Dad wandered in from the living room to the kitchen where I was chatting with mom the other day. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. It had the name Paul written on it and a phone number. He was confused. He had no understanding of who that person was or why the information was is in his pocket. No clue at all.
That is some of the more normal behavior for him these days. He has moved from occasional and quirky forgetfulness to full blown dementia. It comes and goes but mostly comes.
I’ve not posted for a good long while. A moment in time. Busy. Priorities. Confusion. Life. Survival.
So a collection of random thoughts and photos here. When I am old and crazy and look back here for clarity on my life, this post will not be helpful.
There’s a colony of ants that thrive near a tree just off the steps going up to my deck. I noticed their little bunker one day while doing some work in that area. Tonight, I watched them for a while from the deck, where I sat with my cigar and my bourbon. After a while, I went and sat on the bottom step where I had a better view.
There were thousands of them hustling and bustling all around. Industrious little fuckers. Always on the move. You never see an ant sleeping or lying about. It’s wild. Their movements, to my eye, seemed completely random and erratic. One goes here and another there. Sometimes I’ve seen ants marching in lines, but these were cross-crossing and going every which direction. Are they acting on orders or just running around like a bunch of sugar doped toddlers at a party. There must be some method to the madness. Where’s E.O. Wilson when you need him. He was an ant man.
One little guy was furiously dragging the carcass of a dried out little worm towards the main ant housing unit. He was a ways off when a couple of colleagues pitched up to help and in short order they had stuffed that worm down the hole. Food I suppose? How do they eat? Just all start taking bites or do they divvy it out to families or put it in storage for hard times? Well I don’t know for sure. But by god they are some hard working sons of bitches. And tough. You can drop an ant from a distance 1,000 times it’s length and he runs away like nobody’s business. Drop a human from 30 feet and you’ve got a corpse or a coma patient or a quadriplegic. I suppose there must be some boss ant in there somewhere calling the shots because there is no fucking about. No lallygagging as we used say in the navy.
I sat there a good while, then finished up my cigar and laid the stub down there for them. Figure they’ll make a table out if it or maybe just eat the tobacco and get a little high.
Mountain Nerd. That’s the term Brittany uses for how I dress at Black Dog Ridge. Technically, Mountain Nerd with a Rolex.
When you’re raised in rural Midwest farm country, poor as a church mouse, then spend 40 years bouncing all over the world getting an informal street education, and now back to rural Appalachia — it’s confusing. Maybe fashion is my next innovative pursuit. I can speak to the true nomads better than those posers over at Columbia or REI.
Life gets heavy at times. Sometimes I lose my voice. Somewhere between anger, discontentment, disillusionment, disagreement, sadness, confusion and general pissed-offendness, I lose sight of the good things, of which my life is full. If words come, they are full of anger, which feels redundant and indulgent. I’m not the one suffering after all. Writing about contentment feels arrogant. Distant. Detached.
No matter how hard anyone tries, you can never offset the terribleness of the other humans who are causing suffering to other living beings every single day. The weight of that is like a cement block around the ankle while struggling to stay afloat.
Not everyone feels it unfortunately, which I suppose is why we can’t muster the collective will to force societal change to benefit everyone rather than a few. Elon Musk is now worth around $1.9T or thereabouts. All built on the back of government contracts and tax breaks and subsidies. In return, he pays no taxes.
My neighbor asked me if I needed to borrow a few flags for my yard for Memorial Day. He had about 2 dozen or so little plastic American flags poking up all over his property plus a big one on his flagpole.
I said ’nah, I’m cool’.
He didn’t seem to love that answer and asked if I was sure and explained that I was the only one who didn’t have flags in my yard for Memorial Day.
I said ‘I know’.
We left it there. Probably for the best.
But I did walk away whistling ‘Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore‘.
Let’s count the good news from this week.
- Trumps $1.8B IRS negotiated settlement plan/weapnonization fund is being investigated
- Trump’s name is being removed from the Kennedy Center
- All the main acts of Trump’s big 250 year birthday celebration have bailed out. I think Billy Ray Cyrus & Kid Rock are now headlining. Or maybe it’s been cancelled. I can’t keep up.
- The ICE agent in one of the Minneapolis shootings has been arrested
Of course court rulings come and go. We will see which way the political winds blow us.
