You can argue that the NCAA rule prohibiting college players from selling "their" stuff is stupid, but don't tell me that high profile players like Ohio State quarterback Terelle Pryor weren't aware that doing so was wrong.
In case you haven't heard, five Buckeyes - including Pryor - have been suspended for the first five games of next season for selling various colllege football-related merchandise, primarily their 2008 Big Ten championship rings.
In yet another NCAA-rule head-scratcher, the Ohio State five will be allowed to play in the Sugar Bowl against Arkansas. That's right: they're not eligible for the start of next season, but they are eligible to finish this one.
The NCAA doesn't approve of players selling off goods that they've been "given" for being college football players, although you could make a pretty good case that these guys haven't been "given'' anything, but rather earned it - championship rings, game jerseys, even the fabled gold pants that an Ohio State player is awarded for beating Michigan four consecutive years.
While the NCAA doesn't allow players to earn money for playing sports (because that might cut into the millions the school and coaches make), there is nothing wrong with players being given officially-approved merchandise like championship rings and jerseys.
In fact, merchandise from appearing in bowl games can range into several hundred dollars worth of stuff, including spending money in the form of pre-paid VISA gift cards. No other athlete on campus gets this kind of swag, yet somehow the NCAA continues to insist that college football players are to be treated "just like regular students.''
But just like your grandmother would be offended to know that you're regifting that ridiculous set of coffee mugs she gave you last Christmas, the NCAA is offended when players actually act like they own championship rings, jerseys, and other participation-related goods the NCAA allows them to have.
Now, you can argue that Terelle Pryor's 2008 Big Ten Championship Ring is not really his if he isn't free to sell it, and you'd get no argument from me. You can argue that Pryor and the rest of them should be allowed to sell off anything that is theirs, and I'd absolutely agree.
But don't tell me Pryor didn't know it was wrong for him to sell his stuff.
First of all, remember the start of this season when Georgia receiver A.J. Green was suspended for selling his jersey? You don't think a high -profile player like Pryor isn't aware when another equally high-profile player is suspended?
These guys keep up with each other. They were all part of the same recruiting class; travel in the same off-season circles; follow each other to see who is thinking about turning pro early.
I've heard the argument that Green's case is different because he sold his jersey to an agent, but do you realy think Pryor and his teamates thought it through to split those hairs?
But here is the real reason I don't believe Pryor didn't at least suspect is was wrong for him to sell his NCAA-related merchandise for a profit: he would have known that other players at Ohio State hadn't done it.
Trust me, after 30 years of covering college football, I know that players follow the lead of older players. If older players have found a way to stick a few extra bucks in their pocket, younger players see that and learn how to follow suit.
And I don't think for a minute there hadn't been conversations in dorm rooms late at night about the possibility of selling memorabilia. Every player is actutely aware of how rabid fans are, and what fans would be willing to pay for pictures, jerseys, sweat bands, rings, playbooks - anything.
Which is exactly why the NCAA has this rule that players can't sell sport-related merchandise. Because as soon as it becomes legal, it opens the door for "fans'' to start paying ridiculous sums of money to those players as a way to suppliment the players' bank accounts and make attending "their'' school more attractive (meaning, profitable).
Do you know why players don't get actual tickets to their games anymore, but have to put names of family on a pass list? Because once upon a time when players did get actual tickets, they sold them for extraordinary amounts of money to boosters who understood the recruiting advantage of knowing a players' NCAA-approved allotment of tickets could be a legal source of cash.
So while I agree completely that players should be allowed to sell anything they want that is theirs, I absolutely don't believe players like these from Ohio State were not aware that doing so was wrong.
Of course, all this realy does is force a player like Pryor into coming out and declaring for the NFL early.
Ultimately, that's how he was going to take care of his family, and not with a lousy $2,500 gained from selling off a ring, a jersey, and a pair of game pants.
Here's my question, though: if this had happened in the SEC or Big 12, do you think the ruling would have been the same?
Friday, December 24, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
".... like a bowlful of jelly!"
It is Christmas - as if you didn't know - and of all the things that Christmas means to me (don't worry; I won't go into them all here because I hate those 'what Christmas means to me' lists, too), today one Christmas tradition is really sticking out:.
