What's in Dave's Head

Regardless of your political bent, there’s no denying that 2017 was a screwy year, colored by polarization; global tensions, particularly regarding North Korea and Russia; mass killings; racist activities; political turmoil; and a president whose guiding principle seems to be self-aggrandizement. Yet in so many ways 2017 has been a very good year for Donna and me, filled with celebrations. In January we journeyed to Costa Rica to celebrate our anniversary and Donna’s birthday, and in November I finally was onboarded as a full-time employee at Constellation, where I had worked in the Communications department as a contractor for three years. In between these milestones, there were many happy days, most of which were centered on family. Our oldest child, Kate, was married in July to Steve Ritchie. The previous month Kate and I completed the one-mile Chesapeake Bay swim. It was wonderful swimming with Kate, who had trained hard for her first open-water swim and crushed it. In

An annual fall tradition Donna and I have is to take a day trip to the Catoctin Mountains, about an hour north and west of us between Frederick, Maryland and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It’s a beautiful drive, with farms and livestock dotting the landscape foreground while behind is the foliage displaying its pre-death flameout of color. We arrived around 10:30 and the parking lot at the visitor center we normally park at was full. We parked illegally just long enough to get directions from a ranger to a different nearby lot, and drove up Center Road to find it, at the head of a trail we hadn’t tried before. The 2-1/2-mile hilly hike through the thick woods took about an hour and a quarter. The quiet and sense of serenity is remarkable. The weather was spectacular -- sunny, crisp air, and temperature in the mid-60s.  However, as in previous years, we didn’t see, as I had hoped, elk, mountain lions, giant pandas, pythons or zebras. In fact, the only wildlife we observed was

Last weekend Donna and I took a road trip to Detroit to visit Donna’s sister Barb, who had arranged for us to see Paul McCartney in concert at her company’s suite in the brand-new Little Caesar’s Arena. In so many ways it was perhaps the most incredible thing I have ever experienced. I don’t know if people who weren’t around in the 1960s can understand what an impact the Beatles had on our culture. They didn’t just reflect the crazy, tumultuous times, they, perhaps more than any other band, helped drive it. They made a triumphant maiden U.S. tour in 1964 after their first two U.S. albums had done well. They were instant sensations, with their distinctive look – moppish haircuts and skinny trousers – and sound. They appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, which was watched every Sunday evening by 50 million Americans, and teenaged girls went wild. The band’s manager in the early years, Brian Epstein, was a master marketer. There were Beatles fan magazines, Beatles fan clubs, Be

Recently Donna and I met up with some friends in Bethany Beach, to celebrate a milestone birthday of a close friend of ours, Monica. Monica introduced Donna and me -- she and I grew up in the same neighborhood in Rockville, and we and her brother John, one of my best friends, were on the Hungerford swim team together. She went to college at St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana, where she was a classmate of Donna. After college, she moved back home and invited Donna, who was from New Jersey, down for a weekend, and invited me to join them for some of their shenanigans. That was the beginning of Donna's and my romance.  In Bethany Beach, along with Monica and her husband Jim were John and Susan, a couple we hadn't seen in years; Larry and Claire, whom we hadn't met before; June, who like Claire had been a high-school classmate of Monica’s, and her husband Rex; and Monica's dad, John Sr. Monica's cousin Pat, who I had also known since childhood, and his wife

Donna and I spent Labor Day weekend in New York City. We met up with Donna’s sister Barb and two of her kids: Michael, who lives in Greenwich Village and works for Morgan Stanley, and Erin, who lives in L.A. but flew out for the long weekend. We also met up with our friends David and Allen. David went to college with Donna, and I shared a brownstone townhouse on Capitol Hill (according to the realtor; in reality it was a dump in Southeast DC, in an ungentrified area nearer to the Navy Yard than the Capitol with hypodermic needles in the street and where the liquor store had 1-1/2-inch thick Plexiglas between you and the cashier with a turntable where you would put your money and spin it to the other side and the cashier would then spin your purchase to you) with him and another person after college. Friday evening along the Hudson Our hotel was in Battery Park, at the southern tip of Manhattan, by the financial district, an area I haven’t spent much time around. Barb had arr

After Kate’s wedding, Donna and I were ready to take a few days off. There’s a considerable amount of stress in planning a big production like a wedding: You worry that you will forget something; that the vendors won’t do what they’re supposed to do, when they’re supposed to do it; that the weather won’t cooperate; and on and on. When it’s over, and everything has gone well, and there were no fistfights or wine thrown in someone’s face, and no one fell and hurt themselves or threw up in the limo or missed the bus and were stranded at the venue; when you realize you got through the day and can’t find anything that didn’t go just as you had hoped, you take a deep breath, say a prayer of thanks, and trade in your real clothes for flip-flops and a tee-shirt. So we headed to New Jersey’s Long Beach Island, a barrier island that we have visited just about every summer since we were married, and where Donna spent her summers since she was a little girl. It's a place that’s made fo

Our oldest child Kate was married on July 15 to Stephen Ritchie. They were married at our parish of 28 years, St. Louis Church in Clarksville, Maryland, and we held a reception for them in Pasadena at a beautiful venue on the Chesapeake Bay. Donna’s family, mostly from New Jersey but also Detroit, California and New York, started arriving Friday. I really enjoy spending time with them – I think of Donna’s siblings as my own brothers and sisters, and her mom as mine. The weather had been brutally hot and humid all week, but we got enough of a respite that we were able to sit comfortably on the deck, against a backdrop of Donna’s beautiful flower baskets; the pines, oaks and a giant Douglas fir that provide privacy, shade and nesting places for birds; and a lawn that hadn’t yet been turned to dust as it always does by late July. After the rehearsal at the church Friday evening, Steve’s parents, Bonnie and Buddy, hosted a wonderful dinner at a restaurant in Ellicott City. Sev