Copenhagen – or Kobenhavn if you’re a Eurocentric purist – famous for Hans Christian Andersen, and also as a popular brand of snuff in places where snuff is popular, and also, more recently, the site of a big conference in which the world is going to be set straight in terms of its alleged ‘warming’ (though you’d be hard-pressed to convince the people of Edmonton these days, since it came in yesterday morning as the coldest place in the known universe at something like minus-273 that this big ball of mud is getting intolerably torrid.)

This whole dang global warming thing, well a body simply doesn’t know whom to believe. Is it like the H1N1 debacle in which a strain of influenza was mounted to wipe out at least half the planet, and didn’t turn out to kill many more people than you could pack into a Hummer? Or is it as ominous as one group of scientists (as opposed to another group of scientists) would have us believe? “OK – so we overstated the flu thing, but it doesn’t mean we’re wrong this time.” Now, while most of these guys in white smocks (who spent much of their adolescence being shoved into lockers by no doubt the cretinoids who currently scoff at global warming and are still longing for the return of Dick Cheney) are in accord about warming, there is a small contingent that attests to the fact we’ve actually been cooling terra firma-wise for the past decade.

Like I said, who is a body to believe? At a very superficial level, which is my default mode in terms of contentment, I like to think of warming in a positive sense, and look forward to having winters reminiscent of southern California’s, and long for the day I can grow plumeria and bougainvillea, pick oranges from my citruses, and laze in the sunshine with regularity. No, I don’t want to think for one second about rising sea levels devastating low-lying spots, or a massive increase in the world’s deserts. Not that I disbelieve such possibilities, I just don’t want to think about such possible scenarios.

And now, to be serious for a moment – and in honor of which I am currently assuming a furrowed brow – if it is true that our unfettered spewing out of CO2 truly is causing temperatures to rise at an unprecedented level – the jury is still out on the unprecedented puppy, too, I might add – then obviously something must be done and it must be a globally concerted effort. This is, of course, what Copenhagen (obnoxious politicking and jockeying for positions of righteousness aside) is meant to be all about. And if things are what the doomsayers are saying – and I am in no position to dispute their assertions – then we must act.

But, to me, there is, and always has been, a cart-before-the-carbon-horse thing happening here. To me global warming possibly caused by gratuitous CO2 emissions, is symptomatic of a much larger problem and one that became apparent to me decades ago when first I read Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, and that is overpopulation. That is the real overlooked elephant in the global room. I am a bit flabbergasted that in all the chat – idle and serious – concerning the warming trend, that so little mention has been made of the fact that there are too damn many people using too many resources and pumping out too much shit into the atmosphere and the oceans.

And, the biggest offenders in this regard are the most obscenely overpopulated geopolitical entities, China and India. It is well and good that we in western Europe and North America do all our capping and trading and scrapping of our Hummers for Priuses and those dorky little Smart Cars, but if the aforementioned hideously overpopulated entities don’t do something in the long term (it will have to be the long-term for obvious reasons) to arrest their birthrates, whatever we do is not going to amount to much more than, as the good old boys used to say, “a pinch of coonshit.”

Not that we should do nothing. Of course we must do what we have to, while not crippling our already struggling economies in the process. An increased economic recession is going to help nobody. But it is important that we don’t carry the full burden of guilt about it all, much as it is essential for the biggest despoilers of all to truly come to grips with their roles. They must get their numbers down and they must begin doing that ‘yesterday.’

So far this season we have two Christmas cards – one from the realtor who sold us our house more than a decade ago, and the other from an investment firm at which a paltry sum of mine sits and rises and falls according to the market. At a recent meeting with my investment advisor, I said: “When I made my initial investments with you guys 15 years ago I was planning to have a million bucks by now. “And if you’d invested two million back then you’d easily have a million by now.” Such is reality in our capitalist realm for saps like me.

But, the point of my discussion here isn’t the investment climate, but Christmas cards. I made out my list yesterday. It contains a grand tally of 8 names. Names of people we don’t see regularly, so I like to remember them at Christmas. I’ve already sent off three overseas cards. And that will be it. Yet, I remember my mother’s list. Dozens and dozens of names in the same list she used year-after-year, with assorted deceased sorts scratched out, or the non-persons who hadn’t sent a card in two years and therefore were rendered Orwellian ‘non-persons’.

