Letter from My Daughter* to: The Pope

*the first of a periodical series of letters from my daughter to various folks. Everyone knows my daughter has an incredibly impressive vocabulary, but she's only 18 months old. So these letters are obviously on behalf of her. What I would hope she would say if she was able to do this herself.


Dear Pope Benedict XVI,

Just wanted to let you know you're letting a lot of good ones get away.

I am Catholic. Bred from a long line decent, good Catholic immigrant families, including the older generations who still go to mass every week; who believe in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit; who believe in the power of prayer and saints and miracles. I was baptized into the Catholic Church because while they are not really practicing or letter-perfect Catholics, Mommy and Daddy credited their Catholic upbringings with providing moral guidance and respect for tradition and elders. They wanted me to have a similar spiritual compass as I grow up. They had good intentions of at least considering whether or not to actively re-join the faith when I was old enough to sit still during a mass, and start to understand what was going on around me.

I saw a t-shirt last week that said "Christianity isn't for Sissies". I know it isn't supposed to be easy, so I guess that's an OK thing to say... but couldn't you make it even a tiny bit easier for people to be Catholic?

Let's be honest. If there is a God, do you think he is up in Heaven slapping a high five with the saints and angels while you do things like this? Or this? Or this? On the day of judgement will I be judged on whether or not I made it to every Mass, gave money to the Church, and supported all of your whacked Vatican laws?

No thanks. I will take what was good about Catholicism and leave the rest. I will honor my mother and father. I will love freely and openly all of my fellow citizens of the world regardless of race, religion, creed, gender or sexual orientation. I will fight for rights for all human beings everywhere. I will stick up for the little guy, and give generously to those in greater need than myself. And when I choose to have family of my own, I will provide them with this same groundwork.

I know you are only one man in a long line of men to hold this position. And I know that you cannot change thousands of years of church doctrine overnight. But you could have put up a signal that change was possible. Instead you are continuing to foster a powerful religious community that values discrimination over inclusion, hatred for some over love for all, and ignorance over mutual understanding.

I am youth. I was the future of the Catholic Church. And, your Holiness, you just blew it.

-- MRK

Tall Green and Handsome

Oooooo I can't wait to get my hands on this guy...

ISO My Own Apprentice

I could use an Apprentice of my own. Please only apply if you meet at least all of the following criteria.

1. You must be a highly-motivated, enthusiastic and very intelligent professional. Please note: If you sell real estate, arrange mortgages, own a contracting company, or are in any other way responsible for the rising debt of America's middle class by fueling the housing bubble, then you are automatically guaranteed a spot in the final four.

2. FEMALE CANDIDATES ONLY: You must be willing to undergo the following procedures if requested by my producer before filming begins: total body liposuction, laser teeth bleaching, breast augmentation, full body waxing, and hair highlighting.

3. MALE CANDIDATES ONLY: You must be male.

4. You must be able to pack 16 weeks worth of power suits, pajamas, workout clothes, accessories, toiletries, 20 pairs of shoes, 100 neckties, a small serving boy, and three french hens into one small carry-on pullman suitcase. And don't forget that in the Boardroom, many bags look alike. Make yours stand out.

5. You must (no exceptions) speak one of the following dialects of the English language fluently: Pennsyltuckansaw, Mormon, or NEYCL (New England Yacht Club Lockjaw).

I watched both Apprentice premieres this week (Donald Trump and Martha Stewart) and I'll admit being reasonably entertained by both. I was however irked by the opening "twist" of the Trump version.

What would possess The Donald to make his new crop of trainees run pointlessly around his golf course in search of the helicopter that would take only two of them to NYC for a head start on the first task? The sweating and huffing and puffing of 16 desperate power-suited executives running around like children on an easter egg hunt was almost painful to watch. It was a low point, even for reality TV, but as always I learned a lot from The Donald, and there two very important takeaways: 1. Power means I have the ability to make seemingly normal people do incredibly stupid things, while I sit back and have a martini on the back nine, and (most importantly), 2. If I'm going to have any hope of sprinting faster than a 6 foot tall marathon runner, I'll have to ditch my Jimmy Choo's early on.

Mock (yeah) ing (yeah) bird (yeah)...

A One-Scene Play:

Setting - inside the car, on the road coming home from a restaurant. Circa three hours ago.

