I love the java jive, and it loves me

Barring a descent into heavy alcohol consumption, there's nothing like a fresh pot of good coffee, made the way God intended it, to take the edge off a crappy day.

Today has been one of those crappy days, and this is my means of self-medication. If this is a total fail -- I don't think it will be, but you never know -- perhaps I will resort to calling Dr. Jack Daniels.

But I don't think that will be necessary.

I just have some simple advice to the world. Or at least some advice for having a happy middle age.

First, never allow your parents to get old. Second, don't let them get weird.

If one or both go weird on you, you're just screwed. In that case, I'd recommend stocking up on good coffee . . . and good bourbon.

Just in case.

Of Christmas gumbo and 'offering it up'

EDITOR'S NOTE: We're waiting for the second round of ice to hit, the blizzard to come for Christmas Eve . . . and I'm pretty sure I have a sinus infection. So during this interlude before getting snowed in -- and then a spate of Christmas digging out from under it all -- I thought I'd rerun a "greatest Christmas hit" from Revolution 21's Blog for the People.

This originally ran early Christmas morning 2007, it's still true, and I find I have nothing more to add to it. So I'm just rerunning this reflection on Christmas gumbo and offering it up. Merry Christmas, y'all.

It's the wee hours of Christmas morning. The Christmas Eve chicken -and-andouille gumbo is in the fridge, the Christmas Eve guests are long gone and Midnight Mass is long over.

Christmas music plays on a Canadian station on our old Zenith, and I've just polished off a bottle of Cabernet. So I'm sitting at the computer, pretty much alone with my thoughts. And my memories.

THIS CHRISTMAS has been strange, to say the least. From the Omaha mall massacre to the passing of a young friend, it's been impossible to shake the specter of death looming over this season of joy. For so many here this holiday season, it has been a time of profound loss.

And in the dark and quiet of this Christmas morn, we take time to mourn, to recall those who live now only in our hearts and memories. . . .

Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more

EVERY CHRISTMAS EVE I make a huge pot of gumbo and we throw open the doors to whomever wants to share in the largesse. It's my attempt to keep alive a tradition from my mother's side of the family in Louisiana, when my grandma -- and later my Aunt Sybil -- would cook up mass quantities of chicken gumbo and put out trays of sandwiches, relish, fruit cake and bourbon balls.

It seems like Aunt Sybil used to cram something like 100 relatives into her and Uncle Jimmy's tiny house in north Baton Rouge. I come from a family of loud, argumentative people -- it's a Gallic thing -- and opening the door to that caffeine, nicotine and highball-fueled yuletide maelstrom was more than a little like having front-row seats at a Who concert.

Without earplugs.

WHEN AUNT SYBIL and Uncle Jimmy moved out to the east side of town after my grandmother died, they gained some square footage. I'd like to think, though, that what the holiday gatherings lost in regards to that sardine je ne sais quoi, they made up for in "only in Louisiana" weirdness.

Like in 1983, when my brand-new Yankee bride learned first-hand that William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor weren't making that s*** up.

Everything started out normal enough, ah reckon -- taking into account, however, that this was south Louisiana. You know, 87 quintillion relatives (the identities of some of whom, I had only the fuzziest of notions about) all talking at the same time. Loudly.

Of course, Mama assumed my bride had received full knowledge of all these people along with the marriage license. My bride, for her part, may well have been wondering whether she could get an annulment and a refund on the marriage license.

And then Aunt Joyce -- second wife of Mama's baby brother, Delry, whose first wife was mentioned only after spitting on the ground (or so it seemed) -- had a "spell."

IF WE HADN'T FIGURED this out by the trancelike appearance, the eyes rolled back into her head, and full knowledge of her bad heart, we would have been tipped off by everybody running around the house yelling "Joyce is havin' a SPEYUL!"

There could have been a fire, resulting in great carnage -- or something like that -- if Cousin Clayton hadn't been there to grab Joyce's burning cigarette.

Ever hear the song "Merry Christmas From the Family"? Robert Earl Keen ain't making that s*** up, either.

Anyway, 20 people crowding around her announcing that Joyce was havin' a spell brought my aunt around after a fashion . . . and the show went on. At least until Aunt Sybil died some years back.

The sane one in my family, Aunt Sybil was the ringmaster of family togetherness, probably because she believed in "Baby, you got to offer it up." Everybody else . . . well . . . didn't.

