love – Martin Simpson

Family Reunion: Mom Did Well, and Uncle Bob Saved a Flaming Tractor (posted 8/8/25)

I’m happy to be back home in the free state of Florida, after my trip up to Illinois for the family reunion. I just saw CO’s post celebrating over 33,500 followers on this site, and after everybody’s generous responses to my column about the struggles of my friend’s wife, my mom, and Cassie the Wonder Dog, this growing group feels like a huge family right now.

As it happens, this is my 700^th Cautious Optimism column, and I’m grateful to have had the chance to write every one of them. Especially since number 700 will be less somber than number 699 was.

Starting with the best news from the trip, mom had a really good time, and everybody was glad to see her. My sister arrived with her around 2:00 on Saturday, which gave us a chance to drive her around town for a couple of hours before the reunion dinner started.

The weather was great, sunny and in the 70s, and we first drove past the house mom grew up in on Post Street. The current owners have let some over-grown bushes and trees obscure part of the building, but mom recognized it right away, pointing out the porch before we drove around to an angle that let us see it.

At this point her Alzheimer’s is like a fog that descends on her and then lifts for a while, following no particular pattern. We never know when the mists will dissipate or for how long, but seeing her face light up when she recognized the house made the trip worthwhile all by itself.

From there we drove down Ottawa’s main street, through a quintessential Midwestern downtown, past the leafy town square featuring a fountain and a statue of Lincoln and Douglas, commemorating their debate there. Mom recognized the square and the courthouse, but enough of the old buildings have received face lifts over the years that she didn’t recognize a lot more.

We drove to the cemetery beside the Illinois River where her parents are buried, and while she didn’t recognize the cemetery, she recognized their headstone. We wondered how she might react, because for the last several months she has gone back and forth between remembering that they are dead, and thinking that she just talked to Grandma on the phone, and is supposed to meet her at the Post Street house.

But the fog seemed to have lifted for most of the weekend, and she seemed undisturbed, and contented to visit their graves. From there we drove by grandpa and grandma’s last house, a tiny place on the other side of the river that she didn’t recognize. We drove her over to Marseilles, the town where she and dad had started their married lives, and where I spent the first 10 years of my life.

As we crossed the river and drove up Main Street, she recognized the downtown, and a few familiar sights. One of the two houses we lived in has been extensively remodeled, and all of us had a hard time figuring out which one it was. But she recognized their first marital home, on Fillebrowne Street.

I don’t think mom remembers the story of how they bought that house anymore, but she and dad told us so many times that Rhonda and I will never forget it. Mom was going to a baby shower for a friend of hers, and dad wanted to go to a garage sale on Fillebrowne. But because they were broke and he was impulsive, she made him promise not to buy a mower, or tools, or anything.

And he didn’t. He bought the house! For $4500. Then they had to go to see her dad, to ask him to borrow the $450 down payment.

Over the years, every time that house has come up in conversation, or whenever we’ve been back in town and seen it, mom and dad would tell us that story. On Saturday, for the first time, mom didn’t repeat it. But she recognized the house, and that was good enough for us.

We all met for dinner at a local restaurant. Dad had been one of nine kids – five boys and four girls – and eight of them survived past childhood, which was not something to take for granted in their generation. (Dad’s brother Donnie got sick and died before he turned two, and nobody is even sure what he died from.) Three of the nine siblings in dad’s generation are still alive, and two of them were able to make it, along with their spouses. We had 27 people there, including 8 of my cousins and their assorted kids, and the food and the conversations were great.

Afterwards we went to my Uncle Bob’s homestead north of town, for more visiting and stories. Bob’s got about 60 acres, some of it cornfield, but a lot of timber and a huge, shady yard with old oak trees. He’s got a big, old barn and several smaller and newer ones, and he built a nice shelter between his house and the treeline years ago. It has a fireplace, and enough tables to hold 35 to 40 people, and several of the attendees brought possessions that had belonged to their parents or our grandparents.

Everybody did a show-and-tell, and there was a lot of laughter, and some tears. A lot of people brought pictures that most of us haven’t seen in years, if ever. My cousin had an old trunk full of grandpa and grandma’s stuff. There was a wooden high-chair that all 9 kids had used at one time or another, and an old, red onesie and a metal toy car of Donnie’s, which choked everybody up. There was also a pair of his baby shoes, though there was some joking that, as poor as the Simpsons were, every boy and a few of the girls probably wore those shoes before they were handed down to Donnie.

Mom recognized everybody from her generation and most of the cousins, and she had a great time. There were a lot of stories about dad and Uncle Bob, who were “Irish cousins,” and very close. (Dad was born in January of 1938, and Bob in December of that same year.) Mom soaked it all in, and was happy but tired by the time Rhonda and Jimmy took her back to their hotel.

The fog descended on her again the next day. A little while after they got back on the road for Tennessee, she became worried that they’d left dad behind in Ottawa. Rhonda reminded her that he passed away ten years ago, but mom was certain that she’d seen him the night before, apparently thinking that dad had been there with the rest of the family at Uncle Bob’s. To be fair to her, a lot of us felt that way.

When they got home that evening, mom went to bed early, and by the next day she didn’t remember the trip at all. But for that one night, she was in her old hometown and surrounded by family. And when she wakes up from this life and the fog has lifted for good, she’ll remember it all.

One more story from the weekend. I got up to Illinois on Thursday night, planning to pitch in with some preparations, including cleaning up and stocking the shelter for the reunion. But as I was driving up on Thursday, Uncle Bob couldn’t wait for the kids to get there and help. So that morning he took one of his two tractors out and mowed the ginormous yard, before returning the tractor to the newer barn, and going back in the house.

A little while later he smelled smoke, and ran out to the barn to find that the tractor that he’d put away hot was on fire. He ran back to the house and told his wife to call the fire department, and then ran back to the barn. The burning tractor was parked between his bigger tractor and their Miata; the Miata had a full tank of gas, and it was on fire, and the other tractor’s front tires were on fire. And Bob is going to turn 87 in a few months.

So naturally, he ran into the barn and jumped onto the big tractor to try to drive it out of the barn and save it. The metal he grabbed to get up into the seat was hot, and the seat was hot, and the gear shift was hot. But it started up, and he drove it out of the barn – both front tires fully engulfed – and drove it into the closest grass that was still damp from dew, and drove in a serpentine pattern to put the tires out.

