Appointment of Dictionary Czar Confirmed

Satire - Dallas, Texas

Frustrated that ABC correspondent George Stephanopoulos had the temerity to define the word ‘tax’ by looking it up in a dictionary, President Obama has appointed a new dictionary czar. Spokesman Robert Gibbs announced the appointment of Fred Jefferson at yesterdays press briefing. Mr. Jefferson is a former proof reader at ACORN according to Gibbs. Gibbs added that Jefferson’s extensive experience in proof reading gives him the perfect background to redefine words in a way that works well for the benefit of all Americans. “Production of a new authoritative and ‘flexible’ constitution, err, excuse me, dictionary is the change Americans voted for”, Gibbs continued.

When asked if it was true that President Obama is also considering a tattoo czar, Gibbs said he had no comment. Speculation has run strong in recent days that Kevin Inks, also a former ACORN executive, has been involved in talks with the administration about the possibility of creating a federal tax on tattoos that offer support to conservative ideas and tax breaks for those that support the administration. Contacted by telephone, Mr. Inks said there is no truth to the rumor. He also dispelled the rumor that Americans declining to get a tattoo would have to pay a tax, and that it had not been brought up by anyone outside of ACORN. “Besides, he said, the new dictionary czar should be able to work out all this word definition nonsense about the word ‘taxes’ in time to satisfy the less educated before the new tax is announced.” He added “ooops” before hanging up.

Will you still love me, when I'm 92?

Ever wondered what life will be like when you’re 90 years old? I didn’t think so. I wondered it once, but it was because I was watching a local TV newscast about a 90 something year old. He was on the news because he had chased burglars out of his house at the end of a shotgun, while wearing only his underpants. Yep, really slow news night. He didn’t have a twinkle in his eyes. He was all stooped over and wagging a bony finger at the camera. A really big booger was at the edge of his nose. At least it looked like it was a booger. In French, of course, you pronounce it boo-jay, which I think is altogether more artful than buu-gurrr; which is how we say it in Texas. The old fellow was a mess frankly, but after all he was 90-something!

On that particular night I wondered what life might be like at 90 plus. Then I tired of the thought, with it being unpleasant and all, and I went on to think about sex and beer and fast cars. At one point I thought of them in all in the very same thought. It was a combining of the best ingredients of life into a virtual banana split of thinking. Yes, I’m aware that last sentence makes no sense whatsoever, yet any mental cases reading this are nodding their heads up and down and grinning, because they understood it anyway. Caught you didn’t I?

Yesterday, I saw another video of a 90 something year old. In fact, the man is 92 years old. After watching it I understood a little more about grace and dignity. You can watch the video here . Before you watch it however, I should fill you in on some detail. The speaker is named Ernie Harwell. For what seems like the last one million years, he has been the broadcast voice of the Detroit Tigers baseball team. Earlier this year he was diagnosed with an untreatable cancer.

Mr. Harwell is dying. He knows it. The Tigers fans that love him also know it.

He was asked to address the home crowd as this baseball season grows to a close, a moment pregnant with poignancy since Mr. Harwell’s season of life will end shortly, perhaps before this seasons bats and baseballs disappear from the dugouts.

Imagine you have been told you are going to die very soon. Imagine you have to say goodbye to 45,000 family members, under the lights, in front of a microphone on television and radio. Then pray you might be able to do it this well. If you can do so, it will testify to the fact that you have come to understand the power of acknowledging the ‘joy of your journey’. Listen to 92 year old Ernie Harwell say goodbye.

I was recently asked to collaborate on a book, which is now in publication, in which I pontificate as if I were wise about understanding the joy of life’s journey. The joy of the journey is all important to the quality with which we walk through life. Without this understanding, we merely spend our time moving from one completed action to another. Understanding the process and joy of being involved in the action can bring us new understanding about pleasure, joy and fulfillment. Some have simplified the thinking to a simple catch phrase; ‘living in the moment’.

Mr. Harwell’s farewell is simple, yet charged with a complex dignity that I believe so few of us possess and may never attain. But, I pray to God that someday, I might in my own life approach this same level of dignity when I tell the world goodbye. I pray my journey will have been so complete that letting go of life can seem so easy and even joyful that the word ‘dignified’ is the only word that can come to mind. I just hope I don’t have to do it in front of a microphone with the entire state of Michigan watching.

Watch video here

Ready to be like actually ....................

Back in 2002 I took my son on a tour of college campuses to help him ‘discover’ what school he wanted to attend. He ended up graduating from the good ol rootin-tootin University of Texas, right here near my backyard. Well, maybe its a little south of my back fence, but anyway at least its in his home state. But, before he settled on full time partying and frat slumming at UT, he wanted to see New York University.

If you haven’t been there, let me tell you about it. It’s a unique campus, just cuz it doesn’t have a campus. Its buildings are strewn about the south end of Manhattan like confetti on a windy day, following a hero’s parade before the street sweepers arrive. Each building flies a purple flag on their front, with the logo “NYU” emblazoned on it, or maybe I should say it is imprinted, since emblazoned is probably too effusive a term. The flag has a nifty torch on it too, symbolizing something about' holding out a lamp of knowledge against the darkness of ignorance'. Must have been coined by an Obama speechwriter (speaking of overly effusive) back when he or she was a student. Anyway, the point is, you know you got off the city bus or subway at the correct point, to hold up your lamp, if you see the purple flag on the NYU owned buildings. So what, you ask?

Well, on the tour of NYU, (which - oh by the way - costs per year what 2 new Lexus costs and oozes the same class divide snobbery) there was a very intense, yet pleasant, young man who relied heavily on the phrase ‘actually’. As in saying, this is ‘actually’ where we have business classes, and this is ‘actually’ where the freshmen students can puke after too much beer, and this building is actually near the actual police station for this district. And so forth he carried on, with a steady stream of ‘actuals’ and ‘actuallys’.

At one point, I turned to BEG and said, this kid is overly fond of the word actually! Then I made a prophet of myself. I told her that it must be the newest ‘catch-cool’ phrasing and was likely to spread from Manhattan to Los Angeles and soon kids all across America would be using this phrasing.

How right I was! Now it is even commonly used by major network reporters! I’m ready to throw things. I love words, even though it sounds major geeky and I’m always sorry for sounding geeky, old or cranky – but by God and Jimi Hendrix – PLEASE everyone quit saying ACTUALLY!

First it was ‘like’ this and I was ‘like that’ and I said “Like dude, just get over it” – and now it’s ACTUALLY!

I’m like actually, like banging my head on my actual table, because I have like recently caught myself using this overused word as if it were the damned actual swine flu and I had failed to wash my hands of it.

It has me in its grip. I’d rather be like actually dead.

Do you like, actually here me? Can’t we just move on to the next, yet new, horrible overuse of a common five-cent word?

Sorry, I guess it didn't have anything to do with purple flags after all.

Etched in the Rain

I was riding in the back of the car watching the rain slash across the windshield, while the wipers cleared the way to drive. My son had stopped at a traffic light. My wife was in the passenger seat. I sat alone in the back of the car, staring straight ahead at my family in the front seat. No one was talking.

The next morning our son would be leaving Texas, for a job in San Francisco.

