Flashback Father's Day: The Drama of Life

(This article originally was published by The News Herald in Panama City on Father's Day, June 18, 2006.)

The drama of life

By David Angier

Most parents cringe at the drama their teenagers bring into their lives, but Tony Simmons applauds it.

Even when his son, Nathan, is engaging in drunken brawls, kissing random women and acting crazy,

Tony simply smiles and watches - at times from front-row center.

In the years before Nathan, now 17, discovered acting, the drama he brought into the Simmons' household was nothing to smile about. But next weekend, father will join son on stage for a Shakespeare in the Park production of "Othello," in an activity that has drawn them closer together.

Admittedly, Tony Simmons' part is a small one - he has a few lines that he says he's struggled to learn - while Nathan takes center stage as the too-trusting and honorable Cassio, the unwitting tool of Iago's complex scheme of treachery and murder. Director Chuck Clay said he picked "Othello" - the tale of a war-weary general who returns home after defeating his enemies abroad, only to find his greatest enemy in his own home - because it seemed relevant to the times.

"Of all of Shakespeare's plays, 'Othello' is universal," Clay said. "It's something that's going on in our lives today. It has events and themes that we identify with, that we read about every day in the papers."

Act I, Scene I

Tall, lanky Nathan Simmons steps on the 25-by-12-foot stage at Gulf Coast Community College's theater lab and stops being Nathan Simmons. He's still dressed in jeans and black Chuck Taylors. His eyes are still nearly obscured by shaggy blond hair, but his mannerisms alter noticeably. He stands taller and speaks with a force that is absent away from the spotlight.

He's Cassio.

"Reputation, reputation, reputation," Cassio exclaims. "O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial."

The only time Nathan Simmons comes out is when he misses a line. He stumbles over his words, smiles, rephrases and exits. Off stage he jumps up and down in frustration, then darts to a chair to study the line.

Nathan Simmons entered his first theater class during his freshman year at Bay High School. Before then, he describes himself as "pretty anti-social." Nathan's entrance into the theater magnet program coincided with doctors finally determining, after years of misdiagnoses, that he had a seizure problem.

Doctors initially thought he had an attention deficit condition and put him on medication that aggravated his seizures. Doctors finally realized the problem when Nathan was in eighth grade, but the damage to his reputation was done. Nathan was an outsider.

"I didn't have a lot of friends," he said. "But theater is a big family, and as I got into it I grew closer to all those people."

In four years of theater, Nathan has performed in more than 20 plays. He's won awards, acclaim and found a goal for the rest of his life.

"When mom and dad see me on stage, they're really proud of me, and that makes me feel good," Nathan said. "Before I started high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Now I have a goal to shoot for. I have a plan. I would like to major in theater and go to New York and perform there. If I can't do that, I'd settle for teaching theater."

He said he enjoys sharing his latest project with his father.

"We connect a lot more," Nathan said. "Before I joined the theater program I kept to myself a lot. Since then, I've become a nicer person, a happier person. Dad and I, we get along really well. He enjoys watching me on stage. Having him do this show is great because he doesn't have to sit in the audience this time; he can see it from the inside."

Nathan said it's nice the roles have changed in this aspect of their lives. "He's come up to me a couple of times and asked me, 'What exactly am I supposed to be doing here?'" Nathan said. "I've helped him in memorizing lines, and he's said that this is a lot more difficult than it looks. Dad's been more than willing to learn, and it's nice that he's let me be the teacher for once."

Act I, Scene II

Tony Simmons, online editor for The News Herald, is having a hard time "loosening up." He has to remember where to face, what to do and, above all else, what to say - while making it all seem completely natural. At the same time, he's got to project.

Shakespeare in the Park is a physically demanding endeavor. The actors don't have walls to bounce sound out to the audience, and it's up to the actors to make their voices carry. Simmons doesn't have a problem turning to his son for advice.

"He's having to teach me how to loosen up," Tony Simmons said. "This is an alien thing to me; these other people are just letting go. There's no sense of self, or self-consciousness, I guess, and that's something I have to learn."

His only prior acting experience was his senior play in high school 24 years ago. He agreed to do "Othello" — "because they asked me to. They assured me it was a small role. I thought this is something that Nathan and I can do together."

Tony Simmons isn't the type of father who rolls his eyes or shakes his head when he thinks about his son pursuing a career in acting - a difficult profession to succeed at. He's seen too many positive changes in his son's life occur in four years of theater to be pessimistic about the future.

"He's got a lot of promise, and I'd just like to see him take it as far as he can go," Simmons said, noting that Nathan has talent as a playwright. For now, Tony Simmons is learning to loosen his control of his son's life as well.

"I have to be almost less involved than I used to be," he said. "Nathan's found a way to make his own way."

Zen and the art of karaoke survival

Folks dancing at the party.

PANAMA CITY BEACH — I must have spent a good 15 minutes searching Google just now, and couldn’t discover the average age of first-time karaoke use.

I just experienced my first time. I’m nearly 52. I wish I could tell you it was magical.

I know singing in your car and singing in the shower are both considered to be karaoke gateway drugs. And while I’m often guilty of both of the former activities, I’d never before succumbed to peer pressure to take the stage. My son is the performer in the family. I just sit and type stories.

And I pray karaoke is not addictive, because I very nearly died from trying it just once. Then, either numbed or emboldened, I tried it a second time. I don’t remember too much after that.

We were at a 1970s-themed engagement party for one of my wife’s coworkers. The crowd at Hidden Dunes had been dancing to Bee Gees songs and other appropriately kitschy tunes, like “Lady Marmalade” (the version by LaBelle, 1974) until DJ Mike announced it was time to sing.

People dressed in glittery stretch pants and unbuttoned silk shirts clutched champagne flutes and sang “(Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay” (1967), “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” (1976), and “Annie’s Song (You Fill Up My Senses)” (1974). And you could tell they were accomplished cover artists — doing a little dance, playing to the audience, barely watching the video screen for lyric prompts.

While most of the crowd had embraced the disco style, I was wearing a David Bowie T-shirt. The cover to “Low” (1977). Bowie, who died in January, is my greatest musical idol. I learned to pay attention to songs after hearing a noisy cassette recording of a Bowie performance taped from an old TV. The song was “Space Oddity.” The rest is legend.

What I’m saying is, if I was ever going to sing in public it would have to be a Bowie song. Also, I was pretty sure alcohol would have to be applied liberally beforehand. But I was not drinking and had no intention of taking the mic, just enjoying the people with more self-confidence who did so.

Then DJ Mike came to our table and asked me what I was going to sing. I shook my head and grinned. “Nothing,” I said. He returned to his gear and started a chant of my name. The crowd joined in. My wife gave me a smile.

Something in my brain snapped. In retrospect, that might be how horror movies start.



