Regrets or Resolutions? (This one is for Aimee)

There are too many places in print this week that have put forth all kinds of lists about the best and worst of everything and anything that happened in 2011.  I read most of these lists when I run across them even if they are comparing and contrasting things about which I have absolutely no interest. "We rank the best and worst sheetrock of 2011 this issue of Sheetrock Hanger Forum".  I will actually sit and read that crap.

So, on this last day of 2011, I wanted to sit down and take a moment go over the best and worst, major and minor things of this year as they impacted my life.  And I was building up steam as I realized that this was the year that my wife and I got out of debt, the year I left a job I had held for almost half my life, and the year that the worst moment of my life gave me insight that actually helped someone else.

I watched my wife ache to be with her family as quickly as possible after the death of her uncle.  My wife CANNOT fly.  She cannot.  Following the death of her father's brother, and her uncertainty of what that grief would do to him, she agonized over the possibility of getting on a plane and shaving hours off our travel time.  She cried bitter tears at her fear that did not, could not listen to reason.  Irrational fears find their power in the fact that reason cannot touch them.

This year Bin Laden was killed or he is hidden on the outskirts of Cuba.  At any rate, only his memory is a threat to me and mine after ten years of hiding.  Some people chide my country in the fact that it took us 10 years to find him hidden in such plain sight.  I think they miss the rather ominous threat of the fact that we put a bullet in his eye in May or are water boarding him right now after ten years.  Do you think we would have stopped after 15?  What about twenty?  Think on that Oh Enemies of My People.  An attack on us is not a moment of your life.  An attack on us is not a fraction of a second's decision in the course of your life.  An attack on us becomes your LIFE. We will run you like rabid dogs that never tire for your WHOLE life.  Until we end the race in tooth and claw and blood.

I met my latest nephews that come to me from people my wife has known for years and years and who are polite, loving strangers to me.  I learned again the lesson I had learned years earlier that Uncle is the greatest familial rank one can ever hope to hold.  You are not fearful discipline or salve of all hurts or target of all whining.  As Uncle, you are solely and fundamentally and exceptionally FUN.  Best job in the universe by far and one I am honored to bear.

And it was on the waning days of 2011 that a cousin of mine introduced me to the writing of Pat Conroy in the surest way ever invented to get Ray Mancil, Jr. to do anything.  I have read his memoir My Losing Season within the hour of typing this and I am in awe of the way the man gets words to dance.  But I think I am good at that as well.  What impressed me, embarrassed me, shamed me, and confounded me was the total, brutal, unflinching, unwavering, unapologetic honesty of the words that spun and twirled and dipped and even curtsied to the rhythms of truth that only a writer could tease from life.

I read that book with (and type now) with a lump in my throat and water welling in my eyes not from the narrative but from the artistry of the work.  I once watched Katerina Witt skate at one of her last performances on ice.  I was still living with my parents but had my own television in my room so that I could give my tyrant soul full reign over my entertainment choices.  And then found myself free of my parents and subject to basic cable.

But on this night I was forced to watch Witt skating what the announcer said was the simplest, least technically challenging routine they had seen that night.  Channel surfing as I was, I paused long enough to be offended.  It may have been simple and I may have had no working knowledge of ice skating, but I knew perfection when I saw it.  I was a young brute who learned to cuss at a sawmill full of men with limited vocabularies who taught me the artistry of using one particular cuss word almost like punctuation as well as verb, adjective, and noun.  But rough hewn and small and petty though I was, I knew perfection when I saw it because without reason or understanding my throat got a lump in it and I cried.   Apparently my emotions recognize beauty and perfection before my intellect does and has to send rather strong signals to get through.

This is how I met Pat Conroy through his book My Losing Season.  It will be the first of all of Mr. Conroy's books that I read.  And I hope (I plan / I dream / I promise) that it will be the second most memorable exchange I have with the cousin who brought Conroy to me.

But I sit here and realize that trying to capture 2011 is futile.  I have written more this year than I have in years but I have failed to record much of the year.  There have been massive shifts in the world - my personal piece of it and the one that we all share.  There are things that if I put together a few words to commemorate the year, and leave those things out, that I will hate myself.  And I don't want that.

And that leads us all back around to the title of this whole thing.  I regretted the fact that I had not kept a better record of my life this year.  And that sentence right there makes me regret not keeping a better record of my whole life as I have lived a life and time as a writer that not one other has ever lived.  I say that with a humble arrogance in that I am aware that my life is nothing special and yet it is the only one like it in the whole of the universe all at the same time.

But this day, this magical day at the end of the year, at this made up moment in a shared reality that is so mundane we don't even realize the enormity of our world's imagination, this day gives me leave to not have any regrets.  This is the one day that all the things that have worked and all the things that have not, all the plans that have born fruit and all the plans that have met utter defeat - this is the day that REGRET dies.  This is the day that all things are reborn as resolutions for better.  This is the day that we turn to the future with smiles across faces looking up at the heights of dreams that will become improbably, preposterously, wonderfully true.

Happy New Year.

Lighten Up - Some of the Amusing Things in Life

Okay, have had a few posts here lately that have dipped down into the darker corners of my thoughts.  Hope I have not alienated too many folks, but I am also glad that I wrote what I thought.  Writing - to matter,  to have meaning - has to be honest.  I know me well enough to have titled this blog with a reminder of how that honesty should be packaged.

But if this is going to be a recording of my thoughts and, more importantly, if you are going to take the time to read it, I owe all of us the truth as I see it.  The way I figure it, if you go through life trying to tell everyone what you think they want to hear, you are still going to tick some of them off because you guessed wrong.  If you run that risk, why not just share your own thoughts?

You will notice that I said, "share."  That comes back to the name of this blog.  Even if you are honest about your thoughts (and sometimes because you are honest about your thoughts), people are going to get upset.  I don't do this to make people upset.  I do this to let people know what I think and to hopefully get them to respond with what they think.  My mind is not changed often, but it has been changed on occasion.  It usually happens when I have had the chance to exchange ideas with someone who is comfortable answering questions and wants to share a thought instead of winning an argument.

The posts on this blog lately have been a little depressing and maybe I am one those people who is just not in a good mood around the holidays.  Do not remember being that way last year since I had the flu from December 23rd thru the 27th and spent most of that time unconscious or in the bathroom.  Well, whatever the cause, time to snap out of it.  Time to lighten up.

