RIP My Father in Law

I received word that my Father-in-Law Mike passed away.  He has struggled with ill health for quite a while, and was diagnosed with Leukemia a couple years ago.  But the downturn was sudden.  We got news a few weeks ago that he was beginning to have problems.  At the time our focus was on my own mom, who just had her fourth stroke. On top of that, our dog was diagnosed with cancer the same week.  But then out of the blue came the news of his spiraling health problems.  By last week, it was beginning to look grim.  On Friday afternoon, we found out that he was being moved to Hospice.  And today, at around 3:30, he passed away. 

As men of God goes, he's one we always joke and say if he doesn't make it in, I don't stand a chance.  As a former pastor, I can say he was everything you wanted in your parishioners.  A fascinating fellow, a chemist by trade who also spent much of his life in the world of higher education and academia, he was serious about his faith, dedicated to his denomination, very well read and able to converse about a variety of topics.  He was what we used to call a good witness where the Faith was concerned. He will be missed.  

Owing to circumstances, Covid, post-Covid, health issues and family issues, for some time we weren't able to get down to Florida, where they lived and where I met my darling wife.  At least we had a video call on his 80th birthday last year where he saw my daughter-in-law and little granddaughter.  You grab what you can in these situations.  I could write more, but things are a bit busy now.  

Prayers for him, prayers for my wife and her family, and for the whole Griffey gang would all be appreciated. 

Friday Frivolity: Happy Anniversary

Twilight Struggle!

Yep: 

It was 20 years ago this year that this little gem hit the shelves.  I'm not one to gush over things.  I like things, and will talk about those things that interest me or that I like.  But not all the time.  Sometimes things I like fly under the radar, so to speak.  I like them and that's good enough for me. 

This is one of those cases.  As I've said, if I ever had anything close to a sustained, long running hobby, it would be strategy games.  Wargames fall into that category.  But I like strategy games as a whole.  Usually my preference is for historically based games, my love of history being the factor there. 

We bought this some years ago.  By now I'm thinking it must have been around its 10th anniversary, give or take.  As the artwork suggests, it's a grand strategy game based on the Cold War.  My sons are fond of asking how bad do things have to be today for people to be nostalgic for the Cold War.  Yet when we consider the state of the world today, it's easy to see why some would look at those days with a sense of yearning.  Nostalgia sometimes gets a bad wrap.  Though I sometimes think the worse things are the more we trounce on those people who try to find the good of the past.  You might say, the level of hostility to nostalgia might say much about how well we're doing with the present.  

Anyway, if there was one trait from that time, especially the late Cold War, it was Optimism.  That was the thing.  Though the progressive movement was turning our attention more and more to the increasingly irredeemable sins of the West, America, Christianity, and pretty much anything west of the Urals, it was still wrapped up in a bundle of 'but look how much progress we've made!'  Oh, there was still the insistence that we focus on those who 'fall through the cracks', or the insistence that we admit there is still work needing done.  But the uber-narrative was that we were getting better, moving forward, and had much to be happy about. 

Plus, though it's easy to look back and remember the stress and strain of the Cold War years, and it's not difficult to see we were already being weaned into thinking that the best we could say in the US was that we were no better than the Soviets, there was still the reality of the USSR.  It was there.  And despite the developing cultural emphasis on how cool the communists could be, we couldn't help but notice a dearth of those same people falling over themselves to move there. 

Fact is, no matter how we sliced it or tried to blame Reagan, we still had the idea that over there was Mordor, and we were at least Gondor.  As flawed and sinful as we were and as the focus increasingly was, we were still on the right side of the conflict.  

And it looked like we were trying to learn from the past.  Lofty ideas of putting behind us judging based on skin color or any group identity, being tolerant of differing views and lifestyles, restraining from judging either the past or the present, putting the pains and hurts of history behind us, being free to live and speak and think as we choose - those were mighty appealing social promises. Appealing, even if, in hindsight, it's easy to see those making such promises had some pretty long lists of provisos and qualifiers attached to those high ideals. 

Now, I expect little from the games I love.  Really.  I don't get hung up on accuracy or details or really much of anything. Sometimes a design decision will leave me scratching my head.  But then I remind myself that I'm looking at a playing piece on a board that is supposed to vaguely represent in often unimaginably abstract ways the complexities of the human experience, entire historical events, and often in the worst of circumstances.  I'll usually give a pass to the designers. 

What I do love, however, is when a game strikes that right vibe; that feeling that matches what the game is attempting to evoke.  It might be the vast long term and complex logistical focus of World in Flames that allows you to sympathize with the massive organizational undertaking that was the Second World War, or the excellent mood of ancient Roman cloak and dagger that comes with The Roman Republic, or even a very broad sense of medieval feudal wranglings in that boardgame Fief.  The game 1776 catches the scale of that Revolutionary Colonial era war feel, and Victory Games' The Civil War was the first Civil War game I played, and still the best for putting you in that time from a bird's eye view, at least IMHO.  As I wrote some time ago, I even like the game Eldritch Horror for that Lovecraftian aesthetic it hits so well. 

