Dear Beloved Sanibel...

         Dear Sanibel,

        It is heartbreak and anguish to see you shattered and broken. More heartbreak to ponder the human toll in the physical devastation. Dreams gone, homes, jobs life as normal wiped out.

        My pain is in memories only. Family vacations, anniversaries, book launches, special celebrations, times with friends and the dreams you launched. 

        Our girls grew up counting down until spring vacation and our escape from gray, cold and dark mid-west winters; there was excitement even in the wait until we could jet away. 

        We sensed life was kind when we first drove onto the causeway and felt the gulf breeze. So many years, so many of life's great moments, there on your shell tossed sandy beaches and under your thick canopy.

        Year after year Lana and I would walk your shore, being healed by the sun and Gulf, and be recharged to plunge back into life and careers.

        We watched as dear friends created a business, and converted a corner into an art and hospitality peace, and a piece of paradise. We watched our goddaughter grow as an island girl. We slept on the shop floor in our early vists and took pride in what Barb and Dave created.

        All of those grill nights, dinners at Jean Paul's, the Bubble Room, Mc T's and more. All of the laughter.

       Then precious Sanibel, you were where we planned to retire, and so we bought a house, and our dreams took hold. 

        In time our daughter moved there, we spent more vacation visits adding to the years of cherished time.

        My Sanibel Arcanum and The Sanibel Cayman Disc books were published and you helped me celebrate the success. The clippings and interviews and video tape reports now live in the archives of the Indiana Historical Society. All of those wonderful parties and book signings saved for the future.

        It was not about you, nothing about your tropical charm, but we changed focus. Our retired life was to be in California, another coast, another life, but so fondly and sweetly we remembered you, and our dear friends there and the thousands of memories. 

        Now we grieve. We are lucky, the memories remain. You dear precious Sanibel face another daunting time of rebuilding, repair, re-greening and rebirth so you can again be a haven of hope, laughter, peace, and memories. 

        We are sorrowed by the task that faces not only your communities, but the thousands of individual lives that have been altered.

        The Sanibel of my memory and the Sanibel of my novels was changing, as life does. But no one who has enjoyed your magic, your wildlife and wild nature, your devotion to the environment and love of birds can forget how special you were, and that was never to change. Nature will comeback. Ding Darling will again be a refuge and so too will you, precious Sanibel. You rare, east-west, barrier reef island, walking in the Gulf, you have endured for centuries, have taken hits, and have changed, but you always come back. 

        But for now, we hurt, we hurt for you. 

       See you down the trail.

A Statesman

 Richard Lugar and Birch Bayh

1980 AP photo

Two legendary US Senators

     Richard Lugar was a great man. There is a reason he served one of the longest terms ever in the US Senate; he was a thoughtful, analytical intellect, he was a devoted public servant with a drive to make things better, he stood his ground, he chided and pushed even Presidents, and he worked as hard as anyone to make this world safe from nuclear weapons.
   Lugar's passing at 87 is reason for you to spend a few minutes reading some of the cascade of coverage about this remarkable man from Indiana. 

       Tom and Senator Lugar at Richard Lugar Fitness Fest and Run

Lugar was an early advocate of fitness and was a runner.

      I was fortunate to meet and begin covering his political and public service career in 1969. He was the young mayor of Indianapolis and I was a reporter assigned to cover city government.
     At one of our first meetings, Mayor Lugar, who was organizing an international conference of cities, got down on his hands and knees and worked through an overflowing book case, looking for a manuscript by a scholar. He was an habitual reader, voracious consumer of information which he worked to integrate into his public service.

