Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

1) Salubrious. Healthy or health-giving. Always thought it kinda meant the opposite, actually. That middle “loo” make me think of lubricated. Gonna add this to my working vocabulary.

2) Botulism. A disease in which there is an infestation of bots (HT Joseph Epstein). Given our success in preventing the original I see no reason why we shouldn’t re-purpose this perfectly appropriate word for our modern world.

3) Pronk. A vertical leap without a running start. Associated with the African gazelle-like Blackbuck which is capable of clearing a 6 foot fence by springing straight up from all fours, making them terrifically difficult to keep them contained.

Should be re-purposed as a description of a far-fetched statement or other declarative over-reach. “Ivermectin as a cancer cure? What a pronk!”

4) Bland. Scrolling while riding shotgun (Beth does a super-majority of the driving when we are out of town) I came across something about the de-colorization of the Western World. Probably on Xter. Pretty funny that it happened while we were driving in South Florida, too. When I was a young boy visiting my grandparents in Miami I was always amazed and delighted by how colorful everything was compared with the rather drab tableau of the dying mill town where I grew up. Pastels were the thing, but here and there you’d find a grand slash of bright primary colors as well.

And the cars! The post I read had a graph of the decline in the number of colors we now see on the roads. Back in the ’60’s and 70’s it seemed as if every third car was some outlandish orange or green. And not just in Miami but everywhere, even in Southbridge. Now? White, black, and grey lead the way. Even the reds, blues, and greens are muted, as if grey or black was mixed in with the primary colors resulting in something which is less, you know, colorful.

It made for a fun little driving game over the last couple of days in Florida. We pointed out each joyously, outrageously colored vehicle. Each time we saw one we described a car from our past. Parking lots were just a big blank canvas of dull with only the very occasional spark of color. Where did this come from? Where did all of the colors go? And it seems to be price and scarcity agnostic; the Ferraris and Bentleys were just as bland as the Hondas and the Hyundais. As if adopting the colors of the herd somehow concealed the fact that you were in a Maybach.

Thank Heavens for the dune buggies, the last vestiges of color on the road.

5) Healthspan 4: Fitness. Not gonna lie, when I embarked on this Healthspan series I envisioned consecutive weeks of posts culminating in a nice, tidy progression and conclusion. Funny, stuff just kinda got away from me along the way. For those who wish to have things a bit more organized and accessible, and for both of you who miss my long-form posts, at some point after I finish I will put them all together in what I hope will be a more cohesive, coherent manner. For the moment, on to fitness.

Those of you who’ve been hanging around here and the CrossFit.com site of years past are probably slightly surprised and perhaps amused that it’s taken the poet laureate of fitness so long to address the physical aspects of prolonging lifespan in this series. Count me as both. Still, if you read parts 1-3 you will see a very clear and strong influence from some of the earliest foundational writing about what it is that made (and perhaps still might make) CrossFit a touchstone for the kind of physical attributes one might seek to enhance in order to push the inevitable ravages of age and chronic disease further into one’s future. While a super-majority of those who seek to guide us to a longer life lived better put the biggest premium on aerobic fitness/VO2 Max kinda stuff, if you read all the way through you eventually find an admission that one must also be strong, at least adequately strong, in order to continue to move through the paces of aging.

Indeed, they almost sound like CrossFit adherents: work capacity across broad time and modal domains.

In reality only two discrete fitness metrics have been adequately studied by researchers who study aging, aerobic fitness and strength, and so I will limit my advice accordingly. The first of these is rather easily addressed because the bar is actually quite low: get off the couch. Peter Attia has called exercise the most powerful anti-aging drug yet discovered. Countless studies have found that rather low levels of activity lead to significant increases in longevity and decreases in the effects of chronic disease.

If you want to be more analytical about this than simply counting your daily steps start with determining your max heart rate (HRM). Unless you have done VO2 Max testing or had a recent cardiac stress test you can do a quick and dirty calculation by subtracting your age from 220. There are five HR “Zones” or target levels, but it looks like only two of them really matter: Zone 2 (60-70% HRM) and Zone 5 (90-100% HRM). Sure, you can geek out on the subtleties of the other three, and good on ya if you’re going to exercise enough to do so, but you don’t really have to. 75-100 minutes of Zone 2 exercise each week, with 2 sessions lasting 10-15:00 in Zone 5 and you are likely to garner more than 90% of the possible healthspan benefits in the kitty. Walk, jog, bike, row swim, dance, it doesn’t matter. You’re off the couch.

But of course, if your skeleton and your muscles can’t cart cart around your crazy strong heart and bellows-like lungs your endgame is still gonna be lousy. The goal is to be able to lift your caboose off the loo when you are 92. To do so you will have to channel your inner Arnold and “pick things up and put them dowwwwn.” In some way, shape or form you need to incorporate resistance exercise along with your aerobic efforts. Want a fancy body post-50? Go for it. Judgement-free zone here on the blog. Be a body builder and lift weights (with proper form) to your heart’s delight.

Just never, ever skip leg day!

Classic calisthenics (pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, air squats), power-lifting (especially squats and deadlifts), or a well-rounded program using resistance bands (check out the program on billrussell.com for a joint-friendly, mature athlete-friendly program) are all options. The bottom line is that it makes no sense to be able to run an 8:00 mile at age 70 but be too weak to pick up a case of beer to celebrate. 3 sessions per week is probably an optimal schedule, neither so much that you risk injury nor too little that you risk becoming delicate.

No one should expect to pronk at 80, but getting your butt off the couch and doing both strength and aerobic exercise is a salubrious endeavor. While you’re at it, why not exercise in bright red or iridescent green kit. You know, like the bathing suit you wore while driving your baby blue VW Beetle to Spring Break in Ft. Lauderdale back in the day.

I’ll see you next week…

“Quitting on top is not the same as quitting.” Bob Myers, former Golden State Warriors GM to Adrian Wojnarowski, St. Bonaventure Basketball GM and former ESPN NBA analyst.

Media of all shapes and sizes is simply filled to the brim this weekend with questions about what will become of the players, coaches, and other various “names” if the Kansas City Chiefs win an unprecedented third Super Bowl in a row. Will Travis Kelce drop to a knee at midfield and deliver a diamond to the left hand of his girlfriend, sending them off on the next phase of their fairy tale? Or how about Andy Reid, the storied coach who brought the trophy to both Philadelphia and KC? I mean, no one, not even Don Shula or Chuck Noll pulled off three in a row. Dropping the mike and exiting stage left at that point would be the epitome of “quitting on top”.

