Thanks

My thanks to William Turner, my dad, and Barry Lewis, my father-in-law, both passed. 

Thanks to Tim Lewis and Phil Lewis and Joel Lewis and Greg Lewis, my brothers-in-law. Thanks to Warner, Vern, Ervin, Leonard, Gordon and Glen Fahlgren, my mom's uncles, and to their brother Carl, who wanted to go to war but the military said, "No."

I thank you on this Veterans Day for your service, for this freedom you gained and held, for time diverted from the course of your lives, that I may write at this moment and look out upon the peaceful warm fall afternoon outside my window, the neighbor's elm tree slowly glowing to orange flame.

My thanks can never be enough.

Thanks to Buddy Butler, my next-door neighbor in childhood, and his siblings, and his dad, Bill Butler, who sometimes addressed my dad over the fence as "Sergeant." Thanks to Lou Marzio down street of my childhood, and some of his children. Heck, thanks to most of the dads on the street where I lived as a kid, most of the dads who ran the Little League, many of the dads and moms of our Air Force town.

Thanks to Wayne Singleton, my friend from high school, who showed me more of my hometown than I could have ever known otherwise, through the lens of his camera. Thanks to John Bingle, one of my best friends in high school, and to his dad, whom I never met but who — long story short — brought us together.

Thanks to Jim Washburn, high school classmate and college roomie for a while. Jim is the last person I would have figured to join the military, though now I realize his relentless high energy and bright outlook would serve him well as a Marine Corps officer.

And thanks to Rita Lane and Pat and Mike Mahoney. Thanks to Sonia Fry. Thanks to Lance Daniels, an officer who became a teacher who called to duty in Iraq in the middle of a school year, there on a Friday, gone the next Monday. All those I knew from high school who served, thank you.

Thanks to the swimmers I know, in person and in the virtual realm that feels like in person: Coast Guard helicopter pilot Doug Bogle, my swim buddy until he moved; Dan Simonelli and Rob Dumouchel and Floyd Fisk, and Cathy Harrington's son, and Cathy Harrington for always reminding me never to forget. Thanks to Nick Alaga, who runs Will Swim for Food, efforts for which help too many veterans who go hungry despite what they've done for our country.

We swim free but mindfully because of you.

Because of the many swimmers from United Kingdom I have met virtually, I am awash in red poppies and the welling passion to remember veterans. Right now, this day, the last of 888,246 ceramic poppies were planted around the Tower of London, each poppy marking what the BBC described as the British and Commonwealth soldiers who died during World War I.

The poppies, created by sculptor Paul Cummins and stage designer Tom Piper, appear to gush from a turret of the tower, and cascade into the empty moat around it, befitting the title of the sculpture, from an anonymous World War I soldier's poem, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red.

The breadth of remembrance by my UK swimming cohorts moves me, and I thank them for bringing the poppies into my view.

Thanks to Dale Stradford, my son's Scoutmaster when Liam joined the Boy Scout Troop. Dale served in Bosnia and had to hand off Scouting duties to us other parents, and hope for the best. Thanks to Peggy Stradford, a Scout leader and doer of immeasurable tasks while also serving as an Army officer. Thanks to Harold Keim and Ted Nishio, who brought their readiness to helping the Scouts go. Thanks to Alex Eccleston, whose father served before him, and whose father served before him, and so on.

Thanks to Shane Barnes, flying helicopters for the Army. Though I know of some of my children's classmates who are in ROTC, I'm not sure about any others who joined the military.

Thanks to those whom I've forgotten and should not forget. I mean no malice, just ignorance and failure of memory. I can't think of a Veteran I know who has introduced him- or herself that way, or who has talked much about it.

Long ago I interviewed a city park maintenance worker in the city where I worked as a newspaper. During the Korean War he was a prisoner of war, and he agreed to recount his horrific tale, 30 years later, for a story. When the interview finished, he said it was the first time he had talked about his time in torture and imprisonment; he had never even told his wife.