His daughter and her husband had gotten there that morning from Minnesota, and she came out of the house to see her octogenarian dad come barreling out of a burning barn on a smoking tractor, twisting the steering wheel from side to side as he tried to extinguish the flaming front tires.

THAT is an Ameri-CAN, people!

Afterwards, he felt a little shaky about what he had done, and his wife and daughter were mad at him for doing it. But he got a lot of furtive fist-bumps from the Simpson men and cousins at the reunion. And Saturday night, when all but six of us had gone home, and we were sitting around a fire under a clear night sky, my cousin Darryll told Uncle Bob that he was his hero, and that he hoped he’d be able to pull stupid stunts like that when he’s 86.

Because: toxic (or at least reckless) masculinity.

I just wish that my uncle had a ring camera on the door of his house, because that video – possibly with a little Indiana Jones theme music as the soundtrack – would be great for a show-and-tell 20 years from now, with our kids and grandkids.

Next week I’ll be back on the politics beat – there is so much great stuff going on!

But tonight I’m just appreciating the afterglow from the trip. Cassie is asleep beside my desk, where she’s been while I’ve written all 700 columns, except for the small number I’ve written when I was traveling. And we’ve made some new memories with mom, and the rest of the family.

Thank you all for being part of CO Nation, and have a great weekend!

This Week I am Feeling the Bittersweet Brevity of Life (posted 7/30/25)

This is going to be an unusual column for me, because I’m in a more contemplative frame of mind.

As you’re reading this, I’m on the road heading up to Tennessee and then Illinois. I’ll stop over in TN and see my mom and sister – today is mom’s 87th birthday – and then continue on to Illinois, where we’re having a family reunion on Saturday. My sister and her husband are bringing mom up on Friday, and this will be her last trip back home.

Regular readers know that my mom has been struggling with Alzheimer’s, as her mother did before her. She lives with my sister and her husband, and they have risen to the occasion beautifully. Mom is still as sweet as can be, so her care is less challenging than it often is for people whose loved ones’ cognitive decline can be marked by belligerence and inappropriate behavior.

But it still takes its toll, and while I’ve been lucky to be able to go up there frequently and give my sis and her hubby the chance for week-long vacations on a fairly regular basis, Rhonda has still been doing the lion’s share of the work with mom. We’ve recently come to the point where we’re looking at some memory care nursing home options for her.

Rhonda took her for a visit to a very nice one close to her home, and was impressed with it. Mom talked with the people there and took a tour, and at the end, she said that she really liked it, and asked if she could stay there now! Which lifted some of the burden.

Of course, the next day she’d forgotten that she’d been there. On the bright side, when Rhonda showed her brochure from the place, mom thought it looked great, and agreed that she’d like to go see it.

Our fear is that when the moving day comes, if mom gets upset or cries when we take our leave, that’s going to be brutal.

We’ve read a lot about the importance of routine and familiar surroundings to ease an elderly person’s disorientation and anxiety, which has motivated us to keep her at home for as long as possible. A while ago we arranged for someone to come in and stay with her several days a week, and that has helped Rhonda.

But over the last six months or so, mom doesn’t recognize the house or her room as hers, and every evening has involved reassuring her that she’s at home. She’s had a harder time going down for the night because she doesn’t like being alone, even if Rhonda is only 70 feet away, in her own bedroom.

The memory care center has two nurses on duty 24/7, and we hope that mom will likely recognize her room there as well or better than she does her own room now.

The whole situation is fraught, of course, and this weekend will be a bittersweet one. We know it will be her last visit to her old home state and hometown, and the area where she and dad raised us. We hope that she’ll recognize all the family who will be gathered there, and her old church, and her parents’ graves in a pretty cemetery overlooking the Illinois River.

We’re pretty sure that she’ll recognize the two-story brick house she lived in on Post Street, and from where she moved away to begin her adult life when she married dad in 1958. Because she’s been obsessing about that house, convinced that her folks just sold it, and she needs to get back there and help them clean it out before the new owners arrive to move in.

In addition to mom’s decline, a few months ago I got some tragic news from a good friend of mine. He and I met in grad school 40 years ago, and we’ve been close friends ever since. My wife and I have vacationed with him and his wife over the years, and I’ve gone up to Maine to see him at least a couple of times per year for the last 15 years or so. He and I both know that we outkicked our coverage when we managed to land our amazing wives, and have been greatly blessed in our marriages.

In April, doctors discovered that his 50-something wife had a glioblastoma brain tumor, and although they performed a successful surgery and she’s been getting the best care, that kind of tumor is heartbreakingly aggressive, and she probably has around a year to live. We’ve been praying for both of them, and I’d ask that if you’re so inclined, you would do the same.

We husbands know that we usually die younger than our wives, and we are generally prepared for that, in no small part because we know that most of us would be fairly helpless without our wives. So it seems especially cruel when a younger wife gets news that upends her life and family so shockingly.

She has two kids and a husband who love her, and a church family who is surrounding and supporting her. But still, there are no words.

On a much less weighty note – but one that still involves grieving – my much-loved Cassie the Wonder Dog seems to have entered the last stretch of her life. Since the late winter she has been gradually losing steam. She’s got the heart of a lion, but it’s in the body of a 13-year-old Aussie shepherd.

I’ve always taken nightly walks with her for around a mile and a half, which involved going to the edge of the UF campus and through the law school; I tried to teach her to bark and lunge at lawyers, but she’s more well-mannered that I am, and has charity for everyone.

In the late fall I noticed that she was missing a step – just a momentary stumble – maybe half a dozen times during the walk.

Around four months ago, she started to sit in the street when we got a couple of blocks from our house, until I turned around and we headed for home. For a while she would only do the whole law school route 4 times a week, and now we’re down to maybe once.

We have a steep set of stairs in our house, and she started to struggle getting up them, stopping several times on the way up. A couple of days ago I carried her up them for the first time.

There’s nothing dramatic going wrong, and no sickness or injury. Just aging. She’s getting regular check-ups, and we’ve got her on food for older dogs, and we’re giving her a little helping getting into and out of the car. Her eyes are getting slightly milky; it’s easier to see in the brown one than in the blue one.