Car screeches to a halt at a crosswalk.

WIFE (exasperated)
You are going to kill a pedestrian one of these days.

HUSBAND (sarcastically)
I know. I suck.

brief pause

18 MONTH OLD DAUGHTER (triumphantly raising her pacifier in the air, a la Rocky Balboa, from carseat in the back)
I-I-I-I-I-I suck!
I SUCK!
I suck!


CURTAIN

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

This past weekend for the first time in four years, I visited my college campus for Homecoming Weekend. It was a weekend of conflicting emotions. The campus was charmingly the same, yet completely different. The people were achingly familiar but strangers the same. The whole visit was at once exhilirating and tremendously disappointing. All things I'd expect to feel after having a decade of real life separating me from those good ol' days.

By far the biggest disappointment was the eerie solitude of the campus on the big Game Day. As I walked with Dan and my college roommate and her fiance, there was nary a student to be found... anywhere. We walked into unlocked buildings, turned on lights in two empty theatres, popped into the gym/field house, peeked into the library, browsed the campus bookstore, pressed our noses to the locked glass doors of the new cafeteria... and wondered where the hell everyone was. Even the disc jockey at my old radio station haunt was a "townie" -- working a non-student weekend shift.

Down at the alumni tent, the numbers were only slightly more encouraging. Members of the classes ending in "5" or "0" were celebrating reunions. The beer taps were flowing, and the buffet was pleasant. Amid the memories and the cameras and nametags and the orange-shirted alumni staff there were a familiar faces. A former party lush with a baby stroller, That annoying sorority sister who's name escapes me but whom ALWAYS remembers me at these things, the guy who I had a crush on who married his college sweetheart only to divorce 8 years and a couple of kids later.

But outside the tent, empty campus greens begged for picnickers, idle healthclub treadmills languished, overstuffed club chairs in the library remained cold. There were no campus tours. No students hammering away in the theatre scene shop. No students lining up around the spanking new Mongolian grill in the caf.

This was not a wild crazy campus when I was here, but there was a sense of a campus community. That does not seem to exist any more. Back in the day people didn't leave campus for the weekend -- there was a heart and a soul beating beneath it all. We were all overstretched to our limit with extracurricular activities, parties, and get togethers. And on a lovely fall weekend there were frisbees to be tossed, lines to be memorized, books to be opened, and friends to enjoy. Where are today's students and what are they doing with their lovely fall weekends?

But the alma mater, she did look ravishing in the September sun. Even with the many new buildings and all of the changes, the campus remains as I remember it in my heart, in all of its red brick, tree-lined, ivy-covered glory. It remains heartbreakingly beautiful in that Rockwell-esque, snow-globe kind of way.

It all provided fodder for many conversations for the afternoon and all through the ride back to my college roomie's house where we stayed that night. Rhetorical and philosophical questions: Are we mis-remembering how great it was? Are today's students just different? More absorbed in internet and video games and less with the outside enchantments that campus life provides? Did we decide to go to this school because it looked so quintessentially academic and beautiful, rather than weigh the rigors of the academic program? Does it matter? And more important questions: When did college students start looking so young? How did I get out of four years without ever trying a beer funnel? Why do I regret that in a sick way?

The weekend was not a total loss. There were upsides to the low alumni attendance and apparent mass abduction of the underclassmen. We had a sweet parking space with no trouble. There was no line at our favorite downtown restaurant. The football team was brilliantly terrible as always. There were many other little delights as well, not the least of which was connecting with the friends who were there, including the roomie, and my favorite bourgeois deviant and his wife. Friends who are the real pillars of the campus I remember, friends who provided the memories, and the education, that I prize most dearly.

Call the SPCA

Today, I came face to face with the enemy.

I mean, there has been certain... evidence... that a certain pest has been visiting my kitchen at night. A few weeks ago I had Dan put wire mesh around the ductwork and pipes in the cabinet under the sink ... I was trying to convince him that the black specs under the sink were mouse droppings, and he was trying to convince me they were not, but he's a good guy and he did what I asked anyway. Once the holes were blocked up, I bleached and scrubbed and reorganized until all trace of the pestilence was gone. And every morning with joyful satisfaction I open the doors to a sparkling under-sink area. I'd let my 2 year old eat off the floor of that cabinet now. Mission Accomplished.