I owe you the front of the line, all of you, coffee anytime you want it, beer on me. We owe you good jobs, the best of health care for the rest of your lives, without any fight or fear. We owe you that much, and we owe you so much more. Our policy should be that if you serve in our military, you deserve the best our country can offer you for your gift of sacrifice.

How I wish my saying so made it so.

Thank you, on this Veterans Day.

Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red
The blood swept lands and seas of red,
Where angels dare to tread.
As God cried a tear of pain as the angels fell,
Again and again.
As the tears of mine fell to the ground
To sleep with the flowers of red
As any be dead
My children see and work through fields of my
Own with corn and wheat,
Blessed by love so far from pain of my resting
Fields so far from my love.
It be time to put my hand up and end this pain
Of living hell. to see the people around me
Fall someone angel as the mist falls around
And the rain so thick with black thunder I hear
Over the clouds, to sleep forever and kiss
The flower of my people gone before time
To sleep and cry no more
I put my hand up and see the land of red,
This is my time to go over,
I may not come back
So sleep, kiss the boys for me

All fall down

Twenty-five years ago this weekend, the Berlin Wall began to fall. I remember relief — this formidable but tangible symbol of the dark threat to the world, joyously destroyed. It's what I tried to convey in this cartoon from that time.

I drew more cartoons than I had clients to publish them, and looking back I wish the top one could have been published instead of the one (left) that ran in The Stockton Record.

Taken together, they reflect that I operate, then as now, on a volatile mix of unreasonable hope and earthbound cynicism.

Geographic neophytes (read also: Ugly Americans) like me didn't really understand at the time that divided Berlin was deep inside Soviet-allied East Germany.

The wall dividing the city had separated friends and family overnight in 1961, and kept them apart for three decades. East Germany said the ever-reinforced fence-turned-menacing-wall was meant to keep Western fascists out — of course!

East Germans yearned, upon threat of death, to clear the Berlin Wall and gain their freedom — within a totalitarian territory. Nearly 200 people died in the attempt; some 5,000 East Germans, including 600 border guards, escaped, tunneling under, hot-air ballooning over, jumping across, running through.

It seems almost quaint now, as stolidly distant as the films starring Joel McRea and Robert Young of arrogant but ultimately bumbling Nazis trying to sniff out the Resistance. It was the stuff of stories, not real.

When President Reagan in 1987 told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, "Tear down this wall!" I thought, "Yeah, right! Never gonna happen."

Then it did. First, East German officials allowed Germans to pass through the wall's gates unfettered, 25 years ago. Immediately, people began tearing down sections of the wall on their own. East Germany became no more. Glasnost pried loose the reach of the Soviet Union.

I began to think all would be right with the world.

Pause for effect.

Of course, all is not right. Perhaps more is wrong since. Perhaps that's because technology literally has broadened our view of the world and what goes on — even as news vigilance, of sussing out truths on our behalf, seems to wane. Perhaps it's these scales that have fallen from my eyes as I age.

Germany is unified, the traces of totalitarianism fading with time. Other barriers remain around the world, though, even more menacing despite their invisibility.

Worse regimes remain. Baser regimes have arisen elsewhere in the world. Our own freedoms have diminished at the cost of two airplanes, two buildings and more than 3,000 lives.

I used to think the world was moving toward that depicted in V for Vendetta, the movie based on the Alan Moore/David Lloyd graphic novel which is commentary on Margaret Thatcher-led Great Britain. I used to think the world would descend beneath a regime that manufactures fear and salvation over it.

Now I see that the world is not a graphic novel, would not be so tidy, would not fit between the pages of a novel. It's too complex in its simplicity, too glacial for a sentence to sustain.

I see instead that money moves the world. Ideology exists to the extent it can move and concentrate money. Money, I'm seeing, trumps Democracy, trumps Communism, trumps caliphates. Money concentrates the power in the United States, power that games the system, that begets groups like Citizens United (no Orwellian irony there!) which gives concentrated money more power to control elections, that lets our bankers bungle our money scot-free and profitably. Concentrated power allows stupidity to be legislated into school curricula and science policy.