My belly.
Yes. Apparently, tis the season to be jolly, and we all know only fat people are jolly, which is why there is always so much food associated with Christmas, at least in this country.
And just like the shopping season for Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year, so does my Christmas eating. This year, I think I started in July to make sure by the time Christmas got here I'd have the proverbial jiggle to my giggle so that, like Santa, I will "shake when I laugh like a bowlful of jelly!"
Not that I like jiggling. I really wish I was in shape.
Which always starts me thinking about exercise.
I think about exercise a lot. If you could actually get in shape by thinking about exercise, I'd be the Jack LaLanne of my generation (especially if I could get one of those white German shepherds!).
I know people who are really committed to exercise. They are always talking about how good they feel, and how good I could feel, too, if I just did what they did, which is commit half my life to getting and staying in shape.
I actually had one of these guys say to me, "think of it this way: every minute you exercise now is one minute you've added to the back-end of your life."
Which really sounded great ... until I realized what that really meant.
It meant I'd be using all this time now when I'm still at an age to enjoy life, to extend that period of my life when I'd be really old, and therefore least able to enjoy things.
That, to me, is not a fair tradeoff.
Every time I think about exercising, I also think about what else I could be doing. And inevitably, the 'what else' seems a lot more appealing than exercise.
In fact, I have just about decided the ideal is to start my exercise on the back-end of my life, because I'll probably have a lot more time to exercise then and whatever else I could be doing I'll hopefully have done so many times that I'm looking for something new!
So until then ... clear off the sofa and hand me the remote control, because another showing of "It's A Wonderful Life'' is coming on.
That Jimmy Stewart is so thin, it makes me wish I could be like him.
But if wishes were fishes, I'd be frying them up in batter and hot oil and eating them with a half-pound of hushpuppies and fries.
With a Diet Coke, of course.
I mean, I have to do something more than just think about losing weight.
My belly.
Yes. Apparently, tis the season to be jolly, and we all know only fat people are jolly, which is why there is always so much food associated with Christmas, at least in this country.
And just like the shopping season for Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year, so does my Christmas eating. This year, I think I started in July to make sure by the time Christmas got here I'd have the proverbial jiggle to my giggle so that, like Santa, I will "shake when I laugh like a bowlful of jelly!"
Not that I like jiggling. I really wish I was in shape.
Which always starts me thinking about exercise.
I think about exercise a lot. If you could actually get in shape by thinking about exercise, I'd be the Jack LaLanne of my generation (especially if I could get one of those white German shepherds!).
I know people who are really committed to exercise. They are always talking about how good they feel, and how good I could feel, too, if I just did what they did, which is commit half my life to getting and staying in shape.
I actually had one of these guys say to me, "think of it this way: every minute you exercise now is one minute you've added to the back-end of your life."
Which really sounded great ... until I realized what that really meant.
It meant I'd be using all this time now when I'm still at an age to enjoy life, to extend that period of my life when I'd be really old, and therefore least able to enjoy things.
That, to me, is not a fair tradeoff.
Every time I think about exercising, I also think about what else I could be doing. And inevitably, the 'what else' seems a lot more appealing than exercise.
In fact, I have just about decided the ideal is to start my exercise on the back-end of my life, because I'll probably have a lot more time to exercise then and whatever else I could be doing I'll hopefully have done so many times that I'm looking for something new!
So until then ... clear off the sofa and hand me the remote control, because another showing of "It's A Wonderful Life'' is coming on.
That Jimmy Stewart is so thin, it makes me wish I could be like him.
But if wishes were fishes, I'd be frying them up in batter and hot oil and eating them with a half-pound of hushpuppies and fries.
With a Diet Coke, of course.
I mean, I have to do something more than just think about losing weight.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Non-workers of the world: Unite!
It was Karl Marx' belief that, one day, capitalism would end through the organized actions of an international working class (leading to the famous - or infamous - slogan that was adopted by the Communist government of the former USSR: "Workers of the world, unite!").
However, I'm beginning to wonder if Marx missed his mark.
In this economy, it is becoming frightfully clear that most of us can't count on big corporations to look out for us anymore, the way our fathers and grandfathers did.
