What Exactly Did You Meme By That?

“How about you turn in your guns,” President Obama said, pointing a threatening finger.  Well there it was; right there on the internet, right there on Facebook.  I could see it in my mind as if it were really happening.  The President of the United States is knocking on my door, flanked by two U.S Marshalls and trailed by those suited guys who sport shades and earpieces.   And then he says, “How about you turn in your guns.  Boys", he says to the marshals, “do your duty.”  And so they push me aside and march into my home like SS storm troopers and ransack the place until they find the two black powder Civil War replicas that I’ve used in reenactments.  And then The President of the United States and his minions go on to pillage the next house, leaving me to sweep up the shattered bric –a- brac and right the overturned furniture.  Sure as hell it’s going to happen.  It has to because I saw it on Facebook, on the internet and in a meme.  Because if it’s in a meme it must be true. 

Sodden Holiday Thoughts

We’re approaching that holiday time of the year once again.  Actually if you believe corporate it’s been holiday season since sometime around Labor Day.  Time to buy the little woman a Lexus or a Mercedes to go with the thousand dollar bauble from Zale’s.  Break out the camping gear because Black Friday is a-comin’ and you gotta blow off a couple weeks of PTO so that you can save a hundred bucks on a TV.  Every year about this time I try to come up with some holiday theme.  It gets a little harder every year and I was despairing a bit until Starbucks dropped a big present under the tree and a self-styled evangelist put a giant bow on it.

A Night in the Emergency Room

“The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.” ~ Florence Nightingale

“A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running.” ~ Groucho Marks

“I joke, but only half joke, that if you show up in an American hospital missing a finger, no one will believe you until they get a CAT scan, MRI and orthopedic consult.”  ~ Abraham Verghese

As firsts go it wasn’t exactly my idea of a memorable milestone.  But there I was strapped to a gurney, taking a ride in an ambulance.  And this one came complete with a paramedic in training.  “Do you mind if our trainee treats you today?” one of the paramedics asked?  “No it’s alright; go for it.”

It all started when I came home from the gym and sat down to watch sports.  I felt a crappiness that I'd never felt before.  The wife and I debated what to do and I decided that maybe we just ought to drive down to emergency.  We’d just about got out of town when feeling crappy turned to feeling like ten pounds of shit in a five pound sack.  “You know I’m not feeling at all good.  Let’s just swing around and go back to the fire station.”  

Three firefighters greeted us and led us into the garage where they hooked me up to a cardiogram.  My racing pulse had slowed down and the irregular heartbeat was back to normal.  I was actually feeling a bit better than when we pulled in.  That’s the way it always works isn’t it?  That toothache that felt like a cattle prod in your mouth all day long turns benign the minute the dentist walks in and you end up feeling like a dumb ass.  I tried to beg off of the ambulance ride but I was talked out of it by all three firefighters and the wife. 

Mountain Musings

“I believe that a man gets closer to God out there in the big, free West,”  ~  William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody.

There’s something both invigorating and spiritual in sitting on a porch in the warmth of the late afternoon sun, listening to the gurgle of a creek not 10 yards away. Aside from that creek the only sounds are the wind and the occasional screech of a circling hawk.  I’m alternately reading and glancing up from my book at the red cliffs that overlook the cabin.  Bighorn sheep clamor on those cliffs.  Downstream the green, yellow and orange leaves on young aspens shiver in the cooling autumn wind.  They shine and shimmer like colored coins. 

Wow I guess I didn’t fully appreciate the quiet until I got back home to the San Francisco Bay Area and went to my gym a week later.  The noise was like getting whacked in the face with a baseball bat; clanging steel, grunting and shouting and of course the dreck and cacophony that the tone deaf call music.  Walking in I hunched over from the sheer weight of the din.

             Ante Up! Yap that fool!

Ante Up! Kidnap that fool!

It's the perfect timing, you see the man shining

Get up off them god damn diamonds! Huh!

Ante Up! Yap that fool!

Ante Up! Kidnap that fool!

In the locker room I got ready for my work out and said to myself in disgust that “I could eat alphabet soup and shit better lyrics.”  Maybe a little too loud as the guy a few lockers down shot me a look.

High mountain valley

Gridlock

                                                            

Jackson Hole - Horse Thieves and Celebrities; Cheap Beer and Overpriced Pretzels

We’d pulled into Jackson late on a Saturday night a bit disoriented, very hungry and too dog tired to worry about food.  Well the wife didn’t worry about food but I opted for some overpriced room service; but I repeat myself because room service is culinary grand larceny.  What we found in the morning when we headed into town was not the Jackson that I remembered from childhood when we visited on a family vacation.  Understand that I don’t have the faintest recollection of my childhood Jackson but I can state with positive certainty that my childhood Jackson was not this Jackson. I couldn't imagine that the Jackson that my parents brought me to was a haven for the 1 percent. 

