Maundy Thursday - Another Day

"Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos"

Thursday, April 9, 2009 is a full moon and Maundy Thursday.

I didn't sleep well again last night. I sat up and stared at a photograph of my beautiful cousin Beth. In the picture, she is tan and smiling with long brown hair that hangs down to her bright green shirt. Her eyes look calm and happy. Beth and I were born the same year and she should be my age now. But she's not. Beth died in Rhode Island exactly four years ago yesterday, and no matter what anyone says, I know it was partly my fault. I feel bad to be alive when she is not. It's not fair. I wish I could tell her to her face how sorry I am. I can't stop thinking of the situation that led to her death, and how I bought a ticket to fly out to her funeral but I didn't get on the plane. I couldn't get on that plane. I can't stop thinking. I can't stop. I can't.

(pic) - My cousin Beth.

I awake to the sound of a bunny rabbit stomping his feet in a cage next to my bed. It is not the Easter Bunny. It is the Yawny Bunny we are keeping for some friends. He wants some attention. I roll over and he jumps on top of his wooden house inside the cage. I hold a treat for him through the cage wires. He takes it in his big front teeth but I don't let go. He pulls. I resist. He pulls again and again and again. He is strong and just playing with me. Finally he chomps all the way down and bites it off. He munches it greedily while I get ready to 'work from home'.



I have an important phone call with the Dublin, Ireland office at 7:30 am PST. We need to synch up before they go away for the long Easter holiday weekend. I try to log on to my office network but no luck. No internet connectivity at all. I try to reboot and reset modems and routers to fix the problem. When the meeting time arrives I try to call in on my cell phone, but there is no service. I try the home landline phone. No service. I turn on the radio and hear that "telephone and internet service is down over three counties and there is no ETA on restoration of service". I rush out to a local coffee shop to see if they have any wifi connectivity. No luck. While I wait for my brewbar coffee to drip I hear all kinds of rumors at the downtown coffee hole:

• A Korean missile took out our communications satellite! No, it was a massive solar flare.
  
• The State of California didn't (couldn't!) pay it's phone bill and the phone companies are shutting us off! No, the phone companies are shutting down because of the depression.
  
• A terrorist attack is starting on the west coast and will spread east daily until Easter Sunday! No, it's God's Will, and we are finally being punished for all our sins and God wants us to stop plugging in, damn it, and start listening to HIM before it's too late.
  
• Ahhhh, downtown. Keep Santa Cruz Weird ... Amen!

(pic) - Charlie wore this t-shirt in the last Wharf-to-Wharf we ran together in 2004.

As it turns out, it was an act of sabotage. Possibly by disgruntled AT&T Union workers suddenly without a contract. We are in a communications blackout. I've missed the important meeting with the Irish office and they are probably wondering where the heck I am. I have no way of contacting them. I look around. There are no little green Leprachauns to help me.

I look in my planner. I have a busy schedule for the day. I have physical therapy for my hurt ankle in the morning. I have other meetings and emails to answer and phone calls to attend. I have a major deadline to meet. I have to watch my UVM Catamounts beat the BU Terriers in the Frozen Four collegiate hockey semifinals. I have to go to Monterey with Simon and his dance class and watch a performance by the Lula Washington Dance Troupe. Actually, the last two I "want" to do. The others I "have" to do. I need to figure out how to get this all done.

I drive south down the coast, down highway 1 toward Monterey. I listen to my audiobook of "My Good Friend Leonard" by James Frey all the way down. He's the controversial "Million Little Pieces" guy. His writing style is contagious. You might have noticed. I get off at the Monterey exit and the Hyatt Hotel is right in front of me. I pull in to the parking lot. The hotel is nice. Swanky nice, and the lobby is even nicer. Outside the back wall of windows in lobby is a golf course. I sit down and plug-in and logon to their wifi network. I order a coffee. It comes and it is Starbucks coffee and it is good. The waitress brings me free refills for the next five hours while I sit their and work. I really do work. I call in to meetings. The jazz muzak is somehow very motivating. As James Frey might say, I get shit done.

It's 5:30 pm PST. I've overcome the major communications blackout. Now it is game time. UVM vs. Boston U. for the right to play in the NCAA Division 1 Hockey Championship game. I graduated from UVM in the early 80's. I watched a lot of live Catamounts hockey at Gutterson field house. I still have in my possession a UVM game puck from 1982 I caught in the stands. The deflected puck went over the back glass and was going to hit one of my best friends in the head. But he was making out with a co-ed to his left and never saw it. I caught it on the fly instead. I got the puck. He got lucky. It was win-win.

I want to watch the Cats win it all. I can't not watch it.

I walk down the hall from the hotel lobby. The Hyatt has an amazing bar called Knuckle's Historical Sports Bar with fifteen HD TV's. There is an autographed picture of Joe Kapp on their Monterey Bay Hall of Fame Wall. Cool. I go to the bar and ask the bartender to put on the game. He changes the channel on the TV right in front of me. I order a pitcher of beer and it's only about $5 because it is happy hour. There are free peanuts and popcorn available. I am stoked.

