I turn the page not only on the calendar but also on my career.
It is my sincere hope that 2021 proceeds on a trajectory much better than its immediate predecessor - not simply for me and mine but for you and yours too.
Suzanne, the older of my two - spared any of my DNA but hopefully indoctrinated in at least some of the life lessons I shared with her and with Rob in the house where Margaret and I raised them - celebrates a birthday today.
She is extraordinary. She is a Pediatric Speech Language Pathologist. She loves what she does and the passion she has for it is reflected in the quality of her work. Peruse "PlayingSpeech" either on the web site to which I have provided the link or on Instagram to see for yourself. You will discover that - to borrow a phrase from the immortal Joe Willie Namath - it isn't bragging if you can back it up. She can. She does.
As proud as I am of her accomplishments in her field, the pride I feel in how she does what she does professionally pales in comparison to the pride I feel watching how she and Ryan raise their three children. Theirs is a home in which children know they are loved and it shows. Not in some technicolor, cue the dancing hippos, faux-Disney way but in a real world, flesh-and-blood way that their children shall be able to carry with them for the rest of their lives.
Happy Birthday, Suz, and much love today and in all the days to come.
Today, Weiner Law Group bids farewell to an exceptionally talented lawyer and an even better human being. Worry not, I am not being immodest. I am speaking of my Partner, Kelly Skopak. She is off to her next great adventure. I join in the endless chorus of voices wishing her well. She is a credit to our profession. She shall be missed.
And as for Yours truly?
I am off, walking through the dark, heading towards the dawn, and excited about the day to come.
Even after he was exonerated, justice eluded Mr. Harrell. The State of New Jersey fought hard against his claim for compensation related to his wrongful conviction and incarceration, which fight the State won in our state courts. Finally, in July 2020, the State and Mr. Harrell reached a settlement. Under New Jersey's Mistaken Imprisonment Act, Mr. Harrell was entitled to receive $50,000 a year for each year he was incarcerated.
According to the story in the Star-Ledger, he had only received one payment at the time of his death.
There is no better gig I have ever had than Pop Pop. At the risk of alienating the affections of my soon-to-be employer shall I spend every day of the rest of my legal career racing to get to the office because I enjoy what I do that much, it shall never be as good a gig as being Pop Pop.
Suzanne, Ryan, and their 3/5 of my Fab Five usually join Joe, Margaret, and me for dinner on Sundays. This past Sunday, Margaret and I decided that we would celebrate Suzanne's birthday, which is actually at the end of this week. Our thought was better to be six days early with the celebration than a day late.
Maggie, the 3 1/2-year-old tip of the spear of our quintet of grandchildren, was read into our plan by Nana upon her arrival. Several minutes later, she disappeared into the playroom to begin making birthday cards (plural) for her mommy. Pop Pop's abject absence of artistic ability notwithstanding, I was thrilled when a minute or two after she started, she came back into the living room and recruited me to her team.
For about fifteen or twenty minutes, I worked with - and more often than not - under the direction of my oldest granddaughter as we colored one of Suzanne's birthday cards (the other card's decorative touches were limited exclusively to stickers). I was pleased that my new boss graded my job performance as generously as she did for I am as dreadful now coloring as I was when I was her age. I think I spent as much time watching her color, crayon firmly grasped in her left hand, eyes focused on the page, and tongue sticking every so slightly out of her mouth, as I did coloring myself. She oversaw every change of crayon, dictating when we each switched what color crayon each of us used and where on the page our coloring was focused. Finally, with the look of one whose self-satisfaction is well-earned, she put her crayon down, held up the completed card for inspection, pronounced it "Beautiful", and declared our work over.
After she sprinted out of the playroom to entrust the cards to Nana's possession (so they could be positioned properly in the overall presentation, which we made after dinner), I sat on the floor of the playroom staring at the now-vacated space Maggie had occupied, and smiling. I had just spent as joy-filled a fifteen-to-twenty minutes as I have spent in I know not how long.
I basked in the afterglow of its warmth for another minute or three, until she and Cal came back into the playroom to tell me it was time for dinner. I picked my old bones up off the floor and joined them in the kitchen.
Right after New Year's Day, 2019, while I was sitting at my kitchen table in the wee small hours of the morning, doing my usual couple of hours work from the quiet of home before heading into the office to continue my work day, I took a quick, simple, and incredibly effective step to eliminate unnecessary noise and bother from my life. In less than three minutes, I deleted my Facebook account and my Twitter account.