I'm just starting to learn about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, an agreement the European Union and the United States are negotiating, ostensibly to streamline policy and break down walls blocking trade.

Critics — mostly from Europe; I have not heard anything about this agreement despite news dripping into my ears through the day — are raising outcry over whether the TTIP is a Trojan horse, giving corporations greater power to sue against government safeguards and policies.

I'm no expert, of course, but it would not surprise me that money motivated this agreement — concentrated money — and that what is touted as beneficial for working people really isn't.

Canadian Broadcasting has an interesting story about a 1988 Bruce Springsteen concert in East Berlin — sponsored by the East German government — that drew thousands of young East Germans and heralded the fall of the wall, perhaps by a show of how many longed to knock it down.

Maybe so. Despite what you may think of Springsteen and whether his persona is pure freedom, the story highlighted East Germans who lament the fire for young people to protest for their freedoms anymore, to fan their fire with protest music.

their lament resonates with me. Protest against what? The target is shadowy and complex and nimble and patient. It's not a wall anymore. It's not a symbol.

What we need is a new kind of sledgehammer and the patience to build a long, slow, sustainable burn. And maybe a nice song to set the rhythm as we swing.

Mourning becomes election

Such a great day in America! The greatest day to be an American!

For today we Americans, young and old, of every creed and origin, stood out on our American doorsteps, sucked in the crisp fall American air, scanned the landscape of American-made America and declared:

"No more effing campaign commercials!!" The shouts of uplifting relief rang from sea to shining sea.

Also, an election took place — far, far less important.

Now we enjoy a reprieve of almost six months, during which we won't be told how stupid we are by the people who want to represent us in our houses of legislature. Whatever "represent" and "legislature" even mean anymore. The same for "democracy."

Tomorrow where I live, one of two people will represent me in Congress. It'll either be Democratic incumbent Ami Bera, a doctor who unseated Republican Dan Lungen last election, or Republican Doug Ose, a land developer who served previously as a representative in a nearby California district.

I keep being told it's an important race to politics nationwide, though I'm not sure why, unless you count its expense, the costliest House race in the country. If so, here was a chance for the candidates to run on their records, to answer why I should vote for him.

But no.

It's the same old juvenile dreck that passes for a campaign anymore, salient parody if weren't so sad and real.

The Sacramento Bee's editorial cartoonist Jack Ohman spoke my wishes eloquently, and good on The Bee for giving him
nearly  a half page in the Sunday opinion section to say it. What an election this might have been had we
lived in that parallel universe.

It began with a tiny sliver of hope, as all campaigns do, with the happy music and the candidate serving you, his constituent. Physician Bera is treating patients, smiles all around. Ose is walking through warehouses with hardhatted warehouse supervisors, surveying progress happening in your district! Ose's commercial is strangely notable for his sporting three different hairstyles in a 30-second span.

They're going to Washington to fight for you, citizen, and won't answer to the special interests.

That phase goes fast, because name recognition is high in this region, or because positive advertising doesn't pay.

Soon the dreck appeared, dreck upon dreck. They drecked the halls with their folly, following the same cookie-cutter formula: Show the opponent in grainy black and white, in some still from a video screen grab that catches him with eyes half closed or mouth twisted in a chewing motion so he looks locked in an apoplectic fit.

Accuse the opponent of something that might technically be a lie, but nobody's going to read the fact-checking article in the next day's newspaper, and by that time the candidate has launched another half-baked broadside.

Then show the candidate in color with happy music, signaling the end of the ebola and economic and moral bankruptcy the opponent would bring.

The attack ads are the same in every district and precinct in the country. Republicans label their Democratic opponents as slavish devotees of President Obama and reps. Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer and lovers of Obamacare. Democrats, lacking a lame-duck president on which to hang blame, resort to images of airliners and glasses of champagne and stacks of money, and accuse opponents of jetsetting on the public dime.

Neither candidate blames bankers, careful not to bite feeding hands.

