The Most Important Things

It has been one hell of a week.  The Missus left yesterday to spend an extra-long weekend with the Colorado branch of the family business. Work has been, well, busy (an admitted understatement) as I have been preparing three cases for trial this month.  

Work is what I do so busy times at work are nothing new and frankly, when I made the decision to go to law school a lifetime ago, I knew what the job entailed.  The hellacious aspect of this week has not come from work, it has come from disappointments in the non-work areas of my day-to-day, specifically The Many Saints of Newark and the New York Yankees' playoff disaster, the viewing of each made me want to vomit in my own mouth.  

But then, everything changed.  

A great, long-time friend sent me a text message telling me that a genuinely good human being with whom we had both attended W-H a lifetime ago, and with whom I had reconnected only recently, had suddenly died.  Mark Petrocelli was a man who never did another human a bad turn.  It was behavior of which, I believe, he was simply incapable.  It is a cliche to say of someone after he has died that he was universally loved.  In Mark's case, it was not a cliche.  It was the truth.  

Having died far too young, he leaves behind two kids, one of whom is a freshman in college and the other a junior in high school.  It is a situation that is beyond sad.  Far beyond it as a matter of fact. 

Bad movies are bad movies, even when they are not simply bad but atrocious.  Disappointing baseball teams are just that - a disappointment.  In the larger scheme of things, neither is particularly important.  

-AK 

Searching for the Light

A morsel or two of thought for October's first Wednesday...

...that is excellent advice irrespective of the month of the year or the day of the week. 

-AK 

1 and Done or 1 of 12

This evening, under the lights at Fenway Park (for we live and play sports in the money-driven 21st century where just about every baseball post-season game is played at night), the Bronx's best apostles will battle the homestanding Red Sox in the winner-take-all American League Wild Card Game.  Loser goes home.  Winner goes to Tampa Bay to face the AL-best Rays in the American League Division Series.  

If either the Yankees or the Red Sox shall win this year's World Series, then they shall have to win twelve games.  This evening is either one and done or one of twelve.  

The last time the Yankees and the Red Sox played a winner-take-all postseason game was Game Seven of the 2004 American League Championship Series when the Sox obliterated the Bombers in Yankee Stadium to complete a historic comeback from a 3-0 Series deficit en route to winning the franchise's first World Series since 1918.  One year earlier, Aaron Boone etched his way into Yankees lore (and positioned himself to be awarded a managerial job fifteen years later in spite of zero experience) when he hit the game-winning home run off Tim Wakefield leading off the bottom of the 11th inning in Game Seven. 

Twenty-five years before Boone's blast into the Bronx's night sky, Bucky Dent had broken the hearts of Red Sox Nation at Fenway Park on an October afternoon.  For it was on October 2, 1978, in the season's 163rd game, which was needed to settle the issue of who would win the AL East and with it one of the then-two spots in the AL Playoffs, when the Yankees shortstop - batting in the top of the 7th inning with two on, two out, and the Yankees trailing the Red Sox 2-0, hit a Mike Torrez offering into the screen atop the Green Monster...

...and into history. 

Here is to the resumption of hostilities in baseball's best rivalry. 

-AK 

So I Turned Myself To Face Me

I watch the ripples change their size

But never leave the stream of  warm impermanence

So the days float through my eyes

But still the days seem the same.

"Changes"

-David Bowie 

I am an obstinately change-resistant human being.  By way of example, I have gotten my haircut in essentially the same manner/style (whatever you call it) for the past four-and-one-half decades, although never as well as Pat has done it for me these past few years.   It is significantly grayer now than it once was (when I was twelve for instance) but other than that, it is now as it has always been. 

2021 has proven to be anything but a "it is now as it has always been" year for me.  After having spent the better part of two decades at one firm, on February 1 this year I joined a new firm (new to me, not to the world), which has been a bit of an adjustment.  As far as I can tell (no one has changed the lock on my office door or denied me access to the firm's computer network), thus far it has gone pretty well.  

As if changing my employer in my mid-fifties was not sufficiently anxiety-inducing (and I assure you it was), Margaret and I have decided to sell our home in Lake Como and, in fact, anticipate having the closing not later than mid-November.  It is my refuge against the world.  It is my safe haven.  It is my reservoir of peace.  Sadly, it is simply not big enough to suit our long-term needs, which include making the beach our year-round home in the not-too-distant future.  The housing market in Monmouth County and Ocean County is, presently, insane.  So, with heavy hearts we opted to take advantage of it.  When and if we shall find a new little paradise by the sea to call home remains to be seen.  Only time will tell. 

Time will also tell if the decisions I have made thus far in 2021 were the correct ones.  Then again, it always does.   

After all, time may change me but I can't trace time. 

-AK

These Three Words

Mom died fifty-two months ago today.  The great hero of my life, I think of her and I miss her daily.  Some days it feels to me as if she was here just yesterday.  Others?  It feels as if she has been gone for a lifetime.  

In the aftermath of the death of one we love and one who loved us, we have just two options. 

Option One: We collapse into a gelatinous mass of hurt and self-pity, doing a disservice to ourselves and to their memory.  

Option Two:  We soldier on.  We acknowledge the punch to the heart that Life has delivered to us, we pick ourselves up, we dust ourselves off, and we keep on keeping on, honoring our loved one's memory and repaying the debt we owe to them by living our life.  

Spoiler alert:  There is really only one option.  

We remember but we do not dwell.  We mourn but we do not wallow.   It is by doing so and in doing so that we pay homage to a loved one lost...  

...the way the great hero of my life taught me to do.  

Forever loved.  Forever missed.  Forever honored.  

-AK 

Kneeling Before the Altar of the Many Saints

The Missus and I have several streaming services (Netflix, Prime Video, and HBO Max), each of which adds at least a modicum of value to our day-to-day, although rarely if ever at the same time.  

This weekend, it is HBO Max's turn.  

While I understand the frustration of actors/artists who have lamented - and shall continue to lament - Warner Brothers' decision to release its films simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max, its streaming platform, as someone whose general discomfort with (and disinterest in) being in the company of strangers began shortly after my arrival and five-plus decades prior to COVID-19's, I applaud it.  My favorite way to watch a movie - perhaps not surprisingly - is identical to my favorite way to watch sports, which is from the comfort and privacy of my living room.  

Tonight, I shall unwind from what was a very busy and long week in the practice of law by getting reacquainted with some old friends and getting introduced to some new ones.  

Enjoy your Saturday.  

-AK 

How Many Summers Still Remain?

A couple of weeks ago, one of Indiana's favorite musical sons was spotted in Bay Head, New Jersey hanging out with my sister Jill's favorite autumnal neighbor.  It is not every day that John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen get together to make music.  Truthfully, since they were spotted here in Jersey only a day or two before the Sea Hear Now Festival in Asbury Park at which Pearl Jam was the headline attraction, I was half hoping that they were planning to join Pearl Jam at a show that my brother-in-law Joe and I attended.  

Nope. 

It turns out that Mr. Mellencamp was here so that he and Mr. Springsteen could shoot the music video for Mellencamp's "Wasted Days", which is the first single from 25th studio album, which is set for release in 2022.   

Talk about an ironically-named record...

...and who on earth is worth our time?  

-AK