Father to Son: On Being a Dad

I just checked my last blog entry and found I posted it in…January?  Really?

How time flies.  I suppose all my loyal and constant blog readers (Hi, Mom!) are wondering what I’ve been up to.  Well, say hello to my little friend.

Little Man Reed, just chillin'.

There’s a moment, or even several moments, in the process of having a child, when you feel like you are changed forever.  Be it when you look at the pregnancy test, and realize what it is saying.  Or when you go to the hospital for the first time.  When you sit in the darkened ultrasound room and see the tiny beating heart; you feel changed.  Maybe you are, and maybe you aren’t, but that’s how it feels.  And the second time changes you no less because you’ve done it before; I became a different person at that moment.  I was a Dad.  Again.

And this time, we learned, we were having a boy.

My wife tried, in vain, to get me to express a preference before we found out.  Would I rather have a boy?  Someone to carry on the Reed name?  Another girl?  Because the first one is pretty fantastic!  I had no preference.  Nature doesn’t really care what I want, so what did it matter?  The tiny beating heart was all I needed to see.

But seeing as we were blessed with a son, I started thinking, quite naturally, about what I would try to teach him, especially about things that matter.  And I started to think that someday, he might have a family of his own.  Someday, he might have kids of his own.  I started to think about what I knew about being a dad going into all this, and I started to think what I, through words, but mostly through example, might teach him about being a good husband, and a good father.  About being a Dad.

And what I came up with, scientifically tested, and boiled down to its most basic component, was this:

If you want to be a good dad, spend more time with your kids.  Not just because it’s fun and exciting and the most rewarding thing you’ll ever do in your life.  But also because it makes you a better person.

I sometimes think back on all my daughter has accomplished in the past 6 years: she learned to roll over, sit up, walk, run, jump, talk, eat using utensils (sometimes), tell jokes, be sarcastic, learned the names of all the planets, can explain that Pluto used to be a planet and now it isn’t, and can even express why she disagrees with that decision.

What have I managed to accomplish in the same time period?

I learned how to change diapers, and make beer.  Not bad, but hardly on the same level of accomplishments.

Being a dad has been, in short, amazing.

It has also been frustrating at times, albeit it more and more rarely with each passing year.  But I wonder, will the frustrations start again with our new baby?  Will I once again run up against gender stereotypes that typify mothers as having an inherent “mothering instinct,” while dads just bumble along and try not to kill anyone? 

Almost certainly.

This is a pretty typical understanding of how “fatherhood” works.  “A mother knows,” whereas a dad shouldn’t be left alone with a baby for too long.  He might not know what to do if something goes wrong.

Those who express this stereotype might have some ammunition to back it up, and this seems to be borne out within my own upbringing.  My father was not well known for changing diapers (in much the same way that fish are not well known for flying airplanes), so much as he was known for taking me up in bucket trucks, 40 or so feet above the ground.  And while I thought that was pretty awesome at the time, parenting should not be objectively judged by what some little kid thinks is awesome.

So, mothers know best.  I guess, deep inside, we already knew that.  And science has backed this up.

Researchers using functional MRIs have documented neural changes in the brains of mothers.  Other studies have found changes in certain hormone levels during pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding contribute to a chemically-identifiable bonding between mother and infant.  At a biological level, science has been telling us, mothers have an instinct that fathers do not.  With fathers, parenting must be learned (and, by extension, taught, somehow, usually by the mother).

SCIENCE!!

But not so fast!  A more recent study took the shocking step of looking for similar patterns in fathers.  (Shocking!)  And not just any old “dad” off the street, but rather, the study looked at hormone levels and MRI imaging in fathers who took an active role in parenting and caring for an infant.  It even looked at same-sex couples (where, presumably, there was no one immediately present to “teach” this whole parenting thing, like we guys are supposed to need).

The results were clear and, well, shocking!  Parenting itself rewires the human brain.  Certain hormone levels were altered in the fathers in the study, while MRIs also found neural pathways in their brains were altered, all in patterns similar to the changes that have been found in mothers during pregnancy and childbirth. 

