Day 69: Drawing and photography

There are two things I really like doing but am not terribly good at:: drawing and taking photographs. I fancy myself to have an artistic eye where photography is concerned, but my "eye" really is regulated to recognizing good photographs and not being able to take them. I see good opportunities for shots, but my execution is lacking. My daughter, conversely, sees and executes. My drawing skills, meanwhile, are rudimentary at best and pathetic otherwise.

Thing is, I'm OK with being sub-par where these are concerned. It's the process that I'm more concerned with. Always the process. Drawing serves as a relief. Relief from stress. Relief from responsibility. Relief from having to pay attention. Relief from reality. Anything is possible, and everything is acceptable. There is no wrong or right. There is no such thing as pushing things too far. Drawing is freedom.

Photography forces me to be in the moment. Of the moment. With the moment. Photography is a chance to participate without being the focus. Photography is a chance to explore a different perspective and relate that perspective. Photograph is a chance to be of an event but not be part of the event. A chance to perceive your surroundings and tell a story.

I'm fairly certain that for as long as my hands can remain steady and my eyes focus on an object, I'll continue drawing and take photographs. I'll admit that it doesn't hurt when something I've created or shot is recognized in some way, but that's the gravy. The potatoes is being involved, being of something without being the something.

Day 68: Where Golf & Guitars Collide

With every passing day, the weather is getting just a little nicer and the days a littler longer. That means only one thing: Full-fledged golf season is just around the corner. 


It's crazy how much I've grown to love golf. I jones for golf. If I miss even a week, I'm craving to hit the course. I think about golf while lying awake in bed. To paraphrase Christopher Walken: I've got a fever, and the only cure if a 9 iron. 


I wish that decades ago I would have known how I was going to feel about the sport one day. I would have started playing earlier on, or at least paying more attention to the game back in those years in preparation for one day being so enthusiastic about playing. 


Learning the finer points of golf has been a very similar experience for me as learning the finer points of playing guitar. I've been enthralled and captivated by music since I can remember when. It's been a huge, huge part of my life in so many regards. It's been a bridge for a lot of relationships that I share with a very eclectic group of people. Simply put, music has been a passion I can't imagine not existing in my life. 


Yet, for as much as I thought that I understood about music and for as much as I cherished listening and reading about and talking about music, it wasn't until I learned to play guitar that I believe I really understood and cherished music. Hearing music and playing music are two entirely different entities, but they intertwine completely. When you're able to combine both, you're immediately taken to another level. I'm not saying for even an instant that I'm good at playing music. I am saying that being able to do so, even in a rudimentary manner, gives you insight you can't possible have if you're unable to knowledgeably pick a note. 


Being able to play music enables you to hear music in new and far greater ways. You recognize subtle nuisances you couldn't before. You recognize patterns that weren't available to your thought process previously. You may have read about them, but you couldn't apply them or understand their origins and see how they fit with other patterns. I think more than anything, however, being able to play music gives you a far greater appreciation for those who do it exceptionally well. I always knew Clapton and Hendrix and Djanjo Reinhart were frickin' good at their craft, but when I started trying to hammer out even something as elementary as "Mary Had A Little Lamb" on six strings, I realized just how elevated they were. 


The same has been true for golf. I played the game a few times in high school and during my 20s, but the game was so difficult and seemed so inaccessible that I never bothered to take it seriously or consider it a pastime that I was ever going to really actively take part in. Growing up, there was far greater stigma attached to golf, as well. It seemed an elitist sport that was accessible for only a certain segment of the population, and I didn't consider myself a member of that group. For that reason, I never bother to look much past the stereotypes. I never necessarily found golf boring or tedious like some people do, but I didn't consider it all that demanding physically, and I definitely didn't appreciate how mentally taxing it is. Much as with the guitar, I didn't give golf its due respect until I started playing it consistently and the bug dug his teeth into me hard and deep.


Learning to play golf and guitar is humbling. You don't just get good overnight. You have to dedicate yourself to practice, and you have to have the discipline to keep returning even when the results you're after don't seen anywhere near becoming reality. Much like guitar, in the sense that I thought I knew a lot about music, I thought golf would come easy when I started playing it consistently. I was wrong. I wouldn't characterize myself as having been a great athlete, but I think I was above average. Sports always came pretty easily, and I could pick up skills pretty quickly. Not with golf, though. I knew what I was supposed to do; I just couldn't always execute it. Same with guitar. I could see where my fingers were supposed to go and know the strings I was supposed to pluck and when, I just couldn't do it smoothly or with grace early on. 


