Learning To Let Go

In recent years, my opinions of a number of people from my past have changed. The present political climate has stripped away the polite veneer from some old acquaintances to reveal underlying foundations of self-serving, profit-centered, isolationist, or racist beliefs that find their way into conversations that, thanks to the way social media works, are beamed to the devices of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. I've found the removal of this veneer equal parts discouraging, enlightening and instructive.

Before the 2016 election, back when I believed the morally untenable antics of the winning candidate were merely a means to the end of getting elected, I found it interesting to learn how many people I once believed reasonable were eager to overlook or defend all the hate-fueled rhetoric. 

He just curled up his hand and changed his voice to imitate a crippled reporter who criticized him? "No, you're just twisting what he did and said to make it seem worse than it was." 

He just called all Mexican's murderers and rapists? "Well, some of them are." 

He just called for a ban on all Muslim immigrants and a registry of existing Muslims in the United States? "Who cares? Muslims are all violent terrorists anyway." 

I'm not naive enough to believe that people who look like me and grew up in households like mine all think the way I think, but I suppose I was naive enough to believe reasonable people should be able to spot a disingenuous argument and call out the perpetrator instead of being sucked in by him. Any time I hear someone trying to whip me into a panic, my first reaction is to wonder how my panic benefits that person. A politician telling me I should fear an entire culture has an agenda. Some people were eager to buy into that agenda without seriously considering the ridiculous degree of hyperbole because it tapped into bigotry and fear that already existed inside them. As a child in school learning history, I saw little difference between Nazi sympathizers who targeted Jews in pre-WWII Germany and Americans who targeted people of Japanese descent during WWII. I feel the same way about modern-day Americans who justify tearing children away from their parents at the Mexican border, or aggressively accosting people in public places for speaking different languages. We should be seeking our better angels, not feeding our inner demons.

As online incivility has risen to fever pitch, I've found myself growing more and more comfortable with the idea of disconnecting from people on social media -- not because they disagree with my viewpoints, but rather because of their inability to remain civil during the course of a disagreement. It starts with seemingly normal discourse until small barbs like "snowflake" or "libtard" get tossed about. Just jokes, right? Don't be so sensitive. But as you persist in trying to present a meaningful argument with facts or opinion supported by facts, things get downright nasty. When facts become too pesky, the argument shifts until you're drawn down a rabbit hole of ridiculous conspiracies and personal attacks.

Sometimes it isn't the "friend" with whom you're arguing who is the problem. Other people jump in, frequently with a level of vitriol wildly disproportionate to the discussion. An interesting pattern has developed in these instances. The "friend" with whom I was initially conversing will send a private message apologizing for the behavior of their online buddies while never publicly doing anything to temper the discourse. The natural assumption is the "friend" either agrees with the abusive behavior or is too cowardly to say anything.

By my way of thinking, inviting people to be my "friends" on social media is similar to inviting them into my home. You don't have to kiss my ass just because I've opened my door to you, but you shouldn't kick it, either. If you don't know how to behave I'll gladly push you out and lock the door behind you. Even if you do know how to behave, constantly bringing with you an entourage of people who are rude and abusive is enough reason to show you the door, as well. The end result is a minimizing of my friend base on platforms like Twitter and Facebook that I previously lamented but now welcome. More and more, watching the interactions of people on social media seems to me a variation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, only instead of watching the evils of the world affect my own portrait I'm watching in real time as people I once liked, or even loved, grow twisted and gnarled.

I believe there is a reason we fall away from each other throughout the course of our lives. The circumstances that once forged a camaraderie are changed over time. We follow divergent paths away from a common point until the people we become are unrecognizable to the people we were. If we're fortunate, paths cross again and the past repeats itself in meaningful and rewarding ways. Unfortunately, that's more the exception than the rule, and I've come to realize the pleasantry of keeping the past where it belongs.


2018 Mark Feggeler

The Frosty Paws 12-Step

So, the dog.

Lola is a six-pound Cuban silk dog, otherwise known as a Havanese, and a not-too distant relative of the poodle. This makes her a perfect fit for the house full of OCD, germaphobic asthmatics that is our family. No dander means easy breathing; no shedding means no mess. The allergies are problematic since we truly are a dog-loving people. Unfortunately, more than five minutes around the wrong breed means two days of popping antihistamines, wheezy breathing and dull sinus headaches.

