Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot: 2017

Has anyone ever told you what “Auld Lang Syne” means? Probably not. But I will.

The words themselves are a Scottish Anglo-Gaelic* phrase meaning “old long since,“ or to put it roughly, “(for) old time’s sake.” The words of the song, sung every year at this time (and at the end of international Scout jamborees, I am told) are attributed to the Scottish poet Rober Burns in 1788, although the inspiration may be more complicated than that. So also with the tune, said to be an ancient Scottish folk melody, but also attributed to the sixteenth-century composer Davide Rizzio.

But enough about all that. Let's talk about me, and my year on this earth.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT

When a President of the United States is elected, a "Presidential Transition Office" is formed, to provide administrative and logistical support for both the incoming and outgoing political leadership, and also for planning the inauguration. I had the distinct honor of being assigned to provide audiovisual support for the Transition Team, which amounted to taking the official temporary portraits of most of the major cabinet appointees. That means I got to meet them.

Some were more personable than others. The general currently serving as the White House Chief of Staff noticed my Eagle Scout pin, and congratulated me (twice) and saying it was "a really big deal." I also met a former National BSA President, now the Secretary of State. (“From one Eagle to another, good luck, sir.”)

But the biggest thrill was meeting the former Governor of Texas and current Secretary of Energy, Richard Perry. He is also an Eagle Scout (Class of 1964, the last year before the service project requirement was added), and we must have spent at least ten minutes talking about our experiences in earning Scouting's highest award. Most of them spent less than ten minutes getting their picture taken, as they were generally in a rush between appointments.

That was "a really big deal" for me, obviously. I'll never forget these casual encounters in the course of my work, with men who would go on to make history.

I have undergone a transition of my own in the past decade, from being a graphic designer (or as they call it in the government, a "Visual Information Specialist," to a photographer and video producer-director (also known as an "Audiovisual Production Specialist." I had trained to be a web designer, but when they told me I wasn't going to do that after all, I noted that software applications for video editing were very similar to those of animation, and that was my foot in the door. It would seem that I exceeded all expectations, and can say upon my retirement that I won't retire as a relic of past skill sets, but as a winner who adapted to the times. My final years as a full-time professional will be my greatest. Soli Deo gloria!

That's a "really big deal" all by itself.

WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS

I started playing the guitar more often, after more than a decade of playing it rarely. There's a long story behind that one, mostly about life itself getting in the way. But no more. After waiting for so many years, I finally got my dream guitar. I also got a Washburn parlor guitar for playing around the house, possibly at coffeehouse gigs or open mic nights, or other places where towing a full-size axe is less than opportune.

But I still have to find the time to practice. That's why I'm keeping at least one parlor guitar on a stand right in the living room so that it can beckon me to commune with it more easily. Yeah, that's the ticket.

This has been the year following the passing of my mother, and the effect on the dynamics of the family is somewhat noticeable. We will always be a family, but with the coming of age of a new generation, the siblings are more inclined to withdraw to their individual households. Mom and her sisters were always very close, and the reunions on the farm with dozens of cousins are a great memory of my childhood. I wonder how different it will be for us.

In fact, I imagine it will be this way for most, as more and more families limit themselves to one or two children, and as those children eschew the very idea of marriage when they become adults. What will the very notion of "family" mean in this world? Where will we go for the ties that bind us?

THE YEAR TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

I didn't vote for either major candidate in the most recent Presidential election. I saw more similarities than I did differences with either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. On one hand, Trump is less likely to do any serious damage to our way of governance then would Clinton, precisely because he is not a Washington insider. Clinton would be clever enough to get away with what the Founding Fathers referred to as "high crimes and misdemeanors," and she has already demonstrated her dubious skill in this respect, while Trump lacks the gamesmanship necessary to get away with much of anything.

Republicans assume they won the election. They did not. 2016 was less a case of the Republicans winning than it was the status quo losing. All the "experts" on cable news channels were absolutely convinced that Hillary Clinton was on the path to victory as the Election Day wore on, right up until the votes from Wisconsin came in. The most the "Grand Old Party" can claim for bragging rights, is that the leadership of evangelical Christians were gullible enough to back a self-admitted Hefneresque playboy to the Oval Office, who lacks the self-control necessary to bring a sense of dignity to that office. And yet, whatever can be said about him, he has already demonstrated every intention of doing what he set out to do. America knows exactly what it's getting from their forty-fifth President, and with unemployment down and consumer confidence up, he may yet prove to be a workable solution.

Now if he can just keep his foot out of his mouth, and let his Chief of Staff get the West Wing under control ...

BEING PREPARED

For more than twelve years, my service to Scouting was as a local Commissioner, which is basically a liaison function between the Boy Scouts of America as a corporation, and the local units. It used to be about helping those units, but it has become about shuffling paper, meeting quotas, and earning the local Executive officer his next bonus.

So, after a rather unpleasant encounter with one of those Executives, I gave up on ever sitting on an Eagle Board of Review, and joined a regular Scout Troop. I would only join a unit sponsored by a Catholic institution so that I would not have to deal with the recent changes in the membership policy. I was accepted by the Troop sponsored by the cathedral parish, ostensibly as a "Religious Award Counselor," but officially as an Assistant Scoutmaster. With the end of my first year, I am finally getting a taste of real Scouting, right in the trenches with the boys who need Scouting.

The nice thing about affiliating at the ground level is that you don't have to deal with the politics of adults in Scouting (and yes, there is such a thing), which helps you to remember why you actually signed up in the first place.

