A Week of Firsts, New and Old

It has been 7 days since Bride passed and I just need to type about it.  This is the first of what will most likely be a bunch of these related to my journey moving forward, without Bride.  I am hopeful to get to a point where I can share more about our 38 year journey together but that is not now, at least I don’t think.

The things that stands out in each of those days are the first old firsts and the first new firsts.  Everything seems to be a first, first time doing something without Bride.  It started when I got home from work last Tuesday when I immediately started CPR, with the 911 operator on the phone with me, never did that before.  EMT’s, Lincoln police and Lancaster Sherrif folks being in my house all at the same time, that was a new first.  Answering what seemed like an endless list of questions, some about her, some about me and a lot about what happened, never did that before.  Being checked out by EMT’s, temp, oxygen concentrations levels, blood pressure, something looking at my heart with little things stuck all over my chest and legs, new firsts.

Being comforted for my loss by two Lincoln police officers, Margaret and Jeff, no idea what their last names were but they spent what seemed like a few hours supporting me and I hugged them both when they left.  I was also comforted by a Sherrif’s office chaplain whose name was Julie.  I don’t remember much of what any of them said but I do remember them being present for me was very comforting.  I also remember Julie helping me make the first few very difficult phone calls I had to make.  She stayed with me, sitting on the back porch watching the sun go down until about 930pm.  I have watched thousands of sunsets, some with Bride some by myself or others but that day, the sunset felt very different, the first without Bride.  I am so glad that I instinctively snapped a few pictures of it, and my first thought when I did, to share them with Bride.  

One of the questions I was asked was about which funeral home I wanted to use, being new to Lincoln, I had no idea.  I learned they have an on-call rotation of funeral homes for situations exactly like this.  On that day it was Roper and Son’s, and I remember Logan asking me lots of questions and he too was very comforting.   When Sandy’s Mom died, I recall how she jumped into action to get those arrangements made, it was important to do and it was important to Sandy to do them, even after just losing her mother.  I had also watched Bride make lists for all sorts of things, so I picked up a pad and started a list of things to do.  To do my best to honor her courage at that moment I told Logan I would be by the very next afternoon to make the arrangements, we settled on 2pm.   

After Julie left, and I was all alone there was a knock on the door, my neighbor Jacob and his wife.  We know each other and are starting a friendship, which I find harder to do the older I get.  He did not say a word, just wrapped me up in a big ole bear hug and did not let go.  I cried and cried and he held on until I started to let go.  That human moment was exactly what I needed in that moment and I will be forever grateful he gave me that unexcepted and much needed gift.  We traded a few words, none of which I remember and they headed back next door.

I was sitting in the living room by myself and could not get the image of finding her out of my head.  Not sure how I thought to go find a bunch of my favorite pictures of Sandy, but I did.  I uploaded them to Walgreens to print out as 8x10’s, thinking I would pick them up in the morning, wrong, I got a text 7 minutes later that they were ready, so I ran up and got them, along with a bunch of frames.  I sat in the living room with those pictures of her scattered around the room.   I can no longer see the images of her when I found her, I can recall it happening, I can describe the event but I can’t see her that way anymore.  I don’t know if it was the pictures or my brain protecting me from the trauma of that event or both, I guess it does not matter because I can no longer see it, and that is a blessing from the universe.

There was a song back in the 90’s about going through hell, the chorus was “If you're goin' through hell keep on going.  Don't slow down, if you're scared don't show it.  You might get out before the devil even knows you're there.”  That could have easily been Sandy’s mantra in life, I watched her keep moving forward through adversity a million times.  I decided to write down three steps I could take that would move me forward for each day, trying not to show how scared I am.  Before going to bed I decided on my three steps for the next day.  While I had called a few folks I made number one creating a list of people I wanted to call vs them hearing some other way, and I called several the next day so one step forward.  I picked folks up from the airport, check on step forward #2.  I started a list of institutions to notify, the bank, credit cards, her doctors and so on, check although that list has been added to every day since.  I decided I would do this every morning, pick the next three steps.

I did not sleep well at all and got up super early and sat on the front porch waiting for the sun to come up.  Like the night before, this one felt different, it was the dawning of a new day in so many different ways than all the others, another first.  The house seemed so large and so empty, I kept moving to different rooms to try to shake that feeling, another first.  This is when I realized, or maybe it was just acknowledging that I must be in shock.  I was unable to even understand what was happening, let alone begin to process all the feels and all the emotions that were flooding into my brain.  Each going 900 miles an hour, colliding with each other making me unable to function. 

My best friend in the world, Mark arrived at 10am from Rhode Island, we have been friends since the early 90’s and Bride loved him too.  By noon thirty Sandy’s best friend Kathy from Oregon arrived along with my Nephew Chad from Vancouver Washington.  Looking back now I am not even sure how any of them pulled that off so fast and I sure as hell am glad they did though as being alone that morning was difficult.

I also had someone to come with me to Roper and Son’s to sort through the details of the next steps.  Sandy has a big family in Texas, with at least 60 or 70 folks, 7 siblings, their kids, and then those kids kids.  Knowing that, I asked for the ashes to be split and put into two identical urns with one being shipped to her older sister Suzanne.  So, after all the details were sorted I came away with things that I needed to provide, music, pictures and a few other things, they went on the list.  I spent time calling folks, our actual and chosen families and those calls were so hard but I was determined to take three steps forward every day so I did not get stuck in hell. 

