Author Archives: kzmclain

First and Ten, Do It Again

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I believe most people are good
And most mama’s oughta qualify for sainthood.
I believe most Friday nights look better under neon or stadium lights.
I believe you love who you love;
Ain’t nothing you should ever be ashamed of.
I believe this world ain’t half as bad as it looks.
I believe most people are good.  – David Frasier / Ed Hill / Josh Kear

The other day I was cleaning the house, and began listening to the new song from Luke Bryan called Most People are Good. Playing that song wasn’t perhaps the smartest thing in the world to do, because that happens to be one of those songs that runs endlessly through my brain at night, beginning just as soon as I wake up, even if it’s just to turn over. I then lay awake for two hours, perhaps because some of the words won’t come to me; it might be because I can’t remember who sings the song; I could be wondering if there is any living human being with whiter teeth than Luke Bryan’s; it might simply be because I’m trying to figure out if it’s true that most people are good. I hope he’s right.

I love the verse for many reasons, not the least being the line about Friday nights looking better under neon or stadium lights. As I listened to the song that day, it suddenly struck me that there are likely many people, most who have never lived in the south or the midwest, who don’t understand why Friday nights should be under stadium lights.

My husband, for example. Bill grew up in Chicago. Not in a suburb of Chicago but right in the city itself, on the south side, along with Leroy Brown. He went to his neighborhood public high school, where they didn’t play football on Friday nights. There was a reason that Leroy Brown had a razor in his shoe. So, while he can conceptually understand about Friday night football games, he can’t understand with his heart what high school football means to people throughout middle America.

Because my Catholic high school shared a stadium with the public high school, our football games weren’t always on Friday nights; sometimes they were on Saturday nights. It didn’t matter, because Friday afternoons during football season, the entire school was focused on the weekend football game. The Pep Club decorated the halls and the gym. In the late afternoon, classes were suspended because the entire school attended the pep rally. The players were recognized and the coach gave his pep talk to the school body. The cheerleaders led the crowd in school spirit calls. Go Shamrocks!

The night of the game, it wasn’t just the parents of those playing on the field who looked on, but much of the town. The parking lot filled up early. There were announcers and sponsors and concessions and excitement. Though our school was small, our football team was always mighty.  We were like an episode of Friday Night Lights, without the horrible injury in the first game, thank you God.

And something similar was happening on Friday nights all over Nebraska, and Oklahoma, and Texas, and Wyoming, and Kansas, and Iowa, and all over the south and southeast. Young men were playing their hearts out on the football field, dreaming of playing for the state university, while their family and friends and school pals watched.

I don’t know if it’s still that way in my hometown. Back in those days, football was everything. Now I suspect there are soccer games and baseball games and girls’ volleyball games that capture people’s attention. Still, as I think back to my teenaged years, it was much as it is in this tune that country singer Scotty McCreery sings….

Friday night football is king.
Sweet tea goes good with anything.
Fireflies come out when the sun goes down.
Nobody eats till you say Amen
And everybody knows your mama’s name.
You can see who loves who from miles around
In a water tower town – Swindell Cole / David Lynn Hutton / Tammi Lynn Kidd

You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman

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Each day it gets a little bit closer to when we see our AZ house in our rear view mirror. We haven’t started packing yet, but to quote an acquaintance, we’ve begun packing in our minds.

What we’ve been focusing on (probably to avoid packing with our bodies) is doing some things we haven’t done before during our last few days before we leave. Last week, on a day when the temperature was going to be in the semi-reasonable range, we decided to embark on an adventure that was a mere 30 minutes from our front door – the Bryce Thompson Arboretum.

According to the dictionary, an arboretum is a botanical garden that contains collections of living plants and is intended at least in part for scientific study. Maybe that’s why it took so long for us to visit this nature center that is only a stone’s throw away. Scientific study = Study of scientific things. Since I flunked geology in college, science is clearly not my friend. Still, the day looked to be beautiful and anything was better than packing.

