What do we do with all of this??

I was inspired by a friend and the tune “Momma said there’d be days like this”, which I am listening to at this very moment, to type some of my feelings out.   For me, there are days lately when the world feels heavier than it oughta, heavier than I want it to and heavier than the Shirelles ever imagined when they sang that song.  Days when sadness settles into my bones, when fear and anxiety invade all of my other thoughts, when anger sparks and makes itself impossible to ignore.  While these days are inevitable along our journey, I wish they weren’t.

I am Alex Pretti in many ways, I exercise my second amendment right, as he did.  I am wired to step up when I see someone being mistreated, not with force but with presence, as he did.  I would have been the one standing nearby, recording what I saw and making sure she knew she was not alone, as he did.  Protection in some cases simply means making sure the truth can’t be buried, as he did.  That is what being a helper means to me, not confrontation but compassion and empathy combined with accountability.

Regardless the noise and picking a side I am terrified because for the first time, me just doing my thang in that abnormal Smitty fashion, the way I usually move through the world, curious, joking around and just a bit chaotic just does not feel entirely safe anymore. I have lived my whole life NEVER once being othered by a single way that I identify, a white, CIS gendered, heterosexual, American born, English speaker who holds a position of power.  I also recognize, and acknowledge, that I am in the very singular group who can say that.  Because of that privilege, I have never been scared, at traffic stops, in protests, in any setting really.  Uncomfortable at times, sure but NEVER scared let alone terrified.

Like a lot of folks in this moment I am trying to navigate what it really means to be an American in these complicated times.  I am a person who believes deeply in constitutional rights, and civic responsibility, I have never once even tried to get out of Jury duty.  I am someone who follows Mr. Rogers three keys to success, because in a world this loud, kindness is the only thing with enough force to cut through the static.  I also believe deeply in the basic dignity owed to every human, regardless of any differences that may be used to separate us. 

I am sure by this time most of you have seen versions of the videos, probably what will be defined as exhibit A when this goes to trial.  I don’t want to rehash the particulars of the tragedy here.  I do want to tell you what hit me when I watched it from what seemed like an insane number of angles and clarity.  I felt a surge of protectiveness, my instinct to step between power and the defenseless person on the receiving end of that power.  Again, not with violence, not with confrontation and not with anger but with the simple conviction that folks deserve, at a bare minimum, to be treated as people not as threats.

And then the harder to process feeling started to seep in and that feeling was powerlessness.  And the truth of that, it rattled me.  It made me ask questions I have never thought I would have to ask, questions that jest felt wrong all the way to my core.  That lead to the terrible question, what can I actually do?  How can I make a difference?  How can I have an impact?  How can I answer those questions with a path that is both safe and productive.  Supporting causes matters.  Supporting candidates whose values reflect mine, compassion and justice matters.  But this moment feels like it requires more from me.  This moment asks for presence.  It asks us to find a little back bone and a clear hear.  To be productive this moment also calls for restraint, the strength to use my anger for something useful instead of letting it turn me into someone I don’t want to be – this moment needs my best self.

The first thing I have done is try to take care of those around me, making space for friends, family and coworkers when they are struggling.  Not to problem solve but to just be present for them.  That requires us to slow down a bit so we can notice when someone is out of kilter, we know what that looks like for each of those folks we love and care about.  I keep a box of Lifesavers on my desk, literally and when I notice someone off, I give them a pack and send them a link to that 70s commercial about it’s going to be ok.   I know that sounds corny, but it works.  Most folks respond to a little kindness, and sometimes the smallest gestures can make the biggest difference in someones day.  https://youtu.be/d8BqUf7E-Cw?si=9cMr7DZdtGAzuiXa.  This is why showing up cannot be a slogan, it has to be a habit.

