Inch by Inch, Obama is Moving Mountains

There are many whom I enjoy reading, and whom write far better than I could ever hope to. There are also many that know more than I could ever know, or hope to know. I am not claiming that what is below is right, wrong, or somewhere in between, well probably somewhere in between, but I also know that Mr. Sullivan presents a good argument, and packages it well, so thought I would share.

Thank you again for getting this far with me, and thank you to my sister Tina for sending me the link, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6968384.ece.

From The Sunday Times article by Andrew Sullivan

Between Barack Obama and Tiger Woods, it wasn’t such a good December for idolised, lean, brown golfers. Tiger, however, can hide. Barack, alas, cannot. The venom against Obama has been right up there with that directed against, well, Bush, Clinton, Nixon, Johnson ... America is, after all, a tough political arena.

The right treated the Senate passage of health insurance reform — a bill that essentially subsidises private health insurance for the working poor — as if it were the new dawn of bolshevism. Actually, that would be too mild. “Two-thirds of the country don’t want this. And one-third of these jihadists, these healthcare jihadists, do,” opined the Republican commentator Mary Matalin.

The left, however, was no kinder. Many leading liberal lights called for the bill to be killed because it gave too much to insurance and drug companies and failed to provide a publicly funded alternative to private insurance. The columnist Arianna Huffington lamented: “If the miserable Senate healthcare bill becomes the law of the land, it’s only going to encourage the preservation of a hideously broken system.”

My favourite splutter came from the Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson, who declared the entire bill an encomium to Obama’s self-centredness. “It is about him: about the legacy he covets as the president who achieved ‘universal’ health insurance,” Samuelson inveighed. Then — hilariously — he added: “To be sure, the [proposals] would provide insurance to 30m or more Americans by 2019.” What did the Romans ever do for us?

The bill is not perfect and will need work in the next few years — on cutting some entitlements and controlling costs in other ways. But the law remains largely what Obama promised in the campaign.

As with most attempts to judge Obama, a little perspective helps. So let’s review, shall we? This is the biggest single piece of social legislation in 40 years. The Congressional Budget Office predicts it will indeed insure 30m people.

And this is only the end of year one. In the stimulus package in the spring, Obama invested an unprecedented amount of federal money in infrastructure, with an unsung focus on noncarbon energy sources. He engineered a vast and nerve-racking banking rescue that is now under-budget by $200 billion because so many banks survived.

He organised the restructuring of the US car industry. He appointed Sonia Sotomayor, a Latina Supreme Court justice, solidifying his non-white political base. If market confidence is one reason we appear to have avoided a second Great Depression, then the president deserves a modicum of credit for conjuring it. Growth is edging back into the picture.

No recent president has had such a substantive start since Ronald Reagan. But what Reagan did was to shift the underlying debate in America from what government should do to what it should not. His was a domestic policy of negation and inactivism, and a foreign policy of rearmament and sharp edges.

Obama has, in a mirror image of 1981, reoriented America back to a political culture that asks what government will now do: to prevent a banking collapse, to avoid a depression, to insure the working poor, to ameliorate climate change, to tackle long-term debt. The point about health insurance reform, after all, is that it represents a big expansion of government intervention in the lives of the citizenry — and that’s a game-changer from three decades of conservative governance.

Abroad, the shift has been even more marked. From his Cairo speech to his resetting of relations with Russia, an era of polarisation has ceded to one of intense engagement. We have had the supplanting of the G8 by the G20, a dramatic upgrade of public opinion towards America across the globe, an overhaul of the war in Afghanistan, an end to torture as an instrument of US government and the slow unwinding of Guantanamo.

On Iran, Obama held out what he called an open hand, managed to dislodge Russia a few inches from its usual anti-sanctions approach, busted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations on the Qom nuclear site, and held tight as the coup regime was assailed from within. If Tehran’s international position has veered between rank belligerence and confused drift, it is because the regime itself is far weaker than it was a year ago, and may not last another year.

The disillusioned are those who weren’t listening in the campaign or not watching closely in the first year. The right has failed to register his steeliness and persistence and the left has preferred to ignore his temperamental and institutional conservatism. Both sides still misread him — hence the spluttering gloom. And there is indeed something dispiriting about the relentless prose of government compared with the poetry of the campaign. But Obama is a curious blend of both: a relentless pragmatist and a soaring rhetorician.

In time, if the economy recovers, if black, young and Hispanic voters see the benefits of their new healthcare security, if troops begin to come home from Iraq in large numbers next summer, if jobs begin to return by the autumn, then the logic of his election will endure.

His care to keep the tone civil, to insist on impure change rather than ideological stasis has already turned the Republicans into foam-flecked nostalgics for a simpler, whiter, easier period and has flummoxed those left-liberals who wanted revenge as much as reform. Both are part of an embittered past that Obama wants to leave behind. His clarity on this, and his refusal to take the bait of divisiveness and partisanship is striking. That takes an enormous amount of self-confidence and self-restraint.

He has failed in one respect: the political culture is still deeply partisan, opportunistic and divided. But this, I believe, is not so much a function of his liberal pragmatism as it is a remnant of an American right in drastic need of new intellectual life and rhetorical restraint. In this respect, Obama has made the right crazier, which may be a necessary prelude to it becoming saner.

It’s worth remembering that America is a vast and cumbersome machine, designed to resist deep change. That this one man has moved the country a few key, structural degrees in one year, and that the direction is as clear and as strategic as that first embraced by Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (in the opposite direction) is under-appreciated. But the shift is real and more dramatic than current events might indicate. I wouldn’t bet on its evanescence quite yet.

andrewsullivan.com

...Too the Devil

Not doing what is meant
Not doing what is wanted
Not sure what that is
Sure this is not it
Not the worst just not the best
Just playing another role
Been playing them forever
Never really been me
Always been what was supposed to be, expected, planned

Forgot how to think long ago
Forgot how to decide
Do for others, what is best, what makes them happy
'Till it doesn't
Try to figure out why, what did I do wrong? What is wrong with me?
Nothing for a moment
Then start again

So much in me has never come out, not enough anyway
Little glimpses now and again
Just enough to know I don't know, am not me

Not crazy
Not wacky go nuts
Not loud
Not fun
Not funny
Just not
Should be, but just not

Too late
Too old
Too tired
Too broken

Bones
Joints
Muscles
Ligaments

Just broken
Just not
Just
Me...

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

A Good Day

Thanks to the Sage's help, a nice new place to live, with a nice new kitchen, and a pretty cool new town in Boise, Idaho, Thanksgiving day was in fact a good day.

So, having purchased "all the right stuff" to make pancakes with the night before, and having allowed myself to slumber for a bit, not sleep mind you, but slumber, once I wandered downstairs and ponder the prospect of pancakes, French toast, omelet, and so on, I eventually settled on the making of one pancake, yes I said one. I did not want a big breakfast, which is why I had put the bacon, and the sausage and all sorts of other potential food nightmares back on Thanksgiving Eve, and so I decided I wanted one pancake and only one.

My plan was simple, start backwards, put in an egg, and slowly add pancake mix until I had a bit of a paste, and then add the melted butter and thin with milk until the perfect consistency. The plan worked flawlessly except for the fact that the melted butter alone, I like butter, loosened up the mixture too much...so I added a bit more pancake mix, Aunt Jemima by the way, like there is any other, and then I thinned with milk. So four medium size pancakes without bacon is not so bad for a light breakfast.

I took my pancake pan, washed the dust off, and then heated gently while "greasing" with an appropriate amount of butter. Slowly distributed the batter in four strategically placed locations on the griddle, and away we went. Waited for the air bubbles to pop, turned them over to discover the golden brown tops, the crispy edges, mmmmm. I added the obligatory pat of butter per cake, and then removed them from the griddle. "Drizzled" the appropriate allotment of syrup on top and magic. I sat, I ate, I savored, I devoured.

That was stage one. Then, after cleaning up fro breakfast it was on to boxes of stuff. The goal, essentially, was to clear out the living room, where most boxes were first moved into, and in so doing put things away as I went. Mission accomplished. It was nice to be able to empty some boxes and move some stuff out, even just to find some things that had been missing, or at least not yet found.

Stage three was more food. The ham I had purchased, with the pineapple slices surrounding it, and a homemade maple, honey glaze thanks Gram. I prepared the ham, applied the glaze, figured out how to set the oven that I had not yet used. Did not set a timer because I was going to watch this process closely. I applied more glaze a few times, while continuing to move stuff around and put things away. I quickly checked the movie times and did some math and decided that the first showing would be too early and so got myself fixed on 4:45. Stage four was, had always planned to be, an early showing of The Blind Side with Sandra Bullock, yes she is still on my list, and always will be.

Anyway, the ham was nearing completion, or as best I could tell, so I put the Bush's Baked Beans in the pan, doctored them a bit, some butter and some maple syrup just to sweeten them up a bit, and then it was time. I pulled the ham out to inspect and see if it was done. Seemed to be, looked nice on the outside, a bit of a crispy skin, but looked good. Went to begin carving and noticed a bit of a...well...almost a...shell. The ham had been wrapped completely, and that had all been cut away, the label, instructions, warnings, and so on, only once all that was removed there apparently was a thin wrapping to seal in the juices and such, and that had escaped me. Don't know if it was supposed to come off before or after, but that was moot. I cut that off, sliced two slices of ham, put that on the plate with the beans and the pineapple and there was Thanksgiving dinner.

I am still here, so I would have to say that the ham wrapping thing was pretty much a non issue, especially since I have had it for lunch since as a sandwich, and twice in a fritata, Italian omelet sort of, I will write more on this later.

