Farewell, Roney “Mac”(aroney) McDaniel

Some relationships last a pretty long time, but when I first spoke with the man who would be so instrumental in my life and less directly those of my family, I really didn’t know what to think.  At first, I came to think of him as Papa Smurf, but while he had the stature, he just couldn’t pull off the blue skin tones.
One of my coworkers, who came to this job specifically because Mac was the Program Manager, called him Macaroney which in many ways is more fitting.  Sometimes in life you manage to fall into things and my job at the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) at Fort Lee is just one of those things.
I remember pretty clearly how this nearly 14-year started. I was working as a teacher in Mecklenburg County, 99 mile one-way commute, when I got the call, literally.  It came by cell phone from one of the head hunter people I used to have to rely on for jobs when I worked as a technical writer.  Lyla called me one afternoon in late September of my second year “on the job” as police call their work, which isn’t really much different than teaching.
“Hi Lyla; it’s been a while.”
“Hi David. There’s a job in Fort Lee that I think you would fit you perfectly.”
I thought for a minute, ‘where the heck were you last year.’
“I’m working on my five-year plan here,” I told her. “It would have to be something that has some longevity, because I can’t leave this for a six-month project.”
“Well, they are in their first year, with four option years.  Why don’t you call the PM and just talk to him?”
“Okay, I think that’s good enough to listen to anyway.”
That afternoon I had my first contact with Mac.  On the phone, I explained stuff about me and what I do and who I had done it for.  At first I thought all that jibber jabber impressed him, because he asked me to come by Friday for “The Grand Tour.” And I did so.
The truly ironic thing, a teaching point for someone out there I am sure, is that I had been trying to get a job at DeCA for ages.  But, at the time, my skill set didn’t seem to have a place within DeCA’s employee base. After all, who really needs a technical writer anyway? (By the way, we now have two in my department alone.)
That’s what led up to my first meeting with Mac. We “hooked up” at Denny’s and drove onto Fort Lee, that great shining job Mecca. It was hard to believe that I was within days of completing the final steps to get a position at a place I had been seeking employment for at least 10 years.
Mac gave me the dog-and-pony tour, introducing me to people who I would be working with, and people who would become close friends over the ensuing years.  After the meetings, I had a feeling that I had hit at least two home runs in talking with the people who I would be reporting to.  I was hoping to get the job offer immediately, but Mac said he would contact me about the position.
That was October 8, 2004. Through the weekend, I was like an expectant father. I never got far from the phone and I just knew I would be getting a call.  Monday the 11^th was Columbus Day and still no contact.  Crap, I thought, maybe my home runs were strike outs. But as it is even in baseball, I got the call-up Tuesday morning.
“Can you start on the 25^th?”
I wrote and submitted my resignation from Mecklenburg County Public Schools that day and gave the letter to the assistant principal.  “You’re going to make more just in gas savings than we could afford to pay you.”
On the first day on the job, after we discussed the financial arrangements as a sub-contractor through Modis, we spoke for a few minutes.
“I just want to get someone in the job and not have to worry about it for four more years.”
It has been nearly 14, longer than some marriages.  And, as I learned from Mac over those years that building a team is really more like building a family.  At times, it’s sort of a Jenga thing, add a block-take away a block. Take away a wrong block or add a wrong block and you’re stuck with a bit of a mess.
Wednesday, we held a Retirement Party for Mac.  Lots of people showed up, free Nannie’s catering, which we did not advertise for fiscal reasons.
Yesterday, Mac closed up his shop at DeCA after 14 years and one month. He was the man who wrote the original contract for a company called Multimax.  And, Multimax morphed three times over the years, as another version of Multimax, Harris, and then nLogic, which holds the current contract.
The team has seen many parts come and go, but it has not changed much over that time. I still work on the same project, doing a slightly different job, thanks Mac. His replacement is on board, and we are attempting to move forward without the pilot who had been steering us for years.
Have a great retirement, Mac.  We will miss you and your wife, Edie, greatly.

Welcome to the fishbowl, David Hogg

Really, did David Hogg think his attempts at passive resistance regarding the Second Amendment come without trial?  Welcome to the big leagues, young man.

