And the Winner Is ...

Taylor Hicks, the prematurely gray self-proclaimed soul man from Birmingham, is the newest American Idol. Thank goodness. With hot rocker Chris Daughtry out of the running much too early in the game, Taylor was our only real choice. Yes, Elliott is a nice guy with a nice voice and he loves his proud mama. Yes, Katherine is both beautiful and talented. Plus she shares her mother's inclination to show off her cleavage, a sure attraction for male viewers, at least in Katherine's case. (Mama McPhee, PLEASE, put on a sweater or something.)

But you gotta love Taylor for his unflinching uniqueness and his obvious love of music. This is a guy who's not afraid to be himself, who didn't listen to the critics who said he was too old at 29 and too gray at any age to be a star. This is a guy who just flat out loves to perform. It's hard not to catch his enthusiasm. And that's why people love him. Chris will also have a brilliant career; he's just too good not to be scooped up by some bigtime band or label. So all in all, I'm happy with the results. But what will I do until January 2007 when Idol returns for another season? Tuesday and Wednesday nights just will not be the same.

Another Anniversary

It's been a year already since the big Memorial Day 2005 party celebrating the Younger trifecta: Bob's and my 30th anniversary, EK's 25th birthday and the (near)completion of the new Terra Nova. Yesterday marked 31 years for Bob and me, and tomorrow morning we'll pick up EK at the airport for a weekend celebration of her 26th birthday. Lest we forget, Charter, our goofy Newf, also will be in on the festivities. He was born on our anniversary four years ago.

I started this blog on May 25, 2005 as an anniversary gift to Bob. Though my entries have been sporadic and my readers few, it's still satisfying to look back on this record of the past year, even as I'm learning the importance both personally and professionally of living in the present moment. The magazine editor in me also sees this occasion as reason enough for a redesign. Hope you enjoy the new format of Younger Yarns.

Top Ten Ways to Know You're in North Carolina

10. The trees are so green and most of the birds are either Wolfpack red or Carolina blue.

9. More squirrels than people.

8. Meat with every meal and jello salad on the side.

7. You want your tea unsweetened? What are you, some kind of heathen?

6. It's not hard to spot women who still tease their hair.

5. People talk funny.

4. Your husband calls and doesn't recognize your voice. Says YOU'RE talking funny.

3. Entire population is still mourning native son Chris Daughtry's ouster from American Idol.

2. Giant portrait murals at the Charlotte airport feature local racecar drivers.

And the number one way you know you're in North Carolina:

The marquee in front of the First Assembly of God announces "NASCAR Sunday"

Idol Update

I am so not over it yet. At least I have a lot of company.

Shock and Awe (Outi, don't read this!)

Another Idol elimination night and boy, were we all surprised. I won't say who actually got the boot, because my friend Outi in Finland is also an Idol fan, and the show runs a week later there, so I would spoil her fun. But let me just say I am totally depressed. Losing Ace was bad, but tonight was shock and awe, baby. Shock and awe.

Post-Flu Euphoria

Ah yes. The sun is shining through a misty spring morning here at Terra Nova. The birds are singing; the puppies, sleeping. And I finally seem to be coming out of an 8-day flu-related funk. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say, I've been fairly sick and pitiful. Today, aside from the usual lingering cough, fatigue and slight fuzziness in the head, I am feeling close to human again. It reminds me of that scene in Shogun when Anjin-san was committing seppuku for some noble reason I can't remember, and at the last instant, as he was already thrusting the knife toward his body, the local daimyo, which is to say the region's military ruler, grabbed his wrist and stopped the blade, and Anjin-san, rushing back from the certainty of death to the raw sweetness of life, sat silent for a moment so that all you could hear was rain falling outside, and then he said, very softly, "The rain is fine, isn't it?"

It is good to feel alive again. What's more, even the morning's New York Times seemed full of good news. First, San Diego's own Fat Man Walking completed his waist-shrinking, soul-searching cross-country hike yesterday by walking right into Manhattan. Along the way he's dropped a hundred pounds and found his bliss, plus a book deal and folk celebrity status. You know, more power to him. He took on a crazy goal and he actually did the thing. That's just inspiring.

