FLOTUS and the Punchline

Sadly it has been two years since my last post... That is embarrassing as "a writer." For the three of you who follow my blog for reasons passing understanding, I am sorry.

I write today to talk about this election. 2016. What a year. Aging rockers gone. Mass shootings left and right. Race relations about as bad as they have been anytime post-Reconstruction. There are days I really do not know where to begin. Like Mugatu in Zoolander, "I [really] feel like I am taking crazy pills." The answers to our problems seem so simple, but as our great country is filled with complexity and differing points of view it is not so easy to reach out and touch those answers to our challenging questions.

I have personally been pretty quiet in this election cycle. I have let comedians and columnists do my talking for me. Since these campaigns are something out of Monty Python or The Running Man this has worked out okay. Alas, as I am arrogant enough to think my opinion may affect someone's vote so here I go nonetheless...

I was standing in an airport in Kansas City coming back from a wedding when I was moved to tears listening to a Democratic town hall. Senator Sanders made a plea about the importance of treating drug addiction like a medical condition (it is) instead of a criminal indulgence. He was The Guy in my opinion--although twenty years too old and not quite presidential enough. He was the third party candidate we deserved. He is not a Democrat... rather an independent like myself. He also knows what Aleppo is, which I consider a plus. He committed to running as a Democrat during the primary so his message would reach more people. If he actually runs as an independent who knows what the electoral math looks like right now? I would like to read that poll... Where is Joey Lucas when we need her?

So, I will be as brief as my "post-Seminole victory/four beers deep/have to be at work at 4:30 in the morning" mind will allow me to be. Secretary Clinton is not my candidate. Though she is prepared (probably more than any candidate ever), smart, and dedicated, she is perhaps a little too establishment for my taste. She is just not my first choice, but she has my support. I think she will get the job done. She is more conservative (particularly on foreign policy) than she paints herself and will hopefully meet Congress halfway to get some things done. And since she is not brown-skinned (subconsciously I think this has been an issue for a lot of people these last eight years), maybe Congress actually works with her for the next four to eight years instead of allowing sour grapes to roadblock governance and duty.

Legislators, we sent you to "the constitutional seat of power" so please act like you know what that means and do your job. I have seen 7-11 employees more dedicated to their tasks than you.

No, this election has been about a reality TV star. Why is that not the end of the discussion? That alone. Period. The End.... President Kardashian? President Richie or Hilton? President Puck? President Cowell? President Snooki? Do any of those sound valid? Then why does "President Trump" to 46 % of likely voters in this country? For what it is worth I had to run a Google search to check some of those names because I do not waste my precious time watching people who are famous for doing nothing on TV within their "reality."

What is scary to me about a Trump presidency is that his being a good or bad president is equally bad for the country as a whole. As the lovely Maxie put it: "He would be a ruler, not a leader." Now, I was not wild about Senator McCain or Governor Romney and their politics, but I was not concerned that their selection would turn our country into some version of the Hunger Games in a matter of months. They would have gotten some work done; I might not have agreed with some of it, but I feel like their zeal for country was in the right place. They actually consider the implications of their actions on a local, national, and global scale.

I have a good idea of what the country looks like under establishment types. More of the same. Maybe not as much gets done as we would like. Maybe there are some victories for the wealthy and the working classes. A few people in the middle get left out... Maybe there are some breakthroughs in education or environmental policies. But overall? Nothing great. Big deal. Four more years and we get to have another say.

With a President Trump, I feel like Crash Davis in Bull Durham trying to catch Calvin LaLoosh: "I don't know where it is going to go." And that is something we need to take seriously. We don't know. It is anyone's guess... Maybe it is prosperous for all. Maybe he does not roll things back 50 years. Maybe President Trump will be inclusive. Maybe he balances the budget, reduces the debt, admits that global warming is a thing, and solves the crisis in Syria. Maybe. But I do not think so. And even if I did I would not risk it, because the potential downside far outweighs any upside. What if his behavior has all been an act to get the gig? I have read that he is completely different in private meetings with donors and business-people. Which would make this all even worse, because we would be electing more of a manipulator than we thought.

And because we finish with the one that is different than all the rest. He is a bully and a buffoon. He is rude and mean. He is what we teach kids not to be in elementary school. He is a hairdo. He is an actual punchline. The joke? Whatever you want it to be. He is unrealistic and uninformed. He has no plan, no gravitas. He is in no way, shape, or form presidential. And that is it...that is the ballgame. For me anyway. I have met kindergartners and labradoodles whom I feel would be better off with state secrets and launch codes than the Republican nominee for president. In fact, I was fitting a ten-year-old for a pair of spikes today who was inquisitive, respectful, and compassionate (the wheelchair competition of the 2013 NYC Marathon was streaming in the shop and he could not believe they pushed those wheels for twenty-six miles with only their arms). He would have my vote... Now. Not thirty years from now. Now.