Like a blurry Bigfoot photo.

I opened with “Fame” (1975), my feet shifting nervously, my hands in my pockets. I saw Bowie do “Fame” twice — the 1987 Glass Spider Tour in New Orleans and the 1990 Sound+Vision Tour in Pensacola. I tried to keep in mind that he often mixed up lyrics when performing, so I shouldn’t worry about it.

Then the darkness closed in. All I recall is the video screen, the words slowly changing color before my eyes as the song progressed. I had no sense of time or of the rest of the room, or even the sound of the crowd behind the rumbling in my head.

And then it was over, people applauded, my wife grinned ear-to-ear, and I started toward our table.

“What’s your second one?” DJ Mike asked. “Golden Years?”

I froze. The crowd chanted. I realized people had been dancing while I sang.

How could I not?

The music started, a rolling guitar decrescendo that then built and built into that Carlos Alomar funk. Suddenly, a woman I’d never seen before grabbed my right arm, pressed herself close and yelled into my face — something like “I can’t help it! This is my favorite!” — and started singing along.

No offense to the lady is intended, but I thought, “So much for ‘nothing’s gonna touch you in these golden years.’” I lost the rhythm. I stumbled on lyrics I’ve sung in my car a million times. I remember looking at my wife and mouthing “Help?” She shook her head. I  was on my own.

I kept waiting for the roadies to peel the woman off of me like you see at the concerts. They never came, but honestly I was still experiencing tunnel vision, one misfiring neuron short of an out-of-body experience.

So I soldiered through. There’s a secret I’ve learned that applies to just about any situation: Give it time, and it will pass. Find your center, which for me at the moment was a video screen with color-changing lyrics on it.

You, too, can survive karaoke.

Peace.

Flashback Friday: Doc Savage and 'The River Extraction'

(Originally published Sunday, May 6, 2001, in The News Herald)

Cover Art by James Bama

As a youngster, one of my greatest literary heroes was Clark Savage Jr., better known as "Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze." A millionaire, surgeon and inventor, Doc traveled the planet righting wrongs with the aid of his World War I buddies, Monk, Ham, Johnnie, Renny and Long Tom (and sometimes his cousin Patricia Savage).

Written by Lester Dent under the pen name "Kenneth Robeson," Doc's adventures were set in the 1930s and featured in pulp magazines of the day. I became familiar with him in the 1970s when Bantam reprinted the serialized stories in the form of paperback novels, Marvel Comics published illustrated tales and Warner Bros. produced a campy movie starring Ron Ely.

Without doubt, Doc was the template on which other superheroes and adventurers were built. Clark Kent owes more to Clark Savage than a first name. (A "biography" of Doc released in the 1980s linked him by blood with the English nobleman called Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Lamont Cranston - "The Shadow.")

Ron Ely as "Doc"

Doc's base was on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, but he also had a secret "Fortress of Solitude" in the Arctic where he exercised his mind and body to the pinnacle of human perfection. Invariably Doc's physical exertions and hand-to-hand battles resulted in his safari clothing being reduced to tatters. (The number of shirts he went through was used to comic effect in the film.)

That image came to mind this week when I heard the tale of Ebro dentist John Savage ripping off his clothing as he dived into the Choctawhatchee River to pull a patient out of a sinking car. (Call it an emergency dental extraction.)

"It was strictly an immediate reaction," Savage said later. "They asked me if the water was cold and I had to say I never even knew if it was cold or not. There was just too much tension and too much tragedy about to happen.

John Savage, DDS

"I tried to get my socks off, but there wasn't time to get them off."

The car had raced out of control and bounded between trees and over a sand bank where Savage's riverside office (and Fortress of Solitude) sits; the driver initially had trouble getting out of the car and then struggled to swim while wearing steel-toe work boots.

"I'd try to help anybody in that condition," Savage said. "I didn't have time to think about it."

Once again, "Doc Savage" was the hero of the moment. Now he's back at his day job - fighting for tooth, justice and the American way.

Peace.

Flashback Friday: Digressions in infinite complications

(The following was first published in The News Herald on Sunday, April 29, 2001.)

She needed a spoon for her cereal, but none were clean, so she washed all of the dishes, wiped down the counter tops, swept the floor, mopped, noticed dirt on the baseboards and instead of washing them pulled them off the wall and sanded the paint off of them, refinished them, reattached them to the wall, which she suddenly realized needed a new coat of paint in a different color so she went to Wal-Mart, where she bought paint and brushes, and came back home to paint the dining room (and living room and bathroom) walls — never having paused for breakfast.

Did anybody see where that rabbit ran off to?

She wanted to re-seed bare spots in the lawn, so she bought seed, bags of top soil and cow compost, flowering bedding plants, decorative trimming bricks, and went to find a hoe in the shed, but the shed was in disarray so she pulled everything out of it and stacked boxes and junk for a trip to the dump, and stacked other items for Goodwill, then organized the shed and realized that the hoe was not in the shed at all but rather on the side of the house where our spring garden is usually planted but where pine straw was still heavy on the ground, needing to be raked, so she raked the straw into trashcans that also would be carried to the dump — never having got around to seeding the lawn.

Could someone help us catch these wild geese?

She wanted to relax before bedtime with the latest Left Behind book, but the dog had gotten hair on the bed, so she stripped the comforter and sheets and started a load of wash and folded clothes that were in the drier and went to put them away, but the drawers were full of winter clothes so she sorted the winter clothes — setting many aside for donation — and put the remainder in a tote that wouldn't fit into the closet until the closet was sorted — setting several items aside, again, for donation — and by this time the comforter and sheets had been washed and dried so she made the bed and went to sleep — never having cracked open the book.

But I digress.

Getting to the point (if there is one): The walls would not be repainted now if I had run the dishwasher the night before, as I had promised; the shed would not be cleaned if I had put away the hoe; the winter clothes and closets might not be sorted yet, if I had not played with the dog on the bed.

What would she do without me?

Flashback Friday: 'Trek' defense doesn'twork, no Bones about it

(Originally published in The News Herald on Thursday, March 8, 2001, as a "Bay Book" entry; a collection of snippets about the happenings, happenstance and personal experience that lend Bay and nearby counties their special character.)

Dr. "Bones" McCoy, whom you may recall was the crotchety Southern medical officer aboard the starship Enterprise way back in the day, had a fallback defense when asked to perform duties outside his realm of expertise.

"I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer!" he said, for instance, when ordered to repair a wound in the rocky skin of an alien using some kind of space age plaster.

But then, invariably, he did the work anyway.

I thought about Bones Sunday as I struggled with two-by-fours and four-by-fours and two-by-sixes and screws and bolts and a level and a drill and sundry other materials to build a backyard play-fort for my kids using a truckload of lumber and a kit we had purchased.