And yet, neither is likely to happen.

Who among us is not familiar with the saying “winners never quit; quitters never win”? You don’t have to come from a sports-crazy family to have heard that at least once from your parents. Heck, even my in-laws, two educators who were raising three daughters, with only a passing interest in sport of any kind, and that only as spectators, almost certainly used that exact phrase when it was time for one of the girls to suck it up and carry on. But the reality is that everything eventually has a logical conclusion, a time when being done is simply the only conclusion, that is not really quitting at all.

Think of a pair of wrestling shoes left as the retiring wrestler leaves the ring one final time.

Wojnarowski, Woj to millions, had reached a kind of peak in the world of basketball commentary. This had been his stated goal since early in college, and he spent nearly a decade at the top. Unlike the athletes who provided the fodder for his missives, Woj left his shoes in the ring while still performing as well, or better than his earlier years, and showed no signs of having lost a step on the competition. Why did he leave the arena while still at the top of his game? It seems that his particular “top” was a plateau rather than a peak, and it took just as much time and effort to remain on that flat as it had taken to arrive there. Time he’d not given to family or friends. A plateau that, however wide, still had little room for anything or anyone else if one was to stay. Having given what it took to get there he looked around and saw other places to put that time, other places to be that had room for others to join him, and he climbed down.

Does that mean he quit? I admit that I have never experienced the kind of peak that Woj reached. Certainly not as an athlete or in the professional world of my day job. Never a valedictorian or MVP, busiest, richest, or firstest. And yet I get everything about both what it was that Woj set out to achieve, how he pursued it, what it took to get there, and why and when he decided that he was, indeed, on top, could stop and move on.

Some people carry on because they simply can’t think about what else they might move on to. Doctors are notoriously like this. Come to think of it, so are lawyers and politicians. Athletics and athletes provide an excellent window through which to observe this. Why, for instance, does Lebron James still toil in the NBA? Near the top, but no longer truly there, player or team. For every Barry Sanders who walked away from the NFL when he was by far the best running back in the league, or Andrew Luck, the Colts quarterback who retired because he looked ahead and simply didn’t see enough added to his life by playing any longer, there are a dozen Brett Favre’s or Aaron Rogers who simple play on until their battered bodies are scraped off the field, legacies diminished by not quitting while on top.

One is left to wonder why as much about Tom Brady and his last few years as one wonders if, say, George Blanda would have mustered on for 26 years had he made Tom Brady money. Woj walked away from the money, too. Not Lebron James or Andrew Luck money, but Barry Sanders money for sure. Is it the fame? The rush of the bright lights? Of, I dunno, mattering? It brings to mind “Encore”, a lesser known song written by the great Stephen Stills: “Whatcha gonna do when the last show is over? And whatcha gonna do when you can’t touch base? And whatcha gonna do when the applause is all over, and you can’t turn your back on what you face?” I’d be willing to bet that the endorphin rush of seeing something you wrote being tagged a massive “Woj bomb” was comparable to nailing a 3-pointer at the buzzer in a mid-season NBA game or being summoned back to the stage for an encore.

So why now? There were surely more “bombs” to drop just as Mr. James will surely drop more game winners and Stephen stills will play one more song, before he leaves the arena. Adrian Wojanowski hasn’t reached out to let me know, and for sure Lebron James won’t be any more likely to take me into his confidence or take my advice than he did back in his first stop in Cleveland (search “Random Thoughts” for “It’s Not About the Money”). But still, I think Woj has shed enough light on his decision (written in places such as the NYT, WSJ and Sports Illustrated) to see that he might very well have been reading my drivel all along: Woj realized that he is more than what he does, and that reaching a summit that turned out to be a high plateau was enough. Especially one that only had room for one.

And so congratulations and good luck with your Bonnies, Woj. Someday you will quit that job, too, whether or not you make it to the top there, too. Who you are and what you do will continue to intersect over your lifetime. You know what else folks say about this kind of stuff? “It’s lonely at the top.” If you get to the top and discover that there isn’t room there for you and the people you love, well, quitting at the top might turn out to be the ultimate type of winning after all.

I’ll see you next week…

Thoughts while walking on a beach past the sandcastles of those who would be gods…

I try to live a life that others could emulate. It is not the only life worth emulation, but it is my hope that it is one that could be. After all, I have children. I have grandchildren. I often find myself at professional meetings among colleagues, many of whom are 5, 10, and 20 or more years my junior. I see in many of them the shadow of my younger self. Driven and focused, mostly in the pursuit of “more.”

It’s more than a little trite, but man, if only I knew then, when I was a child, when I was a younger professional, a younger parent, what I know now about “more”.

Don’t get me wrong, “more” is good. It is usually decidedly better than “less”. Having had both at various times in my life this is pretty clear. What I’ve learned, though, is the overarching value of “enough”. “Less” and “more” always come in the context of a comparison with some thing or some person, a time or place against which the you and the now are measured and compared. Under the microscope, always trying to measure up, both “more” and “less” can feel kinda lousy.

“Less” is obvious in the lousy feeling arena; no need to expand there. If you think about “more”, ever “more”, there is no end to it. It’s a hopeless chase, an endless endeavor, forever chasing “more”. You are Sisyphus; the boulder will never reach the summit.

“Enough”, though, is sublime. Personal. Poetic. “Enough” lives within you. It might mean more to someone and less to another, but in the end it is a wonderfully liberating concept. “Enough” is a one-word Emancipation Proclamation for a life.

“Enough” is a feast.

I’ll see you next week…

“You can’t out train a lousy diet.”–Greg Glassman.

To entertain both a long and a healthy life one must address how we go about fueling said life. Ya gotta eat. It’s WHAT you choose to eat, and let’s face it, HOW MUCH you eat that determines the effect of nutrition on your Healthspan. Add in at least a little bit of thought about WHEN you eat and you have the basic outline of how you can design your own personal plan for eating your way to a longer life that is freer from the ravages of chronic disease.

Or so says the guy who chose to not only have that extra glass of wine, but did so after consuming a bowl of ice cream after the stop time of my eating window had passed.

Let’s lay down some stipulations before we start. First, there is really no settled science behind any recommendations on what constitutes the one, best nutrition plan. Literally, none. This is me, giving you my distillation of my research and a view of what I am trying to do for myself and Beth. In this effort we probably represent the area under the fattest part of the curve (pretty good, huh?) of folks who live in North America. We looked at obtaining all manner of “properly” sourced foods (e.g. prairie-raised naturally fed protein sources) and found the process to like paying for the privilege of having a second job. So we shop in a grocery store and buy what is available there. We eat at home 5 or 6 days a week. There are a couple of allergies that force us to be a bit particular about recipes but don’t affect our Healthspan-driven options.