Out spoken people, right, wrong, or indifferent, need to understand that when you put your name in the fishbowl you become a target.  And so it is for David Hogg, who would like to rail like Martin Luther King, but is not willing to take the “medicine” that comes when you stand on the political stage.
So, when Dr. Laura Ingraham stated that he was a whiner, he was just getting what any other political opponent might get.  Is he a whiner? Simple answer, does he expect the public to just roll over for his cause?
Sorry, David, you jumped from high school wrestling to the World Wrestling Federation.  You want to argue like an adult and be treated like a child. “Oh, you really hurt my feelings with your name calling and bullying on the big stage,” he might as well have said.
The sad truth of the matter is that you are no longer a child.  You have opted to step into the real world of politics with one of the hottest constitutional arguments in ages. You are not, and no longer will be, treated like a child.  Welcome to the Jungle, or should I say Swamp.
In some respects, what the good Dr. commented on should be a shining badge of honor. You got her, and therefore public, attention.  Wear it.  Do you think her comment was bullying? Then, maybe you need to go home and cry in your pillow.
It wasn’t Laura Ingraham who laid down the gauntlet. No, no, it was you.  You decided to become someone’s spokesperson for the Anti-Gun movement. Or is that the Anti-pseudo-assault-rifle contingent.  My question for you is, where are you getting your funding? But, lest that might make you cry, I shall abstain.
You may try to claim that this is not civil disobedience, and to some extent you may be correct.  But it does harken to Civil Disobedience, and one of the main clauses in any form of Civil Disobedience also kind of fits with what you and yours are attempting. You have to be willing to accept what goes with the territory. To wit:

·   Jesus was crucified for his disobedience.  His death resulted in the books of the New Testament of the The Bible.

·    Henry David Thoreau spent time in jail for refusing to pay taxes. Yes, his mother bailed him out by paying them for him. But he wrote Civil Disobedience, which states that there are bad laws that ought to be ignored outright.

·    Adolf Hitler spent time in jail for the failed “Beer Hall Putsch,” where he wrote “Mein Kampf.”

·    Mahatma Ghandi was jailed and went on many hunger strikes. His book The Story of My Experiments with Truth is his autobiography.

·    Martin Luther King spent time in the Birmingham Jail for his freedom marches, have you read “A Letter from the Birmingham Jail?

·    David Hogg, fought against second amendment gun rights and then complained about being bullied and called a whiner. He wrote nothing.

So, Master Hogg, how does your movement stack up?

My best guess is that you will learn a great deal from this. You may in fact become a substantial human being who will grace the world with his presence, and knowledge, and foresight. All of that is probably within the realm of possibility.
But let me assure you of one thing. If you plan to extrapolate this into some kind of a career, grow a thicker skin.  Name calling and commenting and attacking you means nothing less than you are being successful. If you feel the need to whine about Dr. Ingraham’s whining comment, you just prove the point. If you want to be treated like an adult, then you really need to act like one.
Anything else is, well, whining.

Death of THE Salesman

For as long as I knew Terry Anderson he was obsessed with time.  Not time, like Dr. Brown from “Back to the Future,” it was more that he continually counted the days, hours, and minutes left in front of him.  I think it was the clock that drove him to be the kind of person I knew him to be.

 From the first day I met him, we were friends. For some time, while I was a reporter, we would spend a lot of days sitting together in his office and then going out for lunch.  Over that time, we developed scheme upon scheme on ways to make enough money to supply us with enough cash to retire.

 We never really got anywhere with those ideas, but it was food for the processors that were our minds.  Often, Terry would come up with some idea, where our “earnings” were very small, but the extrapolation over a large number of sources was huge.  If we could make a nickel on every one of these widgets and then get half the universe to purchase them at these very affordable prices we could retire next week.

 Pipe dreams, really.  Things to keep a mind active even when there wasn’t much other mental fodder around.

 It probably helped that he was a fellow New Yorker.  We never seemed to miss a thing during our discussions on how to make our lives better, and consequently, the lives of our families.

 And it was our families that drove each of us.  And, it seemed that over time that 30 minute drive to see Terry got longer and longer, as my personal life started getting busier and busier.  And I sit here at this computer and think of that Robert Frost poem, “The Road not Taken”, and I think of that one line that sort of exemplifies what happened to us:  “Yet knowing how way leads on to way”.

 I like to think that our friendship never wavered. I wish, now more than ever, that I would have taken the time on my trips to the Endocrinologist’s office to stop by and say “hello” and just touch base with my old pal. But that is what happens, just as Frost says, way leads on to way, and we don’t have or take the time to change our steps.

 We get wrapped up in our kids and wrapped up trying to eke out a living that is more than just paying the bills.  We stop dreaming of short cuts, and quick fixes, and how we might be able to bend the financial world even just a little bit, to help us on our personal trek.