an historic save

      Lugar's work on Nuclear Disarmament and Agricultural reform were his long suits in the Senate where he was respected by both sides of the aisle. 
      Lugar was at the center of one of the most critical and dangerous tipping points in history.
      The Soviet Union had collapsed and Generals from the Red Army showed up in Washington wanting to talk about life and death matters.  
     Secretary of State Baker and the HW Bush White House were being careful, but to a fault and spurned the contact.
     Lugar took the meeting and along with Democrat Sam Nunn heard this message-The Soviet power structure is gone, so is the command of the Soviet Army and Navy and that means we no longer have control over nuclear war heads that have US addresses on them. The same is true for chemical and biological weapons. 
        Diverse locales, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and other nations that had been under the Soviet boot heel, had weapons, bases, ports and stock piles in their now independent nation. Who controlled them? That was the million dollar question.
      Lugar and Nunn were quick. Lugar, a former naval intelligence officer and Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee knew rogue players and terrorists soon would be bidding for control of the old Soviet nukes and chemical weapons and material.
     With in hours he and Nunn had worked legislative handles and had millions of dollars to essentially save the world. Soon they were flying off to the old Soviet empire and "buying" war heads, and paying military officers to stay in place and guard the nukes and subs, paying to house Soviet troops who were ready to desert since the empire was no longer in place and could not or would not pay the troops. The troops had families at home and they needed money. Command control was breaking down.
     What Lugar and Nunn saw would raise the hairs on the back of your neck. They returned to the states and crafted what was known as the Nunn-Lugar act. The US would buy weapons and take them down. It eventually became known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction plan. The two of them built a legislative consensus and kept the program funded. After Nunn retired, the work was Lugar's to do.
     This period of Lugar's work was one of the great diplomatic plays of all time. It is in the echelon of the Marshall Plan.  
    As a documentary maker I developed a project to tell the story. It didn't get made. As we were fundraising 9/11 happened. The focus shifted.

Senator Lugar and Lewis Stiner at the ceremony of Stiner's retirement

    Lugar was a progressive and creative mayor who was the godfather of revitalization of rustbelt cities. The halo around Indianapolis as one of America's great cities, was drafted and   the work began under Lugar, with the assistance of his dynamic staff, especially the visionary Jim Morris. The new Indianapolis that followed became guide light for other cities reinvention. 

     Morris was one of the brilliant young thinkers Lugar brought to public service and there were many.

     I met a young Mitch Daniels as he worked in that era and with Lugar's first political chief, Keith Bulen. Daniels became his Senate chief of staff for several years and later worked in the Reagan and W Bush administrations as well as being twice elected Indiana Governor. He is now President of Purdue University.

    The coverage of his passing reprises the extraordinary record of his 36 years in the Senate. Consider the sweep of history from 1977 to 2013 and ponder that Lugar was often a pivotal player and was revered and respected by politicians from every point on the spectrum.

     Praise came from former Presidents, current candidates, Democrats, Republicans and foreign leaders. They respected his depth and they liked the man. 

     When my fraternity brother and long time friend retired from Naval Intelligence, Lugar was there. He respected Lew's service. Lugar had been a legendary intelligence briefer for Admiral Raleigh Burke. He said that had been a shaping experience.

     A lot of people think Lugar would have been a good President. He gave it a run in 1996. One of his chief operators was Mark Lubbers, another of the brilliant people attracted to service by Lugar. 

     His campaign was themed on fiscal sanity and nuclear security. He was a brainy and non flashy candidate but what was the death knell for his campaign was the day it launched, April 19, 1995, the day of the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City. Millions of prospective voters didn't get to see or hear what would have been his moment in the spotlight.

      Amongst those who knew, worked with or covered Lugar there was always discussion about what might have been, how might the world have been different.
      Lubbers has advised Governors and lawmakers and has leveraged his own creative approach to policy issues, mentored by the Senator. Lubber's wife Teresa has spent her life as a multi term State Senator and Commissioner of Education. Her path to public service was inspired by Lugar who she interviewed as a high school journalist. He had a twinkle and spark and a way of motivating.
       There is a cadre of politicians and public servants who were inspired by the former school board officer, innovative mayor and towering 6 term US Senator.

      

      I've been ruminating on lots of Lugar reflections. 
      One that makes me laugh is when my first historical mystery-thriller novel was published. I was on Sanibel Island vacationing and doing a series of book signings. Lugar's staff reached me to say the Senator was also on the Island, one of his favorite break spots and that I should take a book around to him.

      When I arrived I was directed to a location near the pool and beach under an umbrella. There was the senator in a polo style shirt, Bermuda shorts, with dark, to the knee socks and I think wing tip shoes. They may have been loafers.

      I've written before about some of the greatest evenings.

When I was president of the Indianapolis Press Club we hosted dinner and conversations with Senator Lugar and Representative Lee Hamilton. Those men were among the most knowledgeable on national security, intelligence and foreign relations. They held ranking positions in the Senate and House. Sitting there and listening to their state of the art information and analysis, and seeing the respect they had for each and the marvelous byplay was a good as it gets.

     And so was Lugar. I didn't agree with all of his votes, but I respected him and the intelligence he put into his public service. He may have read more than anyone I know. He certainly did more to keep the world safe than probably anyone else.  
    If you don't know much about this man, read a few articles. He deserves the attention due a genuine and historic "Statesman." There are precious few.

       See you down the trail.