Second piece of good news for the day, W's poll numbers have reached record lows, and third, the population of Russia is dropping by 700,000 per year. To some, I realize, especially certain individuals in Washington and Moscow, these latter two headlines would read as bad news. But I see them as hopeful signs that one) the American public is at last regaining its sanity and two) it's actually possible to reduce the planet's burgeoning population without war, pestilence or famine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, obviously a vodka-glass-half-empty kind of guy, has expressed his alarm about the spectre of economic and military contraction. In fact, he's turned into a procreation cheerleader, talking up the wonders of love, marriage and family, and even offering cash bonuses for each baby produced.

But from the global perspective, more is not always merrier. Sometimes seating fewer guests at the table means everybody gets to eat. As it is, we lose 30,000 kids a day to starvation and malnutrition. Yes, 30,000. So that's why I say, it's a good-news day all-around. Also time for a little more cough syrup.

Charter in Mustard

Photo by R. E. Younger, Terra Nova Photography

Dear Anonymous

The thing about posting a blog is you never know if anyone's going to read it or not. Which is nice in a way, because when you write something decent you can feel glad it's out there for the world to see, and when you post something you worry is a bit too revealing or schmaltzy or cynical, you can convince yourself no one's likely to read it anyway.

But then you start to get feedback, comments left in response to your posts, and you realize people really are reading this thing. Cool! Except it seems there's an underworld of characters out there who spend a lot of time surfing around looking for statements of opinion that differ from their own, and then they pounce like an alley cat and eviscerate the poor blogger with a nasty comment or two, usually demonstrating in the process that they've missed the whole point.

That in itself, while not very nice, I can live with. Hey, it's still a free country after all. I can say what I want, and so can you. The problem is these hit and run commentators never leave their names. Or else they leave a stupid made-up name like Piso Mojado. So you wonder. Who really wrote this? Was it anyone I know? Someone who just doesn't want me to know they really have such opposite opinions? Maybe it was someone being paid by the radical right to ferret out dissenters and ambush them right there on their own blog pages? Or was it some angry survivalist holed up somewhere in the middle of the South Dakota prairie, surfing the Web for random blog comments while taking breaks from writing his or her grand manifesto? In the end of course it doesn't really matter who they were, because you already know everything you need to know about them, which is, they're gutless.

So far, these anonymous posters have seemed to pop up most often in response to comments I've made about the Bush Administration. They seem to think I'm a bad American for criticizing the president. They've even accused me of hating my country. This strikes me as bizarre. I don't hate my country. I love my country. What I hate is what George Bush and his posse have done to it--including fostering this crazy idea that conscientious dissent is unpatriotic. On the contrary, this nation was founded on the concept that citizens should be free to think and express their own thoughts, even if they run counter to government policies. Being a "good" American does not mean you must support the government no matter what. That's not democracy; that's totalitarianism. Being a "good" American, I believe, can sometimes compel a citizen to stand up against the government, because the government can be wrong, can lose sight of the goal, can even diminish the liberties America stands for. When that happens, and I believe we are seeing it happen right now, "good" Americans have a patriotic duty to stand up and say so.

By the way, if my anonymous detractors think I'M being harsh on the president, they should read Bob Herbert's column in today's New York Times. Now there is a courageous, concerned American. I salute him for stating our current national dilemma so honestly and so well. Maybe I should send him an anonymous compliment.

Update, May 2, 2006: Turns out the L.A. Times agrees with me about anonymous posters, as one of their Pulitzer-winning reporters has discovered the hard way.

