Business Geek-Speak

I have seldom used this blog for peevish rants but today I make an exception. I just returned from a business meeting in Pittsburg where I endured 8 hours of what I like to call “business geek-speak." Men and women in suits who work for home offices somewhere all seem trapped inside a language cocoon of their own making. They all seem to somehow have developed a distinct language unlike any spoken anywhere else in the world. I don’t know exactly where this language came from but I suspect that it probably has something to do with the dreadful business periodicals they all read. You’ve seen them on planes and trains when everyone else is reading the sports page or the Sky-Cab magazine. There they are, their noses firmly implanted in the latest copy of the Economist or Forbes. Whatever the source this new language, it's at the top of the list of things that piss me off.   So, just because I can, I present to you a short list of the most inane and annoying. For your enlightenment I have also provided a translation of this idiocy into understandable English:

1.Paradigm Shift.   Whenever I hear this I think of that great song by The Who…"meet the new paradigm, same as the old paradigm."  Whenever a home office stooge starts throwing out “new paradigm” what he really means is..."We’re hemorrhaging money so we’re going to cut your commissions."  But when they say “new paradigm” it makes them sound a bit smarter and not so overwhelmed by events.

2. Value Proposition or Value Added.  Whenever nervous home office guys keep saying things like this what they are practically screaming at you is…"We do very little to help you and consequently are having one hell of a time justifying our existence”

3. Seamless Transition.…"This new thing we want you guys to do has more trap doors and moving
parts than a Paris whorehouse and if you make it two weeks without your computer exploding it will
be a miracle."

4. At The End of The Day.  OK, if I heard this expression once I heard it a hundred times, to the point where if everything that they said was gonna happen at the end of the day actually DID happen at the end of the day, then the end of the day would implode in on itself and the universe would disappear.  How about something simple and elegant like..."ultimately?"

5 Cutting Edge Technology.....the stuff we don’t have yet

6. Broad Based Consensus….we’re all wrong


I could go on but maintaining “sustainable” blood pressure readings are a “stage one priority” for me.

Yard Sale Madness

Every two years in my life there is a famine in the land. It’s the year that the locusts eat. The year of the great scourge. When it comes I am powerless to prevent the desolation. I simply bow to its inevitability, and soldier on until its plague has passed. What am I referring to, you may ask? The Dunnevant family Yard Sale. It’s our family’s bi-annual excursion into the strange land of the entrepreneurial experience whereby Americans pretend to be turning their junk into money when in fact they are voluntarily spending weeks working for less than the current minimum wage…in Angola.

Weeks ago it began. Pam and I spent a rainy day plowing through the attic gathering the most worthless of the accumulated debris of our 27 years together. To even get at it I had to flatten and remove literally thousands of gift boxes which I carried down two flights of stairs to the back of my van. Six trips to the dump later I was through. Now we could begin the arduous task of staging the chosen items into the “yard sale pile” in our newly spacious attic which by now was a toasty 90 degrees. By the end of this 8 hour torture-fest Pam and I knew that we had only just begun to prepare for this wonderful family tradition.

The actual week of the big event is a very special and unique time in our home. We shuffle by each other timidly with slumped shoulders trying not to get our feet tangled up in the growing organism that has taken over the downstairs of our house. With lots of heavy sighing Pam trudges through the “staging area” of boxes, grocery bags, and worn out electronics with a clipboard full of freshly printed pricing stickers. “50 cents” one says. “1 dollar” says another. The irony is lost on us. When you are in the midst of organizing the unorganizable it never occurs to you to ask “why”. So all week she prices and all week the piles grow larger and larger as if the beast is taunting us in our futility. All the while more man hours of labor accumulate.