The game begins and UVM falls behind 2-0 in the first period. I eat the free peanuts and drink a lot because the peanuts are salty, or because I am not happy with the score. The second period goes much better and UVM comes back to take a 3-2 lead that is short-lived. BU ties it up just before the end of the period. The Dance performance is going to start in fifteen minutes but I order another beer. I'm not going anywhere.

During the intermission, the ESPN2 broadcast cuts to Sports News about Nick Adenhart, 22, a pitcher for the LA Angels who has been killed in a car accident by a drunk driver the night before. You never know. The Sports News blurb does not tell us that two other young people were killed as well. Only the pro athlete's death makes the news. The Sports News does not mention that over 3,653 people have been killed by drunk drivers in the USA so far this year, a little over three months into 2009. But 3,653 is just a number - more than the number of people killed on 9/11. Nick Adenhart was a promising young pitcher who threw six shutout innings last night. But 3,653 families are grieving because otherwise non-violent people drink and then drive a two ton block of steel on wheels out of control. In the past four years, more Americans died due to alcohol related fatalities (65,020) than the total of American military personell killed or missing during the entire Vietnam war (60,860). I know these statistics. Don't ask me why. These are what you might call 'sobering statistics'. I think about James Frey.

I stop drinking.

The third period starts. It is a great game. When UVM scores a great goal I leap off my barstool and shout out loud "YEAH!" over the din of the busy dinner time crowd. I feel a brief hush as all eyes turn toward me for a split second. I am the only one watching this game. I am the only one who cares. I feel awkward and alone, but only for a second. Then I don't care. UVM is now up 4-3 with little over seven minutes left in the game.

A couple minutes later I hear the rest of the patrons around me at the bar all groan loudly in unison. Ooooh!! They're all watching the SF Giants play the Milwaukee Brewers. I don't care about baseball or about these teams right now. But something bad has happened. I look over at the other TVs and watch the replays. Two outs in the bottom of the ninth in a 7-1 ballgame. A Giants pitcher is hit in the head with a line drive and goes down. We all sit and watch it shown over and over from every angle.



(vid) - Joe Martinez hit in the head. He went to Boston College, not BU. You never know.

Ouch!

Then I look back at the hockey game and BU ties the game. Ouch. A minute or so later they go ahead. UVM pulls the goalie but it's too late. BU wins 5-4. Ouch.

I get in my car. It is raining and I'm in unfamiliar territory and I'm late for the Lula Washington dance performance at CSUMB World Theater. I'm sure I am driving legally, but I drive very carefully anyway. I turn on the sports talks radio. I am reminded of Nick Adenhart again and again and again.

I make it to the show just in time for intermission. Simon is in the lobby and I give one of his friends money for cookies. I drink some coffee. The show starts again and it is beautiful and creative and heartbreaking and lovely. Black women in white outfits carrying tennis rackets dance to some smooth jazz. They are acting & dancing out a tennis match. It is a tribute to the Williams' sisters and it is inspiring. Next there are men and women in hippy costumes dancing to 60's music and acting out the era: free love, civil rights and Peace protests, psychadelics, rock 'n roll. Very creative, nostalgic and moving. Near the end they recite dates and names of the assassinations while Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind" plays in the background:

• John F. Kennedy '63
• Malcolm X '65
• Martin Luther King '68
• Robert F. Kennedy '68

The very last thing they say is:

• 1969: The world watches on TV while Neil Armstrong puts an American flag on the moon.
  

(vid) - One Giant Leap For Mankind. (Reaaally?)

Whoa. Outside in the parking lot there is actually full moon peaking through the overcast. A little ashamed, I look closely for the flag. I gulp.

On the way home I turn on the sports radio again. A sports talk radio announcer starts talking about the Angel's Adenhart and other tragic baseball deaths. He mentions the '86 Red Sox, and I turn up the sound. What? Who could he be talking about? Not Bill Buckner! He is still alive and redeemed. No, it's not the Red Sox. It's the Angels. The Red Sox beat the Angels in the '86 ALDS. The Angels led the series 3-1 and were 1 strike away from their first ever World Series. But Angel's reliever Donnie Moore gave up a two run homer to Dave Henderson of the Sox on a 2-2 count in the bottom of the ninth in Anaheim. (The Sox went on to win the series 4-3, and then had their own hearts broken against the Mets...) But the story is much more tragic than a any box score can tell. Donnie Moore was booed mercilessly by the Angels fans the following year and was the scapegoat for the 1-strike-away loss. Donnie Moore lost his edge, lost his mind, became severely depressed. Donnie Moore tried to kill his wife and then shot himself in front of his sons in 1989.

I'm shocked. I did not know this. (I was living in Singapore then). I am stunned. I think of Bill Buckner and Red Sox Nation. I cringe. I gulp again. And again I am reminded that sports is only a game.

On the way home Simon says he really loved the Lula Washington show. I tell him, so did I.

I smile. What I don't tell him is that I'm really glad that he likes dancing so much, and not sports. But I am.