Making the 4:45 movie was easy, popcorn, Junior Mints, and away I went. Aside from the mother and daughter that I ended up sitting next to and had to keep from strangling on a couple of occasions, this was the perfect end, or almost end, to the perfect day. A great movie about someone nice, and with means, doing something for a person that by all accounts should have been a hard a-- from the projects, but instead was a well mannered quite giant. And Sandra Bullock is awesome.

Came home, lit the fired, well turned on the switch, and had some left overs, played with Bella a bit, and then crashed early. Yes it is hard to not be with family, or friends, or significant other (s) at the holidays, but this was a good day.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Twas the Night Before Christmas (well actually Thanksgiving)

This day really started last night when, on my way home from Barnes and Noble’s, I was fortunate to have some help making an absolutely critical decision. See, on the night before Thanksgiving, the grocery store is only so long, and then it is closed on Thanksgiving. Now you are all sitting there saying “tell me something I don’t know,” but this is what made last night’s decision so critical to today truly being a good day.

See, I realized yesterday afternoon that I had, essentially, no food in the house and that meant a very hungry Thanksgiving Day given that the stores and the restaurants would all be closed. Once this dawned on me I ran out to the local food coop and bought some veggies and snack food and what not, then because I am knew to this area I took the receipt over to the closest large grocery chain and checked the prices of the two stores. In so doing, I learned two things, the coop is cheaper, again, you may be thinking “yeah so,” but this was news to me, I also learned that the grocery was open until 1:00 AM. This meant that I could stay at Barnes and Noble’s until ten and then still have time to go get some additional items if I so decided. We are sneaking up on the most critical and urgent of all decisions.

So I rang my trusted “Sage,” and wished him an early Thanksgiving and then began our rather non-senseacle and innocuous conversation. Mainly, I was taking advantage of the fact that he gets funnier the more tired he is and he was exhausted. I drove to the store, having realized that I had only bought basic items for food, and nothing “special” for Thanksgiving Day, no Turkey, no fixin’s, just stuff. I also had nothing but the recent breakfast winners in English muffns, Thomas’ of course, and some mutli-grain bread, plus a newer addition in the Thomas’ seven grain bagels, or something like that.

It had been suggested that I might make some pancakes for breakfast, and treat myself, and thus the entire late night shopping spree had its source, but an ill advised plan. This is where the sage comes in. As I entered the store he was trying to guide me on what I might get to make the Thanksgiving breakfast special. Somehow our focuses diverged for a bit, we were both still on breakfast, but he was trying to cover as many country with breakfast as possible, such as French Toast, and Canadian Bacon, Belgium Waffles, and some kind of eggs with hollandaise sauce and Swiss Cheese. The hollandaise I don’t quite get because I thought that was French and we had the toast, but never doubt the sage.

While he was on this country quest, on the Bluetooth which was in my left ear, I was selecting my own items, going with an all-American theme, sort of, and flirting a bit with a few of the patrons, I am my father’s son.

My choices were far simpler, Oscar Myer bacon, Hormel link sausage, Aunt Jemima pancake mix and syrup, and so on. I even went so far as to choose Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls, which are very good, but a coronary in a can. Anyway, at some point along the way, with the Sage making me chuckle as I walked through the aisles looking like a nut, laughing out loud, I decided to put everything back and left the store. The Sage was stunned.

I drove back to the front of my house and sat there trying to decide what to do. It was come inside and get to bed at a reasonable hour or make a decision on what I really wanted to eat on this Thanksgiving Day and go back to the store with some focus and get what I needed. A decision was made; pancakes for breakfast with lots of butter and syrup, and ham and beans for lunch. Back to the store I headed.

Meanwhile, the Sage, in his delirious state, was still entertaining me, and educating me in my left ear. Both would happen in greater quantities once back in the store. For instance, I learned a tremendous more than I ever knew about butter, and what makes butter butter, and about milk and the origination of the 1 %, 2 % approach to life, something about the butter fat floating on top of the bottles of milk and someone realizing that they could remove some or all of that butter fat. And Sage you thought I never listened.

There was also a lengthy discussion on hams, and big versus little, good versus bad, both in taste and byproducts, and in why there is water added to every ham?? I think I missed that one. Anyway, I did manage to complete a focused shop, with the Sage’s help, and returned home with pancake mix, syrup, butter, a ham, baked beans, the “original” black bread, not sure what made it original, and a couple of other things that I do not remember at this time. It was the latest I had been up in a very long time.

Thanks for the help Sage, a job well done.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Amish is As Amish Does

Ok, so I have a question, is it not true that the Amish people are not supposed to drive automobiles, or use anything that can be described by the word "auto" in it at all.

I realize that I am not an expert in all things Amish, in fact I am not an expert in any things Amish, but I have to say that when I saw an automobile the other day that read "Amish Quilts" on the side of it this struck me as quite funny. of course this was not just any automobile, no, this was a very black, very large, full size Hummer, with the tinted windows, and the "tricked" out, or "pimped" out wheels and hubs and so on...and on the side, in nice bold white stenciled lettering were the words "Amish Quilts."

Just had to share.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

My Cousin Vinny

This is how it feels sometimes. We are all related right. All the Vinnies and the Michaels, and the Anthonys, and the Josephs. Anyone with the vowel on the end of their name, only this Vinny was Spanish, not Italian, and he wasn't a cousin, he was a barber, and that was just the beginning, well I guess the beginning and the end.

Understand, that in the time I had been here, exactly a week, I had not seen much traffic in his shop (read none), and Monday afternoon when I decided I needed to "trim" there was one person in the shop, and he was not getting his hair cut, but rather sitting against the wall looking very dead. I later found out that I was not far off, he had stopped in to sit for a minute because he wasn't feeling well having just spent four days in the hospital.

When I opened the door this wave of nausea came over me, instantly. It had to be four hundred degrees in the shop, and there was an odor that could not be placed, described, or believed, but it was sort of a combination of dirty sweat socks, gingivitis, and roadkill. I pressed on.

I actually said out loud "feel like cutting hair," and the dead guy answered, just raising his head up ever so slightly, and in a very breathless manner, "of course." At this point I was not sure if anyone in the place was alive, and feared that I was soon to join them. I pressed on.

Vince rose up out of the chair, painfully slowly, and just stood there, apparently waiting for me to take the seat he had been occupying. I did so feeling like if there was a way I could run without being incredibly rude, and hurting this old gentlemen's feelings I would do so. I put my foot, heel first, on the foot rest and placed myself gently, cautiously, into the chair.

Vince shuffled over to the counter, minutes passed, and he came back with a towel, a full sized towel, and wrapped it around my neck, then the black barbers apron, and some sort of pin. I was in, and he pressed on. I was holding my breath.

Vince reached for the clippers, big, heavy, and long guide. He dove into the back of my neck, not my hair, my neck!! He eventually got the angle right to start cutting some hair, some?? Next came another pair of clippers, with a smaller guard, and then another one smaller yet, and virtually no guide. I was doomed, and stuck. He pressed on, I still did not have the ability to breath.

At this point the dead guy rose...he spoke..."thanks Vince," and he was gone.

Behind me I noticed this noise, getting louder and louder. I was trying to figure out what it was. At first it sounded like the TV at three o'clock in the morning, after the test pattern is gone and the National Anthem is over, and all that is left is static. Does that even happen anymore?? Then I began to pick out sound bites, first Kenny Rodgers on what turned out to be a soft country station, and then someone talking about the BCS standings on ESPN Radio, and then a song that came out when I was in college, early 1980s, and on and on. An infinite loop of three intermingled, and very ill matched radio stations, plus tons of static, to go with the blasting heat and the odd, sickening smells. he pressed on, and I still had not taken a breath.

There was the moment when the chair started to spin, and I with it, because the clippers were pressing into the side of my neck, and with the resistance Vince pushed harder and harder. There was the moment that the sheers came out and I realized that they had never been sharpened, not since he came to this country in 1955. There was the truly unbelievable moment when, like any good old time barber, he took out the straight razor to clean up the back of my neck. If I had not felt like running before I certainly did at this point, but I figured I was in this far I was going to see it through, or quite literally die trying. The straight razor was no sharper than the clippers, or the sheers, or any of the inhabitants of the shop were, your truly very much included.

When he was finished I thanked him, gave him ten dollars, which meant a two dollar tip, and then listened as he told me of when he had come over, and where he had lived in Spain, and of his kids that were born here and now are grown and gone away...to California. I then walked up the street to the "salon" and made an appointment for the next day. My hair is very short now.

If I were rich I would buy this man a palace, and hire him maids, and butlers, and drivers, and whatever else he needed in an attempt to allow him some time to not sit in that shop and wait for someone to walk in.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Something Barrowed

I am not the smartest person on the planet and I know that. As a matter of fact all of the people that I consider friends are far smarter than I in some way or another, or mostly many ways. The below is from one such person in response to one of my blogs. What she has to say is very powerful, but how she says it is what is amazing to me...far beyond eloquent...enjoy.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen. ~Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

I agree. A high "moral code", or whatever name it is given, should be the standard of humans relating. Muffled under the vogue of acceptance .. this cheaper version of freedom appears to allow everything in a denied reality of bondage. If I stand for nothing, I fall for anything ... that's not freedom, it's chains of compliance. If each perspective maintains a reality in and of itself and I am to accept perspectives as individual truths, where as a communal body of individuals may we possibly relate without harm?