I know. A dog, even a world-class one like Cassie, is not the moral equivalent of a mother, or a wife. But we’ve had her since she was a year old or so. She delighted my kids when they were young teenagers, and she’s co-existed with my wife’s cats like a champ.

She made the weekly trip up and back to Tennessee with me throughout a tough autumn 10 years ago, when my dad was dying, and I think he was almost as glad to see her as he was to see me every time we got there.

She’s going to leave a little hole in our world when she’s gone.

In the meantime, I’m spoiling her more than usual, and spending as much time with mom as I can, and praying for and talking to my buddy and his wife as often as I can.

All of these gut punches from mortality lately have got me thinking about Shakespeare, even more than usual. Because: English prof.

Sonnet 73 has always been one of my favorites, and as with most of Shakespeare, it gets richer and deeper, the more life experience I get. The speaker is an old man, and uses metaphors of the parts of a day and the seasons of a year to describe his mortality.

The two opening couplets:

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

That last line always kills me.

I’m in my 60s, but I was a young man just a few months ago. I was king of the world, broke and living in a tiny apartment, my sights set on landing my smoke-show wife. Dad was still alive, and mom was fully herself. My buddy and his wife were newlyweds with kids and life and love ahead of them. Cassie was still a glint in her great-great-grand-dog’s eye.

And now, life is still amazing, and beautiful. But I don’t have to look too far or too hard to see “bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

The final couplet sums things up the way only a God-touched poet could:

“This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”

Yes!

And ouch.

I won’t have a column on Friday, and likely not on Monday either, while I’m the road, trying to savor the choirs before they become bare and ruin’d. I’ll be back with my usual goofiness and mockery next week, because so many good things are happening for our country, and our political opponents are making such entertaining fools of themselves.

And as jarringly dislocating as this is to say – considering what an elegiac column this has been – I look forward to getting back to it, and celebrating our victories in our national life, even as I’m simultaneously struggling with the impending losses of loved ones in my own.

But isn’t that our natural state? “In the midst of life, we are in death,” as the Book of Common Prayer says. (There is a great Gregorian chant on that theme, if you like that sort of thing, in Latin: “Media Vita in Morte Sumus.”) Despite the current storm clouds, I’ve got a Savior, and the hope of a life beyond this one.

Shakespeare knew it, and we’re all learning it: the sweetness of this life is heightened by the knowledge that it is fleeting.

So I’m going to make the most of this week, and I hope you will too.

Tennessee Trip, Israel Takes Iran Apart, + Book & Video Recommendations (posted 6/18/25)

I’m back from Tennessee, and still processing the trip.

Heartbreakingly, mom didn’t recognize me three different times over the week, but only for about 10 minutes at a time, and the good moments outnumbered the bad. I had to remind her literally a few hundred times that she lives there, and that I was visiting from Florida while my sis and her husband were in Memphis for a week. “So you’re my babysitter,” she said, but without rancor.

She wears glasses on a cord around her neck, and has hearing aids. When I took her to church on Sunday morning we were cutting it close on time, so I didn’t notice that she had neither her glasses nor hearing aids until she couldn’t hear the sermon very well, and also couldn’t follow along in her Bible.

“You’re not much of a babysitter, are you?” she said in the middle of the service. And because her hearing aids were at home in the charger, she said it loudly. We got a few looks.

I’ve always been able to make mom laugh, and she’s never so much herself as when she’s laughing. She’s always loved running jokes (I come by it naturally), and I got her with a stupid one dozens of times. I’d ask, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” and she remembers that cliched old set-up well enough to roll her eyes and start to make some dumb reply, which I’d interrupt with, “Be-CAWS!” in my eerily accurate chicken voice.

Each time she’d get startled, then remember that I’d got her with that one many times before, and she’d laugh at the stupidity of the joke and my shamelessness in repeating it. If being startled and then belly laughing could cure Alzheimer’s, I’d be up for a Nobel prize in medicine.

We took day trips to small towns in the area each day. On Saturday we went to the small town of Pulaski, but arrived to find the downtown cordoned off and the place jammed with people celebrating Flag Day. (Because: Tennessee!)

But because it’s 2025, there was also a small group of protestors doing their “No Kings” thing. There were maybe 30 of them, and you could tell that we weren’t in Seattle or LA: they skewed older and well-behaved, and their signs weren’t obscene, and they had American flags. That could be because they know their audience in Tennessee – folks don’t take kindly to violent rioting by Mexican-flag-waving d-bags there – but I prefer to think it’s because they are well-meaning people who are exercising their free speech rights and protesting for a cause they believe in.

Of course, I think it’s silly to believe that Trump is a fascist or would-be king on the verge of establishing his monarchy. One subtle clue that that’s not the case: over a thousand groups protested in 50 states, and nobody was beheaded or pierced by crossbow bolts, and there was no drawing or quartering. No one was even arrested or hassled, unless they were violent. (In which case I would have rooted for a healthy bout of crossbowing.)

Of course my sweet mom didn’t know what was going on, but when she saw all of those people holding flags and signs and waving, she waved back happily. Which is one more poignant memory for me. Mom was happy to encourage people waving American flags, and the protestors now feel like they’ve reached at least one supportive old lady – not knowing that she’s got Alzheimer’s and has no idea what ideas they are supporting.

So God bless us, everyone, I guess.

Meanwhile in the larger world, Israel was making me very happy by dropping a whole series of kosher kabooms all over the Iranian nuke program and the top people involved in it!

People didn’t think Israel could top the exploding pagers, then the exploding walkie-talkies, then the killing of various Sinwars and Nasrallahs (plus assorted Achmeds waiting for their chance to move up from triple A – and yes, the “A”s all stand for “a-hole”) with drones and missiles.

And Israel said, “Hold my Manischewitz and watch this.”

I love every detail. The Israelis built a drone base inside Iran, from which they launched drones to destroy a bunch of Iranian missiles and launchers. They devised a ruse to keep a bunch of top Iranian generals in one place so that they could wipe them out with one missile. (Sure, those guys buy their missiles wholesale and not retail, but there’s no sense in wasting them!)