So, guys, you’re good!  Every baffled look, every clearly irresponsible decision (“What does he need a car seat for?  I’m not going to get in an accident!”), is now totally backed up by science as just part of your infallible paternal instinct!  My father knew exactly what he was doing!  He was helping me conquer my fear of heights!  By giving me one!

Not so fast.  Go back and read my description of the research study again.  They found these results in fathers who took an ACTIVE role in parenting.  In other words, this isn’t something you get just for being there, like a frequent flyer card.  This is something that develops in you through constant exposure, immersion, in the reality of parenting.

Now, I try not to make many Mad Men references, mostly because when other people do, I have no idea what they’re talking about, but picture this, the Old Normal:

Picture the successful professional, or the aspiring professional, or the hardworking man working his fingers to the bone to put food on the table.  His wife is at home, taking care of the kids, changing diapers, kissing boo-boos, cleaning the house, cooking breakfast, lunch, dinner, tucking the kids into bed.  And the kids, what do they see?  Mom, taking care of them, and Dad, coming home usually right around dinner time, some nights not until after bed time.  He would read the evening paper, a glass of bourbon in his hand if he happened to be Don Draper (he drinks, right?  Like I said, I never watched it), or munching on a handful of peanuts if he was my own father.  The kids would kiss him goodnight, and off to bed.  And the weekend would come, and Dad would take them on some grand, and sometimes vaguely dangerous, adventures.  Or, you know, just mowing the lawn:

"Don't worry, Dad.  I got this."

 

When it came to parenting, Mom was the Parent, Dad was the Provider.  Inside their brains, entirely different things are happening, and the one cannot even begin to comprehend the other.

Flash-forward to the New Normal (or what we’re slowly building toward making normal):  Mom and Dad change diapers, cook meals, clean the house (my wife might argue with me about this one, but I stand by my work), cook, kiss boo-boos.  And inside the brains, similar neural pathways are at work, because these very activities have the ability to alter the chemistry and functionality of our brains.  Science is showing us more and more that brains are not permanently wired one way or the other, but can change.  And that we can actually choose how that rewiring will occur.  We can choose to be active dads, or absent dads, and our brains will follow suit, seemingly reinforcing that decision as just being who we are.  But really, the decision is ours.  It always has been.

This is what I want to pass on to my son.  That his brain will be formed and reformed throughout his life, and he gets to choose, by his own active participation, how the rewiring will occur.  And the same goes for all of us.  

So dads, be a good father.  It will, literally, make you a better person.  A dad.

Daisy Dave

A little while ago, I related how I was suckered...I mean, gently persuaded into volunteering to be a Girl Scout leader for my daughter's Daisy troop.  I figured, if no one else would volunteer, if it was me or no one, what's the worst that could happen?  So I started submitting my paperwork and waited until the Girl Scouts either said, Ok, go ahead, or issued a restraining order.

Cookies?

To my surprise, I am now one of the leaders of a small (but highly energetic) troop of Daisies.  I have a co-leader, but besides the occasional Girl Scout pointers, she lets me pretty much plan and run the meetings however I want.  And the moment I realized that was the moment when I realized that I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING!

Yeah, I really can't stress this enough.  No idea.  At all.  What I'm doing, or what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing.

Lots of resources on-line?  Just search Pinterest?  These are not actually viable pointers on how to put together a Daisy scout meeting.  Especially when most of the planning is being done on my lunch break at work.

And there were times, when the kids were running around screaming, the parents were looking at me with that one raised eyebrow (you know the one I'm talking about; the Eyebrow of Judgement), that I thought to myself, That's it, I'm done.  I quit.

But then, there were other times, like when I attended my daughter's Holiday party at her elementary school, and I passed one of the other Daisies in the hall, and she ran over to me, gave me hug, and said I should come see her class's party, too, that I realized that even if I didn't know what I was doing, those Daisy Scouts knew exactly what I was doing.  I was having fun, with them, and if we can have fun and learn something along the way, this year will be an out-of-park success.

Cookies!!