Here are some things that I think are amusing:

A friend of ours came out to visit from Texas to play in the snow.  It did not snow the entire week she was here.  She flew out on Saturday and on Monday it started snowing and now on Tuesday we are expecting five inches of the white stuff.

Another friend shared a story about her beloved mother who is a bit of a control freak (so am I).  During dinner she and her husband told another story about a great meal they had and how her husband was going to surprise her with desert at a mystery destination.  Since she had no control over the destination, she refused to go until he told her where it was.

Another friend of ours is newly pregnant while having much older children already.  Apparently she has gotten fed up with people asking if it was an accident and got on Facebook to tell people so.  I saw her the other day and told her I did not see what was so offensive about the question.  I am the oldest in my family and  Mark is 18 months younger than me and Jason is five years younger than me.  I have told people for years that we are the first born, the middle child, and the accident.

We have another friend who is deathly afraid of clowns.  And people terrorize her with them but they are too blatant.  They put a blow up clown in her chair in her office at work and as a result she could not go into her office until someone removed it.  If I worked with  her, I would show up at work wearing great big clown shoes.

I also told the clownaphobe that Priscilla kept me from getting her a print of one of John Wayne Gacy's paintings.  For those who don't know, Gacy was a clown who worked children's parties, painted clown portraits, and was also a serial killer.  I know, I know, this would not have been a funny ha-ha kind of gift for most people, but it cracks me up.

Friend of ours taught his son to say "Mom's the bomb," when Mom did something that was worth a compliment.  He did something later that was apparently worth a compliment and so his son looked at him and said, "You're the mom!"

A friend on Facebook used colorful language to tell everyone that he hated a butt-kisser.  My reply was, "I have always liked that about you."

Out with my mom and brothers and their wives years ago at a restaurant and the hostess asks us if we have reservations.  My reply, "No ma'am, we are sure we want to eat here."  My mom got the joke even if the hostess was too busy to hear anything after "No..."

My wife blew her back out and as a result, the doctor had her out of her mind on Vicodin.  We had to go to the doctor and I had just helped her get her jeans on when she asked me if I would help her get her socks and shoes on.  I suggested her sandals and she replied, "Sandals.  Sandals.  Good idea.  Sandals."  I turned around for a second and turned back to see a hurt look on her face.  I ask what is wrong and she replies that she thought I was going to help her get her socks and shoes on.  I suggested her sandals again and she replied, "Sandals.  Sandals.  Good idea.  Sandals."

Having dinner with my first grade teacher and her husband, my senior year home room teacher, last year here in Indy and I am telling them about my favorite topless place.  I talk about the small plates and the great food at this topless place.  They keep looking at me funny and ask a couple of times about the name of the place.  And I keep going on and on about this great topless place.  Finally, he goes, "Tapas. You're saying Tapas.  Okay.  Okay."  For the record - Barcelona Tapas and everybody had a shirt on the whole time.

Dark Thoughts

The little drummer boy comes so close to expressing it.  We have nothing to offer the little babe in the manger.  We have nothing.  The drummer boy plays out a song on his drum - all he has that can impart meaning.   The deeper tone is that our hearts beat out the only offering that we have.  The old testament talks of snapping necks and slitting throats and sinned paid for in blood.  We have been paid for by the infant in that manger and we have so little thanks for it.  Our hearts are the only offering we have to give and yet we are reluctant to play a tune for our new born king.

I remember a friend watching The Phantom Menace and wondering at the life that could turn such a sweet little boy into a monster of armor and darkness and red lighted scimitar.  The idea was that innocence found so young could not be evil in such a few decades later.  I found myself holding my tongue about the fun house mirror of our lives that she never knew she was looking into.  The story is told, poorly, as if it is solitary or unusual.  It is not.

People sit back and hear of tragedy and wonder why God allows evil to run rampant in the world.  They pay so little attention to the ones forcing evil onto their fellows.  We wipe out our own guilt in looking at a world that is ugly and festering and cruel.  We blame God for the awfulness and the heartlessness and we so conveniently leave ourselves out of the story.

I wonder at stories that bestow godly powers on mere mortals.  From Superman to Bruce Almighty we have stories of beings that are so far above the human norm as to be considered a god.  And we never question our existence.  But what if one of us was given God-like power?  Does anyone take into account that he (or she) could see into all of our hearts just the way of the actual God?

How could we survive one second of that?  The fact that we have been able to exist this long at all is a testament to a merciful God.  We are cruel and heartless and just plain mean.  The greatest threat to a human being's life is a human being.  And that is assuming that all we want is to  kill you.   We may want to make you suffer first.

One instant of knowing the heart of the race of men, and any immortal deity that came from our stock, would end the rest of us in a thought.  A fleeting thought.  A whim.  It would be the kind of decision that would never be questioned.  It might not even be considered a decision in much the same way that breathing is not considered a choice.

We indict God for allowing the world to exist this way and we castigate believers for wanting to be slaves to an Almighty Being.  But how could God be just or fair if we were not allowed free will?  Our suffering is not a result of His indifference.  His Will - His Patience - His Willful Patience allows us to be.  Simply that - He allows us to be.   That is more than we deserve and punishment enough in many ways.

But I hear you now protesting in unwitting blasphemy that you would bring mercy to the world.  That you would end suffering and death.  And all that you would have to extinguish is free will.  You would take away all choices that led to pain and hardship and hurt feelings and soon you would have billions and billions who were only a pale shadow of your simplest, most straight forward thoughts.  All of us reduced to echoes.  All of us reduced to echoes.

Echoes can be rich and deep and comforting.  Echoes can be loud and shrill and jarring.  Echoes can be musical and echoes can be thunderous.  But echoes can never be original.  Echoes cannot think and worship.  Echoes cannot murder and rape, but echoes cannot love.  

As a benevolent God you would exchange our evil and horror for basic nothingness.  Cruelty exchanged for a hollow shimmering reflection of sound.  One is corrupt and the other is empty.

I only know my own guilt for certain.  I only know my own heart and even then I have hidden things behind lies and rationalizations that I don't know the true extent of anymore.  And, maybe this is another of those rationings of reality, but I cannot fathom that I am alone in my guilt.  But that is the way we sell ourselves to ourselves - we have all fallen short of the glory of God.  