TWENTY-FOUR YEARS after Aunt Joyce had a spell and Mrs. Favog got a masters in Southern Gothic, almost all of my aunts and uncles are gone. And I make my Christmas Eve gumbo up here in the frozen Nawth for friends who like exotic fare and funny stories about Growing Up Louisiana.

Then we go to Midnight Mass, being that Mrs. Favog and I are Catholic now, in no small measure because of Aunt Sybil and Uncle Jimmy, wild gumbo Christmases and "Baby, you got to offer it up."

After we were confirmed in 1990, the wife and I got a package from Aunt Sybil and Uncle Jimmy -- a Bible, his and her Rosary beads, and a crucifix. The biggest gift, though, was one they never knew they were giving.

Someday soon, we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, well have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

As seen on Facebook. . . .

If only. . . .

You know?

Café chaud de la Louisiane

My Aunt Rose made the best coffee in the world.

That's because she made it the way God intended coffee to be made -- in the kitchen of a double shotgun house, on an old stove with a whistling kettle and a little, well-used French-drip pot filled with Community coffee. If you want to better understand Louisiana, you need to know about Aunt Rose's coffee.


I'll tell you how to make real Louisiana coffee in a second -- and, mind you, I know about these things. Take Community coffee, for example. That's what just about everybody from my corner of South Louisiana grew up drinking . . . that strong and wonderful inky-black brew.

Hell, I've been drinking Community since I was . . . well, for as long as I can remember. When I was a little kid, I started off with coffee milk on the weekends.

Anyway, that's what you start your pot of coffee with, some Community "Pacquet Rouge" (above), named for the red bag (or can) in which it's packaged.

THE BRAND has been around since 1919, when Henry Norman "Cap" Saurage started custom grinding dark-roast coffee for customers of his Full Weight Grocery in "Dixie," a north Baton Rouge neighborhood that was pretty much "out in the country" back then. Today, the brand covers the Gulf South like the dew. It's found in every grocery store, and there's a chain of coffeehouses and a booming mail-order business.

I guess you could call ol' Cap Saurage a coffee tycoon. We just called him Uncle Norman, being that he was my great uncle. My half of the family was the poor relations, alas.

But we knew how to enjoy our Community coffee. Which brings me back to Aunt Rose, the little pot on the old stove, a kitchen table and an old double shotgun house off Greenwell Springs Road with a yard full of pecan trees.

Oh, and get you an old French drip pot, too. The one pictured above was Mama and Daddy's, and it's probably 60 years old.


AND BOIL you some water, cher. To make hot coffee, you need you some boiling water. But you knew that.

When I was a kid, I remember half the damn family crowded into Aunt Rose's little kitchen, all talking at the same time -- and loudly -- as everybody waited for the water to boil and then for the coffee to make.

This, realize, was an ongoing and repetitive process. Those little pots only make about five cups of coffee at a time.

Aunt Rose would be boiling water and brewing coffee as the conversation swirled around, by and through her. That's the beauty of coffee the "slow food" way. It's a great excuse to gab while you're waiting.


AS THE TALK went around and around, Aunt Rose would get out the bag of Community and fill the pot up to the ridge there.

Mama would be gossiping with her and my other aunts while Daddy complained about the world with my uncles, and all the young folk kept track of the dual streams of consciousness whizzing past each other -- and sometimes crashing into each other -- somewhere above the kitchen table.

OVER ON THE old stove, the coffee pot looked something like this. Poo yi yi, dis gonna be good, yeah!

AT SOME POINT, everybody would just have to talk a little louder, because the kettle was starting to whistle.

And when the water was boiling, Aunt Rose would turn down her fire just to that point where the kettle would stay at a slow boil. Nowadays, I find it easier to pour my boiling water into something that's easier to pour from than a big ol' kettle.

While the womenfolk were verbally separating the sots of the family from the saints, it was time to get serious about creating a pot -- OK, several pots -- of South Louisiana magic.

See, you pour you water on the grounds a little at a time so you don't make a mess, yeah. You don't want to make no mess with dem water and coffee grounds all over you burner, no.


AND WHILE the menfolk debated the relative merits of, say, Richard E. Nixon, dat communiss Hubert Humphrey -- well, Uncle Jimmy would object to that characterization of Humphrey, being the family's yellow-dog Democrat -- and George Wallace, cher, you grounds gonna start to look like this when dey foam up (above).