I was reminded of my father’s death. More specifically I was reminded of the night of his death. It was raining that night too. The night my father died I drove my mother home from the hospital in the rain. It was quiet in the car. Our lives had changed, and both of us were very tired from the hospital vigil and the intense emotion it had brought us. We had little to say, yet we were bound by time and circumstance to one another in this time of pain. Our ride held meaning beyond any routine car ride. It was the type of moment that can renew our role in one another’s lives, a moment that can burn the sights, sounds and emotions into our memories for a lifetime. We all know the rhythmic sound of the wipers moving from the top of their arc to the bottom. We know the sound of the rain, a sound distinct to us all, even with our eyes closed. These are the images and sounds of everyday life that can suddenly etch our memory, when they occur in a significant moment. The sound of the tires across puddles when you’re in motion, the hypnotic image of red and green traffic lights splotched across the windshields surface, reflected off the droplets of water where the wipers can’t reach. When you couple the sights and the sounds with the emotion, like it existed in the car that night, it becomes impossible to erase the memory. When it is silent in the car, the memories burrow even deeper.

The memory of my father’s passing and the quiet bond between me and my mother came home while we sat at that traffic light in my son's car.

I don’t know why the memory chose that moment.

Maybe the power we call fate throws out random reminders of our mortality.

Perhaps the gods expect us to miss the reminders, like we might overlook the note scribbled on a piece of paper in front of us.

This note from fate, or circumstance, or whatever it is that places our minds and hearts and our bodies in a common experience, I didn’t miss. I caught it solidly.

I understood many things in that quiet moment in my son’s car.

I understood my mortality.

I understood the bond between my son and his mother.

I comprehended their allegiance to me.

I understood I was being given a glimpse into the future.

A time when I will not be in the car, yet they will.

I saw a time when the son will comfort the mother, once again.

I understood and caught the moment as though I were already gone.

I understood my place in the world in a more defined way.

I understood it in its past tense and its present tense.

Now, in this moment, I was offered a chance to know it in its future tense.

And I saw it would be alright.

Fate and circumstance will turn in their infinite revolutions.

And it will be alright.

Lone Tree on a Barren Prairie

Don Miguel Ruiz published his book “The Four Agreements’ in 1997. It is an easy to read book that posits the idea that we all conduct our lives and make our decisions based on agreements we have made with life; agreements that are the result of our individual experiences and the positive and negative feedback received as we move along in time. The author states he is expressing a long held tenant of Toltec thinking handed down from his Mexican ancestors.

I am not a scholar of Toltec philosophy. To be so would require even more energy on my part than becoming a practitioner of Yoga, which still lies untouched on my list of things to conquer.

Nevertheless I remain fascinated by the concept presented and the challenge that lies inside this Toltec philosophy. Ruiz maintains that the ability to break these agreements, which are often founded in false reality, is the path of personal progress and self fulfillment.

It seems to me that he is on a track to understanding how to change destructive patterns of behavior and how to redefine our beliefs not by what we are taught, but rather by what we understand as a more natural truth. Like a lone tree on a barren prairie, we bend our lives in the direction the force of life takes us, just as the tree over time bends in the direction of the prevalent winds. We cope and adjust to life. We listen to parents and friends and teachers and we form agreements within our consciousness of what we believe and how we respond to circumstances of life. We rarely construct our agreements without the approval of others.

All this talk of Toltec philosophy and an eleven year old book brings me to the subject of politics. Specifically it enlivens the discussion of what we have come to know as ‘flip-flopping’. In the world of American politics it has become a negative term. Recall Bush supporters arriving at Kerry stump speeches waving flip flops in the air as he talked? The term is applied, as everyone knows, to the process of changing position or changing thinking on a political topic. It is assumed to be a political and personal character flaw in a candidate.

Is it a flaw? Maybe it’s merely the use of politically motivated language that paints such a heavy coat of negativity on a common life process. Can the practice of thinking through a position, then changing your opinion based on a re-analysis of fact be thought of as positive?

In my view this depends entirely on context. In matters of war it seems prudent to constantly weigh one’s position with respect to the facts available. Have the Iraqis let too many sunrises pass without taking possession of their governance responsibility? Would a very unpopular position to run Al-Qaeda from Iraq by sending more US soldiers work? Maybe, I don’t know the facts and I strongly suspect my readers don’t know unless you happen to be one of the privileged that receives top secret briefings. Isn’t it amazing how many of your friends and our celebrities around America know exactly what’s wrong and what to do without access to any of the facts available to the President? It is increasingly apparent that the hardest agreement many Americans have to break is the idea we are exceptionally wise while working with an absence of knowledge and fact about many world situations. A simpler way to express the point is to say, “We certainly have a lot of know it all blowhards in our midst, do we not?”

If we look at the context of abortion it seems less reasonable to own a shifting position. The biologic process has not changed and will not change between now and November 2008. Is the changing of one’s mind on abortion a negative when facts are stable?

I theorize that a majority of Americans will cast their vote for leadership based on agreements that remain unquestioned. Because of that fact, the candidates search for the so-called independent voter with their campaign dollars and their oration. Wouldn’t it be healthier for America if we all understood that our decision should be made on a rational analysis of available fact, with personal agreements questioned at every turn? Ruiz maintains in his book that this ability to reject agreements that limit us is our best hope for self awareness and the fulfillment of our potential.

Sadly I expect the populace and the networks to continue the vitriolic arguments that sustain and foster the strength of their personal agreements no matter the opportunity to base their opinions on objective assessment. We will argue our agreements instead of our natural truth, not comprehending the kernel of truth embedded in the Toltec philosophy. Vice Presidential candidate Spiro Agnew once referred to the press as “nattering nabobs of negativism” a well turned phrase pointed directly at this remarkable capacity of the media for finding fault rather than a positive, which returns me to the central point that ‘flip-flopping’ is not inherently evil or stupid.

Extending this argument about the breaking of agreements to the voting public is the logical extension of our expectation that our leaders be able to change position not only with grace but with intelligence. Can we, the voting American public, do more than vote our pre-existing agreements that Republicans are gun–toting mean racists or that Democrats are God hating socialists? Or, can we think and reason about which candidate offers our country and our children a safe and productive future?

Is our opportunity for continued success in America tied to our ability to no longer howl at the moon of our prejudices until we are hoarse? I think so, but it’s so hard isn’t it?

Truth Crushed to Earth

If we imagined that good always prevails would we engage life with a different plan? The answer to that question might be more important than we think and as in all things important it might be painstakingly elusive as well. Why ask the question in the first place?

It’s only important if we embrace the possibility of truth being embedded in the statement 'good always prevails'. The idea that good will prevail over the course of time is a philosophy handed down by generations of writers and thinkers, theological and secular.

If we accept the truth of that idea as an acknowledged principle, then it raises the question of whether or not it should alter the way we live our lives. If I accept that good prevails I might elect to care not a thread if I abet its ultimate triumph, another way of saying it doesn’t matter what I do in my life. I might also say it this way, “If good always triumphs in the end there is no need for intervention on my part.” Conversely, if I decide that the flow of good required for triumph is inherently tied to my personal actions, it creates the need of a demanding code of conduct, a code directly predicated on embracing one simple belief.

If I answer one way, the moral direction of the universe demands nothing of me. If I answer the other way, the moral direction demands everything of me.

Martin Luther King wrote the beautiful phrase “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It is a philosophical and poetic phrase. Is it true? If the moral universe bends toward justice do I have an obligation to help it bend? Do you?

In that same speech given on August 16, 1967, King quoted a William Cullen Bryant phrase of matching power, "Truth crushed to earth will rise again."

If good can be equated with justice or truth, then we might combine all of this thinking into the idea that good, justice and truth prevail over time, or as King poetically states, “over the arc of the moral universe”.

Do we have a part? Or is it out of our hands and lying in the larger hands of the Creator? Or, is it possible the hands of the Creator exist at the ends of our arms?

The One With The Flowers?

In the past few days I waded through an imaginary swamp.