The choice is obvious. And while I do not think you need a 33-year-old barista to help you with your vote, I hope you think about some of these things when you punch your ballot on Tuesday. I do not think we are actually heading toward doom and gloom, but I think a vote for Secretary Clinton keeps us on a strong path into the 21st century and beyond. Furthermore, as my friend and professor Mark Zeigler often said, "No election in my life has made me change the way I live from day to day," I think it is important to vote for the candidate who is going to help everyone as much as they can especially those who need that help the most. This country is part of a community after all and most of us in our neck of the woods are doing just fine. So vote for the person who is going to look out for everyone everywhere...

Thank you for taking a few minutes to read this. Our time is the among the most precious commodities we have...I hope this post was worth yours. All the best to my conservative, liberal, and independent friends.

The Training Run, Part 4

           We were the second ones back to Haven. Our little clearing was as a good a spot as the Red Oak Woods could provide. It thickened for the perimeter of it giving us extra defense but also forming a nice canopy from the rain. When we got back, Meyer and the others told us their tale. The fires that followed Day One had mostly ceased. They found a few abandoned cars that had escaped miraculously any bombs; they searched the glove compartments and trunks finding mostly drivers’ registrations but a few snacks, too: days old French fries, mints, cereal bars, and leftovers that had not made it to the owner’s lunch hour. Some people had been well into their routines when this all happened, Meyer had shared aloud.

            The rain picked up.

            They had also watched a group of people loot a gas station between the Woods and Capital Circle. There could not have been much left but auto supplies so that did not explain why there were so many people in there. They kept their distance from the gas station—when everything goes back to zero, trust of those you no longer know did the same…especially when there were so few of us left. While we may have been neighbors a few days ago, we were now just inhabitants facing the same problems:

            Where was our next bit of food coming from? Did anywhere in town or beyond have electricity or running water?

            Meyer said that judging by the state of things on the Circle, the answer to the second question was certainly ‘No.’

            There is hardly anything left in there, he told us. A few buildings were still burning especially the larger ones in office parks and strip malls with corporate anchors like Publix and Home Depot.

            All their wealth and security counted for absolutely nothing now.

            Any sign of who did it all?

            None. No army has come to occupy us…not yet.

            No sign of the National Guard?

            That would have been the first thing I bombed.

            There was an armory about three miles due south of where we held safe in the Red Oak Woods. If the armed forces had not made it out of there then it was my belief that no one anywhere was doing any better than us. There was a murmur of agreement among the group.

             The rain came down now in anger and a shit-ton of lightning.

            Where is Pickens? Meyer asked.

            He stayed at the house, and wants us to come back there and set up shop… permanently. He is pretty convinced that no one is coming back to it—judging from what we saw there and what you are saying he is most likely right.

            Let’s go there now, Meyer suggested.

            I don’t know if we can find our way in this weather, I yelled over the thunder.

            We have to try. We can’t leave him alone there.

            Let’s wait until it clears up. Probably another hour or so.

            We waited. Then another hour. Then two. Finally three. The sun descended beyond the horizon. We had to wait for it to clear. Before we knew it, the night would not let us back to Pickens until morning. We knew these woods in the daytime; we feared they would know us at night.

            We stayed there in Haven until morning.

*  *  *  *  *

            Another reason we did not go back for Pickens immediately as we told him we would was because of Meyer’s report on the state of things. The gas station that had somehow missed the bombing was surprising, but because there were still a few groups of people around (and at least one place to loot), we figured there would be time before things turned desperate—people could still get a few items of food. We started toward the road just after daybreak, following along but not directly on the trail system for fear of encounters of the unknown.

            We wanted to stay under the radar.

            Once the trail popped out unto the dirt road, we hastened the final seven or eight minutes to the bungalow. It appeared mostly the way we left it, but the front door was partially open and another window had been broken in front.

            Pickens!

            No answer.

            The eight of us did a lap around the house. The covered fire-pit in the backyard was still smoking. Maybe he had caught a squirrel or raccoon.

            Pickens!

            We started up the stairs to the front porch to find a highball glass on its side underneath a new broken window. I was the first one to the front door and slowly pushed it open. I closed my eyes just for a moment before taking that first step.

            I pushed it open.