The commercials appeared back to back on TV last week, with such speed that Bera seemed to be attacking Bera as Ose throttled Ose.

It didn't need to be this way. I bet it would have been enough for Bera to be Bera. He was dean of admissions at the UC Davis Medical Center, and Sacramento County's chief medical officer. Impressive on its face.

As a real estate developer, Ose could have stood on his standing in the community.



I bet if they bucked the unfortunate trend and told us what they would do for us — with us — rather than lie about what the other guy wouldn't do for us — or would do to us — the election would be light years better.

Why they'd want to run, I have no idea.

Politics these days just seems like another job though, the way it goes now. One currency is the the vote, the ticket into office. The other currency is what comes from the constituency in power, the special interests that guide offices and campaigns and frame policy.

Candidates can act like we're stupid because we only count to get them in office. Once there, we are not needed until the next mid-term.

I wrote both candidates telling them I was ashamed by the way they handled their campaigns. I'm sure a staffer looked at the envelope through hard light, didn't see any money, and threw it away. Or the staffer opened it, and gathered other staffers around for a lighthearted moment from one of the babe-in-the-wood constituents, who thought he really mattered.

No matter. Fight the fear. You may still have time to vote.

The season in selfies

April 2014 (actually, it starts March 31!).
The San Francisco Giants' season promises so much:
Michael Morse, a new left fielder I'd never heard of …
acquisition of a veteran pitcher, Tim Hudson, who always seemed
to give the Giants fits. Lovable third baseman Pablo Sandoval shows up
thinner and more nimble. Pitchers are healthy, center fielder Angel Pagan
returns uninjured and in shape. Let's play ball!
Giants go 17-11 through April.

You can hate the San Francisco Giants. I don't blame you.

They've now become one of those teams that show up often enough in the playoffs to make people say, "Not the Giants again! I hate the Giants! I'm not watching!"

I hated the Atlanta Braves for the same reason, back when they were good. Even if they cast off many years of mediocrity and made the playoffs again, I'd still say, "Not the Braves again! Let somebody else in!"

I hate the New York Yankees no matter what. I hate the Los Angeles Dodgers because it's part of the Giants fan by-laws. I hate the A's because they aren't the Giants.

"Hate" in the sports sense. Good healthy fun hate.

Now the Giants have won their third World Series in the last five years. It never should have happened, had no good reason to. But it did.

The good news: This will be my last Giants post until baseball resumes in March. Probably.
The bad news: This will be my last Giants post until March.

Until then, watch my mug reveal the ups and horrible downs and improbable end to the season:

Holy Cow! ("Holy Cow!™® is a registered trademark expression of
the Chicago Cubs®™ and late broadcaster Harry Caray. Void in Inyo and Kern counties.)
The Giants are rolling! New left fielder Morse is slugging! He's the resident fist-pumping surfer dude,
getting the team to wear weird warrior helmets in the locker room.
Pablo "Kung Fu Panda" Sandoval is catching everything hit.
The team is scoring its runs with two outs —
in fact, seems to be waiting until it gets two outs before engineering
strings of runs. The Giants are unstoppable!

May 2014. Even national broadcasters are saying things like "The Giants are on a pace to win
100 games," or "(right fielder) Hunter Pence is on a pace to drive in more than 100 rbi," or
"The Giants have already put this season out of reach." Yeah, they're that good.
Oof, first baseman Brandon Belt breaks his thumb when hit by a pitch. Not gonna worry.
Giants go 20-9 in May.

June 2014. Early runs, two-out hitting binges, comeback wins,
an ever-lengthening lead over the Dodgers. Dare I say
the Giants were almost becoming … boring?

10-game lead over the Dodgers. All right with the world. Center fielder
Pagan goes out with a bad back. Giants pull a rookie, Joe Panik,
up from the minor leagues to stop the revolving door of weak hitting second basemen.
Beloved center fielder Angel Pagan, the engine of the team, out more than
half of last season to a hamstring injury, goes down this time with a back injury.
OK, minor adjustments. Nobody panic. Even though the Giants
go a miserable 10 and 16 in June, including losing six in a row.

