It's Just A Dog

“It’s just a dog.”  That’s what she said.  That was her first offense.  Her second offense was saying it to someone who had had to put down her two Rottweilers within about a year of each other.  Actually what she really said was, “It’s just a fucking dog.” Which only served to redouble the offense.  This was part of a friend to friend conversation. 

After ACL surgery

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? 

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.  

                

Have Yourself a White Bread Little Holiday (and other Chris..err Holiday Stories)

Christmas is done for 2014.  Like a Dickensian Christmas ghost it snuck up on us, stayed for an instant and then dissolved into winter’s fog.  Every year around Halloween we bellyache that “those capitalist bastard retailers are foisting Christmas on us earlier and earlier every year.”  And then a couple days before Christmas we’re in a panic because we managed to procrastinate away the 2 months long shopping season that the capitalist bastards graced us with.   “What the hell do I get for the wife?  She already has everything.”  So we head for Ross and grab a sweater, any sweater.  On Christmas morning she opens the box, holds it up and asks, “Did you save the receipt?”

Thanksgiving; A Breaking of Tradition

Ah! On Thanksgiving day....

When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,

And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before.

What moistens the lips and what brightens the eye?

What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?

~John Greenleaf Whittier

With a few days to go until the big feast I stepped into the dining room and noticed that Cora had set the big table with the Thanksgiving tablecloth.  Pausing for a moment I realized sadly, that it wouldn’t be used this year.  This year the table would sit empty and idle on Thanksgiving. 

A Dog Day at the Park

“[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”  ~ A. Bartlett Giamatti, Commissioner of Major League Baseball, April 1^st 1989 – September 1^st 1989. 

It’s been a season nobody saw coming. Like that line shot foul ball into the stands that finds your skull when you turn away for just an instant, we glanced away for a moment in June and looked up just in time to be struck by 2013.  After a 2012 World Series Championship the Giants have found themselves in last place in their division, playing baseball that is often sloppy, passionless and sometimes downright unwatchable.

11 strikeouts in the better days of 2012

Roughing It (With apologies to Mark Twain)

The Family Camping Chronicles: Part III

"On the seventeenth day we passed the highest mountain peak that we had yet seen, and although the day was very warm the night that followed upon its heels was wintry cold and blankets were next to useless."  From Roughing It  by Mark Twain

“It would be distressing to a feeling person to See our Situation at this time all wet and cold and with our bedding &c also wet, in a cove scarcely large enough to contain us…canoes at the mercy of the waves and driftwood…robes and leather clothes are rotten.”   William Clark describing being stranded at Point Ellice, Washington (1808).  (For those who slept through the day they taught about the Lewis and Clark expedition in history class, Clark was Meriwether Lewis’ expedition partner)

“We’re really roughing it,” Dad would say as he loaded our camping gear into the station wagon.  The words were served with sides of arched eyebrow, a wry smile and a large helping of sarcasm.  Dad was alluding to Roughing It, Mark Twain’s chronicle of his adventures in the Wild West of the 1860’s.  Looking back it seems like a magic trick that dad was able to get a big canvas tent, two bulky cots, lantern, fishing gear, stove, clothes, some pre-cooked meals that mom packed for us and an assorted pile of “possibles” into that wagon.

Bags and Baggage

The Family Camping Chronicles: Part II

I relegated myself to sleeping in a sleeping bag the other night.  No, it’s not like that.  I wasn’t in the wife’s doghouse.  There’s a perfectly good queen sized bed in one of the extra rooms that comes in very handy for when the kids visit or when the domestic seas get choppy.  My purpose this night was to test the bedding for the upcoming family camping trip. 

On Dirt, Beans and Wild West Whimsy

“Camping is nature’s way of promoting the motel business.”  ~ Dave Barry.

There’s a family camping trip looming on the horizon and I’ve spent the last few weekends gearing up.  I’ve made lists, rummaged through the big plastic bin in the backyard and a couple of garage cabinets; pulled plastic tubs from an attic storage area and crawled around some closets in the house.

The American Adventure - The Open Road

It's July, 2013 and my wife Cora and I are taking a driving trip through Northern California and into Oregon. 

The wife and I have embarked on that great American summer adventure; that annual migration of the dog days; that paean to the interstate, the motorcar and fuel consumption; the modern day version of the pioneers’ tale – the road trip.  We've headed north from the San Francisco Bay to a distant, uncharted and exotic land – Oregon.  Okay, it’s not distant; it’s only 300 miles or so.  And it’s hardly uncharted.  After all I went out recently and bought a GPS so Oregon, the rest of this land and all of hell’s half acre are all pretty well charted.

