What's in a name anyway?

            My nephew got married over a recent weekend and this is worthy of note for a few reasons. He’s the first on my side of the family to get married whereas all of my wife’s nieces and nephews are already married. I have three siblings and between them they have five boys, no girls. My wife and I don’t have any children which I will explain a little later.

            When Diane and I got married almost 34 years ago we thought we were being progressive by having her hyphenate her last names to Graves-Lis, which she has legally used since then. What I found out at this wedding is that many couples are now being even more progressive by ditching their original last names for a new combined last name that they will both use as well as for any children they may have. That’s what my nephew Ben and his new bride Jenna did, combining Lis and Farwell into Mr. & Mrs. Liswell.

            That got me thinking that it would have been cool if when Diane and I got married we had both taken the last name of Gravelis, as in never being buried. Or better yet, since there are no real rules for combining or creating new last names what if we go with the “vanity plate” model and do something like Edmund & Diane Arelove or Mr. & Mrs. Sospecial or how about Diane & Edmund Thegreat.

            But seriously, I think what Ben and Jenna did in creating a new last name is very sweet and also smart in that it shows how committed they are to having an equal marriage. I wish them all the best.

            Does it bother me that there is one less chance for the Lis name to be carried on? Not really, since I made the choice years ago not to have children and knew that my personal bloodline would stop with me. Plus what’s in a name anyway? I don’t know the exact details of how my family got the name Lis, what I do know is that Lis is the translation for Fox in Polish. My dad also told me when I was younger that some of his relatives used the German translation of Fox which is spelled Fuchs and sounds like what you think it sounds like.

            So I guess I could change my name to Fox but I don’t think anyone has ever thought of me as a fox. Plus then I couldn’t use my silly puns like “ignorance is Lis” or my newest one, “Lis is more”.

            OK, enough about names, let’s get back to the wedding. Ben and Jenna are a beautiful, smart, healthy, caring couple. They are both in their late twenties, Cal-Poly graduates, both working at a large accounting firm and living in San Francisco. Their futures so bright everyone around them needs to wear shades. Same goes for the large contingent of millennial friends, schoolmates, and coworkers that were in attendance, they looked ready to conquer the world.

            At one point during the reception I looked around the room at all the young people talking, laughing, drinking, and having a great time. I leaned over to Diane and said something to the nature of them having their whole lives ahead of them, she replied in a whisper, “not all of them”. It was like a reality punch to the gut and I knew exactly what she was thinking. It wasn’t about all the young people around us it was about Julia from Winters, another beautiful, smart, and caring millennial who has no future, only a past because she died last week in a tragic accident.

            That’s kind of the Yin and Yang of life. You can be in the middle of a joyous occasion and think of something sad or I’ve been to sad funerals where someone will say or do something funny and you start laughing. There is such a fine emotional line between what we are feeling at any given moment or situation that sometimes you just have to say screw it, I feel what I feel and there’s no point in trying to control it.

            That’s also how I feel about my family name, it is what it is. I could have been a Fox, a Fuchs, or anything else some long forgotten ancestor decided to call himself but I’m a Lis and I’m good with that. As for the rest of the family, they can do what they want, be as creative as they want because what’s in a name anyway. No one really cares except maybe ancestry.com because this trend is going to make their job that much harder.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 9 of the following link. Winters Express 6/14/18

In Memory of

            As many of you already know, the cat known as Eddy was tragically killed on the porch of Steady Eddy’s Coffee House. It is very saddening and also angering in its senselessness but that’s not what I’m writing about today. I could also be writing a whole column about his history, but again I won’t. Long story short, he showed up as a feral kitten shortly after we opened the coffee house, we started feeding him, he stayed around through 4 owners and 14 years, he became comfortable with the people and the place, he loved and was loved, then he was attacked by a dog and died.

I don’t mean to sound short or cold about this tragedy because I really am sad and was in shock for the whole day after I heard and I cried when I had to break the news to my wife. But as a writer/columnist the thought I was having was about the need for most people to memorialize the dead, especially the tragic ones.

Now if you hadn’t noticed, I’m not like most people. As a matter of fact, in my mind I have this joke motto that I live by, “Ignorance is Lis”. In other words, I don’t want to remember or be reminded of things that cause me pain or sadness. The reason I bring this up is because as of this writing I haven’t stepped back onto the porch at Steady Eddy’s because I’m not sure I can handle it without turning into a blubbering idiot.

You see the reality is that even though I sometimes come off as cold and indifferent, I’m actually very (maybe too) sensitive and empathetic. Let me give you a few examples that aren’t about a cat because I have so many that do involve cats.