I don't know many, if any, Cubans, though I romantically choose to believe Lola must represent the culture well. Small, but feisty, with a determination and stubbornness inordinately disproportionate to her size, Lola manages a charming disobedient gruffness that melts most people who meet her. The fact she doesn't mind being handled like an old rag doll doesn't hurt. Perhaps "doesn't mind" isn't the correct assessment. When you're slightly larger than a guinea pig, and much better smelling, you really don't have much choice in the matter. People pick you up.

Being of a diminutive breed, and even runt-size for a Havanese, Lola's stomach can be a temperamental thing, like a supreme court nominee during a hearing except with a strong possibility of puking. (Well, actually, then exactly like a supreme court nominee during a hearing.) It took some trial and error to find just the right brand and size of kibble so we wouldn't revisit breakfast and dinner each day. We also avoid giving her table scraps as a general rule. Cheese is an exception, since she can stomach it, it's a great way to get her to take pills when necessary, and it keeps her distracted for at least five minutes when melted into her kong. She has also discovered an intense fascination with turkey due largely to the one Thanksgiving when, unbeknownst to us, turkey grease overflowed the cutting board and dripped from the counter. Lola happily lapped it off the floor while a steady stream struck her squarely on the head, ruining her coat. She looked like a rescue animal from the Exxon Valdese oil spill for several weeks.

Recently, to celebrate her fifth birthday and our daughter's twenty-first birthday, we bought her a frozen treat called Frosty Paws. To be clear, the dog got the Frosty Paws, not our daughter. We had to choose from two flavors -- original and peanut butter. I suggested peanut butter might be best, only because I wasn't exactly sure what the "original" flavor of a knock-off ice cream dog treat might be. Dog anus? Dead squirrel? Regurgitated breakfast kibble? The prospects seemed endless and potentially horrifying to consider once I started thinking about all the things I've witnessed dogs sniffing, licking or eating during my fifty years on this planet.

After devouring an entire cup of peanut butter Frosty Paws, it quickly became apparent a few spoonfuls might have made for a sufficient treat. Lola's eyes glazed over, she became lethargic and took on the countenance of a college freshman who has imbibed too much beer on his first outing. She limply passed the next hour or two being shuffled like a potentially explosively vomitous hot potato from one family member to another until eventually recovering to something slightly closer to her normal self than a bloated narcoleptic with crusty peanut butter face. Upon waking the following morning, the spring was back in Lola's step and we, though possibly not she, decided Frosty Paws might be the hard stuff our tender little puppy was not built to tolerate.



2018 Mark Feggeler

Avoiding the Inner Voice

There's this guy I knew way back when. Let's call him Jack Weinstein, which is appropriate since that's his name.

Jack was a year behind me at college and lived for a year in the dorm room next to mine. We were friendly, but not what I would call friends. As with other people with whom I was friendly-but-not-friends, Facebook has allowed us to reconnect in the virtual world for occasional glimpses into each other's lives. In the years since Plattsburgh, while I moved from journalism to public relations to sales, Jack became a philosopher. Seriously. He's a bona fide, published philosophy professor who writes a blog and hosts a public radio show called "Why?" once a month.

Just the other day, Jack dispatched through his philosophy-themed PQED blog a post that struck a chord in me. It was as though someone with a greater vocabulary, keener insights, more rapidly firing synapses, and a brain far less clouded by books like "Who Moved My Cheese?" decided to write an essay expressing my thoughts about the creative process and the inner voice that all too frequently seeks to crush creativity. It's easy to dismiss the inner voice that nags at you with unfounded fears and then berates you for having believed and acted on those fears. It's much more difficult to dismiss, however, when someone other than yourself drags that inner voice into the harsh light of day to lay bare just how insidiously harmful it can be.

Eight years ago, I realized two decades had passed since graduating from SUNY Plattsburgh and I had yet to fulfill my dream of writing a novel. Had I, or had I not, majored in writing? The only thing stopping me was fear of failure. To warm up to the daunting task, I started this blog. I figured if I couldn't write short essays about movies, parenting, candy, or clogged toilets then perhaps the novel was just a pipe dream. Fortunately, clogged toilets are great blog fodder. Is Ramblings of a Very Pale Man a great American work of living art? No. Did the novel I eventually get around to writing win a Pulitzer? Not by any stretch of the imagination. I never expected art, prizes, accolades or monetary windfalls. All I wanted was to find out if I was capable of accomplishing the task. The experience was so pleasurable that I wrote two more short books, introductory episodes in a series aimed at middle schoolers. Then, just as I finished drafting the third entry in the middle school series, something quite unexpected happened.

I lost faith.