 And then things start to happen.  I never realized how bad things were going for my friend.  I heard some snippets and some news, but it always seemed to be far off and like we had an eternity to pull back together and to share notes and laugh like we did back in the early ‘90s.

 The last time I remember seeing Terry he had come to watch my son play football against Midlothian High School.  It was a cold and very blustery night.  We huddled together, trying to find solace from the wind to no avail.

 It brought back to mind how Terry, one night when my car broke down around the corner from his house, came to our rescue.  My son, Geordie, the same football player he had come to see, had run face first into a strand of barbed wire.  He had a gash across his nose that would get four stitches, and we were stranded with a blown water pump.

 Terry arrived in the family minivan, looking for the world, and to us, like salvation.  He carried us to take home some boys who were with us, and then to the hospital where Geordie got a few stitches.  What kind of friend is that?  The very best kind.  I rue that I lost touch, especially as now I can never make that contact again.

 And so it goes, unfortunately, much as Frost said, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and being one traveler, long I stood” and perhaps too long.  Good bye Terry, my friend.

Why I wanted to be a journalist

Way back in the long ago days, you know like 1973, when I graduated from high school;  I swiftly figured out that I had wrong-tracked myself in getting out of school with nothing to do and little idea about a future.  I realized I needed to figure out what I was going to do and fast.

Ideas floated through my mind and none really took anchor.  Until, that is, I realized doing what I was doing wasn’t going to get it.  I looked back at my high school years and realized that the only thing I was ever able to do well was write.

Writing more often than not got me out of all the trouble my mouth seemed to get me into.  And so, after completing my umpteenth essay on why playing sports is more important than attending Health Class, I opted to join the Army.

For whatever reason, writing always seemed to bail me out of things when I was in school.  Ironically enough, writing has turned out to be the best avenue for a career, as well.  Call it the path of least resistance.

So, once I realized I wanted to be a writer, I needed to figure out how to make that happen.  Making that happen involved what ended up being a 7-year hitch in the military. To make matters short, I got out of the military and went to school to learn how to write.  At least, to learn how to write professionally.

As a writer, total immersion seemed the best way to go.  Get a job that requires you to write something every day.  Even more than something, like two somethings every day and at least one column, or opinion piece.  You know, writing sort of like this piece you are reading now.

So in journalism ethics and morals are huge.  There is no one there to tell you what to write and what not to write.  Sure there are editors who will review your material, and hopefully, they are as good as the editors I had when I was a journalist.

During my time at The Progress-Index in the late 1980’s early 1990’s, I had two stories that were both true, but for which I could not get anyone to go on record.  They were huge stories, the kinds of stories that earn awards.

One story finally was too big to stay hidden.  It was about the Chesterfield Sheriff, who eventually resigned.  We don’t need to go over the dirty laundry, but some of you might remember the incident.

The other story I could never get the main witness to agree to go on record.  That person was afraid she would be attacked as a whistleblower and was in fear for her job.  There was a substantial amount of violence involved with the story that threats would likely have been made.

In the end, the best thing I could do was to ask pertinent questions to people in higher positions.  Sure, it didn’t get the play in the newspapers that it ought to have, but in the end the higher authority cleaned house with certain personnel and righted the ship.

In both circumstances, my editors would not let the stories go.  Both stories were true, but neither one had solid enough sources to run with the information.

In today’s journalistic world, apparently, checking sources and having multiple sources is not very important.  What’s important, is what information do you have and how will it serve to attack the person or group you disagree with.

Which brings us to fake news.  What is fake news?  Fake news is something that gets printed or shown on TV that is not true on its face.  Usually, these sort of things get what’s called as “walked back.”  Walked back means withdrawing from the statement to a point at which the attack is no longer offensive.

The bigger problem now is that the main stream media has been caught in so many entanglements it’s impossible not to believe that such untruths are random mistakes.  The errors have come so flowingly, so willingly, so easily, and so much in one direction that it’s getting to the point where no one wants to believe the MSM.

And, until they clean up their acts, no one ought to believe them.

It has gotten to the point where even a legitimate mistake by a reporter serves only to substantiate the idea of fake news.  There has been enough fake news to throw a shadow over everything that is being put out now.  Oh for the old days, where my editors wouldn’t let me get carried away with a story without abundant proof.

Why Wait? Goddard's Park here we come!

The city continues to reap a harvest off the old courthouse property since by contract Kroger still owns it.  The contract included a requirement for Kroger to tear down the old building, which many of us in the Tri Cities can see has been done.