These shadowy thoughts glide across and cast a gloom across everything that I see.  I take the time to type the darkness onto the page to clarify.  I find comfort in the written word.  I start typing and I don't always know how the sentences are going to end.  This is part of the fun of writing.  I can experience the words sooner than any other reader, but I experience them many times in exactly the same way.

I know that humanity is evil.  I know it.  I have seen too much of the darker aspects of life to doubt it for an instant.  And there are times like these where I find us overwhelming.  Christ came for us.  Christ died a horrible death on our behalf.  We have nothing of value to offer in exchange for that.  We are allowed free will and even after making the correct choice we can still reach back to our old, cancerous self and do unspeakable harm to one another.   I wish for the power to make that not so.  But having it, I know that humanity would end in that moment.  And strangely, all that suffering and pain, would not be so.  No more than we deserve.

Stray Thoughts 8: Ocho-A-Go-Go

Dr. Z - Paul Zimmerman


Dr. Z was a columnist for Sports Illustrated who covered the NFL.  Crisp, direct writing with a sharpness of wit characterized his articles on football.  He seemed, from the only way I ever have ever gotten to know him, his writing, like he would have been a blunt man.  He also seemed to be fairly bright and maybe just a bit impatient with those who were not as bright.  I also remember him being painfully honest about those aspects of the NFL that some fans could be naive or willfully blind about.

He had a stroke 37 months ago.  Since that day he has not been able to speak or write.

That is horrifying to me.  His wife loves him and cares for him.  His friends come to visit him.  He seems to know what they are saying.  But he is a spectator in his own life.  Horrifying.

Poker Again


Last night I went from a conservative table at which I had the chip lead to a second table that was just stupid aggressive.  I sat for about 12 hands at the new table.  You will notice that I did not say that I played 12 hands.  Someone went all in on 9 of the twelve hands.  And all in on a pair of 2's and such.

I sat on my hands and folded bad cards and folded borderline cards.  Finally got an Ace with a 3 off suit and I was already the big blind so I was ready to check to see the flop.  Sure enough, one of the yahoos went all in.  I decided an Ace was good enough to call just to see if the guy had anything at all.  He had a pair of fives and I never caught help and out I went.

I did leave with a lesson on how to play the next time I have a chip lead at a table though.  Generate impatience in people who don't have the chips to be impatient so they will challenge you to a fight that they can't really win.  There is a life lesson in there somewhere too.

Just Eat Food


For a quick read go check out Michael Pollan's Food Rules.  It is his second book which serves as a quick reference to the first, In Defense of Food.   Both works detail his research into the modern Western Diet.  In an effort to make food more readily available, to make it more easily transportable, and more profitably marketed, we have rendered food into "food-like-substances".  Pollan not only recommends that we avoid these food-like-substances but offers up rules to smoke out the real food found in grocery stores.

One of the easiest is to read the ingredients on the package.  If there are words there that you can't pronounce, it is probably not really food.  I took this to heart the day before yesterday and went to try to find sandwich meat.  I could not find a single package that just said ham or turkey.  There were things like corn starch and other words that I am not sure I can spell listed on the packaging.

You may be wondering what the big deal is.  I did.  Pollan does an excellent job of laying out how we humans have existed on various diets depending on what was available.  He also points out that no matter if those diets featured high fat (Inuits) or high fish (Japanese) or high wine (French), we humans had thousands of years to adapt to the environment in which that food was found.  As a result, we tended to not have the health issues associated with the Western Diet that gives us concentrations of sugars and fats that no other diet does.

I thought that we humans were just vulnerable to diabetes and heart disease and cancer and dental issues. But funny thing, studies of cultures that don't feature our industrialized Western Diet don't have the incidents of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and tooth decay that we have.  Apparently the illnesses that are just now beginning to cripple our economy here in the U.S. could all be avoided if we ate differently.

I have written before of how logic tends to trap me and alter my behavior better than emotional pleas and such.  I read Dave Ramsey's book on personal finance and changed the way I interacted with money.  After reading Pollan's books, I can't help but see the logic of his thinking.  I go through the grocery store with my wife and we do our best to just buy food.  We stay around the edges of the store where you find the vegetables and the eggs and the dairy and the meat.  We have wine and we have cheese and we cook a whole lot more.

Don't take my word for it.  Take a minute to read Food Rules by Michael Pollan.  It is a much shorter book of the two that details the rules that he applies to his eating habits.  That book alone will probably give you the tools you need if you are not a fan of reading.  If you are a fan of reading, then go back and read In Defense of Food.   The logic of it will probably impact you as it did me.  Truth tends to have that effect.

Loving Your Enemies


Christ commands that we love our enemies as we love ourselves.  I have been thinking about that a great deal lately.  I tend to hold a grudge or two.  I have let most of them go over time but have at least one that  still makes me raise my voice a bit when I talk about it.  Not easy to forgive someone who has never asked for it and who probably doesn't think they need to be forgiven.  Working on resolving it though.

But let's look at the order from Jesus.  Think about how we love ourselves.  We cut ourselves every break and give ourselves every benefit of the doubt.  No matter what our actions actually render, we routinely judge ourselves on what we intended to do.  We know, KNOW, no matter the evidence to the contrary that we are basically "good people" and that attitude allows us to get out of bed each morning and not be weighed down by guilt.

Now think about applying that level of trust (or self deception) to the one person you have been thinking of since you started reading this little section of stray thoughts.   Yeah, me too.  I pray about it.

Roller Derby


If you ever get the chance to go to a roller derby, do it.  It is fast paced, easy to understand, and full of characters who are just plain nuts.  All the skaters, including the referees , have outlandish stage names like "Eve of Destruction" or "Heidi Goseek".  The announcers plug the sponsors during the game.  And sense quite a few of the sponsors are beer companies, and the announcers sample most of the products they endorse during the game, even the announcing gets interesting.

For all the silly showmanship, these ladies are athletes.  Their was one out there that had a cut back move that NFL running backs wish they could do with cleats and she does it on skates for crying out loud.  I had a blast.  I think most of you reading this would too.