"I'm a writer, not a carpenter!" I said.

I had moaned something similar the day before when pressed to install an air conditioner through the wall of my son's bedroom; and a few months ago when faced with replacing a hardwired drop-in range with a freestanding one; and a few months before that... . Well, the list goes on for light years.

At the risk of mixing allusions, I also recalled a Bill Cosby standup routine in which he said truly smart men purposely mess up these tasks so that, the next time there's work to be done, their wives will not expect them to do it.

I suspect that's just wishful thinking, as it never quite works for me. Like Bones, all it takes is a look or a word from one of the crew - my kids or my wife - and I roll up my sleeves. And if I mess it up, they just expect me to fix it.

In fact, the only time the "Cosby defense" worked was the time our central air unit was on the fritz. I argued we ought to call a specialist - "I'm a writer, not an electrician!" - but my wife wouldn't hear of it. It's probably just a reset switch, she said.

So I turned off the power (I thought), opened the side of the unit, reached in for the reset switch and blinded myself with a burst of electricity that landed me a few feet back from the box.

McCoy's other famous remark sparkled through my brain:

"He's dead, Jim."

But that was just wishful thinking.

A view of home after the storm

CENTURY — We parked on Church Street and walked, viewing up close the recovery effort as locals repaired or salvaged what they could after an EF-3 tornado skipped through the town two weeks ago.

The buzz of distant chainsaws carving fallen trees carried on a light breeze, alongside the scent of wood dust and smoke. Debris was mounded in piles along the streets and in yards. Roofers replaced shingles and plywood on one house while heavy equipment left deep ruts in yards to shove fallen trees aside.

Trees still standing were coated in fiberglass flocking and sparkled with twisted vinyl and aluminum sheets. Blue and brown tarps draped the roofs of houses and public buildings, and plywood covered missing windows.

The view down Mayo to Front Street.

A stillness settled in, under warm sunshine and a cloudless blue sky.

I grew up in Century, and everywhere I looked last weekend, my memories collided with the devastation. Here was the place I went to high school. There, a shop I worked one summer. Over there, the hospital where my grandmother built her career. The church where I was baptized. The remains of a house my friend grew up in. The streets where we rode our bikes.

My cousin’s house. My aunt and uncle’s house. The Health Department. The pharmacy.

Some of them sustained only slight damage. Some were reduced to piles of kindling.

The Baptist church where we had parked showed little damage beyond some missing vinyl siding that exposed old tongue-and-groove wood walls and cracked paint on its bell tower. Pastor David Boyd greeted us in the gravel lot, explaining how the church was being used as a base of operations for volunteers from the First Baptist Church of Holt, who were helping to clean up and restore order in the area.

Century Methodist Church

“They’ve been over at the Blair house on Front Street this morning,” Boyd said. “Mr. Blair was at work when the tornado came, but his teenage kids were home. The wind picked up the house, moved it over 12 feet and set it down again. It’s a miracle nobody was hurt.”

Right next door, the 114-year-old Methodist church leaned precariously, having been shifted off its brick foundation pilings, bent and broken. Braces nailed against the exterior walls kept it from collapse until interior relics could be salvaged, as well as pews and stained glass windows. The future looked uncertain for the historic structure, built with the aid of the original lumber company that established the mill town in 1901.

As we walked back toward our car, a voice called out, “You hungry?”

Volunteers from Pineview, Ala.

A car and a pickup truck were stopped on the street, and people from the vehicles knocked on the doors of wood frame houses across from the churches. A man in a Red Sox ball cap repeated his call to us.

They were from Liberty Baptist Church in Pineview, he explained, a tiny community about 13 miles north in Alabama. They’d cooked 300 meals of smoked ribs and chicken, and gathered a carload of cleansers, paper supplies and other household needs that they were passing out.

“The Lord has led us to help these people out,” said Howard Hoomes. “We’re going door-to-door. Even the people that works, we want them to get free food.”

Pastor Boyd spoke with the group as they passed, thanking them for their gifts to the people struggling through the recovery. He clapped me on my shoulder and said, “Wouldn’t this make a good story?”

I nodded. Yes, it would.

Peace.

Throwback Thursday: Christmas Tree Lane could still earn its name

(This article originally published Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2000, in The News Herald's "Bay Book"  column.)


PANAMA CITY BEACH — Christmas Tree Lane, a meandering paved trail on the western reaches of Panama City Beach (Laguna Beach), is lined by everything but what you might expect, given the name.

More oleanders and palms grow here than spruce and cedar, more scrub oaks than even scraggly Charlie Brown-style pine saplings.

There's no snow to frolic in, either — an early morning frost is the most one might hope for. Ground cover consists of sand, red clay, weeds and one yard given over to white marble rock and gravel.

You'll find no igloos or enchanted elf castles on Christmas Tree Lane. Instead, lines of mobile homes give way to abandoned houses, old tourist properties for sale or rent, and empty lots.

But sprinkled among these are pockets of brightness, houses where people have planted roots (and grass). One such place is a modest home that, despite being situated about halfway along the lane, is labeled "The Rhodes End" by a sign at its entrance.

In the front yard stands a brightly-painted 3-foot-tall wooden Santa Claus and a similar snowman that may or may not represent good ol' Frosty.

Homeowner Richard Rhodes, 65, has lived on the lane since 1987, and he said the Christmas spirit has always moved him to decorate.

"I came here from Colorado," he said. "I bought a little hotdog stand on the beach, and I've been working on the beach ever since."

When Rhodes first moved onto the lane, none of his neighbors did any holiday decorating.

"I've always done that all my life," he said. "My wife died four years ago and my son died two years ago on Christmas Eve, so last year was the only year I didn't do any decorating."

He's gotten back into the spirit this year — a toy train runs around the Christmas tree inside the home, much to the delight of his two grandchildren — and he has plans for an even bigger display for Christmas 2001.

"I want to plant a Christmas tree in the front yard in January so I'll have one to decorate next year," he said.

And finally, Christmas Tree Lane could live up to its name.

Childhood dreams sometimes come true — a generation later

(This is my “Undercurrents” column for The News Herald this week.)

The Offer

PANAMA CITY BEACH — If you claim you never stood in front of a mirror and played air guitar or lip-synced into a hairbrush, pen or other object, then I’m going to (generously) suggest that you might be fibbing.

If you grew up in rock ’n’ roll age, that kind of activity is a given.

Me, I’ve wanted to be a rock star since before David Cassidy had a TV series. That’s a long, long time. However, I also have the good sense to keep away from karaoke machines, because no matter how long a time has passed, my singing skills have not improved.