When you lose faith in yourself, it's easy to blame other things for your lack of productivity. Busy work schedules, family responsibilities, the nasty political climate in the country -- anything becomes an easy scapegoat to avoid admitting the real problem lies within. After six years of writing blog posts and books for fun, it suddenly became a chore. And why? After the first year, people stopped buying my books on Amazon. The blog's tracking of visitors had plateaued. There were the occasional digs, as well, by dismissive people. No one other than me seemed interested in my writing. Perhaps all those people who weren't me were right to be disinterested. Who was I to judge my writings worth reading?

[NOTE: My Lovely Wife informed me, upon reading this post, that she misses my blog and that I am, and I quote, "a doodyhead." She would be correct.]

During the past two years, and despite having completed a first draft of that third book, I fell back into the tried and true, unfocused, fruitless endeavors of a nay-sayer. I started writing and outlining at least four different books without conviction or success, considered trying my hand at a screenplay, and entertained other lofty dreams when, in reality, what I wanted to do was write more silly blog posts and finish the middle school series. But, because no one cared about them, they weren't fun anymore. They were unrewarding, or so I thought until a few weeks ago.

Frustrated at my inability to move any project beyond a few chapters, I opened that third book in the middle school series and started reading. It didn't suck. It wasn't perfect. It needed some nips here and tucks there, but it didn't suck. Before I knew it, I found myself in full rewrite mode and enjoying it. How could I have forgotten how much fun creativity can be? That inner voice lied to me and I was stupid enough to believe it. It told me my writing didn't matter because it wasn't worth anything to anyone else when all it really needs to be is valuable to me.

When Jack's blog post about creativity titled "Maybe Your Work Isn't Lame After All" appeared in my Facebook feed, it was a perfectly timed validation of what I was already coming to understand. While his post presents a longer list of ways to assess the value of one's own work than I needed, since all I need is my own personal satisfaction as a contented hobbyist, the basic message was clear -- don't let self-doubt crush your creativity. That's what relatives are for.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a book to edit and a blog post about deadly apple slicers to write.


2018 Mark Feggeler

The Ginger & the Blueberries

Not long ago, perhaps five years, I picked up a small blueberry seedling while doing the weekly grocery shopping. This is not an uncommon thing for me to do. Some people's impulse buys are candy bars, shiny trinkets, or a pair of shoes. Mine are plants, and the cheaper and more impractical the better. A packet of watermelon seeds for only sixty-seven cents? Perfect. I'll take one of those and one of the carrot seeds, too. Do they grow in the kind of sandy soil surrounding my house? Who cares, but it might be fun if they do.

Another good example of this impulse can be found in the gangly remains of wildflowers outside my office window that appear to be nothing more than overgrown, un-plucked weeds. The bag of wildflower seeds found its way into the earth around the same time as the blueberry bush and, due largely to the scorching mid-day sunshine of North Carolina, amounted to nothing more than a smattering of reedy green stalks with yellow blooms. They're nothing to look at, but they make me smile every time I peel my eyes away from the computer screen to gaze outside.

Recently -- after considerable time, effort and expense invested in revamping both the front and side flower beds -- we experienced rousing success with five or six hostas in the front bed. They were purchased from a proper landscaping company and planted in a semi-circle around our best crepe myrtle. The hostas flourished, quickly doubling and then doubling again in size, inspiring us to buy seven more to complete a border across the front of the bed. One week later, our leafy hostas were reduced to lifeless stalks by local rabbits and deer. I've learned two things since then. Miracle-Gro doesn't really work miracles and Repel All gives your plants that extra bit of seasoning critters love.

The blueberry bush has benefited from having been planted out of reach from the larger garden invaders in our fenced-in backyard, in the only spot that isn't laid bare to the unrelenting sunlight of summer. And, since spring in North Carolina has transformed over the last twenty years into a rainy season of tropical proportions, the bush receives plenty of nourishment from good old Mother Nature during that important time when buds appear, develop into delicate bell-shaped blooms, and eventually turn into berries, disappointing the bees and littering the ground with white confetti. That's when you can start counting the harvest you might reap if birds and bugs are kept at bay.

Ever since the plant went in the ground, our ginger-haired son (aka, the German) has obsessively anticipated its annual production. Why? I don't know, because he doesn't eat blueberries, or any color berries for that matter. The only way he might voluntarily choose to eat a blueberry is if you dehydrated it, ground it into a powder and reconstituted it as a chip packed in a canister with other identical chips. Blueberry Pringles. Bringles. Even then, loaded with additives, preservatives and blue dye number eighty-seven, it might still be too healthy for his tastes. Regardless, he watches as the berries develop each year and reports back on their progress.