Fortunately, though, I've always been of the mindset that learning a skill and becoming competent at it shouldn't be easy. Learning a craft, whether it's quilting or cooking or painting or carving wooden figures out of sticks should require some toil and sweat and frustration, otherwise everyone would be doing it. I've always been a competitive person, and being humbled in my pursuit to learn the to play the game of golf and play songs on guitar weren't easy pills to force down. I'm thankful (and even a little proud of myself) for sticking it out. 


Today, I can't think of two other pastimes that I get more joy out of than golf and guitar. Besides being outdoors for hours at a time and challenging myself to do better than the time before, golf is a fantastic avenue for socializing. I tend to play with the same people, and I enjoy being in their company. I look forward to the early Sunday mornings when I rise before everyone else in the house, head out on mostly empty roads to the course, and commence to chase balls around all the while catching up on life with truly good people. Guitar is a more of a personal experience. It's an escape from everyone and everything. But it's fulfilling in many of the same ways. 


Now is the time of March. The grass will soon turn green. The trees will bud and grow leaves. The birds will sing. The rain will fall. And soon I'll be three-putting for another bogey and cursing at myself but enjoying every second. 

Day 67: Mr. Green Jeans

Today, I noticed that my favorite pair of green pants are starting to sprout holes in all sorts of places, including areas where holes aren't a good thing to have--unless you're not a bashful or shy soul. And I am where poorly placed holes are concerned. The world doesn't need a glimpse at what lies beyond, trust me.

As bummed as I am about this discovery, I'm going to look at the pending loss of these pants sometime likely in the very near future in a positive light. I got my money's worth from my beloved greenies. Every penny's worth, actually. My greenies have traveled to a lot of states and seen a lot of sights and met a lot of people. They've endured a lot of hardships and experienced a lot of joys. They've felt rain and snow and sunshine and wind and mud and sand and rocks and leaves and grass and about all the other elements possible other than lava. My greenies have had all sorts of liquids, dirt, and grime spilled, rubbed, and beaten into them and they kept on ticking. They've felt blood, sweat, and tears, and they've partaken in a lot of meals.

I don't like to buy clothes, so I don't do it all that often. I tend to the wear the hell out of what I buy, and so on any particular day I might look like I walked straight out of the 1990s. I really don't care for the most part, though. I stopped caring about the way my clothes looked a long time ago, and it's taken a lot of pressure off as a result. Slip on the greenies, a pair of boots fast-approaching 10 years old, and any one of a number of worn-out shirts, and I'm good. I'm comfortable. I'm at peace. I may look like a vagabond, but who's looking anyway? Even when I cared slightly more about my wardrobe, I didn't get many compliments anyway, so why go to the effort? Besides, I'm not good at buying clothes. It's tedious and boring and overrated, and at the end of the day, I usually come home with stuff that I don't much care for or that looks fairly crappy anyway. I'm good at buying plain T-shirts and white socks and green pants.

I'll miss my greenies, but one pair of pants' demise is another pair of pants' opportunity to become my go-to favorite.   

Day 66: "Pathfinder": To Fantastically Crappy To Ignore

What is it about a dreary, wet afternoon that makes watching an otherwise horrible movie so damn appealing? What is it about such days when it's crappy outside that make snaking your way under a big, soft blanket; pulling the shades down to darken the room; and watching a perfectly awful-to-mediocre, yet somehow captivating, movie so wonderful?

Today, it was "Pathfinder" that did me in when I came home for lunch as was eating my pizza ever so comfortably on my bed. I’d never heard of this tale of a “Viking boy left behind after his clan battles a Native American tribe. Raised within the tribe, he ultimately becomes their savior in a fight against the Norsemen” (according to IMBD.com). Still, despite the fact that “Pathfinder” clearly ripped off “Dances With Wolves,” which clearly ripped off “A Man Called Horse,” for it's story line, I was captivated nonetheless for no apparent reason I can understand. 

I wasn’t bothered in the least that it took roughly two minutes into “Patherfinder" to figure out its plot and outcome. It didn’t matter that the dialogue was next to non-existent or that when the Native Americans did speak they did so in perfectly fluent English and with impressively expanded vocabularies. I didn't blink either when the Vikings came onscreen riding gracefully atop surprisingly domesticated horses. Despite everything working against “Pathfinder,” I was so enjoying the experience that I was perturbed to no end when my lunch hour had exhausted and I had to go back to work without seeing the end.