Start at the beginning: how much should you eat? Easiest answer ever…LESS! You almost certainly get more food through your pie hole than you need. Heaven knows I do. To know how much you should eat it is first necessary to know how much you are consuming now by measuring literally everything containing calories that you consume. There are any number of apps you can use (we used MyFitnessPal). Prepare to be shocked at what you find. Your 1800 calorie macro diet or 14 block Zone more than likely only represents 75% or less of your actual consumption. Knowledge is power; you need to know the baseline.

Eat primarily to fuel your life. Eat to support your daily activities and your efforts at fitness. I know, eating (and drinking) can be a source of meaningful pleasure, especially when it is done with friends and loved ones. Don’t give that up. What we are talking about is your regular nutrition. Think about the challenges that being less strong will pose for you as you get older. You are most likely under-serving protein. We lose muscle mass as we age, even if we strength train. Everything I’ve read says that we should be eating more protein.

What kind of protein? Again, my choices are driven by the reality of my suburban life. It is just too hard and too expensive to eat red meat from animals that provide the same quality protein as they did 100 years ago. By and large it seems that we should all be eating more plant-based protein at the expense of industrially produced animal-based protein. Fill in the spaces as you will. We eat fish and some poultry chez us.

Processed foods, while extremely convenient, all seem to contain stuff we just don’t need, and many are specifically engineered to encourage over-consumption. Sugar is mostly not great. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is straight up bad. While some will exclude most, or all carbohydrates (so-called carnivore diets), most of us prefer a diet that contains carbs of some sort. Learn the Glycemic Index and choose foods that have a low GI. Oranges and apples over bananas and mangoes. Green beans and Brussel sprouts instead of rice or pasta. Mushrooms. How about fat? Sure! Again, just be mindful about the fat. Don’t let some manufacturer mass-produce your fat intake. Avocados and macadamia nuts.

You get the picture.

How about the “When” to eat. Man, what a mess this is. Total see-saw. Eat when you are hungry vs. eat on a schedule. Traditional 3 squares or time limited. If you think the research on fasting makes sense (there is data suggesting that fasting increases longevity to a degree that is greater than just the caloric restriction) do you do a traditional long fast or do something like Intermittent Fasting? And if it’s IF how big is the window during which you eat? FWIW I find the evidence for fasting, specifically time-limited eating or IF, to be moderately compelling. Not more than the HOW MUCH or WHAT research but enough to dabble in IF most days. YMMV.

I guess it’s time to talk about alcohol. Listen, I do love me a delicious glass of “Tuesday wine” or a well-made “Side-swiped”. Research is all over the map on low-consumption levels, but heavier consumption levels have pretty much always been found to be bad for you. Stuff like liver disease we all know about, but there are some really nasty cancers (tongue, throat) that are definitely strongly associated with heavier drinking, to say nothing about not-so-great behaviors like driving under the influence. What is controversial is the question of low to moderate consumption. One or two drinks per day. All of the research, and I mean all of it on both sides of the conclusion fence, is flawed. Poorly controlled, under-powered studies that fail to filter out confounding factors are the rule.

I’m afraid there are no absolutes when it comes to alcohol. For every study that says every drop of alcohol, whether it’s pear vodka or Puligny-Montrachet, is poison there is one that purports to show that moderate consumption reduces all-cause mortality when compared to no consumption. Every “social coin” has a “heads” picture of close friends sharing a bottle of wine as they commune over a shared meal on the other side of a “tails” depicting a family destroyed by some drink-driven debacle. Can you effect temperance, or are you more aligned with Samuel Jackson who would say that forbearance is the easier path? For the time being, at least with moderate intake, the science isn’t helpful enough. You will have to be thoughtful and decide for yourself.

Test to help stratify your health risks. Eat to support your daily activities including the exercise that we will discuss in Healthspan Part 4. Remember, you are not just doing this for yourself, but for all of your friends and family members who want you to stick around and be healthy as long as possible.

1) Anniversary. Our beloved daughter Megan and son-in-law Ryan celebrated their 10th wedding Anniversary yesterday. 10 years! Man, what a ride for them. For us. The first of our kids to marry, Megan was singing along to the radio on the way to school when she promised me that “Butterfly Kisses” would be our Daddy/Daughter song. And in a blink of an eye, there we were, holding each other so tightly, dancing all alone to “Butterfly Kisses”, just like Megan promised.

Their light continues to shine. Happy Anniversary!

2) Ask. Ask for it. This comes up every now and again. If you want something, at least something that is reasonable to want, go ahead and ask for it. Thinking about this always makes me think about Wayne Gretzky: “you miss every shot you don’t take.” Mr. Gretzky didn’t score every time he got a shot on goal; sometimes the goalie made a save. For sure life is like this.

No one gets everything they ask for. I made a big ask of someone I am just getting to know in my professional world. We both acknowledged that, but he thanked me for making the ask because it made clear my commitment to both the endeavor we were discussing and my willingness to commit to both it and to him. Had I not asked he might not have gleaned that knowledge from the rest of the conversation, and for sure the likelihood of achieving my personal goal would be close to zero.

Take the shot. It’s the only way to score. Ask for it.

3) Temperance. This week’s “musings…” continue my exploration of extending Healthspan, the combination of longevity with health and well-being, as I tackle nutrition. Trust me, nutrition following on last week’s mini-rant on “Dry January” is pure coincidence. I will touch on the alcohol pseudo-controversy below, but I stumbled on this gem from an earlier time that sets the stage rather nicely. To be honest I actually tried to find this post last week. Herewith, gently updated thoughts on temperance:

“Beth and I have been on an adventure cruise, a quest of sorts. We’ve been exploring the wonders of the classic cocktail. Equal parts alchemy and indulgence, our trip has been more exciting (as all adventures are) because of the little bit of risk involved.

What if we find one (or two, or…) we really like?

Like many pleasures to drink is to willingly hold the proverbial double-edged sword in your hand; in this case the sword just happens to look like a martini glass. Alcohol as both a substance and a subject is complex and rife with controversy. It’s legal, but only to a point. It’s beneficial, but with a caveat–people who drink just enough live longer than those who drink more or not at all. As a chemical it’s a depressant, and yet in many circumstances it imbues joy in those who imbibe. It all comes down to a fine and delicate balance, not unlike a perfectly aged wine.