It is a decision I have never regretted. Not once.
Nowhere is Daniel Patrick Moynihan's maxim, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts" violated with the aplomb that it is on "social media", which has proven to be the Mother of All Oxymorons. We live in a time when good, verifiable information from reputable sources is more readily available to us than at any time in the annals of human history. Yet, we have become a nation of stone skippers - preferring to travel far and fast along the surface of any given subject rather than taking a deep dive into it. We the people of follows and likes appear to prefer being noticed to...well, to anything else.
I enjoyed Facebook for quite a while after I first joined because it served the purpose for me of allowing me to catch up with people whose names I knew and whose faces I recognized but with whom I had not had any direct interaction in close to - if not more than - three decades. Initially, the people with whom I connected/re-connected using Facebook and I did what I imagine we would have done had we all been in the same place, such as a reunion. We showed each other photos of our spouses, pets, children, and (for the really lucky among our number), grandchildren. We caught each other up on our after-high school and/or after-college life regarding how we earn our living, where we had settled and, on occasion, with whom from our shared past we had actually seen and to whom we had actually spoken, in the real world. We would also share the occasional "Remember When?" story that brought up a good memory and, when necessary, share the sad news of a classmate or friend who had died.
At some point, and I cannot remember when, the tenor and tone of conversations on my Facebook feed began to change. Not the conversations in which I actively participated but, rather, ones to which I bore witness between two or more "friends". The more rancorous these exchanges became, the more I realized that the crack-like quality of Mr. Zuckerberg's deadly toy is not found in its algorithm.
It is found in its verbiage.
When you connect to another soul on Facebook, the two of you become "friends". No one, other than perhaps Dr. Sheldon Cooper (and Stu the Cockatoo who is new at the zoo), reasonably believes making a friend is as simple as clicking a button. Mr. Zuckerberg and his minions are smart enough to know that if the button was named for what it actually does, far fewer people would sign up for the chance to "Reconnect with a person you have not seen, spoken to, or heard from since (a) high school; (b) college; (c) more than twenty-five years; or (d) all of the above and with whom you (e) were never friends; (f) have not had more than a fleeting thought since you last shared space with him/her; (g) would have nothing to say to one another, face-to-face, beyond "How's it been going?"; or (h) all of the above." Those of us who live our lives outside of the glare of the spotlight (politicians, performers, and athletes leap to mind) do not crave the attention of, or strive to keep company with, strangers. But friends? Well, that is a whole different kettle of fish.
For me, I realized the train had jumped the tracks when in spite of the fact that I have more fingers and toes than I do friends "IRL" (an acronym I only discovered about two years ago means "In Real Life" and not "Indy Racing League"), on Facebook I had more than four hundred. In truth, the overwhelming majority of that number are good people to whom I wish nothing but good fortune but who also happen to be nothing more or less than an acquaintance of mine, which is all I am of theirs. It is a perfectly utilitarian relationship but is not friendship. As I suspected would be the case when I deleted my Facebook account, the people with whom I was/am friends with in my day-to-day world are those with whom I remain in contact now. We might have less frequent interaction than we did when we popped up in one another's "News Feed" but there is not a damn thing wrong with that level of interaction.
Friendship is not - and should not - be measured by frequency of interaction but rather by the depth, the breadth, and the substance of that interaction. Among my greatest friends are my "Band of Brothers" from college, in whose company I have been rarely - if at all - in the thirty-plus years since we all graduated but who remain among those humans who know they could rely upon me for any ask, regardless of its size, and who I know would do the same damn thing for me in a heartbeat. I know because each of us has for at least one of the other of us.
Those are the relationships that - if you are lucky enough to have - you must be willing to work to cultivate and to maintain. Long after the computer has been turned off or the app on your phone has been closed, those are the friends who remain.
Hank Aaron died on Friday. He was eighty-six years old. His epic career was already in its late innings when, on an April evening in Atlanta in 1974, he hit his 715th home run off Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers, breaking Babe Ruth's record.
Vin Scully's call of Hank Aaron's 715th home run
April 8, 1974 - Atlanta, Georgia
Perhaps because he played his entire career in Milwaukee and Atlanta, Hank Aaron is a unique figure in the pantheon of sports. He is indisputably one of the greatest to ever play in the major leagues. Yet, he is underrated. An underrated all-time great? Indeed.