Morals, manners, human relationships are the outpouring of our inner lives. How and what I think about has direct correlation to whom and how I interact. If I think positively with gratitude for the people & gifts God has placed & will place in my path, then my actions and words will reflect. If my mind lingers on lewd fantasy, negative responses & darkness, again my actions and words will reflect. I wil not stand to be subject to bondage. Fall the walls of vain acceptance and stand up for what is uplifting, that is what is right. Bring back the moral code.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

"There is something else I am after, out here in the wild. I am searching for an even more elusive prey ... something that can only be found through the help of the wilderness. I am looking for my heart." ~ John Eldredge Wild at Heart

Follow the winds that be, fly your kite, sail it high, let it lead, flitter by.
A search, a quest, unsettled yet certain ... run fast, run wild, run
Without baggage, worry free, it's all as it's supposed to be
Blocks of building, buildings demolished, closer now, beautifully polished

The Winds They Are a Changing

Destination Boise, ID.

Wanderlust. Into the wild. Go West my son.

Who knows how many different ways people have expressed the want for adventure, the yearning for the great unknown. We are a strange animal humans. People don't like change. People are afraid of change. People resist change...and yet...

I don't know what I am searching for, and I don't know if I will ever find it, but if I stop looking I am pretty sure one of two things will happen, it will find me, or my spirit will die and me along with it. Not exactly sure which it is, but as soon as I know I will share the answer with you...depending I guess.

For now, I know the next stop is Boise, ID. For how long...

As a consultant I have seen all the resistance to change you can imagine. In my life, I have been a constant contradiction, both resisting and thirsting. I hope that when I find the middle I will know.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

It Is Not About You

For another steadfast and overly consistent friend.

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one."

I know, Star Trek quotes are not exactly literary, but this one is so profoundly true, at least in my mind, that I have to throw this out there for you to chew on.

When people act in such a fashion as to improve their own situation, standing, comfort level, and do so in utter conflict to what is best for those around them, something needs to be done, said, to right that wrong. Too many times in today's world are people allowed to build their own little kingdoms, or "queendoms," because it is easier for all those involved. Unfortunately more often than not those in the crossfire get hurt, and lose far more than they gain and hardly ever even know what they have lost.

We should all be held to a standard that forces us to put others first, and others' best interest first. We should all be forced to recognize that nothing is ever as it seems, or at least not exactly as it seems, and that there is most likely a truer, more important truth out there for all to see and learn from.

Too often today people are allowed, especially young people (ok, now I am officially old), to take the easy route, not finish what they start, not see things through, not attempt to be better people, better citizens, better colleagues, better "teammates," in the process of becoming successful. We let them feel as though they have won some mystical battle, when all that has happened is that no one wants the responsibility, or the personal discomfort of telling them they are wrong, or of showing them the "real" truth, the true lesson.

"Perception is reality." A much used phrase, a very popular phrase among those that are in a position to manage, guide, teach, and one that is only true because we allowed it to be so.

At some point the world has to scream ENOUGH, and start taking absolute responsibility for what we have all created, or the "kings" and queens" of the world will be allowed to muddle on as they always have, and continue to do so much harm and damage that our country and our world will never recover.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Moral Code

This was not the plan. Every day, then every week, now once a month. I plan to get better at this again and more consistent, but for now here we are.

This one is pretty simple, and for a friend that has always been consistent, never faded, always been in my corner and believes a great deal more in me than I do.

I have said before that I not perfect, not even close, and when it comes to living by a "moral code," I have slipped more often than I like to think, but my friend is right about the basic concept.

I do believe, very much so, that there are very clear lines between right and wrong, and while the ones the line that exists for big things, like how to be a human being and be kind, caring and respectful of others, is very important.

There are things that should never be said, period. There are things that should never be done, no matter what, ever. There is a way to act in the privacy of your own home, and then a higher standard in public, and then an even higher standard in "mixed" company.

Is this "old fashioned?" Sure, I guess. Has the world changed? Yes. Has it changed for the better? In this sense, not at all, in any way, or any fashion. Is it better in some parts of our country and the world than others? Unfortunately, yes.

I was recently allowed the opportunity to spend some time observing a great man, and a great coach, and someone that has endured a great deal in his life, and persevered. This man very much lives by this code, and he instills this in his players, and in every player, student, young man, that he has the opportunity to come in contact with. I watched this Gentlemen address a group of young people, and college players, and youth and college coaches, and his message was, to paraphrase, be a good person, and be a good teammate, "open a door for a teammate." I am not certain, but fairly much so, that he meant that figuratively, as well as quite literally.

There is right and wrong, and anybody that tells you different, or believes different, is part of the problem we face in the world today. This is not about censoring, or restricting ones right to be free, this is about reeducating the world on what is good, kind, moral human behavior, and what isn't, and how important, necessary, vital, to our planet it is to for everyone to try and be the kindest person on the planet because then even though nobody can be perfect, at least we have a chance if everyone is trying.

"Look out for number 1." I believe that statement should be look out for number 2 because if everyone did that then everyone would be looked out for in return.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Questions and Answers

A friend sent me these questions today and thought I would include the answers and perhaps some further explanation. The questions from today are italicizd, the original answers in bold.

What is your favorite...

Color?

Have you seen my paintings?? I like blue, and red, but I just like color.

Season of the year?

Fall for the leaves, Winter for the skiing and how crystally everything looks, the reflection of the sun off the ice on the trees, spring for the smell of promise, and summer for the warmth.

Holiday?

Thanksgiving for the food and Christmas for the giving. Although it has been a very long time since Thanksgiving has been as it was once upon a time, and Christmas has lost its spirit.

Activity?

Skiing. Very few people get to know the shear joy of skiing, at level some of us are lucky enough to experience. The quiet of standing on top of a mountain, completely alone, long after all are gone. Looking out across most of Vermont, and some of Hew Hampshire, Lake Champlain with NY in the distance. Gliding down deserted trails catching the last glimpses of light as the day comes to an end. Or, standing, quite literally, on the edge of the Alps seperating Switzerland from Italy in the shadow of das Matterhorn.

Past time?

Isn't this the same as activity?? Cooking. A love, and gift, I got from Ernistine.

Movie?

You are kidding right?? I am watching one now, watch too many probably, but love many. I am watching Sabrina, the remake, with Harrison Ford. Very well done and very funny. The answer is I love movies, not Horror, and not stupid, but other than that, most. There will be a link here soon to my movie suggestions for those that are interested.

Book?

I have to think about this for a while. When I was younger, Old Man and The Sea. Later, Of Mice and Men.

How would you describe yourself?

Crazy. Caring.

If you could do anything in the world what would it be?

Retire. That is not the answer, but I don't want to answer right now.

Teach
Coach
Consult
Mentor (read help others learn from the multiple of listakes I have made)
Write
Paint
Act
Produce
Love

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Where's the Rush

Just a quick thought about Rush Limbaugh.  The other morning I was listening to the news on a talk radio station, having woken up early to hear this particular show.  I had spent the evening before with the two anchors of the show at a friends wine tasting dinner and they were going to be discussing the dinner and the restaurant on air so I tuned in.  The only problem was that they are on from six to nine AM.

 

I woke up at 5:30, tuned in the station and laid in bed waiting.  I heard them come on the air and surprisingly only one sounded a bit groggy, and was not the one that I would have guessed based on the wine consumption.  Anyway, I was laying in bed listening to the show, and I must have drifted off just before they discussed the event because I missed it.  For the next two hours I drifted in and out hearing their show, but also hearing this commercial for the Rush Limbaugh show which apparently follows theirs each morning.

 

Every time I heard this commercial I simply wanted to pick up the phone, in my half asleep haze, and tell Rush what a moron he is.  Sorry to those that like him, but he is.  His voice has always grated on me, no more so than when trying to fall back to sleep, and he comes up with some of the most aggravating views, or ideas, one could ever come up with, and they are nonsensical.

 

The one from that morning, that was in his commercial each time, was his view that President Obama's redistribution of wealth was hugely unfair to the "super rich," his term not mine, and a huge windfall for the "super poor."  What??  His example was even funnier because mathematically it made no sense.

 

Rush may in fact be right that the super poor will gain an average of $ 2000, and the super rich will lose on average $ 120,000, or whatever number he used for the super rich, again I was half asleep, but $ 2000 to someone that has no money is amazing and will absolutely change a persons life, $120,000, $ 200,000, it does not matter, to the super rich, is pocket change.  If the total annual income for an entire family is $ 20,000 a year than an additional 10 % is real money.  For multi-millionaires, or billionaires, $ 200,000 is at worst 1% of their income, or rounding error.

 

If Mr. Limbaugh wants to make arguments against redistribution, or "big government," or anything else, he should at least use a sound mathematical argument, something that can't be easily defeated by a fifth grader!!

 

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

It Is What It Is

"now a days people really take kindness for weakness"

I have tried to write about this very thought on many occasions, and have not come close to expressing this thought this well. I have never claimed to be eloquent, nor succinct. This is a quote from an e-mail I received last night. This is from a friend that I respect and admire and I thank him for sharing.

I have felt this way for a long time now, "death of common courtesy," and people have been telling me for years that I have to stop being so nice, whatever that means, as if it were possible. I can only be who I am and will never stop, at least not before I stop breathing.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Déjà vu All Over Again

How is it that no matter what we do, or how hard we try to change things, we seem to always find ourselves back looking at the same situations, the same dilemmas? If the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting a different result than I am definitely completely nuts, thankfully I am confident that I am in no way alone. Then there is the old standby, “history is doomed to repeat itself.”