Recently Christopher Mendoza was tragically killed on the 505 down by Vacaville. I didn’t know Christopher other than when he was in High School and was a customer at the coffee house, in the past few years I would pass him on the street since he was always out walking and we would make eye contact or give a nod of the head. So after I heard the details of what happened I dreaded making my weekly drive to Vacaville. The first time I drove it I got queasy and felt sad as I came up to the spot on the freeway with the bright orange CHP marks on the pavement showing the point of impact. I can imagine what the scene was like but I don’t want to, I wish I didn’t know and I wish I didn’t have to think about it every time I drive to Vacaville.

Another tragedy I wish I didn’t know about, but am reminded of almost every day when I walk from work to the post office is the shooting death of Leslie Pinkston. I walk past the spot where she was parked and the tree that was painted purple in her memory but is now faded and will probably be cut down when the hotel exterior is being finished. The morning she was killed I heard the shot and what I thought was a scream but it didn’t register because it was so out of place in the usual quiet morning of downtown Winters. Once I saw her car (that I recognized) with the shattered window and all the people rushing around it, I realized what had happened but I didn’t go out and look because I didn’t want that image in my mind, remember ignorance is Lis.

Let me give you one last example of how warped my feelings are as compared to normal people. 30 some years ago my wife and I had a dog that was blind. She was so special I can’t even begin to explain. She also had terrible seizures that would last for a few minutes and when she came out of them she would be disoriented for hours but would eventually return to normal. Sadly in the end she went into a prolonged seizure and had to be euthanized. I wasn’t there for that, the reason being enough to fill a whole other column and something I regret to this day. But my point is about what I did when I got home from work that day (before my wife), I went around the apartment and picked up and put away everything of hers. Her leash, her bed, her toys, everything, because I couldn’t stand the pain of seeing them.When Diane got home from work she was furious with me and pulled everything back out so she could grieve like a normal person because unlike me, not everyone thinks that ignorance is bliss.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 5 of the following link. Winters Express 5/16/18

Mom manipulated by fake news story

            My mother who is 88 years old likes to send and or forward emails that she finds interesting, relevant, or funny. Many of them are animal and nature photos or jokes that someone sent her. She also sends a lot of links to MoveOn.org petitions because she is very liberal and politically involved with the Democratic Party. I also want to mention (because of where I am going with this story) that she is Jewish but not religious, and has visited Israel a couple of times.

            All that being said, let’s get on with the content of the email she sent me (and 42 other people) with the subject line of Fwd: Brilliant and in which she just wrote FYI.

During the recent cease-fire, the leader of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, Khaled Mashal, sent a gift to the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, in an elaborate box with a note. After having the box checked for safety reasons, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened the box and saw that the content was human feces. He opened the note, handwritten in Arabic by Mr. Mashal, which said, "For you and the proud people of the Zionist Entity."Mr. Netanyahu, literate in Arabic, pondered the note and decided how best to reciprocate. He quickly did so by sending the Hamas leader a very pretty package with a personal note. Mr. Mashal and the other leaders of Hamas were very surprised to receive the parcel and opened it very carefully suspecting that it might contain a bomb. But to their surprise they saw that it contained a tiny computer chip. The chip was rechargeable with solar energy, had a 1.8 terabyte memory and could output a 3D hologram display capable of functioning in any type of cellular phone, tablet or laptop. It was one of the world's most advanced technologies, with a tiny label, "Invented and produced in Israel." Mr. Netanyahu's note, personally handwritten in Arabic, Hebrew, French, and English, stated very courteously... "Every leader gives the best his people can produce."

            My initial reaction was a slight chuckle, then I got upset because it’s very Racist (and that’s not like my mother) and finally I started wondering if my mother actually thought this was a true story considering she put FYI at the beginning of the forward. My feeling was that this was a joke story but I thought I should do a little fact checking before I blasted my mother for sending it to her email group.

            After about a 5 minute Google search I found that the story had originally been published in 2014 by a website called To The Point News, who tout themselves as “The Oasis for Rational Conservatives”. The only other references I could find were posts on Facebook and chat rooms so my conclusion was that this is “Fake News”.

            So now the question is, why did my mother, who’s intelligent, well read, and keeps up with the news think this was something worth sharing? First, the original email came from a guy in her Sierra Club group (in hindsight she did say she should have paid more attention since he is a Republican). Second, the story makes Israel look good. And last but not least, it sounds plausible, like it could be true.