The Little Cabin in the Woods

“My God, this place is at the end of the world,” worried the wife.  It did seem like a long ride up the mountain from the main highway.  It was unpaved and pocked with ruts and holes but it wasn’t horrible.  Hell, highway 880 in Oakland has worse stretches and deeper holes with the added hazards of drivers texting, putting on makeup and fussing about the morning coffee that just sloshed onto the console.  The rain was a bit worrisome.  How bad would this thing be if this light shower turned into a gully washer? 

Dropping Benjamins in Jackson

It was a 14 hour pull from Nevada to Jackson, Wyoming.  We limped into Jackson at about 9 on a Saturday night.  The grand plan had been to leave Fernley early and drive as far as we could and get a room for the night.  As far as we could drive turned out to be Jackson and Jackson apparently had no room to spare.  We drove past hotel after motel after inn and every one displayed that increasingly depressing NO VACANCY sign.  Uh, this was a problem.  My Jackson reservation was for the next day; at 3 PM to be exact.  I frankly had expected that we would end up spending the night in Pocatello or American Falls in Idaho but the allure of Wyoming and the Grand Tetons provided the adrenaline to keep me going.  Well, that and a river of Dr. Pepper. 

Goin to Jackson (Wyoming)

I'm goin' to Jackson, I'm gonna mess around,

Yeah, I'm goin' to Jackson,

Look out Jackson town. – Song “Jackson” ; Billy Ed Wheeler and Jerry Leiber. 

Okay, the song that Johnny Cash made famous wasn’t referring to Jackson, Wyoming but the tune rambled through my head as we made our drive.

It was a long pull getting to Jackson, Wyoming from Fernley, Nevada where we spent our first night.  Fourteen hours on the road but not all of it driving.  We stopped for photos, for food, for coffee, water or soda.  We stopped to stretch and we stopped to relieve ourselves of the coffee, water and soda.  We left Fernley in the black of the morning and arrived in Jackson in what seemed a blacker night. 

Getting Away: Fernley Nevada

On the road from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Yellowstone area.  The adventure begins. 

Fernley Nevada; established 1905.  We’re on the road trip, headed for the mountain states.  Fernley wasn’t exactly where I’d expected to land on the first day out.  I’d hoped to reach Winnemucca on the first night but “civilization” (and I use that term loosely) wouldn’t let go of its nasty, relentless grip. 

Teasing Tatanka and Other Travel Plans

Tatanka – Lakota Sioux word for American Bison (buffalo)

If a bear charges you after a surprise encounter, stay still and stand your ground.  National Park Service Advisory

The plans are pretty much in place.  The accommodations are all booked, the basic itinerary is set and in less than two weeks it’ll be time for us to over pack, throw fishing and camera gear and mountains of other stuff and junk into the car that we won’t need and will never touch and head out on vacation.  I’ll leave the boilerplate “out of office” email message that says I’ll have no cell phone or internet service while I’m gone.  You see this is all part of the new American work protocol in which your employer expects you drop everything, leisure, kids's birthdays, sex and death (a family member's or yours), if and when duty calls.  By saying that you don't have any service you're trying to sound like you're saying, "Gosh I'd really like to but I'm in the wilderness."  But what you're really saying is "Fuck off:" Everyone leaves the same basic message, “Hi, I’m sorry I missed your email but I’m at Silicon Valley and there’s no internet or phone service here.”  I mean really how many places are left where you have no phone or internet service?  Actually I know of one.  That will be the cabin in Montana we’re renting for 5 nights out of the two weeks we'll be gone.  It’s about 20 miles from the nearest town and there really is no phone or internet. 

Participating in the American Demise

There's been a buzz in the news cycle during the last couple of weeks about yet another national plague; one that’s rotting the culture and moral fiber of America.  It has nothing to do with sexual preference or email-gate: not about Muslims or right wing Christians; and it isn't over a warming earth or smarmy, sanctimonious political windbags.  Nope, none of those.  The new national scourge is, hold onto your butts sports fans – participation trophies.

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For those who’ve been on a cruise or just naturally choose to avoid stupidity, participation trophies became part of the national debate when professional football player James Harrison announced that the trophies that were given to his children would be returned.  Said Harrison; “I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothing, participation trophies! While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they EARN a real trophy. I'm sorry I'm not sorry for believing that everything in life should be earned and I'm not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best...cause sometimes your best is not enough, and that should drive you to want to do better...not cry and whine until somebody gives you something to shut u up and keep you happy.”