Not sure I got that last one right, but you get my point. I am a giant gerbil running on a wheel and I just don’t seem to have the sense to stop, or maybe the know how to jump off. To some extent or another we all are, and I take comfort in the fact that I am not alone, but at the same time would love to find a way get off the wheel even if just for a little while to see what it is like to not be running, to not keep seeing the same pieces of the wheel coming back again.

The other side of course is that there are things that I would have to change in the way I like at life, and at people, and choices I have made about who I am that I simply don’t want to change. Most notably, I believe that deep down all people are good, and that everyone deserves a chance. If I can help someone I am going to do so. When you take this approach you are going to be disappointed, you are going to be hurt, and you are going to have a whole bunch of people saying I told you so, or telling you that you were foolish to trust that person, to give them a chance, to reach out. So what.

This is something I am never going to stop. Seeing the few victories in this approach make it worth doing, and if it is true that I continue to “look the fool,” then so be it. I would rather look the fool and see someone achieve something that no one thought achievable, especially the person in question, than worry about appearances and let someone fail.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Rearview Mirror

How nice it is to be able to always be looking forward, always be anticipating the next great challenge, always be happy with where one is and where one is going.

How many of us actually get to do that? How many of us can't stop looking in the rearview mirror as we continue down our individual roads? It is a tough way to drive. I am not suggesting anyone ever try this in real life, but it would be awfully hard to drive down the road looking in the rearview mirror the whole time and actually get where we are going, or even get anywhere without causing a major wreck.

Ok, so I guess I just figured out why it is I am where I am on my particular journey, and not where I thought I would be. All I can do now is keep trying to spend more time looking out the windshield and less time in the rearview mirror.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Catching Up

A month has gone by since I have written a word, or at least since I have published a word, for the two of you that read this blog I am sorry it has been so long. This month has seemed much longer, both in missing the writing, craving it, and in where I have been and in the distance and time covered with two simple trips.

I will write shortly about pieces of those trips, thoughts and memories evoked, people and places visited. I will write shortly about other things as well, I hope.

Thank you for reading what came out in the first two months. I hope you will enjoy what comes next. We will all find out what that is as it happens.

Thank you -- once -- again for getting this far with me.

Hurry Up and Wait

Runaway Train

Eight days later. Plan, hope, anticipate, and now it is eight days later. How does time pass so quickly sometimes and stand still others? How does life seem so wonderful, enjoyable, utterly relaxing some moments and so completely out of control others?

If I knew the answers to these questions, or any questions, I would not be in the state I am now. I expect too much. I deliver too little. I have spent myself life looking forward and backward all at the same time, and now twenty five years have passed in a blink.

The cycle is simple and yet amazing all at the same time. From the beginning of a new semester in school, to planning for a new season, to specific moments in a relationship, the cycle is always the same. Time slows almost to a stop, consumed by the excitement and anticipation of the promise contained within. Time is spent, effort put in, and then in a flash just as time almost stalls, the moment is here and gone and the emptiness of a pure vacuum is left.

Days have moved to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years without my noticing and the person I see in the mirror now is not me. The promise of a lifetime full of happiness, joy, meaning, success, however defined, has passed by.

I have always loved train. If a love for trains is genetic then I got mine from my mother. This train is moving way too fast now. Too fast to catch. Too fast to jump on board.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Our Little Girl Is All Grown Up

I was on the train, the “L,” sending text messages to update my progress towards our meeting point. The journey was a bit crazy, take the hotel shuttle to the “Yellow Line,” then the “Yellow Line” to the Howard stop, then change trains at Howard to the “Red Line” or the “Purple Line” depending on the time of day. Of course when I started out to do this the first night I do not know all of this and when I got to Howard I got off the train because it liked like the station in Evanston from what I remembered.

I started out excited to see her, and then I started to get frustrated, then angry, as I was wondering around trying to figure out where I was. If I hadn’t been so steamed I would have found it funny that I walked for almost half an hour before winding up at the exact door that I had come out of when I first reached the Howard station. I re-entered and asked the question and then climbed the stairs back up to the platform to make my way North.

When I finally reached the “Davis” stop in Evanston, I called and began the modern day human equivalent of the homing pigeon. “Where are you?” “I am outside Barnes and Nobles. Where are you?” “I am just leaving the station I will be there in a minute.” “Can you see me?” “No not yet, can you see me?” Cell phones, and all the other technology, have turned us all into morons.

Finally I saw her and said “I see you I will be right there.” I could not believe my eyes. There was this five foot seven inch, blond haired, blue eyed actress standing at the end of the block outside the entrance to Barnes and Nobles. She looked confident, happy, mature. She had that layered thing going on that actresses do, with the t-shirt and the vest and the button down over the top. She also had the wrap around scarf thing happening. There is no way this was my seventeen year old sister!!

She is twenty nine years younger than I am, and until this week she has always been a little kid. Not anymore. I gave her a hug. She called her friends to find out where they were. We walked a block to a PUB where they were having dinner. She introduced me to all of them, including her boyfriend, the boyfriend part I figured out later. I met her director. It was all so strange.

We then went out to a restaurant and sat down and had dinner together. This is the first time we ever did this. We had a conversation. We laughed. We joked. We enjoyed each other’s company and we were at ease together. I then walked her back to the theatre to meet her friends and made my way back to the hotel.

The next afternoon I shaved, showered and put my fancy duds on. Met a friend outside the hotel and we walked our way over to the theatre once again, this time to see her matinee performance. This was an “ensemble” show that had been five weeks in the making. This was a very talented group of fourteen actors working as one, actually all playing the same women over the course of an hour. This play was beautifully and cleverly written, adequately directed, and superbly acted by all. This was not the community theatre bit part stuff I had last seen her in; this was a theatre production of the Northwestern University Theatre department. In the three years I had been away she had become an actor, or as she prefers, actress, and a very talented one at that.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Cubs Win, Cubs Win

Radio Silence

Ok. Sorry I have been having some technical and logistical difficulties, but should be back on track. Thank you for your patience.

Family Ties

TBD

Charlie's Angels

The Running of The Bulls

How appropriate that I am writing this on my way to Chicago. I did not think of this when I chose the topic, but now that I am airborne I find it comical. I am on a plane on my way to Chicago and I am writing about the Bulls, well actually the bull, but you get the point.

I am on a United flight from Sacramento to Chicago, and our flight was delayed an hour while waiting for plane and crew. I really do not mind delays, as long as I am not connecting anywhere. The only part that gets to me is watching all of the IDIOTS in the terminal. In “Death of Common Courtesy” I may have mentioned air travelers, but today I wanted to be slightly more specific. They are all rude, ignorant, arrogant, IDIOTS. Obviously not all, but the three people I have met traveling that aren’t will no doubt understand me including everyone.

I used to fly a fair amount – read 120 flights a year, almost 700,000 miles in about six and a half years – and I absolutely loved the travel. The only time I would get at all stressed was when I had to listen to people screaming at gate agents because it was raining. I realize gate agents are powerful people, if you are nice to them you can find yourself in first class without knowing why, and if you are grumpy with them you will probably wind up in the back of the plane, last row middle seat, they do not control the weather however!! I will repeat myself, they do not control the weather.

Here is another one, they also would prefer that you not get into a broken plane and try to take off. I know that is weird of them, but they are funny people that way. Gate agents would prefer that no one die. Premier travelers who like to act like they travel a lot and therefore know more than the gate agents, the pilots, the mechanics, anyone really, do not understand this concept.

I will take a minute to explain why I pick on Premier travelers. There are a number of different levels of “status” within United’s Mileage Plus program, as there is with American, Delta and most of the other major airlines. If you travel over 100,000 miles a year, the airlines believe that should give you significant perks and I would have to agree, that is a lot of flying, roughly Boston to San Fran and back twenty times in a year. If you were to travel from Boston to Chicago a lot, you would have to make that trip fifty times a year to be a “1k” traveler. You can probably now see why some perks are worthwhile. If you travel half as much, still a fair amount, you are a Premier Executive, they like you too. If you travel a few times a year you can reach Premier status which means that send you something to make you feel good about yourself, but stacked up behind the 1ks and the Premier Execs you are not going to get much, but if you ever heard the expression “give a little man a little power…” those are Premier flyers.

Enough explaining. While waiting for flights I have trouble sitting down, well really anytime. I like to pace, as often as possible, but I am aware of the fact that my pacing in a gate area could be annoying to people so I usually try to find a neighboring gate that is not active and put my stuff down there and commence pacing. Sometimes, when it is really busy in the terminal, I will find the farthest corner from the gate and set my stuff down and lean against a wall out of the way. That is where I was from around 12:30 today until around 2:00 PM. I had the opportunity to watch roughly 600 people, half traveling to Chicago, and half traveling to Denver, be rude to each other for an hour and a half. The good news, I guess, is that I can report that none of them had any idea there were other people there, so they didn’t really no they were being rude, I guess.

The best, or worst, example I can give you is when the plane for the Denver flight arrived, full, and none of the mass of six hundred even attempted to make room for those folks to get through. Not even when a very nice hung man in a neon vest moving wheel chairs through did anyone go out of their way. Hey said “coming through” in a very pleasant tone, and no one moved, not an inch, he just kept saying it gently, kept creeping towards the exit, and slowly, as the lead wheelchair, he was pushing two people at one time, started to bump into people, the masses started to realize there “hey, I am not alone.” But very slowly, and not for long.