I watched Jeremiah Johnson again. Maybe the 7th or 8th time. By God that movie makes me feel like I’m not doing life right.
To a cabin high
This wolf will disappear
I’m better off in these foggy mountain hills
I should have always been alone
That’s where my kind belongs
With a shotgun on my shoulder
And a craggy mountain songUgly Valley Boys – Alota guns
There are heroes. For me, it was mom. The woman who walked down the street each morning while I was getting on the bus, on her way to clean someone else’s home for $15 a day. She already cleaned and maintained our home — with 5 kids. And a big garden. Our household rarely had consistent or reliable income for most of my youth and money was tight. For school clothes and lunch money and sports programs, mom left every day to do what she had to do for her family.
Most of her clients were my school teachers. Dual income families back in the day when that was rare. They bought their cars new and took a vacation every year.
This amazing woman who never had anything for herself. Who worships and prays every day to the same god who took her eyesight when she was 29 years old, committing her to a life of few options.
My brother stopped over unannounced one Friday evening.
I love the pop in. It’s old school and not well tolerated these days of text before you call and scheduled events. But I still like it. In the old days, we routinely stopped at someone’s house with a 6-pack. No notice and they had no choice but to invite us in. It was a thing man.
Some of my favorite road trips started 5 minutes after some idea popped into my head.
Breakfast at budget hotels is like a feeding scheme at a refugee camp. Whole soccer teams molest the waffle maker and savage the eggs and potatoes. The toaster will catch on fire at some point. Exhausted parents wander around like zombies in sweat pants covered with all kinds of stains from some kid disaster or another. Total chaos.
I had to slap a little convict who was stationed at the toaster this morning. He kept putting the same piece of toast in time after time. The bread was black as coal but this little fucker was laughing and pushing it back down. I’m surprised the fire alarm didn’t go off. He finally wandered over to his mom who looked like she was trying to decide between more coffee, vodka, or suicide. He side-eyed me on his way over, but he knew better than to snitch. Anyway, his mom would probably have rewarded me. She knew this kid was destined to be up close and personal with the judicial system his whole life.
Brittany and I were tired one day a while back. We both worked late and I had to get up at 3:30 am for a flight to Boston. So instead of the planned home-cooked meal, we rolled down to our local — which is a little Mexican restaurant a mile from Brit’s house.
We sat at the bar. As we do. Two young’ish men were sitting to my left and they were pretty deep into it. They had a bucket of beers in front of them and each had a couple of shots while we were eating. Another bucket of beers, another round of shots. They had their own little party going on — music blared from a phone that sat on the bar between them.
We chatted with them a bit just as we were getting ready to leave. One thing led to another and turns out one of the guys’ girlfriend had dumped him that day. Or so the story went. They would not let us leave without a shot of tequila.
So Brit and I joined them and two other bar neighbors for a commiserating shot of tequila. What else could we do — the guy was heartbroken.
The newly single lad had half a tooth missing from one of his fronts. Sitting on the bar next to his beer and shot glass was a grapefruit-sized tangle of bills. 20’s, 10’s and some 1’s. They were crumpled up like they had been wadded into a ball and put in his jeans pockets 3 years ago. I don’t know if there was $50 there or $500. Every time they ordered, the bartender gingerly extracted a bill or two.
I get a kick when HR people are politically incorrect. One HR guy recently said about one of his colleagues, ‘she’s pregnant, stay clear of her‘. The CHRO told me, ‘I got no time for pansies on my team; ‘I need people who can man-up’!
It seems that humans are remarkably capable of and committed to destroying the planet and all life forms, including our own species. The damage we are doing is irreversible as all the inertia lies with the wealthy capitalists much more than the opposition.
A new story this morning documented how the Trump administration is paying billions of dollars to private companies not to build windmills. We also, of course, still give oil companies massive tax subsidies to drill for more oil.
So we are not passively destroying the planet, we are actively accelerating the process with money that might be used for healthcare or renewable energy or education or medicines for old people.
This ride will end for me in the not too distant future, for all of us. But now we are making sure to cut it short and damned uncomfortable for all those who follow.
I actually care a lot more for the animals and fish and insects and trees and all other life forms who are victims of the stupidity of humans.