"There are going to be a lot of berries this year," he'll say in his trademark monotone way. "They're going to be really big, too."

That first year, our little blueberry seedling yielded three edible berries. The next year, maybe twenty. Production has since expanded exponentially. This summer, we can expect to pluck close to one thousand blueberries by the time the harvest is complete, and that doesn't include several hundred from a second blueberry bush we planted this spring. I'm almost tempted to see if any other parts of the backyard are fertile ground for these little fruits.

Our pending blueberry bonanza aside, and even though the side flower bed is doing well, our thumbs remain only middlingly green-ish. Basil, oregano, rosemary and thyme thrive in the same section of yard as the berries, while our tomato-less tomato stalks defy the basic impulses of self-propagation by refusing to yield anything close to fruit. I doubt this concerns the German, though, since tomatoes are just giant red blueberries that he wouldn't eat anyway.


© 2018 Mark Feggeler

A Wish for My Children

My children are close to the age of no longer being children. With a daughter turning twenty-one and twin sons turning seventeen this year, it can be easy to think of myself as a rising empty nester, soon to be beholden only to the daily needs and caprices of my wife and myself.

It's a strange sensation, the idea of returning to the mindset of a newlywed. It's been a long time since we wantonly attended plays, took romantic weekend trips and enrolled in classes at the local community college for the fun of learning flower arranging. I think we're ready for it.

I know we've done the best we could for our children. Were we perfect parents? No, perfection is impossible. Regrets and missteps are inevitable, but they know we love them and that is the most important thing. We've encouraged their interests, indulged their strengths, pushed them to become involved academically and socially, and held them back when they were at risk of over-committing themselves. They are the responsible, intelligent, questioning and compassionate people I hoped they would become. As my wife would say, I want to be just like them when I grow up. Their prospects for fruitful lives seem boundless as we shoo them out the door to continue their educational careers.

Then you see the news. Another mass killing at a high school, this time in Florida.

No terrorists flying planes into the administrative office. No jihadists in Middle Eastern dress setting off IEDs outside the cafeteria. No illegal aliens from south of the border covered in gang tattoos.

No, just another broken white male with a history of behavioral problems and access to a soldier's arsenal. Three of the five deadliest mass shootings in our nation's history have occurred in the last two years. The recent Marjory Douglas High School shooting in Florida ranks ninth behind the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting. For those of you who recall the shock and horror of Columbine, despite it's devastation it ranks a disheartening eleventh place, tied with the Oklahoma Post Office shooting in a list dominated by native-born, white perpetrators. In this most recent case, children routed from their classrooms by the fire alarm were greeted by rounds from a semi-automatic weapon capable of firing 45 bullets per minute from magazines carrying up to 30 rounds.

I can't imagine losing a child to such mindless violence. I  can't imagine the degree to which a mind must be twisted to justify committing acts of that nature.

I especially can't imagine a legislative body so hamstrung by one special interest group that it would allow this kind of bloodshed to continue unchecked, mostly because I don't have to. Regardless of their talk of a safe America, regardless of their promises to build a wall and enact travel bans, our elected leaders have failed to keep our nation safe from its worst enemy. After decades of working nativists, isolationists and conspiracy theorists into a froth over any attempt at regulating gun safety, our PAC-funded politicians have created a 2nd Amendment dystopia in which research on gun violence by the National Institutes of Health is prohibited and law enforcement officials are forbidden to create an electronic database of gun ownership.

Re-posting a hate group's message on social media can get you flagged as a potential threat, possibly justifiably so. You run the risk of being flagged as a potential threat if you buy too much fertilizer because Timothy McVeigh used it to create a bomb in Oklahoma. You have to remove your shoes at airport security because one idiot tried to sneak explosives onto a flight in his. All these reactions and responses to potential threats, yet there exists no meaningful tracking system to identify someone stockpiling weapons or ammunition. In fact, the creation of such a tracking system has been outlawed by the very people elected to serve and protect us.

I am not naive enough to believe we can create a utopia. There will never come a time when any one person in our country or world can wake up with a guarantee of seeing the next sunrise. That doesn't mean we give up hope and stop trying to fix this problem. The loss of hope only inspires inaction that results in an environment conducive to more tragedy.

There is a seemingly endless list of simple, practical things that can be done to proactively address mass shootings, especially those committed by mentally damaged people with semi-automatic weapons. My wish is for a body of elected officials that has the courage to put the safety of our children over its need to please campaign contributors.

If not for my children, I wish it for yours.