The next example just simply made me laugh. There were two 1k travelers, both wearing about a thousand dollars worth of clothing, and both rambling away, in very deep, important tones, lined up to get on the Denver flight. Not that the Denver flight was going to board anytime soon, it was scheduled to board twenty minutes after the Chicago flight, but they both really wanted to be first. I was standing very near them and actually had to ikeep myself from laughing. After the Chicago flight was almost finished boarding, the woman working the Denver gate, her last name was Hitzler, but she said just call me Hitler, I had no response to that, especially since she was a very pleasant, helpful, and knowledgeable woman who had been working for United for twenty two years. Miss Hitzler opened the door to the jetway for the Denver flight in order to help a woman in a wheel chair onto the plane early, and these two, thousand dollar men, both shuffled forward towards the rope, which was keeping them from their comfy leather first class seats. The other three hundred folks that were eagerly awaiting the stale air that is traveling in the “friendly skies,” ALL followed suit, and all I could think about was “the running of the bulls” in Pamplona. The only difference is that I would have to say that the actual bulls are a bit more polite, maybe even a bit more than a bit.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

TBD

Golden Girls

“Picture it, Sicili 1942,” well no not really, but I love the little old Italian mother in Golden Girls.

Anyway, picture it, Long Island, 1995. Mob wedding, not really, but it makes it a better story. A very good, crazy, wacky, goofy, friend of mine married into the family, sorry, a family, from Long Island, pronounced, luong guyland. I would like to say he did it for love, but come on, he is now running a very large business, actually two, owns his own plane, races sail boats in “the” city, and travels constantly. Sur, he did it for love.

This weekend started off great, we were running late. “We,” stands for the second really bad choice, according to my father. Were always running late, and by saying we, I mean she. Man this women could not be on time, could not plan to be on time, and oh by the way, it was always my fault. She also had a friend with her, staying in the next room, if she had been cuter this would be a different story entirely. They were both running late. I vaguely remember the two of them both in my room while we were getting ready trying on shoes and deciding on outfits, isn’t that something one usually decides prior to going away for the weekend to a wedding?

Anyway, once we got to the point of no return and then some I made them get in the car with their stuff because we just simply did not have time to wait anymore. I am driving on the Long Island Expressway, using every lane, including the breakdown lane, and the service lane – read breakdown lane to the left of the car pool lane, up against Jersey barrier. They are both getting “ready,” meaning dressed, as I break the sound barrier, and multiple traffic laws, all at one time. Do you have any idea how hard it is to drive in that kind of traffic, and in that fashion, with half naked women in the car? Read that any way you want.

So living through that experience, we arrived at the church just in the nick of time, and with me in a very bad mood. Ok, I was pissed. This is one of the most important people in my life, the friend getting married, not the girl, and we are arriving at his wedding as his bride is preparing to walk down the aisle. They said “I do,” hours later, I do not like long wedding ceremonies, and then we headed off to the reception. The reception for some unknown reason was an hour and a half after the wedding, and half an hour from the church.

We did the math, and decided that by the time the reception started, and everyone was there, it would be a long time before dinner was served so we should stop and get some food. I decided that we should try t find the deli that was around the corner from where my mother’s mother used to live. We did. Bought so much amazing food, and ate likes kings, and queens, on the way to the reception. This was not a good decision.

I found out shortly thereafter that we were also not well informed. This was a “black and white” wedding, which means that everyone was dressed to the “nines,” and that there was no expense spared at all. As people arrived at the reception they were greeted by a tall thin man in tails, and he would take your keys, hand them to the hired help, and they would park your car. You then walked through an amazing tunnel of ached iron and white lace, lit by white candles. The tunnel was about fifty yards long, and at the end you came into a pool house straight from a Hollywood set. There was a gigantic main pool, a hot tub in each corner, and a pasta station about every ten feet around the outside.

Once inside the food started immediately as you could have any kind of pasta fixed for you in just about any way, and this was just the appetizers. About two hours after we arrived we were seated for dinner, and a two hour long seven course meal was served. This was an amazing affair.

As we were eating our dessert my friends and I began plotting our attack. Were whispering and making eye contact and being very sly, at least we thought we were. All of a sudden my friend stood up from his seat at the head table and started sprinting back towards the pool house. We all followed immediately on a dead run. He had us by ten yards, but since he knew we were not going to stop he had already decided this was going to be on his terms. He did a perfect spread eagle as he went airborne into the pool. I managed to get my jacket off in transit and followed right behind. Soon there were a dozen of us in the pool, all in tuxes. Before long this was coed, and at least I had the decency to leave my slacks on, but only my slacks.

A little while later my girlfriend, or mistake number two, wanted to speak with me so I climbed out of the pool. Her friend was there as well, and I was speaking to both of them, facing them with my back to the pool. The next thing I remember is the feel of wet skin being pressed up against my back. A spy had been sent to sabotage my evening. This spy was not wearing much at all, that would be considered an understatement, and she was cold. Naturally she thought pressing herself up against a warm man was the logical decision. I had no real objection, but I also did not know this woman, nor did I see her coming from the pool. Nonetheless, this was my fault.

This was the most amazing wedding I have ever attended, and the most absurd reason I can think of for getting in trouble with a girlfriend, but then again my dad was right.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

To Fly

At the Smithsonian there is a movie called “To Fly” that was their first movie and done extremely well in the now ever popular IMAX format, or whatever the equivalent was then that made your nauseous to watch. It was also a movie that was filmed, at least the opening, and some of the early flight scenes were filmed, at the Sugarbush Airport, in Warren, Vermont, which was a very short strip of very firm grass, and then later rolled gravel and maybe now a bit of asphalt. The beginning was filmed there with a little “band stand,” and a four piece band made to look like the band members were from the period of time when the first balloon flight was made. My brother was the trumpet player in that opening, and so we as a family went to the Smithsonian a long, long time ago to see the film. I stared at the floor most of the time, as did my grandmother, because the movement really bothered us.

This piece has absolutely nothing to do with that movie.

“…I get sick when I fly because I am afraid the plane will crash. I don’t think Dramamine will help.” Yet another quote from a favorite movie of mine and one that is very relevant to me. No I am not afraid to fly, I used to feel sick when I flew when I was younger, but now I have flown so much that it does not bother me. I am perhaps afraid to “fly.”

“…take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life. You were only waiting for this moment to arise.” The Beatles knew something. They actually knew a lot of things about everything, but this is “bang on” as some would say from whence they came. Sorry I slipped there for a minute.

What if the moment has long since arisen and you didn’t know it, or missed it, or worse yet ignored it? What if the moment arose and you were all the time expecting a different moment? What if the moment arose and you knew it, felt it, were ready for it, but could not get yourself, allow yourself, to “fly.”

All these things are a concern to me, and much, much more. When we are younger, at least for me, sometimes moments come and go and we are unaware, or we let them go by, or we may see one and run after it with everything we have and ride the updraft as long as our wings will take us with all the energy and passion and reckless abandon of youth, and if it was the wrong moment, or if you hadn’t quite figured it out, or if we just didn’t have our “broken wings” fully healed it really didn’t matter because we would try again sometime soon.

As we get older, the wings take longer to heal, we do not notice the moments as readily, and the reckless abandon has long since abandon us, or at least some of us. Some would call it the “eye of the tiger,” and yes I am both dating myself and stereotyping myself all at the same time, but it is something real that either goes away completely, or at least feels that way.

How do you continue to take new risks, in career, in relationships, in life in general? How do you continue to put yourself out there, leave the cat at home by herself, and take chances? I wish I knew the answers, and I wish for me it was just a getting older thing.

There are people, I have known a lot of them and a bunch of them are friends of mine, that do not have the “chip” in their heads that says “hey wait a minute this is too big a risk,” or “ what if this doesn’t work,” or worse yet, “you can’t pull this off.” I respect the hell out of the friends of mine that have just kept moving forward and taking risks and either not worrying about what may go wrong, or perhaps knowing that they simply had to make it work, but they have just continued to have success. I wish I could be in their heads for some period of time, just to see what it feels like to feel that way.

It is not that I have not had success. In fact, as I have mentioned before, I have had enough success over the years to be on my third life, but I also know I have let some moments go along the way that a purely confident person would have just jumped at. I am the most insecure person I know that has ever had a job telling people how to do what they do better. Whether it be coaching, teaching, consulting, producing, it does not matter what I have done, those are all professions where you tell people what to do, how to do it, and you point out when there is room for improvement because you are aiming for as close to perfection as possible. How does one do these things if they are less than perfect, especially significantly less than perfect?

I have no answers, but something a mentor of mine once said to me a long time ago, about fifteen years to be precise, seems very appropriate here, “if you think you are not doing a job well, like you have just been faking it, if you have been feeling that way for more than six months you are no longer faking it.” There is a more famous quote, and more succinct, “fake it ‘till you make it.” I am going be a year older in a week and that is a year older than old, so I must be good at faking something by now, but I would still like to find a way to truly “spread – these – broken wings and learn to fly.”

There are so many more “moments” I would still like to capture.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

The Twighlight Zone

It is a beautiful, wintery Sunday morning in central Vermont. The stoves are all going. The fireplace is lit. Pachelbel‘s Cannon in D is coming through the sound system. My wife and children are setting the table for our traditional family brunch. Everyone is comfortably attired and cable knit sweaters abound as there is no other way to keep warm on mornings such as these.

A foot of new snow has fallen over night, and the trees’ branches are heavy with the weight of the snow, while they sparkle in the morning sun. The contrast of the bright white off the trees and the bright blue of the winter sky is almost too much on the eyes, and the temperature, as the skies cleared and the warmth of the fresh snow went with it, is once again in single digits.