I could eat it like this, yeah.

WITH THE running tally being Richard E. Nixon 1, George Wallace 3 and dat communiss Hubert Humphrey 1 (God bless Uncle Jimmy, good Catholic that he is), Aunt Rose would be keepin' on keepin' on with the coffee.

See above? You keep doing it just like this until you got you a pot of good Louisiana coffee. Don't get impatient, cher. All good things -- especially coffee -- come to those what wait. They always somethin' to talk about.

AFTER YOU BEEN doing this a few times, you got to lift up the grounds holder to see how much coffee you done made, yeah.

You don't check on it, cher, and you gonna have a black-coffee fountain spoutin' all over you nice clean stove.


BY NOW, Aunt Rose would have all the coffee cups and spoons on the table. The sugar bowl would be there, too, as well as the can of Carnation or Pet milk if you wanted you some cream with your Community.

Now, ain't that one of the prettiest things you done ever seen? Hahn?

NOW THAT'S some coffee perfection, yeah. Ain't no Starbucks gonna give you no coffee like that, no.

Then again, back in Aunt Rose's day, we didn't know what Starbucks was. (Intergalactic cash money???) We didn't need it.

WHEN YOU HAVE good Community coffee, made amid your little community with care and love, every kitchen table is Starbucks -- only better. That is, if you make time to stop and smell what's brewing at Aunt Rose's.

I bet you can taste it now. Bon appetit . . . dahlin'.

To shoot or not to shoot . . . .

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I truly am unsure whether to be horrified or to say "Way to go, pops!"

The pending demise of Uncle (Deleted)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I think I need to call home and check on Uncle (Deleted).

Between Barack Obama becoming the 44th president of the United States -- the first African-American president of the United States -- and today's election of Michael Steele as chairman of the Republican Party -- the first African-American chairman of the GOP -- January has been a cruel metaphysical month for Uncle (Deleted).

AND HE WAS WORRIED about a black proctologist.

From MSNBC:

Michael Steele was elected Republican National Committee chairman on Friday, defeating the incumbent party chief and three other challengers over six rounds of voting to become the first black to lead the GOP.

(snip)

"As a little boy growing up in this town, this is awesome," said Steele, the most moderate candidate in the field and considered an outsider because he's not a committee member.
In a brief acceptance speech, the new GOP chairman struck a tone of inclusiveness.

"We're going to say to friend and foe alike: We want you to be a part of us, we want you to with be with us, and for those who wish to obstruct, get ready to get knocked over," Steele said.

NOW, POLITICALLY, there's nowhere for someone as unreconstructed as Uncle (Deleted) to turn. For old Jim Crow, hiding out in the swamps of Louisiana, this cruelest of months must be something like the Charge of the Light Brigade:

"Forward, the White Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

N*****s to right of them,
N*****s to left of them,
N*****s in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the n*****s there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Agitators and misegenators
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

(Apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

THIS MONTH, it's just been a bitch to be racist. Then again, tomorrow is another day!

But maybe not for Uncle (Deleted). Alas.

A '60s kind of Christmas

Do a search for Christmas videos on Google, and you'll find the most fascinating things.

For instance, did you know there's a Web site with nothing but home movies on it? There is. It's run by a film-transfer business called Home Movie Depot.

And there we find some old Super 8 movies belonging to a user, handle of Fabian. Fabian's family was in sunny Southern California in the 1960s, it seems. The web page guesses this home movie was from 1965.

It wasn't.

The women's clothes are off for '65. For one thing, miniskirts weren't widespread in this country in 1965, if they had gotten here at all.

FOR ANOTHER THING, the kids are playing with the Hot Wheels they got for Christmas. Hot Wheels didn't appear on the scene until 1968. Note to self: Retrieve old Hot Wheels and Hot Wheels track when you go back to Louisiana next summer.

Merry Christmas from the family.

Carve the turkey turn the ballgame on
Make Bloody Marys cause we all want one
Send somebody to the Stop 'n Go
We need some celery and a can of fake snow
A bag of lemons and some Diet Sprite
A box of tampons and some Salem Lights
Hallelujah everybody say cheese
Merry Christmas from the family

Feliz Navidad.