Those first few days were simply a blur, the only real things I remember from the second day was picking up my Sister Karen and a Brother from another Mother Scott from the airport, they had come in from Ohio and Florida.  I also remember feeling loved and supported more than anything else.   With all the calls I made I got advice and things to think about, they all went on the list of things.  One nugget I got from a few folks was to create a list of folks who want to come and time those out so you have a longer time before you have to be alone.  It is crazy to think about but that list has like 15 people on it.  Our dear friend Conny sent groceries to the house, she lives in Florida. 

Being surrounded by people we loved and that loved us was so very helpful.  I will forever be in their debt for just coming, without fanfare or question, just got a plane and came to support and comfort me in any way they could.  And they did, and I know they felt supported and loved by me and the others, some of whom had never met before.  There was crying and quiet contemplation of what the world would be like with Sandy in it.  There was also lots of laughter and telling of stories, so many shared experiences from everyone with my Honey.   

Intellectually I know that this was reinforcing my denial and putting off the inevitable.  And my emotional side did not care, this is what my gut is telling me to do.  So, I am, as I have for my whole life, trusted what my gut was telling me to do.  Right or wrong I am not going to deviate from the thing that has guided me my whole life, regardless what the experts say about dealing with grief.  This will be a journey that I am not in control of and I am an unwilling participant.  The ride cares little about any of that, it marches on, and accepting the path the universe has put me on has always been easier than trying to fight with universe, so here I am, on my new path, with no idea where I am headed.  I only know I am going to keep moving and that I will eventually get out of the hell I currently find myself.

The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles – you made this way to damn hard for me!!

So, as many of you know I am a technologist by trade.  A technologist is not just someone who writes code, manages servers and fixes transmitters.  A technologist is someone who thinks in systems, interfaces, handoffs, constraints and failure points.  We ask questions like, where does this system break down?  What happens when the edge case becomes the common case systems are built around?  And most importantly we ask which parts of a problem are human, and which are structural.  By default, we diagnose, not blame.  We look for root causes, not symptoms.  We know most outcomes are shaped by design, not intent, and good people will do good work when the systems around them allow it.

I say all of that to frame this blog, which is version 2.  The first version was pretty damn pithy as my Mom used to say.  Some might have called it full Karen, so much so the title was “oegon DMV is at the top of my shitlist.  After letting that rest a couple of days, I decided to pivot away from that approach, which was filled with assumptions and provided no path to resolution.  Just 4,498 words of my pitching a royal bitch.  So, version 2 is a different approach to telling this same story, one that I am filtering through the lens of being a technologist.

Back in June of 2025 we moved from Smithlandia, located outside Sandy Oregon to Lincoln Nebraska.  When we decided to do that, we had four vehicles, two daily drivers along with two old classics, a 58 Ranchero and 63 Galaxie 500 convertible.  The Oregon tags on the Galaxie were expired when we left.  It was scheduled for full modernization, new engine, overdrive transmission, disc brakes and suspension, so it was going to be on the road right away anyway.  I sold the Ranchero in Oregon.

We decided to wait until we were settled into a house before transferring titles, registrations, and driver’s licenses, mostly because I am lazy and didn’t want to change the address on all of that a few months later.  That plan worked perfectly for my truck, with me walking out in about twenty minutes with the deed done.  That same morning, I took Bride’s Escape in, and that’s when this saga started, August 11^th of 2025.

After only a minute or so, the clerk headed to the back, out of my sight.  She was gone for about ten minutes, the whole while I was thinking, this is not going to end well for me, little did I know.  When she emerged, her face confirmed my thinking, not good.  She told me they could not transfer this title to Nebraska.  I asked, why not?  The title did not have an odometer reading on it.  I was like, what?  And when I looked, sure enough, there was no odometer reading.

Naïve me thought it was fixable in that moment.  I said the vehicle was right outside, that we could walk out there, get the number, and move on.  That assumption was wrong.  Nebraska, as I later learned every state, requires the odometer reading to be printed on the title itself.  Zero exceptions.  The clerk informed me that she had contacted the Oregon DMV and that it was an easy fix for them.  All I needed to do was contact Oregon.

Once I got home, I called the Oregon DMV.  After navigating telephone hell, punching this number and then that number, hoping to get to the right person, I eventually did.  The person assured me this was indeed simple.  She walked me through the form I needed to download and explained the steps, even waiting to ensure I’d gotten it downloaded.  During that process, I noticed there was going to be a fee of $106.   I was a little confused. Why was I paying the Oregon DMV to fix an issue they themselves created by issuing a title without an odometer reading?  After another call, I learned the fee was non‑negotiable, pay it or stay stuck.

I filled everything out, included the check and a letter explaining my situation, and sent it all to Salem, Oregon, where the DMV is headquartered.  I didn’t know at the time that there would be five snail‑mail round trips in this saga.  But there were.  The shortest took five weeks to come back, needing something else, and after the twelve week turn around, they were still asking for more.  Bride’s tags had long since expired, and she was forced to either Uber around or rely on me to take her places.  She wasn’t comfortable driving my truck.  I lost track of how many calls I made or how many stamps I bought.

I did call, a lot.  In those calls, I learned that the people answering the phones are not actually at any DMV and don’t have access to DMV systems beyond a knowledge base.  Like calling the cable company, where someone types your question into a system and reads whatever comes up on the screen.  Only this wasn’t about cable, this was state government.  I spoke to representative after representative, all telling me how simple this was and that I should “just go into the DMV.”  That it would only take minutes to resolve. I was surprised to learn, or at least be told, there was no escalation path.  No way to route a call to something like tier‑two support.  No way to reach someone who actually issued titles.