An Atheist Died Yesterday

Christopher Hitchens died yesterday. He was one of the smartest people I never knew. He was also charming. I say that only because every time I heard him speak or interviewed I was charmed. That is powerful language from me. The finest complement that I ever heard of my dad was that he was charming. So it is a powerful word for me in that I searched my heart and found the words true about my father and true about Christopher Hitchens.

My father probably would not have liked Hitchens. I don't know that for sure. I might be selling one of them short. I am not sure which. I don't even know who would be more offended by the perceived slight. They were two wholly different sort of men and yet also an inverted, squinty eyed, photographic negative of each other.

That paragraph above is why I write. I don't often get hard evidence of why I record my thoughts, which seem to matter much more to me than to anyone else. Until I was in the act, until fingers were dancing across the keys in an effort to find clear thought in their rhythmic movements, I had never thought about a connection between my father and Hitchens.

My father was a devout Christian who identified with the thief on the cross who knew he deserved his fate. If Hitchens ever identified with a person in the Bible, I think it must have been the pragmatic thief on the other side of Christ who tried to cajole an all too earthly escape from Roman fascism. But I see the connection now in my mind and why Hitchens has a soft spot in my heart while I am exactly like the willing slave and ultimate hindrance to human evolution that he must have despised.

Hitchens was smart. He was the kind of smart that even in that time in my life when I would not allow anyone to be smarter than me (only better educated), he was smarter than me. He could make the English language dance and he did not care who he offended. Indeed, he measured himself, I think, by who he offended.

He did not believe as I believed on almost every subject. But he had at least thought it through. He had thought my ideas through to a harrowing extent as far as I was concerned. Camille LaPagilia (forgive me if I have misspelled her name) was the first to disabuse me of the idea that if I could only communicate my thoughts to a person in perfect clarity, they would believe as I believe. Hitchens was the first to clarify my beliefs better than I could and then blow them up to the point that I sometimes wondered why I believed them.

Once I accepted that he was smarter than me, with all the heightened adrenalin that implies for someone as arrogant as me, he actually began to clarify my beliefs. When he explained with disdain that a Christian such as myself was eager to be lead, eager to be a slave, I knew it was true. He looked at that with contempt. I learned to look at Western need for theological freedom with the same intensity as I learned (ongoing process) to welcome Christian slavery from a God who knows better how to live my life.

I maintain that I would much rather have a glass of Scotch with Hitchens, a man who viewed Christianity and all other religions as a crime against mankind, and argue, than to have a glass of awkward tea with Mother Theresa (a woman he loathed). He was a man that I think I would have liked if I had ever gotten to know him personally, even if he would have viewed me with disdain. As a man that views the vast majority of mankind with disinterest, if not disdain, that is a complement.

For my fellow Christians who view my not so subtle awe of the man with derision and who take solace in the fact of his passing, go pray. Not for him. He is beyond hope as we see it most likely. He knew he was dying of cancer and planned to not be a death bed conversion. If you doubt him, know this: he did not like the term atheist. He felt that an atheist was free to hope he was wrong. He tried to establish the term "antitheist" which is someone who not only believes that God does not exist but HOPES that God does not exist.

By my faith, he already knows that he is wrong. He has already had to bow before Christ and acknowledge that Christ is sovereign in all things. He has found out how wrong he was in all things on this earth and is now facing the horrors of hell. I found myself incapable of typing burning in hell in the previous sentence. But in honor of the man, I owe him that honesty of my beliefs. He burns in hell this morning.

If any of you who have known of him before I wrote this, or if you have only heard of him as I type this - if you take any joy in that last paragraph, stop reading now and pray. Pray not for Hitchens, but pray for yourself. We Christians are meant to agonize over any souls that find themselves bereft of Christ's salvation. I pray for you who have no mercy and I pray for his brother.

His brother was recently reconciled with Hitchens after years or estrangement. His younger brother is a devout Christian and suffers today. May God's mercy be upon him. And upon us all.

Stray Thoughts 7: Mantle not Elway

Brought to You by the Number 7

With apologies to John Elway, the most famous number seven in sports for me is still Mickey Mantle. I never had the benefit of watching him play but he was a favorite of my dad who loved the Yankees pre-Steinbrenner. I have read more than a few books on Mantle and honestly, he was a mess. And he was honestly one of the best to ever play the game of baseball.

Most of the men in his family died young. His own father passed at 41 years of age. He used that as an excuse to live hard. If he had come along in the 70's with the prevalence of powder cocaine or the 90's with crack cocaine, my personal opinion is that he would have destroyed himself with them. But he was a creature of his time and so he drank himself silly. You have to wonder how much better his hall of fame career could have been if had just laid off the booze. What if he had worked out? Cynically, I have to ask, what if he had taken steroids?

He also slept with women like he was James Bond or a single man - and he wasn't. I wonder sometimes what life was like for his children. They reached adulthood and knew that their dad had cheated on their mom with casual disregard for their vows. The idea that men are men and they just can't be faithful is an insult to real men everywhere, but I hear it a lot when people reference Mantle.

Most of the time I take a harsh, judgmental tone when dealing with folks who have a train wreck of a life. That slapping noise you hear is all the people who know anything about my life slapping their foreheads at the hypocrisy. I try to cut people more slack these days. But I also understand that people won't change until they hit their personal rock bottom. I also know that enabling hurts more than harshness if the person is not there yet. I say this as a person whose rock bottom was pretty low.

But I have always cut Mantle some slack. I have no idea why. I just always had the feeling that Mantle's life was just bigger than anything he was prepared to deal with. I think he hid in a bottle and he hid in the arms of beautiful women. And yes, I understand that is exactly the mindset of an enabler, but there it is.

Two of my favorite Mantle stories follow. During the 1961 season in which Roger Maris hit 61 home runs, Mickey was also chasing the record. People would get up in the morning to see where each of them stood in relation to the Major League record. But most of the Yankees fans wanted Mantle to be the one who broke Ruth's MLB record of 60 home runs in a season. During the season Mantle had all kinds of injuries (that steroids could have helped with by the way) and at one point was hitting basically one handed.

During one of these at bats he hit a towering home run and as he came to home plate Maris stuck out his hand and said, "Put her there," and Mantle replied, "Can't do it," since he could not raise his hand to meet the hand of his fellow player. The papers were full of stories of a rift between the two even though they shared an apartment during the season. But the man hit a home run one handed off of major league pitching and he could not raise his arm high enough to shake hands. Wow.