The night before the big event might be the worst part. We all make the 30 minute drive all the way across town, Pam in our loaded down van looking like a cross between Ma Joad and the Beverly Hillbillies, me in a truck I borrowed from my father-in-law.( I will not here discuss the fact that on this night I was visited with a violent bout of irritable bowel syndrome because to do so might make me cry.) We all descend on our premium location in Mechanicsville which my brother-in-laws’ saintly mother provides free of charge. For three hours in 97 degree heat and oppressive humidity we sort through bags and boxes of stuff in various stages of readiness trying to determine what goes where. Which folding tables should be placed in which location? Shouldn’t all household items be kept together? Should the three thousand books we have brought to sell to the masses for 50 cents each be left in boxes or arranged more provocatively fan-like on the large wooden table that sags in the middle? “ Why don’t we write down how we did it two years ago,” someone asks over the roar of the floor fans. “ That would make this so much easier!!”

Finally D-Day arrives. I am the first to arrive at 6:30 sharp so I can assemble the game table that I had to take apart so it would fit in my borrowed truck which has just made its third trip across town. On trip number one I noticed that it wouldn’t go any faster than 60 mph without a violent shimmy and shake. When I pointed this out to my father-in-law he pleaded ignorance. “I’ve never driven it 60 before so I’ve never noticed” he said, filling me with needed confidence. Although all of the signs posted around advertising this adventure, along with the ad that ran in the Mechanicsville Local clearly state that the sale begins at 8 AM, I found myself beating back the eager customers. “ Uh..W-wait. We don’t open for business until 8!” I yelled as they began to nose around at the garage doors which I had foolishly opened prematurely. Thankfully, soon reinforcements arrived. And by the official starting time of 8 o’clock we had already sold $300 worth . Soon the crowds began to swell in more ways than one. Car after car began to arrive left randomly askew in the middle of busy streets. Very large and determined shoppers came seemingly in packs, expertly rummaging through our inventory with practiced eyes searching for bargains. We took their quarters and dimes and nickels and stuffed their purchases in grocery bags as they said “God bless”. I sold the game table for $70 bucks to a Mexican man with two young kids who served as his interpreters. They were thrilled to get such a prize and their father seemed so thankful to me for letting him buy it..I was actually a bit embarrassed . Maybe if I were a better Christian I would have given it to him. But this was no time for existential angst. There was money to be made and from the constant stream of morbidly obese shoppers making their way to our sale the prospects for profit looked good.

The time finally came for us to close up shop, gather everything left into the garage for some Christian charity to pick up later and count our money. It was an all-time record. We made $1100. That would be more than enough to pay for all the groceries for our beach vacation at Nags Head in August. We would be eating well, no doubt. After I drove around town returning all of the tables I had borrowed, returned my father-in-laws truck, and spent an hour in the bathtub bringing feeling back to my feet, I began to do a cost benefit analysis. It wasn’t pretty.

There are 15 paying members of our family when we go to the beach for vacation. The total profit from the sale was $1100. That comes out to $73.33 per person. For my family, that means that we made $293.34 from the yard sale. But first I have to deduct the $20 worth of gas I had to put in Russ’ truck. A cursory examination of the man-hours involved ( or in Pam’s case, woman hours) reveals that between the two of us and Kaitlin we contributed 60 hours of labor towards the enterprise. So, that means that my family toiled for $4.88 per hour. Put another way, if I wanted to make an equivalent contribution to our vacation food fund I would simply have to set aside 40 cents a day for the next two years and I could save myself the agony of having to watch someone pay 50 cents for a hardback of the Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe. 40 cents a day people, 40 cents a day.

Not a Good Day to be a Man

Just watched the Anthony Weiner press conference. Its official. I am embarrassed to be a man.

It all started I suppose with Tiger Woods. Every golf fan remembers where they were when they first heard that Eldrick, the famous Buick pitchman, was a serial adulterer. Although he was married to a former Swedish model and was the father of two beautiful children it just wasn’t enough. He was spending his down time chasing around with trailer-park porn stars, women who were all 10’s on the skank-meter when he had the fabulously gorgeous Elin waiting for him at home. But there he was laying unconscious in the street after wrapping his Escalade around a tree in his front yard trying to get away from an enraged wife waving a nine iron with murderous intent, a Buick nowhere in sight.