This week, my daughter and I enjoyed twin ceremonies.  First, I was able to pin her official Girl Scout Daisy Membership pin on her, and all the new Daisy Scouts, something I was deeply honored to be able to do.  Then, a couple days later, I was given my official Girl Scout membership pin.

I know what you're thinking: they should've gone with the restraining order.

Too late, now.

I don't usually post pictures of myself...but, c'mon!  Am I right?

All of which is just a very long-winded way for me to say, everyone reading this blog must immediately order ten boxes of Girl Scout cookies from my daughter.  Thanks in advance, and don't make me get the six-year-olds after you.

Too subtle?

The Beer-Centric Universe

It's no secret that I spend way too much time thinking about beer.

Family vacation?  Sure, if it involves a brewery tour.  Secret Santa time?  Six-pack, and done!  A little light reading?  Check this out:

Quality father-daughter time.

I love making beer, and drinking beer.  And I love learning about beer. And as I've learned more about beer, I've come to a single and awe-inspiring conclusion:

Everything in this universe can be explained by beer.

Politics?  Tastes great!  Less filling!

Anthropolgy?  Hunter-gatherer societies gave way to grain-based agriculture.  To make beer.

But I've recently started to realize that this is not just my own bizarre beer-centric obsession.  Beer is at the very heart of our universe.  Without beer, none of this could exist.

Let me explain.

This idea came to me while reading a Stephen Hawking book.  No, really.  In it, Hawking (I call him "Steve") was explaining the theory of the multiverse, and used the example of the Anthropic principle.

Basically (if I understood it right, and that's one BIG if), the Anthropic principle reasons that we, as intelligent beings, can observe the universe because the universe displays the correct age, the exact right physical values and laws, a planet with just the right climate and physical conditions for our species to emerge through evolution and eventually observe and seek to understand the universe around us.  Since, according to quantum theory, the observer changes the outcome of the observed, our ability to observe the universe has helped create the universe which we observe.  One version of this thought, dubbed the Strong Anthropic Principle, says this is all part of the "design" of the universe; that the Universe came into being in order to develop intelligent life.

The more accepted (at least by cosmologists, and other people who generally aren't crazy) variant of the Strong Anthropic is the creatively titled Weak Anthropic, which states that, yes, this universe is exactly the right kind of universe for our observation, which makes sense because any other universe within the infinite multiverse would be incapable of being observed because intelligent observers (like us) would be impossible.

In other words, we observe a universe that seems just right for us, not because that's how some supreme being created it, but because if it was any other way, we wouldn't be here to observe it.

Ok, pure, totally circular logic, but at least it's consistent circular logic.  It makes sense.

And the same is true of beer.

Beer has been important, even essential, to human civilization from its very inception.  Indeed, civilization would have been impossible, and according to some scholars, would never have arisen, without beer.

Let that soak in.

Yes, other drinks, like wine and coffee and tea, have helped civilization make leaps forward in certain areas, but beer predates all of them.  Indeed, recorded history began because someone wanted to record his homebrew recipes.

This makes perfect sense.

Beer provided a way of storing grains in more compact form.  Their additional benefits (spoiler: it's the alcohol) made them more popular, therefore more valuable, which led to commerce. And they were safe to drink, even when water was dodgy and untrustworthy (like when people started building cities).

As a homebrewer, I know at least the basics of what makes beer beer, and that encompasses biology, chemistry and physics, starting with the enzymes in the grains that convert the starches into simple sugars, which requires both water and heat in very specific quantities.  From that point, the yeast, generally one of two specific species of Saccharomyces, take over to process the sugar.  The yeast consume the sugar (C12H22O11) into carbon dioxide (CO2) and ethanol (C2H6O), resulting in a carbonated alcoholic beverage.

Science!

Take all that in for a moment.  In fact, if you skimmed that last paragraph, read it again.  This is important.