My other favorite story is of a time after Mantle retired when he and Billy Martin ( a fellow Yankee) went out to hunt in Mantle's home state. Mantle explained to Martin that he had to go to the owner of the land and get permission to hunt on the land. While Martin waited in the car, Mantle went to talk to the land owner and the owner asked a favor of Mantle in exchange for hunting his land.

The farmer had an old mule that had been in the family for years and due to bad health had to be put down. If Mantle would put down the beloved animal, then he and his friend could hunt the land. Now Mantle, being a practical joker, saw an opportunity for a grand prank.

He came back to the truck and told Martin that even after knowing his family for years, the old coot was not going to let them hunt the land. Mantle saidf that to get even, he was going to kill the old man's mule and with that, threw his rifle up to his shoulder and fired, "BLAM!!":

Before Mantle could turn around, he heard, "BLAM!! BLAM!!" He saw Martin running back to the truck shouting, "C'mon, Mick! I got two of the old bastard's cows too"

I have no idea if that story is true and I do not want to know. It is too funny as is.

Fun Things with Poker

Monday night I went to play poker and got put out early. One guy at the end of the table went all in on the first hand of the night and got one guy to call him. The first guy had pocket aces and doubled up on the first hand. He then went all in on the 2nd hand and this time nobody called him so all he got was an average pot. On the third hand, I got pocket 8's and bet the blind. Old Faithful went all in again. I had to call on general principal. He had pocket 9's and caught another 9 on the table before it was said and done.

I was the third person off the table and had barely left the house an hour ago. You might think that I would be royally ticked off, and while I was not happy, I was content with how I had played my hand. The idea that old boy could have had a great hand for 3 consecutive times around the table was slim to say the least. And I was right. He did not have a great hand. He just had one better than mine. But the odds were on my side and I was bold in my response.

The previous time at this same poker tourney we were late in the game and I was dealt a Queen and a King off suit. I bet and it went around the table and the dealer went all in. The guy next to me followed him in. I was there with a Queen and a King and we had not flopped yet and I could not talk myself out of believing that one of them had pocket Kings or better. So, I folded. That's when the dealer flipped his to reveal Queen / Nine and the other guy flipped Queen / Three. The only thing they paired was their Queens. I would have won that hand.

That killed me. To have let the game slip away from me because I did not have the courage of my cards just galled me. It did not put me out of the game but it kept me from tripling my chips and being in a much better situation as the game went farther. Of the two hands described above, folding the Queen/King bothers me so much more.

There is a lesson in life there somewhere.

Vietnam Vet

My cousin Tony is much older than me. His children are roughly my age. My mother and Tony grew up more like sister and brother than cousins. My mom would tell us stories about Tony and the Vietnam war. She had managed to keep one of his letters sent from the jungles for years and years before it finally disintegrated.

It was so vulnerable to time since the letter was written on toilet paper - the only paper he available at that time. My mom smiled a rueful smile as she recalled the first line of the letter, "That's right, Dinky, shit paper." My mom would go on to tell us about all the boys in the neighborhood that would wind up going over there. She talked about some of them that came back. She talked about others of them who never did.

Tony served a couple of tours over there. On one occasion my mom got to meet one of his friends who was getting trained to take Tony's place when Tony rotated home. Mom only told me he was a nice guy and young. And within a week of taking Tony's place he was killed in action. My mom felt sorry for him and his family and she felt bad that part of her was relieved that it was him and not the young man who might as well have been her brother.

Tony just got back from Afghanistan. It was not his first trip. He was a civilian contractor working with the local police forces on methods of maintaining the chain of evidence and such. At least that is what he told us. His kids and I are only half convinced he was not some sort of geriatric James Bond over there.

He told me upon his return (they processed him out just outside Indianapolis, where I live) he told me that this would be his final time going overseas. I told him that I had not talked to his wife but I was pretty sure it was his last time going overseas as a married man. He laughed at that and pointed out that when you are old enough to be the grandfather of the majority of the people over there, it is time to call it a day.

The funny thing to me was that even among the service people over there, the Vietnam war seemed like ancient history. He and a couple of other Vietnam vets would sit and tell stories of the bad old days and the young men and women there would sit in rapt attention.

Turns out the Vietnam war was not a movie with Martin Sheen. Turns out brave men and women died and those who didn't were scared as everyone who goes to war can't help but be. And then they came back to find a country that had people literally spitting on them as they walked through the airport on their way home.

Thanks Tony. And thanks to all the rest who have served. Thank you.

We Never Learn

In 2008 the economy went in the crapper. We have only recently gotten back to the point that the national unemployment rate dropped below nine percent. People who should never have been approved for a home loan in the first place wound up not being able to pay for their homes and lost them.

One of the silver linings to this whole gruesome situation was that we as Americans were cutting back on our debt. We were no where near where the country was in 1950 when only about 5% of the homes in this country had a mortgage, but folks seemed to finally understand that borrowing to supply your wants in life was actually dangerous to your financial health.

Or so it seemed. October marked the first month this year that personal debt for Americans went back up. Here we go again.

Budgets and Diets

I have written before about how my wife and I got out of debt. One of the biggest things that helped was that we started having a written budget at the beginning of each month that set limits on all of our expenditures. Once we started doing this, it was like getting a raise. It really made the whole financial thing much simpler and less stressful.

Now my wife and I are working on losing weight and have come across a very similar method. We pick out recipes from a cooking light magazine, buy the ingredients, and then cook for the whole week. The food is then packaged in single serving containers that can be taken to work or turned out on a plate.

Fun thing about how this works. It is crazy easy to eat right now since our house is always full of healthy meals. And a happy side effect is that since we go to the store only looking to buy items for a specific set of meals, our grocery bill has gone WAY down. Cut almost in half each month.

Apparently living intentionally instead of haphazardly has its own rewards.

My 2nd Home

I grew up in south Georgia. I have noticed that when people ask where I am from, I don't actually say Georgia, but always south Georgia. If you are from south Georgia, you get the difference. If you are not, I am not a good enough writer to ever explain it to you.

But my wife was talking to someone the other day and told them that I probably considered Texas my second home. My wife and I had never talked about it as such, but when she told me about this I understood she was exactly right. Nice when someone else comes to a truth about you before you do.