The matter of regulation intrudes on the pleasure. Knowing the existence of the second edge and maintaining an awareness of its cut is both necessary and nettlesome. If you find this lurking behind every glass it may rob you of the joy; if you careen from joy to joy you will inevitably suffer and bleed. Temperance, then, is the essential ingredient, the co-pilot who must be ever present on this particular trip.

Ah, but temperance, willful self-control can feel like a 50 MPH governor on a Ferrari, especially if you make the Indiana Jones-like discoveries we’ve made. It might be so difficult and so distasteful that you decide to roll your dice on the “not at all” line. “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.” Samuel Johnson. Indeed, temperance is so often fueled by the wraith “guilt.” There’s joy and pleasure to be had, but what if there’s too much? Ah, guilt.

It’s all so complicated, not unlike the math involved in the archaic elixirs we’ve been experiencing. So very hard sometimes to ease off the throttle without the aid of the governor. If the “Gizmo”, the “Sideswiped”, and the “Carro del Lô” be guilty pleasures we might ask my interesting discovery, the socialite Charlotte Stockdale, what she thinks of such things.

“I don’t have a guilty pleasure. I don’t really feel guilty about anything. What’s the point?”

As out of the corner of your eye you see it, the shadow of the double-edged sword, one edge Samuel, the other Stockdale.”

5) Healthspan Part 3: Nutrition*. “You can’t out train a lousy diet.” –Greg Glassman (and likely others)

To entertain both a long and a healthy life one must address how we go about fueling said life. Ya gotta eat. It’s WHAT you choose to eat, and let’s face it, HOW MUCH you eat that determines the effect of nutrition on your Healthspan. Add in at least a little bit of thought about WHEN you eat and you have the basic outline of how you can design your own personal plan for eating your way to a longer life that is freer from the ravages of chronic disease.

Or so says the guy who chose to not only have that extra glass of wine, but did so after consuming a bowl of ice cream after the stop time of my eating window had passed.

Let’s lay down some stipulations before we start. First, there is really no settled science behind any recommendations on what constitutes the one, best nutrition plan. Literally, none. This is me, giving you my distillation of my research and a view of what I am trying to do for myself and Beth. We shop in a grocery store and buy what is available there. We eat at home 5 or 6 days a week. There are a couple of allergies that force us to be a bit particular about recipes but don’t affect our Healthspan-driven options.

Start at the beginning: how much should you eat? Easiest answer ever…LESS! To know how much you should eat it is first necessary to know how much you are consuming now by measuring literally everything containing calories that you consume. There are any number of apps you can use (we used MyFitnessPal). Prepare to be shocked at what you find.

Eat primarily to fuel your life. Eat to support your daily activities and your efforts at fitness, not the production of fat. Think about the challenges that being less strong will pose for you as you get older. You are most likely under-serving protein. We lose muscle mass as we age, even if we strength train. Everything I’ve read says that we should be eating more protein.

What kind of protein? Again, my choices are driven by the reality of my suburban life. By and large it seems that we should all be eating more plant-based protein at the expense of industrially produced animal-based protein, especially red meat. Fill in the spaces as you will. We eat fish and some poultry chez us.

Sugar is mostly not great. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is straight up bad. Learn the Glycemic Index and choose foods that have a low GI. Oranges and apples over bananas and mangoes. Green beans and Brussel sprouts instead of rice or pasta. Mushrooms. How about fat? Sure! Again, just be mindful about the fat. Don’t let some manufacturer mass-produce your fat intake. Avocados and macadamia nuts.

You get the picture.

How about the “When” to eat. Man, what a mess this is. Total see-saw. Eat when you are hungry vs. eat on a schedule. Traditional 3 squares or time limited. FWIW I find the evidence for fasting, specifically time-limited eating or IF, to be moderately compelling. Not more than the HOW MUCH or WHAT research but enough to dabble in IF most days. YMMV.

I guess it’s time to talk about alcohol. I’m afraid there are no absolutes when it comes to alcohol. All of the research is flawed. Poorly controlled, under-powered studies that fail to filter out confounding factors are the rule. For every study that says every drop of alcohol, whether it’s pear vodka or Puligny-Montrachet, is poison there is one that purports to show that moderate consumption reduces all-cause mortality when compared to no consumption. Can you effect temperance, or are you more aligned with Samuel Jackson who would say that forbearance is the easier path? For the time being, at least with moderate intake, the science isn’t helpful enough. You will have to be thoughtful and decide for yourself.

Test to help stratify your health risks. Eat to support your daily activities including the exercise that we will discuss in Healthspan Part 4. Remember, you are not just doing this for yourself, but for all of your friends and family members who want you to stick around and be healthy as long as possible.

I’ll see you next week…

*A stand-alone expanded post on Healthspan and nutrition is coming this week.

1) Martini. A classic cocktail containing gin and vermouth that is stirred. Typically garnished with a pimento-stuffed olive. Substitute a cocktail onion and you no longer have a martini; you have concocted a Gibson.

2) Bradford. If you shake your gin and vermouth cocktail you have made a Bradford. It may be just me (it often is), but I think James Bond would have been even cooler had he pointed this out in the very first Fleming novel, and asked for a Bradford thereafter.

3) Turow. Lawyer turned author Scott Turow introduced himself to us with “Presumed Innocent”, a novel I read in the caddy shack one summer. One wonders if his latest, “Presumed Guilty” will complete the arc of his career, not unlike Don Winslow who has taken his leave from staring at the “blank page” with the publication of his “City Trilogy”.

Either way, how cool would it be to see Harrison Ford reprise Rusty Sabich?

4) Commitments. No, not making some kind of grand January commitment on top of whatever resolutions you made (and have likely already forsaken). I’m talking about the movie from the early ’90’s that followed an Irish start-up band that played classic R&B while their “manager” pined for a meeting with Wilson Pickett. Did you see it? I stumbled upon the soundtrack after listening to the Blues Brothers, and now Beth and I have it on while I pound away at my MacBook.

We definitely won’t be watching football tonight.