He was significantly more than a great baseball player. He was an extraordinary man, working to benefit kids ages nine through twelve through his Chasing the Dream Foundation. President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001. In June 2002, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
A life well-lived as much for his generosity and his selflessness as for his stunning achievements in his chosen profession.
I have spent most of my legal career - and the entirety of my time at the Firm - doing defense work, which requires the completion of time sheets on a daily basis. Time as a lawyer is measured in tenths of an hour. It is a unit of time known as "six minutes" to you civilians.
Time gets away from you pretty quickly when you measure it in that way. You look up from your desk and January has given way to March and March (except for in 2020, of course, when it lasted for 18,911 days) has given way to June and June has given way to September and then, inexorably, September has given way to January again. Whether it is the circle of life or simply a vicious circle is for minds far wiser than mine to unravel. From where I sit, it simply is what it is.
For me, now, the better part of an adult lifetime spent in one place has been reduced to just five days. I have as many days left at the Firm as I have fingers on one hand. Time this week shall not be measured in tenths, but in fingers.
A new adventure awaits. It is one for which I am very excited. It is also one whose time-keeping system I am much more familiar with and to which I am far more accustomed.
On January 20, 1989, I was a twenty-one-year-old senior at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In November, 1988, I had voted in a Presidential election for the first time, voting for George H.W. Bush in his successful quest to become this nation's forty-first President. Having not turned eighteen until February, 1985, I had been too young to vote in the 1984 election.
I am a Republican. I have been a registered Republican since I first registered to vote in 1985 as an eighteen-year-old high school senior. I did not vote for Mr. Trump in 2016 or 2020. This year, I crossed party lines to vote for Joseph R. Biden, Jr. for President. While I suppose something might transpire in the next four years to make me question that vote, nothing has in the two-and-one-half months since Election Day.
I am a sucker for tradition and for ceremony. While I worked on various matters on Wednesday morning, I had ABC's coverage streaming through my computer, beginning with Mr. Trump's departure from Andrews Air Force Base. His decision to boycott the Inauguration did not surprise me. It did, however, disappoint me. The fraternity of living former Presidents of the United States is comprised of five men. Five. The only one other than its newest member, POTUS 45, who did not attend the Inauguration was President Jimmy Carter. President Carter's absence was due to the continuing menace of COVID-19. Mr. Trump's was not.
But I digress.
I had the great good fortune Wednesday morning of having come across a post on the Instagram feed of The New York Times upon which my long-time friend and college roommate, Jay Bauer, had either commented upon or "liked", which post was my introduction to Amanda Gorman. At twenty-two, she is a Harvard University graduate, the first National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, and now the youngest poet ever to recite at the Inauguration.
After President Biden's speech, Ms. Gorman recited her poem, "The Hill We Climb". As I watched her, I could not help but thinking how extraordinary twenty-two-year-old Amanda Gorman is - and not simply in comparison to twenty-two-year-old Adam Kenny.
What now seems like a million years ago, I read Tim Russert's simply beautiful tribute to his dad and to growing up in his beloved Buffalo, New York in the 1950's. If you have not read Big Russ & Me: Father & Son: Lessons of Life, then might I suggest you do so. I enjoyed the hell out of it. If you read it, then I hope you do too.
I smiled on Monday because I came across a story on SI.com that made me think of the late great Mr. Russert, his beloved Bills, and the die-hard Bills fans known as the Bills Mafia. On Saturday night, the Bills hosted the Baltimore Ravens in an AFC Divisional Playoff Game. The Bills defeated the Ravens 17-3 and earned the right to play the Kansas City Chiefs this weekend in the AFC Championship Game. The Bills last played for the AFC Championship in 1993.
Lamar Jackson, Baltimore's quarterback, was knocked out of Saturday night's game with an injury. He left the field at the end of the third quarter. He did not return. One of his favorite charities is the Louisville, Kentucky chapter of Blessings in a Backpack, whose mission is to "mobilize communities, individuals, and resources to provide food on the weekends for elementary school children across America who might otherwise go hungry." While his departure from the game favored the Bills, Bills' fans showed their appreciation not simply for the type of player Lamar Jackson is but, more importantly, the type of man he is by stepping up and donating to Blessings in a Backpack in his honor.