If you look closely at the fresh snow surrounding the house you can see little tracks of the animals that have ventured out to find whatever food they can buried deep under the snow. This is the kind of morning when “sugar on snow” is at its best. We have not made it in a long while, but maybe later this morning. For those that don’t know, sugar on snow is when you take an area of clean, fresh snow, and you poor fresh, hot maple syrup over it. As you pour the hot syrup over the crisp, clean snow there is an instant reaction as the syrup literally cools around the snow and you wind up with maple crystals that are just delicious.

Meanwhile in the kitchen I am doing my best to please all parties, this is not a large family, just me, my wife, two girls and a boy, ages 12, 9, and 7, but this is a “high maintenance” family at times. I am in the process of making pancakes, waffles, and three omelets, not to mention wheat, rye, white toast, and two English muffins. Oh yeah, and home fries of course, no shredded potatoes here, these are huge chunks of potato, seasoning, butter, and onions all slow cooked together on the griddle. Maybe I should have opened the diner.

This is the perfect way to spend the perfect wintery Sunday morning in Central Vermont, at least it would have been.

Instead, the last three winters the lowest temperature I have seen is thirty three degrees and that was by traveling ten hours, and it was in mid-March. The only snow I have seen has been on Christmas day each of those three winters, again by traveling to go and find snow.

It was 109 ° yesterday, in the shade. Three years ago, almost to the day, I landed in the Twilight Zone, actually I drove into it, and there does not appear to be a way out. Maybe I will just write my way out. The family above, and the Sundays spent with them hasn’t happened yet. It is all very clear in my mind, and has been all my life, just not yet a reality. Maybe some day soon.

Thank you again for getting this far

Love American Style

“Better Than Chocolate” is a love story, sort of. It is a story about family, sort of. It is an independent film, sort of. Better Than Chocolate is a love story as long as you can let go of whatever preconceived notions you have about love, and relationships, and especially the traditional love story. The same can be said about the portion of this movie that is supposed to be about family, it is, but not in the traditional way. This is an independent film only in the fact that is was made by “independents,” and not by a major studio, but this film is beautifully director, beautifully filmed and exquisitely acted, not to mention that the camera is not rotated thirty five degrees for any of the shots just to pretend to have artistic integrity. Sorry, but I support the idea of independent films being made to tell stories that big studios won’t touch because of a lack of “political correctness,” and I support independent films being made to give writers, directors, and actors a certain amount of creative freedom, I just have trouble with independent films that are made to look like they are overly creative, or made on a budget, “artsy.” This film is just a really well done movie.

Sarah McLachlan’s “Ice Cream” is used for the end credits, and if you know the lyrics, or listen to them after this, you will know that this was chosen for obvious reasons. I was glad Ice Cream was chosen because I very much enjoy her music and I had allowed myself to forget this. Her music is so easy to listen to, her voice so soothing. At one point I had all of her “albums,” but with each relationship CDs vaporize, DVDs cease to exist, and bank accounts shrivel. That is just the way life is, and so I am without so much of the music I once enjoyed. Thank god for Last.fm. If you do not know Last.fm please Google it when you are done reading.

I also watched a “blockbuster” earlier today, my typical Sunday. I watched a movie called “Knowing.” The only reason I watched the entire movie was because I wanted to see just how bad it could get. This was Nicholas Cage, and every time I see one of his movies I find myself wondering what he did to get to be so popular in Hollywood. Nicholas Cage can’t act. In the movie Face Off where he and John Travolta play characters that have their faces switched, what you end up with is an actor with real talent, John Travolta’s face and Nicholas Cage’s mannerisms. Travolta does a great job mimicking the ways of Nicholas Cage; thankfully he does not mimic the way Cage acts.

Anyway, Knowing is a story that if done well could have been really entertaining, but it had action scenes that were nowhere near the quality of a Die Hard, or even a Money Train, and they used CGI, computer graphic imaging, in spots where is was not needed, not appropriate, and/or poorly done. It really was a shame to see because I do think that this story could have been quite enjoyable.

Enough of the movie thoughts for today. My day started with a check of the Tour de France, and unfortunately it appears that Lance is too old. Not that I will count him out until all of the mountain stages are done, and the individual time trial, but when it came time for the duel at the top of the mountain, Alberto Contador did to Lance what Lance is used to doing to others, took off and left everyone behind. Contador is a little more than a minute and a half ahead now and Lance is sounding like he is beaten. It would have been nice to see one successful return, which I guess says a lot right there when Lance is in second place and has a good chance to finish that way and I am viewing that as not successful, but when you get accustomed to a certain outcome by a certain athlete, anything less is a not acceptable.

The same was true of Tiger on Friday when he missed the cut of the British Open, but that was not the news there. Tom Watson winning his sixth British Open title and becoming the oldest man ever to win a major title was the big news, that is until his putt for par on the 18th hole, or really the 72nd hole, went just slightly astray. Watson then he wound up in a playoff that went terribly wrong. I don’t know that there was anyone rooting for Stewart Cink, the eventually winner, and unfortunately when he did win he became the Villain, but how could anyone root against a fifty nine year old Tom Watson who was simply amazing on day one, steady on day two and three, and then did just enough through seventeen and a half holes on Sunday to win.

This has been a tough weekend for nostalgia nuts, a tough weekend for sentimental favorites, a tough weekend for those that root for the underdog, but I guess that is why they are underdogs.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

An American President

Take two.

One of my favorite movies is the movie “Miracle.” If you have not seen Miracle, it is the very true story of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team. I say very true story because that story was a significant part of my life. Not that I was on the team or anything, but I was living in Rhode Island, going to a private high school there, and watching my cousin play hockey with and against a number of the players that were members of that team. It was also a very memorable time to be living in this country in general given the gas lines, and the “odd and even plate” days, President Jimmy Carter, the peanuts, Billy Beer, the 1972 Olympic hostage situation and then the boycott just prior to the 1980 winter Olympics. This was a time of great concern and great stress in this country. This was a time of great concern and great stress on this planet. The cold war was very much still in full swing and there was a real hatred for the then Soviet Union.

As much as that was a time one would never forget, this is a time far worse than anything I have lived through. The sentiment I remember from back then was one of us against them. There was the Soviet Union and there was the United States and if you watch at the end of Miracle all the people across the country that showed support for a bunch of college hockey players because they played for the United States, that sentiment was very real, very palpable.

Today, the sentiment is one of keep your head down and say your prayers and maybe you will come out of this current state our country is in ok. We are a country divided and we have been for the last three elections, an entire decade of not being able to get behind one man, one Presidency, one administration. We need this now more than ever as we have record numbers of people out of work, we have foreclosures happening constantly, we seem to have reached a point where even the richest of Americans have cut back on their spending, and we need an answer.

With an approval rating of 59 % for President Obama, I am not sure we have gotten there yet, especially since that is down ten points from his high of 69 %, but last week I at least felt some hope. It may be false hope, but at this point I will take any hope at all. If I were crawling my way through the desert without any water right now I would “drink the sand.” Michael J. Fox used that phrase in the movie by the same title as this piece. The movie is a bit sappy, but one I have always liked, and it gave birth to a show that had a few viewers over its seven year run, “The West Wing.”

Both are appropriate references here because that is the kind of President we need right now; A President that is going to roll up his sleeves and get to work, A President that will work with the people of this country, and other counties to solve problems, A President with the energy to go at this for as long as it takes, and an understanding of what it is like to be suffering through this right now.

I don’t know if President Obama is the type of President I am speaking of, and I don’t think we will know ultimately for another six to eight years, if he gains re-election, but he just seems closer than what we have had in a long time. I am not basing this on what he has done in office to this point because the country is still pretty well “screwed up,” but I am basing this on the fact that this President seems more like an American, even a human, than any we have had in a while, if ever.

This is a President from Illinois, he is a sports fan, he is a White Sox fan, which puts him in the “blue collar” crowd even though he is not overly blue collar at this point. This is a President that appears honest and down to earth and real, and for me that is more than I can say for most, if not all that have been in that office in my lifetime.

As far as I know President Obama has not done anything in the Oval Office to disgrace the country, not that I think President Clinton was a bad President, but his brain was not always in the on position. As far as I know President Obama did not have a family member “fix” any elections, and he was not his family’s second, or third, or fourth choice to run for President. As far as I know President Obama does not have a brother brewing beer in the Rose Garden, and he has never been in a movie, and I also happen to think that President Reagan was a good president and a good man, if only we could say that of a current movie star California Governor, what were the Kennedys thinking allowing that marriage to occur?

I just think that this is a President that is a true American, and one that is far more in touch with what is going on in this country than any President we have had in a while. I only hope that we are not too far gone, and I hope that my gut is right.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

And that’s the Way it Was

The calm and metered voice of an entire country, the icon that stands for all that was good, and right, in news journalism, the narrator of American life, and death, in the 60s and 70s, that was Walter Cronkite. Walter Cronkite made everything a bit better, a bit easier. The celebrations that were had as a country during his tenure as CBS Evening News anchor were that much sweeter, and the losses, especially that of President John F. Kennedy, a little bit easier to take. Every night, five days a week, everyone in this country, or very close to it, were in front of their television screens for thirty minutes listening to Walter Cronkite tell us how “it was” on that day.

Thinking of it now I realize that this man could have done a radio news cast and had nearly the same affect on his audience because it was his voice, and the way in which he portioned out the information that he was giving to the country, that kept us all so captivated for so long.

Walter Cronkite was the epitome of a news journalist. He gave Americans the information they needed to know what was going on in the country without coloring the information with his own views. He was very human, and warm, but unbiased at the same time. Walter Cronkite become the measure by which all newscasters that came after would be measured, no one ever did. When Walter Cronkite retired from the evening news the seams of this country ripped apart ever so slightly, and have been ripping ever since.