July 2014. OK, maybe start panicking. Lovable starting pitcher Tim Lincecum
may have pitched a no-hitter in June against the Padres, but
he wasn't fooling hitters before that or since, and suddenly all the
Giants' hitters have stopped hitting. The far-gone Dodgers are closing in.
All that early season karma fails to produce many All-Stars:
Only Pence and pitchers Hudson and Madison Bumgarner make it.
Giants go 12-14 in July including losing another six straight.

The Giants collapse. It's so bad, I wish the team would forfeit take a day off,
reset, regroup, rethink. No sooner does Brandon Belt return than he
gets hit in the face with a ball, and disappears with a concussion.
The Dodgers creep closer …

… and closer. Hitters aren't hitting, pitchers aren't pitching,
Giants aren't winning … and closer …

… until the Dodgers overtake the Giants.

The Giants appear dead …

The team trades for Red Sox pitcher Jake Peavy, who used to pitch
as a youngster with the Padres under Giants Manager Bruce Bochy.
Maybe the Giants figure they're not out of this yet.

August 2014: I can't tell: Are the Giants planning to make a run?
Ooof, starting pitcher Matt Cain goes out for the season, needing
elbow surgery. Second baseman Marco Scutaro, hero of the 2012
World Series and missing most of 2013 with a bad back, shows up,
bats a few times, disappears. Second base goes to the rookie Panik.
Infielder Matt Duffy from Double-A ball, and Andrew Susac from
Triple-A get called up, and like to hit. Pagan shows up, goes down again,
finally calling off the rest of the season so he can get back surgery.
I dunno — am I allowed to hope?
Giants go 16-13 in August.

I mean, they seem like they're still in it, playing brilliant baseball
between bouts of embarrassing baseball comedy. Relief pitcher
Yusmeiro Petit, who the season before came within an out of
throwing a perfect game, sets a Major League record for retiring
46 consecutive batters.

September 2014: Giants officially concede first place in the National
League West to the Dodgers. The best they can hope for is a
wild-card chance at the playoffs. They finish 14-12 in September.

They make a wild-card berth. Without ace Matt Cain, without Pagan, now without newcomer Morse, injured.
The Giants sweep Lincecum to the bullpen, and take away the closer role from Sergio Romo.
Belt is just coming back from his concussion. Somehow, they have to beat the Pittsburgh Pirates
in one do-or-die game to get into the playoffs. The Giants should not be there, but trounce the Bucs 8-0,
with a grand slam by shortstop Brandon Crawford and a complete-game shutout by Bumgarner.

The Giants face the Washington Nationals, the best
team in the National League for the Division championship.
The Giants are not supposed to be there, but beat the Nats
three games to one, including an amazing 18-inning, six-hour marathon, the longest
game in playoff history. San Francisco moves onto the National League Championship against
the playoff perennials, the St. Louis Cardinals, who beat the Dodgers.
The Giants aren't supposed to be there, but beat the Cards four games to one, topped off with a
walk-off home run by retread Giant Travis Ishikawa, to go to the World Series.

The Giants should not be there. But neither should the
the Kansas City Royals, upstarts who knocked off better teams to
the top. Two teams so like the other, slugging each other to lopsided
whallopings, all the way to Game 7. All the way to the last out of the
last inning, a runner threatening at third, and 25-year-old Madison
Bumgarner on the mound, already established as one of the best pitchers
in history. Three days before, Bumgarner pitched another complete-game shutout.
He has pitched more innings than any other in a single postseason.
The Giants should not have won, but they did.
Somehow, they did.

Now it's a long cold lonely winter. No more baseball 'til March.
I'll subsist on video replays. Go ahead, hate the Giants all
you want. It's your prerogative. I'm smiling on the inside.

hey, sweet boy ;) lets have sexy time

That yellow smoke stinging your eyes right now comes from  algorithms popping and clicking without sufficient lubrication, overreaching their design, which is to find out about me.