And so, for the time being at least, our new national Yoda on America’s moral fiber is a professional football player; appropriate for a sports crazed nation that is absolutely, insanely and unabashedly goggle eyed gaga over football. Of course it was Harrison’s right to strip his kids of the trophies. It’s not like he beat them or sucker punched a woman.  That he had to announce it to the world would be puzzling if not for the fact that Harrison has a penchant for stirring the pot.  And stir it he did as the battle lines were drawn and the pros and cons of participation trophies were debated in every medium and I suppose damn near every sports bar in the nation.  The anti-trophy crowd’s argument was outlined by Nancy Armour of USA today; “Yet somewhere along the way, someone had the misguided notion that kids should live in a la-la land where everything is perfect, there are no hardships or heartbreaks, and you get a shiny trophy or a pretty blue ribbon just for being you…No wonder study after study has shown that millennials, the first of the trophy generations, are stressed out and depressed. They were sold a bill of goods when they were kids, and discovering that the harsh realities of life apply to them, too, had to have been like a punch to the gut.”  Pardon me, I feel a sneeze coming on –“BULLSHIT.”  Ah that feels better.

So there we have it.  The collapse of America is imminent because of participation trophies.  Okay, that’s hyperbole but I’ve exaggerated for a reason, because folks have gone off the deep end over cheap hardware.  Consider NBC Washington anchor Jim Vance who opined, “It’s child abuse to give a kid a trophy that he has not earned.” We’re talking about children here folks; children playing games.  But as too often happens with youth sports the adults are butting in and fucking up the works; because that’s what adults do.

Having two kids who participated in youth sports and having coached youth sports I guess I have a little experience in the area.  My kids got participation trophies.  They’re packed away in a plastic bin somewhere.  My kids; one 32 and one 29 seem to be doing just fine thank you and I don't even think that they remember the trophies.  They work, they’re raising kids and they’ve gone through some hard times; particularly my daughter who I often consider one of the grittiest, most tenacious people I know.  I have a nephew who got a participation trophy for tee ball.  A few years later his dad died and the boy became the man of the house and remained so all the way through his college graduation. 

As a coach I gave out more than a few of these trophies.  The kids were happy, for a moment; and then the trophies were more or less forgotten in favor of the pizza party and handed to the parents who I imagine put them up on a mantle to collect dust and take up space until they were finally put away in storage.  These are mementos, nothing more, nothing less.

Give a kid a trophy and the leap is made that he won't be prepared for real life.  Okay, wanna get the little blighters ready for the real world?  Let's talk behind their backs; spread rumors about them; throw them under the bus; flip them a bird and drop an "F" bomb on them if they reach in front of you for the bowl of potatoes at the dinner table and by all means decrease their allowance as you load more chores on them. 

Over the decades I’ve become weary of that time worn notion that somehow athletics prepare kids for life, build character and toughen the spirit.  I’ve adopted John Wooden’s idea that “Sports don’t build character, they reveal it.” It isn’t up to the coach, the team or an activity to do the parent’s job of preparing a child for life, molding character and building a foundation that will stand up to life’s storms.  As for Ms. Armour and her notion that millennials are depressed; well maybe she needs to take a little stroll out of the sports department and take a visit to the news department.  Everyone’s depressed lady.  Americans are working brutal hours, are afraid to take vacation time and are bringing home less of the bacon (which by the way costs more per pound and has less lean and more fat); our government is a bureaucratic, bickering snag to progress; we’ve been at war for more than a decade; personal privacy is extinct and the front runner for the GOP presidential nomination is nuts-a-rama.  And Nancy Armour is worried about trophies?

What is truly disappointing is that the national debate about youth sports has centered on hokum; a non-issue.  Whatever happened to the other issues?  You know the ones that are apparently too trivial to catch the ire of Washington news anchors.  It would be refreshing to see Google get blown up with stories and debates about:

                Kids burning out at a young age because they’re pushed by parents and coaches to travel hither and yon playing a sport year round in that often futile hunt for the D-1 scholarship.

                Coaches falsifying records to pack their teams with ringers.

                Coaches teaching kids the "benefits" of flaunting league rules.

                Coaches and parents acting out at games, all the way from abusing umpires, officials and the other team to coming to outright fisticuffs.

                Kids undergoing major orthopedic surgeries because they’re pushed to do too much too soon.

                The use of steroids by kids as early as 8^th grade.

                Coddled kids?  What about those uber-talented youngsters who get to skate from youth through college not being able to read at grade level?  What about the star athletes who, during their youth, aren't held accountable for any aspect of real life, be it basic responsibility or differentiating between wrong and right.  As long as they produce runs and wins, hey, it's all good - just try not to get caught next time. 