5) Dry. “I find abstinence to be as easy as I find moderation to be hard. ” –St. Augustine

“I have to admit to never giving much thought to where juniper comes from. It seemed good enough to know that without juniper there is not gin; without gin there are no Martinis; and absent Martinis you have a dystopia too awful to contemplate.” –Eric Felton in the WSJ

“I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never drink it–unless I’m thirsty.” –Lily Bollinger

Dry January is confusing. At least to me it is. I mean, if you abstain on a schedule without any larger incentive or inspiration than the randomness of the Roman calendar, is it even abstinence? I get traditional fasts like Ramadan and the various abstentions Catholics impose on themselves during Lent. There is a cultural significance, an ancestral gathering of sorts. Totally get it.

But Dry January? Sorry, I don’t get it.

Now please don’t conflate this with the notion that I somehow don’t understand the need for abstinence when true substance abuse or addiction is in play. There has been a bunch of all sorts of that in our extended families, and our living relatives so afflicted would agree with St. Augustine on the choice of abstinence. And I don’t really have any trouble or quarrel with folks who use January as a way to re-set their relationship with alcohol, or Pringles for that matter. It’s just another part of the declaration of better intentions made on behalf of yourself, and by extension those who care about you, in which we indulge as we hang a new calendar on the fridge.

Nope, it’s the nagging feeling of being nagged that sours my mood as surely as too much citrus fouls any number of classic cocktails. In truth it took Tressie McMillan Cottom’s column in the Sunday Times for this realization to bubble to the surface. I’ve always felt a certain unease with the way people publicize their Dry January plans and progress. Not everyone of course, but enough folks not just celebrating their decision but doing so from the pulpit. Preachy and judgy is how Ms. Cottom describes articles and posts. People who always, or nearly always abstain, because of addiction or otherwise, typically just say “no thanks” or simply order a Diet Coke. Dry Januarians seem compelled to tell you all about “why”.

Perhaps I’m a bit more cranky this January, coming as it does a couple of weeks after the Scolder…er…Surgeon General declared that minimal to moderate alcohol consumption raises the risk of multiple cancers so high that a newer, more damning warning should be put on every bottle or can. Just in time for Dry January. He did so despite an announcement literally only weeks prior by the NHI saying that with the possible exception of breast cancer, those who consume small to moderate amounts of alcohol have a lower “all cause” mortality than teetotalers, a conclusion reached with “moderate to strong certainty.”

I’ve always gotten a kick out of the George Thoroughgood song “I Drink Alone.” It’s catchy, has a couple of neat guitar licks, and rather than being an anthem for solo drinking it pokes fun at the very notion. At least for me. Have you watched the Netflix documentary on so-called “Blue Zones” where people tend to live longer, happier lives? With the exception of a Quaker community, all of these places tend to be ones in which people gather regularly and routinely, whether or not they are tippling. But tipple they do, in the company of friends and family. Do they get together in order to drink, or do they drink because they are together? The author of the study from which the documentary was made doesn’t examine that nuance.

Again, I honestly don’t care if you do or don’t choose to drink. It’s really a very personal choice, one that can be made for innumerable reasons, none of which are really anyone’s business. When I was a kid I chose not to indulge in cannabis, and as I got older by extension not to partake in any of the other various mind-altering substances available to those so inclined. Doesn’t really matter why, and I’m not sure I’ve ever really talked about it with almost anyone. And that’s probably what grates about Dry January, those that need to tell almost everyone all about it.

There is one circumstance where you are quite welcome to share your Dry January plans, though. If we are together, out for dinner or taking in a ballgame either at the arena or in one of our buddy’s living rooms, feel free to let us all know that you won’t be having a cocktail, glass of wine, or a beer. We are hanging out, not checking out each other’s InstaFace Tokster posts, and we are likely friendly enough that face to face we will forgive you a little victory dance. Your’e sober, after all; how crazy are you gonna get.

We’re all just thankful that you’ve volunteered to be the Designated Driver for 31 straight days.

Damp or dry, I’ll see you next week…

“How was your Birthday, Dr. White?”

It’s amazing how, where, and why so many epiphanies arrive. Honestly, I’m not sure why this surprises me. I really haven’t had all that many of what could or should really be called epiphanies, but the few that I have had have all kinda snuck up on me out of the blue mist of the mundane. For example, while playing golf with my Dad the week after 9/11 I was stopped in my tracks when a very simple, altogether reasonable question–do you want to play the Ocean Course again–delivered to me a two part gem. The stuff that makes me unhappy brings me down lower than the stuff that makes me happy picks me up. You can’t necessarily make the happy stuff happy all the time, but you can surely make an effort to avoid at least SOME of the unhappy stuff once it’s been identified.

I hated the Ocean Course; no, thank you, I’d rather not play it again.

And so it was that I found myself answering all kinds of folks who were genuinely interested in how my 65th birthday went. What did I do to mark the occasion? Did I enjoy the day? How was I feeling about 65? Normal questions asked in good faith by decent folks. I spent a goodly part of each day answering each person with some version of “good” or “great” or “you know, it’s just a number after all”, and “that’s very kind” when they expressed disbelief at the number in question. It was nice, actually, to receive those tiny gifts of interest from so many people, most of whom live lives that only intersect with the professional and not the personal version of who I might be at any given point.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve become a bit kinder to myself, especially when it comes to time. It’s a cliche, of course, but time is really the most valuable thing no one has enough of. A very nice benefit of being my own boss is the ability to give myself the gift of time during my birthday week even though I was returning from a lengthy Holiday break. Some of that time was quite productive (I reviewed a very complex case as an expert witness), some of it was put to practical use (I’m rebuilding the fitness habits that fell apart along with my hips), but the real gift was the luxury of indulging in tiny little pleasures, like my love for finales.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find “lasts” so fascinating? Beth is endlessly tickled by how hard I will work to watch the last episode of a television series I barely followed, or read the final entry of a long-running serial or book series. I think it started with the finale of M*A*S*H. The most recent favorite has to be Ted Lasso. Did you ever read that series about the female detective, maybe she was a doctor, where each book was titled with a letter? You know, “C Is For Whatever”, and so on? When the author got to “Y” I was literally going to read “A” so that I could read “Z” so that I could then see how she closed out her epic trip through the alphabet. I swear that I was as saddened by the author’s passing before she started “Z” as any devoted reader who’d made it from “A to Y”.

All of which is a build-up to the gift of watching the recording that I made of Hoda Kotb’s final 3 hours as co-host of NBC’s Today show. We are Today Show watchers, Beth and I. Hoda’s story is a good one. She seems to be a genuinely nice person, someone who truly likes, nay loves, most of the folks around her. Someone who is grateful for the life she gets to live. Unlike so many famous TV personalities she was leaving the show on her own terms for reasons that I can personally understand and support: she wished to be home with and for her two grade-school daughters as they grew up.