And then the cards would arrive en masse, with special Christmas commemorative stamps and the almost mandatory Christmas seals from the Lung Association that was always seeking funds to offset the effects of chain-smoking moms and dads puffing away and riding along in seatbelt-less cars with the windows rolled up. The Mantelpiece was never sufficient to accommodate them all, so Dad would string wires across the living room ceiling beams to put all the extras up in fine display. The more cards you boasted, then surely the greater your social cachet.

The cards themselves were reflective of the biases of the senders, with the more pious, like my paternal grandparents, invariably sending religious-themed missives, while the secular sorts were big on Santa and sleighs and presents under stylized trees. It was all good.

Everybody sent and was sent cards. Neighbors, even ones seen on a daily basis got them, as did work colleagues, and relatives; sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, great aunts, cousins and those who had moved away. It was a virtual avalanche of missives. There were personal cards, sometimes containing lengthier letters within. Also those dreaded history of the happenings in the Smith family over the preceding 12-months, containing names of their friends and relatives you didn’t even know. Tiresome were those group mailings, but still OK in their way. 

I remember when I lived in England at Christmas in 1980 and we, being temporary expatriates were sent massive numbers of cards from friends and family back in Canada and the US. On the last Saturday before Christmas the postman arrived at our doorstep for the third time that morning. “You’ve already been twice,” I mentioned to him as I saw him on the doorstep. “This close to Christmas, mate, we just keep making further trips until the backlog is cleared out.” How civilized and accommodating, I thought.

And then the process started to change. My ex and I stopped sending cards to people we saw on a regular basis, and those people did much the same. Meanwhile, stamps became more and more expensive even while postal service decline radically. “Let’s pay postal workers more for doing less work,” seemed to be the federal policy, with the postal union being in full accord.

Ultimately, technology took the biggest bite of all out of this Christmas tradition. We’re in touch via Facebook, blogs and emails so, like, why bother? I made mention of this on Facebook the other day, after I’d waited in a queue at the post office for nearly an hour to send my overseas cards. So, within an hour or so, after I whined about why don’t people just use email at Christmas, I got an email from an old friend who was actually on my list, who wrote: “I got your message on Facebook and I agree with you. So, here’s your Christmas greeting.” Somehow it didn’t seem quite as personal as an actual card from her, I must confess.

So, does the sending and receiving of cards still play a role in your Christmas festivities or has the world just become a slightly colder place?

Late Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker once told the tale of how he was invited to dine with Sir Winston and Lady Churchill. Dief noted how he was enthralled to be in the presence of the grand old man. During the course of the dinner Churchill noted how Dief declined to partake of a glass of wine. “Are you temperance?” the old man roared from the head of the table. Churchill (a noted tippler) had once been defeated in an election by a temperance candidate.

Diefenbaker explained he was not temperance, but a teetotaler. He didn’t choose to drink alcohol but was unconcerned if others, including his own wife, did so. Advocates of temperance, he told Churchill, objected to alcohol being consumed by anyone.

Churchill remained a bit confused, but was mollified that the Canadian PM didn’t object to others drinking.

“So, you are saying that temperance people want to hurt others with their views on alcohol, whereas as a teetotaler you choose only to hurt yourself.”

I mention this anecdote only because for the past many months I have been working (and procrastinating over whenever I find even the vaguest excuse to do something more inviting like vacuum the house or clean a bathroom) on a manuscript devoted to my views on the nature of addiction in all its mult-facetedness. In that I am only procrastinating because it’s a wearing quest.

My manuscript, which I would love someday to see between covers, ponders the entire gamut of a pervasive societal scourge that, while maybe no worse than it has been in the past, is assuredly no better. My study is based my own background as an addictions counselor who has worked with individuals who have run the gamut of addiction to every drug and also alcohol.

It’s also, in part, based on the fact that I, for the past 12 ½ years have been like John Diefenbaker, a teetotaler. I stopped drinking not because I think drinking is a bad thing to do in a general sense, but it had become a bad thing for me to do. But, I’d had my share and I’ll vouchsafe that I’d had the shares of a couple of other people, too. And I’m glad that I quit when I did because it made my life much better all around.

I have no problem with people in general taking a drink. It can be an extremely pleasant experience. I recall it being so. I loved a cold beer on a hot day, a fine vintage wine, and especially a warming cognac or single-malt whisky. Heavenly stuff. Yet, oddly enough, I don’t miss it. In fact it is rare that I even think about it.