Not only did I flunk geology in college, I’m not particularly a nature lover. When one of my grandkids (and when I say “one of my grandkids” I’m generally talking about either Dagny or Maggie Faith) brings forth a worm or some sort of beetle to share with me, I quickly dispel the notion with a loud ewwwww. (By the way, I passed off my feelings about nature to my son Court, who, when he was about 14 or 15 years old, responded with an emphatic  “I hate nature” when I invited him to enjoy a nature hike with me.) My sister Bec, on the other hand, is a nature lover. In fact, she volunteers as a docent at the Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. She knows the names of birds and plants; I know the names of candy bars and potato chips.

Before we even got into our car, we decided we would take the free tour they offer at the Arboretum. That way, we wouldn’t be tempted to run through the park at break-neck speed so that we could go to lunch. It was a very wise choice. The man who led the group tour is a retired geology professor from Michigan. He and his wife now volunteer at the Arboretum, and actually live on site. He provided the most interesting tour – one that even a non-nature lover such as me could understand and enjoy.

We saw many varieties of trees and cacti and flowery shrubs. We saw bird nests and pack rat nests and hummingbird and butterfly habitats. We learned everything we did (or didn’t) want to know about snakes and scorpions and tarantulas and something called a tarantula wasp. Don’t ask, but suffice it to say if you see a gigantic orange wasp, run for the hills. Our guide can tell me the wasp is more interested than tarantulas than me, but I’m not taking any chances. I hate nature.

I learned that Arizona is currently experiencing a drought. One would have thought that the fact that we haven’t had any moisture would have tipped me off. The dry conditions are causing the cacti to not blossom as they should. That explains why the prickly pear in our front yard that normally is sporting yellow blossoms by now looks non-blossomy.

In perhaps my most daring move of the day (aside from our dreadful lunch later on in Superior) was sitting under something called the Red Gum tree…..

Our guide said the natives call it the Widow Maker as it apparently drops huge limbs at a whim, which potentially fall on anyone standing under the tree. Bill seemed surprisingly eager to take this photo…..

One of my favorite AZ native plants is the ocotillo, a spindly-looking tree that looks dead until it begins to bloom, when it looks beautiful…..

The ocotillo has a cousin called the boojum tree. It is, as you can see, considerably taller…..

Cacti are hardy plants. They have to be, given where they grow. Here is a prickly pear that grows right out of the trunk of a tree. I love nature…..

Aside from the horrible lunch we had later that afternoon, our day was perfect…..

Perhaps I won’t let the word arboretum scare me any longer…..

This post linked to the GRAND Social.

Saturday Smile: Is It Really That Bad?

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I mentioned on Thursday a rather unpleasant visit we had to a restaurant in a less than picturesque small town about 30 miles east of our Mesa home named Superior. I had no sooner published the blog post when I got a text message from my brother Dave. Here’s what he said: As Dad would say, “If God was going to give the world an enema, he would stick the hose in Superior.” Dave went on to explain that Dad had used those exact words to describe Craig, Colorado.

My dad wasn’t one to mince words. And he clearly didn’t think highly of the Colorado town located in the northwest corner of the state. I have never been there, so I can’t confirm or deny his description.

The same could be said of my mother. On more than one occasion, I heard her say that the town of Holbrook, AZ, reminded her of a town that had just been hit by a nuclear bomb. Suffice it to say that neither of my parents would ever have been asked to serve on the board of a chamber of commerce.

But when I read the words that Dave wrote, I laughed out loud. Not only could I hear my Dad’s voice saying those exact words, but he might not have been wrong, at least when it came to Superior…..

 

It looks like I will also not be serving on a Chamber board.

Have a great weekend.

Friday Book Whimsy: The Great Alone

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If an author has done his or her job right, there’s something in their novel that drives the story. Something that makes people continue to turn the page. Something that the reader thinks about long after they’ve closed the book.

In The Great Alone, the latest offering from Kristin Hannah (who has written such bestsellers as The Nightingale and Firefly Lane) the “something” is Alaska. Even when Hannah’s latest storyline was so depressing that I wasn’t always sure if I wanted to continue, the Alaskan wilderness kept calling me back.

