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As I write this from a hotel in Springfield, Illinois, the Morefield family is nearly two weeks into a summer vacation that’s taken us halfway across the country in the family mini-van.

The impetus for this epic sojourn was a 90th birthday celebration for Laura’s grandmother, Marie, in the small farming community of Mazeppa, Minnesota. Her actual birthday comes later this month, but Grandma wanted to time her celebration to coincide with the big event of the year, “Mazeppa Daze” (yes, that’s the correct spelling), which brings in not only the 700-odd residents of the town itself, but revelers from all over Wabasha County, neighboring Goodhue County and probably a good deal further out, including in this case Reuter family members from as far away as Ohio, Missouri, North Dakota and in our case, Virginia.

The self-mocking motto for the event and the town itself is “Where the Hell is Mazeppa?” which I guess means everyone else gets the same reaction I do whenever they state it as their destination. The answer I usually give is, “less than 10 miles from Zumbrota,” which sometimes gets a laugh but either way gets the idea across. Zumbrota actually might mean something to a handful of my fellow comic book history geeks as the home town of Captain Marvel’s co-creator and definitive artist C.C. Beck. Or then again, not.

Anyway, Mazeppa’s a neat little town with a gas station, a couple of churches and a disproportionate number of bars. Also there’s a pretty cemetery on top of the hill, where Grandpa Peter was laid to rest in 1995. He’s safely tucked away on what used to be “the Catholic side,” back in the days when a wrought-iron fence made sure the Lutherans stayed in their place (I hope that fence extended as far underground, if it was to do the job right).

Mazeppa Daze itself was a fun throwback to the small town celebrations I grew up with, especially the Oyster Festival in Urbanna, Virginia. We got a parade with school bands, vintage cars and tractors, fire trucks, beauty queens and local notables. Plus of course the politicians crashed the party, shaking hands and passing out fliers. And in the time-honored tradition, everyone threw candy to the kids. Someone let Jason and Scott break through the lines to stand close to the action, so they could get their share, but of course they know they can’t eat about 90% of all candy, thanks to their plethora of allergies. It was actually knd of depressing watching them stand there, ignoring the steady rain of Tootsie Rolls, peppermints and Dum-Dums, in hopes that someone might eventually dispense some Smarties or Skittles. Every now and then something unfamiliar would land at their feet and they’d stoop to read the ingredients list before putting it down again. Wow, I’m depressing myself again just typing this.

Grandma’s event was a parade in itself, of old friends and family and well-wishers filing into the fellowship hall at St Peter and Paul church to catch up with Marie and each other and enjoy food and conversation. Again, the sort of thing I grew up with at church socials, revivals and homecomings in small towns all over Virginia, but it’s interesting to find myself delivering lines like, “I haven’t seen you since you were this tall” instead of receiving them. The sound of little feet running around folding tables, the clank and screech of metal chairs as kids push them aside or trip over them, the general murmur of conversation and even the conversations themselves…all just as I remember them from 40 years ago and probably as they’ll remain for 40 to come.

Also in Mazeppa the kids got to see their first fireworks display, and it was a doozie. Mazeppa’s annual show, occuring a week after Independence Day, is regarded as easily the best show put on by any MN small town, and for most it’s second only the Twin Cities 4th of July exhibition. We had great seats, not far from where the volunteer fire department — including Uncle Fran — sent the rockets up. Scott’s not at all a fan of loud sounds, but he enjoyed the visuals with his hands over his ears. Gracie had a huge grin throughout (and learned to say, “Fireworkshh!”) Jason declared it the coolest thing he’d ever seen outside (putting it on par, I guess, with indoor spectacles like “Wipeout” and the Wii) and told Grandma “I kept blinking my eyes to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.” So I guess you could say they were a hit.

Anyway, for this trip we’ve driven the Hyundai all the way from Richmond, a first for us as we usually fly. The furthest point out was St Cloud, MN, where we stayed with Laura’s cousins Nathan and Val and the kids got to play with their cousins Ben, Sara and Katie. Then it was down to the cities for, among other things, a visit to the Mall of America, where Scott got to see his Mecca, the fabled Lego Land. Then on to Rochester for the Mazeppa events and now Springfield Illinois, where we’re tanking up on Lincoln data and lore to bring the homeschool lessons to life. From here we’re possibly headed for a rendezvous with Laura’s cousin Toni and her husband Pete and kids, summering in the States between their last American School posting in Africa and their next in Syria. Then we’re back to Ohio for some more time with Grandma and Grandpa Jim and then home. I’m not missing work much, let alone the 100+ temperatures on the East Coast but I’ve had enough restaurant food to last me a lifetime.