We can also support fact based journalism, the importance of which in this moment cannot be underestimated.  Donate when ya can.  Defend the work when folks try to label it just an opinion because it makes them uncomfortable.  Hold it accountable too, trust is earned not demanded.  Journalism is kinda like roads and powerlines, core infrastructure to power our world.  And you don’t really notice it until its gone, and then everything falls apart - it feels a bit like we are closer than I’d like us to be.  I have worked with true journalists for nearly 30 years.  Most of what we see on the mainstream is simply pitting one against the other and never really doing the hard work of investigative journalism. 

We can also make sure we are practicing solidarity/   Solidarity isn’t big or flashy.  It’s the small stuff, the stuff nobody cheers but everyone remembers.  As Maya Angelou reminded us, people may forget what you said and even what you did, but they remember how you made them feel.  Solidarity not a hash tag, not a bumper sticker or tee shirt but solidarity at the human level.  That looks like bearing witness, as Alex was, checking on your friends and neighbors who might be getting targeted for some perceived difference.  Maybe offering to walk someone to their car when they look nervous, as I did a couple of days ago at the grocery store.  It is showing up and being present when its inconvenient and being there even when ya don’t know quite what to say.  It is the small consistent action of making sure people aren’t alone when the world is hell bent on isolating them.

And to be honest, some days Im just tired boss.  But then inevitably somebody pings me with something, I see something on the FB that fills my heart, somebody smiles, or someone tells a truth out loud.  Those are the things that make me stand up anyway.    

And the last thing, we can hopeful, in spite of our current situation.  Not as a mood or a situational thing, we can adopt hope as a habit, hope has to be something we do on purpose, not something we wait for, regardless how loud the noise.   Hope as a habit, even on those days when sadness is settling in our bones.  Even when fear and anxiety threaten our well being and even when anger sparks off a firestorm of emotions.  And ya know why hope as a habit is important?  Let me start by saying American has survived many a things that in hindsight might not seem as dire as today but they were.  And to not keep hope as habit, is to admit they won.  I for one ABSOLUTELY REFUSE to admit that, to allow that or to condone that. 

There is a moment in Shawshank Redemption when Red realizes that hope is good thing, it isn’t a lie or a trap.  He realized that hope is the force stubborn enough to survive even the darkest moments and the darkest institutions.  That is the kind of hope I am talking about, the gritty resilient kind that refuses to back down or look away or shut up or give in.  That kind of hope keeps a person riding a bus towards a horizon they’ve never seen but somehow still trust is waiting for them, like Andy was for Red.  It is civic hope, human hope, the keep going even when you’re scared shitless hope.  That kind of hope whispers to us, Zihuatanejo awaits you.  And when we get there and see our friends, we can exhale and set to rebuilding what this moment tried to take away from us and we can remember who we were always meant to be.  Hope is the one thing they cannot take from us, so pack your bag, take a breath, roll your shoulders back and get on that fucking bus because Zihuatanejo is waiting and we have rebuilding to do!!

This is a betrayal of what we say we believe in as Americans

 I have recently been pondering on the quote penned by Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton in 1887 that highlighting the moral dangers of unchecked authority, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."  I heard my Mom say that quote no less that 8.7 million times growing up.  I don’t think I ever fully understood it, until just recently when its meaning shifted from the words in my head and dropped like a rock into my gut. 

When power decides it does not have to answer questions, when it closes ranks and doors after its use of force, when it tells a tale that is in direct conflict with what we all saw with our own eyes, there is a cancer present.  It is no longer just theoretical, it is here, now and evident in the way our federal officials are behaving.   It is here now in the way communities are told to accept their narrative instead of demonstrating transparency and collaboration with local law enforcement.    

Our countries’ creed is not complicated, it’s really simply actually.  The power bestowed on our elected officials is on loan, on loan from we the people, the same people who hold these truths to be self-evident, ya know from the Declaration of Independence.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  With two dead American citizens we ain't doing very godo on that front.  

Our government was literally created to protect those rights, we declared it so in a loud and in your face fashion to King George III back on July 4^th of 1776.  A big part of what makes this experiment that is the United States work is based on trust.  When government forces, of any kind, block transparency and accountability, trust erodes.  And that particular slippery slope is one that is not good for our country. 