We happen, by total chance, to live in a universe where an enzyme in a seed is released under specific circumstances that converts complex carbohydrates into simple sugars.  We live in a universe where microscopic fungi consume the sugar and convert that sugar into alcohol, which is a weirdly specific and mind-bogglingly useful thing for a micro-organism to do.  And we live in a universe where the chemical properties of alcohol on our bodies are not so deadly as to preclude their consumption, but rather we note instead certain no-entirely-unpleasant after-affects.  In addition, we live in a universe where the alpha acids in hop resin have an anti-microbial effect that keep harmful bacteria at bay, but allows the yeast to grow unmolested.  If any one of these traits of our universe were different, it would mean one thing: no beer.

And no beer would mean:

No agriculture.  No safe drinking supply.  No cities.  No division of labor.  No schools.  No medicine  (for beer was one of the first effective medicines ever used, and its sister drink, whiskey, was another).  No concentration of people in order to bring diverse ideas into a single world-view.  No development of early scientific principles.  No science.  No observation.

And since we live in our observed universe, it must be a universe that supports beer.  The observer cannot be separated from the observed because our very act of observation helps define what we observe.  Our universe cannot be observed without beer, thus our universe cannot exist in the absence of beer.

 It is only because we live in a universe with beer, that we can observe the universe around us...while drinking a beer.

Why We Celebrate Thanksgiving (A Historical Perspective

It was late September, 1863.

In his office at the White House, the President stared down at the reports on his desk, seeing them, but not reading or absorbing a single word.

In his mind, he was reliving every lost opportunity, every missed chance to bring the war to a swift conclusion.  Gettysburg.  Meade had Lee on the run, and stayed put because the roads were muddy.  Unbelievable.  Grant had performed well giving us Vicksburg, but now what?  Should really see about giving that man a bigger command somewhere.  And in the meantime, the fighting goes on.

The President looked up at the clock.  Two in the afternoon.  He'd spent most of the morning at the telegraph office.  Almost time to walk over there again, get the afternoon reports.  He mumbled something under his breath about getting enough exercise.

The only other man in the room glanced up at the sound.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"Nothing, Seward.  Nothing at all," the president replied to his Secretary of State.

"Does not the war go as you would like it?  We have enjoyed excellent success this summer."

"I would like it over.  As it goes on at all, then no, it is not to my liking."  He sighed, heavily.  "No, not to my liking at all.  And our funds are low, our morale is lower.  Those rebels, for all the trouble they're causing, they have the conviction of their beliefs.  They're broke, but as long as they believe, they keep fighting.  You need either conviction or money to win a war.  And we are quickly running out of both."

Seward thought about this for a moment.  "You could free the slaves, again.  Everyone really seemed to enjoy that.  Gave the country a good boost."

"I don't find your humor very appropriate."

Seward chuckled.  "You never do." 

Seward stood and walked over to a map of United States tacked to one wall.  The map was covered in pins, reflecting relative positions of the nearly countless armies in the field.  As he walked, he stuffed his smoking pipe with tobacco and lit it casually.  "We already have the income tax; that's helped.  I supposed we could raise it again, but I doubt that would be very popular.  Do you wish to be re-elected next year?"

"The only thing I fear more than re-election is the prospect of someone else being elected.  No, if I must be in this office to prosecute this war, this is where I will stay."

Seward nodded.  "So, no income tax.  So, either we need to find another way to generate money, or we need to unite all the country in a common cause, perhaps based on some mythical aspect of our nation's heritage.  Remind them of the hardships our forefathers endured, and the beliefs that they clung to when little else remained.  That sort of thing."

The president thought for a long time, the silence broken only by the ticking of the clock and Seward's gentle puffing on his pipe.  It had the feeling of one of the defining moments of history; one of the moments that changes the course of a nation forever.

Finally, he said, "I like the money idea better."

Seward grinned.  "Excellent.  Then, this is what we need to do.  Christmas is coming."

"Do you suggest we pray?"

"Just the opposite.  We start encouraging the people to buy more Christmas presents to give to each other, especially the children."

"Won't that just encourage greed?"

"No, sir, it most certainly will do much, much more than JUST encourage greed.  It will encourage generations of greed, selfishness, avarice, covetousness. And spending.  Much, much spending. We will encourage the merchants to extend lines of credit, so people can spend more than they have.  Banks will finance low-interest loans to pay back the merchants, and then raise those interest rates.  And we'll throw in enough excise taxes to bring in revenue by the wagon-load!  But..."