Before we left, Jason said to me, “This is going to be an awesome vacation! This is going to be the greatest vacation ever!” and then, after a pause, “What are we going to do?”

Hopefully now that he’s got his answer he’s still flying as high. I think so. I hope this is one the kids remember for a while. Not least because I don’t know if I’m up to doing it again.

If you know me at all, you know I’m a big Paul McCartney fan. If you follow the news at all, you’ve probably noticed Sir Paul’s upset a lot of fans (mostly on the Right) with a remark he made in Washington last week. To complete the picture, I’ll let you in on the well-guarded secret that I tend to lean conservative.

For the benefit of those who came in late (as they used to say in the Phantom strip), Sir Paul became the third recipient of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in a ceremony held at the White House, where he apparently spent the evening gushing over how Fab that dwelling’s current occupant is, before taking an out-of-left-field swipe at his predecessor: “After the last 8 years, it’s great to have a President who knows what a library is.”

What followed was a firestorm (well in some circles, anyway) of controversy that if nothing else proved people do care after all about the opinion of an aging rocker whose most famous gig is 40 years behind him. On that level, you might even see this as a triumph for Sir Paul, who at 67 still has his love life chronicled in nauseating detail by tabloids that usually treat celebs as “over the hill” at 25, and whose tours continue to pull in more money than contemporary acts a third his age. The only thing missing from the “I’m Still Relevant” trifecta was the ability to stir controversy, and now he’s achieved that. You go, Paul. (One can easily picture the fuming ghost of John Lennon, irked that Paul has once again achieved with ease — even by accident — what he had to bust his hump to pull off).

Because the world is dying to know, I figure I’ll share my opinion here. I believe Paul’s remark was unfortunate for the simple reason that it marred one of those rarest of Washington events; a social event divorced from politics. It was, on paper anyway, a celebration of great music (which in Paul’s case is almost always apolitical music), with performances by a host of super-talented performers and, we can assume, representatives of all parties in attendance. If any other attendee had taken the mic to insult a political figure –on either side — in that setting, we’d have called him a churlish boor, so it’s kind of disingenuous not to apply the same standard to Sir Paul, even if he was the Man of the Hour.

Paul is welcome to say whatever he wants at his own shindig, obviously, but he should be mindful we’ve entered the Age of the Sound Bite, where anything you say can and will be used against you by a media that will happily take one line and blow it into a federal case. Since the clip of Paul’s remark is all most of have seen of the event — and will remain so until PBS airs its recording of the whole thing (and it’ll be interesting to see if they leave the line in), the impression is that it was a DNC fundraiser, a partisan gathering, “The Bush-Basher’s Ball 2010.” Which of course it wasn’t…on paper…and in creating that perception, Paul’s only undermined the stature of the honor, and thus his legacy, which is one thing just about everyone can agree he’s desperately interested in promoting. “Gershwin-level songwriter” looks impressive in the history books; “Favorite songwriter among persons of like-minded political leanings” not so much.

If nothing else, this affair provides an interesting study into the nature of celebrity, and popularity. Fans seem to project all sorts of qualities onto the Beatles, making them whatever they want them to be. Paul in particular has been seen as harmless, the cute one, the one who wrote silly love songs. If some people wrote him off as an intellectual lightweight, a cornball crooner, the flip side was that he at least wasn’t threatening. It was the other one who made the “bigger than Jesus” gaffe, protested the war, got on Nixon’s watch list. Paul we could like regardless of how we voted, or where we stood on the war(s), or whatever. Until now. Funny how little it takes to end the Honeymoon. Lennon wrote protest songs, paid for billboards protesting the Vietnam conflict, made all sorts of waves. Paul made a throwaway remark so toothless and limp even Jay Leno would’ve passed on it, and yet, coming from The Cute One, that’s enough to end the party.

As non-constructive and irrational as some of the criticisms have been (”What does he know? He smokes pot.” “If he’s so smart, why’d he marry a gold-digger?”) the defenses have been equally off-point. As a card-carrying Paulite, I’ve visited his site’s message boards a couple times to see the reaction, and it usually comes down to “Good for him for stating the truth”, “It’s a free country, he can say what he wants” and “I applaud his courage.” Regarding the “truth” defense, of course it’s not true that Bush doesn’t know what a library is, since (1) his wife’s a librarian (2) he was the first CIC to give out this award from the Library of Congress and (3) well, he had to have gotten “My Pet Goat” from somewhere, right? As for the “he can say what he wants” defense, I’m not about to argue he can’t, but there’s a time and place for everything. For instance, I may think Salma Hayek is smoking hot, but I probably don’t want to announce it in the middle of a church service.

