Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology

 Here is an interesting article in the Washington Post by a student who attended the Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology in Fairfax County, the best technical public high school in the land. The author made the most of the education opportunity presented but laments that the school hasn't kept up with the changing demographics of our nation as represented by the population current makeup of the county and suggests that it would have been better to attend a local public high school for a better life experience which would or could have led to a more productive and rewarding life.

This is interesting to me since my oldest child attended TJ for four years and certainly would have had a more productive or at least a more rewarding life if he had attended a local high school in the city of Falls Church or the county of Arlington instead. He squandered his magnificent opportunity by attending this school (which was his choice because he could have otherwise attended an elite top-ten boarding prep school, Lawrenceville, perhaps the Stanford of high school education instead), staggered out of TJ with the bottom high school diploma of three grades in Virginia (about equal to a GED diploma after four years at the premiere public technical school in the nation), a general diploma rather than a regular  high school diploma or a magnet school diploma. This was during the multi-year, quarter-million-dollar divorce engineered by his mother during which, in my opinion, her covert narcissistic predilections overcame the immature wills of our three minor children through the perpetuation of PAS (which many persons knowledgeable of its pernicious scourge label a form of child abuse) for her own petty personal aggrandizement of her sense of her self.

Our oldest child, a talented, bold, smart, athletic pre-teen, a mega-achiever when pushed or nurtured, never went to college after being let out of TJ with his shop-class diploma, and lapsed into internet gambling, being a boy-Friday for the scumbag divorce lawyer who took his "case" to sue his father for fiduciary breach during the divorce (the case was thrown out of court, with sanctions assessed) and perpetrating ever-incomplete schemes on go-fund-me pages.  In his foisted-upon bitterness as a child (by her coterie of mercenary adult "professionals"), the lad, now a fully mature adult, changed his name, lived I think at his mother's next husband's residence and hasn't communicated with any Lamberton (the name he eschewed on his 18th birthday) for over fifteen years.

So I think the article's author might be right.  The experience my oldest child received at TJ wasn't representative of any child's that I know of, when I was effectively shut out of any involvement by TJ of any involvement (or even discussion, really) of my child's continuing high school education by TJ administrators who absolutely adhered aggressively to the fallacious, sexist common principle prevalent in domestic law that "mother knows best."  I'm sorry for you, Jimmy; perhaps TJ wasted your life; instead you could have gone to Yorktown like your brothers who both graduated from VCU, or Lawrenceville where your grandfather (Carleton, Yale Law School), your uncle (Yale, Wharton MBA), and I went (CU, UVA Law School).

Sorry I missed you, son, and I hope you got my birthday card

Just as the first bell above the Post Office at Westover rang signifying noon, I walked into the Lost Dog Cafe pizzeria for lunch and noticed it was pretty empty.  I was seated at a table by the window where I could see anyone entering or leaving the restaurant and ordered a draft beer and an Italian Pie.

While waiting for my pie to be prepared I walked once through the eatery and saw that there was no one in the sparse crowd of diners who could conceivably be from my immediate family and after availing myself of the men's room (I have three sons), I resumed my place at the table and kept watch on the door.  The beer arrived but I didn't like it, too cloying and sour tasting, so I only sipped it occasionally.

The pie soon arrived and it was cooked just right, with a delicate crust ladled with a savory pizza sauce, with lots of pieces of salty diced or round-cut cold cut meats piled atop crunchy white onion strands basking under a melted mozzarella cheese film.  I cut the four pieces into eight and allowed them to cool, then slowly ate most of the slices while watching out the window to observe the front door and sip my beer sparingly.

At the end of the hour I paid my fare, left a piece of pie and half a beer as a good luck charm for next week when my youngest son has a birthday and I'll return one more time for lunch in the hopes of seeing him and his wife of several years whom I have never met and, who knows who else.  I departed thinking back upon my dad, who for all his faults as a person would never have been cut out from the family by all of his children and left in childless loneliness for the rest of his life by those offspring; such an action would seem to the ordinary person to be a pretty damning indictment of an unnatural cruelty imparted to those children by one of of their primary caregivers and her coterie of soulless enablers, children now grown up to be fully mature adults by the passage of an ensuing decade and a half, having seemingly incorporated those same characteristics of immutable cruelty into their very beings.