DIFFERENT CLIMES DIFFERENT TIMES

GOING BACK

   Though he meant it differently, Thomas Wolfe's title You Cant Go Home Again has been nagging around the edge of my mind. A deeper dive into that in a moment, but I wonder if some of you don't find yourself wrestling with Boomer Blues, prompted by the signals that life moves without regard to our wish that good things not change? 
   Here's the trail of this chain of thoughts;  We're back on the West coast after a couple of magnificent weeks with eldest Kristin and her friend Richard.  Magnificent because we cherish family time and because hospitality, weather and relaxation were extraordinary.

    Reading, relaxing, napping and not always in that order.

     The tropical clime, warm trade-wind breezes, balmy evenings and lack of drought created a comfortable cocoon from which to cogitate and reflect.

    It struck me that I've adopted a Cambria drought tolerant ethic. A quick and passing tropical drenching was a magnificent symphony of senses. But I felt guilt at showering at length or watching plants being watered. 

 Naples is nothing if not elegant and caloric. This calorie issue is a fault line of concern for a boomer jock.

   A jaunt to Ft. Lauderdale between the Atlantic and the Intracoastal Waterway provoked thoughts about  extraordinary wealth and spending of some of the 1%. For a journalist of Scot's heritage, that can inspire what is a full on rumble of pondering and argument.

   But it was the return to our beloved Sanibel Island that drove me into the land of the Thomas Wolfe -You Can't Go Home Again permutation.  Sanibel has always been a special home, a place of great joy and celebration, setting of two of my novels and where we once owned a home.

     We'd visit these rare Gulf beaches, seeking refuge from winter. Our girls grew from tots to mature women, shelling with their mother, building sandcastles with their dad and preparing for dinner at our special places like Jean Paul's and The Mad Hatter. Family vacations came at the end of month long countdowns, filled with anticipation.

    Getting to the island, a rare east west barrier reef island that is mostly wildlife preserve, was always a tonic for the soul. It always meant renewal and celebration with friends.

    But this year was different. The joy and luster was missing. Certainly the serious health concerns of dearest friends, the complexities of aging and the changes wrought by time imposed themselves.

  As we strolled the expansive beach, pausing where we spent so many springs in celebration, it was not joy, but a sadness over a mysterious loss that I felt.  

    Perhaps the Pacific serenade of my Cambria has weakened the magic song of the Gulf. The sun is bright still, the colors are vivid, and it is more green than my California when our sparse rainy season ends, but it just isn't the same.

   But neither am I.  I am older, my children are women, too many friends face health issues, some are gone. The career I took respite from on the Gulf beaches, is past and now seems of much less value that I once gave it. Life's order of things has changed.
   I wondered if I was slipping into a melancholy or depression. Was I somehow cheating the zest of life? No, I argued with myself. Concern for friends, sadness at loss, the inexorable movement of time are all part of the journey. There too is the truth that we cannot go back, we  do not recapture youth. And thus, memory is a gift. That is how we visit where time does no harm. 
    Our task then is to create new memories, as vibrant as we may. In that way the good old days remain good though old and as my Island friend Dave said, "we celebrate each day."

See you down the trail.

HOOPS TO GO & WRITE ON + SPRING PINK & MOON

BETTER THAN IT USED TO BE

     If you enjoy March Madness as much as I do, you have to love the way you can now stay connected with your phone

or tablet. The NCAA and CBS provide mobile links to all of the action.

      Oh how that could have made life easier a few years ago!

When the girls were in school, we'd take an annual spring break tonic of sun and beach on beautiful Sanibel Island.  As its was, that day of air travel conflicted with key games in

the big dance.  Having a couple of Indiana teams, or more,

that I was passionate about, it was torture to be in the air or car and away from seeing the tourney. 

      There were many years I'd ask the ATA flight attendant to ask the pilot to keep us up to date on scores.  Since the Indianapolis based flight crew and the plane full of passengers, for the most part, had the same basketball jones, they did a great job.  Still nothing like being able to

watch it on your phone.  Somethings in the good old days

weren't so good as they are now eh?! 

LOTS OF COMPANY AS WE WRITE ON

      I caught an amazing statistic in this blog. What you are reading now is one of 181 million blogs in the world!  Mind boggling.  As we used to say in television news, "Thanks for tuning in here. We know you have choices." And the number keeps growing.

DAY BOOK

SPRING PINK

&

FULL MOON

       An afternoon glass of wine and picnic.

       Full moon rising over the Santa Lucias.
       See you down the trail.