"Adrift"

So it comes as something of a sense of pride to say my son is a rock star. At least, that’s what I tell him, and anyone else who will listen. He’s the vocalist and co-writer of songs for “The Offer,” a band that released its second CD (this time a 5-song EP titled “Adrift”) just last weekend.

The other band members are Mike Jordan (guitar), Mikhail Cintgran (bass/vocals), Tristan Reynolds (guitar), and Chase Hopkins (drums). The band has experienced a couple of lineup changes over the past few years, but has maintained its music and style (which they tell me is rock/post hardcore), as even a casual listen shows.

Listening to the new EP, particularly a song that references Doctor Who and “writing in her journal of impossible things,” my brain took an unexpected leap: I wondered how or if my life choices had reflected my father’s childhood dreams.

It’s a reasonable question, and one I think fathers and sons (and mothers and daughters) have mulled since time began. I’m sure it’s a question that occurs regularly to people in middle age, able to look at the generations before and after them simultaneously.

Dad didn’t want me to be a writer. He wanted me to be an electrician or a chemist, get a job in manufacturing, make a living wage. When I was bringing home Ray Bradbury novels from the middle school library, he was supplying me with Radio Shack electrical kits and chemistry sets from Kmart and giving me reading assignments in science texts.

(I remember debates with my son over his choice of study in high school and college — Theatre — and whether he could make a living wage with that kind of degree.* Sometimes, “living” is less about the wage and more about the life; that’s a lesson with which I’m still coming to grips.)

And yet, much later on, after I had established what became my career and started writing novels and short stories on the side, Dad started writing a regular history column for his local paper, The Tri-City Ledger in Flomaton, Ala., and wrote or co-wrote books on local history. He liked to joke that he was going to be me when he grew up.

I can say with certainty that I am not going to be a rockstar when I grow up. Still, I wondered if Dad had ever fantasized about being a writer in his youth — typed an air typewriter in front of the mirror, or lip-synced an interview into a tape recorder.

Probably not, now that I put it that way.

Peace.

---

* And let’s not forget how upset my daughter became after a career counselor at her school noted her high scores in aptitude tests and suggested she might pursue a career in journalism. I think she still cries when she thinks about that.

The view from the back seat

(This is my Undercurrents column for The News Herald this week.)

PANAMA CITY BEACH — It has been a week of highs and lows, as life tends to be — and pretty clearly illustrated, at least in part, by the perspectives attained according to where I sat in a moving vehicle.

Buckle up.

Saturday, my wife and I drove to Tallahassee to be with our daughter for her birthday, then traveled with her and her boyfriend to Thomasville, Ga., for a daytrip. The old downtown has been revitalized with boutiques, restaurants, a theater, a bookstore, a record shop — even a cupcakery and a fudge shop. We strolled the brick and concrete walks, sampled the local flavors, admired the old architecture. We laughed a lot.

I rode in the front passenger’s seat with my teeth clenched as my daughter’s boyfriend drove like he was auditioning for “Fast & Furious 8.” At one point, a piece of brown cardboard blown into the highway from the right caused him to swerve — I had seen it coming, but he thought it was an animal.

Sunday, we attended the wedding of my son’s best friend in Jacksonville; it took place at a waterside venue, by an old Florida woodframe house under oak trees strung with white lights. Bride and groom were funny and beautiful, and the event felt like a family reunion — everyone was genuinely happy to see everyone else. Afterward came dining, dancing (yes, even me), speeches, and tears of joy all around. My son caught the garter.

I drove most of the way there, but was relegated to the back seat for the trip home, sleeping the sleep of the just, the exhausted, the old. I’m not built for snoozing in a Corolla, but I managed. Pulling back into Tallahassee near midnight was like rolling into a dream — the streets were vaguely familiar, just turned the wrong ways and strangely lit, and even my daughter had trouble recognizing them.

“I’ve never come into town from this direction at night,” she explained.

We next jaunted to Pensacola, where I visited my father in the hospital and then traveled with him to Atmore, Ala., where he was moving for physical therapy. On that trip, I took the back seat again as my wife drove and Dad perched in the front passenger seat. I joked about being the backseat driver, then tried to give my wife directions. Dad chuckled and looked out the window.

That’s when it finally struck me and the mental airbags deployed.

I thought of my own children, of their years in the back seat, looking forward and reading my temper or humor by the bulge of a grinning cheek, set of a clenched jaw, or crinkle of the skin at the corner of my eye. Watching my hairline recede from the center outward.

I couldn’t tell you how many thousands of roadtrips I’ve taken with my father over the decades, covering hundreds of thousands of miles. Short hops to the grocery store, to church, to school, to Grandma’s  house and a million other places. Longer slogs to Orlando, or Cleveland, or Stone Mountain or wherever.

And I couldn’t begin to guess how often I saw him from a similar angle as I was growing up — sitting in the back seat and watching him scan the road as he drove or rode shotgun with someone else. Yet, I had never seen him from quite this perspective ever before. Exhausted, weak, at the mercy of a body and brain suffering from brutal and random tribulation.

Memories and that moment in time collided, the weight of those intervening decades like a yoke on my back, and I wondered what it must be like for him, relegated for a time to being a backseat passenger in his own life.

My advice is to take the wheel while you can, but from time to time, be willing to occupy a back seat and view the world from that perspective. Remind yourself how it feels to follow, to have to trust another’s ability to navigate the miles of rough road ahead.

And don’t forget to buckle up.

Peace.

Throwback Thursday: Not Fade Away

(This column originally published in The News Herald on Sunday, November 14, 2010)

Not fade away: Connecting across time and space

Surrounded and bolstered by kindred spirits on Thursday night, Wewahitchka-based author Michael Lister talked about the sacred calling of the storyteller. He used the word “shaman” to convey the mystical connection between the teller and the listener.

Like an alchemical equation seeking balance, the work birthed in the act of creating art can’t reach maturity until the work is interpreted. Otherwise creation is the silence in the forest when a tree falls and no one is there to hear it.

It’s the sound of one hand clapping.

Michael’s words, as usual, started me thinking. In particular, I recalled a few events of the past week where the things people said (or wrote) and the things I heard (or read) connected with memory to
create new meaning. You never know what people will say, or how the things they say will stick with you and bubble to the surface of your thoughts.

A couple of examples:
I visited the set of “A Doll’s House” on the Amelia Center Theater stage at Gulf Coast Community College this week. Decorated for Christmas, the lights and baubles stood in stark contrast to the dull walls and furnishings in shades of brown. It looked like a scene out of “A Christmas Story.”

The play is set in 1950s Chicago, and the short sequence I viewed made me think about those folks on our Squall Line who want their country back — one of whom even went so far this week to type on his or her computer that “The 1950s was a better time.”

On stage, the husband teased his wife with $10 bills that she greedily snatched from him, one by one, and promised to spend wisely. He called her pet names and spoke in soothing tones, making sure she understood her place and function in his world.