Later this month

Many years ago one February, my mother said wryly to me in a note accompanying yet another arriving birthday gift that birthdays come fast and furious in my household after the turn of each year because one of my sons was born in January, the other two were born in February and their mother had a birthday in March and mine is in April.  Then, relief till Christmas.

Next up a few days from now is my oldest child's birthday, and I hope to see him during the lunch hour at the local gourmet pizzeria after all these years of him being away, apparently getting over the fiduciary suit he and his brothers (and mother, who stood in for the youngest child who was too young to be on the papers) brought against me during the divorce, a case of not-so-subtle coercion of these tender children by overbearing adults supposedly caring for them, that was tossed out by the judge as being a "harassment petition;" which ultimately incurred almost $50,000 in sanctions and costs assessed against their mother.  Yesterday was a holiday and I didn't see anyone I recognized at that restaurant during the lunch hour, but I am hopeful that it will be different on Jimmy's birthday.

Actually on that morning I am slated to have yet more work done on my damaged eye that has bedeviled me through four eye operations and I'll tell him how I am doing as I get older; I am sure he is concerned.  Also a cousin of his is getting married, I'm sure he'll want to know those particulars, one of his aunts has much worse ailments than me and I'm sure he'll want to know about that, and a great aunt who used to often take care of him when he was a baby passed away and I'm sure as a normal human being, he'll want to know that sad fact.

I sent him a birthday card in care of his mother at her address, with a birthday gift inside the card as it's my belief that he lives sometimes at her house, at least when she lived in the area and he used to park his car outside her house in the adjacent bank's parking lot for extended periods.  Being my first-born I of course love him and have many happy memories of him (enjoy these old snapshots of a dad's oldest son) and I hope that after about 15 years I'll see him later this week; I trust that he is alive and well although his mother stonily refuses even to tell me these simple things about the wellbeing of our oldest child, or any of our children.

Presidents Day Holiday

Tomorrow is the President's Day holiday.  Perhaps in a few years, or as early as next year if the 40% aided by foreign interference have their way, it'll be moved to Trump's birthday for the holiday.

But in the meantime, the District is full of reminders of real presidents.  Monuments, memorials, portraits and hidden away statues, like this statue of a kneeling Lincoln in the Washington National Cathedral, tucked away in a little alcove on a stairway.

The Washington Monument is the most significant and noticeable of all the presidential tributes here.  I use it to check on the arrival of bad weather from the west, and to try to orient myself if I'm lost on all the diagonal streets in the District, so long as I can see it.

Sometimes I catch a nice shot of a memorial that is a result of the wet weather in the District, like this photo I snapped of the Jefferson Memorial shrouded in fog from across the expanse of the Tidal Basin, maybe a half mile away.  Tomorrow being a holiday, I'll celebrate by enjoying lunch at the local gourmet pizzeria as usual on holidays and special days and who knows, maybe my oldest child, whom I haven't seen nor heard from since, I think, about 2009, will show up to enjoy sharing the meal with me; after all, he has a birthday a few days later and I'll be there then too, looking forward to seeing him then also, or for the first time in over a decade.  ;-)

Penultimate attempt to reconnect with my adult sons

It snowed some today, but I made it easily enough to the Italian Store in Westover to have lunch at noon on the birthday of my 30-something oldest son hoping that he would finally drop by (he lives locally), to try to re-establish familial relations with his father after over a decade of radio silence from him towards all Lambertons stemming from his induced feelings of hurt over the nuclear divorce his, in my opinion, covert-narcistic mother launched against me in 2001.  He loves his mother so, and he so had his adolescent will overborne during the divorce by his mother's coterie of "professionals" from their perch hanging out at the courthouse seeking paid work.  I'm so sorry for him, and the family-wrecking litigation launched secretly by his mother only finally ended when she was assessed $50K in sanctions and costs years later by the court for filing a "harassment petition" and an "unjustified" appeal.  I guess he is still, in an excellent example of Trumpian rejecters of reality and facts, pissed as hell.

He didn't show of course, but it was a snowbound adventure that was entirely familiar to me.  At the Italian Store in Westover, I swapped stories of snowy traffic rescues of inept or reckless drivers with two Virginia State Troopers who were taking a brief break from trying to manage the chaos outside on the nearby slick interstate (I was a Colorado State Trooper for many years).  The norms of human decency were on exhibit in the store, first responders taking a much-needed short break in their duty to safeguard the community, employees who labored to get there despite the weather so they could serve the community, servers who produced the best product for their clients who had made it there, and in my most poignant vignette, watching as a homeless person sitting at a table outside in the cold was served a complementary cup of hot coca or coffee by a store employee.