It’s a sign of the mullahs’ dysfunction that they steer young Iranian science nerds away from fields that would improve the world and the lives of the Iranian people, and toward developing Jew-killing nukes instead. And since Friday night, Iran has become a much less nerdy place, inshallah. (That’s Islam talk for, “I regret all of my decisions.”)

I enjoyed the hilarious clip that CO (peace be upon him) posted of the Iranian Rachel Maddow, aka the gal reading the news when a “Hebrew Hello” hit very near the newsroom. (She’s got more burka and sex appeal than Rachel, but less America-hatred.) And though my Farsi is a little rusty, I think I’ve come up with a pretty accurate translation of what was said in that short video.

She starts out with the usual, “Death to America! Death to Israel! Trump is a fascist! We like the cut of Gavin Newsom’s jib. We will wipe out the evil pig-dogs with our swords of justice and—” BAM! WHAMMO! KAPOW! (Yes, I did watch a little Batman when I was a kid, thanks for asking.)

The lights went out and came back on, and everything on camera shook for a few seconds.

“Aaaiiiiieeeee!” she continued. “I’ve soiled my beekeeper outfit. Forget that pig-dog comment. MAGA! And also MIGA! (Make Israel [and Iran] Great Again) I for one welcome our new Hebraic overlords!”

And, scene.

One other highlight was the pic of where an Israeli missile hit one specific apartment’s bedroom, killing a top Iranian general and the leaving the rest of the building remarkably undamaged. Reports that his three mistresses staying in the apartment at the time – two of them goats – were also unharmed have not been confirmed.

Finally, I’ve got a quick book and a song recommendation. The book is “The Promise,” by Robert Crais. Crais has written over 20 detective novels featuring main characters Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, and I thought I’d read them all. But I had somehow missed The Promise (2015). I especially liked a great sub-plot involving a military K-9 with a second career as a police dog in this one. (As always, they had me at “K-9.”)

The video is for Oliver Anthony’s new country/blues song, “Scornful Woman.” He released it two weeks ago, and I heard about it on Joe Rogan’s show right before I headed up to TN. Anthony went from unknown to a famous singer/songwriter with his anti-politician song “Rich Men North of Richmond” less than two years ago. His songs are always raw and personal, and now that his wife has filed for divorce, this one is 3 minutes of pain from a talented musician.

The video and song were recorded in a small house in West Virginia during a snowstorm in January, and the visuals are great: an old barn and three big dogs in the snow and in the house, and Anthony and two other musicians recording in make-shift conditions inside. Interspersed video clips of firefighters battling a burning house echo the lyrics perfectly.

Anthony sings and plays a Dobro resonating guitar and drums, and he’s joined by two virtuosos, one on the violin – although in this context, it’s really a fiddle – and one on the electric guitar. (“Hey Martin,” you might be asking, if you don’t have my vast musical expertise, “What’s the difference between a violin and a fiddle?” A violin has “strings,” whereas a fiddle has “strangs.” You’re welcome.)

The song slides back and forth between grieving and furious, and Anthony’s delivery elevates his plain but evocative lyrics. (When he rhymes “nightmare” with “right there,” both simple lines cut deep.) And the two instrumental solos tear through the small house like the fire imagery does.

The fiddle player goes first, somehow ripping a guitar solo out of a violin. And when the guitarist closes things out, he wails on his instrument like it owes him money, and possibly slept with his best friend, too. The final effect suggests three talented musicians who just went through horrific divorces and are dealing with it the way men do: by howling and breaking things.

The pivotal lines are a cri de coeur: “And the court said fifty-fifty, but the math don’t seem right, with a scornful woman.”

Whoo. The song is great, and painful, and it makes me very grateful that I miraculously closed on my smoke show wife 36 years ago, and have never had to feel her scorn.

Hamas delenda est!

A Good Mother’s Day, and Other Assorted Good News (posted 5/12/25)

I hope you all had a great Mother’s Day! We certainly did. Because my wife’s birthday is the 10^th, we had a combination birthday-Mother’s Day celebration for her on Saturday. Her two brothers and their wives came over, and we all went to a large animal sanctuary a few miles north of town.

It’s called the Carson Springs Wildlife Conservation Foundation, and they really do things right. They’ve got all the proper certifications and designations, and during our two-hour walking tour, we could see that they love those animals, and give them the kind of care they deserve. Their living areas are spacious, with appropriately sturdy fencing in a natural setting. (There are no concrete floors and jail-cell ambience here.) They’ve got lots of big cats, plus hyenas, lemurs, and a lot more.

I know that many people can go and see lions, tigers and cheetahs and still go through life as atheists or agnostics. But I don’t get it. I can’t look at an adult male lion without thinking of C.S. Lewis’ Aslan, or Biblical lion imagery (the Lion of Judah, roaring like a lion, the boldness of a lion, even the adversary, “prowling around like a lion, seeking someone to devour”).

And the story of “Daniel in the Weasels’ Den” would work for no one.

On the other hand, I can see how a materialist could still appreciate these animals, just for their ingenious fitness for their environment. The jaguar is so perfectly camouflaged. The cheetah can go from 0-60 in 3 seconds, and he looks like it, even when he’s standing still.

The hyenas aren’t as handsome, but are fascinating to watch. Our tour guide pointed out that their back legs are shorter than their front legs, which allows them to sprint backwards while keeping their eyes and teeth facing a pursuer.

In the SEC, we call that “a shutdown corner.”

Because: God and football, two essential parts of life.

That night I caught the SNL monologue – only because one of my favorite actors Walton Goggins was the host – and saw his very touching tribute to his mom. She was in the audience, and when he called her up on stage to dance with him, it was enough to make even a flinty stoic like myself get a little misty eyed.

(Goggins is in The White Lotus, which is too weird for me to watch. But he was in Justified, which is arguably the best series this century: amazing actors; characters and writing from the great Elmore Leonard; and fantastic Kentucky-ness everywhere you look.)

On Sunday I called my world-class mom. Regular readers know that she is beset with Alzheimers, but is still soldiering on. For the sake of new readers, I’ll re-tell the story that best sums up my mom.