The last packet I mailed back included two different forms and a release of lien letter I had to obtain from a Florida credit union I hadn’t been a member of for over ten years, shout‑out to Community First Credit Union in Jacksonville for saving the day.  I told Bride that if I got another fat envelope back, I was flying my ass to Oregon to deal with this.  When I left, I told her I was either going to get this sorted or she might need to fly out with bail money if I lost my shit over some unknown new requirement.

We were wheels down at PDX at 1:18 p.m, taxied to the gate and grabbed a rental car.  At least I had miles for the flight and points for the rental.  My appointment was at 2:30, and I arrived at 2:00 and was handed number A978.  That number made me smile.  It was the hull number of the first ship I served on in the U.S. Navy, USS Stump, DD‑978.  While I waited, I thought about those years, the chaos, the problem‑solving, and how even in worse conditions, systems somehow worked better than this.

At 2:38, A978 was called.  As you know, I count things, so I started the stopwatch on my phone. It was already pulled up.  I showed my title, with the release of lien from 2015 printed on it, and explained that it didn’t have an odometer reading and Nebraska wouldn’t accept it.  Dan told me no state can accept a title without mileage. According to him, transferring a title without it is illegal, and their system wouldn’t even allow them to print one without it.

I pointed at my title with a bit of a smirk and asked, if it’s illegal, how exactly did I get one?  He explained the system had changed in 2016 and mine likely slipped through before the safeguards were in place.  As he typed, I mentioned my call‑center struggles.  He apologized sincerely and said he had no idea there wasn’t a way to reach someone like him directly.  He asked me to sign the pad.  I asked if he had everything he needed to issue the updated title.  He said yes, and I signed.

Then came the words I expected but still spiked my blood pressure: “That will be $106.” I asked if there was a way to dispute paying for an illegal title that Oregon had issued.  He said yes, with a smile, but it required traveling to Salem.  I stopped him mid‑sentence and reminded him I’d flown in from Nebraska and was leaving shortly.  I paid. I wasn’t happy, but I paid.  When I stepped into the parking lot, the whole thing had taken six minutes and twelve seconds. It really was simple and easy, if you are there in person, at the DMV, in Oregon.

What this experience ultimately reinforced for me is that people are very rarely the problem in these sorts of things.  Dan wasn’t the problem.  The call‑center staff weren’t the problem.  Most everyone I interacted with showed up trying to do the right thing within the rules, tools, and authority they were given.  The failures I encountered weren’t personal.  They were structural, the predictable outcome of systems that make it hard for capable people to produce good results for the folks they are supposed to be supporting.

I am a technologist by trade, which means my instinct is to separate people from problems. When the same failure happens repeatedly, across time and across individuals, that’s not a character flaw.  It’s a design flaw.  Attaching problems to people gives the issue a face.  It brings in all the feels, all the emotions and makes blame easy, and solving the problem harder.  Once blame enters the room, diagnosis usually leaves, at least that is my experience.

My work, whether I’m dealing with technology, organizations, or bureaucracy, is about fixing systems so ordinary, well‑intentioned humans don’t have to rely on heroics to get reasonable results.  Good systems absorb mistakes, expose failures early, and make the right thing the easy thing to do.  When they don’t, frustration becomes inevitable, as it did here, not because people failed, but because the system and structures did.

Maybe I should offer to consult with the Oregon DMV on improving their systems and structures.  This is probably an edge case that will never receive a moment of investigation.  That’s the sad reality.  In the real world we must build systems to solve for the majority of things, not the outliers or exceptions to the rules.  I know that to be true, and it was way too hard Oregon DMV! 

The Importance of Showing Up, Even When You’re Not OK

Some mornings ya don’t wake up brave, some mornings you’re just exhausted.  Some mornings our hearts ache, our minds are scrambled from running all out, and our spirit is running on the battery we forgot to plug in last night.  And still, every morning when our eyeballs pop open, we rise thankful we got another day to make a difference.  Not because we’re unshakable, but because we have learned the importance of our quiet presence.  We must show up, be there for those who need us, even when it takes trembling courage because we know we are not OK ourselves.  That is the kind of courage that does not make speeches or pose for gold gilded pictures, it is the courage of those who know they are imperfect.  That is the kind of courage whose voice cracks, and steady intention can’t even find the words.  Those of us who can admit we are not OK, we sit down, take some deep breaths and let our presence speak the words we can’t quite get out – I am here.  I am doing the best I can with what, and who, I have.  And for today, that has to be enough and we have to be OK letting it be enough, because at least my eyeballs popped open.  

Lately we don’t get to show up on the hard days full of fire and fearlessness, ready to attack the day.  Lately we have to show up simply because our presence matters to those who rely on us, even at work.  We show up even when our strength and patience are running near empty.   That’s a quiet truth that most leaders learn the hard way, at least in my experience.  Disappearing, even for legitimate and valid reasons, can ripple through a team in ways we never intended.  For me that means making space for the team, even when I am angry and disappointed and my voice is cracking.  I still make the choice to support the folks in my care.  It lets them know that they are not alone, it lets them know we are here to support each other, even in the hardest of times.  I show up for them because I have a responsibility to do so, just like I showed up for my shipmates, no matter what.  Leadership is not a performance, it’s a presence.  Imperfect, human, sometimes raw and unfinished, but the constant is showing up.  It can be a gift, I know it is for me. 