I hung out for long minutes by the pizza station hoping to see, or be greeted by, a family member (I have three estranged sons) but after awhile I went to the hoagie station and ordered a 12-inch Italian sub that was way too large to eat alone.  It was filled with meats and cold cuts, delicious and too much to eat.  I sat by the door enjoying it, where I could watch persons entering and leaving to see if I recognized anyone, but nobody familiar came by.

So I left, ruing in a bittersweet way the life I could have had but for this somewhat pretty, in my opinion covert-narcissist who I got swept up with as a young man, when she was playing me against her then-current fiancee.  I love my three estranged sons, but they are immutably aligned to her because she so worked them psychologically (she had them 79% of the time) during the years-long divorce she spawned.  My youngest son will turn 30 soon, and I will thereupon not further assiduously work to make myself available for these boys (now men) henceforth, a victory for the mother-knows-best bias of Western courts which culminates often in PAS (research Parental Alienation Syndrome, it should curdle your hairs).

     

Presidents Day 2019

Yesterday being a holiday, I went at noon to the Lost Dog Cafe to dine, as is my custom.  I ordered the spinach bacon feta pie, which also contained mozzarella cheese and basil.

As usual, my companion the Empty Chair silently took in everything I had to say, displaying in its structure an inherent strength within.  This contemplation on my part led me to wonder about the strength of character of adults who casually break blood bonds and human norms of decency in rejecting an entire family line and casting aside the full dictate of the 5th Commandment.

The pizza was delicious and there was more than enough to accommodate anyone who might happen by.  No one did, so leaving behind a part of my meal as a good-luck omen for the next time, I left.

My oldest son, who is in his thirties, has a birthday next, and I think I'll try something different on that day.  At noon on that day I'll be in the bustling Italian Store across the street and up the block from the Lost Dog, ordering its New York style pizza to consume at one of the booths or counters inside the store.

Perhaps one or more of my estranged sons, or the one daughter-in-law I know about (I've never met her), will display common human kindness and join me.  After that my youngest son has a birthday, wherein he will enter his thirties, and after more than a decade spent always being available for them, I'll stop trying to hold the door open for them to overcome their adolescent-induced anger at me from the divorce, abetted mightily by their mother's manipulation of them at the time and since then.

What does it mean?

Occasionally I dream about family members whom I haven't seen in years, like my parents or my children. It always features them as I remember them, frozen in time in their fifties or adolescent years.

This morning I was going through my usual anxiety dream, being at the university late in the semester trying to find out where and when my final exams were going to be held, when I hadn't been to any class since the first week, and wondering if I could pass the English exam without even knowing which books the class had read that semester.  The dream morphed into a commotion at the institution, which had changed into a Junior High school, and students were carrying a comatose fellow student up the stairs to their homeroom.

I went to help, being an adult among children, and discovered that the semi-responsive child was my oldest child as a fifteen year old (he's in his thirties now), and I picked him up and started carrying him in my arms, wondering where I should take him immediately.  My child whispered to me, "Narcotics," and I thought overdose and discovered, by placing my hand over his left side, that his heart was racing palpably.

A teacher hurried up and said, "This is our thirteenth narcotics case so far today."  Talk about an opoid crisis.

The dream ended as I was carrying my lolling son into the cafeteria where a security guard rushed up, asking me how I was related to the victim.  I proudly but worriedly said I was his father.  I hope my oldest child is well.

Jim Rogers

Have a happy day. The article below indicates how you're doing in life, with some community college coursework, a crowdfunding stake, some video poker, a software job, being the office boy for an unscrupulous divorce lawyer. By the way, have you read the opinion on the internet where the sterling work of that guy got his buddy's client docked almost $50,000 for her unconscionable harassment petition? Your former name was listed first amongst the losing plaintiffs; of course, you being a mere minor then, you weren't assessed any costs. And speaking of your mother, are you still living with her?

New Year's Day

New Year's day was a glorious start to 2018, despite how bitterly cold it was.  There were exciting college bowl games on the telly.

I had a delicious lunch at my favorite local restaurant at noon, dining as usual with the Empty Chair.  Enroute to the Lost Dog, I passed by my man Trevor, out at his usual spot on a street corner, interacting with passing motorists despite the frigid temperatures.