Then there was John Edwards, he of the perfect hair and the “Two Americas” stump speech. Much of America held him in high regard after the announcement that his wife Elizabeth had terminal cancer but would soldier on with her husband while he campaigned for the presidency because of how much she loved him and believed in him. Although the adoration wasn’t enough to trump America’s fling with Barack Obama, it did endear him to millions. Then came word that the slimy senator had a love child with a campaign worker, a relationship that had thrived before and after the discovery of Elizabeth’s illness. Two Americas, indeed. Dude wasn’t even allowed to attend her funeral.

Of course, any discussion of male infidelity wouldn’t be complete without mention being made of Gov. Mark Sanford of the great state of South Carolina. After becoming somewhat of a star in the Republican party for his conservatism and “family values” reputation, it was discovered that while on a trade mission to South America the Governor had met the love of his life. Meanwhile back in Columbia, the wife of his life and the four boys she had brought into this world were devastated and his career was over. As soon as he left office in January of 2011, he was spotted on a beach in Rio with his new soul-mate. Which caused me to wonder why it is that married men always seem to find their soul-mates in warm climates. Why does no one come back from a trip to a plastics warehouse in Idaho to announce to their wife that they have met someone new?

Speaking of slimy Republicans, just before announcing his candidacy for President Newt Gingrich felt the need to clear up this business about him cheating on his wife and forcing her to sign the divorce papers while she was dying from cancer in a hospital room some years back. Gingrich explained, “ in the past there have been times when I loved my country so much that I worked too hard and things happened that were not appropriate”. So I guess that means that he cheated on his dying wife…with Uncle Sam. How’s that for a family value?

Which brings me to the ill-named congressman from New York. After a picture of his crotch was published on twitter Mr. Weiner spent 10 days denying any connection to the photograph, blaming it first on an anonymous hacker and then on a practical joke gone bad. For 10 days the good congressman (if you will pardon the expression) castigated anyone with the temerity to question his version of events. But by yesterday it had become clear to Weiner that the game was up. There were more pictures and more women coming forward with lurid details of his depravity. And so we were all treated to the smartest guy in the room having to face the music on live television. Riveting. This newly married progressive champion admitting to being a pervert. Would he resign? No. You see, he hadn’t “broken any laws”. I for one am glad he cleared that up.

I heard a sports show host the other day say that we fans have no right to criticize athletes or other famous and rich men who get caught cheating on their wives because the only reason the rest of us don’t cheat is because we don’t have as many opportunities. If we had hot women throwing themselves at us in fancy hotels in exotic locals without our wives in attendance we too would stray with equal frequency. Maybe so.
Maybe he was right, but if he is what does that say about us as men? Are we just dogs with clothes? I have been married for 27 years and have never been unfaithful, but maybe its just because I haven’t had enough opportunity. I like to think that the reason I haven’t had opportunity is because I have constantly strived to avoid temptation. I don’t put myself in situations where I might have to discover how weak I am.
Its not just opportunity. There’s something else. Something that’s absent from all of the stories that I have mentioned above. Shame.

For the past 13 years I have taught scores of high school and college kids the basics of Christianity. Hundreds of students. Many of them have for whatever reason held me in high regard and continue to long after I taught them. They admire me, want to be like me. The guys want to marry someone like my wife. Many of the girls wish their fathers were more like me. For better or for worse I am a role model to them. If I cheated on my wife all of the good will built into the lives of everyone of those kids would be wiped out. More importantly, I have two kids of my own. How could I possibly face them, look them in the eyes and admit that I had betrayed their mother? And what of the vows themselves? I spoke solemn words in front of my family and friends and God himself. Do those words mean anything? Why don’t the Anthony Weiners and the Mark Sanfords and the Tiger Woods of this world slink away in shame hiding their faces from us? How can they call a press conference? What has become of us? What has become of men?

On the odd chance that my pastor reads this, if you have the guts...this might be a good sermon topic.

Where Have You Gone Mayberry,USA ?