But just as clearly, because of the struggling economy, labor unions have become little more than political organizations, increasingly unable to protect members' jobs.
I'm beginning to wonder if the real power doesn't lie in that growing class of the unemployed.
Think about it: much of the rhetoric of the entire Democractic party and the current president is geared toward taking care of the unemployed: extending unemployment benefits, provide health care, and generally do all those things that unions and/or businesses have traditionally have done for the working class.
The assumption, of course, is that people who are unemployed really want to be employed.
The problem is that the unemployed now have a choice: do they take just any job? Or are they better off being cared for through unemployment? Particularly if unemployment benefits continue to be extended to cover longer and longer periods of time?
Now, please, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying everyone who is out of work wants to be out of work. I know that's not true. I was out of work (briefly, thankfully), and I wanted to work. Most of my friends who are out of work really want to work, and some are taking the view that any job is better than no job, willing to start over if necessary and try to work their way back "up" - whatever "up" might look like in the limited time many of the middle-to-late-aged unemployed are left with.
On the other hand ... ask people what they'd do if they won the lottery, and the most common answer you get is "quit work.'' Everyone I know talks of hoping to "retire early.'' We're constantly bombarded with ads from financial advisors who are trying to help us figure out how to retire early.
And it doesn't seem to matter how we get to that point. Hard work, creativity, lottery winner, inheritance - it's like a national epidemic: the goal of work seems to have become to get to the point where we don't work anymore.
If the goal is to get to a point where we don't have to work, is it really that far of a leap to say that, once people get used to getting paid for not working by the government they begin to expect and even like it?
Sure, there are limits to how long the unemployed can draw unemployment. But those limits keep getting extended.
The premise that our goal is to get to the point where we don't have to work anymore is wrong. Man was created to work. Hey, even Adam in the Garden was given a job to do. You think naming animals was easy? You know Adam had to be running out of ideas when he came up with "aardvark'' and "duck-billed platypus." I figure it was near the end of a hard work week and he was anxious to get back to the cave and this thing known as "Eve" when he came up with "bee'' and "Yak."
We're supposed to work. Otherwise we run the risk of all becoming a nation of Paris Hiltons.
Now, the difference in those people who have money and don't work and those people who don't have money and don't work seems obvious; but is it really?
Someone once said the difference between men and boys is the size of their toys. Maybe the same could be said of the difference between the unemployed wealthy and the unemployed poor. If you get used to not working and living off whatever benefits you get from the government, well ... I know a guy in California who tells me he expects to draw unemployment for three years, and prefers to do that than take a job that's "beneath'' him where he may not make that much more money.
Again, I'm making sweeping generalizations (which doesn't pay nearly as well as simply sweeping).
I'm all for helping people who have lost their jobs and want to work. Shoot, I have been there. And I have been helped by more people than I can name, people whose generousity I can never repay.
But not the government.
It occured to me one day on my 500th re-reading of the book of Job (a terrific book, by the way; I highly recommend it), that at the end of the book, we get the happy ending: Job's wealth and family is restored.
What gets lost in the ending however, is how Job's wealth and family is restored.
First, his wealth: friends and neighbors came by and gave him gifts to get him back on his feet, which he then used to rebuild his wealth. Somehow, I don't think it happened overnight. I'm betting it took Job years to get back to the status he had before he became the chip in that cosmic poker game between God and Satan.
As for his family: I'm guessing it was restored in the usual way of nine months of labor and delivery. Unless his wife had a litter, I'm guessing this, too, happened over time. Throw in the fact that Job was older and he was having to work twice as hard at perhaps twice the age and I have this feeling it wasn't quite like Job simply won the heavenly lottery (except for the fact that Satan wouldn't mess with him again, which is a pretty nice prize).
Again, the point - and, to quote Ellen Degeneres, I do have one - is that neighbors and friends helped Job get back on his feet, then Job went to work.
With God's help and blessing, of course (and I do not say that lightly).
Which brings me back to where I started.
There is a growing political power in this country: the unemployed. It's becoming a movement.
If the government allows the movement to get comfortable and truly become a political force, well then, capitalism will end through the organized actions of an international non-working class.
And we all know how well that worked out for the USSR.
Or course, this is just a blog. Nobody said I had to be right.