Tales from home: Sin makes you stupid

Talked to Mama on the phone this afternoon.

"Your Uncle (deleted to protect the guilty) was supposed to be back in the hospital today."

"What for?"

"They was gonna give him a colonoptomy [That's colonoscopy everywhere else in the English-speaking world. -- R21], but he refuse to go."

"Why is that?"

"He said he wadn't gonna let no damn n****r put they hands on him. Your cousin said that's on him, they cain't force him to go."

"Well, you know there's gonna be a black president now. Is Uncle (deleted) gonna give up his citizenship?"

Confirm us in our trespasses, and deliver us from African-American proctologists. Amen.

UNCLE DELETED IS 88 years old, and he'd been in the hospital a week or so ago because he needed a blood transfusion because he was bleeding internally somewhere. The colonoscopy was to find out where.

But he won't have it done because the doctor who was supposed to perform the procedure is black. This in the Age of Obama.

America needn't get its hopes up unnecessarily or pat itself on the back prematurely. In lots of places -- most especially the South -- the ugly past not only hasn't been forgotten, it's not really past. William Faulkner knew of what he wrote.

Likewise, there are reasons my home state of Louisiana was a backwater, is a backwater and seemingly will forever doom itself to being a backwater. One big reason is that Uncle Deleted isn't all that unusual there -- still. Another is that folks down there still think his kind of s*** is normal.

To be tolerated, even.

Unlike African-American proctologists sticking scopes up white butts.

THERE'S A REASON why my home state is on the bottom of all the good lists, at the top of all the bad lists and nowhere to be found on the short lists of corporate America. There's a reason why the public schools in my hometown, Baton Rouge, are 83-percent minority.

There's a reason why literacy and high-school graduation rates there lag behind almost every other state. (And the even worse scofflaws are likewise all in the South.)

There's a reason so many people are poor there.

The reason? Sin makes you stupid.

Its wake swamps all of history and extends well into the future. It has consequences for every segment of society, and it can turn its victims into sinners, too. (See New Orleans, City of.)

Imagine someone who'd rather -- perhaps -- die before his time rather than let a black physician mess with his colon. Imagine a whole society built upon that premise.

Imagine the mess my home state perpetually is . . . and why some of us find that "We shall overcome" sadly coincides with "We have left for good."

Hell on wheels

To my old man, wheelchairs didn't bring forth visions of the disabled. They were just more stable platforms to shoot from.

I learned this the hard way.

Mrs. Favog and I hadn't been married but a few years when we became aware of my father's . . . uhhhhhh . . . eccentric views about those confined to chairs with two big wheels in back and a pair of little ones in the front. We were living in Baton Rouge at the time, and we were over to my folks' house for dinner.

IT WAS Labor Day. I know this because I recall that we were watching the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.

I made the mistake of asking whether they'd be making a donation to Jerry's Kids, fighting the good fight against muscular dystrophy.

Hell, no, said the old man.

Why was that?

He then launched into a diatribe about the crippled, wheelchairs and guns. Something about how the Wheelchair People were just itching to gun us all down.

I can picture it now: The cute little Muscular Dystrophy Association ambassador -- probably all of 11 years old -- was pissed as hell about his impending horrible death from a dread disease and, dammit, he was going to take as many people as he could with him.

Unfortunately for us, the wife and I did the rational thing when presented with the specter of Roland the Crippled Wheelchair Gunner. We laughed our asses off. But my old man wasn't joking.

I ought to have figured that he wasn't. The old man almost never joked.

WHAT FOLLOWED was an angry diatribe by the old man -- aimed at his uppity son and his g**damn Yankee wife. Somewhere in there was the memorable phrase, "I might not have book learnin', but I got common sense."

That phrase spoke volumes, actually. It needed to. What followed from the old man was about a month's worth of silence -- and not just on the subject of wheelchairs and guns.

The old man is long dead now, but the whack genius of Psycho Gunners on Wheels lives on in Favogian lore. After all, you just can't get anymore insane than. . . .

Ohhhhhhhhh . . . CRAP:

This shooter had an unconventional mode of transportation.

Shortly after 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, police responded to a call about a person who was down in the street near 69th and Maple Streets. Officers found Patrick Amburn, 40, of Glenwood, Iowa, who told them that he had been shot by a man in a wheelchair.