I really loved my time in Texas. I would go to Astros games in the summer time several times a week after a work. I would go to biker bars with biker friends and people watch some truly outlandish people. I would go to saloons and watch ten gallon hats dance with ten gallon big hair doing the two step. And the BBQ. You couldn't find decent pulled pork to save your life, but they do things with brisket out there that would make a Jewish deli jealous.

And the Mexican food. Oh, man. Priscilla and I have found a place or two in our travels that could put out a decent Mexican spread, but they have been few and far between. In Texas, you would have a pot luck at work and somebody would bring grandma's tamales to the shindig. Yeah. Texas is my second home.

I Don't Have the Perfect Solution

I hate it when people bring up a problem and all they want to do is moan and groan about it and not offer up a solution at all. So as I discuss this, I will try to offer what solutions I can think of even while nit picking them for their own short falls. I have no perfect solution to these issues and that might be because there is no perfect solution. I just think that what we are doing now is going to fail.

In this country, like every country in the world, we have the hungry and the homeless and the uninsured. I have lived long enough to understand that my idea of a tough day pales in comparison to those people who lead a life of legitimate hardship. And by my belief system, my faith, we will always have the poor and the hungry with us - Christ himself said so.

Hard to not feel defeated in a situation like that. But the disciples who were there with Christ and heard him say the words still worked to feed the hungry as they worked to spread the Gospel. So even hearing that the problem would always be bigger than them, did not keep them from trying. So, also by my faith, we have to keep trying.

But here is the problem. If you try to help people the way I would prefer, through private institutions that would be able to work locally and set restrictions on how help was given, you work on a small scale and you magnify the chances for mismanagement (perhaps even criminally) of the funds that are entrusted to them. If you try to help people through government programs you establish a mind numbingly huge bureaucracy that consumes large portions of the funds and creates rules and regulations that can be easily manipulated by those willing to play the system for their own benefit.

Let's take the 2nd system first since it is the primary system we have in place now. The advantages of this system is that it is huge. It offers assistance on a grand scale that comes closest to matching the size of the problem. Criteria is spelled out in law and it prevents favoritism in the implementation of help - if you meet the criteria, you are entitled to the help no matter what. And it is constant and consistent - the check hits your mailbox every month like clockwork and funds are pulled in by law to support the program. As a result, the program is not subject to the whims of donors.

Now as to the small, local option to help. The good in it is that the help could be catered to help a specific aspect of the local community. If the primary reason for need is that a local plant has been shut down and drastically increased unemployment, a focus could be shifted to job training and job finding assistance to get as many people back off the rolls of assistance as possible. Local leaders on the ground tend to have a better idea of who among their clients are actually trying to better themselves and who are milking the system and could take quick action to reduce help given based on effort seen. Also under the current system of local help, the funds raised have to come from donors which fosters a need for the local helpers to strive to show results to keep the funds coming in.

The problems with both systems are many. If we were to take the funds currently given out by the government and entrust them to local charities, you would have millions of small programs which would be almost impossible to monitor. We would be swamped with stories of charitable leaders who embezzled funds meant to help their clients. We would inevitably have some charitable organizations choosing only to help those who conformed to a certain belief system instead of helping those who deserve to be helped.

The problem with help on the large scale are numerous as well. There is a cycle of dependency in place in this country where generations of families are on public assistance. I saw one news special where the grandmother, mother, and the pregnant daughter were all on assistance from the government and none of them had held a job in years. Also the very act of spelling out criteria to receive help simply provides a road map for the unscrupulous to make sure they meet the standard to get assistance. And there is not an endless supply of funds.

People who have been critical of the fact that our current system does not do enough have often pointed out that our system pales in comparison to what the governments in Europe do for their citizens. Take a moment and go look at how many European economies are on the verge of collapse right now. They have found that the culture of dependence, once ingrained, will literally lead to riots in the streets when there is an attempt to reduce benefits.

The poor will be with us always and we are not afforded the luxury of simply giving up. My less than perfect solution would be to curtail some of the mandatory support given directly to those who meet the criteria, and to instead fund more local charities to provide help for their communities. I would urge the implementation of good behavior, practical behavior being used to govern who gets funds - this good behavior would include submitting to drug testing, job training, birth control, and mandatory service to the charitable institution from which assistance is received.

The books would have to be open to the public to prevent fraud and this would mean that the neighbor of the one getting assistance would know exactly how much assistance they were getting. This is a huge invasion of privacy, I know, but it is based on the fact that the person getting the help volunteered to get the help. They could maintain their privacy by not asking for help.

There are probably a thousand reasons why this will never work. I understand that. I hope there are people out there smarter than me who can figure this out. The collapses that are threatening Europe have no problem hopping the pond and coming over here. I believe that the economy is going to get a lot worse before it is going to get any better and that means we are going to see a huge increase in the number of people who are going to need help.

The system that we have now will not be able to support that. We will find ourselves having to cut program funding at the exact moment that more people will be making demands on those programs. People are going to be hurting. People who have never known true NEED are going to find themselves standing in lines for food with people they used to look down their noses at. And we are going to have angry people who don't understand that the money was never magical and never just appeared in the mailbox when the people funding those programs all these years suddenly meet the criteria to receive help from the programs.

This honestly worries me. I have spent years not liking the system because of the culture of need that it creates and perpetuates. But I have tolerated the system because I knew that it actually helped those few people that actually needed the help but refused to be made an assistance addict. Now I am literally concerned that this mismanaged system is going to collapse under the weight of its own inborn weaknesses and there is going to be nothing left to help anyone.

Does anybody out there have a solution? Anyone? Anyone?

Hunger

I am a fat guy. Have been a fat guy on and off for years now. Currently working to eat right and exercise and drop some pounds. Having some success. I don't really understand hunger. I know what it is to be hungry in that I have had my stomach growl in the hours between meals. But I have had much more concern with what my next meal would be than whether or not I would have my next meal.

Even when I was young and my parents had very little money with three children, I never missed a meal. I never even felt the stress my parents felt in finding ways to feed us. I came to the table, sat down at my spot and maybe even complained because the meal was not from McDonald's. But there was always food on my plate. I never had to miss a meal because there was no food in the house.