A Recollection of Fishing

I got up that Sunday morning a little after 5 o'clock.  During these long summer days it’s more or less my usual time.  Has to be early.  It’s the only time I can take my dog Rainey for a run.  Rainey is day blind; can’t see the paw in front of her nose once the sun starts to peek out so we have to hit it while it’s still dark.  And so when I staggered out of bed Rainey jumped out of her's, did her happy laps around the bedroom while I shushed her lest she wake the little woman and then she rumbled down the stairs. 

“Sorry Rainey, I’ll let you out to do your business but then it’s back to bed."  She wasn't getting it yet.  While she was outside I crawled into my clothes and threw the camp chairs into the truck.  Rainey came back inside, wagging her hind quarters expecting me to grab the leash until I sent her up the stairs.  “Back to bed girl,” as she sulked up the stairs

Defining Mom

Under her pillow she keeps rosary beads and a life guard’s tank top.  In the darkness before drifting off  I can sometimes hear the clicking of the beads.  Her prayers include petitions for her children and grandchildren.  Not because they're wayward lambs.  She simply asks for God to guide and protect them.  For her, channeling God's love to her children and grandchildren is the best way that she can care for them.  The tank top is her daughter’s.  It found its way under the pillow when our daughter left home for college in San Diego.  Jessica long ago graduated and is now living a short 15 minute drive away with two children of her own, but the shirt remains.  I suppose it’s her way of staying close to her daughter and a reminder of the days when Jessica lived here and filled the home with the ever alternating joys and maddening drama of a teenaged girl.

A Terrorism of Indifference

"I would invite anyone in Washington to come look my patients in the eye and tell them that waiting for a flight is a bigger problem than traveling farther and waiting longer for chemotherapy."  ~  Dr. William Nibley, of United Cancer Specialists in Utah.

It came home to roost this past week.  The IT is sequestration.  You remember sequestration don’t you?  It’s only been about 8 weeks since President Obama and Congress foisted the sequester on the folks they’re paid to serve, and for the most part it’s been almost forgotten; by the public, by the media and most of all by the men and women who are responsible for it.  Perfectly content and comfortable with sequestration conveniently out of the news, they were no doubt equally disappointed when it came back to the headlines with something of a vengeance.

Glove Story

Donning a glove for a backyard toss, or watching a ball game, we are players again, forever young.~ John Thorn; baseball historian.

Its baseball season again.  Time to dig into the closet and pull out the glove.  I did that last year about this time and went through some moments of panic when I couldn’t find it, tearing the closet apart, shouting at my wife, "Cora, Where in hell is my glove?" 

"I don't know. I don't play baseball." she yelled back. 

Then I remembered that I’d loaned it to my son.  I asked him to give it back which gave me an idea for a present for his upcoming birthday. 

What's Happened Here?

When did it all change?  Why did it all change?  How did it all change so much?  I grew up in the suburbs of San Mateo.  It was a middle class neighborhood in the hills above the town, on the San Francisco Bay Peninsula, about 30 minutes south of San Francisco itself.  It was the fifties and sixties; a time when we boomers lived the American Dream defined by well-manicured lawns, ranch style homes and the notion that we, the children, would live in a better America. 

A Sunday Stew

For many here in the States, the best part of Sunday is football.  Not so for me.  I’m partial to Sunday supper.  Sunday supper has its origins in Britain and Ireland where a hearty meal of roasted meat was served with a bounty of sides after the Sunday church service.  It’s remained popular to some degree in the former colonies, including The United States. 

Reading America

But he is not always alone.  When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow the meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.  (From Jack London’s, The Call of the Wild.)

The Oak Desk

I recently made the decision that it’s past time to get rid of the roll top desk that sits under the window in our bedroom.  A roll top was something I’d always wanted.  I suppose I pictured myself sitting at that desk like some latter day Mark Twain; sipping expensive bourbon from a heavy crystal rocks glass, dipping pen in inkwell and writing the next great American novel.

When Things Fall Apart

I’ve achieved a new personal record as we runners like to say.  I now have a small collection of little amber pill jars; 3 actually.  That’s the most I’ve ever had at one time.  My previous personal best in pill jar collecting was two and it usually came after oral surgery; antibiotics and the ever popular Vicodin. 

Discarding Christmas

Six A.M. of a rainy day after Christmas; dreary, dark and cold.  Driving to work with the relatively few others of the sleepy and depressed on the freeway; and wondering why.  I guess this is how it is on the day after Christmas.