I’ve often wondered why it is I’ll willingly sit time and time again through such stellar cinema as “The Beastmaster” or “Road House” or “Can’t Buy Me Love” or “Out For Justice” or “Double Impact” but can’t seem to find something worth my time among Netflix’s 5 gazillion choices? I’ve often questioned why I’ll take points off my IQ by sitting through “Police Academy” but haven’t brought myself to watch “Schindler’s List.” It makes no sense at all that when my wife, or anyone else for that matter, asks me if I want to watch a movie, I'll ask a thousand questions about what we’ll be viewing because “my time is precious and I don’t want to waste hours watching crap” but I’ll turn around and watch crap.

Maybe I’m a hypocrite. Maybe there are times when self-abuse is in order. Maybe I feel sorry for the writers of directors of these films. Maybe watching such schlock is my way of convincing myself that “I could do that” and really believing it. Or maybe, just maybe, there’s something inherently appealing about partaking in something so bad that feels so good. There’s just something delicious about watching Steven Seagal bumble around asking everyone in the bar “Has anyone seen Richie?” or watching Dar carry his furry little ferret friends everywhere he goes in a darling carrying bag or watching Dalton kick some serious night club ass that makes me a happy sucker.

Day 65: Women Have The Power

Over the years, I’ve gotten on a lot of mailing lists from a lot of organizations that do good work. Among these groups are those that are socially and politically motivated. Others are environmentally inclined, and others still are groups that work to benefit wildlife, the homeless, the hungry, and so on. I get on a lot of mailing lists because I want to know what the respective groups have to say on the topics and how it falls in line with what I feel and believe. Admittedly, I tend to lean left on most matters, and among the groups barraging my inboxes on a daily basis are groups that lean the same way, but there are also plenty of groups I keep tabs on that sit squarely in the middle and that bend toward the right.

In the last week or so, my various email inboxes have been inundated with requests to sign one petition or another renouncing the Republican’s current “attack on women.” Most of the groups have specifically requested that I add my name to other names who have denounced the words uttered by Rush Limbaugh and that call for repercussions for those words spoken, including that advertisers of his radio show pull their business and that Clear Channel Communications pull his show completely from the airwaves.

Understandably, a good many of the groups that I have received requests from have been penned by women who are upset and fed up, women who feel a line has been crossed, and women who feel it’s time to strike back. I don’t expect this movement to tamper off any on through the Presidential election, and I won’t be surprised to see the topic debated at some point.

I'm not here to tell anyone what to think or believe about women. I'm not here to act as some kind of protector or a voice for women because they are more than capable of doing that themselves. Here's what I am here to do: declare my love and respect for women in general. 


I like women. I love some women. I respect women as equals. I respect women for their god-given gifts. I respect women for being every much the thinkers, shakers, doers, motivators, contributors, developers, inventors, and supporters as any man. I've had women as friends, managers, bosses, co-conspirators, teachers, professors, advisers, confidantes, and just about every other facet of life you can think of. I married a strong, independent woman, and I wouldn't have it another way. I'm raising girls who I hope will turn out to be just as equally strong and independent. It pains me, though, to know they'll likely run into narrow-minded, pigeonholing men who detract their abilities purely because of their gender.  

Substitute "women" for "people" in these lyrics appropriately penned by Patti Smith in “People Have The Power," and you get a sense of my hope for my own girls. 

People Have The Power

I was dreaming in my dreaming 

of an aspect bright and fair 

and my sleeping it was broken 

but my dream it lingered near 

in the form of shining valleys 

where the pure air recognized 

and my senses newly opened 

I awakened to the cry 

that the people / have the power 

to redeem / the work of fools 

upon the meek / the graces shower 

it's decreed / the people rule 

Day 64: A Walk In The Park

We're lucky enough to live next to a park that's been carved into the wetlands that our neighborhood butts up against. Because the land is constituted of wetlands, it's federally protected, and no one can build or develop on it. A true blessing and treasure.

The park has about a half mile worth of path that's mowed into it, and if you pick the right day, like we did today, you can see all kinds of wildlife on your hike, including a nice sized group of deer. Today, as we were walking up along the Salt Creek, which borders the park to the east, we caused enough of a racket to motivate about 20 or so of the deer to take off on a gallop about 100 yards or so in front of us. Over the eight or so years I've been hiking in the park, the group has grown from about seven or eight adults to what is now probably about 30 or so adults and fawns at any given time. At night, they come out to graze on the grass, and years ago, before more and more people started moving in, the deer would come right up to the park swings and slide as if they wanted to play. Today, they keep their distance, probably because there are a lot more dogs around.

If you walk early enough in the morning and are quiet enough, you can get within 50 yards or so of where the deer live among a thick patch of trees stretching upward from the greenest, mossiest grass you've ever seen. I've gotten within 20 yards of the deer on certain occasions in the winter. On other days when I've brought my binoculars and picked a good tree to sit underneath, I've been able to watch them do their thing for as long as I was able to sit.