The idea of hungry people here in America has always been so strange to me. At a young age, I understood that we were indeed a land of plenty. You can just walk down the aisle of any grocery store in this country and see that we have plenty. In the years since I was a child the offerings at the local grocery store have expanded to include exotic gourmet items that were never seen in my small town world except on television.

My wife and I seek out new restaurants to try dishes and delicacies that we have never had before. There are TWO whole television networks focused on food as art and entertainment. There are countless shows on other networks that also feature food and chefs. There are all sorts of festivals and competitions that showcase the acumen of professional and amateur cooks alike. This is a land of plenty.

And yet there are people who are hungry. I am not a bleeding heart. Far from it. I am politically just to the right of Attila the Hun. And that is still just to the left of my dad. My dad was conservative and tended to vote Republican with a layering of Libertarianism ladled on to maintain succulence. I, like my father, believe that you deserve in this world only those things that you can work for and earn.

People lament that the rich have a better life with the best of everything. They have the best food and the best wine, the prettiest spouses, the fastest cars, the biggest houses, and the best medical care. How unfair that those of us less well off have to settle for less. The argument is that the rich don't deserve all of this just because they have more money.

I think they do. If you have worked hard enough and long enough and well enough at a line of work that garners riches, you are entitled to all that they can provide. That means they DESERVE the best food and wine and spouses and cars and houses and even medical care. I honestly believe this even though I am squarely in the middle of the middle class.

I fundamentally oppose any and all government programs that offer a hand out to people who have failed at life. I know that calling people failures is probably horrific to most of you. But if you are in a place where you cannot feed and house yourself and your family, then you are a failure in life. Choosing any other way to describe it is just sugar coating a situation that does nothing to make a situation better.

But I have the same weakness that my father had. I am content in sentencing adults to live with the consequences of their choices in life with no help from the government ( I do endorse charitable organizations that help the poor - they are able to set boundaries on the help they offer). But I have a weakness for children. Children have played no part in the failings of their parents. It is unfair in the extreme to have children bear the burden of the failures of their parents.

Any limits you set on hand outs would impact the children of the parents. It would impact the innocent. And people like me are not the only ones who know of this loop hole. My mom once had a woman on welfare explain to her that she was going to have to have another child soon. Her youngest was about to start school and this would result in a reduction in her benefits since she would be able to go out and get a job while the child was in school. This woman had done the math and realized that if she had her fifth child within the next 10 months or so, she could continue to not work.

How do you deal with that and not punish her five kids who have done nothing wrong but be born to a waste of life? I think I would be more comfortable with government assistance to people if you could put strict limits on what they were able to do with the funds.

I worked in a convenience store as a teenager and got to read the directions for handling the food stamps program. Part of the structure was that we were to offer no guidance to anyone using the stamps for purchases, such as pointing out that hamburger is cheaper than steak. Again, part of the reason that I like private institutions that address hunger and homelessness is that they can impose restrictions on their help in a way the government feels that it cannot. If you are drunk out of your gourd, then you do not get to sleep in the church shelter kind of thing.

There is an idea that poor folks should have the same rights as everyone else when it comes to their assistance from the government. Again, I disagree. If you cannot pay own way, you have to play by a special set of rules that the rest of us don't. I think you ought to have to have regular drug testing to receive benefits since you might not need benefits if you were not spending your cash on drugs. I think you should have to spend a portion of each day doing something in the service of the state - even if it is something done from home to avoid child care expenses.

But even here, we are faced with what to do if a person violates any of the proscriptions applied to them since if you cut them off, their kids are cut off. That is a horrible side effect. I know people who grew up hungry as a direct result of the dereliction of their parents.

I have had long conversations with friends who hated summer vacation. When they were in school they were assured of at least one meal each day. During the summer there were literally days where they did not eat at all. The family was not on any sort of assistance since both parents worked and produced plenty of money. The money just went to drugs instead of things like food for the kids or the electric bill or rent. I have no personal experience with that kind of horror.

There is no solution I can see to that kind of situation. Nobody knew (at least no one willing to take action) what was going on. And there are no means of addressing this kind of abuse unless someone says something. The kids just go hungry.

But one radical idea (that I struggle with) keeps coming back to me when dealing with those who would have the rest of us subsidize them. I admit that this idea makes me terribly uncomfortable, but as times get tougher and tougher, it begins to seem more and more plausible. If you accept assistance from the rest of us, you must submit mandatory birth control.

I know, I know. Terribly invasive, but only if you ask us to come into your life financially. The logic would be that, if you cannot provide for your family now, why should you allow your family to get any larger? I can hear people now talking about the infringement on rights and how rich people don't have to face this kind of thing. Agreed, but rich people are not asking me for money.

And it addresses the issue of being able to turn off benefits that would hurt children. If people are kept from re-populating the needy, eventually we would have some families off the welfare rolls in direct opposition to the woman in my mom's story. I know. I am a horrible person for wanting to do this to poor disenfranchised people. I know.

But in a land of plenty we need to come up with some ideas that will allow us to help those who need the help without continuing the culture of dependence that sees generations of a family dependent on the government. We have to help and we have to help on a grand scale. But we have to curtail this idea that help comes with no strings attached.

The rest of us are only allowed to live the kind of life we can afford. The poorest of us that need our help should have to live a life that matches what they can afford. That means limits and conditions placed on them from the ones that provide the money. Just like you and I abide by the rules of our employers. If we could set parameters on how help was given, there would be more "help" available to be given. How much more legitimately needy people could be helped within our flawed government system if we did this?

Much of this whole argument would be alleviated if each of us did more to help our fellow man. Take some time (and money) this year to help others. Find a charitable organization, research it, and if it actually helps people, then find ways to support it. Take your nose out of your own problems for a while and if you have lived my life, discover that there are others out there that have had a much, much tougher time than you have. Enjoy your life and the rewards you have earned but leave a spot in your budget to help those who are less fortunate that you are. If we all did this to the extent that we are capable, this issue would shrink considerably.

And keep an eye out for kids who play with your kids and go to school with your kids who go to sleep hungry tonight. They are out there and they are probably silent about it. Help them too. If you have kids and you have a problem with drugs and alcohol, find a program, find help. No matter what demons are chasing you, don't let them have your kids.

