Roll Tide and pass the cornbread dressing

I am thankful to be alive and well this Thangsgiving 2010. I am more thankful that my wife, Nancy, is alive and well. She had a serious brush with the grim reaper this past year. My daughter, Beth and her family have moved back from Pensacola and are now only 15 minutes from us rather than 3 hours. Our son,Drew, is happily employed and getting ready to have a new baby and our daughter Emily has been here all along with us. She is getting ready to give birth to another little girl. That will make 7 total grandchildren for us.

Someone once said that the Americans had discovered the perfect holiday, Thanksgiving. You do not have to go buy anyone a gift. All you do is eat all day long and watch football. How could there be a more perfect holiday?

I am healthy. A little too fat but I can walk 5 miles without too much of an effort. I can walk 18 holes of golf and occassionally break 90. Now I do take some meds. I spent thrity years in the pharm business and I truly do believe that pharmaceuticals do, indeed, extend and enhance life.I am thankful for them.

All in all my life is pretty good. I am not camped under a tank in Afghanistan or Iraq. I give thanks to those who do so voluntarily to protect us back here at home while I watch my Crimson Tide on TV and sneak an extra plate of cornbread dressing and gravy.

We Americans have a lifestyle that is the envy of the world. Our freedoms are unprecedented. I do not particularly understand a lot of stuff that goes on here. I had to quit watching the nightly lineup on Fox news from 8 PM on. It got me so worried about things I could not sleep. If there is not some sort of ball involved in what is going on TV-wise I just turn it off and try to read a book or something.

I have good friends. I love my church. I love my family. I had a wonderful career and am now into a second career that makes me realize what a great career the first one was.

Now if Alabama can just figure out a way to beat Auburn this will end up being a pretty good year, in spite of some seriously concerning moments.

Macy's in Philadelphia gets it!

Just when you thought it was getting to where you might be arrested for saying Merry Christmas to someone the following transpires. Can you just imagine walking through the mall and having a "Random Act of Culture" transpire before your eyes?

With all the political correctness folks around we have to think about any little thing that we might say that is offensive. We have come to this juncture through two or three decades of sensitivity training. I think we would have been better off spending our time in spontaneity training.

This "just happened" at the mall. Not like a nativity scene that shows up in the mall and the political correctness posse shuts it down because of the terrible affront it might be to someone to actually display symbols of the most relevant event in history.

I find this so appealing that it just happened. The lovely music of Handel's Messiah of course did not just happen. This presentation did not just happen. Both took countless hours and days of preparation. However the delivery of this random act did just happen. You can tell by the cameras panning the shoppers that they were mesmerized and delighted.

Good for us. Good for Macy's. Believe me I won't hesitate to spend my little bit of money there. God bless the organizational genius of those who made this happen. Just a few days ago.

If you have not seen it then please visit the following link. You Tube says that it has already had almost 3 million hits. What inspired genius to open the Holiday season. It renews my faith in all of us. To quote a famous line from a similar Holiday story, " God bless us, every one !"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp_RHnQ-jgU&feature.com

Georgia sunshine, in Tallahassee

This is my little grandaughter, Georgia. She calls herself Georgie and she calls me Pop. She is one of five little grandchildren that my wife, Nancy, and I have together. Her Mother, Beth, has always been a bright, sweet and loving daughter to us. Georgia has two older sisters who have minds of their own. I am not saying that Georgia is any different.

Nancy recently had to go see a vitreoretinologist. The purpose was to have a needle inserted into her eyeball and deliver opthamologic grade steroids into her retina. I have always used an extreme, falacious example of deciding to give up golf and taking up inserting needles in my eye. The punch line on that declarative was that activity would be preferable to playing golf, at the level I play it. Well little did I know that Nancy would actually have to have that done one day.

Georgia went with us on this particular day as her Mother was volunteering in Kate's, her 5 year old's, classroom. Georgia and I played in the car. We listened to every song I could find on various CDs, including Ray Charles' version of Georgia. She obviously claims that song to be about her. After all the games I could come up with over an hour of waiting she decided that she wanted to see her Nana.