FAST TIMES AT SAINT BLOG’S PARISH

With the advent of the weblog, and the concept of "Catholic blogging" at the start of this century, there have been several benchmark events. 2002 saw its blossoming in the face of the scandals within the Church, both in Boston and beyond. By the end of the first decade, blogging was finally being taken seriously by traditional publishing media, and you didn't have to already be a celebrity with the latter to lead the way. With the departure of Simcha Fisher and Mark Shea from the National Catholic Register (and this is not the occasion for the details therein), we saw the waning of the phenomenon that was the "celebrity Catholic." And for several years, a disturbing byproduct of "the Francis effect" has set even faithful Catholics against one another.

More on that later as well.

WE’LL TAKE A CUP OF KINDNESS YET

I turned sixty-three years old just three days ago. And it was with this year that I began to see a light at the tunnel. It was a decision made easier with my mother passing into eternity, and the four of us discovered the extent of our inheritance. I am by no means a millionaire, and it is tied up in a portfolio of investments. We all retained the brokerage that managed it for our parents, and hopefully, this will compensate for what I was unable to do for a number of years. Now all I have to do is not screw things up.

It was the best of years, the worst of years, all in all, not just another year.

And so it goes.

* Essentially an earlier form of an English dialect, not quite the same as pure Gaelic, but with vocabulary native to Scotland. Or something.
 

My Y2K Moment

Lately I have become interested in emergency preparedness and survival techniques. The good thing about such a skill set, is being ready for anything. The bad thing about such a skill set, is attracting others who are ready for anything, including those who are a little too ready. You know who I'm talking about; the "doomsday preppers." If you've reached the age of majority by now, you are old enough to remember what didn't happen when 1999 became 2000. Of course, it was a great time for COBOL programmers -- people who knew the language of the old mainframes that still held much critical information, but were supposed to go dead the moment the clocks turned over -- but other than that ...

It was New Year's Eve in 1999. I was invited to a special black-tie dinner by our then-communications director. It was strictly a private affair, so your tax dollars didn't pay for it. This gal I was seeing at the time was all set to introduce Mr Wonderful (that would be me) to her friends in the coming weeks, but you wouldn't know it by the look on her when I came to the door. Something was up, but I tried not to notice. (I'll get back to that.) But it was hard not to notice the wonderful full-course dinner we had. This was my first such affair. I hadn't seen this many pieces of silverware in my life outside of where it's stored.

You have to remember that I come from people whose place settings only had one fork, even when the good china was brought out. It's one thing to have a separate soup spoon, because you need that big one to, you know, eat soup. But two forks? What would be the points? (Get it? Points?) Now, imagine seeing three of them, among other things. As for the night in question, what did all those pieces do? Well, someone just said to start from the outside and work your way in. That did the trick. For more details, I obtained this handy illustration from Fatima and Andrew Spoor. Keep this handy in the photo gallery of your smartphone, and you'll always know which implement to use next.

What happened to the one that got away? Well, once the clocks turned over and our computers didn't all die on us, she dumped me two days later. I found out about two weeks after that, that she was already making time with an old flame of hers for nearly two months. He was in a high position in a cabinet-level department right across the street, and the whole Y2K thing was the occasion for their meeting up again. And again. And again. What made it worse was that we both worked in the same agency, the same communications office. I wasn't just dumped; I was publicly humiliated. I remember sending her a long, heartfelt letter in the spring of that year, telling her of how these things tend to revisit you at your own expense. Two weeks after that, she discovered she was in the latter stages of cancer. She passed away by summer's end.

That wasn't what I wished for her, obviously, but I remember how bitter I was at the time, and how I considered it a form of poetic justice. Not only is that a rather cruel thing, but it presumes to know too much of what the Almighty has in store for us. We see so little of the big picture. We need to dust ourselves off, and move on. Somewhere in the greater scheme of things, there was then, and is now, a reason.

So eventually I did move on.

Most of the good things that have happened to me in my life, have been in the last ten years. For all my good fortune, I never forget how fragile the human condition can be, and how, as Old Blue Eyes used to say:

“Life is like the seasons. After winter comes the spring. So I'll say a little prayer, and see what tomorrow brings.”

Oh, and when the old homestead was sold last year, guess who got the good silverware.
 

Nowell Sing We Clear: New Year’s Eve “Rag Dance”

Many of the traditional carols associated with the Christmas season are not specifically for Christmas itself, but are meant to welcome in the New Year. This 1990 performance by Nowell Sing We Clear (Tony Barrand, Fred Breunig, Andy Davis and John Roberts) in Altamont, New York, recreates a custom brought by the Acadians, on their way down the Mississippi River to Louisiana, to such towns as Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, and Ste Genevieve, Missouri, both not far from Saint Louis. The “rag dance” is a traditional New Year's Eve "visiting custom." Dancers dress in costumes decorated with rags, and neighbors join in as they progress from house to house.

I know what you really want to ask: “Pray tell us, O Mighty Black-Hatted One, what are your plans for the most hungover occasion of the year?”

Ah, dear minions, I have your answer: Not much.

Now that the family summit meeting described herein has been completed, the evening will be spent at the movies. Fortunately, very little driving will be involved. (Sal and I usually hit "The Salsa Room," where I'm into Latin on the dance floor, and it's less than half a mile from my place.) I went to see "Les Miserables" last night, and finally understand why my ancestors left France in the 1840s. Tonight it's either "Lincoln" or "The Hobbit." As I am convinced that the former has taken some liberties with history (most likely the result of more than thirty years as a "southerner"), it will probably be ...

Which reminds me; for those who need it, Saint Bibiana is the patroness of hangovers.