Saturday morning, after I spent a few hours working on a brief, I did one of my favorite things. I went for a run.
It is the simple things in life that keep me balanced. One such thing for me is going for a run. It clears my head. It is good for the soles. It is, also, good for the soul.
I did not take my faithful canine running companion with me. It mattered not. Not actually going for a run does nothing to quell Sam's enthusiasm for the post-run recap.
For that I was, as I always am, very happy. Quality time with my hound is, also, a simple thing.
In my experience, it is the simple things that are the best things.
Consider this a programming note if you will, of a personal and professional nature.
At month's end I am leaving the Firm where I have spent the better part of the past quarter century practicing law. The decision to leave is mine.
While leaving the safety of a place that is familiar and filled with faces of long-time colleagues, including many who were already at the Firm when I walked through its doors as an employee for the first time on January 5, 1998, is a somewhat sad occasion, the sadness I feel is pales in comparison to the excitement I feel regarding my next adventure. After all, life is a forward-moving exercise.
Effective February 1, 2021, I shall practice law at Kennedysin its Basking Ridge, New Jersey office. Over the course of the several months, I have gotten to meet and to know the men and women with whom I shall work. They are an exceptionally talented group of lawyers. I look forward to the challenge of proving my worth among them.
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies...
In these United States, if we are truly as lost as we have appeared to be for the first two decades of this century, engaging in an ever-escalating, unabating tit-for-tat exchange of insults and invective that fueled the historically unprecedented attempted insurrection of the Congress by the President less than two weeks ago, then there is no point in continuing with the Founders' experiment. A Republic requires some tending to, which is never easy. It is ours, as the great Benjamin Franklin reportedly observed, for only as long as we may keep it.
While I shall never be mistaken for an optimist, pie-eyed or any other variety, I choose to believe that a basis exists for continuing to press forward with the Founders' experiment. I have five grandchildren, the oldest of whom will not be four until May. I have skin in the game. Whether you have grandchildren, you too have skin in the game. Each of us does.
America is found in Ted Lumpkin, Jr. and his fellow Tuskegee Airmen, who during WW II simultaneously fought against fascism in Europe and racism in the United States Armed Forces and kicked the hell of out of both foes. On December 26, 2020, less than one week shy of his 101st birthday, Mr. Lumpkin died in a Los Angeles hospital. His reported cause of death was COVID-19 complications.
America is found in Landon Hacker. Nine years ago, he was a drug addict living on the streets of Camden, New Jersey. On January 13, 2021, Chief Justice Rabner of the New Jersey Supreme Court swore him in as a member of the Bar of the State of New Jersey.
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike...
Less than twenty years ago, on October 20, 2001, a boisterous crowd gathered in Madison Square Garden for The Concert for New York City, a benefit to honor the City's first responders, their families, and those killed on September 11. Among the highlights of the show was the set David Bowie performed. At the time of the September 11 attacks, he lived with his wife, Iman, on Central Park South. Neither of them was an American by birth but both became New Yorkers, engrained into the fabric of the City as it was into them. His performance of "Heroes" during his set brought the house down.
His set also included a stirring rendition of Simon and Garfunkel's "America", sung by an Englishman who had not been born here but who sang every line as if he had experienced each firsthand. He sang it as a love song to a country that may not have been the land of his birth but was most assuredly a land that he loved.
If it is true that America has been lost, then let us make it our job, yours and mine, to find it.
From the September morning on which I entered kindergarten through the May morning on which (still too drunk to have yet commenced being hung over) I graduated college, I had the great good fortune and pleasure to follow my sister, Jill, through school.
Wilma is the penultimate member of Mom and WPK, Sr.'s sextet, and the one who Dad presciently affixed with the sobriquet "Tiger" when she was but a child. She is two years older than I am and was always two grades ahead of me in school. But for 11th and 12th grades at Wardlaw-Hartridge, when she was off at college, she and I had always attended school together. It was an experience I found so jarring that as a high school senior I opted to continue my education at the University of Colorado, Boulder - where she and Joe were beginning their junior years.
I have proven to be the gum that my sister cannot scrape off her shoe. Thirty-plus years after college and five-and-one-half decades after I commenced "Operation Annoying Brother", I smile at the knowledge that we are still as thick as thieves.