I wasn’t a falling-down drunk and I didn’t drink on the job or anything like that, but it was causing domestic stresses and it needed to be curtailed. Rather than curtail, I just quit completely. No, it wasn’t as easy as this seems to indicate. It was a lot of work and dedication for the first many, many months. But ultimately it clicked and that was cool.

And I can certainly say that during my drinking years, alcohol gave many good things to me.

Booze made me:

-         very, very attractive to the opposite sex.

-         Extremely sexy

-         Amazingly witty and urbane.

-         Unparalleled in my intelligence, as evinced in the formidable logic of all my arguments and discussions.

-         Eloquent on a parallel with the great orators of history.

-         Capable of turning out absolute gems of journalism.

-         A wonderfully generous tipper, and the tips grew in relation to the comeliness and friendliness of the server or barmaid.

At least, that was what I thought. Others (like wives) may have had different opinions.

Oh, and alcohol most definitely did make all the girls prettier by closing time.

So, yeah, I quit. I quit for the sake of health and happiness. Reasonable motivations, I’d say. And in being away from the stuff, I learned a lot. Such as:

-         social gatherings are invariably extremely loud, and that is mainly because alcohol numbs the hearing considerably so the drinkers get louder and louder the less inhibited they become.

-         My own province has the highest per capita number of boozers in the country.

-         80% of alcohol is consumed by 20% of the population, and I know I did my bit to help.

-         If people have had too much to drink they repeat their stories. I never did that, did I? If people have had too much to drink they repeat their stories – oh, wait.

-         There is absolutely no cure for a hangover so forget all those bullshit articles you see in newspapers and magazines this time of year. You drink too much, you will suffer. It’s called self-inflicted injury. Only you can decide if it was worth the price.

Anyway, just some meanderings about both me and the subject of my book. And if you enjoy a good drink, don’t worry. My book won’t deny your right to do so. The only people who shouldn’t drink are the people who shouldn’t drink, and they know who they are. As for the rest, rock on! Just don’t drive when you’ve been doing so. Oh, and none of your anecdotes at a party or the bar are anywhere near as interesting and amusing as you think they are. Just a little caveat.

The biggest logical and logistical flaw of Christmas shopping for me is, if I haven’t got a clue what I want, how can I decide what to get somebody else? And, I honestly don’t know what I want. I mean a European tour or a BMW convertible would both be nice, but both are highly unlikely at this juncture.

We don’t buy a lot of presents, and what we get is mainly for each other. In itself that simplifies matters. But it also doesn’t. For one thing, by our ages we have accumulated so much stuff down through the years that we just don’t need any more. In that context Wendy mounted a personal gift-giving proviso in that anything she is given must be ‘consumable’. I’m never quite sure what that means. Brussels sprouts are consumable, sort of, but they don’t offer much of a festive feeling no matter how they are wrapped.

But seriously, chocolates are consumable, but in terms of waistlines and hips and all, an excess isn’t always appreciated and only leads to post-Noel guilt. She’s not much of a drinker, and I’m not a drinker at all, so a fine bottle of plonk will likely sit on a shelf for months. She likes beer, but a six-pack seems a little cheesy giftwise. So, my Christmas gift options get narrower and narrower. But here are some hints for the males out there’s

Options:

-         Lingerie: Like all red-blooded boys I love silky and sexy undies (on females) and unlike many males I am not embarrassed to buy such things. I can even discuss thongs and their virtues (and lack of same, with the term ‘dental floss’ coming to mind) with female clerks and not turn even slightly pink. But generally women are inclined to seek functional everyday Hanes stuff in lieu of frou-froux. And, of course, according to a friend who runs a lingerie shop (every guy should have a knickers-vendor in his life, though I’m not entirely sure why), men buy the seductive stuff for themselves, not for their wives or significant others. That’s why the shops must anticipate masses of returned items after Christmas. Oh, and no man should ever, ever buy his lady a bra.

-         Practical items: OK, guys. Under no circumstances ever buy an electric grill or can-opener or vacuum cleaner, no matter how multi-faceted and cool you think the item is. All they do is look like work and as a consequence your sex life will become non-existent at that point. If she has expressed a desire for, say, a food-processor, that’s a good thing. But, don’t make it a gift. Pick one up and just present it as “something for the house.”

-         Clothing: A nice sweater will often work. That’s about it. Shoes are out of the question unless she’s picking them out, in which cases your suggestions will be utterly unwelcome.