That's why I love Twilight Struggle.  To borrow the old saying, it 'Gets' the Cold War and the whole feeling of that period in history.  Even the parts of the game that tap into events long before I came along manage to pull me back to that time when we weren't fighting about reality, but instead were still trying to struggle for the right over the wrong in basic, common sensical ways. 

The game itself is a pseudo-card driven game.  The goal is to get the most points, and this is accomplished by pushing your side's influence into as much of the world as possible. And don't forget those obscure African countries in the middle of nowhere, they can make a difference.  The one game ender is if certain events could cause the Defcon Rating to drop, and we all know what happens if it hits one (game over, both lose - a fun mechanic). 

The cards themselves are drawn randomly, and played back and forth by each player.  There are different sets of cards per era of the Cold War - early, mid, late.  The cards have a point value that you can play to push more influence into an area, or invest in other nifties, like the Space Race or even the Olympics.  The cards also have historical references printed on them that can be played instead, and they give a tremendously broad amount of benefits for your side or penalties for the other.  The various historical references vary greatly from Woodstock and The Soviet Pact, to Sputnik, The Truman Doctrine, or heck, the whole of the Korean or Vietnam Wars.  In the instructions, in keeping with the best of historical strategy games, there is a section that explains the actual historical basis for each card and the overall time period.

All in all, it seeks to unpack that era after WWII that changed how the era after such a catastrophic war might have unfolded, even if at the time we didn't realize that. And the game manages it on almost every level.  A relatively fast game, it can be wrapped up in an hour or so.  Or it can drag out.  But once you get the hang of it, it's a fast play for two players.  One that manages to pick you up and deliver you back to a time when you didn't need an explanation for the picture on its box. 

Why did scenes like these from my college days make a young, liberal
agnostic like me feel secure and confident even though
they weren't supposed to?  Because I wasn't an idiot, that's why.

The days will soon be gone

The Catholic Bard muses on the sudden string of well known celebrities passing away.  Chuck Mangione, Malcolm Jamal Warner, Ozzy Osbourn and Hulk Hogan.  

Those were names loomed large in that pivotal time my life as I began transitioning from childhood to adulthood.  Mangione came first, though I didn't know him by name at the time.  It would be years later before I attached his name and larger body of work to that delightfully ubiquitous song that became his trademark. I mean, a flugelhorn?  Who tops the charts in the age of Disco and 70s rock with a flugelhorn?  His picture adorning the record sleeve was one of pure elation. I mean, I dare you to look at that picture and not smile: 

Happiness personified

Malcolm Jamal Warner became a big name in my later high school and college days with his turn as Bill Cosby's TV son (a loosely inspired character from Cosby's own real life son).  Like Michael J. Fox and Michael Gross on Family Ties, his easy chemistry with Cosby at times almost overshadowed the rest of the show.  Since Cosby was such a cultural juggernaut at a time when America still had strands of homogeneity, it wasn't difficult learn Warner's name, even if only as part of the day's larger cultural tapestry.

Then there was Ozzy Osbourne.  A lightning rod for self-made problems, Ozzy's was one of ups and some catastrophic downs.  Not all were of his doing.  Originally part of the provocatively named Black Sabbath, he dipped when, in 1978, an obscure group who opened for them on tour came to steal the show every night.  That group was Van Halen.  Finally, Osbourn formed his own group around himself, tapping into a young guitar virtuoso who gave Mr. Van Halen a run for his money - Randy Rhodes and the legendary Blizzard of Ozz and Crazy Train.  Thus began the famous 'Guitar Wars' featuring Rhodes and Eddie that were broadcast in our area on 96.9, home of the Buzzard, and were required listening for most of my peers in my school.   But alas, young Mr. Rhodes died tragically in the same manner as Buddy Holly and his fellow passengers, leading Ozzy down another spiral.  This was after Ozzy was hospitalized for biting the head off of a rabid bat during a drug fueled concert appearance.  Such was Ozzy's life.  Part poster child for the sex, drugs and rock and roll Me Generation, part cautionary tale, part individual trying to scrape out a positive legacy before he passed.  

And of course, there was Hulk Hogan.  In my lifetime, never has Professional Wrestling been so famous with the wrestlers being household names - almost parodies of  characters - than the early to mid 80s.  And Hogan was the spokesman.  Though I never cared for the wrestling gig, I had to admit that however inauthentic you might say wrestling was, give credit to a man who can pick up Andre the Giant and twirl him about.  Like the WWF of the day, and the 80s in general, Hogan was larger than life. It was an odd time of excess, decadence, godlessness and strangely the last gasp of a somewhat pre-post-modern society. 

It's easy to forget how much of a giant he was

With the exception of two musicians of wildly different musical genres, none of the four had much if anything in common.  And yet they all loomed large - very, very large - in that time of my life when such things mean so much to a youngster.  Well, Mangione's song loomed large since you heard it all the time.  Like You Light Up My Life, but more agreeable.  Yet they all made an impression on a time in my life I will never forget.  Even if that time, like all times, must pass.