* But then after I wrote this, I came across this story:
However, I'm beginning to wonder if Marx missed his mark.
In this economy, it is becoming frightfully clear that most of us can't count on big corporations to look out for us anymore, the way our fathers and grandfathers did.
But just as clearly, because of the struggling economy, labor unions have become little more than political organizations, increasingly unable to protect members' jobs.
I'm beginning to wonder if the real power doesn't lie in that growing class of the unemployed.
Think about it: much of the rhetoric of the entire Democractic party and the current president is geared toward taking care of the unemployed: extending unemployment benefits, provide health care, and generally do all those things that unions and/or businesses have traditionally have done for the working class.
The assumption, of course, is that people who are unemployed really want to be employed.
The problem is that the unemployed now have a choice: do they take just any job? Or are they better off being cared for through unemployment? Particularly if unemployment benefits continue to be extended to cover longer and longer periods of time?
Now, please, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying everyone who is out of work wants to be out of work. I know that's not true. I was out of work (briefly, thankfully), and I wanted to work. Most of my friends who are out of work really want to work, and some are taking the view that any job is better than no job, willing to start over if necessary and try to work their way back "up" - whatever "up" might look like in the limited time many of the middle-to-late-aged unemployed are left with.
On the other hand ... ask people what they'd do if they won the lottery, and the most common answer you get is "quit work.'' Everyone I know talks of hoping to "retire early.'' We're constantly bombarded with ads from financial advisors who are trying to help us figure out how to retire early.
And it doesn't seem to matter how we get to that point. Hard work, creativity, lottery winner, inheritance - it's like a national epidemic: the goal of work seems to have become to get to the point where we don't work anymore.
If the goal is to get to a point where we don't have to work, is it really that far of a leap to say that, once people get used to getting paid for not working by the government they begin to expect and even like it?
Sure, there are limits to how long the unemployed can draw unemployment. But those limits keep getting extended.
The premise that our goal is to get to the point where we don't have to work anymore is wrong. Man was created to work. Hey, even Adam in the Garden was given a job to do. You think naming animals was easy? You know Adam had to be running out of ideas when he came up with "aardvark'' and "duck-billed platypus." I figure it was near the end of a hard work week and he was anxious to get back to the cave and this thing known as "Eve" when he came up with "bee'' and "Yak."
We're supposed to work. Otherwise we run the risk of all becoming a nation of Paris Hiltons.
Now, the difference in those people who have money and don't work and those people who don't have money and don't work seems obvious; but is it really?
Someone once said the difference between men and boys is the size of their toys. Maybe the same could be said of the difference between the unemployed wealthy and the unemployed poor. If you get used to not working and living off whatever benefits you get from the government, well ... I know a guy in California who tells me he expects to draw unemployment for three years, and prefers to do that than take a job that's "beneath'' him where he may not make that much more money.
Again, I'm making sweeping generalizations (which doesn't pay nearly as well as simply sweeping).
I'm all for helping people who have lost their jobs and want to work. Shoot, I have been there. And I have been helped by more people than I can name, people whose generousity I can never repay.
But not the government.
It occured to me one day on my 500th re-reading of the book of Job (a terrific book, by the way; I highly recommend it), that at the end of the book, we get the happy ending: Job's wealth and family is restored.
What gets lost in the ending however, is how Job's wealth and family is restored.
First, his wealth: friends and neighbors came by and gave him gifts to get him back on his feet, which he then used to rebuild his wealth. Somehow, I don't think it happened overnight. I'm betting it took Job years to get back to the status he had before he became the chip in that cosmic poker game between God and Satan.
As for his family: I'm guessing it was restored in the usual way of nine months of labor and delivery. Unless his wife had a litter, I'm guessing this, too, happened over time. Throw in the fact that Job was older and he was having to work twice as hard at perhaps twice the age and I have this feeling it wasn't quite like Job simply won the heavenly lottery (except for the fact that Satan wouldn't mess with him again, which is a pretty nice prize).
Again, the point - and, to quote Ellen Degeneres, I do have one - is that neighbors and friends helped Job get back on his feet, then Job went to work.
With God's help and blessing, of course (and I do not say that lightly).
Which brings me back to where I started.