-         Jewelry: Wendy has a fetish for earrings and I usually do pretty well in that regard. Nipple rings for a female casual acquaintance or colleague are in questionable taste and a bit presumptuous.

-         Books and/or music: Generally these work and they work even better if they are books and music the purchaser actually likes. If she has a fascination with the lyrical renderings of, say, Barry Manilow, well I guess that would have to be her problem.

-         Candy: Similar qualifications as books and music. Buy only what you like. Seems fair to me.

-         Fascinating up-to-the-second electronic crap: You’ve begged and pleaded for a 45-inch flatscreen TV. She has said that you do not need one and the current set still works fine. You get one as a gift anyway, firmly believing that once she sees the quality of the picture she will love it as much as you do. You will be wrong.

-         Sex toys: You, sir, are a knave and a bounder!

I find many, many excuses to procrastinate. Virtually anything that prevents me from setting book-writin’ mots, bon or otherwise down works well for me. I need those excuses currently on account of I’m in a dry spell, and have been for a few days. I’m about half way through a manuscript and have decided, especially after having turned my hand to a bit of editing yesterday, that every word I have thus far written is puerile crappola.

“You don’t write crap,” Wendy says reassuringly at such times. “You made a living as a professional writer for more than 30 years. You have two articles in the latest In Focus (a local magazine), so they don’t buy from people who write crap.”

“But, this is book writing,” I protest. “My crap level is higher with book writing.”

“Just take a break until it starts to come smoothly again,” she advises. And, she’s right in that. When it starts to come smoothly, then all is good for however long that lasts.

But, any invitation to take a break is fine advice for me. It gives me an excuse to do SFA and not feel guilty. I can procrastinate and still feel I’m performing. You know, I am just recharging my batteries.

There are two distinct types of procrastination: a) productive, and b)non-productive. Non-productive is more fun and has nothing to do with guilt. Non-productive has no pretense about it. It is: lying on a golden Hawaiian beach, screaming along in a sleek train in the south of France, going to a theatre or music performance, barbecuing on a summer evening, swimming, making wonderful love in the afternoon, have a Jacuzzi, eating fresh prawns and a million other things.

Productive is a little less fun as it is purely a means of easing guilt. How it eases guilt is by putting some demands on the brain. Productive procrastination is either cutting a lawn that must be mowed, or it is a matter of “exercising ze leetle grey cells,” as M. Hercule Poirot would have it. It’s like priming the pump, or adding started fluid to a diesel engine on a frigid winter morning. It gets stuff moving again.

The late Norman Mailer said that in later life he limbered up what was left of his brain by two means: One was playing solitaire, either electronic or with a real deck, and the other was with the New York Times crossword. I do both. Spider solitaire puts some demands on memory and logic, and the crossword calls for you to know stuff.

Over the years I have become an enthusiastic crossword guy. Give me the Sunday NYT and I’ll milk it for as long as I can.

I’m not brilliant at the task, but I’m competent. A fair knowledge of trivia has helped in the endeavor. Oh, and I do my responses in ink.

What I like about the crossword is that, as you become familiar with them, you realize that certain clues are repeated time and again. So, if you’re not a novice you realize that Eero Saarinen is a famous Finnish architect.

In my time with the puzzle I have also learned that Enid OK is famous if for no other reason than that it is a regular clue. So often has Enid assumed a prominence out-of-keeping with its actual impact on the world, that I found myself becoming curious about the place. So, I looked it up (looking up stuff is another great way of procrastinating, by the way). It’s kind of a quaint little community down there is southeastern Oklahoma, right in the heart of the tornado belt. We also found that housing is incredibly cheap there. There you can get for 80,000 a really decent bungalow that would sell for $350,000 around here. On the other hand, the pay-scale is relative, and schoolteachers there are pulling in less than $20K per annum.

Oh, and I’ll never forget that another name for a fencing sword is an epee.

OK. Now back to work – or the unfinished Sunday crossword.

Statistics show that money and power are the ultimate aphrodisiacs. The more money and influence you have, the more likely you are to stray from straight-and-narrow-and faithful domesticity. If you’re good looking and charming it adds even more to the possibility you will be exploring beneath the lacy unmentionables of somebody you’re not legally connected to.