The Truth About Freelancing

People tend to glamorize the concept of freelance writing as a career. It's an understandable fallacy, stemming from the word itself. The concept of freedom in your work is so appealing when you're committed to the nine to five routine. There are advantages both ways of course. The salaried employee may enjoy less personal freedom, but paychecks arrive on a regular basis, along with paid vacations and sick time, 401Ks and health insurance. Or to put it in the words of the late John Keats, a wildly successful freelancer during the 1950s and 60s and one of my favorite writing teachers, the trade-off for the nine-to-five lifestyle is "all the benefits that slaves enjoy." Keats was a marvel of self-discipline and productivity, who churned out a series of fantastic nonfiction books in addition to all his magazine articles and made enough money to raise a family of four children and even buy an island in the St. Lawrence River between New York and Canada. His philosophy of quitting his job to begin his work has always inspired my inner freelancer, and I've been haunted by his onetime admonition to me: "You should never hold an office job." What he meant by that was he felt I should write. Sometimes, I can believe those long-ago words and take courage in the power of possibilities. But in reality, the writing life is not always so idyllic. Yesterday I came across this piece by the very talented Sarah Hepola that sums it up so well I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

April Is the Greenest Month

Photo by R.E. Younger, Terra Nova Photography

When in April the sweet showers fall and pierce the drought of March to the root, and all the veins are bathed in liquor of such power as brings about the engendering of the flower, when also Zephyrus with his sweet breath exhales an air in every grove and health upon the tender shoots, and the young sun his half-course in the sign of the ram has run, and the small fowl are making melody that sleep away the night with open eye (So nature pricks them and their heart engages), then people long to go on pilgrimages, and palmers long to seek the stranger strands of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands.
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

It's my favorite time of year in San Diego. Fresh in the wake of winter rains, the land transforms from dead brown to lush green. The birds are so happy they can't contain themselves. Terra Nova is bathed in song from dawn to dusk. And the crows and raptors are flying with baggage in tow, no doubt taking meals home to their families rather than eating everything themselves in the field. Saturday morning I saw a kite hunting, a magnificent, nearly all white bird that can hover in midair and then drop out of the sky like a stone when it sights its prey.

Between the garage and the road and back, the rabbits cross our paths by two and threes. They've been busy; already I've seen a little one. And amid the jumble of trailers, chicken coops and corrals below us in the canyon to the east, I've been watching a foal trying out its spindly new legs.

All too soon the green will fade, and the world will turn brown again, the lush grasses will become fuel for the coming fire season. But for now the canyon is glorious and verdant and all of us who live here, from the field mice to the redtail hawks to the Newfs and their humans, are reveling in its riotous celebration of spring.

A Good Day

Let's accentuate the positive, shall we? It was a good day. Perfect spring weather, great progress on "the book," good news on two other projects under way, quality time with the Newfs, phone chats with both daughters and Bob, who's coming home tomorrow from a week-long business trip. All in all, it helped take the sting out of losing Ace on American Idol last night. If you haven't been watching, you can't understand, but the Ace Face will be missed. Oh, and he's a pretty fair singer, too.

Comic Relief Is on the Way

I know what you're thinking. It's not fun reading Younger Yarns anymore. Sandra has turned into a shrew. It's not that politics is all I think about these days. It's just that Bush and crew make me so mad I have to write about them or explode. Meanwhile, other things in my life--lovely, warm and fuzzy things--go unreported. So I promise to mix it up a little from now on. Stay tuned ...

Mushroom-Clouded Minds

I really can't believe I'm writing this, but it seems the top leadership of the United States of America have actually been busy drafting plans to "pre-emptively" attack yet another sovereign nation, this time with nuclear weapons. NUCLEAR WEAPONS!!!

The problem: Iran is working toward nuclear capability, a sobering development by anyone's estimation and something the administration believes only big, benevolent, responsible superpowers like us can have. So it only makes sense to stop them by nuking their R&D facilities, which by the way include university laboratories--a strategy inspired, no doubt, by parents who beat their children for hitting each other. Please, someone wake me up and tell me I'm just caught in a sci-fi nightmare.

They've denied it of course. "Wild speculation," the president says. "Fantasyland," Rumsfeld echoes. Oh yeah, like I really believe them. Pinnochio couldn't keep up with this pack of liars. The latest evidence: we've learned the president himself authorized the long-celebrated media leak that led to Valerie Plame Wilson's exposure as a CIA agent. Yes, the same president who told us how much he hated leakers, promised us he would fire this one when he/she turned up, and then ordered a big, fat investigation into the situation. Your tax dollars at work.