Someone could straight up ask me, or do some old fashioned legwork, but no one does. Not that I'd be inclined to help.

Instead, a myriad mathematical formulas and equations roam the intersecting planes that exist behind my computer and yours, countless Rowling-like Death Eaters extracting information, relentlessly scratching, scratching.

This would all be over, I suppose, if I would just finish my facebook™® profile, which consists now of name, rank and partial serial number. As a result, facebook©™ is frequently left to wonder if I'm from a certain town, and like a lawyer with no more than circumstantial evidence and misanthropic hope for the human condition, points to others with whom I have made a tenuous connection with that same town.

But then, seemingly distracted, it shows me others from another town, and wonders if I'm from there instead. It wants me to give in.

I've written about my town. Just ask, algorithms. I'm not gonna tell you now, though.

Nor has it seemed any good to declare the books I read or music I listen to or TV I stare at. The profile questions may seem at first like ways for the ever growing network of facebook®™ users to connect with one another — hey, you love Terry Jacks too!? — but they are really one more clue surrendered, one more wedge with which sellers of things can prop my wallet.

It's Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence and making you want to take his place. It's Michael Jordan making you think Hanes®™ removed the annoying tags from its cotton shirts for your comfort, when really it removed all the annoying tag-sewing jobs that used to chafe shareholders while they counted profits.

So, unwilling to type in my preferences or play the online quizzes — which Canadian province are you? — designed to ease my inhibitions about volunteering information, I watch the bots circle around me, scratching, ever scratching.

You probably get these too: You so much as half-click on a product, exhibit the the merest glancing interest on some brand, and an ad for that brand follows you everywhere on the Internet — atop each page you visit, over to one side of facebook™®, in a commercial before listening to a You Tube® cover of "Seasons in the Sun."

I am reasonably certain that in many cases I simply thought of these products, or dreamed about them, and in no way indicated through finger tap or eye movement, no physical motion in front of my computer of any kind, that I was interested. Yet, the ads trail me in sticky luminescence.

Lately too, my junk emails have become more personal. Really personal.

One's titled "Small Business Loans shawn" and the subject is "shawn Oops! Do you need help with small business loans?" "Small Business Loans shawn" is also part of the email address that sent me this wonderful offer. Maybe I'm supposed to be charmed by this "accidental" email. Oops!

Many fine business leaders are anxious that I respond to "Whos Who_shawn" because I have been accepted to the 2014 edition of Who's Who Among Executives & Professionals. Announcements arrive daily. Won't the fine business leaders be embarrassed when I appear at their next Tux & Tennies mixer and they discover my paucity of executive experience. Perhaps then they will resolve to choose more wisely.

Even the more personal pitches have gotten more personal.

Blanca pointedly advises in her email, "Never disappoint her again, Shawn …" Such come-hither heat, these ellipses.

The text of her message is:

SnçdĮQÇMZEÐ5Ȅ»SH 2çjMîCaȺA³ÙTûMuTÎ8¡E581RËèoSR⌋7 ∀℘vTª6ΞOe8y Èc2ҮBÀºOD½4ȖQËEЯ2ΩN 7Æ8GUM5І1∠rЯS³PĹæ9ESome time the soî blue eyes. Yeah well he saw her car keys.
Ethan gave cassie looked back pocket matt.
Guess we both of sleep. l13 С Ƚ I Ϲ Ϗ    Ȟ Ě Я Ȇ F·’
Eve and knew about as though.
Someone else even have diï erence.
Just the others to leave. Lott said folding his shoulder.

Most of the letters are printed in white on my message, secret and monochrome yet unintelligible in their revelation. Interspersed in this gobbledygook are larger colored letters — more symbols than Roman letters, almost Cyrillic, just recognizable enough — that spell: "SIZE MATTERS TO YOUR GIRL. CLICK HERE."

Julieta just gives it to me straight. Her subject: "Shawn I'm so sorry.. Sylvia Sidney loves 8" + organ.." I didn't know that about Sylvia Sidney. Of course, I didn't know about Sylvia. An actress by that name died in 1999 at age 89, I just discovered. She was in "Beetlejuice," but flashed the flapper look in her youth.