There is a growing political power in this country: the unemployed. It's becoming a movement.
If the government allows the movement to get comfortable and truly become a political force, well then, capitalism will end through the organized actions of an international non-working class.
And we all know how well that worked out for the USSR.
Or course, this is just a blog. Nobody said I had to be right.
* But then after I wrote this, I came across this story:
Unemployed get another jobless benefit _ free yoga
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hTp5DVv4Qisj9CFdbTFX-j1rBE6Q?docId=4d140ccf08a0495f9f55429d89b5afe6
Friday, December 17, 2010
Workers of the World: Disperse! (Part 1)
So I'm listening to this guy on the radio, a caller to a talk show, who is saying how he used to be against extended unemployment pay, but now that he's lost his job he has changed his mind. It seems he had a pretty good job, but he's a middle-aged guy and his company - according to him - realized it could save money by hiring a younger guy for less money and put up with someone with less experience.
Now, right off the bat, I have to admit I can relate. Hey, what "middle-aged guy'' in the current economy hasn't lived in fear of "the boss'' deciding to cut the high-salaried employees loose in favor of someone right out of college? And I don't know about you, but in my circles, there are too many guys who find themselves unemployed and, as much because of their age as anything, feeling unemployable. It's scary.
Anyway, the talk show host says unemployment is not the answer - which is right if you live in one of those states like Alabama or South Carolina where unemployment is capped at something like $260 a week, no matter how much money you were making when you were let go.
On the other hand, other states pay more, and with an almost indefinte extension of unemployment benefits (if you know how to work the system), if you're in the right state I can see the disencentive to get back to work - if "getting back to work'' means taking just any job. Apparently, any job is not always better than no job at all.
I have heard of cases where people in states where unemployment benefits are better than others have banded together, pooling their unemployment money, saving up to start businesses. That's creative.
But I digress. The unemployed guy on the radio and the talk show host continue to talk, and the host decides to cheer up the unemployed guy by saying, "look at it this way: you have a chance to do something for yourself. Start a business. ..." and he gives all these examples of people who have been unemployed and started a business and now are on their way to becoming millionaires.
And it hit me: maybe we're in the midst of a new kind of Industrial Revolution.
Stay with me through this. I'm not an economist and only an amatuer historian, but I do remember how, during the various Industrial Revolutions, people left their farms and family businesses to go to work for newfangled factories that led to corporations. And as the factories grew, they began to be a far more secure place to work. Some even developed "mill towns'' where the workers lived and shopped and sent their kids to school and had doctors; self-contained and self-style Utopias (see Robert Owen and others): industry-owned communities where generations could work, marry, live, raise a family, be educated, die, repeat.
The small family run businesses and farms couldn't compete, and security was found in working for someone else. During the middle part of the 1900s, that was the definition of security: working for a giant corporation that, if you were in management, took care of you or, if you were a worker, you joined a union that promised to take care of you.
This is a broad generalization, of course. And no one knew they were in the Industrial Revolution. It's not like there were banners or uniforms, "Come join the Industrial Revolution." It just gradually happened as people found themselves migrating to urban areas and coming to rely on corporate entities to provide wages and benefits for them and their families.
Now it seems too many of the once-giant corporations can no longer promise life-long security. And not even labor unions - also a product of Industrial Revolution - can change what is happening with the economy.
The solution? Maybe it is working for yourself. Starting your own business, or going in with a few friends and starting a company. Maybe it's a family business again. Maybe it's contract work.
The point is, the only real security in the work place these days seems to be in being self-employed, a return to the entreprenueral spirit that kicked the Industrial Revolution into high gear, but with a caveat of no more mega-companies that employ mega-numbers of workers. It doesn't seem like anyone should expect to actually hit 65 without changing jobs several times over the course of their work-life.
We go that way kicking and screaming because we've been raised in a culture that taught us security comes from working for someone else, the same way our great-great-grandfathers kicked and screamed as their sons and sometimes daughters left the family business to go join the faceless masses working in cities and factories.
This is a huge generality, I know. There have always been and will always be people who work for others. Slaves, serfs, indentured servants, apprentices, whatever.
But maybe we're being forced back into that old-fashioned American trait we used to admire so much: self-reliance. Stand on your own two feet and take care of yourself because nobody else will.