It’s weird because those days I show up the most imperfect are the days that carry the most  hope.  Folks don’t want or need polished up quotes from whatever the latest leadership book they read, they need us real and they need our presence.  When we show up with tired eyes, an honest heart, even if angry and disappointed, it becomes permission.  Permission for them to stop pretending, permission to breathe, and most importantly, permission to bring their whole selves to the conversation instead of the curated version of themselves.  That is such a grounding force, authenticity is appreciated as it steadies the room without saying a word.  Just being there tells the team, we can keep going, even through the hardest things, especially the things outside of work they have no choice but to carry with them.  This act of care is a small but powerful signal that we understand them, that we believe in them, and that makes room for the possibility that tomorrow might be kinder to their soul.

Some days we simply have to admit the truth without letting it become our whole identity.  Not OK does not mean broken, it does not mean we are not capable, it means we are human in a moment in time where the world seems dead set on taking a bite out of us.   Funny thing, and it’s kind of like when a scientist watches an experiment and realizes the simple act of watching is changing the experiment, an unexpected variable.  When we stop trying to wrestle our feelings to the ground to get them to relax, they get a bit lighter, the whole thing changes when we let go a little.  We are allowed to be shaken by the goings on, I question those who aren’t, and regardless we can still be steady and a bit lighter about it.   Think about that wisdom that says home is still home, the porch light is on and we don’t have to prove to anyone we deserve rest, we just walk right in and plop down on the couch and Grandma brings ya a sweet tea and kisses your forehead, that right there is the good stuff.     

The simple truth is, none of us get through any season alone, even if we put up the façade that we are.  We are steadied by those we allow to show up for us, the ones that don’t need explanations or a bunch of words.  The ones who are simply present for us, maybe with a hand on our shoulder, or a longer than normal hug.  It might even be that random text from that person you needed to hear from, I got an email yesterday that filled my heart from a coworker, I damn near cried at the generosity of their soul.  These folks don’t try to fix us, don’t try to justify the world in any way, they simply make space that feels safe enough that we can breathe again.  That simple human kind of love reminds us that showing up isn’t something we owe the world, its something we learned from the people who never walked away from us, even on their hardest days.  That is who we need to emulate.

Some days the bravest thing we can do is let enough actually be enough.  This is a struggle I have, the intellectual part of me recognizes the need to let enough be enough but I have learned that my emotional part does not always give a damn about what the intellectual part is up to.  The dichotomy of that battle I find to be one of life’s less than humorous jokes.  Pretending when we don’t believe it is also one of life’s little jokes, one that can be cruel to our well being.  We must keep saying, this is what I got today, and that is enough, sometimes we have to add words, like God Dammit or for fucks sake.   That is our heart being humble and kind with ourselves.  Maybe when Tim McGraw sang the words don’t expect a free ride  from no one, don’t hold a grudge or a chip and here’s why.  Bitterness keeps ya from flying, always be humble and kind he was singing about that very thing.  We have to dig for our better selves, choosing gentleness when things are hard.  We have to work on not passing our hurt onto the next person in line.  And always be thankful you kept going without losing your humanity and inherent goodness – be humble and kind.

Showing up when you’re not OK is not weakness, its love with dirt on its hands.  It’s refusing to let the hard season turn you into a hard person.  I have said various versions of this over the years but folks don’t always remember what ya said.  But they do remember how they felt when you were there.  They will remember that you didn’t disappear, even if your eyes are tired, even when your day was shitty.  We have to make room and share space to help the room feel a little less lonely, for both of us.  The wild part is, it does not require grand gestures to make an impact.  More often than not, it is the smallest things that tell the loudest truths.  sharing a lifesaver, holding a door open when you don’t feel polite, letting someone in who stayed in the lane we both knew was closing a mile ago, or simply paying for coffee fort the person behind you in line at Starbucks, which happened to me today, I paid that forward and rode that wave of joy all day.  That joy was an unexpected gift from a stranger, and I am grateful for it.    

So maybe that’s the whole thing.  Learning to come home to ourselves the same way we went over to Grandma’s to feel safe and loved.  On nights where you’re running on fumes, let enough be enough.  Be deliberate about putting the bitterness and hurt down, because that shit is heavy and you deserve to breathe.  If all you did today was stay human and offer one small kindness, then believe me when I tell you, that counts and it matters.  That is courage.  That is hope.  That is perseverance. And most importantly, the porch light is on for you - always! 

More War - again

So, it seems we are adding to the tally of years our country has been at War.  Over our country’s 250 years nearly 230 of them have been spent fighting one war or another, or over 91% of our entire history as a country.   The latter seems the craziest to me, 91%.  They always say how important it is we learn from history so as not to be doomed to repeat it.  From my perspective, the only thing we seem to have learned is that we don’t, or can’t learn from history, no matter what or no matter how recent the history.

In the 20 years between 2001 and 2021 the United states alone has spent $1,637,297,000,000 in total in the wars against Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.  These numbers don’t include the classified costs for the military and other agencies.  Those could easily be that much again.  Yeah, that is 1.6 trillion dollars that we the taxpayers footed the bill for.  Here is a link to our Governments own data on this Cost of Wars and I would say those numbers are WAY low, but that is just my opinion. 

There are other costs that come with war as well, most importantly our brave young Men and Women who volunteer in service to our country.  The average age being 28 for enlisted and 34 for officers (2023-24).  Over 7,000 have made the ultimate sacrifice between 2001 and 2021, the number we can verify.   I absolutely certain many did not get counted due to being on classified missions.  In those countries over 800,000 folks were killed, that number is comprised of combatants and non-combatants using the available data, which I am sure skews way low.