I had settled in for the night after cleaning up the kitchen and taking out the trash. I turned on the television to see if anything good was on but after surfing through 1500 channels I decided on an old episode of the Andy Griffith Show especially because it was one that featured Otis. Good old Otis, the Mayberry town drunk. Dude was hilarious. Alcoholics Anonymous? Otis didn’t need no stinkin’ AA. Otis didn’t beat his wife or buy his booze with food stamps. Was he even married? Otis never got a DUI, never plowed his car through somebody’s front porch. He knew exactly what to do when he was too plastered to go home. He would stagger over to the jail and let himself in with that key that used to hang on the wall right outside the cell. It was genius. Then he would sleep it off, wake up 24 hours later, catch a little hell from Barney and be on his way. The lovable drunk with the heart of gold. In Mayberry even the seedy underbelly of society was lovable. What an awesome place to live. Mayberry, North Carolina, USA…a place where even the ugliest man in town can land a hot girl. What could Thelma Lou possibly have seen in Barney Fife?

It wasn’t just Otis or Barney that made Mayberry special. The town mechanic wasn’t some shady, double-talking shyster. No, the town mechanic was named “Goober” and seemed totally without malice. The only politician in town was Mayor Pike and he was a blowhard who everyone knew to be wrong about everything. It was perfect. There was Floyd the barber who sat around all the time gossiping about everyone. There was Emmett the fix-it man, the struggling small business owner with serious productivity issues. But all was not well , even in Mayberry because of the annoying presence of Howard Sprague the county clerk and therefore only full time government employee. He with the tweed jackets and bowties. He with the artistic sensibilities. Howard was clearly the town liberal. Truth be known, I feel certain that had Howard had a car it would have had a “I Adore Adlai “ bumper sticker. Ever notice how old Howard would disappear from the show for weeks at a time with no explanation? I’m sure he just tired of the provincial Mayberry life and had to escape to the buzz and pop of Mount Pilot where he and the other government employees could plot the formation of their union. Then there were the marginal characters that filled out the place. Ernest T. Bass, the incompetent TV repairman. Raif Hollister the farmer and erstwhile bootlegger who, it was clear to everyone in town still dabbled in the Moonshine business, but was allowed to exist owing clearly to Andy’s libertarian tendencies.

Holding the whole place together though was Andrew Jackson (Andy) Taylor, the sheriff, the law. Wise, good-natured, calm and cool. He didn’t carry a gun because he was in control. Although being a single parent in a southern town in the 1950’s might have been problematic to some, Andy was not without feminine help ,what with the ever reliable Aunt Bea constantly pulling fresh blueberry pies out of the oven and his strangly creepy girlfriend Helen Crump always at his side bringing with her not one ounce of sex-appeal. If America ever really was like Mayberry it would have been a wonderful place to live. But tonight Andy was in trouble, held prisoner by a couple of bank robbers in a cabin in the deep dark woods just outside of town. Barney and Howard both try and fail to come to his rescue leaving Otis, ten sheets in the wind, to stumble and fumble onto the scene with a loaded shotgun in one hand and an open bottle of Old Grand Dad in the other. After passing out momentarily, he wakes just in time to clobber the bad guy over the head with the whiskey bottle. Otis, the man of the hour.

After watching several commercials for erectile dysfunction pills, Cholesterol medicine and the biggest, baddest pick-up truck in America, a Law and Order episode came on that featured a couple of corrupt cops who hang out in strip bars and are secretly on the Mafia payroll, not in Mayberry but New York city. I turned off the television and sat quietly for a moment as a sadness came over me.

Of course, the fictitious town of Mayberry was just that...fictitious. The writers of the show didn’t spend a lot of time examining the darker parts of American life. Race relations never came up, Mayberry being a decidedly white enclave. And despite airing throughout the entire decade of the 60’s, no anti war sentiment ever cropped up in town. But that’s not to say that the show didn’t have a culturally relevant theme. It most certainly did, and that theme was...Don’t get too big for your britches and be kind to your neighbor. The one episode that sticks with me still today was the one where the big shot banker from New York City is driving through town when his big shiny car breaks down. Stranded in this bucolic backwater, his vehicle in the capable but slow hands of Goober, (who obviously doesn’t work on Sunday), our uptight banker finds himself stranded at Andy’s house for Sunday dinner. Apparently, there is bad news coming in over the telephone from the bank, and the worry writes itself plainly on his face. Meanwhile, after dinner, Andy, Bea, Opey and Barney retire to the front porch, still in their Sunday clothes. At first, the impossible peacefulness of this scene baffles the New York business tycoon. How can these people be at such peace? Don’t they know what’s happening in the world? But, after Bea hands him a glass of lemonade, and Andy whips out his guitar and sings a mournful song he remembers from his childhood, his countenance begins to change. The worry lines around his eyes begin to soften, he loosens his tie, tips his fedora back a bit...and the scene fades to black. End of show.