It’s 1974, and Ernt Allbright returns home from Vietnam after living in a POW camp for a few years. His wife Cora, the daughter of wealthy parents who married Ernt against their will, recognizes immediately that he is a changed man. The man with whom she fell in love and for whom she defied her parents is now sullen,unstable, and dangerously volatile. Their 13-year-old daughter Leni, can’t remember the father who wasn’t so unpredictable.

Feeling the need for a change, Ernt moves his family to a remote area of Alaska, where he hopes to homestead and live off the land. Cora agrees, optimistic that a change is necessary to save the family. It works for a while, but eventually Ernt’s mental instability takes over and things take a nosedive.

The Great Alone is a story of neediness, friendship, and dysfunctional love. It is taut with tension and anger. The incredibly difficult living conditions in this small Alaskan town create a dependence on each other that can benefit or wreck someone as emotionally fragile as Ernt Allbright.

I’ve never been to Alaska. I don’t know if a small town in remote Alaska today would look like it did in this book. While the story is unendingly depressing –ironically, nearly laughingly so – I found myself continuing to turn the pages because I was intrigued by the notion of living in such a wilderness. People relied on one another because, particularly during the winter, there were no others on whom to rely. It’s an intriguing background story for a novel.

I find Hannah’s novels to be somewhat predictable and her characters fairly one dimensional; nevertheless, I will give The Great Alone a weak huzzah for its important topic and setting. If you like Hannah’s other novels, you are likely to enjoy this one as well.

Here is a link to the book.

 

Thursday Thoughts

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Cheers
Whenever it’s time to go either direction (to AZ in December or to Denver in May), I feel sad. There are things I miss from both places. Family, of course, but other specific things as well. In AZ, I miss the lovely spring weather during which we don’t have to worry about snow the next day, my charming manageably-sized ranch home, Fuddruckers, my garbage disposal (which not only doesn’t back up regularly as does ours in Denver, but is big enough to actually grind up an elephant should that need arise, given that Bill installed it), and our wonderful church. But perhaps most of all, I miss the fancy Fry’s Supermarkets that have sushi bars where you can sit down and enjoy your meal, beautiful delis with seating, and an actual wine and beer bar where you can sit and enjoy a selection of adult beverages…..

I took this photo while sitting at the bar at Fry’s Supermarket.

I support small businesses. I really do. But I will tell you that I wish with all of my heart that you could buy wine in grocery stores in Colorado. Having a beer and wine bar would only be the icing on the cake.

You Call This Food?
Bill and I took a field trip yesterday to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum, a state park that, despite only being about 30 miles away from our front door, we have never visited. In fact, we had never heard of it, and only learned about it from friends. I will tell you about our visit next week. But let me quickly tell you that afterwards, we stopped in the nearest town – called Superior – for lunch. The town is optimistically named, as it certainly isn’t superior to much of anything. The restaurant we chose out of the few that didn’t have boarded-up windows was called Buckboard City Café. It was the “café” that sold us – that, and the fact that all of the other restaurants were boarded up. I am not fussy about food; truly, I’m not. While some restaurants are better than others, I can tolerate most any of them. The Buckboard Café was simply awful. The highlight might have been when a man came in to return the burritos that he had purchased earlier. I don’t know why, and frankly, don’t want to know why. What was disturbing, however, was that the server who was helping him literally yelled from the front of the restaurant into the kitchen, “Sue, there’s a man here who wants to return his burritos. What should I do?” What you should do my friend is not holler at the top of your lungs that people are actually returning your retched food. They did, however, boast the world’s smallest museum which we didn’t bother to visit….

We couldn’t help but enjoy the so-called artwork outside in the parking lot…..