It was filled with water the color and texture of sewage. Large trees ripe with summer foliage overhung the mire and blocked my vision of a sky dark with heavy clouds. A distinctive grey darkness cast itself across the surface of every plant and animal. Debris of an indeterminate composition, representing the mistakes of my life, floated on the top of the thick water. Snakes of evil, casting an aura of unknown danger moved across the surface of the water, gliding in that distinctive curving fashion of a swimming serpent, the darkness of their backs moving from one debris pile to the other. Their eyes locked mine in a threatening stare and my own eyes locked onto theirs. Each of us measured the other with equal loathing and fear.

I hadn’t come here by design. When I left it was fields of waving green grass, speckled with multicolored wildflowers that I searched for. Throughout a sunny morning I had walked along the forest path looking left and right for an opening that would lead me to that field of pleasant dream. From the trees above the locusts hummed their incessant song. An occasional unexplained noise diverted my attention from the path yet nothing showed itself to explain the scurrying noise from the undergrowth. The canopy of trees above my head grew thicker, darkening the sandy path as the day grew longer.

Just beyond a brown stone bridge the path split. The side I chose led me longer into the day and deeper into the dark. Eventually cold water tickled at my ankles and my feet slid an inch deeper into turf that had become mud. Dark images of large birds mocked me from above. The scurrying sounds of the underbrush were replaced by an eerie quiet, the type of quiet that magnifies its presence by the forceful power of its nothingness. Still, I moved forward. I knew what lay behind. I didn’t yet know what lay ahead, though I searched with hope for my sun drenched field of green.

I noticed the outline of his small figure mirrored in the water to my right side. My attention raptly focused on the snakes and piles of mistakes had honed my alertness to a level that gave the water borne image unusual clarity. I moved my torso a quarter turn in the bog, the swishing of the water at my waist breaking through the silence. I stared at the figure, fuzzy and dark in the shadows of the trees. The outline of a small human form crouched along the earthen bank, his right foot closer to the waters edge than his left, his elbows resting on his knees. He held up his right hand and with a soft and slow folding motion of the hand beckoned me to come closer. He spoke no words. I moved one step toward him, lowering my head in an effort to see more clearly. I squinted my eyes in the manner people use to try to sharpen their focus. I could see he wore only a white shirt, long sleeved and buttoned only in the middle, the sleeves rolled up on his muscular arms in a haphazard fashion. His skin was peculiarly free of any hair, glowing and sleek in the way dolphin skin might look if transposed onto a human figure. His feet were longer than his body size would dictate they should be. The hands had the same out of proportion quality, the fingers long as they folded up and then back out again in the beckoning motion. His penis was small as if Michelangelo had re-sculpted David, crouched on an earthen bank in a bog wearing dolphin skin. I was unsure if I should obey the hand command. I moved three more steps forward and his hand uprighted itself in the stop signal. He smiled a radiant smile of brilliant white perfect teeth that seemed to have caught light from nowhere, further obscuring his facial features in the grayness that surrounded all but the smile. The small man spoke to me in a pleasant inquisitive voice.

“Are you lost my friend?”
“Yes”
“Are you looking for the green field, the one with the flowers, the one that everyone that passes here is searching for?”
“Yes”
“You missed it because you were not looking when you found it.”
“That’s impossible; I have looked all along the path I’ve walked. I never once closed my eyes or quit looking for the field.”
“How is it then that you have come so far to find me?”
“I don’t know, I just kept walking, I was just hoping to find the field and lie down in the sun, I didn’t realize I passed it.”
“You have passed it as I said, yet it remains in front of you.”
“How can that be, how can it be both in front of me and behind me?”
“It can only be found my friend when you are not seeking it. It lies behind you. It lies in front of you. It is on your right and on your left, but you have chosen to wade with snakes instead.”
“No, it’s not like that! I am only here because I got lost!
I looked quickly to my left to keep an eye on the snakes and the floating debris. When I looked back toward the dolphin skinned man he was gone. The eerie quiet returned.

Innocence and Experience

Purple seagrass waves in the breeze
Summer announces
Am I seasoned, or am I young again?
Memories cross paths and the boy engages the man

Dreams of youth and the realities of the present
They seem strangers; the familiarity goes unexplained
The scent of cut grass and the memories of baseball
Phones ringing; insistence on experience

Innocence or experience
Collisions inside my mind
A girl in a short skirt
A stirring of memory

An unexpected glimpse of today in the mirror
A young girl laughs; her conversation amuses the elder
It excites the younger

Purple seagrass waves in the breeze
A tear decorates the man’s cheek

Memories cross paths
The boy engages the man
Familiarities go unexplained
Strangers

They are staring at one another
Perplexed by the other image
Purple seagrass waves in the breeze

Hello, my soul
Ageless
Content
Unexplained

I'll give you something to cry about.....

I have been listening to all the news stories about the airlines charging $15 to check a bag.
I started traveling with one carry-on bag after my luggage was lost for 11 days during a trip to Italy. My wife's bag was lost (delayed in airline language) for the same time period. I learned something. You need far less things than you might imagine, even in a foreign country where you don't speak the language.
BEG and I made a pact to never check an airline bag again. It has nothing to do with fifteen dollars. We learned exactly what is really needed and how to pack it in a carry-on size suitcase. We spent 2 weeks in France this past March with one carry-on bag each. No problem, no kidding. It can be accomplished sooo easily.
Cut to the television interviews. One woman at O'Hare in Chicago is whining like a baby about the high cost of flying for a family with six children. Six children? Lady, this is the smallest of your problems. Having cashed 2 kiddos through college, trust me on this one, airlines are the smallest of your problems. And not to sound all Chinese and everything; but 6 kids! Good planning.
Another lady traveler is bemoaning the fact that she is being charged to carry the child seat she is taking to her daughter in Omaha. Huh? They don't have child seats at WalMart in Omaha? Think people! Another man says he might have to shift from his normal first class to sit in coach if fuel prices keep rising. Oh Good God! No, tell me it isn't true!
Another man says this is killing his trips to Las Vegas to gamble once a month. Oh no!
Cut to the TV anchor with a furrowed brow, asking the field reporter if there is ANY relief in sight? The field reporter sadly replies "not anytime soon." My lingering thought is this is a lot of silly crybaby excrement we're hearing. I'm sure the powers in Dubai are laughing their asses off at the ridiculous and whiny Americans.

My dad used to say when I would tear-up as a child, "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about." Harsh? Sure. But I know at this point in my life what he meant. I recently earned a bad ankle sprain and haven't been able to train on the track, which has made me agitated (according to BEG, and God knows she is the one that would know). I tested the ankle on the track this morning and still no go for me after 2 weeks of shut down. I grumped my way up to 7-11 to buy some coffee. A patron at the counter bid me a cheerful good morning. He was sitting in a wheelchair and had no legs. True story; not kidding you. Happened this morning.

"I'll give you something to cry about"
Now I Get It....maybe

Freckles and Sweat

Beads of sweat, invisible in the darkness of night, ran off his forehead. He closed his eyes. A quick swipe of his fingertips removed the dampness from his eyelids. The mattress below him had grown wet from his perspiration, yet it meant nothing in the world he lived in. He slept in his own sweat every night. There was no air conditioning in his house. This night was cooler than the ones in his bedroom. The slight breeze that came with the growing Texas night was beginning to cool the sides of the pick-up truck’s bed. It was Friday night, and a few hours before his dad had hauled the queen mattress out of the house and dropped it into the back of the 1957 Ford pick-up. From his spot in the back of the truck his senses filled with the voices of the women laughing as if they were rehearsing a TV scene with Lucy and Ethel. The men spoke softly and drew large hits off a stream of never ending cigarettes that glowed like small lamps among the cluster of men. He concentrated on the small orange glows as they danced up and down, their movement caused by the practiced art of men talking while also holding a cigarette in their mouths.