And then, there it was. Pretty much the last guest was a country music star, a guy named Walker Hays. Now, I am not the country music guy in the family, although everyone will likely agree that I’ve become at least conversant with the genre as it has become more “pop” in recent years. Still, I needed to Google Hays to “remember” that his big hit is “We Fancy”, or something like that. But here he was, strumming a guitar as he entered stage left, singing a song that he and Hoda had written together called “Wednesday”* and bringing with him my epiphany: Most days are just Wednesdays. A truly happy life is one where you are grateful, truly grateful, for the Wednesdays.

“Some days are the best days. Some days are ‘she said yes’ days. Some days are ‘it’s a girl, good Lord how in the world did I get blessed’ days. Some days are the worst days, on the taillights of a hearse days.

Most days are just Wednesdays. Get up and do the same old same again’s days.

If tomorrow ain’t nothing new, I’m just glad I get to do, just another Wednesday with you.”

Seriously, how good is that?! I went through half a box of tissues, me and everyone in that studio audience just yanking ’em out of the box, watching and listening as my big old epiphany landed. Most days are just days. Events, happenings, milestones might be what we remember, might be how we track our stories, but it’s all of those plain old every days that make up a life. Finding the joys of those every days, and more importantly being grateful for the micro joys that make up those days, is the key to happiness.

“What did you do on your birthday?” I went to work. It was a Tuesday and so I went to the operating room, and then I did a bunch of lasers, and after that saw a bunch of folks in the clinic. I got to help some really nice people be healthy. I spent the night with my Better 95%. We had dinner at home. Chicken. Not a birthday dinner but a recipe we have maybe once a week. Had a glass of “Tuesday Wine”. Watched a TV show we’ve been enjoying. It was just another Tuesday, nothing new, in a place that makes me happy and with the person I love more than anyone or anything, like so many Tuesdays I’ve been lucky to have over so many years.

Thank you for the Birthday wishes. It was just another Tuesday. It doesn’t get any better than that.

I’ll see you next week…

Twelve hour drive home yesterday after visiting Megan, Ryan, Tracey and Steve in the Low Country. 20ish degree high for the day, much too cold to brave the garage gym. A few errands, 11 or 12 newspapers to get through, groceries and laundry, a possible EPIC step toward landing the plane, and all of a sudden I realize, no “musings…”!

I came upon this gem and I think it is as applicable today as it was some 10+ years ago. Did you make any resolutions? I did. Well, sorta kinda did. If I didn’t work out today does that mean I already punted one of the big ones? For whatever it’s worth I’m off tomorrow and will doubtless squeeze something that looks like exercise in, so I’m going with “no” on that one. Last year ended pretty OK, and so far 2025 is starting off pretty OK, too. I’m just gonna go with that.

So rather than stress myself out by postponing a well-deserved, much welcomed “Sideswiped” I’m just going to help myself (and you) to a little dish of New Year’s leftovers with this re-post from the past:

Tons of random stuff banging around between my ears, so much that it’s a little difficult to wade through and make sense of any of it. One little thing keeps bubbling up to the surface, long enough at least to be noticed: the lowly comma. Mathew McConaughy describes himself as a “comma person”. I get that.

What with all of the New Year’s resolution action, here and, well, everywhere, it can get to feeling like there really is a discreet finish to a year. A ‘period’. Full Stop. Does it seem like that to you? Everyone gets all in a rush to finish off a year, in this case 2013, so that they can get started on the next one. All kinds of retrospectives, writ large and small, come cascading down at the end of the year. As if it really was an end. Capped by a ‘period’, you know?

The thing is, though, that I don’t really feel all that different. It doesn’t really feel like anything was all that completed on December 31st. Or, for that matter, like there’s any huge new start, re-boot, or even a mulligan just after that ‘period’. Sure, there’s a really convenient opportunity to take stock, maybe make some adjustments or even re-route, but the longer I’ve been at this New Year thing the less it seems like anything is ever really at Full Stop.

More like a pause. That’s it. Not a ‘period’ so much as a ‘comma’ leading into whatever comes next.

A sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, or the whole darned story ends with a period. The year is over and the last box has been checked, but the story continues on New Year’s Day. Even the most severe pivot is still connected to the other side of the angle, the beginning of the line. The line, the sentence, the story and the life do not really stop at all; New Year, Birthday, whatever. We may pause, indeed we do pause, sometimes quite often. Full stop? Nah. Not us.

That’s what’s got me thinking about the comma. The story goes on and on, one big run-on sentence with an occasional pause but never a stop. It’s connected front to back, side to side, and start to finish by those pauses, by the lowly comma. I think I get what McConaughy is getting at. New Year’s Day is a comma place for sure, but neither time nor life hits a ‘period’ there, either. We just keep on going. The comma means there’s more to come.

I think I might be a “comma person”, too.

And there you go. Not bad, eh? Seems like I used to be pretty good at this “musings…” stuff. For what it’s worth when I re-read this I found myself nodding along. I will likely never have the pleasure of meeting Mr. McConaughy, let alone chat with him, but heretofore I’m going to think of the two of us as “brothers in comma”.

Happy New Year. I’ll see you next week…

1) Rain. It is monsoon season in the Low Country of South Carolina. 3 days straight of almost constant downpour. With our dogs.

The smell of Christmas is wet dog.

2) Brobdignagian. My (no so) little dog, Bohdi, as sorta kinda a bespoke purchase by Beth. After losing Abby, the border collie we “inherited” from Dan (he might dispute the actual transaction), the companion we rescued, Sasha, became a big ball of angst. After almost a year of searching for a “mini” Aussie to rescue Beth found a specialty breeder. Bohdi was supposed to be 15″ at the shoulder and weigh around 25 lbs.

Yah, about that…

At 19″ and a bit over 40 lbs. I’ve been on a search for a word that describes the opposite of the “runt” of the litter. Since my little quest has come up empty, at least when it comes to an official descriptor, I have found a candidate. Herewith I nominate “Brobdignagian” (brahb-di-NA-gee-ann; from Gulliver’s Travels) as the antonym for “runt” to describe the largest puppy in a litter. As long as I’m taking it upon myself to make this declaration let me presume to offer a contraction as well: “Brob”.

And there you have it. The runt and the brob, both sides of the size coin.