If only the news about Iran war plans had come from some third-rate, conspiracy-theorist blogger, but alas, the reporter was none other than the venerable Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, the same writer who first acquainted us with the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. This guy has some sources.

Surely, I first thought, Bush can't really attack Iran without congressional approval, and Congress won't fall for his scare tactics again. But it turns out he can. We could wake up tomorrow morning, and it could already have happened.

Words fail in describing the lunacy, the immorality, the hyper-hypocrisy of all this. Suffice it to say, we have met the axis of evil, and they is us. The good news is the president's approval ratings have dropped a few more points, indicating more Americans are figuring out he's not the compassionate conservative they thought he was.

Update, May 31, 2006: Some commenters suggested I was seriously over-reacting here. But apparently I wasn't alone. Dozens of prominent physicists have written to President Bush calling U.S. contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against Iran "gravely irresponsible" and warning of "disastrous consequences for the security of the United States and the world." You can see a petition signed by nearly 2,000 physicists, including several Nobel laureates, at http://physics.ucsd.edu/petition/

Puppies in the Sun

Enough serious stuff. It's a gorgeous sunny day, endless blue overhead, and inside, puppies are busy with their morning naps, each in the usual places. Terra, the princess, is curled up on our bed, a black, furry island in a billowing sea of white pillows and comforters. Charter is stretched out full-length on the floor beside me, framed in sunny squares slanting in from the windows. He is dreaming, feet twitching, eyelids and lips quivering, pink tongue barely peeking out of his mouth. Every now and then one or the other rouses for a moment and looks up at me, hoping I'm ready to go downstairs. As soon as I move, both dogs will jump up to join me, anticipating breakfast or a walk, the mere promise of any sort of adventure. But for now they are content to sleep here with me while I work. My peaceful companions. How I love them.

Thanks, But No Thanks

Well, now it's Australia digging out from a monster storm. The AP reports this morning that Cyclone Larry was the most powerful cyclone to hit northeastern Australia in decades. Larry destroyed thousands of homes and flattened hundreds of square miles of sugar cane and banana crops. As one resident put it, "The whole bloody place is blown apart."

The Aussies, of course, are rising to the challenge with characteristic elan. The town of Innisfail cleared a spot among the ruins and enjoyed a huge "barbie," with local butchers and restaurateurs donating their inventory rather than let it rot in their freezers until power lines are repaired.

And there was this nicety mentioned in the AP report. "President Bush called Australian Prime Minister John Howard early Tuesday to offer American help if needed." Hmmm. The same President Bush whose appointees failed so utterly when our own Gulf Coast was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina just seven months ago? The same President Bush who's already put that epic tragedy and its still-suffering survivors behind him in his psychotic zeal to end terrorist plots, real or imagined? I'm thinking I could live a long time without that kind of help.

To his everlasting credit, PM Howard responded with admirable courtesy and restraint. "Of course we are able ourselves to look after this," Howard told the AP. "But it was a very generous, thoughtful gesture on his part, and I thank him for it."

Competence and class, too. How refreshing. How about next time a natural disaster strikes the U.S., we corral Bush and his fellow cowboys for the duration and ask Australia to come help us with the clean-up?

Adult Supervision Required

National Journal reporter Shane Harris provides further proof of the complete and utter leadership vacuum in Washington in an article introducing Douglas L. Hoelscher, the new executive director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Advisory Committees.

Hoelscher will serve in a key policy-making position as DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff's "primary representative" to more than 20 advisory boards populated by corporate, government and academic heavyweights; he will also provide "strategic counsel" to Chertoff on such vital issues as terrorist threats to infrastructure and potential attacks employing weapons of mass destruction.

It's quite a career coup for a 28-year-old former Bush campaigner with no management experience whose first government job just 5 years ago was a $30,000 low-level White House staff assignment arranging presidential travel. So maybe it was Hoelscher's personal strengths that catapulted him to power. In his Friendster.com profile, he disclosed: "I'm usually fairly quiet in a group setting. I am not a talker but a pretty good listener."