I was reminded of an early Saturday morning recently, when an older man joked about spending his entire “allowance” on yard sales. He circled among some tables stacked with colorful trinkets and clothing, asking silly questions and flirting with the ladies at the sale. Suddenly, he grew quiet.

“I was married three times,” this total stranger said to me, his breath misting in the morning cold. “I left the first one, the second one left me, and the third died. She was the only one who ever said she loved me. She was the only one I ever loved.”

He cleared a lump in his throat and pointed at a coffee maker designed for one person.

“Is that real or a toy?” he said, and I told him I believed that it was real.

He bought it and drove away alone.
Peace.

Throwback Thursday: Best ‘witches’ for the happy birthday ghoul

(Originally published Sunday, October 31, 2010 in The News Herald.)

She arrived squalling in the dark and early hours of a Halloween morning, an absolute treat after a frightening and tricky delivery, our own tiny gremlin. Later that day, a boy dressed as the Flash gave her a kiss — through his face mask — before zooming off to trick-or-treat.

She has worn many costumes in the 19 (all too short) years since then: baby pumpkin, fairy-tale princess, pink Power Ranger, witch, Indian princess, police officer, Dorothy Gale, gangster moll and many more. She’s even been known to create a costume and makeup out of boredom (see above).

She won a prize in a sci-fi convention costume contest one year for the Star Trek outfit we dressed her in — mostly because she was an awfully cute 4-year-old at the time. The grownups in their expensive “uniforms” were not amused.

Over the years, we developed a tradition of taking the birthday ghoul out to eat before going trick-or-treating; the whole family would wear costumes to whatever restaurant she chose. That came to an end the year I wore a Star Trek costume and everyone in the joint came by the table to make jokes.


She absolutely refused to let me wear a Mr. Fantastic outfit a couple of years back, but that might have had more to do with the way my gut stretched the fabric.

I suppose there’s only so much humiliation a young woman will endure from her father.

For the last few years, she has wandered the neighborhoods of the Hammocks in Lynn Haven with her friends and has hauled home loads of candy — so we’re a little disappointed that she has finally decided she’s “too old” for trick-or-treating. Looks like we’ll have to hit the after-Halloween sales on All Souls Day.


All this is to say that, no matter what outward outfit she wears or how many Halloweens she has seen, she’ll always be our little monster under the surface.

Happy Halloween!

Former narcotics agent begins third chapter

Merle & Judy with actor Shemar Moore

MEET THE AUTHOR

• Who: Merle Sheppard, author of “Ghostly Shade of Pale”
• Where and When: Sundog Books in Seaside 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, and Hidden Lantern Bookstore in Rosemary Beach 2-6 p.m. Saturday
• Details: MerleTemple.com and Facebook.com/Merle.Temple.1

 

SEASIDE — Merle Temple, at age 67, has begun a new career as a novelist — a third career, after retiring from the law enforcement and communications. He has worked for the FBI, the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, and BellSouth. Now, he’s a successful author.

I caught up to him by telephone this week as he relaxed in Destin with his wife, Judy. They had been out birding, and he had recently spoken to a class at a Destin elementary school. He mused upon his new life and how it reflected in those youngsters, just starting their lives.

“These books have opened up a whole new world for us in our retirement years,” he said. “I didn’t know if anyone other than friends and loved ones would want to read them. ... I am so grateful that I lived long enough and survived so much tragedy to know who and what never mattered, and Who always will.”

His debut novel, “A Ghostly Shade of Pale” introduced the character of Michael Parker, which is based on Merle. Parker leaves Ole Miss in the early 1970s to enter America’s “War on Drugs.” He is kidnapped by heroin dealers and held hostage while working solo undercover. Later, he’s ambushed near Memphis by contract killers hired by the Dixie Mafia. When he becomes a captain, he and his men are ambushed in a heroin deal near Columbus by a sniper.

“Only the dramatic intervention of God saves the lives of agents that day,” Merle said, adding, “All these things and more really happened.”

Merle, originally from Tupelo, Miss., claims to have crossed paths with many of the iconic figures of the 20th century, including Margaret Thatcher, Charlton Heston, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, J. Edgar Hoover, Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, and countless other senators, congressmen, governors and celebrities.

“I pull the curtain back to allow people to see Washington as it really is, and it is not a pretty sight — where everyone and everything is for sale,” he said.

The second book in the trilogy, “A Rented Love,” follows Parker into the corporate world and high-level politics. There, he finds that the organized crime figures who tried to kill him are choir boys compared to the political criminals he encounters in what Merle calls “the unholy trinity of crime, politics and business.”

Merle is currently at work on the final book in the trilogy, “The Redeemed,” in which Parker — a would-be dragonslayer — pays the price for his crusades and for opposing the power brokers. The treachery runs all the way to the White House, Merle hints.

 “So many I have known in politics love only power and money, but beyond that, so many of them refuse to surrender power even in old age and infirmity,” Merle said. “They made a Faustian deal to rule in hell on earth, rather than to serve eternally in heaven. They equate retirement with death, and they are terrified to stand before their maker. They know what they’ve done, and they know that the road is running out.”

The novels are being considered for adaptation into TV series by various Hollywood producers, which took Merle and Judy to the West Coast for meetings. They watched the filming of “Criminal Minds,” signed books for actors Joe Mantegna and Shemar Moore. The series writer-producer Jim Clemente is pitching “Ghostly” for Merle.

“I have written all my life in the public and private sector — speeches, technical papers,” he said. “People told me, ‘you have a gift of writing,’ but I found out fiction is difficult. It’s tricky to speak in other voices. It has so many threads in it, it’s so complex. It has been a real learning process.”

Merle also believes that what he writes and how he presents it is important. His work, placed in the public eye, is equivalent to the epitaph on his tombstone, he said, in that it’s how he will be remembered.

“My novels, written as fiction but drawn from my life, have no profanity or graphic intimacy,” he said. “They are written as literature to endure, and people love them for that reason. ... People are hungry right now for that, even if they’re gritty books, but behind it is a message that’s uplifting.”

Peace.

Throwback Thursday: Don't wait for Godot's great pumpkin

(Originally published October 30, 2005 in The News Herald)

As you read this, it's the morning after my daughter's first-ever hosted multi-guest sleepover party.

If all went according to plan, she had youngsters traipsing through the halls in Halloween costumes, eating snacks and birthday cake, half-watching scary movies, staying up to all hours, and dancing to music at a volume that probably was turned down over and over again by weary grownups.

Pray for them.

Bad enough that I can be grouchy on the best of mornings. Worse that my daughter is even more grouchy than me. But that's not really what this is all about.