Ever tantalizing, the bots test the parameters: Maybe the guy's into married women? I get emails from such as "Mrs. Hyacinthia DiPaola," who reminds me "True masculinity is not complete without a big rod, Shawn."

Similarly, folks pitch me for online dating services in the specific niche of spouses who want to cheat.

Another, offering a pipeline to my Viagra®™ (or Vigaara, Viargaa, or several other variations) and Cialis™® supplies, explains, "When you are happy, the people around you are happy as well, Shawn .."

Which is universally true, I would think.

The stake of my manhood, so to speak, has gotten even more direct than that. An email from "Brees M-Patch shawn" with shawn in the email address and the subject "Improve your Sexual Performance Instantly. g" doesn't prevaricate with odd-looking letters. It clearly shows a photo of a woman pushing up her red push-up bra, and tells me exactly what happens when I use its product.

It left out "Sproing!"

Yet in the same day I'm relieved to find out, "shawn it's not too late to learn about sleep apnea management," from someone with my name again in its email address.

Someone named "Walk-inTub shawn" with my name in its email address (uncanny coincidence!) doesn't want me to miss the point of its message, so reiterates in its subject, "shawn Walk-in tubs here."

The bots are trying sooooo hard: A rookie geezer on the cusp of long-awaited adulation for his professional status, who deserves to perform sexually commensurate with his lofty status, but still can't lift his gams over the bathtub wall — which may be in this town, or in that other town over there — to snore in sudsy bliss.

They know me so well!

It's only a short matter of time, though, before they really will.

I'm Nova Scotia, by the way.

Haul of Wonders, Completely Stumped Annex

I. Have. Absolutely. No. Idea.

But it's Throwawayback Thursday, so what the heck?

I found this while looking for something else among my collection of tangible art pieces. (I didn't find the something else.)

Stored in a flat-file cabinet with brush-and-ink and acrylic and watercolor and misbegotten oil pieces, the collection of tangible art comprises a shrinking portion of my life's work as an illustrator. It's probably 20 percent now. Most of my work lay on hard drives and storage devices racing to obsolescence.

Though dislodged carelessly from the pile, this piece still signals a specific strata in my personal geology: The Gray Time, which I spent trying to convince people who knew me as a writer that I could also draw pictures. No really, it's true! Do you want to see? hello? Hello?!

I was taking every job anyone was confident or carefree enough to give me.

Which must be where this came from.

But who or what is C. B. P. D. P. E?

Google®™ is no help: I'm pretty sure it's not about the Christian Business Development Directory (one search result); certainly not the Council Bluffs Police Department. Seems I'd remember those. "Performance evaluation?" "Prostate exam?" "Charles Bronson Production Department Perfunctory Edit?" Might as well be.

All the figures in the cartoon are women. I think. They may or may not have represented actual people. One is pregnant, one asleep. All consumed junk food (or maybe the pregnant one is instead bloated from hogging much of the food). They pulled an all-nighter processing towers of paperwork. They don't seem unhappy; loopy maybe, in that way of a job well done or a bottle well pulled.

TQM probably means (the meaningless) Total Quality Management, some buzzword — replaced by now, I'm sure for another — for "doing our best."

The clock indicates 2300 hours (11 o'clock p.m.) for some reason. Was this a military project? Ostensibly, C. B. P. D. P. E. was an achievement of some kind — the surviving of it, anyway —  but what?

Somebody gotta clue? What a miracle if you happened to know!

You've been here before

The Giants and I were new at this five years ago.

(c'mon: Another baseball post?! Seriously?!!)

(Look, it's either this or write about the Loma Prieta earthquake and the
World Series — quite appropriate on the 25th anniversary — but I've already done that — twice. — ed.)

I had started my part-time gig as a tour guide of Sacramento's Underground. The information felt overwhelming, the challenge frightening.