Of all the shows, that’s the one I remember. Whenever I find myself stressing over some big weighty thing, I think of that banker, and I remember that there is always reason to slow down and be thankful  for my life, go out on the deck, drink some lemonade, and listen to a mournful song.

A Hymn For the Road..........a short story.

It had come to this. I found myself at a bus station at 6 o’clock on a Sunday night somewhere in Tennessee. It was as far as I could afford to ride from Mobile. I was out of money and cursing myself for being stupid enough to spend my last dime on a bus ticket to nowhere, the latest in a long line of foolish decisions. I suppose I thought that Tennessee was closer to home than the gulf of Mexico. But Virginia was only home because it was where I was born. There was no house in Virginia, no front porch, no light on for me. There wasn’t any family waiting. My folks had passed on years ago and my wife and child had moved on from me several years back, so there wasn’t anyone left. I had called Jill a few months ago to ask about my son. We hadn’t talked in awhile and she was cold and sad on the phone. She hadn’t even asked me where I was like she always did before. It was over for her. She was tried of hoping and worn out from caring.

It had all been my fault. I had walked away from her right after Mick’s 2nd birthday. I told her that I felt trapped and then blurted out that I didn’t love her anymore and probably never did. I had been drinking too much after Mick was born. I stopped going to church with them, stopped doing anything with them. A couple of guys from the church had come over one night, said they wanted to pray with me. Something in me just snapped. Even though they were good guys and wanted to help me I had flown into a rage at their suggestion that I needed to repent of my sins. I threw them out of the house, packed my bags, and after a violent argument with Jill the screen door slammed behind me and just like that I was gone. I abandoned her with a two year old and a checkbook full of bills. I had been on the run from the law ever since.

Since that night I’d been living on the road, picking up odd jobs, drinking and wasting away. In Mobile I had taken a job at a junkyard where the greasy old boss had let me sleep for free on a cot in the back of the warehouse. One night a storm blew in off the gulf and the wind was shaking that old building to its very foundation. As I lay in the dark listening to the wind and rain beat down on the roof a memory came to mind. I hadn’t thought about my mother in so long I couldn’t even picture her face in my imagination. But there she was sitting on the end of my bed the night I had wrapped my Dad’s Impala around an oak tree after a football game in high school. I had gotten drunk at a party and on the way home had lost control and somehow managed to survive without a scratch. I was 17. My mother stared into my eyes as she held my hand between hers then said, “ Jackie, you should have been killed tonight. But you were spared. God spared you because he loves you and he wants you to learn to love him back.” I had almost forgotten that night until it came roaring back with the wind and rain. The next day I bought the bus ticket. As far as I could go for 65 bucks.

And now here I was walking the damp sidewalks wondering why I had left my free cot and job for yet another mindless trip to nowhere. I was about done. I wasn’t afraid of dying anymore. Nothing could be worse than what my pathetic life had become. I had found myself thinking more and more about ending it. It was practically all I had thought about on the bus. How much better would it have been for everyone if I had been killed that night in my Dad’s Impala.

I walked for an hour or so until I saw some sort of mission through the fog ahead. Lights were on and the old store front windows were empty but there was noise and warmth and the smell of soup. The front doors were propped open with two cinderblocks. I went in and instantly recognized the smell of bums and the sound of hungry men slurping down a free meal. This was just another soup kitchen like a hundred others I had relied on, run by some do-gooder college kids or church group. I didn’t care. I knew the drill and I was hungry so I got in line and was served a bowl of beef stew with a couple of rolls and a ham sandwich. A tall glass of tea was brought to my table by a hippie looking kid in a tie-dyed t-shirt who smiled and said, “Here you go brother.” As I ate I looked around the room at the usual faces I always saw at these places. Some were on drugs, most were drunks, some were just out of their minds whispering something to themselves as they pointed frantically at unseen demons.