I wonder how many of those US troops had a spouse, kids a dog and I wonder what the long term impact on them is?  How many hours of counseling are needed?  How many bankruptcies happened as the result of that?  How many parents lost children, how many friends and loved ones now simply have a hole in their heart where their friend or loved one should be?   And beyond those numbers there is real human fallout, what about all those folks who knew and loved those 800 thousand people, can we even calculate that impact?  How many now and how many generations to come will hold the US in a very dim view?  How many may be radicalized to carry out further attacks?

For me, when we strip away the dollar signs and the line items, what’s left isn’t strategy or national interest, it is human wreckage.  No one wants to tally it, because it doesn’t fit neatly in a spread sheet or a Pentagon power point.  We throw around numbers like they are abstract concepts, I’ve even done that here.  But behind each and every one of them is family that got their entire world blown apart so some Politian could thump their chest, or as I see it measuring their dicks to see whose is bigger.  It’s childish and frankly repulsive and disappointing.

The disconnect between decision makers and the people who pay the price is infuriating.  It should infuriate every single American.  They are clearly not serving our interests or representing us.  If I am being honest, it is not hard to look at it all and wonder if anyone in Washington has actually learned a damn thing over the last two decades.  It also makes me wonder if learning was ever the point, because it sure as hell does not seem like it was or is, at least to me.  These things have always been about rich people protecting their interests by sending poor or lower class folks to do their bidding.  It is about who is being enriched by the actions.

Behind each of these actions are brave men and women.  They are real humans, not action figures, not avatars from a war game but people, our parents, our kids, our friends, our neighbors, loved ones of all sorts.  There will be dogs pacing nervously while they wait for their human to return.  Cats will be acting like cats do when their Human is not there for them to torment.  For what?  Another war we will we eventually pretend didn’t happen?  For another batch of unanswered and ridiculously hollow thoughts and prayers?  The emotional debt we pack on the backs of our military families is fucking obscene, and somehow, we act like it is just the cost of doing business in America and that makes me question whether we ought to be in another business instead of this one. 

So where does this leave us?  Do we keep repeating the cycle, like we are trapped in some nauseating national ground hog day of bad decisions?  At what point do we stop letting those elected to represent us wave off ambiguous outcomes with polished platitudes focused on patriotic soundbites?

What will it finally take for us to hold those fuckers to account, really hold them to account not in just a slap on the wrist.  Or easily passing it by at the speed of the news cycle.  We need to have an accounting of our tax dollars.  We should get that as a matter of course from those we elect to represent our interests, which is not currently the case for me and my interests.  

If we don’t hold them to account, nothing changes and we sink billions into this test of whose dick is bigger,  There will always be someone who is sure theirs is, and we will be left mourning the loss of another generations dead while the people who sent them continue on with their lives unaffected by the problems of the little people.

Maybe the first step is our own, maybe we can admit and stop pretending this is all somehow normal or necessary or inevitable.  It feels like a curse that says America must always be at war.   Dwight Eisenhower warned us to guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military industrial complex.  We didn’t.  I feel like that is played out in real time in front of our very eyes, who is benefiting the most from war?  Perhaps it is the ones with the best lobbyists.  Every time we let political leaders skate by without a single real consequence we embolden and empower them, we ourselves have normalized this bullshit.   

We should be demanding transparency so aggressively that it makes them squirm in their chairs.  Every penny tracked, every classified program scrutinized but people who don’t owe their careers to the same defense contractors writing the check for favorable legislation.  We need decision making in the daylight.  If they can’t face Gold Star Families and explain why the sacrifice mattered, they don’t get to send anyone else.  And we should ensure when we send Americans into harm’s way, it is absolutely clear that it is an action of last resort.  And that should be made clear to all Americans, we deserve no less from those we send to Washington to represent us.  

We could start redirecting war fighting budgets, even if it is just a sliver from the endless river or trillions.  We could spend that actually taking care of people.  Imagine what would happen if we treated the root causes of conflict the same way we treat defense budgets.  As a tech dude I spend a lot of time thinking about root causes.  In today’s case, as with many before, it seems to be an unwillingness to learn and engage in dialog to find resolution to conflict.  I guess that is unrealistic for the 542 elected federal officials, so it seems impossible for that to work on a larger global scale.   

We could invest in diplomacy that isn’t a photo op.  In education that teaches critical thinking.  In communities that give young people options besides enlisting because they cannot afford college or health care.  We could hole public hearings where decision makers don’t get to hide behind closed doors, as we see them doing with the Epstein circus.  We could build a culture in our country that is more focused on collaboration, that values life over profits and that see service members as people, not pawns.  And that stops treating war as some kind of recurring subscription that we forgot to cancel.  Maybe a national Rocket Mortgage check that can cancel them for us.

If we want a different future, we’d better put down our devices and find the spine to demand one.  It’s obvious no one in Washington is going to magically hand it to us out of the goodness of their heart.  If we do not start demanding better, making it louder and harder and more relentlessly than ever, then we must admit we are simply bystanders.  We are then complicit in and actively supporting our own demise.  And at that point, we should stop pretending we value life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness or that truth means something or anything else worth having a flag to stand under.   