The funniest, though, is the suggestion that Paul has somehow struck a bold blow for the Left out of personal courage. This we can rule out for the simple reason that he knew he was delivering his line to a sympathetic audience. Now, if he’d been awarded the prize during the Bush Administration, only to step up to the mic and say something in protest of Bush-era policies (and not an infantile “Bush can’t read” remark), then maybe he’d have shown some guts. Still no decorum, but guts, of a sort. Half the country would still be ticked off at him, he’d still have tossed away all those years of good will, but at least he’d have done so in spectacular fashion, making his rival-even-in-death John Lennon look like a piker for merely mailing back his MBE to Queen Elizabeth.

Not that I believe for a minute he would have done that, because one of the digs at Paul that’s managed to stick over the years is that he’s a brown-noser, a guy eager to be loved and thus willing to suck up. If W had tapped him for this prize, he’d have accepted it, and he’d have kept the “Bush is dumb” jokes to himself. In that context, “Bush was dumb” was just his way of working the crowd. The roadie with the cue card says we’re in Philadelphia tonite? “Go Phillies!” This is Paris? “Viva La France!” Obama White House? “Bush can’t read!” Pause for applause. For Lennon to go up against a sitting President and risk deportation or worse was gutsy; this was just a cheap shot at a straw man. Bush is gone, has been for well over a year and is not about to come back. For a guy so deft at the bass and drums, Paul’s timing is decidedly off in the comedy department. Maybe next time he can follow up with a dig about how clumsy Gerald Ford was.

Personally, I think there’s a wide swath of Americans out there thinking, “Oh brother, not him too!” whenever they hear a celebrity taking either side in politics. Unrealistic as it may be, we’d like to think at least some performers are willing to stay off the political soapbox, or maybe it’s just that we hope in vain for some little corner of our lives to remain untouched by the partisan rhetoric that’s increasingly tainting our relationships with our neighbors, our relatives and our co-workers. Sometimes you just feel like taking a break from that crud, and logically this event should have been one of those times.

Adding to the “let’s make this bigger than it needs to be” nuttiness, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) has called on Paul to make a public apology for his remarks. Which of course he shouldn’t do. The cat’s out of the bag for any fans who still harbored hope that a 60s icon, marijuana advocate, PETA champion and wearer of Nehru jackets might somehow share their conservative politics, and there’s no undoing that. Apologizing would just cheese off the fans who share his views and think he’s great for having aired them.

Anyway, I’ve no doubt Paul will weather the storm. As controversies go, this hardly holds a candle to the time he sued his fellow Beatles to dissolve the partnership and thus put the last nail in the coffin of the 60’s “peace and love” trip. Not to mention the time he responded on camera to the tragic death of his band-mate, co-writer and “brother” John Lennon by saying, “It’s a drag.” If Beatlemaniacs got over that stuff, then what’s a lame joke or two? Ultimately, you just can’t stay mad at the Cute One.

Even now, the problem’s pretty much been solved for him. As history’s proven time and again, there’s no controversy that can’t be solved by laying low until the next controversy blows up. This time, thousand-year-old nutjob White House correspondent Helen Thomas has jumped on the grenade for Sir Paul, declaring that Jews should “get the Hell out of Palestine” and go back to “Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.” And in a dazzling demonstration of marketing savvy, she made the remarks to an outlet called RabbiLive.com. Compared to that kind of gaffe, Paul’s Henny Youngman impression comes off like…well, like an aging hipster making a harmlessly unfunny joke. Big whoop.

Maybe some good can still come from this. Maybe I should take these remarks from Paul and Helen and pitch one of those “clip shows” to cable outlets. I can see it now: “Geezers Say The Darnedest Things.”

The kids had a blast at Nags Head last week with Grandma and Grandpa, despite a lack of cooperation on the part of Mother Nature for the first three and a half days.  Overcast skies, cold winds and even colder water couldn’t keep the boys from wading waist-deep in the surf, though it did make for some whining on the way back to the beach house.

It continues to amaze me just how much energy those guys have.  Once the weather cleared up, we visited Jockey’s Ridge State Park (”largest natural dune on the East Coast”) and they ran the entire time…up the dunes, across the dunes, down the dunes.  Then we visited the Wright Brothers Memorial and they did it all over again…run, run, run.  I don’t know if it’s that they’re so full of energy or that I’m just getting old, but honestly I don’t see how they do it.

I thought the kids would get a kick out of the Wright Memorial, given their fascination with planes and history, and Jason’s had a very nice picture book on the Wright brothers for years.  Now I’m not so sure Jason even read it.  The first time I brought up a visit to the park, he asked, “Will we see where they crashed and what’s left of the plane?”  Then when we climbed up to the monument itself, and found a vault-like door at the base, he wanted to know, “Is this where they’re buried?”  When exactly did this kid get such a morbid streak?