She was with me way back when I was a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore who wanted to experience what it felt like to drive so she pulled over into a parking lot, swapped places with me, and let me drive Mom's little red Chevette on the deserted byways of Neshanic Station...and right up into a railroad tie while attempting my first left turn. Irony of all ironies is the son of a man whose secret goal on every trip appeared to be reaching his destination by making nothing but left turns completely screwing the pooch attempting his very first one.
We were together again, with Joe and Margaret, on a Saturday morning in late September on the beach in Bay Head when Sam I Am came perilously close to having Bruce Springsteen ask me my name for the sole purpose of ensuring its proper spelling in the caption of his personal injury lawsuit. We four were running and playing on the beach with Sam and Rita when Bruce and Patti emerged from the water and began making the short walk up the beach to the oceanfront home they had rented. Sam damn near ran Bruce over trying to get by him to say hello to Patti, who helped break any fast-developing tension by immediately bending down and petting Sam.
My relationship with Wilma is one that - to borrow a phrase from Mr. Springsteen - neither time nor memory shall fade away. For that I shall be forever grateful. Today, on her birthday, I am grateful for the fact that Margaret, Giuseppe, Sam, and I shall be able to spend a portion of it with her.
Happy Birthday, Wilma. You are now, as you have always been, my favorite Bad Ass.
Lest you have any doubt, on January 6, 2021, as rioters poured into the Capitol, Police Officer Eugene Goodman was a profile in courage:
An extraordinary minute and one-half, which likely felt both much longer and much shorter than that to Officer Goodman while he did what he did.
Never underestimate the steel of good people to stand up to those who would do others harm. Never underestimate the steel of a person like Officer Eugene Goodman. Never forget what he did. Never forget for whom he did it. In case the answer to that last one eludes you, then might I suggest you go look in the mirror.
And if someone you count among those you love most of all in the world is a law enforcement officer, then you likely processed what you watched Officer Goodman endure for a scarier ninety seconds than I have ever endured in almost fifty-four years through that prism and doing so you came away feeling terrified, infuriated, and relieved.
Terrified by the thought that the person you count among those you love most of all in the world could have been standing at the top of that stairwell alongside of - or instead of - Officer Goodman. Infuriated by the thought that (a) selfish, feckless idiots with no real sense of "duty", "country", or "honor" could so callously threaten the life of a man who clearly has a well-defined sense of all three; and (b) all the selfish, feckless, logic-deficient idiots within the geographic boundaries of these United States were not then - and are not now - roaming solely in Washington, DC and Officer Eugene Goodman is not the only one encountering them, either then or now. Relieved by the thought that when his shift ended on January 6, 2021, Officer Goodman went home.
As the father of a son who serves and protects this country every day and who I count among those I love most of all in this world, I know that which every law enforcement family knows, which is the First Rule of Law Enforcement:
"Make sure when your shift is over, you go home alive."
In early January 2018, University of Texas Men's Basketball Coach Shaka Smart gathered his players to share some hard news with them. Their teammate, Andrew Jones, had been diagnosed with leukemia. Thankfully, the course of treatment that young Mr. Jones underwent at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas proved successful. The redshirt junior (he was granted a medical redshirt for the 2017-18 and the 2018-19 seasons) from Irving, Texas is cancer-free, working towards his degree, and playing basketball for the Longhorns.
This past Saturday was the third anniversary of Coach Smart's sharing the news of Andrew Jones' leukemia diagnosis with his teammates and this brave young man picked one hell of a way to mark the occasion:
My faithful canine running companion is three years old today. Sam(antha) came into our lives at the end of March, 2018. We adopted her about three weeks after our sweet Rosalita died. Rosie's death broke my heart. For the uninitiated, I am a man who not only admits - but embraces - the fact that I enjoy my dog's company to that of most humans. Losing Rosie wrecked me.
Samantha found her way into our lives quite by accident. Joe, Margaret, and I drove to Home For Good Dogs Rescue in Berkeley Heights that Saturday afternoon principally interested in one of her litter mates, another female pup whose name the tag team of time and age has erased from my memory. Upon arrival, we saw our intended, wearing her "cone of shame" and screaming because she had only recently been spayed. Margaret looked at her adorable little face, declared "She cries too much!", and went off in search of other candidates.