But what to do with the property is another thing altogether.  While Kroger is on record saying that they had a bit of an economic downturn that caused them to change their growth plans, one has to think that the site’s location, right next to the city’s immaculate round-about, may have played into it a bit.

Their lot exit onto south Temple Avenue may not have been as clean as it looked when they first envisioned the property.  And, of course, Publix has pulled some of the higher-end shoppers that used to frequent Martin’s and before that UKrops.  Add to that, the growth at Aldi’s and you really have to wonder what really drove the decision to drop Kroger’s planned expansion.

So, that leaves us with the big question of what can we expect to fill the property.  Right now, the city is collecting taxes and has little need or desire to market it.  In fact, it’s in the best interest of Kroger to market the property, and, I believe, the city has a right to nix the deal if they are not in favor of the “new” owner.  I mean, God forbid we end up with a Priscilla’s factory outlet.

The argument for Goddard’s Park at the Roundabout

So back to the roundabout.  To be honest, it seems to be working.  I drive it at least twice a day, mostly from the South Bound Temple Avenue entrance/exit to south I 95.  Most of the time, I have no problems. I’m an early driver and there is very little traffic. On occasion, someone heading south on Temple attempts to cut across in front of me when I am trying to go south on I 95, but it is rare, and becoming even more rare.  Let’s say people are getting use to how the roundabout works.

The one thing no one is really talking about is what to name the park that is in the middle of the roundabout.  It screams for some kind of marker and of course a name.  Since it owes its life to the Goddard Family, I think we ought to name it Goddard Park.  And, since it also owes its existence to the demise of Goddard’s Dairy Farm, maybe we can put in a statue of a Holstein and a heffer (two cows), or maybe just put up a miniature silo?

On a more serious note, perhaps we can put up a marker to commemorate all those Colonial Heights people who have given their all to the country.  We don’t need something as large as Arlington, nor as expansive as the Vietnam War Memorial, but it surely calls for some kind of display.  Just look at what Hopewell is doing with money donated by the Cameron Foundation on the Route 10 entry to their city.

Using Foundation funds on a 50-50 match designed to beautify an entrance to the city, Hopewell has opted to erect a huge capital H, resplendent in silver, to let people know they are entering Hopewell.  Hopewell, the city with two recent state champion football teams.  Of course, we in the Heights did win a Volleyball state championship just a few scant years ago, so maybe we should put up a volleyball net and then invite the homeless and others in the community to come and get a little extra exercise.  

Well, however it goes, it still ought to be named Goddard Park.

Christmas, Christmas - Hurry Fast

                           Christmas, Christmas time is near

                           Time for toys and time for cheer

                           We've been good, but we can't last

                           Hurry Christmas, hurry fast

Alvin and the Chipmunks

Written by Ross Bagdasarian Sr.

At some level, I suppose, I live a bit of a jaded life.  When I was a child, I lived for the holidays. I lived for the big three:  Hallowe’en, Thanksgiving, and most especially Christmas.  It seemed almost like David’s Hierarchy of Needs.  You know, sort of like that Maslow guy, only a bit simpler and geared more toward children.  You know, I am pretty sure the American public all has memories similar to the ones expressed by Alvin, Simon and Theodore – see above.

When I dig deep enough through my jaundiced memory, those things seem to resonate.  The ideas pulse; I remember some of my favorite “gets.”  I got this toy car one time that had a crushable fender.  When it hit a wall or some other immovable object, the fender would pop off and the tire would come off.  Your job, after crashing the car, was to put it all back together. It even had a jack and lug wrench.

Years and years later, that experience helped me when I was riding with my mom to pick my Pop up from work. It was a 30-mile commute and that night it was icy cold rain.  We got a flat, and there I was literally in the middle of nowhere.  We had a jack and we had a lug wrench, and I had that ages old experience replacing my toy car’s tire.  When we were back on the road, I sat as close to the heater as I could get with my soaked jacket on the floor and me shivering in the passenger seat.

But I am sure everyone has those kinds of memories.  And, I can’t really say where, when, how or why I sort of lost that amusement I had had with the holidays.  Perhaps it was my 7-year stint in the military when time sort of spins by, and holidays and birthdays turn into mud pies and you tend to forget about those things.

I remember, as a single NCO, being a bit of a mercenary and working Christmas and New Year’s charge of quarter’s duty for people for a price.  It probably wasn’t so mercenary since the people were more than willing to pay someone to take their place for the holidays.  Truth is, I likely would have done it for free, but they were going to pay someone anyway and as a buck sergeant charity wasn’t really something I could afford.