As it had been so long in the waiting I acquiesced to her demands. It is much easier that way, I am told. It was almost noon and the physician doing the procedure had to come into the office

in order to see Nancy. The waiting room was bare and this little imp burst through the front door and queried the receptionist, " Where's my Nannie?" The receptionist immediately brightened and smiled, Georgia has that effect on most anyone she meets, and asked her what her Nannie's name was. Georgia said, "Nannie, Nannie !". I quietly told the receptionist that this was Mrs. Vass' grand daughter.

The receptionist said to her, " Come with me and we will find your Nannie." She happened to be in the dark waiting area midstream in her first of 12 episodes of this procedure. As Georgia entered the room she saw her Nana. She squealed with delight and ran across the room yelling, "Nannie, Nannie." She climbed up on her lap and just hugged her for several seconds. I think she sensed that her Nana was doing something that was not terribly pleasant. Nana was just so happy and was warmed by Georgia's attention that day. I am sure that it had to have made the experience more bearable.

Georgia taught me a lesson. Of course I am not a cute little 3 year old girl. I am an overweight 65 year old man. The lesson is to try your best to put a little sunshine into other people's lives. It is so easy to get grumpy, cynical and mean. On the other hand, a kind gesture to anyone you encounter. Some pointless conversation to a person you pass on the way. A random note expressing concern or friendship to a person you have lost contact with. A random phone call to someone who is alone. All of these acts have an enormous effect on other people.

Something we ought to think about as we head into this very difficult and lonely time of the year for some people. The best gifts do not come from Macy's. They come from the act of giving a little of your time to someone who needs it.

Depression and the migratory urge

I don't know about you but I have been pretty depressed here lately. My business has dried up and blown away to heaven only knows where. My baseball teams never made it past the first part of post season and now the mid-term elections are over. I suppose that I am just bored with life with nothing much to focus on. My candidates won for the most part in the elections. I really sort of liked seeing San Francisco win the series. Buster Posey played baseball right here in Tallahassee at FSU and I have always followed Cody Ross from his days with the Marlins.

I think there is something more here that I am dealing with and it has been a theory of mine for several years. I have a very happy life. My wife who was very ill earlier this year has rallied back and is her old self. I have wonderful children and I have 5 grandchildren who live within 30 minutes of me. Soon I will have two more of those. I have a wonderful home in a NE subdivision of Florida's capital city. So far I have been able to keep the wolf away from the front door. My football team is defending national champs and running at #6 in the BCS. I play golf once or twice a week with good friends. My scores suck rocks but that has not changed recently. So just what is it that is bugging me?

Here is the point of this post. I don't know if you experience this or not. I find in my own life that when the weather changes and fall settles in around us, I get a sense of melancholy and nostalgia for no apparent reason. I sort of review my past and drag up all the hurtful things that have occurred in my personal history and I feel regret and sometimes just abject depression. I suppose I could get my doc to Rx the latest SSRI and get to feeling better but I find that it always seems to go away eventually. But what the heck is it?

What occurs in nature when the seasons change? The bears load up on carbs and hibernate. The Canadian geese, except for the ones who defecate all over the greens on my golf course year round, fly south. Heck, even the monarch butterflies come floating in over the Gulf of Mexico in the hundreds of thousands. You see thier little corpses all over Hwy 98 south as some of them make landfall with unfortunate synchronicity of the passing of a car. Man, what is up with all that?

I believe that there is a remnant of the migratory urge in all of us. It is settled way down in our DNA. Back when we lived in caves and or tents or on the side of a cliff in a dugout apartment the weather would change. This signaled to us that we better follow the herds, head to a warmer climate or hunker down for the winter. I visited a place once upon a time named Montezuma's castle. It is about 50-60 miles north of Phoenix. There in the side of a sheer cliff are the remnants of the homes of a race of people who just up and disappeared back in around 1100 AD. No one knows where they went or why.

I think we mistake depression often for this wanderlust that seems to be endemic inside all of us. Now don't get me wrong there is a lot of stuff to be depressed about. Our economy is in deep guacamole. I don't see it turning anytime soon. However, who am I to judge. There are people that we just elected to office that are much smarter and more clever than you and I that are going to save us all. What's that? They are no more clever than any of the rest of us? Gulp !! Guess I will start taking a look at property in Niceragua.

Why not be crazy?

I was reading a survey posted up on WCTV.com concerning the terribly exciting and ever present tea party movement. In my humble opinion the study was overtly biased, psychobabble. The end points were designed in advance to support their opinion that the tea partiers are right wing, whacko extremists.