She lives with my sister and her husband in Tennesee, and after she had a mild stroke two years ago, she was unsteady on her feet for a few days after she came home. My sister told her that she was going to sleep in her bed with her the first night or two, so that she could help steady her if she had to get up in the night.

When they had been in bed for about 15 minutes, mom rolled over and saw Rhonda there. Seeing that mom was confused – in fact, she’d forgotten the mild stroke already – Rhonda said, “Remember? I’m going to sleep with you tonight.”

Mom said, “Oh, okay.” Then after a moment, she said, “Did you have a bad dream?” THAT’s a mom: 86 years old, and still taking care of the kids!

When I called her yesterday, she said she’s doing great, because that’s her standard response. I thanked her for being a great mom most of the time – there is some controversy in the family as to whether she spoiled my sister too much 😊 – and she thanked me for being a great son all of the time.

Thus proving that her mind and memory are still strong!

Later this week, I’ll be going up to see her and my sister, on my way to Illinois and another traditional May trip with two of my cousins. (New readers can go to “Road Trips” on my website and read about our trip on Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica in a ’76 Caddy Eldorado several years back, followed by our “Lap the Lake” trip around Lake Michigan.)

(You can also see a 6-year-old picture of my mom and I there, in stylish headgear. She’s the one in the birthday hat; I’m the one in the turkey chapeau.)

This year we’re going to Harper’s Ferry, with stops along the way in Cleveland (for the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame), Pittsburgh, Gettysburg, Antietam and the Shenandoah National Park, along with anywhere else that we stumble across along the way.

All of that being said, I don’t have time to comment on all the good things that have happened in the world over the last couple of days. But ticking off even a short list should make us grateful.

India and Pakistan seem to have pulled back from a nuclear war. The Catholics have a new pope. There are positive signs on the tariff front. Letitia James is so panicked about the karmic arse-whipping she’s about to get that she has painted herself bronze and is trying to hide in plain sight on top of a pedestal in Times Square.

Trump has intimidated Hamas into releasing their last American hostage. (Though if they don’t immediately release the rest of their hostages, I hope Israel descends on them like the Lion of Judah, if the Lion of Judah had exploding pagers and groin-seeking missiles and whatever other weapons it takes to wipe every Hamas terrorist off the map).

By the way, you may remember that American hostage’s name from all the time the Dems spent wailing about his illegal captivit—

Oh no, wait. They haven’t mentioned his name, because they’ve been too busy rending their garments over wife-beating, human-trafficking, gang-banging illegal thugs like Kil-Mar.

Speaking of which, Democrat politicians never fail to keep failing, as four of them did when they tried to illegally force their way into an ICE facility in New Jersey last Friday. A Dem mayor got arrested, and more arrests are likely coming, as DHS reviews video of the incident. Which was exactly like The Great Escape (1963), except that instead of brave POWs trying to break out of a Nazi camp, it was a clot of bumbling, deranged commies trying to release a bunch of violent thugs into America.

Because: self-detonators gotta self-detonate!

Finally, I have to mention Maine high school teacher JoAnna St. Germain, who appears to be a miraculous agglomeration of the DNA of Jasmine Crockett, Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Lil’ Davy Hogg, all rolled up in one.

This “educator” took to Facebook to call on the Secret Service to “take out” the president and “every sycophant he has surrounded himself with.” She later clarified that she’s “not talking about assassinating a president.”

But wait. Didn’t she just— Oh, read the next sentence: “A president is a person duly elected by the American people.”

Get it? That thing in November wasn’t a legitimate election, because any election in which the Left doesn’t get what it wants is by definition illegitimate. Thus, Trump is a fascist dictator, and should be murdered.

She seems nice.

She’s got social media pics and posts that check ALL the boxes:

Crazy eyes? (You betcha.)

Odd hair? (Several variations, the most recent of which appears to be a shaved/very short ‘do. If she is undergoing cancer treatment, I sincerely apologize for the mockery. But… NOPE.)

Pics from protests featuring badly-made, hand-written signs? (Oh yeah.)

Do those signs have way too many words, heading off in multiple, incoherent directions? (Need you even ask?)

How about vulgarity? (If a big “F” bomb counts, then yes.)

Any pics of the rainbow flag? (Obviously.)

Does it have the big, ugly, triangular thing on it, indicating that just 5 or 6 made-up genders aren’t nearly wacky enough? (That’s a bingo.)

The Secret Service confirmed that they are aware St. Germain’s creepy posts, but no charges have been filed against her yet. On the bright side, she is probably now one of the leading Democrat candidates for 2028.

And “Crockett/St. Germain” has a nice “JD-Vance-walking-in-accompanied-by-‘Hail to the Chief’” vibe to it, don’t you think?

Have a good week! If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and watch Justified, and if you’ve got a little donation money lying around and want to support some of God’s creatures, Carson Springs is a 501-C-3 non-profit, and can be found at http://www.carsonspringswildlife.org.

And don’t forget…

Hamas delenda est!

Another Self-Detonating Hero, and You’ll Never Guess Why the Dems Are Worried about Fetterman (posted 5/9/25)

After two over-long columns on the serious subjects of lawfare and the courts, today I’m returning to the kind of material that is right in my usual wheelhouse: a quick rundown of recent stories requiring juvenile mockery.

But I appreciate the many thoughtful comments that you all posted on my last two columns. I’m going to share a little more next week to answer your questions about how my buddy responded to my emails, and also about my conversion from being a liberal in my callow youth, to the wise old conservative you know and love today.

First up, we have a new candidate for the leftists’ “Self-Detonating Hero” designation, so get ready for a fusillade of “unexpectedly”s:

He is a pro-Hamas, anti-Semite Columbia student (unexpectedly!) from “Palestine” (unexpectedly!), here on a green card (unexpectedly!) named Mohsen Mahdawi.

Mahdawi was taken into custody by ICE, but has been temporarily released on bond on the order of a US District court judge in Vermont. (Unexpectedly!) Of course that judge was appointed by Ronald Reagan.

HA! I kid because I love. He’s an Obama appointee.

Unexpectedly!

And the Dems are already beginning to transfer their schoolgirl crushes from Kilmar to Mohsen, like a 13-year-old girl replacing her Donnie Osmond poster with a Shaun Cassidy one. (I’ll take “Timely late 1970s pop culture references” for $100, Alex.)