Growing Up Inside Sameness

I grew up in a tiny little, mostly agricultural community in west central Ohio, one of those places that looks almost identical now as it did when I left 43 years ago.  Mostly homes stayed in the family, and in rare cases when one came up for sale it usually went to someone who had grown up in the area anyway.  My Sister actually purchased my Granny’s house and renovated it, and then passed it along to someone else.  I lived in that purple house in Millerstown for nearly all of the four years of high school.  It was one of those towns that if you’ve never been there, you really haven’t missed much.

I went to a small rural school district established in 1957, the Graham school district.  Back in my youth I went to Graham South elementary.  Prior to becoming part of Graham Schools, it was Christiansburg-Jackson School and was originally built around 1907, finally closing in 2007.   Later it was torn down, along with Graham North and East.  The school carried the name of A.B. Graham, yes the founder of the 4-H youth agricultural program in 1902 that later grew into  the modern 4-H global program focused on hands on learning, leadership and agriculture.  

There was a sameness in the looks of all those elementary schoolhouses, and even the fields around those schools looked the same.   The small towns in the district shared that same sameness, Rosewood, Terre Haute, Carysville, Millerstown, Westville, and Thackery.  All familiar places filled with the same small town hard working men and women whose collars were mostly blue.   What I didn’t notice then was a deeper sameness, the near total absence of diversity of any kind.

In my entire childhood and young adulthood there, I cannot recall going to school with a single person of color.  Maybe there was one kid, but they were not in my circle.  My world was built out of sameness, and sameness became normal, and sameness became my truth.  Looking back, I can see it more clearly, the quiet but ever present “you ain’t from around here are ya?” energy that is so common in small towns, at least in my experience.

I can recognize now that the sameness built a certain level of blindness in me.  What I recognize today as casual xenophobia that was just in the air we breathed.  When a kid from California moved to our high school, we were brutal.  He wore an earring, a boy with an earring, in his right ear no less and we were 100% convinced that meant he was gay.  That tiny detail was enough for us to mark him as “other.”   Anything outside the script of sameness felt disruptive, and disruptive felt dangerous and scary.  I know now it was a moment in time that is long gone, but it still sticks with me.   

I also remember going to a diner with my Sister when I was back one time and the server asked where I was from, commenting on my accent.  I said Millerstown, to which she replied without hesitation, “no you’re not.”  I had to run through my graduating class and the folks I went to school with before she’d believed me.  I have seen a version of that play out in nearly every place I have been.  In smaller communities where everyone knows everyone else, the xenophobia is not intentional at all, it’s inherited.  We humans are literally wired to protect ourselves from the unknown, and in places with limited exposure, the unknown can be nearly everything.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to unlearn the idea that sameness equals safety.  In a homogenous place, everything reinforces itself, beliefs, expectations, the rhythms of life, nothing interrupts the script.  I was not raised to reject difference, I was simply not taught to recognize it, appreciate it or engage with it.   Stepping out into a world where people looked different, loved differently, worshipped differently, or simply lived with different perspectives and opinions left me more confused than hostile, boot camp helped with that.  It created a confusion about the great big world and how it worked, in all the ways I never even contemplated.   The world was expanding faster than my ability to keep up with it or my understanding of it, and in many ways, that is still true to this day. 

I also find a certain irony in all of this.  Folks from rural areas pride themselves on being grounded, self-sufficient, practical and grounded, and they truly are in ways city folks cannot ever fully understand or appreciate.  The sameness that supports those attributes also creates a fragility.   It prepares folks for continuity, which is essential.  At the same time it does not prepare folks for the complexities that exist in the world.  I learned a lot from a lot of amazing people, people who loved me, but they simply couldn’t teach me things they never had to face themselves.    

There were so many answers I needed and I did not even know what questions to ask.  My world was so small I didn’t even realize what I wasn’t seeing, and that’s the part that humbles me now.  I think back to that kid from California, all the shit we gave him because of an earring.  The irony is, I ended up getting one decades later and I put it in my right ear because of him, and I don’t even remember his name.  It makes me laugh now, and it also makes me think about how each of us carry little moments like that, unresolved crap from our childhood when we weren’t leading with our best selves.

And now when I look back at that tiny Ohio town with its sameness and the long gone purple house, the familiar fields, it’s not my prison and it’s not my promised land.  It’s simply where I started this crazy journey called life.  I see the beginning of a story, one that took years to understand and one I am still learning how to interpret.  I will be forever grateful for having had the childhood I had, it was stable, predictable and full of people who took care of each other.  And I’ll always hold myself accountable, for examining the blind spots that came with it, so they never define the path ahead.  I am imperfect and flawed so I have no expectation of perfecting myself altogether, and I am ok with that.   

Pretty amazing place Millerstown

The Navy Years, where the foundation of who Smitty is was forged

I didn’t know it at the time but that frigid late December day in 1984 when I boarded my first ship, the USS Stump was the start of the most amazing journey.  Sitting cold and completely out of its element because it was in drydock, was the day the forge that would form who Smitty would be got lit.  I was young, loud in the way that only an inexperienced dumbass can be, carrying a mix of false confidence and cluelessness that probably made the old salts roll their eyes.  Everything smelled like metal, fresh paint, fuel, and of course salt.  I did not understand anything about honor, dignity, respect, responsibility, or even how to be a man yet.  And somehow, I knew I was standing on the gangplank of life that would eventually shape me in ways my young cocky self could not even imagine, even in my wildest dreams.  And that certainty is something I’d not yet felt in my life, at that stage anyway,  I was ready for a bosun whistle and “underway… shift colors” piped over the 1MC, and at that moment I did not even know that that meant we were tossing off the moorings and headed out to the great blue.