If we’re going to have a national tirade about participation awards why are we picking on kids?  What about the tens of thousands of adults who jog a 10K at 15 minutes a mile?  They get medals. And while kids usually forget about their awards the adults literally slaver over their medals; they paper their walls with them  At the risk of sounding like a geezer, back in my day you didn’t get a medal unless you finished in the top three. Everyone else got a cheapie little ribbon.  I’ve got less of a problem with an 8 year old getting a trophy than an adult getting a fancy medal for taking pictures along the course with a cell phone. 

Sports is America's graven image.  Professional sports are a business for both owners and players where character, fair play and sportsmanship are for the most part relegated to the worn, dusty shelves of nostalgia.  College sports are a morass of hypocrisy, greed, corruption and oceans of money misapplied.  But youth sports are for the most part and for the vast majority of kids supposed to be a fun activity.  Yes there are opportunities for life lessons; to learn about teamwork, appreciate camaraderie, develop healthy habits, hone skills and coordination, learn perseverance and maybe develop a lifelong activity. Youth sports have become the last bastion of sport as a game; where fun is supposed to trump yes - real life.  

                

Father's Day

"My dad taught me everything I know.  Unfortunately he didn't teach me everything he knows."  ~ Al Unser.

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”  ~ Unknown but often attributed to Mark Twain

He pulled on the oars on a chilly (well, frigid) early morning and the little rowboat, not so much glided as  moved in fits and starts to a little spot tucked into some reeds at the lake’s edge.  I would stare sleepily, trancelike at the water that swirled around the paddles.  Once at our spot he would tie the boat off on a half-submerged tree and then he’d make sure I’d baited my hood correctly and then would guide me through the cast.  The reel zinged and then the little split shot plopped into the water and then we waited.  That was Lake Merced, in the southwest corner of San Francisco.  The lake is just inland from the ocean and is often blanketed by fog that’s pushed in by a chill ocean breeze.  In the middle of that lake on a little rowboat it seemed like you were in the coldest damn place on Earth. 

Classic Dad; book, pipe, easy chair and a little Cognac

Baseball Takes the (A) Rod

At the instant of the crack he would glide along the deep green carpet looking up in the high blue sky picking out the orb that at its apex must have looked like a dancing white pea in the chill swirling winds above San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.  He moved surely as if guided by some mystic inner sense directing him right to the spot where the little orb would land.  And then he would position the glove just right, oftentimes just in front of his belt, opened and waiting like a leather basket. Plop the orb would drop into the glove and he’d step forward and throw a seed back to the infield.  I had the pleasure and yes, the honor of seeing Willie Mays, arguably baseball’s greatest player do that in person in many a game at the frigid and usually unfriendly confines of Candlestick Park.  I also watched Mays belt a fair amount of his 660 career home runs.  I didn't see the 660^th, which he hit in the uniform of the New York Mets in the twilight of his career.  It was 1973, the Vietnam War was still raging, Nixon was living his Watergate nightmare and I was just about to turn 20. 

Evacuating Suburbia

Throw out them LA papers

And that moldy box of vanilla wafers.

Adios to all this concrete.

Gonna get me some dirt road back street

~  From L.A. Freeway, Lyrics by Guy Clark

“Concrete and cars are their own prison bars”

~ From Toes, Written by Zac Brown, John Driskell Hopkins, Shawn Mullins and Wyatt Durette

Retirement talk has been revolving around the domestic circle a lot lately.  Mine, not the wife’s.  You see she’s been retired and according to her it’s the shit (that’s urban slang for she likes it).  I know this because she tells me it’s the shit all the time, quite often after I've dragged my worn out bones into the house after a day at the office and an hour on the freeway with a few thousand of my fellow Americans feeling like shit; about 10 pounds of it in a 5 pound sack (which is old school for suburbia blows).  

Two Stories; Giving and Taking

This is a story about two stories.  Both are typically American.  Both reflect values.  One story is about values cherished.  The other is about values gone awry.  The stories tell a story; about what is good in America and what is wrong with America.  Each story is about responsibility; accepted and denied. Both stories were on the recent nightly news and were broadcast within minutes of each other.  One story can warm the heart and bring a tear.  The other story is a groin kick that makes you wonder about the double dealing we often think pervades our society.    

Sniping Over the Sniper

There’s been an awful lot of sniping going on surrounding the movie American Sniper, the story of Chris Kyle based on Kyle’s memoir of the same title.  It’s an argument that like damn near every argument in America these days, has no gray area, got nasty from the start and spares neither the movie, its director Clint Eastwood, the Iraq War, the book, nor Chris Kyle himself.  And like arguments in America it managed to go off the rails into wild irrelevance.  A prime example was Michael Moore hauling Jesus into the donnybrook.   I saw the movie the weekend it debuted and shortly afterwards I noticed all the hoo-haw that was hitting the media.  And so I decided to read the book and a fair amount of articles in order to make up my own mind.