It's about The Great Pumpkin, and the girl who came to us on a Halloween morning 14 years ago,
and the lessons she teaches.

The Great Pumpkin, like Godot, never arrives. It's the anticipation of his arrival, and our loneliness in the waiting, that matters. Linus sends letters that are never answered; he waits in the patch all night and never sees a sign. He believes in things the rest of us find laughable.

For many years, despite requests from our own "peanuts" gallery, somehow we seldom had a jack-o'- lantern on the doorstep. This year, we got a great pumpkin. We chose it from the patch off State 77 in Lynn Haven and brought it home to lovingly mutilate. It wasn't huge by any means, but it had a good shape and size. And it was ours.

We went to get the pumpkin because our Hallowed Eve princess wanted it, of course, and because her mother's insistence overcame my considerable inertia. And after a few days of having the pumpkin sitting patiently unmolested by the front door, for much the same reason, we took it into the backyard to carve.

As her mother watched, I showed the spooky little girl how to trim off the top and dig out the guts — or brains, if you prefer — to stick to the gourd-as-head analogy. I skimmed seeds out of the fibrous orange mucous and put them into one bowl to be cleaned and roasted. The brains and inner meat went into another, to be made into pumpkin pie or something else Mom might decide to make.

Then daughter and I drew the face, and I helped her cut the holes. She outlined the holes with red paint to increase the daytime scariness. We have since placed the candle inside and shined the light, and it is one formidable jack-o'-lantern.

But there was a moment in between those steps, a moment when I was up to my elbows in pumpkin brains, fingers coated in goo, when I realized my place in all of this. The role I had taken, though active in these final steps, was not the role that had put the gourd on its journey to the front porch.

"This is cool," said the Halloween girl. "Thanks, Mom."

Peace.

Get your write on this NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo Kick-Off Party

• What: Tips and tricks for writers; light refreshments
• When: 5:30-7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 19
• Where: Bay County Public Library, at 898 W. 11th St., Panama City
• Details: nanowrimo.org or call 850-522-2120

PANAMA CITY — Writers, it’s time to limber up those typing or scribing fingers, bulk up the brain muscles (or whatever) and get ready for the best month of the year.

November is just around the corner, and that means you’re invited (in fact, encouraged — nay, required!) to set your mind to writing a novel during the 30 days of National Novel Writing Month, or “NaNoWriMo.”

“NaNoWriMo challenges people to write 50,000 words of a novel in the 30 days of November,” said Regina Burgess, Community Relations and Marketing Coordinator for the Northwest Regional Library System. “Crazy? Yes. Doable? Absolutely!”

My recent novel of zombie survival, “This Mortal Flesh,” began as a NaNoWriMo project. I’m planning to write the bulk of a new steampunk novel in November.

As Regina notes, more than 250 NaNoWriMo novels have been traditionally published, including Sara Gruen’s “Water for Elephants,” Erin Morgenstern’s “The Night Circus,” and many more. Last year, NaNoWriMo welcomed 351,142 writers from around the world. Of those participants, 58,917 hit their goals, completing a 50,000-word draft of a novel in November 2014.

If you’ve always said you wanted to do so too, then now’s the time.

To help locals get the ink flowing, the Bay County Public Library will host a NaNoWriMo Kick-Off Party from 5-7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 19. I will join local authors Michael Lister, Sharman Ramsey and others during that period to share some helpful writing tips and prompts. Friends of the Bay County Public Libraries will supply light refreshments.

Attendees may also enter a drawing for three gift boxes, each of which includes goodies and the book that started it all: “No Plot, No Problem: A Low-Stress High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days” by NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty.

The library will also host “Come Write In” sessions 5-7 p.m. each Monday in November, with library staff on hand for support and encouragement; participants are welcome to bring their own refreshments.

Finally, the library will have a “Thank God It’s Over” party 5-7:30 p.m. on Dec. 7 to celebrate finishing (or at least attempting to finish) your novels. Again, Friends of the Bay County Public Libraries will supply light refreshments.

 “We have some staff members who are going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year,” Regina said. “I’m one of them, and I am both looking forward to it and scared out of my wits! So far, I have no idea what I’m going to write about or even what genre I’ll attempt. But the unknown is half the fun!”

In writing, it’s about the journey as much as the destination. Come with us into the trackless unknown.

Peace.

Throwback Thursday: Some leave monuments when they go

(This column originally appeared in The News Herald on Sunday, October 23, 2005.)

Hugs all around, and smiles, and some laughs.

We compare bald spots, and aches and pains like the guys on Jaws comparing their scars. We brag about our children, their grades and accomplishments, bestow compliments and accept them.

(We live through our children, after all. We put our arms around them and hang on for dear life. The future is there. Here is the past, we say to the child as we brag to our forefathers about the living future.)

So many faces in the crowd. We don't see them any more, except at family reunions, or weddings or funerals. We don't have family reunions any more, and those of us who were once considered the kids of the family are now at that intermediate age when it seems like nobody's getting married.

I guess you know what that leaves.

I'm thinking it's a shame that it has been so long since I saw so many of these people, and I'm thinking Bobby would be glad to see so many of them gathered up in one place. He'd have something inappropriate and hilarious to say about it.

There are pictures and flowers, as there always are. And tears. But there are inordinate amounts of smiles. Bobby would have appreciated that — it's what he brought into rooms.

Later, after the service at the Flomaton Funeral Home and another one on the green hill overlooking the town, we gather at his house. We are greeted there by a wooden sculpture Roland Hockett might have conceived on a whim.

Bobby built the monument to the recent hurricanes Ivan and Dennis after they dropped trees — twice — on his house. The second time, after repairs from the first time had been significantly completed.

The freeform sculpture stands at the end of the walkway that leads from the street to the front door of the home. It's made of pieces cut from the trees as they were removed from the house, as well as various other debris.

Maybe it's a warning of what can happen if you fight the forces of nature, I thought. Maybe it's a kind of pine ju-ju meant to appease the hurricane gods. Most likely, it's just a typical joke — Bobby's way of saying he's not going to let something like a one-two punch from Mother Nature get him down.

Some people leave memories. Some leave legacies. Some leave monuments.

I snap a picture, and wonder.

Peace.

Undercurrents: Honoring Rosie, establishing a legacy

Rosie

• The Amelia Center Honors: Rosemarie O’Bourke
• When: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 17
• Where: Amelia G. Tapper Center for the Arts, Gulf Coast State College, 5230 W. U.S. 98, Panama City
• Tickets: Free admission; online reservations at GulfCoast.edu/Arts suggested to guarantee seating
• Details: Call 850-872-3887 or email jhedden@gulfcoast.edu

 

PANAMA CITY — I first met Rosemarie O’Bourke, or “Rosie,” many years ago, when I started reporting on education for The News Herald and the Gulf Coast State College theatre was undergoing a massive renovation. But I finally got to know her when my son entered the college’s Performing Arts track.