He trailed off.  The President looked expectant.  "But...what?  It sounds like a marvelous idea."

"But, it will work better if we focus our attention on just the few weeks before Christmas.  Just enough time to spend lots of money, but not long enough to regret the purchases and learn from their mistakes.  We should start it...I'd say the last Friday in November.  You should declare a holiday."

The President nodded.  "Yes, of course!  And I shall call it, Thanks-taking! To encourage people to take those presents they are being given, with thanks."

Early Bird Special:  Four-score and seven bucks off!

Seward blew a smoke ring in the shape of a dollar sign.  "You're a capable leader, Mr. President, but not very shrewd.  We can't declare a holiday just to make people buy stuff.  The holiday must be the day BEFORE.  And the next day, the shopping day, we'll tell all the stores to open early, so people can start shopping sooner.  And every year, they will open a little sooner, and a little sooner, until the holiday itself disappears.  By that time, we shouldn't need the holiday anymore."

"Excellent," the President shouted.  "Write something up, some declaration, or proclamation, or presidential thingamajig.  Call it Thanks--something.  Work on it.  And throw in some claptrap about Indians or Pilgrims or something.  Make it work!"

Seward nodded.  He had a piece of paper in his hand now, and was scribbling furiously:

New holiday, last Thursday of November.  Thanks-getting, or something similar.  Throw in crap about Pilgrims.  Try to work in a parade, and maybe some football.

And the rest is history.

Some thoughts on being Red Sox fan

It seems that the Red Sox have once again won the World Series.  And again, against the Cardinals. Third victory in less than a decade, and all the players should be very proud of themselves.  They are some fantastic ball players, and justly deserve the parade that the city gave them.

While we were watching the coverage of the parade as it was happening (because the TV happened to be on), my daughter looked up just as some reporter was interviewing a little girl about her age, all decked out in Red Sox gear, clutching a little stuffed Wally the Green Monster.  And my daughter looked at me and said, "Why can't I be the little girl on TV?"

And I chuckled good-naturedly.  I may have even tossled her hair.  And I said, "Maybe next year."

And to her, that meant just what it sound like.  I'd agreed, tacitly, that next year, after the Red Sox win the World Series again, I would take her to the victory parade so she could be interviewed by a TV reporter.

But to me, it was like a secret code, a quiet acknowledgement that while we in what is repeatedly referred to now as "Red Sox Nation" have gained a World Champion team, we have perhaps lost something in our nature, something that defined us for many decades.

Now, I'm probably not the biggest fan of baseball, in general.  I don't really follow it, don't watch it on TV, didn't watch a complete World Series game this year. 

My daughter probably likes baseball more than I do.

But I was born a Red Sox fan.

There really was nothing I could do about it, and choice never entered into it.  My father was a Red Sox fan, thus I was taught to be a Red Sox fan, and there was very little else to say on the subject.  He told me about Ted Williams, about the Impossibe Dream, about Carlton Fisk and the the homerun that almost wasn't.

I collected the baseball cards. Had an official Red Sox batting glove.  A souvenir baseball.  I remember my first game at Fenway (I'm pretty sure it was Clemens on the mound, though at the time, that meant nothing to me, and I had no idea why people kept holding up signs saying "K.")

But the year I really became a Red Sox fan, as I have always understood the term, was 1986.

That year, while I was busy being a kid, the Red Sox made it to the World Series for the first time in my lifetime.  Suddenly, I was interested!  The Red Sox were going to be World Champions!  All they had to do was beat the Mets, and really, how hard could that be?

You must know the story: They just about had it sewn up, when a ground ball down the first base line went right past the glove and between the legs of Bill Buckner, and the Mets went on to win, and win the following game as well, leaving us Red Sox fans heartbroken and disappointed.

Which, of course, was exactly the point!

We, the true Red Sox fans, have always lived in a state of perpetual heartbreak.