Home is Where the Pocketbook Is
I wish I could remember where I come across these things because it would make me so much more believable. But here is an image I found most remarkable, and most troubling. It showed what income was necessary to be able to afford the AVERAGE home in each state. If I read the map correctly, Colorado is fifth highest behind only Hawaii, California, the District of Columbia, and Massachusetts. I’m happy that all of our Colorado children (and we) already own our home, because homebuying would be much more difficult these days. Yoiks.

 

Ciao.

How Does This Work?

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While we’ve been living it up in AZ these past four months, our kids back at home have had to handle important household chores for us. Gathering our mail once a week and sending it to us; watering my pitiful plants, one of which came from a cutting from Bill’s mom; shoveling snow, which mostly didn’t happen until this month. For their help, we are most grateful.

I got a text from Jll yesterday, around the time that I knew she and Addie arrived at our house to water plants. How did I know they had arrived? Our wonderful RING program which allows us to see all the activity that happens at our front door. Take that, Burglars.

Anyway, here’s what Jll’s text said: Something funny about the next generation. They are bad with keys. My kids struggle to use the keys to open your mailbox and house. They are a remote and keypad generation. It is so weird.

At first that struck me as odd, but I started thinking about our house and our cars. The car keys can be kept in your purse or pocket because you just press a button to start the car. Of course, my car is a 2003 Volkswagen Beetle that not only requires a key, but still has a cassette deck; I missed an entire generation of ways to enjoy music in your car – the CD! But it’s yellow, so there’s that.  At any rate, while our front door does have a lock requiring a key, we also have a remote opener on our garage door, not to mention the remote controls we carry in our car.

It really is funny to think about what those that Jll refers to as “the next generation” would think if they could time travel back to the 1960s and 70s, never mind the 50s. You have your rotary phones which basically dialed your number using sparks. They were slow. You hated to dial any of your friends who had lots of zeros or nines in their phone number. Imagine an emergency situation where you had to dial 911. Even worse if you’re in England and have to dial 999. Would our next-generationers even be able to figure out what to do if we handed them a rotary phone?

And wouldn’t they laugh at our televisions? Those literal pieces of furniture that were massive in size but had a screen about the size of an iPad. They weighed as much as a Mac truck, and when they broke down, you didn’t just go to Walmart and buy a new one. You called in the television repairman.

Following my recent book club meeting, several of us stayed longer because we began talking about our TV experiences as a child. Remember when you didn’t have 24/7 programming? At some point in the night (midnight?), programming wrapped up, and you listened to the National Anthem as you looked at an American Eagle until it faded away until the next morning.

And we had maybe three or four channels. ABC, NBC, CBS, and maybe a random local channel. If the weather was bad, the antennae could go on the fritz and you were out of luck until it could be straightened up once again.

Baby Boomers such as me like to think of those as simpler times. But I have to admit to enjoying my Sirius radio and keyless entry. I like having a couple of hundred television stations from which to choose (though I probably use only 10; still, I appreciate possibilities). I like Netflix and Amazon Prime and Hulu and iPads and iPhones and being able to change channels without having to get out of my chair.

Still, it’s fun to recall those simpler times when you didn’t have to close your eyes for most of the programming, even on regular television and surprisingly early in the evening.

And don’t even get me STARTED on cursive writing.

Fear of Flying

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Every time Bill and I travel by plane, I am struck by how little room there is between knees and seat backs. It’s not so bad for me, as my legs aren’t much longer than those of Tom Thumb. But I always feel sorry for Bill. He’s only of average height, and yet his knees are always slammed against the seat back. He looks the way I imagine poor Jack looks in his box. You know, Jack-in-the-Box. C’mon people; work with me.

Anyhoo, remember when the flight attendants would tell you that if the plane is plummeting, passengers should bend forward and put their heads in their lap during impact? I never really bought that, even back in the days when I was limber enough to actually bend over that far. I just never figured that was going to do much when you hit the ground at airplane speed. It seemed more like you were bending over so that you could kiss your you-know-what goodbye.

Nowadays, they don’t even bother. If the plane’s going down, I assume the flight attendants just wrap up their potato chip sales, make sure everyone’s signed their Visa receipts and added the necessary tip, put on their parachutes and wave goodbye.