Now let me be up front and say that idea scares the heck out of me. I like working for someone else. I like someone else taking the risk and simply giving me a check for doing my best to help make them profitable enough to keep taking care of me.
But there is no denying the economy is changing. We're headed in one of two ways: either we go back to creating our own businesses (whatever that looks like in this high-tech environment), or we let the government take care of us (more on that in the next post).
So maybe as painful and scary as this is, it could be really good.
For you, of course.
Me? I still like the idea of someone else taking care of me.
I work hard for the money.
Now, right off the bat, I have to admit I can relate. Hey, what "middle-aged guy'' in the current economy hasn't lived in fear of "the boss'' deciding to cut the high-salaried employees loose in favor of someone right out of college? And I don't know about you, but in my circles, there are too many guys who find themselves unemployed and, as much because of their age as anything, feeling unemployable. It's scary.
Anyway, the talk show host says unemployment is not the answer - which is right if you live in one of those states like Alabama or South Carolina where unemployment is capped at something like $260 a week, no matter how much money you were making when you were let go.
On the other hand, other states pay more, and with an almost indefinte extension of unemployment benefits (if you know how to work the system), if you're in the right state I can see the disencentive to get back to work - if "getting back to work'' means taking just any job. Apparently, any job is not always better than no job at all.
I have heard of cases where people in states where unemployment benefits are better than others have banded together, pooling their unemployment money, saving up to start businesses. That's creative.
But I digress. The unemployed guy on the radio and the talk show host continue to talk, and the host decides to cheer up the unemployed guy by saying, "look at it this way: you have a chance to do something for yourself. Start a business. ..." and he gives all these examples of people who have been unemployed and started a business and now are on their way to becoming millionaires.
And it hit me: maybe we're in the midst of a new kind of Industrial Revolution.
Stay with me through this. I'm not an economist and only an amatuer historian, but I do remember how, during the various Industrial Revolutions, people left their farms and family businesses to go to work for newfangled factories that led to corporations. And as the factories grew, they began to be a far more secure place to work. Some even developed "mill towns'' where the workers lived and shopped and sent their kids to school and had doctors; self-contained and self-style Utopias (see Robert Owen and others): industry-owned communities where generations could work, marry, live, raise a family, be educated, die, repeat.
The small family run businesses and farms couldn't compete, and security was found in working for someone else. During the middle part of the 1900s, that was the definition of security: working for a giant corporation that, if you were in management, took care of you or, if you were a worker, you joined a union that promised to take care of you.
This is a broad generalization, of course. And no one knew they were in the Industrial Revolution. It's not like there were banners or uniforms, "Come join the Industrial Revolution." It just gradually happened as people found themselves migrating to urban areas and coming to rely on corporate entities to provide wages and benefits for them and their families.
Now it seems too many of the once-giant corporations can no longer promise life-long security. And not even labor unions - also a product of Industrial Revolution - can change what is happening with the economy.
The solution? Maybe it is working for yourself. Starting your own business, or going in with a few friends and starting a company. Maybe it's a family business again. Maybe it's contract work.
The point is, the only real security in the work place these days seems to be in being self-employed, a return to the entreprenueral spirit that kicked the Industrial Revolution into high gear, but with a caveat of no more mega-companies that employ mega-numbers of workers. It doesn't seem like anyone should expect to actually hit 65 without changing jobs several times over the course of their work-life.
We go that way kicking and screaming because we've been raised in a culture that taught us security comes from working for someone else, the same way our great-great-grandfathers kicked and screamed as their sons and sometimes daughters left the family business to go join the faceless masses working in cities and factories.
This is a huge generality, I know. There have always been and will always be people who work for others. Slaves, serfs, indentured servants, apprentices, whatever.
But maybe we're being forced back into that old-fashioned American trait we used to admire so much: self-reliance. Stand on your own two feet and take care of yourself because nobody else will.
Now let me be up front and say that idea scares the heck out of me. I like working for someone else. I like someone else taking the risk and simply giving me a check for doing my best to help make them profitable enough to keep taking care of me.
But there is no denying the economy is changing. We're headed in one of two ways: either we go back to creating our own businesses (whatever that looks like in this high-tech environment), or we let the government take care of us (more on that in the next post).