It was Joe who found our girl, Samantha. She was playing in a little penned-in area with two of her brother. I know not what it was about her that caught his eye but whatever it was, it caused her to be removed from that area to an area where Margaret could hold her and Joe could talk to her for several uninterrupted minutes. They fell in love. She was ours.
Adoption Day - March, 2018
The folks from the Rescue told us when asked that it was their best guess Samantha - a "medium-sized dog" - would grow to be thirty to thirty-five pounds.
She was ten weeks old the day we brought her home and slightly bigger than a minute...
Sam - March, 2018
Her naturally mischievous side revealed itself not too terribly long after she arrived...
Sam - April, 2018
...and has continued unabated since.
While her spirit and her energy have neither waxed nor waned, one thing that has changed quite considerably is her size. Our "medium-sized dog" who we expected to top out between thirty and thirty-five pounds is a muscular sixty-pound fiercely loyal, absurdly affectionate, and unbelievably spoiled hound dog whose humans love her as much as she loves them - and who is one good-looking girl to boot.
Sam - September, 2020
Spoiler alert: We stopped calling her Samantha almost immediately upon bringing her home. She was quite a little hellion as a puppy and, frankly, having to yell "Samantha!" every time she did something worthy of interjection was exhausting and laryngitis-inducing. "Sam!" it became and so has it remained.
She is my favorite running companion and an integral part of our family.
Sam - December, 2020
It is indeed a dog's life. One to which I am happy to bear witness.
A sad bit of news came across my desk the other morning. Due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 Belmar/Lake Como St. Patrick's Day Parade, which steps off on March's first Sunday every year, has been cancelled.
While Margaret and I have not attended it annually in the five-plus years since we bought our little Paradise by the Sea in 2015, we have done so on several occasions. It is a terrific event. Between the vintage fire engines and the almost-dizzying array of pipe and drum corps, it is a feast for the ears and for the eyes. Annually, thousands of people line Main Street as the parade moves north from Lake Como to Belmar's border with its neighbor to the north, Avon-by-the-Sea.
Here is to hoping that by the time 2022 rolls around, the Belmar/Lake Como St. Patrick's Day Parade can once again step off and fill Main Street with its unique blend of joyous noise.
Alex Trebek died two months ago, today. The Stage IV pancreatic cancer he was first diagnosed with in 2019 killed him.
He taped his final episodes of Jeopardy in late October, shortly before his death. This week, Jeopardy has aired his final five shows. Tonight, at 7:00 pm on WABC Channel 7 for those of us who live in the New York City television market, his final episode shall air. As it turns out, the episode airing tonight was originally scheduled to air on Christmas. So tonight as millions tune in to say good-bye to someone many might consider an old friend, he will do what an old friend does. He will wish us all a Merry Christmas.
I know not whether it makes any sense to have an emotional reaction to the death of someone you never knew - or even met. I do not care whether it does. I know that news of his death saddened me as I know that watching him tonight for the final time shall sadden me too.
Ultimately, a half-dozen members of the United States Senate and one hundred twenty-one members of the House objected to certifying Joe Biden's victory. Among them, noted constitutional scholar and freshman Senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville. Coach Tuberville, who confirmed approximately sixty days ago that his understanding of the three branches of the federal government was that it is comprised of the House, the Senate, and the Executive Branch. I cannot wait until he attends his first State of the Union and witnesses the arrival of nine men and women wearing the black robes of Supreme Court Justices.
Jingoism masquerading as patriotism. As dangerous as ever.
This year is the twentieth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Shortly before Margaret, Sam, and I joined Jill, Joe, and Rita to ring in the new year in Bay Head, I finished my final book of 2020.
"What Brothers Do"
Michael Everett Brown, M.D.
Dr. Michael Everett Brown is, in his own right, an extraordinary human. His big brother, FDNY Captain Patrick "Paddy" Brown of Ladder 3, was larger-than-life. Paddy Brown was a legendary figure in the FDNY long before he was killed in the collapse of the North Tower on September 11, 2001.
Michael Brown's book is an incredibly worthwhile read. It is evident throughout just how much reverence Dr. Brown felt for his big brother. The greatness of his book is not that he recounts the stories of his brother's heroism, which he does. His book's greatness is found in the way he humanizes his brother. It was on a human level that Paddy Brown's life - and death - had the greatest impact. He was far more than a hero. He was a son, a brother, and a great friend. His death affected not simply the city he loved, it affected those he loved and those who loved him most of all.