Fireflies darted across his face, daring him to chase them. He was content in the back of the truck; the soggy pillow below his head doubled up where he could watch the dancing cigarettes and hear the laughter and high pitched voices of the moms.

He was 8 years old. He had been to a handful of these church socials. He didn’t know why the church members gathered in a city park on Friday nights. They would all sleep in the park tonight, on cots and in the back of pick-up trucks. He knew the small frame house where he lived next to the railroad tracks was hot and that maybe that is why they gathered in the park on these nights. It was also noisy at his house as the trains roared by through the night no more than 50 yards from his open window. Late at night the hobos that walked the tracks and rode the trains would appear at one of the windows and wake him up by knocking on the wooden window sill. It always scared him, but he tried to not let on. He just told them they only had enough food and stuff for themselves, sorry. That’s what his dad said to tell them.

The vacation from the small hot house and the productive railroad tracks was what made these Friday nights so much fun. There was laughter. There were games before the picnic dinners, men playing dominoes and smoking, moms laughing and preparing food. Now the stars above him were glowing with a full brightness through the leaves of the oak trees. The leaves moved gently in the cooling breeze of the evening, a breeze that had begun to make the sweat on his face feel cool. The same breeze brought the distinctive aroma of smoke from the group of men and also seemed to heighten the sound of the ducks near the pond, their constant quacking mimicking the back and forth voices of the group of women.

He lost himself in thought about Rebecca. She was confusing to think about. Small freckles decorated her nose and cheeks, the freckles were almost the same muted red color as her hair. He liked the way her hair would fall across her face when she ran. She would have to slow down and move it behind her ears before she could continue running. Her red canvas shoes were always topped by white socks that sagged to her ankles when she played with the boys. He didn’t know why he liked to think about her but it made him feel good to remember her running and tending to her hair. He liked it when she smiled right at him and he imagined holding her hand, but he also knew he would never dare.

He was happy. No hobos and no trains, just laughter and stars and ducks on a pond. He swatted a mosquito away from his ear. He thought about Rebecca’s freckles and smiled. His eyelids grew heavy and he drifted into sleep.

Years later when he had all the things of value that life could bring him, when a generation of time had separated him from the boy and his personal wealth had grown, he would sit in his study and think about the happiness of the boy. He did it again tonight.

When we have so little, only dreams and an image of what comfort might be, why are we so happy? When poverty stricken children in third world countries chase a soccer ball across a barren field dotted with skinny cows, why does an enormous smile play across their face and why do their eyes dance with the fullness of life? Does ignorance of plenty enhance satisfaction with little? And if its true………….how do we return to the place where the leaves rustle in front of the stars and we care only about our dreams and the play that begins in the morning? Where do we find the place that we chase a soccer ball across a field of skinny cows, grinning like a child?

A Million Pounds?

All day I have been working away at my job, but I have also had the cable news programs on in the background. Today President Bush upped the ante on the elections by pressing Congress to revoke the long standing legislation prohibiting off-shore drilling.
One startling overnight poll showed that Americans have shifted to being nearly 80% in favor of off-shore drilling, the percentages turning almost 180 degrees from where they have been in recent years.
For some reason that reminded me of the best joke ever written about prostitution. The joke is credited to Bernard Shaw.
He was at a party once and told a woman that everyone would agree to do anything for money, if the price was high enough.
"Surely not, she said."
"Oh yes," he said.
"Well, I wouldn't," she said.
"Oh yes you would. For instance, would you sleep with me for... for a million pounds?"
"Well," she said, "maybe for a million I would, yes."
"Would you do it for ten shillings?" he asked.
"Certainly not!" said the woman "What do you take me for? A prostitute?"
"We've established that already," said Bernard Shaw. "We're just trying to fix your price now!"

Sooooo....... I see the flip-over price is $4 per gallon.

Now I Get It...........maybe.

I Don't Believe You

This post is like huntin with Cheney. I’ve got no idea where I’m aiming, but I might hit something if I just fire a round off.

My knee hurts. It doesn’t hurt like arthritis or any of that old guy stuff. It hurts because I have been banging the victim knee on hurdles. Fair enough, go ahead and wonder why a 56 year old man is jumping hurdles. Frustration awaits you if you seek an actual answer because the man doesn’t actually have a reason except that he thinks its fun to see if he can do it better than other 56 year old men. I never claimed to be motivated in enlightened ways. I lay claim only to being motivated, which of course was also true of Timothy McVea, so any association with the good implied by that statement is suspect from the time the light turned green at the front of the sentence.

Back to my knee. In the interest of going over the hurdles with optimum efficiency I am required to forcefully jerk my right knee over the top of the hurdle during the step over. Well, not required, but it helps if you want to win. Refer to the previous sentences regarding improperly placed motivations if you feel confused at this point. Several times in the course of a workout I manage to bring the right knee into serious impact with the hurdle. It hurts. The seventh time you do it in the same week hurts more than the first time. Here is what I said on the seventh impact. #(*^@$*@$*@&@*!!!!!.

So, being a fellow of diligence and serious motivation, however improperly placed or maniacal that said motivation might be when analyzed by a kind hearted counselor, and damn those guys cost a lot, I went to look for advice from a second expert. I found one only 75 yards away. A world famous track and field coach, that I call a friend, was working on the other end of the track with two Bejing bound athletes.

Understand that my coach friend is famous for his wit, wisdom and plain spoken passages about track and life. He is in his early 60’s, so plain speak is his earned province much like your old cantankerous uncle, whatever his name is in your case. I presented my hurt knee problem. Coach’s solution was quick and effective. He said “If I was you I would quit running hurdles. Crashing into them is what is making your knee hurt.”

Okeee Dokeee, thanks Coach. I wish McVea had asked for help too.

Last year this same friend told me something I have not forgotten and I want to talk to you about what he said. This is a man who has worked with literally thousands of college age athletes, many running at a world class level years after they leave his program. He has seen and accomplished a great deal in his profession and is widely known for his successes. Here is the wisdom Mr. Track Coach laid on me.

“People will always show you exactly who they are. The hardest thing is learning to accept that what they show us is the truth.”

I reflect on the relationships I have known of where abuse was present. The abused often stays around, refusing to believe what they have been shown. I had to make a decision in the past 2 weeks about a personal relationship based on a pattern of behavior that I had witnessed so many times before that it became crystal clear that this individual was showing me once again exactly who they are, and this persons behavior keeps repeating itself like a barroom parrot in a Jamaican bar.

Do you think this saying by my coach friend is accurate? Is it really possible that people always show us exactly who they are, but the hardest piece of the puzzle is fully accepting what we have been shown?

Speaking of showing us what you got, I’m going to Las Vegas for a wedding this weekend. BEG is going too so I have to figure a way to get her into one of the showgirl shows, you know the kind where 120 topless girls balance big feather things on their heads, which the women in the audience comment on, while the men wonder what feather head thing?

So while I’m gone, just talk amongst yourselves here if you want. Or come on out to Vegas. I’ll be at the MGM Grand showing Vegas exactly who I am. Ask for Seven Alevin, but don't be surprised if they think you want a Slurpee. Everybody’s welcome, but I don’t think you can go to the wedding.

An Old Coot Don't Need No Stinkin Gas

I have a privileged slot in the pecking order when it comes to buying gasoline. What I mean is that I don’t have to buy much of it. I work at home and 90% of my everyday commerce is conducted electronically. I emailed an entire construction specification manual today by email. It was the 4^th book I have written in 3 weeks that reached its end user without my use of gasoline.