Here is a picture of my first ship in drydock after some repairs on the sonar dome.  If you look closely you can see those two .

Those first days felt like living inside a machine that could not care less about me.  It was however my home now too, and my shipmates were my family and in a weird way it was the safest place I had.  That was true of the drydock and the ship, they both had a gravity to them that held me tight.  I learned quickly that the work had a sort of monotonous rhythm to it, and I liked it.  Shipboard life had its written and unwritten rules, and those standards were not up for debate.  I was still running on bravado, bad assumptions and a cockiness that ended up bumping me into the UCMJ, that is the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  It also led to not fully meeting the Chief’s expectations about how I was to show up, regardless of any event, situation or location and regardless how much I had drunk the night before.   Those hard lessons stuck and are still sticking.  Eventually young Smitty learned it was better not have the Skipper rip the stripes from my uniform,  then take half of  my pay for a couple of months and to add insult to injury, keep me on the ship with a lot of extra after hour duties for 45 days, not that I made any money to go do anything anyway.  Those lessons learned the hard way have never faded.

The Navy has a not so subtle way of putting a man in his place without ever raising its voice.  You learn quickly that nobody owes you patience, nobody owes you respect and nobody is impressed by the loud kid.  They have expectations, and a lot of them, and one of those is that you meet those expectations.  I had to earn my space by showing up, taking my knocks and finding the lesson, do the damn thing you are expected to do and not make the same mistakes twice, that was also a clear expectation.  As a cocky young kid, that was an expectation I struggled with and paid the price for.

Little by little that false confidence was replaced with something sturdier.  The forge wasn’t just hot.  It was steady, it was deliberate.  It kept hammering the same spots until they got stronger.  The forge was about repetition, discipline and the humbling realization that doing the right thing is more often the quiet struggle and almost never convenient.  This was the beginning of becoming a man who could hear “underway… shift colors” and understand that it meant so much more than the ship getting ready to move.  It was the realization of my responsibilities, to the ship and my shipmates.  I did not have words for it back then.  Now, it could not be clearer.

The loudness that comes with being a NUB, non usable body, started to fade, not because anyone told me to quiet down, but because I was learning to listen.  I started to see the difference between talking and communicating, listening more, asking more questions, and being humble enough to admit I didn’t know, that was hard at first, and I learned it was a superpower.  I also learned the difference between showing up and showing off, the men I served with were not interested in my bullshit, any of it.  They expected and demanded consistency, effort, contribution, and a willingness to learn without excuses, even learning shit I had no idea I would be expected to learn.  

Every small task, sweepers, and waxing the passageways, I freaking hated that, underway replenishments, standing the midwatch when I was exhausted was a reminder, honor and integrity is not earned in grand moments with grand gestures.  It is built in the small, consistent, mostly invisible and unnoticed actions that contribute to a greater good than my dumb ass understood at the time.  That realization came slower than it should, but the lessons have remained core to who I am.  It was also at this time that I started to understand accountability is a gift to be cherished.  When someone corrected me it was not to knock me down, it was to lift me up, push me towards my better self.  It was to keep me aligned with expectations of a crew that depended on each other to stay alive and hear those words, moored… shift colors when got home safe.    

That kind of responsibility was not theoretical, it was immediate.  It was real and with its quiet pressure was shaping me faster and harder than any mistake or punishment ever could.  The forge wasn’t just hot, it was precise, it was deliberate and with a consistency that knew exactly where to heat the metal to get the desired product.  Looking back I realize the subtle shifts were creating momentum that was driving real change in who I was.  I was a little less dumbass, never none, but at least less, and a little more dependable.  A little less of I got this and a little more teach me so we all get through this.  I didn’t see it then, but the Navy was pushing the boy out of me one layer at a time.  As those layers started to fall away they were replaced with the stronger layers of a man who could carry the weight without complaining, someone who understood the value of the mission and the man standing next to me.  those early days did not just prepare me for service in the Navy, they were preparing me for every day that was to come on my journey through life.     

With all the goings on in the world I find myself reflecting back on those lessons I learned as a young man, and the ones that came after my service, more often than I expected to.  Not the technical or the rigidity of it but the deeper truths about steadiness, responsibility and choosing integrity and doing the right things, even when it is inconvenient.  My last couple of posts were me trying to process the noise, trying to find a place to drop anchor that will hold fast so I am not just drifting or being pulled around by the current.  I have not found a strong anchor point yet, that is a big part of writing about it is the search for that anchor point, where it will hold fast.  Those lessons from my youth are helping me in the chaos of the world, reminding me that I am part of something bigger than myself.  Thank goodness those lessons didn’t fade, the forge hardened them and they stuck.  They are the compass I use to set my course, even when its foggy and I can’t see shit.   

The world feels unmoored, drifting, and dragging anchor.  The news feels like that time the Navy shot an Exocet missile at our ship to test our missile defenses- scary as shit!  Sailors as a default learn a lot about navigation, for the obvious reasons, those lessons are helping me navigate the world while we are in a hurricane, which I’ve been through by the way.  Those words, underway… shift colors have also taken on a new meaning, something broader with different context.  It still means we are headed out to the big blue, to accept new responsibilities, new expectations and those are choices we must make, regardless of whether it is scary or even terrifying.  Maybe that is why typing these posts matter so much to me right now.  Maybe it is my way of tossing off the mooring lines that have held me tight to the pier.  Maybe it is honoring that kid who walked up the gangplank all those years ago not knowing anything.  Maybe it is applying the lessons learned by the man who walked back down that gangplank with a foundation strong enough to weather what came next, including whatever the hell this moment is.