And that is not to say that we were never proud of our team, or that the team, prior to 2004, was somehow inferior.  I'd submit that Ted Williams, Dom Dimaggio, Carl Yastremzci, or the '86 team that included Clemens, Wade Boggs, and Dwight Evans are easily the equal of any recent Red Sox lineup.  No, it wasn't for a lack of talent; it was... something else.

Every year, or so it seemed, they'd start off the season strong, then they'd lag behind, and come September, they'd surge ahead, sometimes barreling into the playoffs like an out-of-control locomotive, sometimes coming up just short (in '49, the entire season came down to one winner-take-all playoff game against the Yankees.  Hey, that reminds me of another season...)

And then, as though the universe realized what it was about to let happen...they lost.  No, they didn't lose: they blew it!  Year after year, they blew it!

And did eighty-plus years of constant disappointment turn Boston into a city of fatalists, without any shred of hope for the future?

Never been to Boston, have ya?

Red Sox fans have always been veritable fountains of unyielding optimism.  Every year, after every defeat, we would simply look at each other and say, "There's always next year."

This was famously immortalized on a bottlecap from the Nantucket Nectars juice company, which got into the habit of putting interesting facts or short jokes on the underside of their caps.  One cap said, "The Red Sox will win the World Series next year."  I guarantee, non-Sox fans didn't understand that cap.

And that taught me everything I needed to know about life.  That no matter what happened, no matter how hard you worked, how far you came, sometimes you'd still lose out, right at the moment it matters most.  And you what?  That's ok, because there's always next time.

They taught me good-sportsmanship.  They taught me persistence.  They taught me resilience.

And I'm a little worried that my daughter will never not know a world where the Red Sox are not known as World Champions.

Sure, I'm happy for them.  I was happy, truly happy, for all the fans in 2004, who had waited so long.  But now, I'm worried about the fans.

I'm worried that the fans will begin to expect to win.  They'll forget what it means to say, "Maybe next year."  They'll feel like they are entitled to win. They'll be obnoxious, unruly, intolerable.

In other words, I'm afraid they'll become that which they most abhor:

Yankees fans.

The Vampire State

Halloween is here again, and that means 3 very important things: costumes, candy, and scary stories.

The candy is coming, we just need to beg strangers for it.  You know, I try this year round, but for some reason it only ever works at the end of October.  Go figure.

As for the costume, my daughter has chosen ninjas as this year's theme.

I was hoping for "astronauts."

And finally, the scary stories: I love scary stories in all forms.  Be it book, or movie, or TV, I love being scared.  And while it seems like every horror movie put out these days claims to be "based on a true story," the very best scary stories are 100% true.

Like the story of Mercy Brown, the Rhode Island Vampire.

Now, I'll grant you that this happened back in 1892, which seems like a long time ago, but this is also the most recent documented incident of vampirism in the United States.  And like most of my favorite ghost stories, it takes place in Rhode Island.  And the real kicker is, while Mercy Brown may be the last vampire reported in Rhode Island, she's not even close to being the first!

Our story begins in the town of Exeter, Rhode Island.  There in 1892, the Brown family had suffered a string of terrible tragedies.  Mary Brown had died the year before of a horribe illness, where she seemed to slowly be drained of all life, becoming thinner and thinner, her eyes becoming sunken, her skin pale, like she was becoming a living corpse before their very eyes.  Soon after she died, her oldest daughter (also Mary, because, you know, it was a popular name back then) contracted the same illness, and shared the same fate.

By the following year, Mary's  (first Mary, not second Mary) daughter Mercy and son Edwin were also ill.  After Mercy died, the people of Exeter were convinced that a vampire was to blame.  They exhumed the three Brown corpses, and while two of them showed appropriate amounts of decomposition, the third, Mercy, showed very little decomposition, with seemingly fresh blood still in her veins.  Seeing this, the people of Exeter, immediately cut out her heart and burned it, making her ashes into medicine for poor Edwin.  (It didn't work.  Remember that the next time your doctor prescribes "ashes of your dead sister.")