            Hello? Pick—

            The bottle of Basil Hayden’s remained on the mantel, but laid on its side. Below the mantel was a recliner where the body of David Pickens, Olympian had breathed its last breath. A few of us ran up to him immediately to see what had happened. Those who saw the carnage that had been laid onto the meat of his quadriceps, calves, and biceps stood back—aghast. Zephyr and Smith cried out in horror turning their faces away. His shirt had been stripped from his body. His neck had been punctured, and he sat in a pool of his own blood that had run down his chest to settle in the chair.

            His skinny frame was pale and cold.

            The most powerful muscles of his body had been carved away from the bone. These muscles, lean and taut had once propelled him to being one of the top American distance runners in history; had moved him along to a top-5 finish in the Games; had moved him over beach, hilltop, and mountain for most of his adult life had now been used as entree in the backyard of House Apocalypse.

            Who the fuck would do this! Cried Zephyr. Is this our world now—our existence?

            I looked around for a weapon of some sort, for something that had inflicted this damage to our brother.

            Nothing.

            Meyer went outside for air. The warm aroma of blood had made him nauseous. The fresh air overwhelmed him, and he vomited repeatedly. Those who were not standing with Pickens comforted each other.

            We were now eight. One of our leaders had been taken from us in a manner that not a month before would have sounded like something out of a horror film. Everything was normal then, as normal as things can be for people who spend most of their time running or thinking about running. There was no innocence anymore. It did not matter what our mile times were or what we had run our intervals in the week before. Our coach was missing. Our friend was dead. We had no home. We had no food. Others were turning to extreme measures for sustenance. We came to the realization that if we did not want to lose our soul, we needed to hunt and kill an animal… and soon.

            Things had turned desperate now, and we had to act quickly.

            We took Pickens’s body out to the edge of the property. Anderson and Slim found a few tools in the garage that would help. We took turns digging the shallow grave for our friend. Six feet would not work. Whoever had done this might check back to see if there were other human meals around. We had dug about three feet of earth, and gingerly placed Pickens and his bottle of Basil Hayden’s at his chest. We left the glass on the porch as a warning to whoever came by the solitary house next.

            Broken highball through a broken window.

            We did not dwell on ceremony. Tresser, who had been a Eucharistic minister in high school and was therefore deemed our spiritual leader, said a few words from his heart. He left the New Testament out of it—something I think we were all thankful for. God didn’t exist anymore, and if he did he certainly didn’t care about us. And with what was going on now in the world, I didn’t think any of us could blame him.

The Training Run, Part 1

           Tallahassee was destroyed. We did not know who had done it. What we did know was our life in the North Florida Red Oak Woods. It was all we had left. Two years have passed since the bombs started falling during a weekly training run at the Greenway east of town. We would go there because it was just far enough out of town to make it really feel like you were leaving civilization.

            On the morning of the bombing that turned out to be true.

            In another time, we would be considered hunters and gatherers. In this time, we were merely survivors. None of us ever planned on living like this. We were a group of the best distance runners in North America. We were paid professionals; taken care of by shoe and apparel companies for the sheer purpose of covering ground quickly in footraces.

            When the bombs started falling that changed forever. Our homes were destroyed. Our friends gone. Was our country still a country? Were we at war? Were we soldiers? We did not lead the lives of professional distance runners anymore. We were dealt a new hand on the morning we had run just out of reach of the bombardier’s scope. We only had each other then, and that was all we would ever need again.

*  *  *  *  *

            We heard the planes before we felt the bombs shake the ground under our feet. An armada had arrived. Thunderous engines roared. We had been in the midst of a standard 12-mile progression run when their bombs started falling. We were already on our way back to the team van when we started running faster and faster. This was no longer training. This was a race to see what the hell was happening. Explosions. Planes coming and going. We had to get back to Coach Novak who had already driven back from our turnaround point to give us fluids. He was to return to our starting point at the edge of the trails to call our splits as we crossed the finish line.

            Today, our times were going to be the best they ever were. We did not think of stopping. We agreed on that; Novak had the van, which was our best way to safety from whatever was happening in the heart of town. We ran faster.

            We had to.

            There were a few murmurs about what might have been going on? A world war? The War? It did not matter at the moment—we could not control the rest of the world. We could only control getting back to Novak. Back to the van. We had to move quicker.

            We had to.

            The ground continued to shake underneath our steps. I rolled an ankle during the last mile as the trail moved under my foot shifting a root and with it my foot to the outside. I pulled up lame for about 30 seconds—the others continued on. Walking was worst. It felt like the explosions in the distance were meant for me, and me alone. The running—even though it was toward the noises—seemed safer.

            Was this the end of the world?