But the little telltale specs started popping up near the dishwasher this week. The little bastard found another way in. I know it's the pipes around the dishwasher. We need to pull it out and fill the holes around the pipes.

Today between conference calls I was tossing a ball out in the yard with Mercury the Wonderdog and he starts sniffing around by the red wheelbarrow, upside down in the yard. Sure enough I hear something thumping around under there. A few half hearted pounces from my lazy-ass canine friend and sure enough, a little fluff of grey mousehood darts out from under the wheelbarrow and into a patch of grass near the basement bulkhead doors.

The internet is an amazing place. Over the next hour I learned that this was not just any pest -- it was Mus Musculus (a little known Marvel villain). It can squeeze through almost any 1/4" hole. It can shit 40-60 times a day on my kitchen floor. It can live off crumbs, dried spills, dog food (and if there is anything we have in abundance around here it is crumbs, dried spills, and dog food -- Hell-O, can you say life with a toddler??). It can reproduce 8 times in its one year life span, with multiple babies in each litter. And wondrous, almost magical, the teeth just keep growing and growing nonstop throughout its life -- it MUST chew on things to keep its teeth worn down enough to function normally. (But really the most wondrous magical thing is that it shits 40-60 times a day).

In the abstract it was a gross disgusting invasion of the most sacred room in my home -- my hearth! But then I met the critter face to face and well, the struggle sucks. Since my slobhound doesn't leave much in the way of food at night, and I have tried to be diligent about cleaning up spills when they happen, and we never leave food out, the mouse food is in short supply. What then, keeps him coming back? Is he looking for sanctuary, taking the chill off for a few hours in my warm house? Is he paying homage to the weeks-old stainless steel 5 burner dual fuel 2-oven Jenn Air? Is he lost?

I used to hate driving. I did not have a lot of experience -- I didn't really drive after leaving high school. I didn't take a car to college, and I lived in cities with good public transportation afterwards. But when we ended up in Boston in 2000, I had to do a little more driving on my own. I learned cautiously the 10 block comfort zone around our Cambridge Apt but never strayed beyond that one my own.

One day there was a dying squirrel in my back yard. It was bleeding and broken. I don't know if it fell from a tree or dragged itself into the yard from a car wreck. I called Animal Control and a host of other public works offices, with the same response -- they all told me to leave it alone, nature would take it's course, but they could come get it for the price of $100 (!!!). A call to Dan who was in B-School class at the time, ended with my sobbing after he asked me if I could take a shovel and "finish the job"... I called the Animal Rescue League and told them of my plight... they agreed to come pick up the squirrel to see if it could be rehabilitated, but it would be 5 hours. I told them I couldn't wait that long, and they said I could bring it to their "ER" myself. It was 8:30AM, and the ARL office was in downtown Boston. I put on my best rubber kitchen gloves, put the squirrel in a cardboard box and covered it up with a little tea towel and mapquested my way through the morning rush with my special charge. When I arrived they told me there was nothing they could do, so I filled out the paperwork and authorized them (authorized them! Me! Like I "Owned" the squirrel!) to euthanize the poor soul. (They did offer to give me the tea towel back, but I declined). Although it was a pivotal day in my driving career (it's been smooth sailing since), I was racked by guilt and nightmares and what ifs about the stupid squirrel for many days after.

So therein lies the dilemma with Mr. Mouse today. I cannot co-exist peacefully with this vermin in my kitchen. And yet I cannot bring myself to set traps or put out poison (both of which are dangerous with kids and dogs around anyway). Another Google search yielded many creative ways of solving the problem -- ranging from instant mashed potatoes (apparently the mouse will explode if he eats too many of them and then drinks water... I'm skeptical and it's gross anyway), to an elaborate contraption with a coffee can and a vat of bacon grease and water which guarantees a "humane death by drowning" (?)

Depending on its age, it could have 5, 6, 7 or even all 8 of it's reproductive cycles left! And it could have six inches of ungrown teeth and 3,600 more "deposits" to drop. I can't kill it. I don't want it to die, I just want it to move out.

So instead I'll be spending this weekend plugging every 1/4 inch hole in my kitchen with a combination of steel wool, dryer sheets, mothballs and essence of peppermint. I mean, who doesn't have time for that? And if that doesn't work, well -- his lifespan is only a year anyway, right?