Blaine Got The Call
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, lots of people celebrated last week. Cam was one of them. It was a case of determination unwavering belief that was finally rewarded. ----- So, after six years, Blaine finally got the call. I remember during the pandemic my wife and I rode our children’s bikes down the center of the street late one evening to our friend’s house for a cocktail. It was strange to have no traffic at that hour. At their house we sat outside and chatted for a while. Blaine was home and he and his sister stood in the back yard playing an improvised game hitting ping pong balls with...
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Practitioner
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam wonders if we have what it takes any more. If the thumbs up button is as far as we'll go or as much as we'll do. ----- David Brooks wrote a column in the New York Times last week calling for a, quote “comprehensive national civic uprising.” There are well over four thousand comments with most being something along the lines of “Yes. It’s about time. Someone should do something.” Brooks’ says the Trump administration has gone too far, that we are indeed in a constitutional crisis, and it’s time to act. But, I wonder, do we have what it takes to...
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Prom
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam tells us that based on a series of recent events, he has two people he'd like offer up as potentially superb spies. ----- My twins are high school juniors, and prom was last Saturday night. The event went something like this: For my son: He brought his Joseph Banks suit downstairs about noon. It looked like it had been in a pile on the floor since he last wore it in March. There was a button-down shirt with it. My wife took the clothes and began steaming the wrinkles out. She asked “What flowers did you get your date.” A blank look. “Go to Publix and...
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To AI or Not AI. That Is The Question.
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On today's Keepin' it Real, Cam reports on a writer's conference he attended last weekend where a good part of the conversation was about using AI. All the writers, Cam reports, choose to not use it, preferring to remain "pure." ----- I attended a writers' conference last Saturday. Writers are a curious breed, convinced their unique perspective on describing something as mundane as a sunset is groundbreaking and essential. I love them. But they’re weird. This year, though, a frequent topic was artificial intelligence – how do writers use it, if at all. Speaker after speaker claimed they...
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Get The Joke
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Cam and his wife were at a wedding reception last week. It was beautiful. One conversation, though, has stuck with him. ----- My wife and I stood with a young man at a wedding Saturday night as he lamented the lack of turkeys to hunt at his camp. There were no gobblers, he said, and he was a bit down in the mouth about it. “Why,” my wife asked. “In the spring,” he said, “the hens move to a different place where they like the environment for nesting. The gobblers follow. And wherever those hens go, it’s not on our property. I wish there were something about our place that the hens...
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Judges Of The Truth
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
It's been a long week for Cam. He's going to get paid one hundred dollars for two days of work that he is required by law to perform. He didn't enjoy it but it wasn't because of the low pay. ------ In grade school I never wanted to be the one to pick teams. I was afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. It’s ridiculous, I know. I like to get along. I like to see people succeed. I’ve never wanted to be the arbiter of someone’s else’s happiness. That responsibility scares me. Monday morning, I was selected as a jury member for a federal trial. It was my first time doing this. I was one of...
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Meaningless Conversations
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston shares what exhausts him and how a good conversation is hard to find. ----- It was 1,000 one-minute conversations. A collection of people who all were within a degree, maybe a half a degree, of separation. Hardly a meaningful chat and as the event wore on, the meaningfulness of the chats dwindled further. For so little conversation, it was exhausting. I think maybe that conversations that skim along the veneer of content are more taxing than digging into content. I don’t know. But when I left, I was completely spent. I’m like so many other people...
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Happiness
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On today's Keeping It Real, Cam recounts his birthday week which has some unexpected surges of happiness. ----- Happiness is fleeting. It never lasts and I’m not sure it’s supposed to. It’s different than joy and contentment and pleasantness. Happiness bubbles up from an unexpected place and last such a short time. And when it arrives, it sometimes brings tears. Living in constant happiness would render us nearly helpless. It immobilizes you. Living in joy and contentment is great with, hopefully, unexpected surges of happiness from time to time that render us speechless. For my...
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The Ft. Lauderdale Accord
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam explains the Ft Lauderdale accord and how it's telling him that it's time to move on. ----- My wife and I will be empty nesters in eighteen months. If all goes according to plan, in that time our youngest two will graduate and head to college and if looking back is anything like looking ahead, these next eighteen months will fly by. If you’re a regular listener, you know that my wife and I have four kids. We purchased this house with a family of six in mind. With only two kids left at home, it’s already a lot of space and in eighteen months it will be...
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Paraty
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On today's Keepin It Real, Cam reports back about his most memorable event on his recent trip to Brazil. He traveled a long way to come back with this... ------ Cachaca is a Brazilian alcohol that was first made by the slaves the Portuguese brought to Brazil. It’s sugar cane based. Very sweet. And like gumbo, red beans and rice, jazz music, and the Mississippi delta blues among other things, it was what the poor people created due to a lack of resources and that the wealthy people eventually wanted. Crazy how that works so predictably. It’s like clockwork. Anyway, my wife and I were...
info_outlineThe value of Mardi Gras beads peak when they're under no ownership. It's part of the silliness of my favorite time of year.
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If you’re not listening in the deep south, you may not know that it’s Mardi Gras time for us derelicts and mystics living here on the top lip of the Gulf Coast. Ships from all over the world back in the day delivered a menagerie of people here where they threw their customs and traditions into one big gurgling pot and one of the results is Mardi Gras. The story I tell is that Mardi Gras was a time for people to dispose of food that would spoil during the fasting associated with Lent, which begins with Ash Wednesday next week, so they threw big parties to consume all the food. Is it the truth? I don’t know. It’s the story I’ve heard the most, so it’s the story I tell.
Folks from other places who now live here are fond of saying “I just don’t get Mardi Gras. It makes no sense.” And they’re right. It doesn’t. Don’t try to make sense of it. Just enjoy it. If you can’t enjoy it because it doesn’t make sense, stay away. L et us have our fun.
Take Mardi Gras beads as one of many examples. The value of a typical strand of Mardi Gras beads can range from a few cents per strand to a few dollars. So, for argument’s sake, let’s assume one of the strands I bought at the bead store last weekend for my parade cost one dollar. It was likely made for a few cents by some poor underpaid child somewhere operating massive machine and wondering what in the world these beads things are used for and why they need so many. Nevertheless, the bead store paid maybe forty cents for it. Its value shot to a dollar when I paid for it at the register. However, the highest value of those beads cannot be assigned a number and was not when it was owned by the manufacturer, the retailer, or me. The highest value of the beads was when those beads were ownerless after I had tossed it from my hand, and it curved in gentle arc through the air and began its descent. In those moments the beads were in the air, grown men and women, aggressive children, and people who are normally friendly neighbors saw the beads and used NBA style block-outs, tremendous jumps, karate chops and tae kwon do style elbows to friend’s ribcages to catch ‘em.
Once caught, the beads went around a neck for a short time. Or they disappeared into a bag already full of them. Or were tossed on top of a pile of other beads just like it. Or, they could very likely been given away to a complete stranger. Once secured and under new ownership, the bead’s value vanished instantly. In a week they’ll be in the trash.
It makes no sense to spend so much money buying beads, then give them away, only for them to ultimately be thrown away. No sense at all. But that’s Mardi Gras. If you try to apply logic to it, you’ll scream.
And, frankly, I can’t get enough of it.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.