Next week, Oct. 17, the college will celebrate Rosie’s career and legacy following her recent retirement as chairwoman of the Visual and Performing Arts Division — a department that started when she first arrived at the college, about 30 years ago.

“The Amelia Center Honors is an event celebrating the numerous contributions Rosie O’Bourke has made to arts and education in this community and the positive impact she has had on so many students during her career,” said Jason Hedden, who assumed his role as chairman of the GCSC Visual and Performing Arts Division upon Rosie’s retirement. “The entire community is invited to share in this exiting evening of entertainment.”

The special ceremony will feature performances and tributes by students, alumni, colleagues and community members. NYC-based performer and alumnus Matthew Holtzclaw will serve as guest emcee. Formal attire is requested.

The Amelia Center Honors, as it goes into the future, will become an event to honor others who contribute extraordinary value to the area’s cultural life.

In 2013, I sat down with Rosie in her office, which was decorated with University of Florida and Gator items, and we talked about her life and career.

Born in Cuba, she came to the U.S. in 1961 at age 13 as one of the “Peter Pan” children. The Miami Catholic churches had arranged passage for Cuban children and placed them in foster homes and orphanages to get them out of Castro’s regime.

“I didn’t speak any English or any such thing,” she said. “My brother and I went to live with a family we knew, friends of our parents. We were lucky.”

Rosie completed high school and college in St. Petersburg, graduated from UF with a master’s in music, took a second master’s degree in theater from St. Louis University, worked in a playhouse in Cleveland while getting her MFA, married and had three kids.

The first show she produced at GCSC (still “Community” College at the time), was “Bye Bye Birdie,” with choreography by her longtime collaborator and friend Jenny Freed. The last one she directed, a career-long dream, was “Les Miserables.”

But retirement doesn’t mean she’s far from the footlights. She plans to spend more time at a family cabin in North Carolina, but also to work with children, teaching and producing children’s theater and choral performances. Arts education is as important to her now as ever.

“My soapbox is keeping the arts in our schools,” she said. “Kids really need it, and research shows they do better in all the other subjects if they’re (exposed to) the arts. My students have gotten so much from the arts — self concept, energy, compassion. They had to learn to be team players, to accept other people, and no matter what field you go into, you have to be a team player.”

As the team gets together next weekend to honor its coach, mentor, and fellow player, they’ve had occasion to reflect on how they got where they are — and who helped guide them along the path.

“Rosie has had a profound impact on my life and career,” Hedden said. “For over 20 years, she has believed in me, more than I believed in myself. That unwavering support has given me a confidence that has led to many of the personal and professional successes in my life.”

That’s a legacy anyone would be proud to count. Congrats, Rosie, for a career well spent, and best wishes for many years of creativity and inspiration to come.

Peace.

Throwback Thursday: On the road — I remember the warrior

(The following originally was published in the Sunday edition of The News Herald, October 16, 2005.)

I remember a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land. Most of all, I remember the man we called Max, the road warrior.

Here, the signs stripped of numbers, the bags over the nozzles. There, cars backed up 10 deep and into the street with a police officer directing the lines and watching for drive-offs as the last drops are drained of premium.

And finally, cars following a tanker as it drives from the Chevron terminal on St. Andrew Bay to deliver thousands of gallons to a station on U.S. 231. There, the lines form again, and only hours later the underground tanks again are dry.

There's desperation in the eyes of those who sat at the ends of the lines, those who did not get a taste of the golden juice, those whose needles rest on the red "E."

Without fuel they were nothing. They'd built a house of straw. Suddenly their machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked, but nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled.

I was one of the lucky ones during the recent shortage who found gasoline — enough to make a trip out of town — and there I found gasoline enough to make it back home again. It was a worrisome thing to do.

You become afraid to travel. If you give any thought to the ready availability of fuel, then you do. Can you get from here to there? And if you make it one way, can you get back home again?

Traveling last weekend, we passed any number of gas stations with empty signs and bagged nozzles in Walton, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa and Escambia counties. We paid more to travel one way to the old homestead and back again than it would have cost to drive three times that far a year ago.

Abandoned cars sat on roadsides, more than I've ever seen on that journey, and I wondered how many of them simply were out of petrol.

We'd been making Road Warrior jokes for weeks around the office because of the shortage, and now I was facing the images for real and wondering: Where was Lord Humungus? Where was the lawman, Max? How far were we from feral children roaming the wasteland with boomerangs?

To understand who he was we have to go back to the other time. When the world was powered by the black fuel, and the desert sprung great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away.

Strangely enough, AMC's "A One and A Two" (in which the cable network plays a movie and its sequel as a double feature) on Wednesday night showed Max Max followed by The Road Warrior.

And Thursday, the prices on the convenience store signs began to fall. I wondered if there was some karmic connection.

"You want to get out of here? You talk to me."

Here he would learn, amid the dark wreckage, that the fire which burns in the heart of man, will endure. Hope survives.

Peace.

Writers Wednesday: Angier enters fictional realm with ‘Political Animal’

PANAMA CITY — A beautiful but ambitious wife, a delusional blogger, a police detective and a newspaper reporter are among the characters vying to understand lawyer Peter Madden. He’s running for State Attorney in the Florida Panhandle, and he’s pleading self-defense for having shot a client to death in his own law office.

This is the situation readers face in David L. Angier’s debut novel, “Political Animal,” the opening salvo of a trilogy that will explore Florida politics, courtroom drama and wacky characters. (Book two, which is not yet complete, is currently titled “Strange Bedfellows.”)

For Madden, a claim of self defense just might make him the ideal candidate for an ultra-conservative political group with a gun rights agenda. With the help of a savvy campaign manager and a mysterious “dirty deeds” man, Madden turns the election process on its ear, molds the killing into a political statement and runs as “the candidate who isn’t afraid to do what needs to be done.”

“Political Animal” is Angier’s first novel after publishing two nonfiction books, “The Madness of Joe Francis” (2013) and “Salvaged Santa” (2011, with Greg Wilson). He has two more nonfiction books on his schedule, but unlike his other work — which has focused on telling the true stories behind the headlines, and which is written with the audience in mind — this novel was about having fun.

David L. Angier

“I didn’t write this one for anyone else but me,” Angier said during a recent conversation at Amavida Coffee & Tea in St. Andrews. “I decided right off I was just going to have fun with this project, and I enjoyed writing it. I used to say I didn’t think I’d ever write a novel, but now I don’t want to write nonfiction again.”