When I wore the uniform, the oath I swore was not to a person, a party or a department.  I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic.   Day in and day out the work required discipline, restraint, and accountability.  We learned quickly that real strength does not come from how loud ya bark orders, it comes from carefully you wielded authority.  Facts were laid out, orders explained and expectations set, those are the bedrock of military order.  When shit went sideways, and it sometimes did, we did not get to barricade doors, obfuscate the truth, or tell tales of woe, we took responsibility for our actions and we course corrected.  There was not some obscure reason for that, we were literally putting our lives in the hands of our shipmates, and they were putting theirs lives in ours.  That is not something one fucks about with.  .

 I learned that honor is not the ribbons we had to meticulously maintain for display purposes, honor is a habit.  Choosing to do the right thing, even when it is hard, even when it is seemingly impossible and even when it comes at a personal cost shows ones true character.  that character shows up in the quiet consistent choices we make, day in and day out.  Choosing transparency over convenience, humility over spin, the really hard right over the really easy wrong ain't easy and has tested me more in my life than any other thing. 

I have had sign in my office for years, “Do the right things, and do those things right”.  Hardest thing to do, regardless of what it is.  While we are free to make decisions in this county, any of them we want – that is what freedom is.  We are not however free from the consequences of those decisions.  That means accepting responsibility for our actions, doing that is true courage.

And when things do go sideways, we must have the moral courage to not only accept responsibility but also to invite scrutiny.  To let independent eyes check our work, provide an independent accounting of our actions.  Those values are not disposable when thing get uncomfortable, that is when we learn who we truly are and we can only hope we don’t come up lacking.  Those values are exactly for the moment when things get hard.  The truth is simple, it needs no spin, it needs no embellishment and it needs no permission. 

The same standards that kept all my shipmates safe should be used to keep our communities safe.  If squids, mostly kids, can log every evolution, submit to inspection after inspection and answer for their action because lives are at stake, then any officials who exercise lethal authority on our streets must do the same, we must hold them to the same standard.  That is not too much to ask, at all.  Fact-o-business, that is the fucking barest of minimums a free people should demand!!

American values are not abstract to me, for the most part they have become muscle memory.  Human dignity first.  Truth in the open.  Power on a short lease because it belong us, not those we chose to represent us.  I was taught that my words matter, that I must own my mistakes and that I was responsible for making any wrongs I made right.  The government does not get a different rulebook, no sir!  If anything it should be held to even higher bar.  Liberty is not a license to do whatever you want behind a badge.  Liberty is the rulebook that provides the authority in a way that we the people can trust is fair and just and in alignment with our values.

the bar is not terrible high on this.  Open the scenes. Honor the warrants.  Share the evidence.  Let independent hands do the work here, and let the public see what that those hands find.  If we truly believe the words we recite, equality, liberty, and justice for all,  then let us practice them even when its inconvenient.   We all know in it in our bones, and the Mandalorians say, this is the way!  If our institutions have drifted, as I feel they have, then we have a responsibility to pull them back, with the kind of stubborn integrity this country still claims as our own. 

I am angry, viscerally so.  I am heartsick.  And I am done pretending that what we are watching is anything other than what it is, a betrayal of what we say we believe in as Americans.  Power used in the dark is not public service.  It is cowardice and it is theft of the public trust.  Steals trust from the very people who granted that power in the first place.  It steals dignity from the families who deserve the truth, not some ridiculous narrative.  It steals the future from a country that can only govern itself when the truth is out in the open and acknowledged.  You cannot protect a community, as we are being told they are doing, while at the same time blocking that community form the truth – period all stop.  

To our federal government, hear this clearly.  You are NOT intitled to your own story, you earn that by opening the scene, honoring the warrant, sharing the records, and letting independent hands to their work where the public can see it.  You earn it by submitting your actions to the same scrutiny that you would demand of us.  You earn it by admitting error when error exists, not spinning stories moments after two people were killed.   To do otherwise is a sure sign that something else is happening here besides the narrative you are attempting to persuade us of.   