I am not pretending to have answers, but I know the next right thing to do is toss the lines, blow the bosun whistle and shift colors and trust myself enough to step up, lean in and keep moving forward. 

I Wasn't Ready for That Question - Seems Normal to Me

I had a completely unexpected conversation today at Hy-Vee checkout, the kind that gets stuck in the grey and drags ya into pondering a question that came out of left field.  I was wearing a tee shirt, because it was finally in the 50’s today.  Nothing fancy, just the one word across the top and four more below it in two more lines.  I have several with similar themes from over the years, sort of my silent statement on the goings on in the world that I feel need attention.  Nothing I have not done a thousand times over the years, although today’s world feels more tense and maybe needs even more light shined on it.

As I wandered the aisles gathering up the things on my list, I saw mostly that quiet sort of stoic Nebraska nice folks here have.  A few nods of appreciation, a couple of murmured approvals, and one guy who just stared before blurting out “100%.  I wish I saw more people saying that”.  I also saw just as many folks faces tighten up or that sideways stink eye glance that always seems to say more than any words could.  None of those really bother me, if it did, I would not wear shirts like that.  Hell, I would not fly the progress pride flag with the American flag on my truck for Pride Month and I would not wear my Portland frog hat, that also says “resist”.  I do not have a problem exercising my constitutional right to free speech and my general sentiment if fuck ya if ya don’t like it.

At least until I met the checker as I was paying for my stuff, I will call her Alison.  As I always do, I asked how her day was going, she provided the perfunctory “fine”.   She then looked at my tee shirt and without missing a beat asked, with totally genuine curiosity “What does your tee shirt mean?”  I froze.  I was totally unprepared for the simplicity of that question. Unprepared for the absence of heat or agenda.  She asked the question in the way someone might ask about the color of the walls.  She asked with the clear eyed honesty we see in most youth, that kind of simplicity us adults seem to forget how to use.   

I stumbled for a moment, caught off guard by how plainly and unburdened the question was.  Not hostile, not loaded, just a young person looking at five small words, Resist, This is not normal.  I do not believe she saw the implied context, no emotional freight, no history behind them, for her they were just words screen printed on a cotton tee shirt.  I managed to fumble out some words about traveling the world and seeing many different cultures gave me a perspective, what it feels like when something is off kilter and what normal feels.  And being 60 also gives me a sense of what normal has meant in the context of our country.  She nodded politely, considered her response for about half a second and said, “Seems normal to me”.      

 And there we were, me flabbergasted, her completely unfazed.  That answer, seems normal to me, was so utterly sincere, agenda free and hit me in a way that no stink eye, nod of approval and no aisle comment had.  She wasn’t agreeing, she wasn’t disagreeing, she was simply describing her world as she knows it.  In her world the things that feel tense, jagged and out of alignment to me, aren’t deviations for her, they’re the baseline, it’s the water she grew up swimming in.  A world I experience drifting, she experiences as the default setting. 

So, I ask gently, “do you mind if I ask how old you are?”  She said 20 with the ease of someone who hasn’t lived enough decades to understand why I am wearing this tee shirt.  I told her, the next time you see your grandparents tell them you saw a guy wearing this shirt, just to see what they say.  She smiled at the thought of her grandparents and said she would.  And that was it, the whole exchange taking about a minute.  But as I pushed my buggy to my truck there was a weight settling on me that I did not expect when I left the house. 

On my drive home, a sadness started to seep in, coming from the realization that the things that alarm the shit out of me are simply normal life through the eyes of someone younger, or at least through Alison’s eyes.  Not because they support them, or even understand them, but because they have never known anything different.  They don’t have any other point to reference in order to see this is not normal.  They are inheriting the world mid-stride and absorbing it as the only version they’ve ever seen.

It made me think of the Oratory I wrote about Micro Relationships  How the smallest, mostly forgettable moments can end up reverberating the longest.  Today, there in the Hy-Vee checkout line, I was reminded how true that is.  We don’t just pass down our stories, we pass down the shape of the world, its tone and temperature, its sense what’s ordinary.  We have been doing that since people were scribbling stories on cave walls.  Maybe normal is supposed to evolve, but for me when normal drifts this far I fear the next generation won’t realize how far out of whack things are.

I felt an anger growing towards Alison as I processed that 60 second interaction.  Then I realized she was not wrong at all.  She was just describing “her normal”.   That realization left me wondering, what obligation do we have to those who come next?  We owe young people more than silence about what’s drifting out of alignment.  We owe them memory, we owe them contrast and we owe them the courage to say “the water was not always this muddy.”  Never having kids, I never really thought about the obligations of the adults in the room.  We are supposed to teach them what danger looks like, we are supposed to preserve the shape of possibility, because when a generation normalizes things that were once unimaginable, the loss is not just cultural, it is slow demagnification of our collective compass, leaving us adrift and we get to watch it all in real time.

Her question was as simple as flicking a light switch.  But sometimes the light reveals the dust and the roaches scattering.  And sometimes the youngest amongst us ask the clearest questions.  And sometimes, like Alison’s question today, they uncover a grief we may not have even recognized we were carrying.  Maybe that’s the lesson for me today.  Scrape away my biases, strip the story to its bones, and ask myself the simplest version of the question, “what does your tee shirt mean?”  And as I sat with that, a line from Marcus Aurelius floated in, “The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts”.

Alison’s answer hit me hard, so now I’ll ask y’all - what did you say to your checker today?