Walter Cronkite was the calm and gentle voice in my childhood, he was a distinct constant. I have always had nothing but wonderful memories of the piece of my youth he filled. I was sad when he left the anchor desk, and I am profoundly sadder this evening as I learn of his death. I am eternally grateful that I was granted the privilege of having Walter Cronkite in my life in the way that he was. He is the reason the last line of this blog is ever so redundant.

I fear that my words here do not do him justice, but I had to try.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

A Rose by Any Other Name...

Perception is reality. I have heard this phrase endless times teaching, coaching and in business over the years. I also know without a doubt that our world operates this way. I just have significant issue with that fact.

People have told me this over and over in an effort to alter my behavior such that I might make my situation better, or easier, somehow. People have also told me this over the years in an effort to help me find a way to stay in a situation longer. My response has always been the same, reality is reality and I am never going to alter what I do based on what people think if what I am doing is benefiting others. I have never been “popular,” and never really been with the “in” crowd. I say that having been an athlete in high school and college and having had decent grades and a somewhat “normal” social life, so I was not necessarily an outcast, I just never did what was “acceptable” simply for the sake of being accepted.

Are there ways in which to do things at times that would better serve my cause? I am sure there are. Does it make sense to consider them if it means not accomplishing what needs to be accomplished in the amount of time it should take? To me the answer is no. Does it make sense to consider them if it means not helping someone in need? That one is easy, definitely not.

When it comes down to helping someone I am never going to opt not to out of concern for what people may think. I have never considered such things, nor financial concerns, or “return on investment,” as it were, I only ever consider whether or not I can help the person, or people, in question. Does this make me naïve? Does this make me a fool? Has it meant a different life for me than that which I could have had if I had chosen an easier path? Probably D, all of the above, which “matters not,” as a friend would say.

I wish I could tell you that I am totally “at piece” with all of this, but I am certainly not. Life can be a definite struggle at times, and it is not always fun knowing there are bunches of people out there that question your motives, your actions, your intent, but that is where I am the most at ease with the choices I have made along the way. I have made choices all of my life that have been motivated by good, and kindness, not ego and greed, and especially helping others. Even if I sometimes forget that with the way life can be, I simply need to think for a minute and remember those decisions and what the true motivation was.

Our society is such that it has become difficult to do anything without the whole world looking for the ulterior motive, the hidden agenda, and that is sad. When offering someone a ride in the rain, or a seat on a bus, opening a door, or smiling at someone and being pleasant has become outside the norm, then we have a problem. Where is the incentive for people to do good if the outcome is going to be “how come?” Where is the incentive to take risks on other’s behalf? Where is the incentive to do the “right thing?” Or I guess the question should be why is there disincentive, and how do we work to remove it?

My least favorite word is rumor. Why? Because rumors are just that, rumors, and very rarely, if ever, based in fact. One of the pieces that I read yesterday on Walter Cronkite spoke of the fact that he always waited to make sure he had the facts before breaking a story, even going so far as to wait for absolute confirmation of President Kennedy’s death. Where in today’s cable news race, first is what is important, right comes later. The only problem with today’s approach is that once something is out there, right or not, it is out there, and if “not” is juicier than the truth, that is what people will latch on to no matter what actual fact is eventually revealed.

The only person that ever knows the truth, the reality, about a person’s life is that person, and from there everything else is speculation. I wish people could accept this and just “live and let live.”

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Little House on the Prairie

Three years ago, almost to the day, I packed everything that could fit in my car and headed from the East Coast to the West Coast. In hind sight this may not have been the best decision I have ever made, but the trip itself was great. This was also not exactly a straight line.

I bobbed and weaved across the country, visiting friends in a number spots, and seeing sight that I wanted to see. Once I got passed Minneapolis there was a lot I had not seen.

Along the way, of course when you travel three thousand miles a lot is along the way, there was a friend of my dad’s from the army that I was to visit. I have always been shy, introverted, insecure, pick your word for not being the most adventurous when it came to meeting folks when anyone, especially my family, would say “hey so and so lives out there you should look him up.” I just have never really felt that a total stranger from someone else’s past would be entertained by meeting me??

Anyway, I had said that I would make this stop, and it seemed to mean a lot to my dad and I also figured what is a few hours out of nine days on the road.

My father’s friend lived on a very large farm in South Dakota, so I was actually going right by there, sort of, on my way across the state, and since there is absolutely nothing to see or do from when you cross the river to when you reach the Badlands, I decided it was something I should do. However, it happened to be 115 ° all the way across the state, and was not cooling off much in the evenings. I also discovered that South Dakota was uphill while driving East to West, ever so slightly, but uphill all the way, into a head wind. When you added all of this up, it meant that gas was essentially being siphoned out of the car all the way across the state. When I hit South Dakota I had been averaging right around twenty two miles per hour pretty consistently. When I left South Dakota that average had dropped to eighteen miles per hour, it was like someone was steeling the gas out of the car as I drove.

So it is the end of July. I am in the middle of South Dakota, and it is 115 ° in the shade. The state is practically on fire and any time you get out of the car it is like stepping into a pizza oven. I get off the highway at the proper exit. I follow the directions that I had printed out ahead of time, drive so many miles on this long straight dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and then turn left onto the next long straight dirt road in the middle of nowhere. It was like playing checkers in a car. These roads were dirt, but there was absolutely no dust kicked up by the car because between the insane heat, and the constant wind across the plains, these roads had essentially turned into blacktop.

Finally I found my destination. There was a little, white house next to a tree, a tree, and then behind the house were a number of different buildings, very plane and nondescript. As it turns out each one had different equipment, a couple of old cars, and so on as you moved your way back. I pulled up along the side of the house, stopped the car, and as I got out this little man came out of the back of the house with jeans on and some kind of work shirt. He walked up and introduced himself extending his hand to me. I swear this man was made of leather. He had that look that all the cowboys in the old westerns try to achieve only this was not on film, not achieved with make-up, his faced just looked as though it had been stretched and dried with branded lines and cracks.

We said hello and the door opened again and a smaller, female figure came out to join us. This was his wife of a lifetime, and she was just a smaller version of him, essentially. The most obvious feature they both had was these big, broad smiles, again showing their age and years of being in the same place working all day long every day, but with a genuineness to them that I honestly had never encountered. These were good, honest, happy, pleasant people, with no justifiable reason.

Please understand, I am not saying that these folks were wrong to be happy, I am simply saying that given today’s world and the way people are, anyone else in their situation would not be able to handle their life, let alone be happy about it. This is reality TV show waiting to happen. Can you last a year on a farm in South Dakota, never mind, make that a day. One of the first things they told me was that they had been out since before dawn, yes I said before dawn, we just lost most of our contestants right there, watering the cattle, watering the cattle. When you are seven years into a drought and you are trying to hang onto as many head of cattle as you can you load up tanks of water in the morning and you drive out to the watering holes where the ground water is supposed to naturally fill, and you water the cattle so they don’t die. Maybe we should have started the bailout process with farmers and then banks.

So, after I was greater, I was shown around and then we went into the house and sat at the kitchen table and visited. They showed me pictures of the family, his kids, and grandkids, and they told me about every one of them, where they were and what they were doing now. They also spoke of their life there and how they were working to preserve what they had known all their lives, they did not put it this way, I am, but that is what they were doing. Again, to me that is what they were doing, to them they were just living their lives and enjoying.

We had a little bite of something, I honestly don’t remember what, and we drank homemade iced tea, and visited for about an hour in the kitchen, their little kitchen, very dark with all the shades drawn to keep the heat out, and the sound of the old window unit in the one bedroom off to the side running away. On the entire property, in the absolute middle of South Dakota, with one shade tree and acres and acres of parched land, they had one window AC unit in one room of their house.

After a very pleasant visit, and knowing I had another four or five hours to drive that day, we walked outside to say goodbye. That is when the most extraordinary thing happened. As we stepped back outside, into that sun and heat, at about four o’ clock in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, this man of unknown age, who had worked every day of his entire life, been in the army, come back and picked up right where he left off with no break, ever, said to me “at least there is a nice breeze today.” This was like walking straight into a blast furnace, but to these people it was a nice breeze.

I wish I could have learned a long time ago to view life in this way.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

In The Air Tonight

As I left my apartment tonight and stepped out into the hall, I was hit with such a strong, sweet, intoxicating smell, and in a flash I was back to the summer of 1982, spending every minute I had with the first woman I ever loved. I was back in my dorm room in the fall of 1982, and could smell the student union and then the hallway along the row of mailboxes, and then the letter, or card, or not inside seemingly soaked in her perfume. I instantly felt that same feeling, warmth, happiness, anticipation of what she had to say. I could see her eyes the first time I ever met her.

It is amazing to me, and wonderful, just how much a certain smell, or sound, or song, which is technically a sound, or a look out over the horizon can remind us of so much and bring to us such strong memories, some good, some bad, and some simply amazing.

To this day, if I hear American Pie by Don McLean, Imagine by John Lennon, Maggie May by Rod Stewart, I am instantly seven years old, in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, one town up route 1A from Narragansett, in this somewhat rundown old wood structure that was officially called the Saunderstown Yacht Club. The Yacht Club was much more like an oversized clubhouse for a bunch of seven, eight, and nine year olds than it was a Yacht Club. For one thing there were no yachts, just sail boats and mostly small and old sail boats at that. This was a place where kids ran around in swim trunks all day and rinsed off boats and sails, stored gear, prepared gear, rigged out the “yachts,” Sunfish, Sail Fish, Moby’s, and if you were lucky that day the Lasers.