Still, I would sometimes come home and spend the holidays with my family and everything would be fine.  But being one person, one man, one alone—it sort of drives the spirit of good will out of you.  Things change over time and I guess through my time after the service, going back to school, plugging in hours to work myself out of debt, the holidays clomped deeper into the recesses of my mind.

I think that changed December 26, 1987, when Geordie was born.  Sure, he was born on the 26^th, but any of you who are parents know that once a child is brought into the home the Christmas thing is back in full force, and it’s not really for you except by the glow from your child’s joy.  Unfortunately, that joy recedes a bit when they are old enough to live on their own.

But then a miracle happens. Yes, a miracle.  The miracle that brings back the joy of Christmas. Yes, that miracle. Grandchildren.  Thank the good lord for grandchildren, with them we get to revisit our youth, we get to bask in the glow of their joy.

Thank the good Lord for grandchildren, for they shall lead you to joy.  To all my readers, fools that you are, have a blessed holiday and take the time to hug grandchild.

                                      We can hardly stand the wait

                                       Please Christmas, don't be late.

Merry Christmas

David

Life Imitates Art

When I caught the headline from The Telegraph’s Science section, I thought well maybe there is a chance for me?

I’ve long thought that I was supposed to look like Robert Redford at birth, but somehow ended up in Buddy Hackett’s body.  Yes, I felt I was short-changed at birth. Don’t you?  But really, who do you complain to? Certainly not God, right?

If you are one of those who believes in the science side of all birth questions, then, to quote Popeye the Sailor, “I am what I am and that’s all that I am.”  Those types quickly whip out things like DNA and the prune doesn’t fall far from the tree.  You know, that hard to argue with garbage which we all owe to an Augustinian Monk named Gregor Mendel, who just might have been an Augustinian Brau tester (beer taster).

You see, besides the not talking thing, Monk’s weren’t very busy back in the 1850s and 1860s, so, for Gregor, the “pea thing” was simply “something to do” sort of like my father and a crossword puzzle.  In my mind, I see him sitting down at dinner and separating his ration of peas into several categories: those with wrinkles those that are smooth, etc.

You get the idea.

Now, we come to accept things like this as if they were common knowledge.  But back in Gregor’s days, no one really took it to heart.  In fact, it was 35 years later before the whole concept was revisited by the “Science Community” and found to be viable in terms of heredity. You know, the whole deoxyribonucleic acid thing; think DNA.

What Mendel was dealing with was basic genetics.  What other scientists thought at the time was that it was merely a study in hybridization.  It’s sort of amazing how a simple study of peas could lead to something like the genetic tests people are taking nowadays to discover that not only are they related to their actual brothers and sisters, but the two kids down the street are siblings as well….

Well, that’s not really true because those test rely on the mitochondrial DNA (momma genes) and not papa genes.  Which means it would be pretty hard for you to be a long lost brother to your next door neighbor unless somewhere down the line there was a common female ancestor.  And, if that were so, then you would far more likely be a cousin.  But enough of such speculation.

Now, I’ve already gone pretty far off course because the story that caught my interest is one about a successful head transplant.  It seems that some doctors in England successfully reattached a head from one corpse to another.  Yes I know this is Frankenstein kind of stuff, but they say they did it successfully.

What I want to know is how they were able to figure out that it was successful?  Did the corpse suddenly start breathing, or sing an aria, or wolf down a mouthful of Cap’n Crunch cereal?

And who would volunteer for such a thing anyway?  I know, there is a huge waiting list for people who want to be the first ones to “travel to Mars,” but I think one’s demise in this kind of operation is far more likely.  What I guess I mean is, if Matt Damon can live on Mars, then so can I.  And, if I really want to look like Robert Redford, then I probably will get a chance at some point, but the results aren’t all that promising since most likely I will already be dead.

There are a lot of other problems that pop into my head when I read about doctors spending hours trying to attach head to body.  I would think that things like attaching the brain stem, otherwise known as the medulla oblongata for you The Water Boy fans, would pose significant issues.  We can’t even fix spinal cord injuries and here they are dabbling with one of the more complex nerve centers.

Personally, I’ll take the flight to Mars.  At least, I should have some time to work crossword puzzles while in flight to the Red Planet.  And who knows, there might actually be someone on the flight who doesn’t mind talking to a person whose DNA test results resemble Buddy Hackett.