Angier, 50, was raised in the Clearwater area near Tampa. He earned a degree in Journalism and Communications from the University of Florida,  where he “suffered along with my classmates through a spree of murders by a serial killer that terrorized the campus.” After graduation, he worked as a courts and crime reporter with several newspapers in Florida, Missouri and Illinois, before landing at The News Herald, where he covered courts and crime for the next 12 years.

“Florida is a great place to grow up, especially if you have an appreciation for tropical weather, string bikinis and warm Gulf of Mexico waters,” he says in a biographical note. “Panama City has turned out to be the richest area for news I’ve ever encountered, and my first two (and next two) nonfiction books are from events in that area.”

As a reporter, Angier said he often would find himself composing an article in his head as he drove back to the office from court or the scene of a crime. Now, he does the same thing with fiction, as an inspiration strikes and he begins letting a scenario play out in his head.

“Then I go back to my home office and start writing,” he said. “I try to follow the flow and let the story dictate itself. ... Dialogue moves things along. I do a lot of character development through dialogue.”

Real people are complex collections of sometimes contradictory personality traits. Angier said he builds characters by focusing on just a few traits, which allows him to divide aspects of “a normal human being” into several characters. Readers fill in the gaps, but the traits make the characters memorable.

“I find characters I want to write about and put them in completely fictional settings,” he said.

Angier doesn’t plan to hold formal book signing events, but he said you’re liable to catch him hanging out at The Wine Dog off 23rd Street any given Friday evening, having a cigar and a beer; he’ll have some books with him that he’s selling for only $5 each (they cost about twice that online).

“Like I said, I’m not trying to make a ton of money with this book,” he said. “It’s about having fun. If people read it and enjoy it, then I’ve succeeded.”

 

• ‘Political Animal’
• What: Debut novel by David L. Angier (242 pages, paperback)
• Where: Available on Amazon.com or via DavidLAngier.com
• Price: $8.99 online or $5 in person

Forecast for a Blood Moon: Cloudy with a chance of snark

PANAMA CITY BEACH — I set up three lawn chairs in front of our house Sunday night and positioned them to face the glowing blotch floating overhead, where the full moon’s glow struggled to pierce the cloud cover.

We hoped to glimpse the supermoon and the “blood moon” effect of the total lunar eclipse. Clouds moving in opposing directions, depending on their altitude, worked to obscure our view — a condition made all the more frustrating by the open gaps showing black space and sparkling stars at the wrong angle from our position below to allow a view of the moon.

Occasionally, a piece of moon would peek from behind a passing veil of vapor, but only for a moment. Blue light flickered through the neighbor’s blinds and dogs yapped from somewhere beyond the surrounding trees. I listened for coyote howls, but heard none.

Strangely, I offered no howls of my own, and never once wondered about werewolves; I’d almost think I must be growing up, if I didn’t know better.

I did, however, think about the silly warnings I’d seen posted on Facebook about the “Blood Moon!” event, as well as the exhortations from various world religious leaders not to panic. Apparently, some people actually thought a full moon/eclipse augured the end of the world; I would have thought that kind of superstition had died out long ago.

But then I see the sort of things that become viral on Facebook — please stop sharing that blasted privacy notice thing! — or that become points of contention between otherwise “enlightened” and educated persons, and can’t help but accept that we, as a species, will believe almost anything.

I mean, there are some things “I want to believe,” as Special Agent Fox Mulder’s office poster used to declare. But I don’t want to be stupid about it.

Apropos of Mulder, my son tossed in the metaphorical towel early on, returning indoors to continue his binge-watching of “The X-Files” on Netflix as he anticipates the revival of the series early next year. I suspect he’s genetically predisposed to enjoy that kind of thing, and I know which of his parents is to blame.

Meanwhile, cloud-watching and eclipse-waiting, it seems, is an old-person’s game. My wife and I persisted in our quest for another half-hour or so, as she experimented with different settings on her camera and I experimented with magical cloudbursting spells.

Surely, just the right gesture and exhortation — “Expelliarmus!” perhaps, or “Rain, rain, go away!” — would pierce the veil in time to see the moon blush in humiliation over all this misdirected attention.

The wife was less amused by my silliness than I was, I suspect, but more patient than she might have been in earlier years. A lunar halo effect, perhaps, though it may be that she allowed me some leeway because our pearl anniversary was the next day and a dozen roses had mysteriously materialized on the dining table earlier in the afternoon.

But try as I might, I failed to dissolve the cloud cover with either magic or telekinesis. Whether that’s a testimony to the strength of the tropical weather pattern or an indictment of the weakness of frequency or amplitude in my brainwaves — you can decide.

Peace.

Weather or not, autumn is coming

PANAMA CITY BEACH — The turning of the season has brought its share of miseries. A death in the family. Illness. Calamity on the road. The first anniversary of another death in the family.

And yet, impossibly, this remains my favorite time of year.

It’s the month my sister was born, and her first son as well. The month I was married (three decades ago, now). The month I mark “Breakaway Day” (40 years, as of Sept. 13).

After a summer of heat and humidity that sapped the will and stifled activity, the world feels ready to be lived in again. The morning sky is a featureless dome of pastel blue when it isn’t filled by fluffy white cumulous clouds. The air feels crisp, smells clean, and makes me feel alive.

Yes, there’s a strong undercurrent of nostalgia — but the best kind. Time collides with recollection on the wake of a passing cold front, stirring echoes of past autumns.

In the misty distance are hints of football Friday nights in the 1970s and ’80s, hanging out with my buddies, driving my first car (a Ford Galaxy 500) with the windows down. From almost as far back comes the reminder of a being newly-wed college student and stopping to enjoy the sunshine between classes at Lake Alice. And later, standing with the kids on early school mornings to wait for the bus. My daughter’s Halloween birthdays.

More recently, the scent of fall in the atmosphere or tumble of positive ions on the breeze bring alive the months we rented a home a few blocks from the Gulf and spent our evenings walking the shoreline.

So yes, there is much joy in the memories that September fosters. But it has been a bad month, too. One in which the hits keep coming. One of those times when all you can do is hunch your shoulders, keep your head down, and just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I have held people while they cried. Helped to carry a coffin. Given bad news over a phone. Stood by, helpless. Tried to solve problems. Gotten sick and gotten better. Suffered a surreal moment in an old church in my hometown.

And just the other night, back home and back in my routine, I stood in the dark under a crescent moon while the dogs sniffed and circled and looked for places to do their thing, and I looked at the stars. Sometimes I can fool myself into thinking it’s a different year, a different place — the stars are the same, after all, and the air is perfect.

But not this time. This time, despite the energy of the sky and atmosphere, it was all too much.

I saw chain lightning threaten in distant clouds, silent and ominous. The rain never came, the storm never materialized. And yet, it continues to feel like the bottom could drop out, lightning strike, rain pummel, and darkness fall.

Me? I’m holding out hope for October.

Peace.