Whatever. DHS certainly seems confident in its newest top executive. "The administration has named a qualified and talented professional to cultivate these partnerships," commented Stewart A. Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the department.

Then again, that's probably what he said about past DHS appointees, including former FEMA director Michael "You're Doing a Heckuva Job Brownie" Brown, a longtime friend of Bush's 2000 campaign director, Joe Allbaugh; Julie Myers, wife of Chertoff's chief of staff, who without benefit of law enforcement experience heads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau; and Eduardo Aguirre Jr., a Texas banker with Bush family ties who served as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

O.K. so not such a great track record. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Hoelscher's youth and inexperience aren't necessarily liabilities. Harris reports one DHS staffer assured him: "There's plenty of adult supervision" at the department.

Like a Thunderbolt

I'm pretty sure I saw a golden eagle soaring above the canyon today. A huge bird, too big for a hawk, but brown, not black like the crows and buzzards. I watched it until it disappeared into the chapparal more than a mile away. Thinking back on the sight of those strong wings sailing and rising effortlessly in the thermals reminds me of Tennyson's wonderful poem, "The Eagle."

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Alfred Tennyson 1851

Power Lunch

My friend Claire never went to college, had a big career, made a fortune or got famous. But what she did do—raise a family of four children within a lasting marriage and spread the joy of Newfoundland dogs, along with a keen insight into the human heart—has made all the difference in countless lives, mine included. I had a rare chance to visit with her yesterday, and as always, it was a treat. She's in her seventies now, but her embrace was as strong as ever, her personality as vibrant, her intuition as rare. We enjoyed a lunch she had made herself at home in Tennessee and overnight shipped in frozen containers to share with her daughter JoAnn and friends here in San Diego. Lentil soup. Beef and barley. Homemade sandwich spreads and two kinds of cake. It was a small group. Claire and JoAnn, two other Newfoundland lovers and me.

Afterwards, I fired up my laptop and ran through a sampling of photos of the new house, the family, the Newfs. As always, Claire took it all in eagerly, punctuating the show with bits of sage commentary and encouragement. You are an inspiration, I told her as I packed up to leave. I don’t know why, she said, laughing and looking away. But you are, I said. You’re my Yoda. She cupped her hands on either side of her head. Big ears and all? she asked. I nodded. Wise are ye, I said. She looked away again. We hugged good bye, and she waved as I turned to back out of the driveway, feeling, as always when I’ve talked with Claire, that I'm okay, that life is still long and full of meaning, and that anything is possible, especially when you believe in dogs.

Story Time

Today, well yesterday now since it's 2:20 in the morning, my fire story became part of NPR's current Story Corps project. It just flowed out of me and listening to it myself on the way home via CD gave me goose bumps and made my eyes sting. It is an amazing story, a miracle story. I'm grateful to my friends Lena and Coleen who set up the interview and encouraged me to do it. I'm happy that a story from the Cedar Fire will be documented for posterity in the Library of Congress along with thousands of other stories from American life. And I'm more eager than ever to finish my book.

Update March 2, 2006: KPBS, our local NPR station, aired an excerpt this morning. You can listen to it here.(MP3 4:13min.)

Pot Shots

Obviously, I've been on a blogging hiatus, despite deep thoughts I wanted to share about marching to the Capitol in Washington on Martin Luther King Day and then Coretta Scott King's triumphant homegoing. My friend Peggy's Newfoundland, Baby, Charter's sister and Lilo's aunt, won big yesterday at Westminster. And, oh yes, remind me to tell you about senior diet cokes.

But this I can't let pass. The vice president of the United States of America, while out enjoying the rich man's sport of quail hunting on vast private ranches, shot a fellow hunter. Fortunately, the guy is okay. Cheney, on the other hand, has made himself fodder for delighted stand-up comedians everywhere. Here's a nice sampling put together by our friends at the AP: TV Joke Writers Take Shots at Cheney.