Taking advantage of the information age was a decision I made 10 years ago and it has paid far more lifestyle and financial dividends than I would ever have imagined. I don’t have to wear clothes when I’m working. I am able to do my run and weight training on a regular schedule since I don’t have a boss and can work deep into the night if I need to. I only drive in rush hour traffic if I happen to go temporarily brain dead and schedule a meeting in downtown Dallas or Fort Worth at a bad time. I eat the food in my refrigerator instead of fast food or restaurant food which is a necessity of my training anyway, but at least I don’t have to carry my lunch to work!

I’m not bragging, just feeling good about my circumstances. I know there are millions of Americans, especially young Americans with families that drive many miles to work for small wages. Surely this gas situation is a huge strain for them. I have empathy.

Still, maybe there is good that can come from the situation. Maybe more of us will learn to work from home and take full advantage of the new information age, lowering carbon emissions and simultaneously shooting a middle finger toward Dubai. Maybe we can learn to bicycle and plan our trips. It wouldn’t hurt Americans to lose about seven gazillion pounds collectively. My Lord, people surrounding me in public are just sooo fat these days! Riding a bike or walking like thinner Europeans can’t be as bad as the fattys might imagine. Maybe we will rediscover that we have neighbors living alongside us.

Maybe we will all stay home and become Guitar Hero legends. I can play Black Magic Woman now as well as any fifth grader on his second try and I’ve only been practicing for 2 months.

Maybe we will find something far more important. Maybe we will rediscover the simplicity of right now. That may be a confusing sentence without context, so let me explain. The frenetic pace of our culture has taught us to scurry like mice on a wheel. We run from here to there with a sense of urgency not limited by space, distance or the cost of fuel. In the course of that scurrying and the brain patterning that accompanies it have we lost our sense of simplicity, planning and the idea of being present in the now? Have we lost sunsets and meaningful conversation?

All that may seem a tad gray or old fashioned. Sorry for sounding like an old coot that don't need no gas.

Maybe what we will learn is that we have a new purpose and stewardship not only with our energy and environment, but also with our personal sense of where we are going as individual souls and why we are going there. Maybe we will have time to ask the question "why are we always needing to travel so far outside ourselves and at such a rapid pace." If we run fast enough might we be able to escape ourselves? A Jackson Browne lyric observes, "no matter how fast I run, I can never get away from me."

If we all had more time to sit at peace outside the immediate view of our steering wheels and gas gages and think about our lives and our perspective of the 'right now', is that really a negative?

You tell me.

Applause for Bigotry?

I’m curious about the media’s insistence on referring to Barrack Obama as the first black candidate nominated by his party. After his victories earlier this week the headlines across America lead their stories with some variation of this theme. I might be accused of picking knit, but the tiniest bit of research indicates Mr. Obama is neither all black nor all white.

It leaves me with the idea that this is merely a new chapter in American racial bigotry rather than the mining of a new vein of acceptance and race blindness. What dictates that a bi-racial man is black rather than white? Is it because his appearance presents the image that lives in our minds about what a black man looks like?

Is it more sinister than that simplistic observation? Is it possible that our culture is presenting that once a white woman or white man has produced a child with a black person that the child is considered black rather than white because of institutionalized cultural agreement on permanent blemish or social devaluation?

This is my question for America. Why do we not refer to Mr. Obama as the first bi-racial candidate nominated by his party? Is this insistence that he is a black man America’s hoping and dreaming that our prejudice is resolved by electing a black man, when we actually elect a man that is both black and white?

Is the prospect that two races have merged to produce a unique and talented individual just too underwhelming for journalism? Or, is it possibly the biggest story of the day, left unearthed by a media stuffed full of its own unobserved bigotry?

You tell me.

The Gossip and the Green

Eradicating vice from our daily life is an onerous task. The devil in many lives, my own included, is the daily dose of gossip and erroneous language that passes from mouth to mouth, infiltrating and infecting the wrinkled gray matter of everyone it contacts. Like a computer virus traveling by email, gossip races across its course with alarming speed and even more frightening it travels over multiple race courses, proving it possesses far more lives than the ordinary house cat. The vice of gossip is often attributed to housewives and women with nothing better to do with their time. The sexist notion wrapped therein is demonstrably false by simple observation. Men delight in gossip just the same as women. It is a non-biased stain on both genders.

Let’s talk about gossip and the green.

Recently, the American Institute of Architects instituted a new requirement for its membership to earn continuing education credits in sustainable design, a code phrase for ‘green movement architecture’.

This comes on the 15 year old heels of the requirement for continuing education in the first place which produced a vast array of education providers feasting on the Architect’s dutifully coughed up seminar money. Green is now gospel. Throughout the streets of America folks are wearing their ‘go green’ t-shirts with smug smiles of self indulgent pride in their do-goodness.

Now begins the task of preparing for the commercialism of the green movement. Look around and gather the easily apparent clues of the blossoming attempt to take your money and mine by promoting the ‘green movement’ in products. Stand back as the green commercial stampede claims its victims. This cascading phenomenon is firmly rooted in the fantastically fertile mixture of capitalism and gossip.

There are only a limited number of scientists with the credentials to understand the impact of man’s activities on the future of our planet. In reading what some of them have to say I have discovered they possess a large measure of humility, often stating directly that they are unsure of the results gathered at the end of their well intended and carefully controlled scientific pursuits. This appears to be a way of saying that they understand nature and science, but do not own the skills to extrapolate the longevity of the polar ice cap and other geographies from the gathered data. I also read disagreement among a few of the less humble scientists. One group espousing the coming doom, the other group lecturing to hang on a minute before you take the next flight to Mars; another way of saying that not even the brightest knows for sure what our future holds. The less objective of the scientist and the non-scientist shills with a platform use the whole discussion for personal gain. Al Gore secures a new fortune by preaching the coming firestorm. Rush Limbaugh pontificates that global warming is a complete hoax though my research shows he has no scientific training. Michael Moore continues to muddy reality with multiple lies disguised as truth, a fact well documented, aimed at the youthful, the ignorant and the blissfully absorbent and angry rebels in need of a cause.

None of the three individuals I mentioned has a scientific pedigree to make any statement whatsoever that should cause anyone to pay attention. The corollary that comes to mind is that this is the same as if your bank teller has diagnosed you with a malignant brain tumor.

My position in all of this ‘g-warming’ discussion is a simple one. I don’t know because I don’t have the credentials or scientific intelligence to know. A good portion of the reports I read I don’t even understand due to a lack of scientific background.

I consider the discussion analogous to gossip. Rush wants his listeners to believe in the hoax of the movement. Former VP Gore wants his listeners to believe the earth hangs in the balance of buying his book and stabilizing his legacy. This is the common form of gossip. It is the spreading of words, not dipped in the well of truth, being nonetheless orated as though it were true beyond any doubt. The listener believes it as truth, then passes it along to the next gossip participant. The underlying premise that this is a giant hoax or else a 180 degree opposite calamity with earth in the balance strains a rational man’s patience.

And so I am now stuck, with equal parts of amusement and disgust, as I watch the green movement turn into a products parade. The fertile mixture of gossip and capitalism tilled together, reaping a giant harvest of the ignorant and absorbent souls of our world wearing their new $21.95 “Go Green” t-shirts. Al Gore stares back at me from the cover of his apocalyptic revelation. Michael Moore apparently continues to harbor a misplaced need to unleash his vast anger and corpulent image on the general public. Rush smokes his cigar after lighting it with a $1,000 bill and smiles as he reminds the largest radio audience in America that it is all a hoax. And now, to continue being an Architect in good standing I have to sit in a CE class with a lecturer half my age teaching me how to collect rainwater from the roof, drain it into a cistern and wash my hair with it as though it were actually complicated and had not been first accomplished around 900 BC. The fact that I have no hair is seemingly immaterial in the face of this hurricane of gossip and fresh t-shirts.