We also made a trip to Roanoke Island Festival Park, where we toured a recreation of a Native American village and an early pioneer settlement.  Reenactors showed us around a replica of the sailing ship Elizabeth II and Jason even got to help turn the capstan on a “work detail” as everyone sang a shanty.  For her part, Grace got to push all kinds of buttons in the museum — always a favorite passtime — and modeled a new wardrobe of sun dresses hand-sewn by Grandma.  She wasn’t too into the beach, though; not really a “sand between your toes” fan, that girl.

We had to come back a bit early so I could help out with the recording/streaming of VCU’s commencement ceremonies, so Laura spent a big chunk of her birthday in the car, which was kind of a drag, but all in all it was nice getting out of town for a while and relaxing in a new environment.  The next planned trip will take us all the way to Minnesota by car, which promises to be not nearly so restful.

I’m way behind on this one, but what else is new?

On April 24, we took the kids on a homeschooling field trip down to Fort Eustis to visit the fire station, and it turned out to be really cool.  The kids were excited to meet real firefighters, and I got the distinct impression the feeling was mutual.

The fun started with a demonstration of the ladder truck in action.  They raised the ladder to its full 150-ft height and had one of the firefighters climb to the top to wave down to the kids.  Then the ladder was rotated 90 degrees and lowered to form a  “bridge” from the truck to the firehouse, for a firefighter to walk across.

Next came a rundown of the various firefighting tools and a 30-minute video on fire safety.  Jason was excited to acquire new facts for his trivia-drenched mind (at 1200 degrees Fahrenheit, everything in your house that can burn will burn).

The highlight of the day was, no doubt, the rides the kids were given in a firetruck.  Since we were on an Army base, which is more or less its own little self-contained world, it was possible to make several runs so everyone got a turn, and Laura even got to run the siren and blow the air horn to her hearts’ content.  One can only imagine what chaos would be caused by 7 or 8 runs like that in the city.

After that came a pizza lunch with the firefighters, and a chance to practice evacuation procedures from a “burning” trailer.  Also available for exploration were an ambulance and police car.

As an added bonus, the boys and I got to ride in an electric car, one of two provided for the fire station as part of the government’s efforts to “go green.”  This one was used by the fire chief to make his rounds and conduct inspections on base.  It was amazingly quiet, practically silent, and not too bad a ride despite having suspension as rudimentary as that of the average go-kart.

For her part, Grace enjoyed flirting with the firemen, with Mommy’s friend Miss Heather and her boy, Liam, and especially with “Patches,” a robot dalmation in a remote-control firetruck, operated by a fireman hidden away in an office, with a microphone that let him talk to Grace.  (”Hey, Grace…touch my nose!  Ah-Choo!”).

In all, it was a great way to spend a Saturday and certainly an outing the kids will remember for a long time.  So, a belated thanks to the guys at Ft Eustis Fire and Emergency Services.  We had a blast!

I always seem to start these posts off with a phrase like “impossible as it seems…” but doggone it, it really is hard to comprehend how your kids can go so quickly from tiny little newborns to…well, in Jason’s case, seven years old!

I still remember the surprise I felt the  morning of April 15, 2003, when Laura told me it was time to go the hospital (three weeks ahead of schedule)  and how we dropped our tax return in the mailbox on our way out.  And of course I remember what a bundle of nerves I was, convinced I was going to humiliate myself by passing out in the delivery room, only to end up being thrilled by the whole experience and getting really into it.  And I remember Jason, lying quietly under a warming lamp seconds after being born, checking out his new surroundings with a serious stare and giving the first glimpse at what we’d come to know as his inquisitive, analytical brain.  (I’m thinking, “Cool, he’s not a screamer” while the nurse is taking points off his APGAR score).   And then his eyes locked on mine, as if to say, “You! This is all your fault!”

It occurs to me this blog began pretty much when he did, with a post to share the results of our first ultrasound with friends and family.   Over the years, I’ve tried to use this space to record Jason’s adventures, sayings and accomplishments, but I haven’t been nearly as good about it as I intended.

Suffice to say Jason’s made me a very proud Dad since the day he got here.  He’s a sweet kid with a big heart and lots of love and patience for his little brother and sister.  He’s got a great mind and a goofy sense of humor, and naturally he’s terribly handsome.  In the last year, I’ve particularly enjoyed watching him blossom as a Cub Scout, showing good manners and respect to his leaders and fellow scouts and tackling his various badge requirements with real dedication and effort.

Happy birthday, Jason, and thanks for showing up early that mid-April morning in 2003 to kick off seven years of good luck for Mommy and me.  We’re looking forward to the next seven just as much.