I did not spend 10 years in service to this great country to watch the Constitution be treated like a prop in a shitty movie.  It is a set of values that either bind us in moments like these, or it reveals us to be frauds.  If we still believe in human dignity, say so by proving it with an open process.  If we still believe in liberty, say so by refusing secrecy when force is used against us, in our name.  if we still believe in justice, say so by letting neutral eyes test the story against the evidence.  Anything less is just a demonstration of moral bankruptcy dressed up on federal letterhead.

So here is where I stand, I absolutely refuse to allow this to be normalized.  I refuse to soften my language or lower the bar.  I refuse to trade my values fro someone else’s comfort, and I will not hand the next generation of Americans a country that confuses control with accountability.  In my bones and every fiber of my being I know this is not right, and in your bones, you damn well know it too.  I am sad if your hatred of whatever it is has so clouded your judgement that you feel any bit of this is OK. 

The truth will set you free. Lets open this up to scrutiny.  Let the evidence be evaluated.  And as Mando says, this is the way.

What happened to me on my 22,251st sunrise

I was inspired to share this story by a friend of mine, I will call her C. who recently shared a brutally honest, and heart felt post on the FB about aging.  She talked about mammograms that bruise, colonoscopies that somehow rate higher on the comfort scale and the betrayal of vision for folks in their 40’s.  She shared about perimenopause being on easy mode, and that she is knocking on wood it stays that way and about the body she’s living in now will no doubt one day feel like a luxury suite compared to the one her future self will inherit.   

What struck me was not the catalog of indignities, but way she was looking at them, frustration on one hand, gratitude on the other hand and a reluctant appreciation.  The kind of appreciation that, at least to me, tells part of her story, that she understands the alternative to that is not being here, no longer riding the ride.  I have in past typed about getting older and all that one can only understand having endured it.  So, thanks C. for inspiring me to type a bit about my own journey.

So, I have been alive now 22,257 days, and yes that counts leap years for those who always ask when I count days.  In that time, computers became faster, thanks Gordon Moore, they became smaller, thanks Jack Kilby, and they became smarter, thanks Geoffrey Hinton.  In that same time frame, I have become slower, thanks younger dumbass Smitty, I have become creakier, thanks again younger stupid Smitty, and I am more likely to mutter, what the hell was I doing, while I am actually doing that very thing, thanks universe for providing the absolute fucking hilarity in that.

Somewhere along the journey, my metabolism deprecated half of its features, the better half of course so thanks again for the hilarity universe.  My joints, not the ones smoked, started issuing bug reports, with an alarming and continuously increasing cadence.  And food I once inhaled due to its magnificence, without consequences I might add, now require full diplomatic negotiations with my digestive system, which I never seem to be on the right side of.  I remember Granny loved pork chops and they hated her, she ate them anyway because she loved them.  My younger self did not understand that, I do now.

Aging feels a lot trying to run modern software on windows 3.1 machine, disk space too fragmented, not enough ram and not anywhere near enough CPU cycles.  My knees click, my joints buffer and the whole system throw warnings like a drunken Sailor running up a bar tab, and I was one of those so I know of what I type.  Somewhere in the middle of all that noise clarity shows up, or at least it did for me.   That means a bit more grace for myself, a little less ego, and the quiet realization that half the worries I used to worry about don’t matter at all.  One benefit of those realizations is that it is easier to uninstall the stuff that is actually irrelevant in my life.

As you know I have old cars and they as they get older start to require more and more preventative, and corrective maintenance.  I have been fortunate in that regard, only taking two medications, one for blood pressure due to being a bit tubby, and one I will talk about later.  Other than that, there are a few vitamins each morning.   Of course, at 40 was the first prostate exam, which after my long time doctor performed, I tried to lighten the mood my asking if he and I could go out back and have a smoke together, I smoked by then.  After bit of awkward silence, he laughed and it became our annual joke.