I had to distill a thick binder of historical information into a story that kept people engaged and while I kept them safe for an hour of walking around an obstacle course of the old town.

What's more, I put it on myself to effect a 19th Century Irish persona and a brogue that didn't remind people of the Lucky Charms™® Leprechaun.

The Giants, meanwhile had no business rising through the standings that year. They were the misfits, failing to conform to baseball ideology. Failing at all but winning.

Love! Exciting and new!

Several of the museum staff, where the tours emanate, turned out to be Giants fans too. A radio in one office even now is permanently tuned to the weak KNBR signal, broadcast home of the Giants. I learned quickly where the "on" switch was because I didn't dare move the dial and lose that precarious signal for good.

They were good times. I was figuring out this guide business. The hard knocks of leading a tour and failing forced opportunities to try again with a new tack, a different way of showing and telling, until I felt comfortable in this faux Irish skin.

The Giants kept winning all the while. It became habit, then obsession, to stop by that office between tours and catch 10 or 12 pitches, maybe even a half-inning, before having to stomp off to the next tour.

The first words out of my mouth once I returned to the museum from a tour: "Score?" Someone had the score and scoring summary ready. We Giants fans in the museum rose and fell by those games. The majority of the staff, not fans, rolled their eyes.

An improbable final-game division win in 2010 rolled into a division championship against the Atlanta Braves, became National League pennant against the phading Philadelphia Phillies, became a showdown with the American League sluggers the Texas Rangers. The Giants were overmatched, all the pundits said so. The Giants won.

Two years later, the Giants were back. Catcher Buster Posey, lost the season before to a gruesome collision at the plate, was back in form. Key players from the 2010 were gone, though, or pale imitations of themselves.

It was not to be. The Giants had no chance. But they made it again to postseason, for an early exit, the experts said. Then, down the first two games in the five-game division series, needing to win the rest to stay alive, the Giants did and beat the Cincinnati Reds. Behind three games to one against the St. Louis Cardinals for the pennant and needing to win all the rest — the Giants won all the rest.

Detroit would destroy the Giants, the pundits said again. The Giants swept the Tigers instead.

The second time in three years proved more manic. The season's end and the playoff games always seemed to coincide with tours or church or other obligations. I learned to text that year and sought salve that way, loved ones relaying scores while I was pinned down during the Eucharistic Prayer.

I was at the top of my game guide-wise, even folding in a second character.

Two World Series wins in three years! It was quite enough. I was sated.

This, though. This is gluttony: The possibility of three World Series wins in five years. Once again, the Giants made it the hard way.

They flopped feet first into the playoffs after a woeful and powerless mid-summer stretch. And yet … they trounced the Pittsburgh Pirates in a one-game Wild card playoff just to get to the division series against the powerful Washington Nationals. The Giants beat the Nationals with power to get into the League championship, then waited for the evenly matched St. Louis Cardinals to throw the ball away enough times to lose (suggesting a new statistic known as RTI — run thrown in).

The final game came with unexpected Giants power and the unlikeliest of heroes, Travis Ishikawa. He was on the 2010 Giants World Series team, a player I liked to root for, a player best known for pinch hits. The Giants released him when he wasn't hitting well, and he bounced around the minor leagues for two years before resurfacing with the Pirates at the start of the season, then got released again and back on the Giants.

Ishikawa seemed like a retread hanger-on, but had transformed himself physically and worked on his hitting. Maybe it wasn't so unlikely, then, that he hit the pennant-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth, the hoariest of American dreams.

Now the Giants are the calm veterans, facing the speedy and powerful Kansas City Royals who play a much different style of game. The Royals are the upstarts, unlikelier than the Giants.

I feel like an old hand too, like I've been here before. All the games so far have taken place when I'm not on tour or stuck in church or otherwise indisposed, like we planned it, the Giants and I. Having seen it all, or almost, I remain calm when tourists fall on the route, or delivery trucks block our path, or low-riders extinguish all sound save for what disgorges from their woofers.

We're cool. We can do this.

Game 1 tonight. Go Giants.