So, let’s take Tiger Woods. Immensely talented, charming, good-looking, more money than many European nations, and the poor sap is just a sitting duck for statistical extracurricular hanky-panky. In this unfortunate turn in his fortunes thanks to mean old Mr. Libido, Woods is going to get even more heat than say OJ, and that’s because he has also been sold as an image: an image of decency of the sort that should be an inspiration to younger folk.

So, revelations of his walk (or drive) on the wild side would be akin to learning that Gretzky was selling crack on the streets of NYC. Image counts for everything and Woods has defiled that image – for now at least. 

Admirers of his immense skills – and I happen to be one of them – are trying hard to say that we must separate the superlative golfer from his transgressions and we must continue to admire his prowess – athletically, that is. But, it’s a hard-sell in a muckraking society that dwells on scandal. Let’s face it, Britney is much less fun since she stopped being an exhibitionistic trainwreck. “OK – so she’s back, looking healthy and giving audiences a good musical show – ho-hum.”

There are those who think that the ole horndog Bill Clinton has redeemed himself post-Monica. And he has – to a degree – but how long even to this day do people make mention of the man without a lewd joke popping up, along with references to a blue dress or a cigar? It’s hard to live down a locker-room backslapper.

There have been other national heroes who have been less-than-stellar in their performances off the playing fields. Babe Ruth was an inspiration to a lot of kids, but the fact that he was a noted philanderer, glutton and drunk was kept, in those simpler times, from the youngsters. That was back in the days when kids were meant to be protected from the ickiness of certain grownup behaviors. No more. I mean, how can you protect them? All the crap is ubiquitous from grocery store checkout tabloids to the Internet. Just type in Tiger Woods, kids, and see what comes up.

So, I feel for Tiger, and I certainly feel for his mashie-wielding spouse. He made some bad decisions. We all do. I even made a couple of bad decisions many years ago in the realms he’s made his bad decisions, but nobody cared that much about my transgressions other than the people directly involved. It didn’t get into the tabs, and most people who knew me were none the wiser.

Otherwise, I hope people will live and let live and let one of the greatest golfers of living memory get his mojo back – his golfing mojo, that is. I say this and I don’t even golf.

Each December popular glossies and newspapers devote a certain amount of ink to retrospectives concerning the deaths of notables who went to the back-and-beyond over the preceding 12-months. In other words dead people none of us actually knows except as public personae. Why do we care that these people have died? I have no idea, but we do. Even I am no exception.

The year 2009 chalked up a pretty decent roll-of-honor (or dishonor) tally and it behooves me now to remind you of those “we shall miss.” In truth, I don’t know if we’ll miss them at all Life goes on, after all. But, without further ado, here they are in no particular order:

-         Farrah Fawcett: Death as a Reality Show. Much loved lady with the biggest hair in the business in her Charlie’s Angels glory days, along with a surfeit of flashing teeth and the cutest nips ever seen on a popular poster. Later segued into some decent made-for-TV films and ultimately waged a stalwart and ultimately fruitless fight against terminal illness. Ryan O’Neal still alive. Sigh.

-Michael Jackson: One time deserved giant in the musical business and latterly an ethnicity-denying, loopy, paragon of dubious causes and beliefs and highly questionable behavior. A sad tale that the vultures devoured on a daily basis. What next? Was the question always. Death is an act for which there is no encore. Just ask Elvis.

-         Ellie Greenwich; For Da Doo Ron Ron if for nothing else this wonderful songwriter should earn lasting respect. What’s it mean? Why, it’s taken from ancient Sanscrit. Not really. It’s just fun, and so were Then He Kissed Me, and Cherry Cherry amongst a number of gems in her long career.

-         David Carradine: To hell with all the weird rumors around the cause of his death. I mean, he was a weird guy always, but also one of the more notables in the illustrious Carradine acting family, and for the moment in time he gave in the early part of his career we can never think of kung-fu without bringing him to mind, nor “Little grasshopper” for that matter.

-         Ron Silver: Once played the boyfriend of Rhoda’s sister Brenda, but later on a fine actor who excelled as left-leaning Dershowitz-style lawyers on Law & Order among other offerings.

-         Ed McMahon: “Theeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrre was Eddie!”

-         Patrick Swayze: I think Wendy should write this entry because she’d give it more poignancy. But, Ghost can still make me mist up so that film is an appropriate epitaph at a couple of levels.

-         Patrick McGoohan: Not necessarily one of the world’s great thespians, but one with a commanding voice and presence, especially as No. 6 in the brilliantly surreal (long before Lost) British production The Prisoner. Do not waste your time with palid and soulless remakes of one of the best TV shows ever.