I base that opinion on the inculcation of one word into the survey questions. " Are you of the opinion that the tea-partiers are crazy ?" Now I am not a scientist. I did, however, work for a science company for thirty years. I used to read and present materials from studies to very educated people. Your credibility was at risk if that study seemed biased in any fashion.

There is an entire branch of medicine that is dedicated to the determination of a person's mental health. I believe to become a psychiatrist you must have 4 years of college, followed by 4 years of medical school. I believe there is a 5 year residency following all that.

There is a 400 plus page textbook manual entitled the DSM-IV manual. It is a comprehensive listing of thousands of diagnosis codes related to mental illness. There is not one single code applied to the term crazy. Way too general. People can be bipolar, schizophrenic ( with or without delusion ), paranoid, obsessive, etc. etc. I am totally unqualified to diagnose or categorize.

However we as a society toss around the term crazy constantly. " Crazy, baby !" " Man you were crazy drunk last night." Hello, you crazy son-of-a-buck." " My friend is crazy about you. Do you want to go out with her? " " That guy driving that red Corvette is a crazy driver."

I think the more rational conclusion to draw is that we are all crazy in one vein or another. Is being a little crazy a bad thing? Have you ever been around someone so stiff and boring that you would like to inject them with a little crazy?

I don't know what conclusions you can draw from anything on this post. Trying to do so could drive you totally..............................CRAZY !!!!!!!

I will tell you something that truly is crazy. This real estate market we are in. It is the low point of the recovery ( what recovery?). I get lots of people asking me to explain it to them. I simply mutter something about "man it is crazy, I will get back to you."

I will try to help you figure it out in a sort of group therapy session. Visit me on my website at
http://elvass.com

Look at life through the windshield not the rear view mirror

I am a rabid football fan. I am schiziod in my allegiances. I have followed the University of Alabama since 1963 when I moved to Montgomery. I started out life in West Virginia, so I naturally like to see the Mountaineers win. I also like University of Florida where I sent a daughter and I like to see the home town 'Noles win because I sent a son and a another daughter through there.

My wife, Nancy, grew up in the shadow of Florida State University and graduated from Brigham Young University so she naturally is a rabid Georgia Bulldog fan. She likes to see the 'Noles win and of course her alma mater as well, but has done a lot of oozing over the bulldogs season.

My team, Alabama, (number one in the nation up 'til yesterday) got shellacked by the gamecocks of South Carolina. I was DEPRESSED afterwards. Maggie the wonder bassett felt it would be a good idea for her to take me for a walk after the loss to settle my nerves. She loves me and felt that a little squirrel and or rabbit chasing would improve my spirits. Nancy said to me as I we left the house, " Are you going to be OK." I told her, " I almost buried you back in April. I did bury one of my very best friends last week. This is a stupid football game. Of course I will be allright."

I once heard one of the leaders in my church say, " It is vitally important that we proceed through life looking at the world through the windshield rather than the rear view mirror." What a positive statement that is. There is a ton of stuff to get us down. Football games don't make a good sized pimple of importance on the buttocks of life in general.

I lost my job back in 2002. That will soon be 9 years ago. I could have drawn myself into a hole and put on 200 pounds and watched ESPN all day long and night. Living my life via the rear view mirror was not an option for me. I had a very successful 30 year career with a Fortune 500 company. They treated me fairly and I still get a pension from them. I decided to try real estate and have been a top producer in that realm from the first year. Now we are in the throws of a downturn in that business. Lots of soul searching as to what has gone on in the past to destroy that business along with the economy in general.

Tomorrow is a new day. Bama is going to win the rest of its games and play the Gamecocks in December in Atlanta for the SEC championship. After we beat them we are going to play Ohio State or Boise State for the national championship.

If and when this real estate economy turns around, I am going to go back to selling 3-4 million dollars of homes per year. I liked the way little orphan Annie put in "Annie" the motion picture.
" Tomorrow is just a day away." I also liked what coach Bobby Bowden said to Bert Reynolds in an episode of Evening Shade several years ago. The scenario was that Reynolds character wanted his son to play for Florida State. Coach Bowden went to talk with the boy as a courtesy to the Reynold's character. Reynolds was all depressed that the kid was not Seminole material. Bowden's parting comment was, " Football is only a GAME. !!"