Mohsen looks like an Arab Luigi Mangione, and he’s got the soft-spoken peace-loving protestor routine down pat. CBS and the NY Times have already given him tongue-bath interviews. (Unexpectedly!) So start your countdown clocks, because you know he’s going to blow up in their faces soon.

I just came across a group called Canary Mission, who documents and publicizes people and organizations who promote hatred of the US, Israel and Jews, and they’ve put together a great two-minute video of Mohsen spouting some soothing talking points about how his activism “is centered in the energy of love.”

Hilariously, the video intersperses Mohsen’s assertions with video clips and pics that belie his words. He says, “Antisemitism has no place in our movement.” Cut to him holding a microphone wearing a keffiyeh, in the middle of three other people, under the chyron, “Mohsen surrounded by anti-Semites.”

He says, “My compassion is also for the Jewish people.” Cut to him standing on campus, using a bullhorn to drown out a small group of students calling on Hamas to release the red-headed Bibas babies, whom they eventually murdered, along with their mother. (In that clip, Mohsen has a hateful smirk on his face that made me wish the IDF had placed one of their pager charges in his bullhorn.)

My favorite part of the video is when Mohsen mournfully accuses the IDF of killing six of his cousins and his uncle. Cut to a photo lineup of scowling “Palestinian” terrorists, one of them holding an AK-47, identifying them as his cousins and uncle.

It reminded me of a mafia movie scene in which an old gangster looks through wedding pictures. “There’s Sammy the Bull, Fat Tony Salerno, Frankie the Blade Lucchese, Big Paulie and Little Paulie Genovese. All of them upstanding Italian Americans, unjustly harassed by the police!”

I hope the Dems go all-in on dreamy peacenik Mohsen as their newest poster boy. Then, pics of him in a suicide vest, proudly holding up a copy of Mein Kampf can show up in 3… 2… 1…

While the Dems are hot and bothered over Mohsen, they’re very worried about another one of their own, Lurch Fetterman. Last week New York Magazine ran an alarmist story about his health, with the tagline, “John Fetterman’s Struggle: The senator insists he is in good health. But staffers past and present say they no longer recognize the man they once knew.”

If you didn’t know what a left-wing rag NY Mag is, you might think that Fetterman has had another stroke, or a heart attack, or is possibly collapsing on a regular basis and bleeding from the eyes.

But if you were a certain hilarious genius with a fully functional wizard hat, you might guess that Fetterman is continuing to make more sense, which his leftist handlers regard with alarm. And you’d be 100% right.

Expectedly!

The story actually has various members of his staff hysterically getting their dresses – or in some cases their gender non-binary onesies – over their heads because Fetterman has demonstrated such ominous signs of dementia as… wait for it… disbelieving that the IDF is bombing “Palestinian” “refugee” camps full of “innocent civilians,” and… wait for it again… considering not voting against Pete Hegseth’s nomination for SecDef!

One of his key advisors who quit last year captures the tone of the article: “I hope Senator Fetterman gets the help he needs.”

The story is unintentionally funny, and it perfectly sums up the elite left in a nutshell: When Fetterman shuffled around like a stuttering, lobotomized mental patient who would vote for whatever they put in front of him, they praised him to the skies! But now that he’s occasionally making sense, they think he’s lost his mind. Perfect!

Speaking of losing one’s mind, did you catch the CNN interview with a Sinaloa cartel member? They put him in a disguise and altered his voice, and the interviewer talked to him as if he was an aggrieved victim of unfair accusations. She said, “According to the Trump administration, you are a terrorist. What do you make of that?”

The guy answered, “Well, the situation is ugly, but we have to eat.”

Of course you do. And of course the CNN dope didn’t push back at all. Because who among us hasn’t been in that poor criminal’s situation?

I remember my junior year in high school, when I’d smuggled some fentanyl into study hall, shot two of my rivals execution-style, and sex trafficked several of my female classmates for cash, and I got caught. Boy, was my dad mad when he got called down to the principal’s office with me!

But I said, “Dad, if I didn’t sell drugs, pimp out my girlfriends and assassinate my competitors, what would I do for lunch money?”

And everyone agreed that I’d made a compelling case. So I spent a year in juvie and missed my graduation, but four short years later I got a job as a reporter at CNN. True story.

Anyway, I can’t believe that even CNN can be this stupid. They hate Trump and would do anything to discredit him, but do they really believe that a violent cartel thug giving him a thumb’s down is going to help the Dems and hurt Trump?!

You keep doing you, CNN!

Hamas delenda est!

Why is the Left so Mixed-Up About Sex? (posted 2/28/25)

Even with all of the misbehavior being uncovered in various government agencies, I had not imagined a spot on my “Feds Engaging in Shenanigans” Bingo card for “Bizarre sex chat rooms within the National Security Agency.”

But here we are.

When I first started reading this story, I had to make sure it wasn’t a hoax, or a Babylon Bee parody. But as I read on, I realized that I might have to give up satire, because even my eccentric mind couldn’t make this up.

And just like having sex with your cousin on a moving elevator in a skyscraper, this story is wrong on so many levels!

First, these were government workers talking dirty to each other on our dime, and that’s wrong enough to get fired over, just by itself.

Second, these people aren’t attractive Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt types, steaming up a dimly lit employee lounge in some kind of 50 Shades of Grey fantasy situation.

No. These are – hold on to your gag reflex, all ye who enter here – cubicle-dwelling government employees. And you know what that means.

Vaguely spheroid, gelatinous bodies under unflattering, buzzing fluorescent lights, the sickly pallor of their skin like one of those deep-ocean-dwelling, eyeless fish who never see the sun, or else Lizzie “Grandma Squanto” Warren.

(#wemustneverstopmockingher)

And they’re all either way too big or way too small, and the contrast between the morbidly Jabba-esque beside the frail, spindly homunculi makes both extremes look even worse somehow.

And third, even if you could get past their disturbingly froggish appearance – and you absolutely cannot – there’s the nature of the sex talk. It’s not even the sexy kind of sex talk. There are no Viking warrior princesses with form-fitting metal breastplates, or French maids with the seamed stockings, or sorority girls getting ready for a pillow fight, or…

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

Where was I? Oh yeah. The horrible, horrible sex talk.