Amburn was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center with a gunshot wound to his back. His injuries did not appear to be life-threatening, police said.

THANKS, Omaha World-Herald. I can hear the old man going "HEH HEH HEHHHHHHHHHH!" all the way from Roselawn Cemetery in Baton Rouge, La.

The cops had better haul in Jerry Lewis for questioning. He probably knows the assailant.

The 1,000th post

On the phone Tuesday afternoon with Mama, back in Baton Rouge, as she gives me the funhouse-mirror version of my Louisiana kinfolks' financial affairs:

Mama: Did you get dat govuhmunt check?

Me: You mean the stimulus check?

Mama: Yeah. How much y'all get?

Me: Twelve hundred dollars.

Mama: Y'all get dat much?

Me: Well, we're a married couple, and married couples get $1,200.

Mama: (Unnamed cousin) didn't get nothin', cause she didn't pay no tax. She's a notary public, and dey don't pay no tax.

Me: What?

Mama: Yeah, dat what (unnamed cousin) say. She's a notary public, and dey don't have to pay no tax, so she didn't get nothin' back.

Me: That's the first time I ever heard of anything like that in my life. If that's the case, the entire country's gonna be notary publics.

Mama: Well, I don't know.

Nighty night. I'm headed off to become a notary after grabbing a few hours' shut eye.

Teen-age mutant ninja whack jobs

If you took the reports trickling over the news wires about criminally disturbed teen-agers and replaced "arrested in the death of" or "massacred" with "infected by avian influenza," you could start a national panic.

As far as we know, however, there has not been one reported case of bird flu among American teens. All we have here are reported cases of sporadic atrocities -- ranging from school massacres to mall rampages to suicide pacts to the random unexplainable murder -- carried out by our children.

Ho hum.

Now let's get back to our plasma TVs, which hang in our McMansions, which we're trying to figure out how to pay for, while Junior shifts for himself because Mom and Dad (or Mom and Stepdad . . . or Dad and Stepmom, or . . . ?) are otherwise occupied.

"Say, what's on TCM, hon?"

"'Lord of the Flies'"

BUT FIRST, this special report from Nashville, Tenn. Here's The Associated Press with breaking news:

A teenage passenger from California was arrested in Nashville for plotting to hijack a plane from Los Angeles to Nashville, the FBI said Friday.

FBI spokesman George Bolds told The Associated Press the 16-year-old boy was removed from Southwest Airlines Flight 284 Tuesday night by authorities at Nashville International Airport and found with "suspicious" items.

Bolds said the teen had handcuffs, rope and duct tape in his bag and was believed to be traveling alone. The juvenile's name has not been released.

"His plan had a low probability of success," Bolds said.

(snip)

FBI's Bolds dismissed earlier broadcast reports that the teen was planning to crash the plane into a "Hannah Montana" concert in Lafayette, La.

Bolds said it has not been determined if the boy was trying to crash the plane. He said authorities searched the teen's home in California and found a mock cockpit.

The teen is believed to be suicidal, Bolds said. Bolds said he could not comment further on the teen's mental condition because he is a minor.

Bolds said the teen was calm throughout the flight and never made an attempt to hijack the plane but told the FBI after he was apprehended about his original plans to commandeer the aircraft.

TWO QUESTIONS: Does this child have parents? If so, where the hell were they?

Just asking.

I am legend

On Christmas morning, our little house bustles with the ghosts of children who never were.

They play tug of war with the ghosts of long-dead dogs and listen to stories of "way back there then" from grandparents who live only in memory. Then we all open presents never bought, tearing through brightly colored wrapping paper that never left its cardboard tube.

And someone always plasters someone's non-existent hair with non-existent bows.

THIS CHRISTMAS, the missus and I sit down for a late supper -- the two of us -- at a table built for six as the old radio on the bookcase plays carols about a holy infant, a mother and child, on some far-away station.

Through nearly 25 years of marriage, we have come to love one another more and more deeply, and we have learned to be thankful for the blessings that are ours. But after years of infertility, then cancer surgery that took a question mark and turned it into a period, we are haunted by the ghosts of our beloved children who never were.

My wife loves babies. She has an infant-seeking radar that will guide her to every small child in a room and have it in her arms as soon as Mama or Daddy will unhand the child. Most people don't realize what a remarkable thing it is to take such grief over what never was and turn it into such love of what is.