            Most elite running groups from college teams to the professional ranks had a team van. Usually it was a nondescript white van for getting to and from workouts. Slim called vans like ours a “slapper knapper” because the darkened windows in the back made it good for hiding anything you were keeping back there—like kidnapped children. Dark? Yes. However, we were runners, and one of the things we were all really good at was coming up with new names for tired clichés. Slim called them slapper knappers because of the variation he created on the “punch-buggie no punch back” game whenever one would see an old Volkswagon Beetle. If you saw a van with the windows painted out: “Slapper Knapper!” and then you would slap the person next to you.

            Oh the things we used to care about.

            The last half-mile back to the start seemed an eternity even though we were running at just over five-flat per mile pace, the two minutes and thirty seconds we had left were daunting, because we knew we were going to get answers when we got back to camp.

            We had to.

            Coach Novak was nowhere to be seen. The slapper knapper was gone. Our sweats, our Gatorade bottles, our towels, and our protein bars had been purposefully thrown from the back of the van. They hadn’t been stolen, what with their deliberate placement on the ground. We spoke quickly and exchanged ideas. We decided that Novak had abandoned us, taken the van to save himself, but with what little Catholic guilt he had left, he decided to leave our stuff behind. Maybe he wanted to give us a fighting chance. It turned out to be a good decision, but at the time, it felt like we had about as much chance as a marathoner in an 800 meter race…

            None.

            What the hell happened in there? We were east of town. And, all that came from the horizon was smoke. It blanketed the sky. Had all major cities been destroyed? There was no one driving on the two-lane road that ran along the Greenway. Not a single car. Meyer ran down the street to a series of townhomes to see if he could discover what was going on. No one answered their door. It was as if during the 70 minutes we were working out we missed an evacuation notice, an air raid signal, and the raid itself. Meyer snagged a handheld radio from one of the houses to see what was going on. Every station was static. Even the one used for emergency broadcasts.

            The planes were gone now, too.

            We need to find a transistor radio. See if there are others out there, Pickens suggested.

            Not sure what good it would do, I had said. If everywhere else is as bad as us, the next people could be a hundred miles away. At least.

            There could be people on the other side of town.

            Could be.

            Maybe they know what happened.

            Maybe.

            We decided to take an easy run down to the Publix that was a mile and a half away. We needed to shakeout our legs anyway from the progression run, and Zephyr and Diesel had left their wallets in their sweats. We had a little money in our pockets. If the grocery store was still there, maybe they would take our money.

            It took us ten minutes on the deserted roads to get to the Publix on Mahan Drive. We ran up behind it to keep a low profile. None of us wanted attention—we did not know who was out there: friend, foe, or otherwise. We figured if this was the end, we should not tempt fate by being conspicuous.

            The trip seemed a lost cause. Burning was all there was. What had once been a Mecca for people’s hunger was now a smoldering concrete building. But, the closer we got we saw there was still a delivery truck out back. It was no longer connected to the loading dock, and looked to be in decent condition.

            We risked it and ran toward it. The sliding back door to the container was half-open. Pickens found a backpack in the driver’s cabin and brought it around back. We grabbed what it could carry. Fruit, some bottled water, and granola bars. It was as if this delivery was for a bunch of stranded runners. Turned out it was.

            We ran back into the woods behind the burning store to eat our snacks.

            Should we try and get back to the houses?

            They’re not there anymore.

            What about the highway?

            If anyone survived? Probably jammed.

            Do we want to get out of here?

            I don’t think that is a good idea. We don’t even know what happened here.

            All those people. Hundreds of thousands bombed and burned. Gone. Dead.

            Whoever did this, I am not giving them the satisfaction of defeat. This is my town, and I am not leaving it.

            We thought of our families around the country. Asked aloud what we thought was happening? World war? Had our government gotten tired of us? Bored with us?

            We didn’t know—couldn’t know. We just decided to stay together to look for a place to call home. Surely there was a safe structure or two not in flames or blown to bits.

            That was two years ago.

            We’re still in the Red Oak Woods today. 

A short story...

I submitted a short story to a fiction contest in February. I got word in September that it was not accepted which is all well and good. My next thought was to submit it to "Running Times" as they sometimes select short fiction for publication. Alas, my short story is about two times too long for them. Which brings me to this outlet. Over the next few weeks I will be releasing parts of the short story for all three of my readers to enjoy. ;-)

Be warned it is a completely over the top scenario for a short story, but it was immensely fun to write. My ego tells me it is part Lord of the Flies with elements of Palahniuk and John L. Parker, Jr.

Please let me know what you think as I release each section.