Beyond the deer, you're likely to see dozens and dozens of geese cruising in the creek, countless black birds and crows, rabbits, plenty of hawks, and the occasional coyote and fox. One night, I was in the park hiking under a full moon way beyond the stated curfew when I heard the grass starting to rustle about 20 yards or so behind me. When I stopped walking, the rustling stopped. When I started again, the rustling started again. I'm pretty certain it was a cat of some sort, but I was too scared and just smart enough to not stick around and find out. Not long after, I took photos a largish cat strolling along the bank across the creek. Not long after that I read in the paper a cat had been spotted by more than one person in the area.

I really love this park. In my estimation, it's the best aspect of the neighborhood I live in. I particularly love it in the winter and late fall, and many days when I'm hiking, it's not difficult at all to look upon this land, which has remained untouched by humans for who knows how long and imagine pioneers crossing in wagons and on foot. It's not difficult, either, to imagine Native Americans on their horses riding along the banks of the creek or the various wildlife that populated the area in far greater numbers than today.

These days, the houses the border the park off to the west server as a constant reminder that things aren't the same. Worse, there's a gun range a few miles to the southeast that ironically sound off a constant "pop, pop, pop" from shotguns, as well as a motor cross track not much further away that render a steady "roarrrrr" on certain nights. Still, on any given afternoon, this park has given me a much needed escape from the world that I can reach in just a few blocks on foot. Once there, I can stroll among the native grass and reeds and pools of water and mud, open my ears wide open, and hear birds singing as if just for me. Later, I can meet up with my old deer friends and just let time trickle by the way it was meant to. 

Day 63: Fantasy Baseball

Next week at this time, I'll be sitting around a table at some country club in Grand Island with seven other middle-aged baseball nerds immersed in what will seem like Round 765 of a fantasy baseball draft. Most likely I'll be working on my 10th soda; eyes glassed over; picking at cold, hard French fries; randomly circling my finger around a page of names I don't recognize; and saying "Eenie, meenie, minnie, moe" before I jab the tip of my index down on some sorry sack who will help my team, the glorious Wild Samolians, on its journey toward finishing somewhere in the middle of the pack or worse yet another year.

Truth be told, I love baseball. Absolutely love it. I'm only "eh" about fantasy baseball, though. I never win; I don't have the time it takes to improve my standing; and although its blasphemous to say so, there can be such a thing as too much baseball. I'd much rather watch a game than spend several hours week in and week out analyzing why my team's pitching stats suck so hard or if I should start Mr. Strikes Out A Lot But Hits A Lot Of Home Runs or Mr. Gets On Base But Doesn't Pop For RBIs.

The problem for me is that there are plenty of guys who get off on that stuff, and more power to them. I'm not a fantasy sports snob. I don't think it's just for geeks. I don't think it's ruining the game or all fans care about anymore is individual's stats vs. how their home team is doing. I don't believe that to play fantasy sports you have to live in your parents' basement and not have a girlfriend or wife.

What fantasy sports is, nor more or no less, is an early form of social networking with competition mixed in.

Social networking is, in fact, the primary reason I play fantasy baseball. Our league is dubbed "Pinetar," and a good chunk of the fellas who are in the league have been playing before personal computers were hip and household items. My team is the Wild Samolians, named in honor of Afa and Sika, members of the Wild Samoans, the greatest pro rasslin' tag team to ever enter the squared circle (outside of the Road Warriors, of course).

Combined, the Wild Samolians and Pinetar give me just enough of an opportunity to escape the stress of deadlines and responsibilities and bills and so on come my way throughout the spring, summer, and fall. Pinetar has been in operation for, jeesh, roughly 15 years or so. Over those years, a lot of inside jokes and nicknames have been created. People have come and gone (maybe because of the names), but fresh fish always enter the pond. Pinetar and the Wild Samolians gives me an avenue to talk all sorts of junk and drop rain on my fellow league suckas. Believe me, when I'm motivated, I can bring the pain with my smack. I can also take it, and I do, whether it's from Big Dave, master of the Gravy Ladle; Pimpfitz Brad, an old man of the sea with a Mr. Magoo infatuation; or Daryl, "Mr. Two Pumps & A Quiver" himself.

The fact that maybe 10 or 15 people walking planet earth would understand those references and nickmaes is what makes fantasy sports worth it for me to throw $30 or so into the vapor come every March when the Pinetar Clan gathers once again for our yearly ritual of eating, drinking, watching March Madness, and mixing in baseball picks along the way.

Camaraderie. Friendship. Verbal abuse. Who couldn't use more of those things?