Then I saw him. He was a very old black man with an oddly sane and cheerful smile. When he spotted me his eyes danced and sparkled. “ Well hello there my brother!” he shouted with a laugh. Startled, I could only think to answer..”I’m not your brother old man, and you for damn sure aren’t MY brother!” “Sure you are,” he answered. “You and me are God’s children so that makes us brothers!”

I ignored him and went back to eating, wondering why it was that God treated his children so poorly. After I finished I started to get up to leave when a strong voice began to sing. The old black man had taken his hat off and rose from his chair and with his eyes closed and his head tilted up slightly sang…

“ I will sing of my redeemer and his wondrous love to me;
On the cruel cross he suffered, from the curse to set me free.”

The room had fallen quiet. The spoons were still, the feet had stopped shuffling, the lunatics had stopped their whispering, even the kitchen had stopped to listen. The old man’s voice was raspy and worn but the notes were clear and beautiful…

“ Sing, oh sing of my redeemer, with his blood he purchased me.
On the cross he sealed my pardon, paid the debt and made me free.”

The song was familiar to me. When I was a child it was a favorite at the church Mom always took me to but nobody there ever sang like this..

“I will tell the wondrous story, how my lost estate to save,
In his boundless love and mercy, he the ransom freely gave”

Tears had begun to track down his cheeks and disappear softly into his beard. I found myself with a knot in my throat and my hands began to sweat as I watched his face with amazement. How could this old bum with nothing and nobody sing such a song?

“ I will sing of my redeemer, and his heavenly love to me;
He from death to life hath brought me, Son of God with him to be.

He must be crazy I thought. Instead of whispering and pointing he sings. But he could sing, really well, the kind of singer that might have really been something at one time. The kind of singer who might have done it for a living before the wheels came off and he ended up broken and busted up eating free soup in a rescue mission. When he finished the room erupted in applause. He seemed not to hear it as he sat back down and began to eat. I stood there looking at him for a minute as the noise slowly returned to the room. “That was some nice singing,” I managed to say. He looked up briefly from the soup and smiled, nodded his head and said nothing. “ I recognized that song from when I was a kid,” I offered awkwardly. I began to get irritated with him for not responding to me. I heard myself blurt out, “If God loves you so much old man, why the hell are you here?” He sat up straight, looked at me brightly and said, “Whatcha mean what am I doing here? Why, my God is supplying me this wonderful bowl of stew, that’s what I’m doing here! Ha! Don’t let my looks fool you brother. I got joy you know nothing about.” “Yeah, but you got nothing else,” I said in a quieter voice. “Well of course not. You got anything else?” he paused for effect. “I didn’t think so!. See?? I told you we was brothers, we’re just alike , practically twins you and me..Ha!”

He continued to eat and I sat there staring at him, unable to look away, much less leave. When he finished his meal he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Jack is it?” he asked. “ Jack, I’ve got something to give you. Ha! I lied a minute ago when I let you believe I didn’t have nothing! Ha!” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wrinkled and stained folded envelope and slid it across the table to me. I opened it cautiously and pulled out a bus ticket to Richmond, Virginia leaving in an hour with my name typed across the front. “what the hell?” I whispered .

The old man leaned forward and spoke in a quiet voice so just he and I could hear. “See, you’ve got business in Richmond. There’s something there that you need to make right. It won’t do for you to be running anymore. You’ve got to go home and be a man. You got to take whatever you got to take when you get there…but its time for you to go home.” He stood up, put his hat on his bald head and smiled down at me. “One day soon Jackie-boy you gonna sing of YOUR redeemer” And just like that he shuffled through the opened doors and disappeared down the street. I made my way back to the bus station with the words to that hymn in my head. As soon as the bus ramped onto I-40 I was sound asleep and going home.