Even if "what is" belongs to someone else.

For years, we have volunteered with our church's youth group. And for a while now, we've been going to the weddings of kids the same age as our ghosts, then watching them have their own children.

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

I NOT ONLY cannot improve upon how Joni Mitchell describes the "Circle Game" of life, I -- and my wife -- have been doomed to not fully participate in it. My better half says there's one question she wants to ask Jesus when she dies, being that we live in a country where there's so few children even to adopt because so many parents don't want to be . . . and can make that so.

I'll bet you can guess what that might be.

We live in a society that feels free to take our pain and use it as a weapon to smash the natural law to politically correct bits. In fact, during one youth-group session, we sat there dumbfounded -- and seething -- as a "Catholic" theology professor speculated upon the possible ecclesiastical permissibility of "gay marriage" someday, on grounds that -- hey -- infertile couples can't fulfill the procreative nature of matrimony, either.

A roomful of societally brainwashed Roman Catholic teen-agers nodded approvingly.

I wanted to kill the son of a bitch. Who, naturally -- being a Catholic theologian teaching at a Jesuit university -- was impervious to objections raised on catechetical and natural-law grounds.

WELCOME TO THE LIFE of a childless, middle-aged Catholic couple in the Midwest. I don't relish this opportunity to give you a glimpse into our world. To tell you the truth, I've been writing this in fits and starts.

When you take a hot knife and dig around in an open wound, you tend not to have a lot of staying power.

This, however, finally made me do it. "This" being Rod Dreher's "Crunchy Con" post on an article (and online discussion) in The Atlantic Monthly about the apparently grim and lonely dotage we Baby Boomers will be facing.

In his post, Dreher quotes extensively from an online observation by Atlantic contributor Philip Longman:

Another relationship between fertility and aging is less obvious but also important to the future. Within the Baby Boom generation there was a pronounced disparity in birthrates. Those who remained childless or had just one or two children tended to be well educated, liberal, and secular. By contrast, the roughly 30 percent of Boomers who had three or more children tended be conservative, religious, and less well educated. Members of the later group, though only a minority of their own generation, produced more than 50 percent of the next generation.

Already, as I have argued elsewhere, this pattern in Boomer birth rates (which is much more extreme than in previous generations) has led to the country becoming more morally conservative and pro-family. As Dick Cavett once quipped, “If your parents forgot to have children, chances are you will as well.” The anti-natalism inherent in the modern liberal mindset leads to a gradual return of patriarchy, if only by default.

What does that mean for Boomers in retirement? A majority or near majority of younger Americans, having grown up in conservative and religious households, will tend to view childless Boomers through their parents eyes: as members of an irresponsible, alien tribe. Though the minority of Baby Boomers who rebelled against tradition have a hard time recognizing it, most people wind up adopting their parent’s belief systems, particularly if they become parents themselves. The apple rarely falls far from the tree. Accordingly, in the eyes of many, if not most, younger people, a Boomer without a family will be taken for an aging yuppie, a decaying narcissist, or ailing atheist—none of which stereotypes will be helpful in drawing public sympathy.

THAT'S. JUST. GREAT. If Longman is correct, the answer to "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?" (or 84) may well be . . . "No!"

All because my wife and I are going to be lumped together with all of the most pathological of my fellow Baby Boomers. Accused, tried, convicted and sentenced to die "alone and unloved" by the millennials and their children.

And the ghosts of our children -- our children who were so loved but never born -- will not be able to speak to their compatriots on our behalf.

They will not be able to come back to their childhood home to visit us, and to indulge the waves of childhood memories that, alas, never will engulf them. And we will not sit down together at the family table, eating my wife's wonderful cooking.

Neither will we all gather together at the Omaha homestead for my traditional Louisiana chicken-and-sausage gumbo on Christmas Eve, and I will not tell them stories of growing up down on the bayou. And my grandchildren will not ask me, "Grandpa, why did black kids and white kids have to go to separate schools?" or "Papa, how come great-grandma grew up so poor and never got to go to school?"

I WILL NEVER GET the chance to struggle at giving them my best inadequate answer, because our children and our grandchildren are not there, and we -- my wife and I -- are incomplete.

And on future Christmas mornings, our little house will bustle with the ghosts of children who never were.