Mercy, and the rest of the Brown family, had what was known at the time as consumption, what we know today as tuberculosis.  It was a poorly understood illness at the time, with many conflicting and incorrect ideas about what caused it.  (It's much better understood now, but really, do you know what causes tuberculosis?  I didn't think so.  And if your doctor told you, "Yep, that's definitely vampire-related," you'd at least consider the possibility, so don't look down on the poor folks of Exeter.)

But why did these not-nearly-as-ignorant-as-people-think Rhode Islanders jump right to vampirism as a likely cause?  Probably because of all the times it had happened before!

The first documented case of Rhode Island vampires seems to date back to the 1790s.  And that's not necessarily the first case, just the first one where we have found clear documentation proving that said person existed, died, was exhumed and treated as a vampire.

This first case of vampirism centered on a girl named Abigail Staples of Cumblerland.  According to official town records, after her death at the age of 22 or 23, Abigail's father asked permission to exhume her body, "In order to try an Experiment on Livina Chace Wife of Stephen Chace Which Said Livina Was Sister to the Said Abigail Deceased."

(They really liked capitalizing back then.)

So, that doesn't say anything specific about vampires or consumption, simply referring to an "Experiment'" but destroying a vampire to keep her from destroying her own sister is rely the least creepy explanation I can come up with.

And soon after that, around 1799, comes another story out of Exeter.  After the deaths of between 4 or 6 (details vary) of his children, Stukeley Tillinghast (Best. Name. Ever.) decides to exhume their bodies, and ends up believeing that his daughter, Sarah, is the vampire feeding on the rest of the family.  Hilarity ensued.

Between 1799 and the finally story of Mercy Brown in 1892, as many as ten documented cases of vampirism can be found just in Rhode Island, plus a few more just over the border in eastern Connecticut.

Just ridiculous superstition, right?  Just silly folklore nonsense from those crazy, ignorant Rhode Islanders.

Well, perhaps, but this isn't fifteen or sixteenth century Europe.  This is happening in the United States, starting in the same time period as the writing of the Constitution, and on up past the end of the Civil War, almost to the beginning of the twentieth century.

But of course these folks were isolated in their small towns and not as educated as the average American.

Except that's not entirely accurate, either.  These towns kept careful records, they had newspapers, so people obviously knew how to read. If they were isolated, it was really only because they wanted to be, not because of any great distance or physical barriers.  This was, after all, just Rhode Island.  You could walk the entire length of the state without too much trouble.

So what was really going on there?  Why did so any people believe in vampires, and why did it stop after Mercy Brown?

This mystery reminds me of something I've always felt was odd about the Salem Witch Trials. Again, they happened only in one isolated area, and quite apart is distance and time from the European witch trials. And while it is obvious that most of the victims were blameless, it seems possible, just possible, that the panic could have been sparked by some degree of truth: that maybe, just maybe, someone in the village was practicing witchcraft.

Similarly, why would the people of these small Rhode Island towns be so convinced of vampires, even after consumption had been identified as tuberculosis and treatments had been developed, unless somewhere, at some point, one of these "vampires" had really been an actual vampire?!

Imagine this: One by one, members of a family become stricken by what appears to be consumption.  One by one, each family member wastes away, until their skin is drawn tight over protuding bones, their eyes so sunken into their sockets that at night, by the light of a few candles, they seem not to have any eyes at all.  And then, they die.

Perhaps, then, someone sees some creature in the local cemetery, perhaps just too big to be a dog.  Perhaps they notice a grave recently disturbed.  At any rate, they decide to investigate, to dig up the grave, open the casket.

Inside, they find something horrible; something not dead, but not truly alive either.  They realize this...thing...has been the cause of the lamented family's misery, and calling upon stories they always thought were only folklore from the Old World, they cut off its head, they cut out its heart, they destroy the thing with fire.

The town is at peace again, but none of them will ever forget the thing that they saw in the cemetery.

And if something similar happens in a town nearby, won't one of the townsfolk want to help, to warn those citizens of what it could be.  Again, they are not superstitious, do not believe in such creatures, but the man gives his word he saw it with his own eyes.