Doubt me? Look around your local stores carefully at how many products are now “green’ though nothing really changed. I saw a plumber’s truck on the highways of Dallas yesterday with fresh painting on the sides declaring he was a ‘green plumber’, whatever the hell that might be. It‘s only the beginning.

Resist. Admit your scientific ignorance and save yourself a bundle, and if not money, maybe you can save yourself a lot of misplaced energy and frustration. Can we acknowledge there may be intelligence illustrated in knowing what we do not know?

Enjoy the sunset tonight instead of MSNBC. Yes, the sunrise and sunset are still out there, and that's not gossip. Its fact.

"Son, are you hungry"

My father was a hard working man that selected his words carefully. Truth actually told he never selected more than a mere handful at any one sitting. On odd occasions he would pack me into his work pick-up, a 1957 red Ford, and haul my pre-teen randomness out to my Grandmother’s house in deep west Texas. It was a drive of over 300 miles, straight as an arrow through the Texas desert flatlands and cotton fields. Our mission was always the same. The back of the truck was stacked with building materials. My dad and I would spend the weekend fixing and renovating my Grandmother’s home. It was my father’s generosity and carpentry craft rolled into a gift, given in virtual silence and received by his mother in like silence. At the close of the day Sunday we would pack up and head home across the starry skies and flat plains of Texas. He would return to his regular work that following Monday morning. I would go to school, sleepy as a Mardi Gras partier after an all night parade.

On those long rides down the straight and dusty Texas highways, my Dad would always say the same thing to me. Its entire content was the useful question, “Son, are you hungry?” If I answered in the affirmative he would pull into some clapboard mom and pop restaurant along the side of the road. His door would open and then slam shut without a word while I tagged along after him. After all, it was perfectly clear to anyone except Larry, Curly and Moe that stopping at the restaurant meant we should go inside and eat. The meal and the remainder of the journey were executed in silence. That is also the manner in which he taught me carpentry. He used words only to make clear the aspects of the craft hidden from visual observation. What could be observed and translated with one’s eyes was assumed to need no explanation by word.

He has been absent from my world for more than 20 years, his early sixties life claimed by a cerebral aneurysm. I miss his silence as though it had been a symphony. And now in the 56^th year of my life I work at my own use of words. I work at how to best use them. Or more accurately I wonder how to not use them when silence is the better selection.

Words are surely the most powerful tool we own. They can hurt. We can all give testimony to their sting. They can heal the soul and dry tears just as easily, and this remarkable reversible property is always dependent on how we select the words we wish to use and the tone of voice we use to grant them life.

What I know with the degree of certainty that is the consequential partner of the older man with half a brain remaining is that our words matter a great deal. My words have been missing here for a while, but they have been applied other places, for better or worse. Or maybe they have been spent on the great god of Who Cares. I know my father sometimes seemed to look at words that way. His eyes frequently said “Who cares about all that talking?” Maybe it was nothing more than the silence of his own mother that birthed the silence of the son.

But I have discovered I do care. Words are a gift to be used with wisdom. Ignoring their power and usefulness can be as sinful as using them to negate.

I am working on using words in a better manner. Maybe the path of Goldilocks is what I seek, where my words are neither too few, nor are there too many, but somehow just right. And maybe by some sort of grace the words will even be the correct ones delivered in a suitable and welcomed tone.

For now I am having a small problem with this new exercise. I have been listening very carefully to my questioners and fellow conversators. (yes, conversators is a new word created here for my personal use) Now I think carefully before responding and I try to choose words that are appropriate and carry the proper meaning of what I want to convey. Several people have become agitated at my tardiness and repeated the question thinking I didn’t hear it on first resonance. I suppose next they will merely walk away. If they do they might miss the most carefully thought out and meaningful response I can give. I mean really, it could be very good after I have thought it all out.

You know what they say, “everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” I suppose waiting on me can be a bit like dying if you are already old?

The Rest Of The Story

I have not tired from telling you this story. Unfortunately I am being squeezed from all sides, a bit like a cow udder in the hands of a strong dairy farmer. OK, I know cows get milked by machines now; I just wanted to create an illusion of being squeezed. I have no time to continue this story. I’m telling you the truth. My ‘earn a living work’ is taking away much of my fun time. I have also been asked to contribute to a book that will be published in February of 2008. The publisher has requested my portion be complete in 9.5 weeks! And of course, the holidays and family obligations are on top of us all.

So, I’m going to give you an executive summary of the remainder of the trip and adjourn from this site, most likely until February of 2008. For a little while, the chair will be empty. But, I will be back.

The Rest of the Story

I continued to call the airlines from pay phone booths, dialing the 21 consecutive numbers to locations all over the world. The problem I was having was having everyone push me off to another number and location that was guaranteed to solve my problem. One day, and I am not exaggerating, I stood in a noisy phone booth for 3 hours dialing and talking and being put on hold. I'm talking about 3 consecutive hours! I finally called a teammate in Houston and asked for help. The friends, a wonderful couple named Jerri and Mark Hastings, turned Houston Continental Airlines upside down on my behalf. The luggage was found in a Houston storage warehouse belonging to Continental Airlines. It wasn’t funny then and it remains unfunny to me today. BEG’s luggage arrived 10 days after we arrived. My luggage came the next day on Day 11.

Our wonderful friend Stephanie Collins continued to loan BEG clothes. She was and is kind and sweet beyond measure. After day six or so I started buying BEG new clothes, but out of absolute stubbornness, which is a character flaw of mine, I continued to wash and wear my same clothes for 11 days. A lot of the time I was actually at the track wearing competition clothes so that was a break for those that had to continue to look at me.

My ears and lips developed a case of fungus. That’s right; there was a fungus among us. My ears got all scaly, causing me to look as if I might be headed for a ‘circus freak’ audition. Step right up folks and see the “Scaly Man.” When I finally stood in front of the pharmacist and presented, he said something to this effect. “Oh yes, this is common for first time visitors to Italy. It is a bacterium that rides around in the public buses and other places. Italians are immune to it. You should have come in when it first started itching.”

Thanks a lot pal.

He gave me a fungal cream that was literally a miracle cure. OK, thanks for real this time.

In hindsight I am now aware that the enormous toll of the early days, lack of sleep and lack of food presented conditions ripe for a lowered performance on the track and opened the door for the sneaky Italian bus dwelling bacterium. The 200 meter races did not go particularly well. I made it to the final sixteen, but I was just too ‘off-track’ to haul my tired hiney and scaly ears around the track at my normal speeds.

The good news is that after an additional week I was given the opportunity to run on the USA 4x100 relay team and I had recovered some energy and my ears were nearing a normal status. The heralded British team ended up running a new World Record in the race, smashing the old record by a significant margin. We finished 3 or 4 strides behind the British capturing an easy second. I took a silver medal home and it is now engraved and proudly displayed in my home.

The even better news is that the remainder of the trip, spent in sight seeing, was truly wonderful and the gods and sun smiled on both BEG and myself. We visited Venice, Florence, Ferrara and Bolgna. Actually we went to Venice twice. BEG took over one thousand photos on the trip! The days were filled with glorious weather, wide smiles and were coated thick with treasured memories.

And a story I wanted to tell you; we damn near missed the flight from Paris to Houston. Again it was through no fault of our own. The connecting flight from Bologna was delayed and we ended up running through Charles DeGaulle Airport just as we ran through Houston Intercontinental 17 days before. I arrived at the gate breathless once again with BEG running up from behind. As Yogi Berra is famous for saying, “It was deja-vu all over again”…..except we MADE IT! Try this on for believability. They lost our bags again on the way home! True.