-         Paul Harvey: From the time I was a kid, if we were on a road trip in the US we’d surf through the dial on the tinny car radio until we picked up Harvey’s unmistakable voice. Didn’t always agree with what he had to say, but loved the way he said. He was a broadcast journalist of the old school.

-         Walter Cronkite: He was ‘the’ broadcast journalist of the old school. Old ‘Uncle Walt’ was a trusted voice and presence for everybody except Archie Bunker and the Bunkers of society. Was he biased? Of course he was. There isn’t a journalist in the world that doesn’t let his own worldview sneak in once-in-a-while. But, he was also intelligent, analytical and leagues ahead of so many of the talking heads that followed.

-         Mary Travers: I guess she is now ‘ironing’ her unchanging blonde tresses in the great beyond. Peter, Paul and Mary brought a sanitized form of Dylan type folk to the masses and as a group were arguably more influential in inspiring the genre than anybody else. A lovely and pure voice, without the grit of Bob inspired a whole generation of people to get tedious around a thousand campfires, and that was OK.

-         John Hughes: If for bringing the world (namely me) Molly Ringwald (that wonderful mouth, bedad) if for no other reason. But, there are many other reasons, including a series of films about teens that are not filled with randy humping and jerking off, but are sweet and poignant without being gooshy. You could tell he really liked kids. That speaks well of him.

-         Les Paul: All subsequent guitarists are quick to pay homage, and so they should. I also have a soft spot for Paul’s old days with late wife Mary Ford. Such harmonies with herself and ‘the’ guitar always present. Vaya con dios indeed.

-         Bea Arthur: Blunt, abrasive, acerbic and funny as hell, and then there was Maude who introduced the uber-feminist of ‘a certain age’ to the world and carried it off with great and likeable élan. Later she became a paragon for all the brilliantly funny and honest old broads of the world, like Betty White with Golden Girls.

Not a complete list and you can certainly add names of your own. But, the foregoing is my two-bits worth. I missed such notables as Natasha Richardson, Frank McCourt and everybody’s favorite Chrysler salesman, Ricardo Montalban. Love that “Corinthian leather.”

-

I am one of those anal purists that subscribes to the idea that the current decade in which we find ourselves began on Jan. 1, 2001, and will come to its conclusion on Dec. 31, 2010. Sorry, but I am unwavering in that because the other way has no mathematical validity.

Consequently, I find it irritating that the decade-retrospectives and analyses are already finding their way into popular journals and newspapers. By irritating, I mean only ‘slightly’ irritating, or possibly ‘fairly’ irritating, but not ‘outrageously’ irritating as in the nature of my ongoing disbelief that there are still people who protest that Celine Dion is one of the most wonderful singers of all time, right up there with Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha and Peggy Lee. No, definitely not that outrageously irritating.

Now, in not being obsessive about the date thing (OK, a little bit obsessive), I am prepared to play the game and will suggest my thoughts about the first decade (nine years) of the 21^st Century. 

The decade kicked off with the Y2K fraud and fiasco and it offered us just a hint of how paranoid we had become as a society. It also kicked off a few months in with the presidency of George W., indicating to otherwise skeptics about Y2K that there was indeed reason for some of our paranoia. In that regard it is apt that the decade ended with the curious phenomenon of H1N1 paranoia. You know H1N1 the pandemic that never was. Well, it was an illness, but pandemic has so far been truly hyperbolic.

All those elements considered, and as decades go, there can be little doubt, despite our self-indulgent and gratuitous that the ‘oughts’? (what do we call the decade? Numero uno? The oughts? – “I remember back in ought-six, dagnabbit!” – the Zeros?) as a decade bit the big one in terms of a certain awfulness. As the decade (and century) began with such hope, it deteriorated very quickly. You get decades like that. The 1930s were not a lot of fun, and the early ‘40s kind of stank, too, though the decade improved after ’45. Ours has yet so show much improvement.

Anyway, let us take a trip down memory lane and recall all the bad and even worse days that transpired. I mean, it wasn’t all bad, so I won’t be completely negative. For example, they were able to get that damn Martha Stewart off the streets and into the slammer. Many people with shoddy decorating taste breathed easier after that because they knew that for a few months they weren’t going to be judged and found wanting.