Whenever we talk about air travel, my sister Bec always says she’s waiting for the day when just prior to takeoff, the flight attendant’s voice comes over the intercom, and he or she says in that fake Cheerful Flight Attendant Voice, “Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to In Your Face Airlines. We’re happy you’ve chosen to fly with us today. In an effort to keep your costs to a minimum because we care so much about our customers, we haven’t staffed a pilot today. So, is there anyone among you who has some flying experience? Any amateur pilots? Anyone ever fly in a hot air balloon? Anyone ever play any of those airplane video games? If so, ring your flight attendant bell. We will be happy to take a full $10 off of your next ticket.”

Whenever Bec jokingly says this, I almost always respond with some funny add-on regarding the fact that I’m surprised they don’t have passengers standing like on a subway, gripping the strap hanging from the ceiling.

Hilarious, right?

EXCEPT THAT MY SIDESPLITTING IDEA is actually being discussed by airline officials. True, the idea came from the mouth of the CEO of a mostly-unknown budget airline called VivaColumbia, who assured the Miami Herald reporter to whom he offered this idea that it was in the consumer’s best interest because the airlines are always looking at ways to make flying less expensive.  Cough.

A scenario that might be a bit more realistic if not more horrifying is this airplane seat design that was offered at a recent Aircraft Interiors Expo…..

I don’t know what to say. I just don’t. I’m hoping those aircraft interior expo guys proposed this on a cocktail napkin after three or four martinis, and the bartender threw it away afterwards. By the way, this information and the photo comes from an article from Inc. Magazine.

Whenever Bill or I make airline reservations these days, we start out with basic economy. It isn’t long, however, that we get sucked into buying assigned seats and buying the opportunity to bring a bag onto the plane that will actually fit more than just a package of travel Kleenex. But we’re dumb, because the United Airlines CFO has actually been quoted as saying, “You get people to pay more for something that in the past was bundled.”

But, at least those of us who are flying what now is optimistically referred to as Basic Economy give those in Regular Economy someone to sniff their noses at after they’ve been sniffed at by those in Business Class.

On the Road

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Here’s why years from now you will most assuredly not be praying for the intercession of St. Kris: I get caught up in the wrong things when it comes to the bible and completely miss the point. You know, the REAL point.

Take the story of the two fellows walking down the road to Emmaus on the third day after Jesus died. They’re heading to the village which is seven miles from Jerusalem, and are shooting the breeze about what the two women had told them about the body no longer being in the tomb.  Suddenly they are approached by a stranger. So here’s Missing The Point I: Why didn’t they recognize him? Luke says their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. In fact, it wasn’t until they had persuaded him to spend the night at their house, during which time he once again blessed bread, broke bread, and shared bread that they realized who he was. It seems to me – pitiful human that I am – that rather than preventing them from recognizing him, it would have been a more efficient use of time to just allow them to know who he is right off the bat.

Break bread, bless bread, eat bread.

And then, when they realize that it is Jesus, he vanishes. Poof. Bummer.

So they immediately set out again to Jerusalem. Luke says so they set out at once. Missing The Point II: That, in and of itself, isn’t too surprising. After all, had my friend who I had seen die right before my eyes come back and make himself known to me, I would want to tell somebody ASAP. But it’s seven miles, and they had walked seven miles just a short time earlier. Well, good on them, I guess. As for me, my hip starts hurting after a mile-and-a-half or so.

It’s at this point that yesterday’s gospel picked up the story. These two fellows get back to Jerusalem and immediately tell their friends what had happened. About that time, who should appear again? Jesus. They are all understandably afraid and think they are seeing a ghost. To calm them down, Jesus says to them, “Peace be with you.”

Now that makes sense even to me. Jesus is telling them (and us) that whenever we are afraid, we should put our fears aside and feel peace, because he is with us and will take care of us. But then Jesus says something that completely throws me off my spiritual game. Missing The Point III: He asks them if they have anything to eat. Did it throw Peter and his buddies off their game as well? Did they ask themselves – as I did – why on earth do you want to eat right this minute?