They -- and their children who never were -- will play tug of war with the ghosts of long-dead dogs and listen to stories of "way back there then" from all the grandparents . . . who live only in memory. Then we all will open presents never bought, tearing through brightly colored wrapping paper that never left its cardboard tube.

And someone always will plaster someone's non-existent hair with non-existent bows.

Then after a Christmas alone with our thoughts, and with each other, the missus and I will sit down for a late supper at a table built for six as the old radio on the bookcase plays carols about a holy infant, a mother and child, on some far-away station.

So if you're walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
As if you didn't care, say, "Hello in there, hello."

Of Christmas gumbo and 'offering it up'

It's the wee hours of Christmas morning. The Christmas Eve chicken -and-andouille gumbo is in the fridge, the Christmas Eve guests are long gone and Midnight Mass is long over.

Christmas music plays on a Canadian station on our old Zenith, and I've just polished off a bottle of Cabernet. So I'm sitting at the computer, pretty much alone with my thoughts. And my memories.

THIS CHRISTMAS has been strange, to say the least. From the Omaha mall massacre to the passing of a young friend, it's been impossible to shake the specter of death looming over this season of joy. For so many here this holiday season, it has been a time of profound loss.

And in the dark and quiet of this Christmas morn, we take time to mourn, to recall those who live now only in our hearts and memories. . . .

Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more

EVERY CHRISTMAS EVE I make a huge pot of gumbo and we throw open the doors to whomever wants to share in the largesse. It's my attempt to keep alive a tradition from my mother's side of the family in Louisiana, when my grandma -- and later my Aunt Sybil -- would cook up mass quantities of chicken gumbo and put out trays of sandwiches, relish, fruit cake and bourbon balls.

It seems like Aunt Sybil used to cram something like 100 relatives into her and Uncle Jimmy's tiny house in north Baton Rouge. I come from a family of loud, argumentative people -- it's a Gallic thing -- and opening the door to that caffeine, nicotine and highball-fueled yuletide maelstrom was more than a little like having front-row seats at a Who concert.

Without earplugs.

WHEN AUNT SYBIL and Uncle Jimmy moved out to the east side of town after my grandmother died, they gained some square footage. I'd like to think, though, that what the holiday gatherings lost in regards to that sardine je ne sais quoi, they made up for in "only in Louisiana" weirdness.

Like in 1983, when my brand-new Yankee bride learned first-hand that William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor weren't making that s*** up.

Everything started out normal enough, ah reckon -- taking into account, however, that this was south Louisiana. You know, 87 quintillion relatives (the identities of some of whom, I had only the fuzziest of notions about) all talking at the same time. Loudly.

Of course, Mama assumed my bride had received full knowledge of all these people along with the marriage license. My bride, for her part, may well have been wondering whether she could get an annulment and a refund on the marriage license.

And then Aunt Joyce -- second wife of Mama's baby brother, Delry, whose first wife was mentioned only after spitting on the ground (or so it seemed) -- had a "spell."

IF WE HADN'T FIGURED this out by the trancelike appearance, the eyes rolled back into her head, and full knowledge of her bad heart, we would have been tipped off by everybody running around the house yelling "Joyce is havin' a SPEYUL!"

There could have been a fire, resulting in great carnage -- or something like that -- if Cousin Clayton hadn't been there to grab Joyce's burning cigarette.

Ever hear the song "Merry Christmas From the Family"? (And you would have if you'd listened to the Christmas edition of the Revolution 21 podcast.) Robert Earl Keen ain't making that s*** up, either.

Anyway, 20 people crowding around her announcing that Joyce was havin' a spell brought my aunt around after a fashion . . . and the show went on. At least until Aunt Sybil died some years back.

The sane one in my family, Aunt Sybil was the ringmaster of family togetherness, probably because she believed in "Baby, you got to offer it up." Everybody else . . . well . . . didn't.

TWENTY-FOUR YEARS after Aunt Joyce had a spell and Mrs. Favog got a masters in Southern Gothic, almost all of my aunts and uncles are gone. And I make my Christmas Eve gumbo up here in the frozen Nawth for friends who like exotic fare and funny stories about Growing Up Louisiana.

Then we go to Midnight Mass, being that Mrs. Favog and I are Catholic now, in no small measure because of Aunt Sybil and Uncle Jimmy, wild gumbo Christmases and "Baby, you got to offer it up."