For me this was a place to be me, small, wiry, scrappy little kid that would do anything that needed to be done, anything that kept me there, where I enjoyed being more than anywhere else, where I got to be on the water, having fun, and in charge of where I went, what I did, and with whom I enjoyed that time. The friends I had were good kids that liked all the same things as me, salt water, fresh air, and wind.

When I get to go back to Chicago, which I am doing again soon, or New York, or Boston, two weeks after Chicago, that is all about the sounds, so many sounds, but to me they are all just one big sound of the excitement of these amazing cities. It is also about the sight of the glow over the city as you begin to get near, or maybe not even so near, for Boston the glow is no less than twenty five miles away, for New York it is a long way off, and for Chicago, since I have only ever flown into the City at night, it is the sight of the entire city lit up as you fly just north of the city in from off lake Michigan, and if you are really lucky there will be a night game at Wrigley which you can see clearly from the air if you know where to look.

For some reason anytime I hear the sound of city buses I think of Chicago. Whenever I hear sirens I almost always think of New York, I dare you to try and walk two blocks in New York City without hearing a siren of some kind. When I smell Kettle Corn it is Chicago again, Kettle Corn on almost every corner downtown. When I go downstairs to a friend’s restaurant and hear him speaking Italian to his mother on the phone with the smell of the “gravy,” pasta sauce, in the background I am always reminded of the Hannover Street in the North End in Boston where almost all you hear is Italian, and there is amazing food everywhere.

The power of specific sounds and smells, songs and foods, the way the light hits, the way the sunrise or sunset burns, always transforms me to places, people, times, moments in a way that is magical. Maybe time travel is possible, if we allow it to be.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Truth, Justice and the American Way

I don’t know how to tell you this, but truth and justice are unfortunately not the American Way anymore!! I wish I had better news, but they haven’t been for quite some time now, in case you hadn’t noticed. Truth, “perception is reality.” Perception is not reality, reality is, but perception is juicier. Justice, have you seen the news lately. American way…please read on.

I see it every day in all sorts of ways. People are out for themselves, that is what the last two generations have been taught more than anything, “look out for number one,” but it has become more than just looking out for number one. I would agree that taking care of one’s self first makes sense relative to being able to care for others, but that is not the way people live their lives. They have taken “look out for number one,” and made it all about them, and having everything they want, and serving their own “agendas,” whatever that might be.

This year for me has been a year of dealing with all sorts of people from many different backgrounds, areas, and ways of life, and I know that there are still good people out there, but unfortunately there are so many people, young, and now older, that are absolutely going to make every decision based on what is best for them. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.” I realize that saying comes from Star Trek, or at least that is why most people know it, but I don’t think that matters, what matters is that people should listen to phrases such as this and realize just how true and vital these kinds of ideas, ways of thinkin, are.

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.” Would you not feel better if that was the way your company ran their business, or if that was the way your school, your kids school, the state universities in this country were run? Would you not feel better if our country, the United Nations, and the governments of the so called “super powers” were run?

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.” What is amazing in these words is that the phrase “the good of the many outweigh the good of the few or the one,” is echoed throughout that passage.

As I read those words from beginning to end, I run across words and phrases such as “perfect union,” “justice,” “tranquility,” ”common defense,” “general welfare,” “blessings of liberty,” “to…our posterity.” Union, common, general, posterity, these words were not chosen by accident, of that I am certain. These words were “chosen,” “inked,” deliberated over by men whose sole purpose it was to create a United States, a free world, but one that we could find a way to share together.

And yet, on a daily basis, sometimes on an hourly basis, we are faced with the prospect of dealing with individuals, groups, organizations, corporations, governments, that do not operate under any scenario or premise that would have them focused on the “good of the many,” but rather on the ”good of the few or the one.” Worse yet we have one generation reinforcing for the next, incorrectly, and inappropriately, that this is the right, best, the proper thing to do, action to take, decision to make.

Why?

Some of the best and most successful companies in this country, and around the world, operate on a very simple principal, “the customer comes second.” If you have not read the book by that title please do so if you get the chance. It is a great read with some great concepts, not just applicable to business. I will give you one guess what the entire approach is based on, put others first and it will all come back to you and then some. From a business sense it is talking about putting employees first, supporting them, encouraging them, making them happy, do that and your customers by default will be very well taken care of and will keep coming back. Put others first and it will all come back to you and then some. “Pay it forward.” See that movie if you haven’t, but all of this is saying the same thing, “look out for number one,” by putting others first!!

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Three Musketeers

I have been following the Tour de France this year far more than ever before. In actual fact, I have never “followed” the Tour before this year. I have always had an interest in the outcome to some extent or another, but now I am finding myself thinking of it when I wake up in the morning, looking forward to turning on the computer and reading the “Stage Tracker.”

Since yesterday I have found myself thinking about three men, three athletes, that have meant sheer dominance in a way that we have never seen before in sport. I am sure there are others, but not sure that there have been others that have dominated to this extent.

Michael Jordan dominated professional basketball to such an extent that he brought his entire team with him. In a team sport, where one man is not supposed to be able to affect the outcome at the championship level, Michael Jordan did just that. He dominated the sport as an individual first, but eventually brought the Chicago Bulls to a point where they were untouchable winning six championships in eight years, the two years they didn’t win Jordan was playing baseball.

Tiger Woods brings Jordanesque qualities to the game of golf. He brings a focus, determination, and desire to win that has not been seen since Jack Nicholas played the game, while bringing the strength and training of a world class athlete. Tiger is aiming at his fourth British Open Title this week. Having been denied twice so far this year in Majors, including the battle with the elements at the U.S. Open where he still closed a thirteen shot lead to three on the final day, Tiger seems more determined than ever.

Lance Armstrong is doing what these other two gentlemen have done in their sports. Cycling is a sport that is a team sport and an individual sport at the same time. There are times when six or eight guys riding together to achieve something on a given day, or to protect a teammate over 21 days, are as much a team as in any other sport. There are also times, especially during the tour, when a rider is very much out there on his own.

When Michael came back professional basketball felt a resurgence. When Tiger came back this year, after a year away, the same happened with golf. Now Lance is back in the tour after four years of retirement. Cycling is being watched all over the world for these 21 days with never before seen interest. As with any sport where there is a dominant player or team I am sure some of that interest is to see Lance fail, but has hasn’t, he isn’t, he won’t. Lance is proving what Michael proved in the last three championship seasons, and what Tiger proves every time he goes back and re-tools his swing, mental dominance of a sport is worth more than all other attributes an athlete has.

Lance Armstrong has come back before and from much more than a simple layoff. Lance came back from cancer to win seven straight tours. To win one is amazing, to simply finish is amazing. In 21 days those guys will ride almost the width of the United States, averaging about 25 miles an hour on most rides. That does not seem like much, but when you think about the fact that roughly one third of those rides are practically straight up some of the steepest roads in all the world, there are some cars in France that wouldn’t make it through those climbs. These guys have to deal with heat in the three digits at times while maintaining that pace for 120, 130, 140 miles. They have to deal with descending at speeds of 40, 50, 60 miles an hour on skinny little tires in the pouring rain. They have to deal with the risk of losing concentration for one second of the five, or six hours out there in the saddle and they could not only lose their chance to finish the tour, but take dozens of riders with them, and risk serious injury.

Lance Armstrong has dealt with all of this and won, not once, but seven times, and now he is back and in third place after the first week of racing, just eight seconds behind the leader. Those that know the tour and know the riders know that he is really in second, two seconds behind his teammate because the man “in yellow,” leading the race, does not really have a chance to win the tour at this point in his career, that is cycling.

This tour, however, we have seen something from Lance we have not seen much of in past tours. Again, reminding me of Michael during championships 4, 5, and especially 6, and Tiger in his thirties. Lance has done nothing so far but play the “team” game over there. He has retrieved water from the team car, traditionally something reserved for the low man on the cycling team totem pole, the “domestic.” Lance “held” onto a competition rider in the mountains to allow his team a chance to keep contact and regroup. Lance has even continued to support his much younger teammate, Alberto Contador, the 2007 tour winner, even though Contador broke ranks two days ago and deserted team plans earning him the lead over Lance.

Is this a new Lance Armstrong? No. This is an older, slightly more mature Armstrong who knows more about how to win these things than any of his teammates, the most dominant team in the tour, or any of their competitors. Lance knows that when it comes down to it this race will be decided on the last day in the Alps next weekend, during a stage that finishes on a long steep ascent, and he knows that he just needs to be close by the time that day comes and the tour is his once again.

Do you really think that someone that thinks like Michael, like Tiger, someone like Lance Armstrong is going to forget what Contador did and not repay him when the time comes in the Alps??!! That is going to be a fun stage to watch, follow. This is a man that in his sixth win, if my memory serves, was dueling his arch nemesis up just such a climb. What happened on that day? Lance followed, hung on his wheel, made him work to try and shake him, then pulled along side, paused, got up out of the saddle pulled ten feet ahead, glanced over his shoulder with a wry grin and then put the hammer down and took the tour.

Three dominant athletes in three sports where it is not possible to be as dominant as they are, three sports where it takes someone greatly superior athletically to dominate, and where these three athletes have used a superior mental approach to keep that dominance. Three guys where the biggest rule when competing against them is simple -- don’t make them mad.

This is appreciation for accomplishment above that which is possible, not unlike the piece “Searching for Bobby Fischer” earlier in the week. These are just examples of that very same “gift” in three truly remarkable athletes, one of a kind in their sports.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.