My golf education

I did the unthinkable yesterday. Played golf on a holiday. It was predictably brutal. One of the ironclad rules for living that I have always lived by is …don’t play golf on the weekends and especially if a holiday is involved. Don’t get me wrong, I love golf, the great outdoors, the camaraderie of the fellas, and the opportunity to smoke a fine cigar. But for me golf is a sport to be participated in on a weekday with an obscure tee time like Tuesday at 10:45. If a round of golf cannot be completed in 4 hours or less it morphs into something ugly. It becomes a tedious slow motion death trap. You find yourself watching from a distance 50 year old men plumb-bobbing 4 foot putts. After taking three shots to advance the ball 200 yards, some 65 year old retiree in lime green Bermuda shorts stands in the middle of a fairway confidently waiting for the foursome on the green to clear before he hits what is sure to be a fabulous 225 yard 3-wood. Meanwhile back on the tee you and your buddies debate the ethics of firing a drive over his balding head. Although all agree it would be “freaking hilarious” the decision is made to be patient. After all, it is pointed out, he is probably somebody’s grandfather.

On this particular day I was graciously invited to join a group of guys from my church who had an early tee time on Memorial Day. I agreed to violate my ironclad rule of living in this case because I actually felt like playing golf for a change. My enthusiasm for the game has considerably waned in recent years what with two kids in college and my only getting worse with age impatience with anything that forces me to wait for stuff. But on this day I was excited to get out on the golf course. At this point I should point out that my last purchase of golf equipment occurred pre-millennium. I bought a driver which at the time was all the rage 15 years ago. It was called the “Blue Rage” and it was manufactured by a company that no longer exists I think. I have a set of Titleist irons that are the same age as my son. My putter is the putter I bought back before I got married. Anyway, you get the picture.

When we get to the first tee it started. I look around at the equipment that these guys are packing and I feel like an old man sitting on a plastic chair at the Royal shop waiting to pick up his repaired typewriter! When I pull out my trusty old Blue Rage the fellas start with the jokes…” Nice driver Mr. Trevino, can I have your autograph?” I look around at the drivers around me and they all look like croquet mallets only shiny and metallic and quite intimidating with all sorts of cool technology like little screws that you can turn to alter the balance or to play a fade or a draw. And it wasn’t just the drivers, these guys had incredibly gleaming irons and space age looking putters. The best part was when one of the guys in my foursome whips out the “Laser Range Finder 2000”. All you had to do is point this one-eyed monster at the target, peer into the monocle and BAM, the exact yardage to the hole appeared on the screen. It was as though I had walked off the set of the Flintstones and found myself playing golf with George Jetson. I promptly responded by carding an 8 on the first hole.

Thankfully my woefully under-equipped game did improve and I didn’t embarrass myself too badly. My Blue Rage actually out drove her high tech competitors on several occasions and I ended up in the middle of the pack with an 86. Although I was happy with the score and the fellowship, spending 5 hours to do it in 95 degree heat was about as dreadful as it sounds. The cigar was good though.

Book Reviews!!

10. Stan Musial An American Life George Vecsey

Terrific biography of the greatest baseball player that nobody ever talks about. Although he finished his career with over 3600 hits, 475 homers and over 1900 runs batted in, won three World Series titles and three MVP awards and had a career batting average of .331, the fans left him off a 1999 vote to determine the best 25 players of the twentieth century. Why? Mostly because he was boring. He never married an actress, never said anything controversial, and he played his entire career in St. Louis, not New York. Great read that shines some long overdo light on a wonderful player.

11. Men & Dogs Katie Crouch

My list of favorite female writers is embarrassingly short. Its nothing intentional. Its just that I tend to prefer masculine perspectives. So I set out to remedy that with this novel by the highly respected and well recommended Katie Crouch. The book was well written, creative and in spots actually beautiful. But in the end I didn’t care one way or the other about any of its characters. They all seemed shallow and self-indulgent. By the last chapter I wanted all of them to be consumed by the wrath of God for their pettiness and incessant whining. I will not here end my search for fine contemporary female fiction. But my first attempt was a dud. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