After we were confirmed in 1990, the wife and I got a package from Aunt Sybil and Uncle Jimmy -- a Bible, his and her Rosary beads, and a crucifix. The biggest gift, though, was one they never knew they were giving.

Someday soon, we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, well have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Au revoir, pas adieu

Our young friend, Chris Rudloff, lost his fight last night, about the time I was uploading that last post.

Chris was a special young man with a gleaming future ahead of him . . . ahead of them, Chris and the love of his life, Abby. It was just in May that we attended their wedding, then partied through the night in celebration of their future together.

WE JUST DIDN'T KNOW -- couldn't have even believed -- that future would be this damned short. It's not right, and it's not fair. Of course, not a damned thing about life is fair. Death, either.

I write this through my tears this cruel Christmastime, and nothing breaks my heart more than to think that, at such a young age, Abby is living the worst nightmare of any woman who looks upon her husband and sees the love of her life. And of any man who desperately loves his wife and knows -- absolutely knows -- that it's all true when he calls her his "better half."

Likewise, it goes without saying how devastatingly wrong it is for any parent to bury a child.

This week before Christmas, I don't feel like decorating the tree. I don't want to do a Christmas edition of the Revolution 21 podcast. Particularly for us in Omaha, this season of good tidings and joy has brought in a harvest of death.

And now this for those of us who knew Chris and loved him.

WE WILL, however, decorate the tree. I will now get to work on putting together a Christmas podcast, though it may be a little late. It is necessary to celebrate the baby who came into the world to conquer death.

It is because of that first Christmas, that joyous day so long ago when God became man, that we now tell our friend Chris au revoir. Not adieu.

It's not supposed to be this way

In all of my wife's and my years of helping out with youth group at our Catholic parish here in Omaha, there was one band of brothers who were absolute stalwarts in "Connections."

That would be Justin, Chris and Joel. Teen-agers aren't supposed to be that dependable . . . or universally good-natured . . . or selfless . . . or faith-filled, for that matter. It gets your attention when you run across the likes of Justin, Chris and Joel.

Mrs. Favog and I had the pleasure of watching this trio of eventual Eagle Scouts come into the high-school group as 14-year-old kids -- first Justin, then Chris a couple of years later, then Joel a couple of years after that. More than anything, you remember two things. First, that they were always there, and you could always count on them. Each of the three even worked in the church office.

Second, you remember knowing from the first time you saw them that they were going to grow up to be good men. God knows that's not nothing, not today. It's a lot.

OVER THE YEARS, amid the teen-age hustling mob, we watched Justin fall in love with Annie, then stand beside her right after graduation as she fought cancer. We always knew they'd get married, and they did -- we rushed to make it to a hurried ceremony at church, hours before Justin shipped off to Iraq.

He came back in one piece, finished his hitch, and then we watched as yesterday's high-school kids became parents of a dear little girl.

Likewise, we watched Chris grow into a fine young man and fall in love with Abby. I think "Connections," in some mystical Catholic way, must be some kind of institutional Yenta.

And this summer, after Chris' graduation from college, we all gathered for Chris and Abby's wedding. Of course, Joel -- the youngest sibling, now a newly minted paramedic -- was the life of the party.

A couple of us old farts reminded Joel that we would blackmail him, just as soon as his future children were old enough to hear stories about their old man.

And after the honeymoon, Chris was off to optometry school in Philadelphia, where his bride would join him this winter after her graduation.

NOW CHRIS lies in grave condition in a Philly hospital, having fallen victim to something they call Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome. Today, the updates have gone from so-so to catastrophic.

It's not supposed to be this way: Chris and Abby have their whole lives together before them. Bright futures, successful careers, perfect children.

Grave illness is for middle-aged fat men like me. It's for those of us who have the luxury of thanking God for the grace of a life well lived, or mourning over roads not taken and opportunities squandered.

It's not fair that hopes and dreams, future years of marital love and generations to come should teeter upon some existential precipice, shakily tethered to this world by IV drips and a ventilator. There's something horribly and frighteningly wrong with this picture.

It's one of those mysteries we Catholics keep talking about. I've faced them before, real close to home. Now we face another.

And I hate it.

Please, if you have a moment, say a prayer for Chris and Abby. They need them so much, and life is so unfair.