3) Tipping Math. I truly hate the “tip for everything” thing. Hatehatehate it. You made me a double-something half-another? Sure, you get a tip. I’m stopping at Dunkin’ Donuts (yah, DONUTS dammit) and you poured me a black coffee and then spin the card display around so that I can choose a 18, 20 or 22%? I hate to be a Scrooge but I’m sorry, I just don’t get it.

Even worse, that hand-held thingy that the waitstaff carries around now so that they can finish the transaction right there at the table? That causes a whole nuther set of problems. In reality I am a very generous tipper, and sometimes 22% just isn’t enough. The other night at dinner I asked how to do a custom tip and ended up doing the math wrong. Instead of tipping high I shorted the poor kid. Had to chase her down with a handfull of cash to make up the difference.

So yeah, I hate the whole “tip for everything” thing.

4) Healthspan Testing. New Year’s is just around the corner. Gearing up for Resolution Season? Of course you are. Just this morning I re-booted the strength for mature athletes program created and taught by my fellow CrossFit OG Bill Russell (surf over to billrussell.com to sign up for remote instruction). This is a perfect time for you to start your Healthspan project, your effort not only to live longer, but to do so while simultaneously pushing the effects of chronic disease further and further out so that you not only live longer, you live healthily as well.

One of the things that made CrossFit such a sea change in the fitness (and health) world was its emphasis on measuring your fitness. “Work capacity across broad time and modal domains” was the fitness goal and one of the upshots of this was that you could measure your level of fitness by comparing your work-out results over time. Why not get some “pre-” numbers on a selection of fitness benchmarks as you start the New Year? Honestly, it probably matters less which ones and how many you choose as long as they can be measured.

As a CrossFitter in my heart I will look at stuff like pull-ups and push-ups, deadlift and squat multi-rep maxes, rowing splits and times on the bike. After having my hips replaced I’m not supposed to run, but those of you who do should not only seek distance baselines (5K, etc), but push yourself for a mile time and a 400 sprint. Maybe this is the year that I finally take up race walking.

You can get super fancy of course. Lots of Healthspan gurus would encourage you to get an accurate measurement of your VO2 Max, for example, or go all out and measure lactic acid clearance. If you’re into it and can pull it off, especially VO2 Max, sure…go for it. FWIW I probably won’t just because of the hassle factor. For those of you who plan to aim for workouts in particular heart rate (HR) zones you’ll have to decide if you will have that measured or simply use age averages. Body composition, specifically % body weight (BW) and visceral fat, is on interest to me. Hassle or no I’m on the search for a place to get a DEXA scan. And listen, if you are elderly-adjacent like yours truly let’s be smart and check-in with our doc, OK? Maybe some kind of stress test or a Cardiac Calcium Score.

Just sayin…

There are some very basic, classic medical/health measures that you should get as you embark on this journey. Blood pressure is a no-brainer. Take yours first thing in the morning before any caffeine or breakfast. If you are going to take this at all seriously you won’t be able to avoid getting some bloodwork. The bare minimum is serum lipids, your cholesterol and its subtypes. Make sure to include LDL-C and Lp(a). A fasting glucose and an HbA1c (hemoglobing A1C) will give you insight on your insulin metabolism.

Now you need to decide just how much information you feel that you need. Why? Well, on a practical level some tests are expensive. A positive result may prompt you to seek more advanced (and more expensive) testing. The best known test in this category right now is the “Grail” (presumably as in “holy”) offered for around $1000 by Galeri, that tests for 50 or so cancer markers. On top of the cost there is a risk of both false positives (leading to unnecessary testing) and false negatives (leading to a false sense of security). Still, with the possible exceptions of mammograms and colonoscopies when appropriate, you aren’t likely to seek out a screening PET scan to confirm your negative Grail.

Brain health is a big deal. Testing here is a tough call for me. APOE is a gene that is highly predictive of Alzheimer’s if you are unfortunate enough to roll craps on the wrong combination. Everyone gets two copies of the gene: E2 is protective, E3 is neutral, and E4 confers an increased risk. E2E2 is the best combo of course, and E4E4 is a devastating result. Why is it a tough call? Man, there’s really nothing you can do except EVERYTHING, and even then you might still be afflicted. Since I already plan to do almost everything anyway (I don’t think I would enjoy leaving that nightly glass of wine behind). I just don’t know if I want to know, ya know?

So there you are, just in time for this year’s resolutions, some testing to set your baselines as you embark on your Healthspan journey. Nutrition, exercise, supplementation, and happiness still to come.

5) Distance. What I’ve always liked about the Christmas holiday season is how it always seemed to shrink the distances between friends and loved ones. Each year we would move Heaven and earth to connect. And not modern electron-driven connections via FaceBook, X, Instagram or TikTok, but real, live, honest-to-goodness reach out and touch connecting.

“Hugging distance” I once called it.

If you are very observant you might have noticed a couple of connections missing from my list above. Postal service and phone calls are how the extended White family has always communicated. Once upon a time my Mom sent each of us a postcard every day. That’s every single day. Four of us. We called and talked on the phone, all of us. We still call and we still talk (you young’uns might have a fleeting knowledge of what that green “call” button on your Instagram poster is there for), but the postcards stopped long ago. Our moms and dads are all gone now. No matter how far we might travel there are no hugs from our parents waiting for Beth or for me.

But this is not one of those wistful “oh I wish” or “oh if only I had” posts. Parents and grandparents depart. Our lives proceed as they will. As they have. We connect and we disconnect. Sometimes quite deliberately, on purpose, and sometimes quite simply by accident. At any one time, though, we are connected to some someones, and our connections might still include a Mom and a Dad. The door that opened this year was ours; we were the ones engulfed in the hugs that tumbled in. Beth and I travel on Christmas this year with one part sorrow at the leaving, and two parts joy at the destination where still more hugs await.

Until now, to my great surprise and delight I hear, for however long it may last, “Lets get together then, Dad. We’re gonna have a good time, then.”

I’ll see you on New Year’s Day…

It’s Christmas morning and I’m thinking of home. I mean, of course I am. It’s Christmas. Even if you can’t BE home you can still GO home, right? What else did you expect? Today isn’t the time to think about ideas or issues of the day. Come on…it’s Christmas! So it’s to home I go. To take a moment…just a moment…and peer through the windows of the home that lives in my heart. Come with me, won’t you? But bundle up now. It may be warm around the hearth but it’s awfully chilly standing outside at the window.