It was all about nightmare fetishes and polyamory and genital mutilation. One guy who got de-junkified claimed to enjoy being on the other side of the stick, so to speak. Another was just thrilled because his newly Gavin Newsom-esque featureless crotch allowed him “to wear leggings or bikinis without having to wear a gaff under it.”

I’m not looking that up, but I’m assuming that he didn’t mean “gaffe.” Although…he certainly did.

Another sang the praises of “getting my b*tth*le zapped by a laser.” For a moment I wanted to believe that he meant that somebody had finally fired on Adam Schiff with one of those phasers from Star Trek. But alas, no.

There was a lot of talk about “polycules.” None of us knows what that means, but all of us somehow know that we do NOT want to know what that means.

As incomprehensibly gross as this all is, it’s not inconsistent with the odd fixation that so many on the left seem to have with eccentric (to put it mildly!) sex and gender weirdness. Just within the last week, two Dem Governors have creeped out the nation on this issue.

Maine’s Janet Mills is so dedicated to the proposition that males should be dominating girls in high school sports that she is risking her political future and $250 million in federal funds to pursue that obsession.

“Martin,” you might ask, “has Mills also danced in a drag show wearing an unconvincing Wonder Woman t-shirt?”

What an odd question. But yes. Yes she has. And no, Gal Gadot (giggity) is in no danger of losing her Wonder Woman role in any upcoming movies to the septuagenarian Maine governor.

Meanwhile in Wisconsin, oddball Governor Tony Evers, (D)imwit, hopped onto the “let’s screw up the language” bandwagon by inserting ridiculous gender terms into the state budget proposal, for some reason.

My theory is that he watched the way the Biden administration got mocked for referring to expectant mothers as “pregnant people” and “birthing people,” and he turned to an aide and said, “Hold my cheese curds, and watch this.”

Then, instead of using the word “mother” in the Wisconsin proposed budget, he used… wait for it… “inseminated person.”

Good lord!

One of the things I love about the English language is its vast vocabulary, which allows for finely detailed shades of meaning to describe anything. If you want to describe people as “thin,” for example, you can choose from several pages of variants, from the very positive (slender, svelte) to the negative (skinny, bony) to the extremely negative (emaciated, gaunt).

In addition to being the biologically correct term for a woman who has given birth, the word “mother” is entwined in a constellation of comforting, evocative connotations. Safety, warmth, nurturing. Unconditional love.

Dying soldiers on battlefields all over the world often use their last breath to cry out for their mothers. If you want the most reliable shortcut to a righteous beatdown, insult a man’s mother.

When normally mild-mannered women throw themselves in front of their babies in moments of great danger, we call that “maternal instinct.”

What does “inseminated person” evoke?

A sterile biology textbook. Something a jaded sexual assault investigator scribbles in his notebook at a crime scene. A phrase in a transcript at a war crimes tribunal.

Is any sane person ever going attribute an act of sacrificial love to “inseminated person’s instinct?”

If Tony Evers has managed to get a woman to marry him and father children (unexpectedly!), and his wife dies first, is he going to put her names and dates on her headstone above the phrase, “Beloved Inseminated Person”?

Ugh. I don’t know what’s wrong with these people, and I’m no (real) doctor, but I think they need some intensive psychotherapy, with at least a dusting of electroshock sessions. Because they’ve got some cranial crossed wires when it comes to sex that would send Sigmund Freud screaming into the night.

Am I saying that in a fair world, Tony Evers would be convicted of some kind of felonious governmental malfeasance and end up in a prison, where he would gain some karmic, first-hand understanding of being an “inseminated person?”

To quote a former terrible presidential candidate, I’m saying that we should have that conversation.

Hamas delenda est!

Christmas, Losses, & Remembering My Dad (posted 12/13/24)

This column will be an unusual one.

Today my wife and I are heading down for my daughter Emily’s graduation from college on Saturday. We’ve got a four-bedroom Airbnb through Tuesday, and we’ll be joined by Katie and her husband, Karen’s two brothers, and one of my cousins. After the graduation, we’ll be having an early Christmas with Katie and Ryan, since they’ll be back in Denver and working on Christmas Day.

In other words, we’ll be making rather merry for the next four days, and I won’t be posting my usual column on Monday. But I’ve got some things on my mind that I thought I’d share before leaving town.

December is my favorite month of the year, and after the relief of Trump’s win last month, this has been an easier year than usual to get into the Christmas spirit.

We’ve got the tree and lights up, and last weekend we saw the town tree-lighting – with carolers, horse-drawn wagon rides and luminaries lining the streets – in an old hotel where Robert Frost spent his last winters, in one of our town’s oldest neighborhoods. The advent services at church have been great, and the weather has cooperated by giving us enough cold nights to justify having a few fires in the fireplace.

But I’m also reminded of the bittersweetness of the Christmas season for many, especially older people. The sweetness is obvious, especially for Christians, for whom the holiday marks the pivot-point of human history.

But the bitterness is there too, because for most of us Christmas is the most nostalgic of holidays, and nostalgia always combines happy remembrance with the ache of loss. If you had a reasonably happy childhood, some of your best memories invariably involve Christmastime and the traditions and people you loved, magnified through the rosy lens of your own innocence.

The older we get, the greater the chances that the holiday also carries bad memories of tragedies that happened around the holidays, the pain made sharper by the jarring confluence of a happy event – a birthday, an anniversary – with a devastating loss. After you’ve lived a while, you’ll inevitably have some poignantly empty chairs around your Christmas table.

I’m thinking about this now because tomorrow is both Emily’s graduation day, and the tenth anniversary of my dad’s death.

Ten years seems like a perfect amount of time to illustrate how strangely time works on us. By the time you’re middle aged, events from a decade ago alternately feel like they happened eight months ago, or in a different lifetime.

(It’s disorienting. I mean, I’d guess that Kurt Cobain died around 10 years ago, around the time when Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. But no. Cobain died thirty years ago, and Biden was still in the race 6 months ago!)