            This email my mother forwarded is a better example of an insensitive joke than fake news but it still gives us the opportunity to discuss the fake news hype.  Fake news is nothing new, I’m sure it’s been around since early man started telling stories around the fire and was probably used to try and make his adversaries look bad. It’s basically gossip with the intent to manipulate social or political thought. Back before the internet we called it “spin” and there were people known as Spin Doctors, now they are “Communications Specialists” who give us “alternative facts”.

            At its core, a lot of fake news is propaganda. That’s kind of what my mother’s email was in that it tried to elevate Israelis while denigrating Palestinians. The fake news/propaganda tries to elicit an emotional rather than a rational response from the recipient because they are much easier to manipulate that way. And Psychological Manipulation is what all this current fake news crap is all about.

            The powers that be, whether politicians, big business, religious leaders, or the super rich are all trying to influence us into their way of thinking. Social media has made it so much faster and easier to get the message and or disinformation out to the masses that most of us can’t even keep up with the sheer volume let alone figure out what’s fact or fiction.

             Let me wrap up this little rant by saying that I think that an eternal skeptic like myself has an advantage in the info-wars in that I don’t believe much of anything I hear whether it comes from the left, right, or down the middle.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 5 of the following link. Winters Express 4/19/18

Ice, Ice, Baby

            The New Year is here and for many people it’s a time for reflecting on the past and planning for the future. If you’re a regular reader of my columns then you probably already know that I’m not one of those people. I should probably clarify; I do reflect and think about the past (way to much) it’s the planning for the future that I’ve never really been into.

             I gave up making New Year’s resolutions ages ago when I figured out that if I couldn’t or wouldn’t change my ways during the past year why would I make any more effort to change starting on any given January 1st. I know me, and I don’t see any point in kidding myself or those around me. That’s not to say that I haven’t given up some bad habits or changed my ways, just not as a New Year’s resolution.

            Christmas and New Years are so close together that they get lumped together into the “holiday season” and it’s too bad because I really dislike the beginning but I’m always happy to see the end. One of the things I like about New Years is that it’s the only holiday that’s non-religious (if you don’t count the Gregorian calendar aspect) and non-political.

            Thinking back as a kid, New Years was always exciting because my parents liked to throw New Years Eve parties and they would let me help do stuff like peel the shrimp. Then they would let me stay up until midnight if I could keep my eyes open and see everyone ringing in the New Year.

            As a teenager New Years was just another excuse to party since my friends and I stayed up past midnight almost every weekend anyway. I don’t remember any specific New Years parties that stood out, I just know we partied like there was no tomorrow.

            Considering that I’ve lived through 60 New Years, none have really left much of an impression other than the one I’m going to tell you about now. Oh, and impression may be over hyping it.

            When I was in my mid-twenties and already living with Diane, for 2 or 3 years in a row we celebrated New Years Eve with an old friend of mine and his wife at their house down by Detroit. It was such a low key get together that we jokingly called ourselves “The Boremores” as in boring. We played board games, ate, drank, waited until midnight then made the hour drive home.

            So you’re probably wondering why this is memorable. Well the party wasn’t but the drive home sure was. First let me explain; I used to be one of those guy that If I said I was going to be somewhere at a certain time then you could set your watch by it because nothing was going to stop me. And if it was a social commitment, for sure don’t get in my way.

            Anyway, that particular New Years Eve the weathermen were predicting freezing rain and we probably should have stayed home, but damn it I committed to a party so we were going.

Sure enough just after midnight, as we were leaving, the rain started and at the same time the temperature started to drop. I had the wipers and defrost going full blast to keep the rain from freezing on the windshield. Even though the salt trucks were out the freeways were still treacherous and the drive home was what we Midwesterners call “white knuckle driving” because you’re holding onto the steering wheel so tight.

After a couple of hours crawling down the freeway we made it home without any mishaps and collapsed into bed wondering about what a way to start the new year. Was it an omen for what lay ahead? We weren’t sure but we were definitely a little freaked out as we finally drifted off to sleep.

That morning, New Years day we woke to an almost unbearable brightness coming in through the bedroom window (and it wasn’t from being hung-over). Our bedroom was on the second floor and looked out over a park that was across the street, as I got up and looked out the window it was one of the most amazing, dare I say even magical sights I have ever seen. The storm from the night before had past and the sun was shining down on all the trees covered in a layer of crystal clear, shimmering ice.

It was one of the most beautiful and memorable things I’ve ever seen and reminds me that sometimes you just have to sit back and let nature say HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

To view the column in it's original form go to page 12 of the following link. Winters Express 1/4/18