Onward:

Too much actually happened to fit it all into a teeny little blog, so let’s consider a few highlights. Sept. 11, 2001 turned the world an icky hue and likely should really be seen as the kickoff date of the decade because everything just turned a little uglier after that epiphanic event. We are yet to again experience the freedoms we had before that time. Air travel remains an ongoing nightmare for most of us and many airlines have been unable to cope. The day of the Towers remains forever etched in our collective global consciousness, and the political repercussions go on and on and on. Even though the even happened at the beginning of the decade, it persists in dominating. Will it get better? Probably someday. For example, people hardly fret at all about the Spanish Inquisition any more. In our lifetimes? Not so much.

As in the case of the assassination of JFK in which those who were around always remember everything about the day, 9/11 has the same impact. We were in a little souvenir/T-shirt shop in Avarua in the Cook Islands. I can still remember the face of the clerk who told us to come back and look at the images he had picked up on his computer.

So, that was a bad one. So was the economic meltdown of more recent times as we learned that if you make less than 50K you can’t really afford a 500K house despite how much some sleazy banker convinces you that you can. 

And then there is global warming. This has been largely as badly handled as H1N1. Is the situation as dire as some with vested interests in the Climate Change biz would have us believe? If it is, then let’s damn well get on with it and do what we have to do like get dorky little cars and bicycles and those ripoff curly lightbulbs that cause migraines and epileptic seizures. If ever we needed the absolute scientific truth, then this is an area in which we need it.

And, oh children, there is so much more that I could dwell on, but cannot fit in. And, aside from it all, there are positives. The US election of ’08 gave just a little bit of hope for the world. Ms Palin continues to give us decent comedy (and we can hope nothing more), and Britney has learned to keep on her underpants and maybe get back to her erstwhile career.

So, all things considered, when the new decade rolls around, I think we’re entitled to a better one. We set a bad tone with the first, so let’s see how we can improve on what just went by.

As a footnote, there wasn’t much in the way of a Space Odyssey back in 2001 that I recall. Of course, that was the same year that hostile aliens established mind-control and memory blanking.

Got an email yesterday from my ex-sister-in-law. It was my first direct communication with her in over a decade. It was more than nice to hear from her.

She and her husband live down in Lake Jackson, Texas – a little more than spitting distance from here – and we had basically lost touch. I didn’t want to lose touch with her forever since I really like her very much. In fact, I like her enough that I would still like to consider her my sister-in-law, even though her big sister and I divorced over 15 years ago. I mean, I didn’t divorce her, just her sister, so I think I would like to keep her in place as my actual SIL. With that end in mind, when I was talking on the phone to my ex a week or so ago (yes, we converse very pleasantly after all this time) I asked for her kid sister’s address and she thought it was nice that I wanted to get in touch.

I have had other sisters-in-law in my matrimonial adventures, but she was the first and most important. As for my others, nah, not so much. Trudy’s sisters have never made any attempt whatsoever to contact me, and Wendy’s sister, as much as I love Wendy and cherish our relationships, is a pretentious asshole whom I quite frankly can’t stand. That’s OK. Neither can Wendy. In fact, it would only cause domestic stress if I actually liked Wendy’s sister.

Anyway, my ‘real’ sister in law is very bright. She’s a fantastic artist, and is also fluently bilingual. She’s cosmopolitan, and did graduate studies in France and elsewhere, and she has a riotous sense-of-humor. Damn it, I’m even missing her more as I write these positives about her.

So, I learned from her letter that her erstwhile ankle-biter kids are now graduating from college, though in my mind they must always be five or six years old because I have no point of comparison; much as she must look exactly as she did when I parted from the nuptial fold with her sister.

As wrenching as that divorce was at many levels, I have no regrets about it. What transpired was for the best for the two primary parties involved. But the point that bites is having to divorce the other people that were important in my life, like my SIL.

Past a certain age life’s losses tend to increase exponentially and in that regard I think it behooves us to hold on to the people we have or become reacquainted with those who have left our scene and who we might like to have back. I think to a degree that can be done, and we should endeavor to do so if it’s important to us. In saying that, I know that we can’t necessarily go home again; nor should we want to. But, the idea of putting a new dynamic onto an old relationship just might have some virtues in terms of human contentment.

The folks that are dead are assuredly that, but those who are still alive should just maybe be cultured and even courted to a degree.

As crass and false as some people see Facebook to be, I have been able to contact individuals long since gone from my life, and have been delighted to do so. So have they to be in touch with me.