On year 49 we are finishing up my annual physical, and the prostate probe, and he starts with this sort of evil laugh.  I was not sure what that meant but immediately got nervous.  I asked anyway, what’s up doc, and yes that was in bugs bunnies voice.  He says, and I shit you not, I get to violate you in a whole new way next year.  To which I said, what??  He wanted to get a baseline colonoscopy for me to reference later in life.  Being a tech nerd I understood the importance of a baseline but could not help blurting out, that is not right Doc, to which he again provided me his evil little laugh.      

So I say all that to lead into what I experienced on day 22,251 of my journey.  Somehow I made it that far without ever having a “medical procedure” that required anesthetic, just 29 days before my 61^st Birthentines day.  Broken bones, sure, chainsaw incident, sadly yes, and other stitches and what not, yep but never anything that rose to the "procedure" level.  This corrective maintenance was addressing the other medication I took each day, and that is called tamsulosin, or more generically Flomax.  That is a medication to address issues with being able to pee like I could when I was young, due to aging and enlarged prostate.    

When I first spoke to a urologist they presented 4 options, with Flomax being the least invasive.  The other three were medical procedures that actually could address the issue, thereby eliminating the need for a pill to treat the symptoms.  The first was a steaming process, yikes but OK.  The second was a sort of stapling back affair and the third was basically a mechanical roto-routering, which was most invasive according to her.  After a few minutes of allowing myself to digest all of that I asked if they were all like Lasic surgery. 

She got a confused look on her face and said, this has nothing to do with your eyes.  I clarified and asked is this a moment in time procedure?  She asked me to say more, I said with Lasic you are correcting the eye to a moment in time.  As we continue to age, the eye will continue to degrade, she got it then.  Any of these procedures are moment in time fixes and as your prostate continues to grow, this problem will come back.  My next question was which one has the longest time before additional corrective actions are required.  And of course, it was the most invasive of the three, the roto-routering, medically referred to as a Transuretheral Resection of the Prostate, TURP for short.  I had that procedure scheduled in Oregon and then decided to upend our lives and move on out to Nebraska, so it got delayed.

While I did not have many, I did have come nerves about getting put under, more than I did about the procedure.  I asked every nurse, doctor and bystander up until they knocked me out if they had been partying last night, if they felt ready to go and were properly caffeinated.  The smiles and laughs helped ease my nerves.  The doctor did the deed, inserted the catheter and sent me to room to spend the day, the night and most of the next day.  Having a catheter was more just uncomfortable than painful and Tylenol worked.  When the nurse took it out 4 days later, she seemed unaffected but for me that was a bit of indignity and it was VERY uncomfortable, she said take a deep breath and she just yanked that fucking thing out, I lost my breath and was thankful I was sitting down as surely I would have toppled over and broke something.

I am on day six of recovery now and everything seems ahead of schedule, fingers crossed for that to continue.   Out of an adult diaper after 2 days, needed for what the doc called “potential leakage” and now i am using a feminine hygiene product as the “leakage” has slowed to nearly a stop.  I picked randomly the Always brand Infinity flex-foam in size #2 and it works magnificently, yeah that is something you now know about me.

So, here I am on day 22,257, patched, prodded, roto-routered, cathetered, padded and somehow still laughing at the absurdity of it all.  Aging keeps throwing new maintenance cycles at me, and I keep showing up for the updates, even when the release notes include things like, temporary leakage and catheter yanks.  But ya know what, underneath all the jokes, indignities and windows 3.1 era operating limitations, there is still a profound gratitude for being alive long enough to complain about any of it.  Gratitude for modern medicine and the brilliant band of doctors that keep me running as best I can.  And gratitude for friends like C, and the rest of Y’all who tell the truth about their journey with humor and courage.  That is my reminder that this whole messy and complicated ride is worth EVERY SINGLE MOMENT!!!

Love Y’all