But unlike me, the disciples did not sigh loudly and roll their eyes. They instead gave him a piece of baked fish, which he proceeded to eat. And that, my friends, was that for me. I spent the remainder of the Mass wondering why Jesus felt the need for a bite to eat right then. And perhaps as puzzlingly, why did St. Luke feel that point was important enough to put into his gospel?

As we drove home after Mass, I asked Bill that question. Why did Jesus ask for something to eat? To prove to the disciples that he wasn’t a ghost, was Bill’s take on the matter.

I guess I have the advantage of 20/20 hindsight. It’s interesting to think about how startling – terrifying, really – it must have been for Jesus’ followers to see him walking around when they had taken him down from the cross and buried him themselves only a few days earlier. And now here he was walking around showing them his wounds and eating with them.

And maybe that’s the point. They really shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, Jesus himself points out to them that his birth, death, and resurrection had been prophesized for hundreds of years. They had all studied their Torahs. They knew what to expect.

But despite that, without 2000 years of hindsight, it must have been hard to understand the whole business. Quite frankly, even with the benefit of 2000 years of explanation, it’s still hard to understand.

That’s where faith comes in.

Will the Real Cole Please Stand Up?

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Last weekend, Court and Alyx took their kids on what seems to be a very fun outing. They went to Boondocks, which is a venue near their home that offers fun activities such as bumper cars and miniature golf and bowling. It was a nice day, and the family had tons of fun. They posted the photos on Facebook. I, of course, love looking at any and all of my grandkids having fun, but these photos were especially enjoyable. I laughed out loud when I saw one particular photo of 3-year-old Cole. He looks like an angel in the photo on the left, but perhaps has more than a little devil in him in the photo on the right. Will the real Cole please stand up?…..

Have a great weekend.

Friday Book Whimsy: House at the Edge of Night

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My husband and I were lucky enough to spend three months in Europe a few years back. Nearly two of those three months were in Italy. While I don’t have a drop of Italian blood in me, I’m convinced I lived in Italy in a former life! From the time I first stepped foot into the country, I fell in love with the people, the climate, the food, the art, and the culture.

Reading The House at the Edge of Night, by Catherine Banner, was a bit like sitting at a table all day on a piazza in an Italian hill town watching the villagers live their lives. The author managed to successfully capture the flavor of the people of this wonderful country nearly perfectly.

The House at the Edge of Night is a multigenerational saga of a family who lives on the fictional island of Castellamare in southern Italy near Sicily. Amedeo Esposito is an orphan who is taken under the wing of a doctor in Florence. He takes his last name and follows his lead in the medical field. He winds up on Castellamare, where the native people eye him suspiciously – as Italians are wont to do. Eventually he marries his beautiful wife named Pina who is strong-willed and smart as can be. Though it takes a bit, the locals eventually accept him as one of their own.

Unfortunately, Amedeo makes a big mistake that results in two babies being born on the same night – one to his wife and one to the wife of the nasty Count who lives on the island. The Countess claims Amedeo is the baby’s father, and unfortunately, it could be true.

The story goes on from here, as Pino agrees to continue to live with him and raise their family. This leads to that, and Amedeo finally gives up his medical practice to open a café in his home, which is referred to as the house at the edge of night. This café takes on a life of its own, and as the years go by, the café itself is as much a character as the people who walk and talk.

Readers watch the wonderful characters that inhabit the island as they live through world wars, attempts to steal relics, an economic downturn that nearly cripples the population, love affairs, births and deaths. At the end of the day, however, it always comes back to the house at the edge of night.

I loved the story. I found its casual pace to be much like the casual pace of life in Italy. As the author described the food, and particularly the homemade limoncello and limettacello and arangcello that they drank morning, noon, and night, I could taste it. I could feel the hot sun on me as she described the town. I think she really captured the flavor of Italy.

It made me want to make sure my passport was updated!

Here is a link to the book.