There are people hungry in this land of plenty. Children in America go to sleep having not eaten all day and with the assurance that they will not eat in the morning either. That is horrible and shameful. I think we conservatives have to commit to do more. I think the liberals of our country have to admit that benefits with no strings only serves to create a culture of dependence. This problem is fixable, but we all have to do our part. If we don't, if we continue to fail to deal with this, then we condemn children to continue to face an all consuming hunger.

Give Them the Trophy Now

Sports are a fun diversion. They allow us to all feel like experts since we can play a muted version of what we see on TV in our backyards. We can all feel lifted up when our teams do well and outraged when forces conspire to work against our teams.

And we love sports in this country. The next time you are out shopping, look at your watch and see how long it takes you to see ten people wearing some sort of sports endorsement clothing. We get immersed in the ebb and flow of the fortunes of those teams that we have chosen to follow. But why?

I think the largest part of the charm of sports is that there is so much that is black and white. There are winners and losers, catches and interceptions, sacks and great blocks. There are home runs and basket catches, runs batted in and bang, bang plays at first, and earned run averages and suicide squeezes. There is clarity and definition in sports in a way that most of our lives don't have.

Are you a good parent? How do you know? Is the Big Bang Theory accurate? Does it contradict the Bible or clarify it? Where is Jimmy Hoffa buried? Is Jimmy Hoffa even dead? See what I mean?

That is what has become so frustrating this year in college football. Earlier this year we had a game between the two best teams in the country (I think - we don't have a playoff in college football). Louisiana State University beat Alabama in a defensive battle. Okay. So LSU is at least better than Alabama this year based on this game.

Now Alabama nor LSU have lost since and every other team out there has at least one loss. Oklahoma State University has one loss to an inferior opponent (I think - we have no playoff system in college football), but has beaten two top ten teams (I think - we have no playoff in college football) while Alabama has not beaten any top ten teams (I think - we have no playoff in college football).

Now I know all the Bama fans are all too eager to have the rematch and I don't seriously expect them to ever agree to exclude their team from the championship game. But how can you put Bama in at the expense of OSU? Didn't Bama already have a chance to beat LSU (in Alabama, by the way) and failed? It makes no sense to me.

But this rematch is exactly the championship game that we have now. And here is the biggest reason that I don't like it. It will not generate a black and white result if LSU does not win. If Bama wins they will have beaten LSU on a neutral site. LSU will still have beaten Bama on Bama's home turf. That cries out for a third game to settle everything. If you don't have the third game to settle things, isn't LSU's win on Bama's home turf more impressive and deserving of more first place votes? Shouldn't LSU be the National Champion no matter who wins the National Championship game?

I think so but we don't have a playoff in college football so I can't be sure.

Best of Intentions...

Read a comment from one of the Presidential candidates the other day concerning child labor laws. The politico thought that a lot of the provisions of our child labor laws actually work against the poor of this country. He reasoned that union janitors at schools could all be fired (costs savings for the school district and its tax payers) and you could have a janitorial supervisor with students from the school paid to maintain the school for a couple of hours each day after or before class.

His thinking was that students would learn the value and pride of work, that they would have a vested interest in their school, and that they would actually have a small income to help the family.

After I read his remarks I read the comments posted on line from my fellow readers. Almost all of them derided the notion. Some of them were merely pro-unions and I can understand folks having strong beliefs on that front. But what concerned me, even though I was expecting it and it was why I chose to read the comments in the first place, was the fact that so many HATED the idea of school children working.

They felt the whole idea was tantamount to abuse. I found myself shaking my head. Despite the hostility of the comments, I tried to remind myself that this was probably a cultural difference. In the south, it is not unusual at all for kids to spend their summers working in the fields on the farm. Some kids spend their afternoons after school working on farms and such as well.

I was out at my dad's sawmill every summer from the time I was twelve. I also had a part time job during the school year at a convenience store every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday nights and alternating Friday's. The jobs provided spending money for me and bought all my school clothes each year. It also supplemented my parent's grocery money since my dad decided that after the first three meals that they provided, I had to provide my own fourth, fifth, sixth, and sometimes seventh meal of each day.

I would say it provided date money but I was not much of a ladies man in high school. That is a whole other embarrassing story of social inadequacy.

The jobs did not pay much and were not pleasant and I am proud to say that I have never made so little money ever again. But I learned that money was nice to have and that to have it, you have to work for it. I learned that what was so difficult to earn was startlingly easy to spend. And I learned that making more money did not necessarily make me happier. All good lessons to learn and to learn early in life.

And while my experiences helped my family a little, I had a friend in high school whose work actually provided for his family. His dad had a heart attack when we were sophomores in high school and his dad could not work and his mom had to leave her job to take care of his dad. My friend got an afternoon job at a Walmart Distribution Center and literally became the primary bread winner in his family for the next two years until his mother was able to go back to work.

No government program or helping hand from his neighbors could have matched what Walmart paid him. Now this was back before changes in the law led Walmart to only employ people over the age of eighteen in its warehouses. These rules were designed to protect young people just as child labor laws were supposed to prevent the exploitation of children.

But have these laws led to a generation that has no appreciation for work? Do they prevent all members of a family from working together to provide for themselves? I think so.

We have a huge number of young people that have not had a chance to see how the real word works (no pun intended). Behaviors in school (where you have a right to attend) can be more outlandish than at a job (a place where you have to prove your value to belong).

You actually have to show up and produce at a job. You don't get any participatory trophies. I have had to sit down and fire people who were perpetually late or absent. Its the kind of thing that might get you held back at school, but not the kind of thing that would get you thrown out altogether.

I don't want nine year-old children working in coal mines or defusing bombs in the Middle East, but I think some form of employment should be made available to those young people who want to work. Being able to have your own spending money in your pocket and to be able to help your family can be a point of pride and a source of comfort. Well intended laws designed to protect may be doing more harm than good.

Jobs at a school are a good option. Jobs at place in the service industry are another. Like I said before, farms have always provided a place for young people. Walmart Distribution Centers are surprisingly safe places for people around 16 or so - one needs to be adult enough to respect the actual dangers.

Some will argue that the kids will be taking jobs from the adults and not solving anything. I subscribe to the belief that the person who wants the job bad enough will keep it. I also wonder if the added revenue of these newly employed kids might stir the economy and actually create even more jobs. At any rate, it seems patently unfair to deny people who want to work and who would benefit the most from it, a chance to actually hold a job.

At least that is how I see it.