Meeting John McCain

Tonight is not the night to cite the many times I disagreed with Senator John McCain politically.  Perhaps that will come at a later time, when our country is not under siege from within and without by scoundrels, crooks and opportunists and my energy is better directed at resisting. 

No, tonight is a night to remember the evening I shook John McCain’s hand.  It was February 28, 2000 and Republican candidate for President, Senator John McCain, was flying into Redding for a campaign stop.  Tim and I were immersed in following all things politic and he insisted we take the one-hour drive north to see a presidential candidate although we were both probably not going to vote for him.  Still, we were curious about this “maverick” and just what brand of Republicanism he represented.

We arrived at the airport and waited in a hangar that had been set up for a brief stop.  The hangar was packed for a Monday night and we spotted Joe Klein, Time political writer and (originally anonymous) author of Primary Colors, restlessly waiting for the candidate.  His coat was rumpled, no doubt from too much time on the press bus or press plane. We waited and waited and waited.

When the McCain plane finally arrived, we were standing near the back of the hangar and remained there during the very brief speech which was not memorable except for the fact that a national candidate was in Redding.  The crowd was enthused but the wait had taken a bit out of them.

Tim was comfortable in this milieu and also, as always, intent on making every adventure memorable.  He saw McCain and his wife descend from the makeshift stage and quickly tracked the likely exit back to their plane.  It was then that he insisted we get up to the rope line so I could shake McCain’s hand as he worked his way back to the plane.

I am too short to see in a crowd, but followed Tim’s back as he knifed our way through the crowd.  Suddenly, there was the rope line.  Tim nudged me into place and shortly thereafter I shook the hand of the Republican candidate for president.  (I have to insert that Tim was similarly insistent about a Clinton book-signing line; I had given up – the line was very long – but we worked it and I now have a signed Clinton book and a memory of shaking Bill Clinton’s hand.)

I knew at the time that McCain was a war hero, a prisoner of war who was tortured and in solitary confinement in the Hanoi Hilton.  I also knew that he was coming to California on the heels of a South Carolina GOP primary, during which Bush operatives odiously spread misinformation which accused him of not being a hero, of fathering children out wedlock and fathering a black child (the McCains had adopted an orphan from Bangladesh).  Leaflets and phone calls spread this ‘fake news;’  Bush’s campaign had not done well in New Hampshire and so Rove and company broke out all the stops to take South Carolina.

I did not know that because of his injuries he could not comb his own hair or raise his hands above his shoulders and there was probably some pain in shaking so many hands at so many events.  I did not hear him that night in February 2000 vent or whine about the below-the-belt tactics of his opponent in South Carolina.  He was a total pro, continuing to speak out on his issues and moving ahead with his campaign on his terms.

He was a public servant his whole adult life and in the twilight of his life cast a memorably decisive vote on the attempted repeal of the Affordable Care Act and spoke out about the dismal performance and disgraceful actions of the current occupant of the Oval Office.   But before those last stands, there was a moment I will never forget  -- a gracious concession speech after losing to Barack Obama which the nation needed to hear.  (Aside from the praise of Palin – again, another blog another time).  It was an important moment in American history and the right words were required to meet the moment.

The nation had just elected the first African American president, the Palin tea party crowd was ascending right and wacky in the GOP, but the tone of his speech, filled with the usual thanks and acknowledgments, considered history and acknowledged and elegantly appreciated the significance of the moment.  We needed a citizen patriot at that moment and I think he rose to that occasion.

For that moment and for his years of service, I thank Senator John McCain.  In pain no more.

https://youtu.be/NvgqRKYapU8

The Forest for the Trees

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life - it goes on.

   ~~ Robert Frost

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life.  Overcome fear, behold wonder.

   ~~ Richard Bach

I lived in Golden on the opposite metropolitan edge of Denver from Aurora when Alan Berg was gunned down in his driveway by members of a white hate group.  It was shocking at the time, yet not too far in time or place from Littleton and Columbine High School.

I woke with Tim one day in 2001 to watch the World Trade Towers crumble.

And in 2007 as we woke to prepare for a drive to Stanford for a battery of tests to see if Tim could pass muster for a lung transplant, we watched the unfolding news about Virginia Tech.  My niece was a freshman at the school, and it was several anxious hours before she was able to get through to family and let us know she was ok.  It is an indescribable feeling to not know.

Time stands still at times like these.  

Yet, if the past is prelude, there will be predictable aftershocks.  There will be debates about our nation's obsession with violence and guns, but candidates and legislators will take no action.  There will be people seeking their fifteen minutes on Nancy Grace and extended sensational coverage of a trial if one is held.  There will be much second guessing about parental failure of one sort or another and idle questions about why no one noticed odd behavior.  Flowers will be left at the scene.  And soon it will be forgotten...until the next time.

But tonight, I try to center myself, for once even indirectly touched you can't help but remember how fragile we all are, how random life's tragedies strike, and how difficult it can be to find the way to see the wonder again.  But how necessary it is to find that way.

Music for centering and reflection:  Claude Debussy, Clair de Lune

Photo of aspens in Colorado Rockies:  Carrolls

Song Saturday - Four Seasons

Decided the best way to kickstart an unplanned retirement was to leave town that first week as a retiree - clear the mind, decompress, cleanse the mental palate with my favorite fun thing - that would be music. So, off to Vegas for a solo trip to catch a musical trifecta - Santana in concert, the Cirque's "Love" show featuring the music of the Fab Four, and reaching farther back into musical memory bank, capping this quick trip with Jersey Boys, the Tony-winning show telling the back story of the Four Seasons. Polished and well-staged. Fast-paced and somehow gets about 27 song snippets staged as the story moves from the streetlight singers in Newark to Valli as a solo artist. 





When I think of the Four Seasons, I think of harmonies bookmarking a soaring falsetto, black and white tv, and junior high. It was the exact time I was starting to listen rabidly to tunes on my clock radio - a treasured transporter. It's odd to think the Four Seasons co-existed with the British invasion - somehow their sound takes me mentally back further to babysitters with short shorts and transistor radios attached to their ears as they walked down the street - the precursor to earbuds and ipods.






Frankie Valli, with a three octave range, is amazingly still kicking it in his seventies with new Seasons to back up his still-crystal falsetto. Guess as I ponder what's next, I'll take inspiration from an old pro who still tells me, "big girls don't cry."  Move forward and follow the music.

Not Fade Away - Song Saturday

And like the old soldier in that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the sight to see that duty.  ~ ~ Douglas MacArthur

My retirement day from local government service came and went Friday, but I don't know what Douglas MacArthur was thinking about when he addressed Congress and expressed a desire to 'just fade away.'  I wonder if he ever had second thoughts about making that statement.  Just not my vision.

Tim impressed on me the importance of deliberately constructing memories, for at the end that's all we have - memorable life moments with memorable people.  He also taught by example how to face significant endings (he was dying) and mold to the extent possible leaving on self-determined terms.  So, after I processed the word "layoff," then elected to retire from the public sector after 25 years, and consciously worked at rapidly running through the five stages of grief about the loss of my job, I knew I had to deeply consider my last week at work and how I wanted to remember it and, as importantly, how I wanted my colleagues to remember me.