And for my faithful readers Kid Bratcher and Silver Lovely I want to acknowledge you and thank you for support in helping me relive the story. It was fun knowing you were reading with interest. For Kid, I am including a photo of Christine. The photo was taken by BEG on the day I finally got my luggage. Christine was so happy for me she kissed me! Maybe she was just really happy she was through dealing with me?

I wanted to develop some characters for you. Not in the way a fictional write might, but more to paint a picture of the real and wonderful people that surrounded me in Riccione. I wanted to paint a portrait of Charlie, a genuine prince of a man from whom I learned many lessons about competing in international competition. He wrote BEG and I a beautiful note the morning he left and we enjoyed rooming with Charlie and Jackie immensely. Charlie won a World Championship and a silver medal before sustaining an injury that put him on the sidelines.

I could have told you so much more about Bill, my coach and world champion sprinter. More important to know is I consider him a world champion friend. He is like a big brother, always with an eye cast my way to safeguard and make my track experience as good as it can become.

I would have told you about Stephanie’s always present smile, laughter and kindness. If you read this Stephanie, understand you are considered a treasure.

I could have gone on at length about our Aussie teammate Bob Cozens. He is a live wire at age 70, a man truly alive, refusing to succumb to what so many men his age might succumb to. He is 30 years old in my mind. That’s a gift to be observed and incorporated as I move along in age. Thanks Bob.

And most importantly I should remind you all of the golden treasure BEG brings to my life every day. In a trip filled with potholes and cold rain early on, she kept smiling and holding my hand. She even told me she loved me several times. Go figure.

I must go now and help write a book, but I’ll return next year.

Good Thoughts to you all,

Seven

A Texan in Italy - 17 Curious Days - Day 6

Over the next several days I will be telling you about my recent challenging, weird and wonderful 17 days in Italy. However, in the peculiar world of blogging that means the first story is on the bottom! So, if you want to begin at the first, go to the bottom. This is Day 6.

Day 6 - September 7, 2007

My sixth day in Italy was a gloriously beautiful day for weather. I strode out of the apartment into a bright and clear day of 72 degrees. The birds were singing. Cyclists rode past and smiled, then spoke as if I were their longtime friend. I was on my way to the Hotel Fedora, confident day 6 would be bring my luggage to my possession. BEG was wearing Stephanie’s clothes. Bob Cozens has loaned me a fresh shirt for today. We learned how giving and kind our friends can be and Stephanie and Bob definitely stepped up to the plate when it was really needed. It was odd to see BEG in clothes that didn’t quite fit. She didn’t have a hair dryer. She didn’t have make-up. We bought her a comb just the day before. And despite it all she kept smiling.

Christina saw me walk through the door of the Fedora. She smiled as if she had a secret. I knew my luggage surely had arrived. Nope. Apparently Christina was merely happy to see me. I would have loved for that to have been enough to please me but I was beginning to feel as if the gods had aligned themselves against me. I dug down deep to find a philosophical thread to hang on to. It was still a beautiful day on the Adriatic coast. Hard times can bring perspective. I wasn’t on the streets in a near hurricane trying to shelter BEG and find a place get out of the elements. No. The sun was shining and I had a place to sleep, so I wandered about the philosophical nooks and crannies of my brain searching for the optimistic thought or two that remained employed and on the job of keeping me sane. Those thoughts seemed to go out of their way to raise their hands to get my attention and let me know I had reasons to be happy. I headed for the too noisy phone booth whilst scratching away at my itchy ears. A call to the US, specifically to Continental Airlines, was my mission. My intuition told me they were sitting in the daddy chair at the table of my luggage troubles. I talked to Maurice at Continental. He was helpful in a hopeless fashion, meaning he tried hard but worked the policy line of Continental Airlines, a script certain to kill my every optimistic thought previously described. He told me the luggage was still in Houston. Yep. My image of the bags circling the carousel n Houston was remarkably near the truth. His explanation was as follows. “Mr. Seven the problem is that KLM Airlines was your last carrier and I see you have given them all the required information, but they have not requested that we send the bags.” I of course asked why not just go ahead and send them since the owner of the bags is on the phone with you requesting them? Nothing doing was the message I received, but it was delivered in corporate apologetic language. Gotta do things like the airlines do them. Can’t send them until KLM asks for them.

So, I hung up and I called KLM in Bologna. No answer. Again.

I walked back to the Hotel Fedora. Christina decided now was the time to deliver unfortunate news. She told me the Bologna Airport had been under siege for the past two days by students unhappy about something completely unrelated to airport functions. At least that is what I surmised from her valiant efforts to communicate in my sole language. She told me they had been calling about my luggage for 3 days but no one would answer because the police had closed the entire airport. I told her it was no concern anyway because I had been told my bags are in Houston, safe from unhappy students. She asked me “What is a Houston?” Never mind. My ears felt like they were on fire. The itching had stopped! Now they just felt hot and a little bit scaly. My lips burned in the same way.

I went back to the phone and called KLM airlines in Amsterdam. I was transferred to Maurice’s corporate evil twin who told me “Mr. Seven, we are waiting for Continental to send us the bags. We can get them to Bologna when order is restored to the airport, but they must of course send the bags to us first.” Catch 22, long dead in literary circles had been resurrected and had reached into my life and doomed me to wear my blue shirt and green slacks a while longer.

Much more conversation took place on the phone. Let it be enough to know I ended up pounding the sides of the booth and screaming at the evil, corporate line reciting KLM employee while simultaneously worrying about what the devil was wrong with my ears and lips as if I could not decide which current affliction to focus upon. Like all unscheduled temper tantrums by an alleged adult I can safely assume I did not advance my case.

I had to abandon my tantrum to run down the avenue and catch a bus with BEG and other US athletes and spouses. Today was an off day for the track meet officials. No events were scheduled. Our group, and others from the US contingent, were headed for San Marino, described as an ancient walled city of northern Italy. We didn’t have tickets for the trip. The tourist office where tickets are purchased was closed. We were woefully short on planning. It a phenomena that always develops when large groups try to travel together. There are simply too many talking heads and concerns about everyone’s needs and desires to create a smooth ride. I have always thought large travel groups should elect a king. The closest we had was a dynamo named Sydney Howard. Syd is in his mid 60’s and calls the northeastern seaboard of the US his home. He competes in the 1500 meters. My guess is he is every bit of 5’-4” tall if standing on his toes. What he lacks in stature he more than makes up for in energy, total number of words used in a day and genuine good heartedness merged artfully with a sprinkle of kooky, all of which renders him immensely likeable. Due to our failures in planning and lack of tickets we are herded onto a completely occupied bus and left to stand in the aisle. Syd occupies a place between Bill and me. Syd makes friends easily. He speaks loudly to a large man from Czechoslovakia seated directly beside him. The Czech, an enormous man that could squash Syd in a singular sweep of his hand smiles broadly but it is clear he has no idea what has happened or what was said. Syd informs his new Czech friend it is alright because according to ‘The Secret’ everyone has to be in their exactly correct place and all things are good. The Czech grins broadly again as if he has also read ‘The Secret’. Syd moves on to a taciturn couple from Scotland seated directly behind the Czech. They speak English in the Scottish manner and Syd tries to turn them into new friends on the spot. The Scottish husband seems to be very uneasy as Syd launches into a quiz with his somewhat shy but pleasant wife about Scottish history. Her brogue is thick, but she is sweet in nature and deals with Syd in a polite way. Syd is a bona-fide history buff and it soon becomes apparent that he knows more about Scottish history than the native couple. The husband never warms up, looking at Syd as though he is a snake oil salesman from the Wild West. Just as quickly as it began, the history lecture ends, and Syd asks me about my luggage. According to Syd my luggage is still in Houston because that is where I need it to be. He says ‘The Secret’ taught him that. I’m wishing the secret would teach the airlines how to move luggage between cities more responsibly, but I remain quiet. Syd surrenders to my inexplicable quiet and moves on to a couple from Belgium. They are polite but appear to want none of the boisterous US contingent, though I must say we were more spirited and happy to be going to San Marino than the rest of the buses human content. San Marino is no more than 20 miles from Riccione. As billed, it is an impressive ancient walled city of stone, the path to the top fortress lined with tourist shops of every type. I would learn later that San Marino is in fact a country unto itself, existing now by the grace of Italy. It sustains itself with the proceeds from the hundreds of tourist shops within the walls.