Even though public sentiment seems to be trending away from Republican extreme viewpoints, the Supreme Court continues to fully support Republicans. Most recently, by allowing state legislatures to gerrymander voting districts however they want. So Republicans will likely dominate the house in future elections and probably forever.
The NYT published an article of interviews with Trump voters who are now showing regret. As one would imagine, the piece articulated just how dumb most of these people are — which of course means they are easily manipulated into voting for anyone who tells them what they want to hear — regardless of the ridiculousness or inviability.
One interviewee said “I thought they would get rid of all taxes, so we get to keep all of our paychecks”. Another “I thought getting rid of the penny and getting out out of World Health Organization and Paris Climate accord would save money because they are such a big part of our budget”.
Those things add up to about .19 percent of our budget.
Some relatively high percentage of Republican voters are just really really dumb. The others probably have some concept of the evil they are enabling, but support it because they think they might pay a little less in taxes.
America as we have known it in my lifetime is over — so the quicker we accept that the better. I’m hoping to pick up my little family and retire overseas at some point.
I’m too old for a civil war and too stubborn to accept fascism.
I don’t understand how anyone can muster a case for optimism at this point. There is not a shred of evidence that the world has a chance of pulling out of the death spiral we are in. Yet I keep meeting people who think all will be okay. It won’t. For my generation — sure, we’ll die before the planet does. But a few generations down the road? What is the political, economic, and ecological climate look like then? Is there a single indicator that is trending positively, or even showing signs of trending positively?
In a purely intellectual sense, this reality should not impact our own happiness. Of course humans and animals will suffer as they have always suffered in masses since the beginning of time. The fact that we have the ability to alter this trajectory but choose not to is interesting and suggests our intellectual development has far outpaced our emotional maturity. But little of that reality impacts my life directly. Humans have always been destructive, but the industrial revelation brought scale and acceleration. Modern, unbridled capitalism provided the turbo-charge.
I allow the sadness of it to affect my mood I suppose, but even that is illogical since I am powerless to stop this machine of destruction.
I decided to shut down Martinitime for a while. Some may have noticed. I was thinking of running for president but decided not to. Actually, a potential consulting client wound up with Martinitime url and I assumed my political commentary would not be warmly regarded by a large not for profit hospital system. Harmless as it is, but you know how these things go.
The next time someone asks me if Martini is a ‘rescue dog’, with that expectant/judging attitude that any answer other than affirmative is tantamount to voting Nazi all down the ticket in Germany in the 30’s, I am going to ask them how many kids they have. When they inevitably say 1, or 2 or 3 or 4, which is statistically likely, I will ask them why they chose to be so selfish to have their own child when there are millions of children waiting for their forever homes. Why bring a child into a world that is already drowning in resource gorging humans and where billions of children are suffering from malnutrition and diseases that could be cured. Did you choose to add to the problem of over-population or choose to bring happiness to a child that needed adoption.
That should make me popular.
Years ago I suggested to a native of New Orleans that the most sensible thing to do is evacuate the entire area and let it return to wetlands. The conversation ended very shortly after that.
20 years later I am finally vindicated as attested by the article below.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/04/new-orleans-sea-levels-relocation-climate-crisis
My main problem as an entrepreneur is that I am primarily interested in creating things — and far less interested in the monetization part. So I expend the money and time, but once the product is created, I lose interest trying to sell it.
I never even tried to market my book all those years ago. Never really tried to build a credible camp trailer business. Just proved the design was viable with two credible prototypes and then moved on.
I’ve invested a considerable amount of time and money in projects that may not have made sense to anyone else. But they made sense to me. A bookstore and coffeeshop back when that was an anomaly. A high-end restaurant in a small town. Campers that were designed and priced for outdoor enthusiasts rather than people who wanted a house on wheels.
I asked my friend Kenny to help me build something unique. A treetop bedroom that adjoins my house in West Virgina and is accessed via an elevated walked.
This notion was inspired partly by the simple but beautiful design of Dani Holloway’s Stiltz Hotel in Western Namibia.
Kenny, as always, delivered. The new addition to Black Dog Ridge is a bedroom that sits 20′ off the ground in the tree canopy. The wrap-around deck provides amazing views of the Greenbrier River and the surrounding forest, 50 feet or so from the main house.
