a drug-related arson fire, then razed to build a mall.

It’s not uncommon. In the course of some genealogical research I found out that the Chicago neighborhood where my father grew up 70 years ago is now under the tarmac of O’Hare airport.

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He’d been to confession again, after so many years; he cried when he told me about it. He hadn’t been since before he eloped to Reno with a Presbyterian. “He thinks if a priest touches him it’d go ssssss,” his brother (the funny, charming drunk brother) told me once at breakfast in the diner with all the old men. As a boy he’d wanted to be a priest or a bartender when he grew up. Loss, though — sickness, so thin now he lost his wedding ring when it fell from his finger, and that favorite brother’s death — both scared and shielded him enough to face a priest, to carry his heavy old church into a newer, reduced one.

The good bathtub adjoined his bedroom; when I went in to wash the kid I saw the pamphlets the priest had given him arranged on his dresser.

Christmas and Easter, he stayed home when we went to church. Now I do that.

Lost three kilograms over the weekend.
Made it around the Monday morning garbage truck on the way to work today.
Cleaned car in and out on the weekend.
Beautiful sunny day.
Found a parking spot right in front of the office.
Drinking gin with angels.
So far, so good.

“Dad, can I fly to Edinburgh for the International Harp Festival?”
“Eh, let’s see… we’re broke, there’s a war on, increased risk of terrorism internationally, and SARS outbreaks all over. No.”
“Puhleeze?”
“Well, okay, just this once.”

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“She was crazier than a rat in a coffee can”

Just when you start feeling ashamed of your species, you hear language that makes you proud to be human. I’d credit the above, but I read it somewhere top-secret.

What’s your favorite?

We got up at 3 this morning because Beta had an early flight to Scotland. Her plane didn’t leave until 7, but get there 2 hours early you know, because although security was not intrusive, you have to do stuff like check in, and ask why it’s not possible for her to be pre-checked for the plane change in Frankfurt if the girl she’s traveling with *is* checked all the way through and how is a 13 year old with little time between planes to be expected on her first unchaperoned international flight to do all the checkin stuff and why weren’t we informed about this 2 months ago when we booked the tickets and then there was the time necessary to be told, “Gee, dunno, go ask Lufthansa, she’s flying with them the second leg of the flight” and go talk to the Lufthansa desk, frequent-flyer Alpha working this end of it, while seldom-flyer Mig orders breakfast for the girls and tries to keep really tired and wired Gamma from communing too closely with the gum stuck under the table and don’t spill anything and then the time it takes for the 2 girls traveling to go to the restroom and discuss with Alpha, no mom, you don’t have to come to the restroom with us, how’re we supposed to travel to Edinburgh if we can’t even find the WC without help?” and the time for me to say, “huh?”.

It was funny, all in all, but I’m worthless today so I’ll just leave you with a couple political links.

Victory in the war is not victory in the argument about the war.
Hippie crap saves the world.
Some thoughts on the fall of Baghdad.

I was so happy to see that statue of Saddam come down– “Permission to stop thinking about Iraq SIR!”

More on the statue.