Yes that is the plant and i swear to you everything written here is true... from the facts of that fall evening with my mother to the evening when i wrote this last night.  I'm done here. I've got other things to do but since you came here i will let you in on one more piece.

What follows never saw the webpage but i have come to regard it as the first anniversary piece.  It is the piece i wrote for the Chase Newsletter the month i left.  It was the first time i had ever written anything remotely like these pages.  And i think it will be fitting to make it the last thing i ever place on it.

Enjoy the dawning of sappy geno...

11-July 1997

By the time you read this I will already be gone.  Not dead, heaven forbid, but gone.  I have taken a 4 month leave of absence.  I have taken leave to find something, somewhere, I know not what.  But as long as I have this last chance to be published here, I may as well try to further the good of the bank if not, at least, FDR.

This would probably be a good time to point out that this will be a serious article for the most part.  So everyone who has ever said, “Geno are you ever serious?”, here you go.”  Don’t bitch, you asked for it.  So let me leave you with one last piece of advice, wit, wisdom, or whatever you dredge from these silly little articles I send out.  BE HAPPY.

I’m not gonna be here everyday to make sure you guys are, so I’m just going to have to trust you.  (Besides considering the walking bag of despondency I have been of late, it will probably be easier without me around).  So just be happy, for yourselves.

Right now people are reading this saying “I am happy.” Great!  Don’t ever take it for granted.  See the beauty in a loved ones smile, enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done, feel the passion of  music and art.  See all the things that make you happy.  You truly cannot make anyone else happy until they  are  convinced that you’re happy yourself. 

For those of you who are convinced you’re not happy.  Shake it off.  There’s a lot of beauty in this world, we just need to see it.  It’s the sadness that blinds us.

I think everyone at sometime in life should be required to read Camus’ novel “The Plague” If you’re happy it reminds why you are.  If you’re not, it reminds you why you should be.  Probably the most powerful line in the book “... the habit of despair is worse than despair itself”.  Think about that.  It really does say it all.  Be sad, bad things happen we can’t explain but grow stronger and move on. But don’t ever accept it.  Things get better. 

All right enough of the melancholy.  Let’s talk about the other piece of required reading.  Tennyson’s Psalm of Life.  My mother, you remember her, she always popping up in these articles, taught me the poem when I was in High School but I’d long since forgotten it.  Several weeks ago, I was cleaning out the house and found the poem on the first page of my Father’s High School yearbook.  (True Story, take it for what you like).  At any rate, the poem is too long to completely reprint so I give you my two favorite stanzas:

In world’s broad field of battle
In the bivouac of Life.
Be not like dumb and driven cattle
Be a hero in the strife

Life is real, Life is earnest
And the grave is not the goal
Dust thou art to dust returneth
Was not spoken for the soul

Did he say soul?  Is that politically correct?  Will they print this?  Yes, I said soul.  With apologies to Pat Ondish, who as a child never questioned its existence, even asking in a science class where the soul was located in the body. I cannot stress enough how important a part of the body it is. 

Each of us has a soul, it’s just a question of how you define it.  But each of us most certainly has one.  It’s the part of us that aches when we lose something very dear to us.  It’s not the heart—that pumps blood, it has no nerve endings.  It’s not the brain, or we’d take aspirin when we were sad.  It’s most certainly the soul.  It’s the part of us that embraces beauty and gives you chills, it sees other people for who they are and what they do, it’s the part of us where we feel passion.  It’s where we cry, smile, and yes, laugh.  It’s the one thing we need to maintain and the rest will all fall neatly into place...family, career, and God. 

I thought mine was stuffed, I was wrong, he was starving and now I’m leaving now to feed him.  Travel, read, and close up shop on this whole parent thing.  I think it will be quite nourishing.  But I leave you with this, if you’re unhappy, listen to your soul and give it what it needs, deep down, only you know.  Everyone around you will be glad you did.  If you are happy, keep on doing what you doing and realize why you are. 

And if you guys get the chance read The Plague and The Psalm of Life.  Here’s one last parting stanza.

Trust no future, however pleasant
Let the dead past bury its dead
ACT, ACT in the living present
Heart within and God o’erhead.

XOXO
                  -G