The attention to detail is amazing. Every element inside and out is a testament to old world craftsmanship, married with modern sensibility. Comfort and beauty perfectly joined. The large trees serving as support came from the forest property — trees that were near end of life. We chose the site based on the fact that we did not have to take down any trees that were not already standing dead or dying.
It may not make sense to anyone else. But it made sense to me. Or I guess it did at the time.
I had to tell a story the other day to some colleagues at my new gig. Had to. Accenture guys. We were debating how to deal with a somewhat unique situation which had to do with roles and responsibilities for high level management consulting versus tactical implementation work — which is what I do.
In the conversation, in which I was trying to delineate the difference between these two types of consulting, I tried to work in a rugby analogy.
It went like this. In most of the world, rugby is viewed as an elite sport. In colonial countries, rugby is often the sport of choice in private schools and soccer is preferred in public schools. Elite vs pedestrian or mainstream.
That is school boy rugby. But then you get to men’s club side and this is where there is a divergence.
I played rugby for 23 years. Among the best years of my life. I loved playing rugby. I still dream about playing rugby. No matter what happened during the week at whatever shit job I was working back then, or what was going on with a relationship or life in general — I always had Tuesday and Thursday practice where I ran and worked out with my crew. My pack.
On Saturday’s, we drew some blood in battle and were bloodied in return. We used our bodies in a very physical and aggressive way to go to war for a while. Then we drank beer and celebrated the feeling that comes when endorphins fade away and we realize we’ve survived.
I was one of those rugby players that did not go to a private school. I learned to play from men who also did not have that type of education. We played a different type of rugby.
I played with a few of those prep school lads back in the day. Some were okay. They had nice manners and teeth.
A lot of them didn’t have the stomach for the games that got tough. They liked to throw the ball around a bit, have a little run, and then head to the pub and sing some glee club bullshit. These were the guys who conveniently pulled a muscle and had to come off the field if a game got really rambunctious.
Rugby players in the style I played do not become management consultants. I have no tolerance for the fake vernacular and bullshit they peddle talking about optimizing operating models, driving synergies, and scaling dynamic solutions et al.
I’ve been around long enough to know that those assholes don’t even know what the words mean. Executives don’t really know either but they know others hired a team of consultants so they are afraid not to do the same.
If you give me a set of marching orders — I am going to get that shit done. That’s my type of consulting.
The rugby analogy was a stretch but I wanted to talk about something real for a change.
I suspect, if I were not so old and cranky, I could spin up some bullshit and join that other world and fit in. But I do have some boundaries. Some ethics.
Brit was at Whole Foods not long ago and a homeless guy hit her up in the parking lot and had ‘tap to pay’ set up on his phone. His back story was that he was a former COO of a landscaping company and needed funds to get his company back. When Brit came out of the store and saw he was still there, she kept a can of beans in her hand in case she had to beat his ass.
That’s my girl.
America is so desperate for any sort of positive imaging, NASA is billing a new launch around the moon as ‘historic’. Complete with all the theatrics and Madison Avenue messaging trying to prop up something we did 50 years ago as somehow newsworthy now.
When we landed on the moon 50 years ago, that was amazing. Truly historic. Groundbreaking. But now, with the space station nearly 30 years old and people living there for months at a time, the current launch to go around the moon, not land on the moon, seems remarkably diminutive comparatively. But that has not stopped NASA from using the most ambitious declarations they can come up with.
I forget sometimes that if I just endeavor to live my life like Jimmy Buffett, all will be fine. That’s a truth worth more than gold. Most of our anxieties are manufactured in our own minds and not worth the emotional energy it takes to spin them up.
But it’s hard to let it all go sometimes. For all of us.
I’ve been working on a comprehensive review and touch up of SV2SA, with an aim of re-releasing the book next year with a new foreword and final chapter. I also want to release an audio version.
As I read the words I wrote over 20 years ago, I remember very clearly the dust and sand of the classrooms at Kolin and sitting with the teachers in the lounge and chatting with Ms. Both in her office. Escaping to the coast on the weekends to get out of sad, tired Arandis.
When I walk down my lane, surrounded by forest and the peace and beauty of Appalachia, or relaxing on the deck of Black Dog Ridge, I feel blessed. Not that I am free of all the anxieties of modern life, but only that I feel I have a chance.
Humbly Submitted
Robert Myres – Rugby Player (ret.), writer, comic genius
The Martini Tales 