I think it was C.S. Lewis who cited this kind of alienating strangeness in the way we perceive time as, if not dispositive proof of the soul’s immortality, at least a persuasive indicator of it. He used the analogy that fish are not constantly surprised by the water they live in, but we are constantly surprised – fooled, and vexed, and startled – by our experience of time. We are created for immortality, and this current life hints at that fact constantly.

So on the one hand, I wish dad could be there to watch my astrophysicist daughter walk across that stage tomorrow. And on the other, I know that he will be. And that the only reason he’s not as proud of her as I am, is that it’s not possible for anyone else to be as proud of her as I am!

Okay, I said that this would be an unusual column, and I think I’ve delivered on that. So I’ll finish the same way.

I wrote a remembrance of my dad for Father’s Day in 2017, which now seems like 6 months ago. (See what I mean?) I’ve re-posted it on a couple of Father’s Days since then, and I’m happy to say that thinking of him these days brings back nothing but good feelings.

I’m reposting it here for one last time before retiring it for good. Whether you’re a newcomer to the CO site and haven’t seen it before, or you’re seeing it one more time, I hope that even though it’s not the least bit Christmas-y, it will help you to appreciate the time you’re able to spend with your family this Christmas.

From June, 2017:

“As this Father’s Day approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad. He died not long before Christmas in 2014, and time has been doing its work, to the point that thoughts of him have shifted over to a mix of many happy memories of him, to go along with the pain of his loss. I’m a father to two daughters, and have known hundreds of other fathers as friends, relatives, co-workers and acquaintances, and off the top of my head, I can’t think of anyone who carried out that role any better than my dad.

He was born into a family of four boys and four girls to working class parents in Illinois in the late 1930s. He married my mom not long after high school, and had me and my younger sister, and raised us while working at the Northern Illinois Gas Company, until he was forced into an early retirement at the age of 57 by injuries. He operated a variety of heavy equipment, and he took great pride in his work.

When I was little, I can remember him pointing out subdivisions or houses that he’d run services to, and whenever we’d pass a parking lot with heavy machinery, he’d brag that he could operate anything on that lot. My mom had to explain to an excited young me (at maybe age 5 or 6?) that no, she was not going to let dad scratch my back with his backhoe. (He’d assured me that he could do so, no problem.)

He was not perfect, as none of us are. He could be short-tempered and impatient, for example. But even then, he was the most unusual of people: he was a short-tempered man whom I never heard swear. Not once in my life. Not when he bounced a hammer off his thumb. Not when the Bears or the Cubs went O-for-a-month. Not when a Democrat got elected.

He used ridiculous euphemisms to avoid cursing – “son of a buck,” “dirty rip,” and the like – but as a grown man who rarely makes it across town in heavy traffic without dropping at least one trenchant Anglo-Saxonism at one of my many brain-dead fellow citizens who cannot seem to master a turn signal or figure out which lane is for passing, that’s almost more than I can comprehend.

People are freaking idiots all the time — I am too — and my dad was surrounded by them his entire life, but he never swore in front of his son!

In the summer of 2014 dad had cancer surgery that we initially thought had been successful. But a month or so later we found out that it had metastasized, and a month after that we learned that it would be fatal. I spent much of the fall of that year with my mom and dad in Tennessee, and I’ll always be grateful for that time. I recorded dad sharing a lot of memories from his life, and I saw the evidence of how many lives he had touched in the form of a steady stream of visitors who came to see him, and to see what they could do for him and for my mom.

He kept his sense of humor throughout his final illness. One of my cousins was visiting not too long before dad died. That cousin is known for sarcasm and smart-assery – even by Simpson standards – and he has some Scottish background on one side. Dad was sitting in a recliner and drifting in and out of the conversation, and the cousin was joking that he was going to try to learn the bagpipes. He promised (tongue-in-cheek) to play them at dad’s funeral.

Dad delivered his line with a perfectly dry tone: “That’s it. I’ve changed my mind. I’m not dying.”

Dad died on a Sunday evening, and he told me his last joke two days earlier. He and I had both been Chicago Bears fans for life, and the Bears really stunk in 2014. In the last couple of months in that season, they were on tv unusually often for a team that bad. On the final Thursday of dad’s life they were on Thursday Night Football, and dad and I watched from our dueling recliners. He was pretty heavily medicated and drowsed on and off; each time he woke up a bit, he’d ask me the score, and I’d report that the Bears were down by another touchdown or so, and he’d roll his eyes and make some comment before sliding back to sleep.

The next day, he asked me for a favor. He had been unable to make it to church for a while by then, but his church made each week’s services available on DVD for members who had been unable to make it on Sunday. Dad had several of those stored up to watch, and on that Friday, he asked if I could put a DVD in for him. He seemed a little drowsy, but I put in the DVD and handed him the remote, asking if he thought he could stay awake for the sermon.

“I’m not sure,” he said, “But I don’t want the last tv I ever watch to be that stinking Bears’ game last night.”

To end his good life, he died a good death. He had hospice care in his home, and my mom, my sister and brother-in-law and I spent some time with him every day in his final months. He had the chance to tell everyone he knew how much he loved them, and that he was ready to go, and he was solicitous of others at a time when most of us can focus only on ourselves. Because of great hospice workers and morphine (which by itself is proof to me that God exists, and that He loves us), he was able to die at home.

He slept for most of his final day. In the evening, mom and I arranged a schedule; I would stay up with him, and give him morphine twice, and then she would get up early and administer the morphine while I was sleeping in. She spoke to him the last time, kissing him and telling him that he had been a great father and husband, and that he could go. Then she went to bed, and I’m convinced that he passed before she fell asleep. I had some papers to grade, so I went down the hallway to get my computer, and brought it back to set up in the chair next to his. By the time I got the computer plugged in and checked on him, he was gone.

Ronald Lee Simpson was born on January 22, 1938, and died on December 14th, 2014. In between he lived a loving and generous life. I think it is hard for some people to come to faith in a loving heavenly Father if they have an abusive, or neglectful, or absent earthly father. I am a Christian because of both of my parents, but my path to God was made much easier by the example of a father’s love that I witnessed all my life.

I can’t wait to see him again.

I wish for you all that you have had a father like mine, or that you marry a father like mine, or that you are a father like mine. Happy Father’s Day!”

…and Merry (early) Christmas, everybody!