2021 was an epic failure--the worst year I have experienced except for the half decade at the start of this sorry century when that covert narcissist, in my opinion, my former wife Sharon Rogers Lightbourne harassed me with lawsuits to divorce me which used every dirty scumbag scheme her unscrupulous or worse divorce lawyers and enablers could conjure up to murder the childhoods of my children in their avarice and zealotry to destroy me psychologically and financially including directing my then-minor children to sue me over a "fiduciary" matter and turned my children irrevocably against me (which was classic PAS--a form of child abuse). She was assessed almost $50,000 in penalties and costs ultimately by the courts which turned off the litigation spigot finally. (This is the last page conclusion of the appellate decision years later which finally ended the litigation where my ex-wife with her coterie of "professionals" tried to throttle the life out of me by "unjustified" and meritless appellate litigation using our minor children as surrogates in James B. Lamberton et al vs. Peter W. Lamberton. No wonder the boy changed his last name to hers on his 18th birthday, to get rid of the stigma of such an unfavorable decision.)
This past summer was the best of a miserable year, or at least the least bad part of a terrible year. I went to Colorado on a business trip for a week which I enjoyed as I was able to see a couple of freshman dorm mates and meet my grand niece whom I had never seen. Since I was in Louisville for my business, I went on a short journey down memory lane looking at some of the houses we had lived in. (In Louisville I drove past the house we brought our oldest child, James B. Rogers, home to from the birthing hospital in Denver in the eighties. I planted every green thing you see in the yard. On December 30th it survived the massive conflagration which burned down a third of the town and most of the adjacent town to the south, Superior, although it obviously would have suffered insidious and thoroughly impregnating smoke damage like all the other houses in town west of Main Street.)
I went on a trip to North Carolina to see another dorm mate where I attended a service at a Black evangelical church which was very uplifting to me, witnessing such wholly pious and fervently religious believers. We also went sailing, serving as crew in the harbormaster's boat judging racing sailboats in a series of races in the harbor. (And the winner is . . . the boat with white sails.)
I visited the USMC museum a few miles south of here in Quantico, which I had not been to before and is well worth seeing. (The Douglas SBD Dauntless Dive-bomber, the American carrier bomber which sunk all four Japanese carriers it encountered at the Battle of Midway. This plane, hanging from the museum's ceiling with its speed-dampening perforated air brakes deployed, in effect turned the tide in the Pacific War on that day in June, 1942 and doomed the Japanese empire.)
I visited the spectacular Glenstone Gardens in Maryland, scoring a scarce ticket largely by luck. (Check out the giant horse's head statue behind me on the hilltop made out of flowers growing out of a hollow steel trestle.)
I attended a minor league baseball game in Maryland which was relaxing and fun, especially after a year when there was no minor league baseball whatsoever. It cost $8 for a ticket and we could sit wherever we wanted to. (The Regency Furniture Stadium in Waldorf, home to the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, is a pleasure to watch a baseball game in.)
A friend and I spent a lot of time hanging out on my porch feeding the birds and eating and occasionally having an afternoon drink, just as we had done the summer before, and also taking walks. The pandemic never seemed to get better despite the ready availability of free vaccinations, thanks largely to the selfish, unpatriotic 40% of Americans who refused to help us all out by getting vaccinated, ensuring that America could never get to herd immunity and leaving us all at risk of disease and possibly death. (Pizza, a little bourbon and birds to feed. How idyllic, eh?)
I took up tennis again after an absence of four decades. It wasn't pretty but it's getting better. And I jumped cold into pickle ball in a big way, which is both fun and frustrating. The only people I can play with are seniors who are all better than me, having played together for several years. I lose a lot, a whole lot, which doesn't improve my forever pandemic and soon to be post-democracy gathering gloom. (I cold-turkey one day ditched the ping pong grip and went to a continental grip. It helped. And just this week I received a composite touch paddle as a gift from a friend so I could ditch my wooden paddle and hopefully improve some more.)
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