The final line of Dr. Brown's book is, "I started out writing a story about pain and ended up writing a story about love." Indeed, he did.
Could not help but think of my father, WPK, Sr., on Friday night as I watched Ohio State obliterate Clemson in the CFP National Semi-Final, 49-28. One of the best pieces of advice he ever gave me was "Never Violate the First Rule of the Playground: Never Write a Check with Your Mouth that Your Hands Can't Cover".
Dabo Swinney, the Tigers' exceptionally-successful head coach, violated that rule in the run-up to Friday night's game. In the final Coaches' Poll before the post-season (and after Ohio State had been selected for the four-team playoff AND had been named as Clemson's opponent in the National Semi-Final), Swinney voted the Buckeyes #11 in his Top Twenty-Five. He had ranked his own Tigers #2.
Coach Swinney now has the off-season to choke down his dinner of crow and humble pie, served cold of course. The best revenge always is. Presently, Ohio State is busy preparing for its January 11 date in the National Championship Game with Alabama, which took Notre Dame about behind the woodshed in the other Semi-Final. Early on, oddsmakers have installed the Tide as a touchdown favorite over the Buckeyes. While I have no idea who will win next Monday night, I am reasonably confident saying that I doubt Coach Ryan Day or his players give a rat's ass about the odds.
Margaret, Sam, and I began this year in my favorite place. After spending a simply terrific New Year's Eve as Jill and Joe (and Rita's) guests in Bay Head, I woke up on New Year's Day and, shortly after sunrise, I went for a run. Sam I Am stayed home. When the wind barrels out of the northeast at 10+ miles per hour and makes an already brisk 38 degrees feel like a bracing 27 degrees, man runs and beast does not. My decision elicited no complaint from my faithful canine running companion.
There is no way that I enjoy welcoming the arrival of the new year more than by running at the Shore. On New Year's Day, I headed east towards the water for a couple of blocks before snaking my way south into Spring Lake.
Spring Lake September 11 Memorial
New Year's Day 2021
I ran through Spring Lake for a bit and then turned east towards the water so I could run north - to home - on the boards...into the teeth of the aforementioned northeast wind.
Spring Lake - New Year's Day 2021
It was very cold. Yet, it was even more calming and serene.
Belmar - New Year's Day 2021
As I ran, I thought of Mom. I thought of how much she loved the beach and the ocean. I thought of the peace it had brought to her - especially during the final twenty years of her life when she lived in Jupiter, Florida. I thought of how much peace it brings to me. And I smiled.
Belmar - New Year's Day 2021
My love of the beach, my reliance upon it to center me, and to bring me peace is my inheritance. Here, forty-three months since her death, I remain indebted to her for it. I always shall be.
Love you, Mom. My love for you is something that neither time nor memory shall fade away.
For all the trials and tribulations 2020 brought, it also brought the Missus and me two more granddaughters. Rylan arrived in late February and five months later, almost to the day, Shea joined her. My grandkids are the great blessing of my life. They prove to me that I have made out much better than I otherwise have deserved to make out. They are extraordinary.
Maggie, who is three-and-a-half (already!), her brother Cal, and their first cousin (literally and figuratively) Abigail, are dedicated, fervent believers in the magic of Santa Claus and Christmas. Cal and Abigail are two-and-a-half. While Margaret and I did not see the Colorado branch of the family tree in person this Christmas, we did visit with them via the magic of Face Time, which permitted us to see firsthand how excited Abigail was about the Doc McStuffins toys and paraphernalia Santa had left for her under her Christmas tree, which is to say as excited as Maggie was about Santa remembering that she had asked for a Cry Baby Doll and as excited as Cal was about Santa bringing him the dinosaurs for which he had asked.
My grandchildren are the greatest gift I have ever received and shall ever receive. This Christmas, in a year when opportunities to be merry and bright were in dangerously low supply, their pure, unadulterated joy was my best present - even better than the new Garmin watch AND the ticket to the 2021 See. Hear. Now Festival on September 18 and 19 in Asbury Park that Santa (a/k/a Margaret) left under my tree.
Children grow up fast. Too fast, perhaps. There shall be a Christmas, far closer on the horizon line than I might want to acknowledge presently, when believing in Santa will be spoken of in the past tense. Those days are not these days. These are the days of miracle and wonder. I shall embrace them and enjoy them for however long they last.