Off to Southbridge we go. Careful as we drive in. Lebanon Street was pretty narrow even back in the days of the original VW Bug. Even those big old Chevy wagons seem like mid-size cars when you park one next to, say, a Suburban. Look at all of the lights on the trees! They’re all colors, too; none of that pristine modern “tiny white lights only” stuff. And the snow! Southbridge was in a little snow zone in central Massachusetts. Heck, it seemed like every town north of New Jersey was in a snow belt back then. It looks pretty, all lit up by the street lights.

Here we are, 96 Lebanon Street. The house is so small! Look, the carport is still there. This must be BK, “before Kerstin.” Dad hasn’t turned it into a family room and a bedroom for the boys yet. The upstairs windows are all dark, but there’s a light on in the living room. Here, squeeze through the bushes and we can see in the front window. There’s Mom wrapping our gifts while Dad is putting all the decorations on the tree. I’d almost forgotten: when we went to bed on Christmas Eve there were no gifts out and the tree was bare. My parents would be up all night helping Santa bring Christmas home. Dad just opened a box of leaded tinsel and began to place the strands one at a time until you could barely see the lights and the decorations through the silver “rain”!

It’s Christmas morning now. Randy and I are sprinting up the front hall stairs so that means that Kerstin has joined us and we are now four. Randy is leading the charge, of course. He was always up first on Christmas day, dragging me out of bed and then jumping up and down on Tracey and Kerstin until they got out of bed and we all headed in to Mom and Dad’s room. We had to wait for Dad to to downstairs first. There he is! Oh my, he really looks tired; he must have pulled a near all-nighter. In goes the plug and on go the lights, and Dad is setting up his camera, complete with that silver plate-surrounded flash bulb that instantly blinded us as we tore down the stairs and around the corner.

Santa made it to 96 Lebanon Street again!

Did you have visiting family, or did you travel to a relative’s house on Christmas Day? Gama and Gramp always came to visit us in Southbridge for Christmas dinner. Just peak around the corner of the house over here by the Pingeton’s and you can see Gramp’s Cadillac pulling up. I honestly can’t remember if they brought more presents, only that it just wasn’t a whole Christmas until they arrived. We’re all excited. Even from all the way over here you can see Dad smile as my Mom hugs her parents.

Here, take my hand and let’s take a walk over to 30 Kirkbrae Drive. My family has moved to Rhode Island now. Don’t worry, it’s only a short walk. Christmas is a time of magic and wonder. We’ll be there in just a couple of minutes. Whoa…I forgot how much bigger 30 Kirkbrae was than 96 Lebanon. Same colored Christmas lights on the bushes, though!

It looks like we, the older three of us, are in college which means that Kerstin is in high school. We lost Gramp a few years ago. Everyone says he died of a broken heart. I know losing him broke mine. We can come right up to the big picture window here on the porch. Gama’s there, too. She lives with Mom and Dad and Kerstin now. We’re all hanging that same leaded tinsel on the tree, one strand at a time! Dad gave up the all-nighters years ago but somehow has managed to find that tinsel even though the country banned it years ago.

Did I ever tell you about the White family tradition of “rejecting gifts”? Mom wanted everyone to love every gift. If you really didn’t like something you could politely say so and decline it. The catch: there would be no substitute or replacement gift. Poor Kerstin seemed to have at least one gift rejected every year until she came home as a college freshman with Notre Dame swag! She batted 1.000 that year. Let’s walk around to the back porch where the window is closer to the tree so that we can hear the banter a little better. Dad is still handing out gifts one at a time. You had to “ooo and ahhh” over everyone’s gifts and wait your turn. My folks were super generous; some years we would be at the gifting thing for hours. Oh my, it looks like it’s the Christmas with most famous “rejection” ever. Mom finally caved and got the boys jean jackets for Christmas.

But she brought the wrong jackets! Wrangler with fluffy lining instead of regular Levi’s. Randy opened his first and shook his head. “Really Mom?! This was the gift you couldn’t get wrong” as he pushed it back under the tree. Dad handed me an identical gift. I looked at Mom and raised an eyebrow. She nodded and I simply put it back under the tree. Everyone is laughing about it, even Mom. She felt so badly that for the first, and only time, she replaced the rejected gift, sending Randy to the mall to make the exchange. She didn’t even blink when he upgraded, coming home with Calvin Klein instead of Levi’s. Here, come a little closer and you can smell the bacon that Dad is cooking up in the kitchen.

Oh, you’re shivering. I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s so warm in there that, well, I can feel it even out here. Are you OK? I’d like to take you to one more Christmas home if you’re up for it. Yes? Great. Another quick walk, just around this corner. Ah, yes, here we are. 29123 Lincoln Road. My little family has landed in Greater Cleveland of all places. Each year our house would be decorated with Beth’s flair; sometimes even with colored lights in the bushes out front!

If we step up to the window over by Cliff’s house we’ll have a great view. There we are, Beth and I and our three kids. It looks like Danny is maybe 13 or so which makes Megan 11 and Randy 9. And whaddaya know, there we all are in the “dancing room”, our name for the living room pre-furniture, and sitting on the couch are my Mom and Dad, now Gram and Gramp! Kerstin lowered the boom on Gram after she decided that none of her children had adequately invited her and Gramp to spend the holidays with them and sulked off to NYC to see the Rockettes.

Hilariously describing their companions as “all the other parents whose children didn’t invite them for Christmas”!

We’ve come full circle. Thanks to Kerstin very fourth year we host my folks for Christmas. There I am (look how skinny!) handing our gifts one at a time. Oh, and no rejecting gifts in this house. Oh no! Beth always hated that little White Family quirk and put the kibosh on it at our first Christmas together. No matter, though. Come closer and put your ear up against the window. It’s cold, I know, but it’ll be worth it. That’s my Dad laughing! And Mom helping my Randy with a bow. In a minute or two I’ll head into the kitchen and fire up some bacon and 29123 Lincoln will be filled with all of the warmth of 30 Kirkbrae and 96 Lebanon. Gosh, it’s so good to see everyone, Mom and Dad, Gama and Gramp, my siblings, Beth and all of my kids…together and happy and warm. Those were good times, at home.

The windows seem to be getting blurry. No? Or maybe it’s me. Something in my eye, maybe. That must be it. I think it’s time I get you back home anyway. Get you warmed up, in case you might want to take a walk of your own. You know, a walk home. Home for Christmas. Christmas is a magic time, you know. Home will be just around the corner. I’m sure everyone is still there, at least today, on Christmas, waiting for you.

Merry Christmas…

*A respectful nod and thanks to the late Dick Feagler and his annual column “A Christmas Visit to Aunt Ida’s”.