Roll Tide and please pass the Kleenex.

Visit me on the web if you get bored at http://www.elvass.com

Death, the enemy, or our friend?

I was walking by my neighbor's house here about a year ago and I saw the 85 year old wife sitting on the front porch alone. I had not seen her for a while so I walked towards her and greeted her. She seemed preoccupied. For the last several months I was aware of the fact that she had been suffering some rather severe dimentia. She did not acknowledge my cheery hello but instead said to me " Lee, I think I am going to have to place Dr. Townsend in a nursing home. " She went on to describe how he had been sleeping excessively and was not eating. I asked her if I could see him.

She took me to him. Sure enough, he was in his bed and cast a suspicious and wary eye on me. Now, here was a man whom I have lived by for the last 20 years. He was an active golfer for much of that time. He was retired from the Navy and had at one time been the commander of a significant base hospital. He was a physician and a very smart and friendly fellow. I liked him a great deal and always looked forward to running into him.

Now, here he was, obviously on the downslope of a pretty serious decline in health. I believe there may have been a bit of estrangement between he and his offspring based on the fact that none of them to my knowledge came to visit very often. Well I spoke with a neighbor across the street who was a nurse and their next door neighbors so we could begin a period of keeping them under close surveillance so that they would be in safe harbor.

We all responded and were doing pretty well getting him to see his doctor who prescribed meds to him and sent him on his way. Then came the day where he fell and could not get up. A call was made to 911 and the ambulance came. He resisted being transferred to the hospital because he knew the score. He was quoted as saying, " I just want to be left alone to die here in my own bed." Well he was transferred anyway and they diagnosed him as being dehydrated and having had a mild heart attack. They put him into ICU and kept him there for a couple of weeks.

In the meantime we made contact with a son and ended up having both of the sons come, one an attorney and the other a physician. The decision was made that he would be moved to be near one of them along with Mrs. Townsend. Dr. Townsend made the 18 hour trip in the front seat of his own car. Within 3 weeks we, the neighbors, got wind that he had passed away. He ws 90 years old. Echoing in my mind was his proclamation that he " just wanted to die in his own bed."

Here was a man who had practiced medicine over the course of a lifetime. He knew he was dying. He embraced it and accepted it. The rest of us could not just stand by and not seek some sort of intervention. He led a full, successful and pretty happy life. What would have been wrong with letting him die in his own bed?

I just delivered a eulogy for a friend of mine, Colin. You can read the eulogy if you like on the home page of my website, under "About". Colin had been diagnosed with cancer almost 10 years ago. I made his acquaintance and became his friend approximately 6 years ago. He was always sick and having to take radiation thereapy and ultimately chemotherapy the entire time I knew him. He loved life and did well for the extent of his illness for many years.

His son came and lived with him about 3 years ago and his daughter came within the last year. He was not alone. He would get to feeling better and then lose ground to the illness. He fought a long and brave battle. During his final days he suffered incredibly. Death came at almost midnight 9 days ago. His children and his beloved sister were beside him holding his hand as he passed away. Suddenly in as long as it takes to take a breath and let it out he was gone. The suffering stopped and he was at peace. He was 60 years of age.

My own Father in law contracted an illness akin to Lou Gehrig's disease. It was called a rediculo transverse myolopathy. In any event he was rendered parlyzed from his neck down, placed on a ventilator and had to be moved 250 miles away from his home to be supported in a ventilator hospital. He died after 6 years in that hospital on that ventilator. That was 13 years ago.

My mother in law lived to the age of 86 and got sick and died within 24 hours. She was surrounded by her entire immediate family as she took that last breath and surrendered to the reaper. Cancer took my father at 70 years of age. He was diagnosed in November and dead by mid December.

Is the reaper the enemy or is he our friend? In all of these scenarios I think he was a friend. I once read a quote by a philosopher who said," We fear death as if it were the greatest enemy. We do not know if it is the greatest good. How could anything as natural as death, designed by the Great Architect be bad? We live in the land of the dying. The next land ( for the believer ) is the land of the living. We die that we die no more." ( Neil Fugal, paraphrased ).

I suppose that someday we will all know, won't we? None of us are getting out of this world alive.

Lee Vass
http://www.elvass.com/