The bus rolled to a stop. Syd was in full gear asking the bus driver a dozen questions in non-stop fashion while not waiting to hear an answer, seeming to disappear from the bus in a fog of words and action. I reached up and felt of my ears. They were definitely scaly. My lips burned as if they were smeared with jalapeno juice. I stepped off the bus and gazed at the fortress tower. It would take a long winding walk of 1.5 hours to reach the top. I could see Syd already walking up the road, his arm around a new friend. I wondered if the new friend spoke any English.

Photo 1 - Bill and the Syd 'The Secret' on board the San Marino bound bus.

Photo 2 - Inside the tourist shop filled walls of the fortress at San Marino.

A Texan in Italy - 17 Curious Days - Day 5

Over the next several days I will be telling you about my recent challenging, weird and wonderful 17 days in Italy. However, in the peculiar world of blogging that means the first story is on the bottom! So, if you want to begin at the first, go to the bottom. This is Day 5.

Day 5 - September 7, 2007

The initial mission of day five is to compete in the semi-finals of the 100 meters. Sixteen runners remain from the initial field of forty eight. The race is scheduled at 10:30 am. For the first time since I left Texas I slept soundly through an entire night. In fact it was one of those extraordinary sleeps filled with dreaming. Not the traditional semi-haywire, separated from reality, subconscious bubbling over where you wake up and think; “what the heck was that all about?” Not that kind. These were the dreams I have learned to enjoy. They are the soft and pleasant type dream where good abounds. Often they are erotic in content. They had been mostly erotic last night and it always leaves me with a slightly embarrassed feeling as if I want to tell someone, “you’ll never believe what I was doing last night, and who was there!” Yes, I want to tell someone even though I know it didn’t actually happen. The bonus is I’m not likely to develop any STD's having sex this way.

I had agreed to meet Charlie and Bill at 8:15 to walk to the buses. There was never a question of Charlie or Bill advancing to the final rounds. Bill is a multi-world record holder and Charlie is the world record holder at 400 meters in age group M55-59. Both are many times world champions and both have been selected to the USATF Hall of Fame. I was surrounded by the best in masters track. It can be humbling to walk around a world track meet with either one of them since they are recognized and constantly stopped by other athletes. The humbling part occurs when I have to continually introduce myself to their fans. Next time I will describe to Bill and Charlie’s admirers the content of the erotic dreams. Maybe they will remember me that way? I felt good in the warm-up. I wasn’t feeling 100% but was appreciably better for having slept. The partial smile I wore was merely left over from the dreams and not illustrative of my true mood.

As I stared down the track moments before the race I felt I would be able to uncork a good run and advance to the final that would be run later in the day. The warm-up was thorough and I felt more alive than I had in the previous more troublesome days. I had drawn lane 2. On my right in lane 3 was none other than Alasdair Ross. He was beginning to feel a little like a shadow; an aloof shadow at that. On my left in lane 1 was a Polish runner with a determined and unsmiling countenance. When the gun sounded I drove low and hard from the blocks. Throughout the summer I had been using a personalized visual image to remain low and drive through the important start portion of the race. Staying low and driving through is a concept required for the best time you can run and I had taught myself to imagine I am pushing a stalled car with my head. Odd as it sounds, it had done wonders for my start and in fact it had helped me run very fast times in the early part of the summer. I had come to Riccione with the second fastest time in the world for 2006 at 100 meters. There is danger in this preoccupation with driving low. It is possible to slightly hang a spike or lose your balance in this precarious execution of technique. My drive out was excellent and the video shows I cleared the blocks earlier than the competition. Then as if I had not been doused with enough disaster for one trip, fate intervened once again. On the fifth step I drug a spike ever so slightly across the top of the track. It produced a stumble that sent one hand out before I quickly regrouped and maintained balance. It was over. Racing against the 16 fastest in the world allows no margin of error. Interestingly my time was actually faster than the day before but well below my ability. I ran the race through but I couldn’t make up the ground required to advance to the final. I watched from the infield as my friend Bill blew away the field in heat two with ease. I remain in awe of his amazing consistency in big meets.

Bill and Charlie would both race in the 100 finals at 3 pm. For me the interim time period was filled with eating lunch, conversation and luggage tracking. I made some progress with KLM by email. Our luggage was now showing on the KLM lost luggage section of their website as being in process. They have the proper bag tag numbers and the address of the Hotel Fedora is correct. Even if my race was a miserable failure, at least there is some hope on the luggage side of things.

For the 100 finals it is necessary to get a seat early. The final of the fastest race of the meet brings large crowds. At race time the stands are packed with athletes and fans, often dressed in the colors of their country, or wearing the track warm-ups with the countries name embroidered across the back. BEG busies herself with trying to get a photo of every different uniform she can see. The crowd is gearing up, giving off enough energy to power a couple of generators. As the various age groups begin racing an odd cultural collision occurs in the stands. I am the first victim. One of my training partners Cindy Steenbergen is racing in the W50-54 final. As the race develops I stand up to get a better view over the plexiglass barrier since I can’t see her at all. Once the race is over I am told a couple of guys behind me want my attention. The message the two young Italians, located one row up and several seats down have for me is to ‘remain seated.’ In painful English one tells me to stay seated in an openly hostile tone. It’s really not good timing to be messing with me, but his tone toward an elder is more the issue than his message. I tell him “#**%*&$^%&&” he can stand up as easy as I can stay seated. Hostility develops quickly. I wonder what that particular hand sign he just used means in Italian. This particular scene is repeated several times afterward between Italian fans and other American athletes in that area of the stands. I am witnessing and even participating in a bizarre clash of cultures. Italians apparently expect everyone to remain seated during an intensely exciting 100 meter race. Americans stand and cheer for their teammates without even thinking about the cultural implications. Each time there is spoken displeasure from the Italians and a return of fire from the American athletes. Each side needs a timeout. Maybe a separate set of stands separated by a plexiglass barrier? And of course maybe the need for plexiglass barriers at this particular stadium speaks volumes about true Italian comportment at sporting events?

Bill races to yet another World Championship in the finals roaring down the track in full control of the race from the gun. Charlie runs second to a fellow American. Both are happy and I am happy for them. It’s been a long day at the track and at around 6pm we all climb aboard the buses for the trip back to the apartment. My ears are itching. Not just that littly ‘itchy itchy what is that’ kind of feeling but more of an ‘I can’t stop scratching my ears, dang it’ kind of constant itching. I’m riding along with a bus load of people from all over the world. They stink quite honestly, but I assume I am also doing my part to flavor the buses ambiance. I’m standing up and holding the overhead rail with one hand while the other hand paws manically at both ears. It never occurred to me what small pesky infections might be crawling around on a buses hand railings. Unfortunately I was destined to find out.

Photo - Bill runs away from a world class group. Again.