Coming home after lunch I could see in passing by that the mother of my children has her condominium for sale.  My oldest son has, I think, lived there with her and her new husband in the past and so far as I know in the present too, so I suppose he'll be moving on too, perhaps to their new location; I last laid eyes on him and spoke to him in, I think, 2007, so I won't be missing anything, especially as concerns her, who provides me with zero information about our children (even whether or not they're well or even alive) and her stony-hearted new husband.

I miss my children though, as their unjustified and indeed totally gender-driven estrangement from me and the whole rest of my family stretches on absurdly past a decade.  Next up--middle child, I'll be at the Lost Dog at noon on your upcoming birthday for lunch; come on, now that you're a fully-mature adult and responsible for your own actions, give healing a try and join me!

Happy Presidents Day

I remember as a school boy in New York, we used to get Lincoln's Birthday off as well as Washington's Birthday, both in February.  Down south they celebrated Washington's Birthday but not Lincoln's, marking a holiday a month earlier as Lee-Jackson Day instead, as in Bobby and Stonewall.

This all got sorted out by marking the greatness of Martin Luther King, Jr. with a holiday on or near his birthday, substituting it for the south's worship of their revered CSA heroes and Lincoln's exaltation in the north and renaming Washington's Birthday as Presidents Day.  Today is that very holiday and at noon, as is my custom on holidays, I'll be dining at the local gourmet pizzeria.

Two of my sons have birthdays this month also, and I'll be at the Lost Dog Cafe at noon on those days too.  Perhaps one or more of them will come dine with me any of these days, my treat; I hope so because I miss them and love them as any father would love his sons.

Jimmy I last saw or heard from over a decade ago.  Danny I haven't seen nor heard from in about a decade.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday, Dad.  You would have been 92, if you hadn't passed last century, but in your too-short life you got so much done.

Reader, don't believe me, read the NYT obituary.  Yes, from the dishonest press, so it couldn't be right, right?

Child of the Depression, combat veteran, scholar at two prestigious schools (three if you count his high school), father to six, loving husband to our mother, Wall Street lawyer, civil rights fighter, constant volunteer, advocate, my hero.  I'm glad one of my three sons got held by you before you departed.

You wouldn't recognize where America is headed now, the country you fought for with your utmost in desperate hours as your fellow Marines bled and died around you.  But resistance is back, Dad, and I've been there and I'll be there.

"Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?"

W.B. Yeats wrote the above poetry quote.  Yesterday my oldest son, who I haven't seen or heard from since 2007, turned 30.

I was at the usual spot at noon on his birthday, The Lost Dog Cafe in Westover, for lunch.  As always, the empty chair showed up.

I ate a Rin Tin Tin personal pizza pie, leaving a slice, with a symbolic bite out of it, and drank most of my draft, then took a symbolic swallow out of Jimmy's, excuse me, Jim's, paid and left.  The pie and libation were good, the company was nonexistent.

Two years ago I encountered his mother on a public street and asked her if Jim was alive, well, married, had children, and where he lived.  Stony silence was her answer to these five indispensable questions any parent must know about their child, but this year I discovered her Twitter account and saw that she had invited him to address her first grade classroom last June on "Heroes Day," so as of eight months ago at least he was alive.

 

"Is it you my blue-eyed son, my darling young one?"

I was riding the rush-hour Orange Line metro train to work and I felt someone looking at me.  I glanced up from my seat and the young man standing by the door with the heavy backpack who entered the car in Arlington, wearing the sweat shirt saying "Washington Basketball," adjusted his earphones and lapsed into blank mode.

I looked at him--thinnish, tallish, with stubble on his face and sandy-colored thin straight hair.  Hmmm.

I know that my estranged oldest son Jimmy, whom I haven't seen in seven years, lives in Arlington.  I saw a picture of him recently, in an article about his current entrepreneurship, and I realized then that I would no longer recognize him if I met him, or any of my three estranged sons, because of the time lapse from when I last saw any of them, when they were adolescents, to the present, now that they would be grown men.

I had studied that photograph, and I had finally recognized aspects of the young man pictured, the detached look in his eyes when he was distracted (his partner was speaking), his cleft chin.  I studied the young man in the railway car--he looked familiar yet he didn't.

The nose didn't seem quite right, too large.  Then I saw a cleft chin on the man.