It’s not so much that I definitely want to hang with these people, it’s just good to know they haven’t yet dropped off the planet.

So, I am glad I emailed my sister-in-law, and even happier that she took the pains to respond with a chatty, informative and lengthy return email. Maybe I’ll just find myself in Lake Jackson sometime and I know I wouldn’t feel weird about calling her up.

The older I get, the less certain I am about the whole Heaven thing. It’s not a matter of whether I believe or disbelieve, for that is such a personal matter, but if I conceptualize what is to come, what will it look like?

Within our culture, we are proselytised from virtual infancy that if God decides to snatch us back, regardless of where we sit in the lifespan allotment, we will not really be dead, but just transformed to another place where we will dwell in bliss for eternity just hanging out with Jesus and all.

“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep;

If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

Yow, that’s a pretty frightening prayer for a tiny tot. Reassuring Mom cajoles and says emphatically, “That doesn’t mean you’re going to die tonight,” but the wise kid knows the lines wouldn’t be there if there wasn’t just the teeniest chance. Such terrifying thoughts tend to compromise the parental goal of dry sheets every night.

“But wait,” says Mama, trying her damnedest to soothe, “that only means that when you die eventually – when you’re very, very old, you will go to a lovely place and see Grandpa again and be very happy.”

Unimpressed with his mother’s theological grasp, the kid eventually nods off into a fitful sleep after having been emotionally bribed by being promised a new Play Station for Christmas. “Hope I don’t die before Christmas,” he can be excused for thinking.

But, really, all we do end up being left with is a relatively bland concept of what Heaven might be like, and many of us have formed our own ideas about what we’d like it to resemble, even if we don’t really believe in it. I mean, if you subscribe to the “fire and brimstone” view of religiosity, then you specifically believe in it, much as you believe that the alternative (either for sinners or for those subscribers to cultural groups we don’t really like) is too ghastly to be imagined. Therefore such people strive to be in that select few of ‘saved’ folk.

But, what does such salvation mean? What does it look like?

Somebody once said that while so many people long for eternity, most of them have no idea of what to do with themselves on a wet Sunday afternoon.

A couple of years ago, I was reunited with my oldest friend in this world after a hiatus of more than 15 years. I mean, we’d kept in touch, but hadn’t actually been in each other’s presence for nearly two decades. So, the encounter was wonderful. We discussed this and that and just had a fabulous time. And then we reached the point of starting to grasp for conversational items. I mean, our lives had diverged a long time before. We may have still loved each other, but we had little life stuff in common.

From there I go to thoughts about Heaven, about the afterlife, an afterlife that will last for eternity. My dear friend and I had a challenge making it for two hours.

So, you see, part of my vision of Heaven has included being reacquainted with those who have gone beyond long before us. How wonderful to once again see those whom we’ve cherished, like:

-         My grandparents. I still miss them. I still find some spiritual solace in reaching out to them in my heart. Yet, Granny died when I was 14, and Granddad when I was 15. I was pretty unformed. We might not have a lot in common.

-         My parents: Oh, probably a lot of unfinished business there. I mean, I do have a lot of questions for both of them, but you know, then we’d end up in an argument, and that sort of behavior is probably frowned upon in Paradise.

-         A dear friend who died when he and I were 37. Great guy. Loved him dearly. But, in looking at some material about him, I now realize that he and I diverged somewhat in our political views. Wasn’t apparent at the time, but is now.

-         A beautiful lady who was just one of those ‘flings’ and who passed away very prematurely. Would love to tell her how much I cherished a ‘brief encounter’ but, in Christian context at least, our ‘friendship’ would fall into the ‘sin’ category, and might be frowned upon in Heavenly circles. It would just be too complicated.

-         On the other hand, I can heed the great wisdom of James Thurber and think how I would utterly cherish seeing my dog, Murphy again, and how we could run and he could chase sticks through the Elysian Fields forever. Meanwhile, the presence of Max in my life keeps me connected.

But, seriously. Eternity is an awfully long time. Forever? Truly, bend your thoughts around that. Barring reincarnation possibilities (in which we have to do this crap all over again), we must be in some sort of place and state of spirituality in which time and space are no longer relevant.

Dr. Who, being a Time Lord and all, understands that stuff, but I still have a problem.

So, what is your view of what lies beyond, even if you don’t truly believe and it’s all just speculative on your part? I mean, let’s face it, that’s all it can be in any case.