And so it continues.  Never spreading far from where it began, and the supernatural cure does not always work, for often these are just what they seem: vicims of consumption.

But once in a while, just enough to keep the stories alive...

And why did it suddenly stop in 1892?  Maybe it didn't, they just stopped talking about it!  It could be that the same thing is happening in parts of Rhode Island even now, they just don't publicize it anymore.  The Brown case got quite a bit of media attention, and maybe once the late 19th century version of Fox News descends on your village and starts openly mocking your beliefs, you may shut up about it for a while.

"Damn liberal media." - Dracula

That doesn't mean it stopped.

So the next time you find yourself driving through Rhode Island late at night, keep your eyes open. You might see a young woman walking along the side of the highway.  You might think she's looking for help, that perhaps her car broke down somewhere.

I'd advise you to keep driving.  Don't even slow down.

Because the Ocean State might just be... the Vampire State!

Happy Halloween!

I should add, I am deeply indebted to Michael E. Bell and his fantastic book on New England Vampires, "Food For the Dead."

Remember the Poodle

Last week, we had to say goodbye to a member of our family.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a dog lover. And when we bought our house nine years ago, we immediately got a dog.  My wife found him at a local shelter, a scrawny, underfed, unkempt little mutt, found wandering around, abandoned.  We named him Joe.

Believe or not, he was not always this dashingly handsome.

Soon after, my wife picked me up from work and told me, "We're going to Billerica."

"Ok," I said. "Where's Billerica?"

She didn't know.  We needed to buy a road atlas to find it.  (This was before the world of ubiquitious iphones and GPSs.)  It turned out to be almost 2 hours away.  There, in some woman's house that doubled as an "animal shelter," we got our second dog, a tiny ball of white poodle that we named Mae.

Mae, pictured moments before she tried to convince my toes to become unattached from my foot.

Mae did not immediately ingratiate herself to us.  She whined a lot, she growled, she bit, she picked fights with Joe.  But over time, she grew on us.  She would sleep at the foot of our bed, and bite my foot nearly every night.   As she got even older, we had to get used to cleaning up her accidents all over the house.

She had breast cancer, which was removed by surgery twice.  She had to have one eye removed after it became swollen and infected.

This wasn't exactly "Marley and Me."

Nine years later, last week, we took Mae to the vet for another eye infection.  They found she'd lost over 2 pounds since she'd been there last.  Considering she'd never weighed more than 7 pounds, she didn't have much left to lose.

Within a day, she'd stopped eating entirely.  The next morning, she passed away in her sleep, in her favorite bed.  We buried her in the backyard.

I don't want to talked at length about this one poodle (although I guess I am), nor do I want to talk about death, about picking up her cold body, or the smell that infused her bed.  No, that's not something I'm feeling up to talking about.

If you remember nothing else about this blog entry, please remember this: there are animal shelters near you, filled with dogs and cats that need a home.  That need love.  That need you.

Don't go to pet stores that sell puppies out of cages.  Please.  Yes, that puppy may be given a good home and a wonderful life, but you're encouraging the store to bring in more puppies, and very few of them will be so lucky.

During one of her checkups soon after we brought her home,  one vet commented that it looked like Mae had had puppies before.  They guessed that she'd been a breeder, used to churn out as many puppies as she could to sell to those same pet stores, and had probably been abandoned, literally thrown out, when she got too old to be useful.

Mae had endured 9 years of being beaten, forced to breed, forced to fight other dogs for food, for water, for a place to sleep.  And because of that, despite being given a safe home surrounded by a family that loved her, she still woke up in the middle of the night snarling and biting anything that moved nearby.  (Spoiler: it was my foot.)

The 9 years she spent with us cannot erase those first nine years, but she was able to die in her favorite bed, peacefully, and that counts for something, since it was probably the first thing she was able to do peacefully in her entire life.

So the next time you see a puppy in the pet store, please remember my little white poodle.  Remember her nine years of torment, and the nine years of peace that couldn't erase them.

Then, drive down to a shelter, and give your love to a dog that needs it.

Or else her ghost will bite your foot off.  I'll make sure of it.