R.I.P. Brack Howard.

Roughly ten days ago, my cousin Sabrina messaged me to relay the news that our cousin Brack Howard had died. He was born in 1955, which places him at 61 or 62 at the time of his passing. I'm unfamiliar with the details.

I'd been waiting for an obituary to be published, but given that Brack's wishes were that neither a service be conducted nor a funeral held (he was cremated), it seemed there might be no public notice, either.

This seems a shame, so please forgive me for any possible trespass as I remember him here.

Brack was his middle name. His first name was Roger, and he was named for my father. To be honest, we hadn't been particularly close since my childhood years, but Brack always took an interest in me back then despite our five-year difference in age, and I'm thankful to him for this, as I was an only child, and he was someone fun to play with.

Talkative and friendly, probably the only harm Brack ever did was to himself, and he's certainly not alone in this regard. He had issues, many self-inflicted. So do the rest of us. It isn't something I often say, though surely merited in this instance: I'm happy he's at peace, as I suspect it often was elusive in life.

My cousin Brack Howard is survived by a brother (Jeffrey) and sister (Whitney).

Charlie Pierce: "I don't know what comes next. For now, it's family."

My thoughts are at the end ... down there ↓ but first, thoughts from one of my favorite scribes.

Even in Great Despair, There Is Hope, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

I don't know what comes next. For now, it's family.

It will do us all good, I think, to take a weekend off from the cares of a world that seems to be coming apart from its mind outwards. It will do us all good, I think, to take this particular holiday slowly as it comes around. Even the pagans needed some excuse to rejoice in the darkest time of the year, which is why Christians copped the notion in the first place, and this has been a year with more than its share of dark times, god knows. And there's no telling what's coming down out of the deep woods come the next turning of the calendar. But very likely it's something we've never seen before, or at least that's the way I'm betting.

I've highlighted one passage.

So, as long as we're all in this alien country in which all the landmarks are familiar, but not entirely so, and changed in some vague way at their foundations, it won't hurt us to sit down and catch our breath and realize that, in the end, we are all that we have, and to find, if not joy in that, at least some comfort. Coats against the cold, as the late Guy Clark would have said. I don't know what's coming next. (Truly, at this point, I don't even want to guess.) But there will be places to stand against it, if needs be. Those are the places in which we still can have faith in hope, and where we can see through the storm the golden light of one candle in one window. That should be enough for now.

Picking these places to stand will be the essence of your resistance. Think about them carefully. Although the e-universe exists to rush our thoughts, this is the time to step aside and consider choices carefully. My own resistance will be here, where I live.

But Charlie is right. Give it a rest this weekend. Ignore Trump's idiotic tweets and the death throes of Democrats in "opposition." Take care of business at home. Whether by blood, circumstance or choice, family is a fundamental building block. Indulge it.

Then, when the holiday season is over ...

Eastern USA Road Trip 2016, Day 5: Ruby welcomes the Confidentials to Massachusetts.

The whole point of the eastern road trip was for my wife Diana to visit Ruby, the five-month-old daughter of her niece Jen. Ben is Jen's husband, and they're wonderful folks, indeed.

The Confidentials rented another excellent Airbnb, this time the basement apartment of a house in a rural area a mile away from Jen's and Ben's house. It is so "country" that the owner recently saw a mama bear and cubs in the back yard, and garbage left too long in the outside can is in danger of being disrupted by critters.

However, within a 50-mile radius of our lodging, there are ample human populations as well as 51 colleges and universities, including UMass (Amherst), Smith and Mount Holyoke, the latter located in South Hadley, our base of operations for three days.

The next three days were destined to be about family, babies and the sort of domesticity that I've seldom experienced in my life. Perhaps for this reason, it was enjoyable in ways that I wouldn't have expected prior to arrival. I let go of my walking obsession and relaxed. It was high time for such. We hung out a lot, and took a few excursions.

There were beers and food, as at the fine Yarde Tavern in the center of South Hadley, where my Saturday lunchtime Reuben sandwich was delicious with a chaser of Allagash (Maine) Witbier.

Our visit to the Montague Bookmill is described at the Potable Curmudgeon blog:

About the Montague Bookmill, and a few beers in the Massachusetts countryside.

Following are a few frames of many casual photos.

Labor Day weekend in New England is something I could do more than once.

B. W. Smith: "It's not just that Ward (Cleaver) is more hip than any of us recall, it's that, were he around today, he'd vote Obama."

Thanks, Brandon.

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Ward Cleaver would Vote Obama, by B. W. Smith (Open Salon).

That's right. You read it here first.

Recently, it occurred to me that, despite my best efforts, I had turned into Ward Cleaver. I wore the suit, had the elegant stay-at-home wife, kid, and heck, I even lived in a ranch house built, you guessed it, in the 1950s.

Ward's only a television character, of course, but he's an iconic figure in American pop culture - a symbol of an era that conservatives want us to believe was a golden era of the nuclear family. It turns out, however, that when you examine his record on Leave it to Beaver (courtesy Wikipedia), Ward's not the guy our collective conscious remembers.

It's not just that Ward is more hip than any of us recall, it's that, were he around today, he'd vote Obama. Sure, he looks like a country-club Republican on the surface and kept up appearances for the neighbors, but consider the lesser-known record:

-He reads the newspaper…everyday.

-He played basketball in school.

-He smokes, but he’s subtle about it.

-He dries the dishes for his wife.

-He drinks brandy but not to excess.

-He only owns one car, and he sometimes leaves it at home on a work day.

-He occasionally works from home.

-His job is mysterious, but it involves a briefcase and predicting the needs of women (he was once spotted working on a women’s marketing survey).

-He has a cool bachelor uncle, Billy, the world traveler.

-He was a philosophy major in college.

-He’s a veteran, attends church, and loves his country, but he’s not smug about it.

Thus, extrapolate Ward 50-some years into the future, and you’ve got a college-educated, middle-class professional, green-leaning, family man, non-wacko, main-stream, Midwest blue-state American…an Obama supporter. Just like you and me.