12. Knuckler Tim Wakefield with Tony Massaroti

Yes I know. I read tons of baseball books this time of year. I can’t help myself. It’s the game I love more than any other. Tim Wakefield is a rarity, a 42 year old who still plays and one of the last of a dying breed of pitchers who have made their living throwing a knuckleball. Add to that the fact that he plays for the Red Sox, my favorite team and there was no way I wasn’t going to slap down the 28 bucks for this hardback. It did not disappoint. Wake is as tough a competitor as anyone who ever played the game, but he has done so for over 15 years without making enemies. Friends and foes alike all admire him and want their kids to be like him, none more so than Joe Torre the manager of the arch rival Yankees who famously placed a call into the visitors locker room after the Red Sox had come back from being down 3-0 to win the 2004 American League title…just to personally congratulate him. That’s the ultimate respect…and no player deserved it more than Tim Wakefield.

13. Love Wins Rob Bell

Whenever a book by an evangelical shoots up to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list it gets my attention. I saw Mr. Bell interviewed on CNN and he was awful, tying himself into a pretzel of contradictions trying to explain/defend his thesis that essentially 2000 years of orthodox theology about the nature of salvation, the meaning of the cross, and mankind’s eternal destiny..well..has just been a huge misunderstanding! I run over to Barnes & Nobel immediately to see what all the fuss was about expecting a giant door-stop of a book outlining this dramatic departure from biblical doctrine. Something between Augustine’s City of God and a dusty tome by Martin Luther. Instead what I found was a cute little pamphlet of a book with artsy indentations and tiny little paragraphs of simplistic non- sequiturs. Although Bell does at times stumble into some brilliant observations, mostly he just asks question after question like some breathless sophomore in a theology class. I’m sorry, if you’re asking me to turn my back on the work of brilliant men over twenty centuries, if you’re asking me to turn aside central doctrines about the meaning of salvation and eternity you’re going to have to do better than this thin gruel of a book.

14. Bonhoeffer Pastor Martyr Prophet and Spy Erik Metaxas

After Love Wins I felt the need to wash my brain out with soap, so I went 180 degrees in the other direction looking for a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer figuring that I needed to read about someone for whom Christianity had consequences. This book was simply transformational. One cannot help but be overwhelmed by the power of his mind, the sweep of his story and the sadness of its end. To see how this great man was transformed by the times he lived through from being a man of reflection and theory to being a man of action, bravery and defiance is inspiring to behold. And it raises the quiet question in your heart with the turn of each page..”would I have been as strong?” Long after the Rob Bells of this world will have faded from memory, future generations of Christians will still marvel at and be challenged by the life and thoughts of D. Bonhoeffer.

15. Meditations On The Psalms D. Bonhoeffer

OK..after reading ABOUT him I just had to read something BY him so this collection of sermons and meditations on his favorite book of the Bible was the one I chose. Some of them were written during the 18 months he spent in Nazi prisons which only added to their emotional power. Missing are the cute stories and platitudinous blather that pass for sermons today. Every word had meaning. The time was short and he had something to say and the urgency and gravity of the hour leaps off the pages. Beautiful and convicting stuff.

16. Collected Poems 1909-1962 T. S. Eliot

I try. I really really try to like poetry. Part of me feels guilty and simple every time I pick up a book like this. I bravely plow through it trying desperately to be enlightened. I mean, he’s TS Eliot for crying out loud! He’s great, right? I read poetry like a child reads an encyclopedia, vaguely aware that stuff is going on but hopelessly clueless. Every now and then I find a poem that I get and that actually stirs me to the point that I experience something of the art that’s there, Byron’s “She walks in beauty like the night…” or Dylan Thomas’ “ do not go gentle into that good night”. But mostly I read poetry and feel dumber for it. No thanks.

17. Alexander The Great Philip Freeman

This is an incredible tale about a giant of a man who by the sheer power of his passion and will conquered the known world…all by the time he was 29. The most interesting part of Alexander’s story is the complex contradictions in his character. He could be generous and touchingly kind one minute and stunningly brutal the next. He was a man of big appetites for conquest, revenge, and sex. Reading how the Macedonian culture was so openly bisexual was a bit of an eye-opener. Here’s the most macho man in history openly cavorting with young boys…very weird. An amazing read primarily because of the glimpse it offers into the ancient world.