I got up and went over to him. "Excuse me, sir," I said.

He ignored me. I got more front and center to him and said again, "Excuse me, sir."

He bared an ear.  "Yes?"

"What's your name?"  Without hesitation he answered, "Paul." 

"I'm sorry, you look like someone I used to know."  "No problem." 

He replaced his earphone and went back into blank mode.  I went over and stood by the opposite door.

I watched to see where he got off.  He exited the train at Foggy Bottom with a mass of GWU students.

I know Jimmy has never attended college, so it probably wasn't him.  Maybe next time.

And More Happy Happy

It's a new dawn… Happy birthday to my oldest, who will be closing out his twenties soon.  (A hat-trick striker with the McLean Sting, below, and also the FYPC Lightning.  But then again his agenda-driven "counselor" when he was a youth, who was his Mother's "counselor" as well, convinced him that I was living my life vicariously through his athletic achievements.  In my opinion, she was and is full of pure crap.)

I haven't spoken to him since 2007, nor seen him since perhaps 2005, but hope springs eternal.  I read an article about him, relating to a project on Kickstarter, in November, so at least I know he's alive.  His Mother, a public school teacher, stonily refuses to tell me anything at all about him or my 2 other sons.  (He's the one on the right, below, I think, although this article describes him as the one on the left.)

He lives, I surmise, either with his Mother a couple of miles away or else somewhere else in Arlington, the next town over.  Yesterday I sent a birthday greeting card to him care of his Mother's address asking him to call me about the VA prepaid tuition plan I am the owner of, and so I can relay some important family news. Perhaps this will be the year… .  (The collage below featuring our first-born is circa 1987.)

At noon today I'll be having lunch at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover, Jim.  (Happier times, before the "experts" who prey on divorce situations as they suck the Estate dry and drive their own agendas got involved.)

Happy Happy

One of my favorite memories from law school is a party some students in my small section threw at their townhouse to celebrate the end of our three years of study.  I was an oddity in my small section in that I was older than everyone else in the section and I had three kids already.

Two of my children, four year old Jimmy and two year old Johnny, were there with me enjoying the party and I was keeping an eye on them in the hub-bub.  There was a keg of beer out back in a little enclosed outdoor patio and everyone was festive at the conclusion of our last finals week.

Once when I hadn't seen either of my two kids in a minute or two, I got up to look for them as any dad would do.  There weren't any stairs in the townhouse and they couldn't get out of the premises so I wasn't overly worried about them.

I found them soon enough, out back in the momentarily deserted back patio.  They had obviously been watching the comings and goings of everyone and observing the frequency with which my friends had been going out the back door to get a cup of beer.

They had waited for their chance and when the coast was clear, the two of them had gone out into the little fenced-in space to do what the adults did.  As I went outside, I saw that Jimmy was furiously pumping the keg and Johnny, as directed by his older brother, was dutifully holding a plastic cup in his chubby little fists under the dispensing hose, waiting for the golden elixir that everyone was enjoying so much to appear.

The only problem was that Jimmy didn't know how to push the dispensing lever on the outlet to allow the beer to flow after being pumped.  But amidst Jimmy's hurried whispering to Johnny to hold the cup more steady and the older boy's frenzied pumping, they were certainly trying to imitate the big people.

Happy Birthday Johnny.  I love you.

Ringing in the New Year

…with lunch at the Lost Dog at noon today.

Perhaps I'll see one or more of you there then.

Or perhaps, some other time then.

Practicing for the big R

I'm starting to burn up this year's A/L, which means it's no longer available as a lump sum payout if I were to leave work for some reason.  I guess I'll start storing it up again come January.

I went for a "schools" run yesterday and today, which is the same thing as a "hills" run in my town.  Yesterday it was a 4-mile run around Mount Daniels School atop the hill on Oak Street, this morning it was a 3-mile run around Timber Lane School atop the hill on West Street.  Both places have stairs to run up too.

After today's run, I worked clearing out the basement for a little while, throwing things out.  Lookit what I found, a picture from 1986 of a State Trooper holding his oldest child, who has donned his trooper's hat.

Then it was off to the local Starbucks for a cup of java from 9:30-9:45 a.m.  I don't speak Starbucks so when I asked for a "small house coffee" they put in my order as a small hot chocolate.  I scrutinized everyone's face who came in but nobody I recognized entered.