So maybe as painful and scary as this is, it could be really good.
For you, of course.
Me? I still like the idea of someone else taking care of me.
I work hard for the money.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Anything worth saying ....
Is worth saying ... well?
They say that if you don't use it, you lose it. For the past 30 years, I have written something for some publication on a regular basis - daily newspapers, web sites, magazines, TV, radio, even a few books.
And then last May, when I walked away from being a sportswriter, I stopped writing
Cold turkey.
After thousands - if not millions - of words published or said for public consumption, I told myself I had nothing left to say.
And then when I actually tried to write, I froze - which only reinforced the possibility that I had no words left.
Maybe it is true. Trust me; I read enough on Facebook to know that just because people write something doesn't mean they really have anything meaningful to say.
I have always been deathly afraid of being one of those people.
Still, my learned brother tells me I need to continue writing because there is the real possibility that if you don't use it, you lose it.
So I decided to start back with this blog, following the example of my daughter SaraBeth ("Life in the Slow Lane'' at smelick.blogspot.com) and others that I have begun to follow.
Of course this is self-indulgent. All writing is, really. I mean, what makes anyone think they have anything to say that other people care about? Ego. I accepted that a long time ago.
In fact, I had a Christian writer by the name of Patrick Morley ("Man in the Mirror") admit as much to me while talking to him at a conference years ago in Birmingham. And that always bothered me, because I have always believed part of what we are called to do as Christians - followers of Christ, of which I am one - is to suppress our ego and pride to replace it with the servant-attitude of Christ.
Yet if God has given us a talent and, more specifically, a message, then it's wrong not to share that (just ask Jonah).
So the delimma becomes, is this ego? Or is it the correct use of a God-given and, hopefully, God-inspired gift (recognizing there are different levels of gifts, some greater than others. For example, the gift of C.S. Lewis' writing compared to, say, mine).
That, then, becomes the call of the reader.
Please don't tell me, however. Just read - if you stumble across this - and decide for yourself whether it's worth checking back on, or whether it's just my own ego-driven ranting and rambling on a wide-range of topics.
Because it will be wide-ranging. Sometimes it will be politics. Sometimes it will be faith. Sometimes it will be life and family and music and random observations.
And yes, sometimes it will be sports because that is what I have some measure of reputation for and some deeper level of knowledge.
To paraphrase: anything worth saying is worth saying well.
Of course, whether anything we say is indeed well-said is really in the ear of the listener or the eye of the reader.
As for me, I just feel the need to write again.
By the way, maybe at some point I'll go into further explaination of the title for my blog - not that it's all that complicated. But the "Eden'' I'm referring to is not that small town in East Alabama off the I-20 exit. It's "the Garden of ..."; the place the Bible says we all started but from which we have been banished; the home we've never known; that place deep down we all long to return to whether we realize it or not. I just happen to have realized a long time ago that I have a longing to live life in a way that doesn't seem to exist, that I was created for something different than the world I find myself in.
And if I long for some place else, a place that I can't find and have never known, then maybe it is some memory buried deep within my genetic code that I can't quite shake.
Some place like Eden.
I have a strange idea about where Eden really is. At least, my wife believes it is strange. It makes perfect sense to me. Maybe one day I'll get into that, too.
Until then ....
They say that if you don't use it, you lose it. For the past 30 years, I have written something for some publication on a regular basis - daily newspapers, web sites, magazines, TV, radio, even a few books.
And then last May, when I walked away from being a sportswriter, I stopped writing
Cold turkey.
After thousands - if not millions - of words published or said for public consumption, I told myself I had nothing left to say.
And then when I actually tried to write, I froze - which only reinforced the possibility that I had no words left.
Maybe it is true. Trust me; I read enough on Facebook to know that just because people write something doesn't mean they really have anything meaningful to say.
I have always been deathly afraid of being one of those people.
Still, my learned brother tells me I need to continue writing because there is the real possibility that if you don't use it, you lose it.
So I decided to start back with this blog, following the example of my daughter SaraBeth ("Life in the Slow Lane'' at smelick.blogspot.com) and others that I have begun to follow.
Of course this is self-indulgent. All writing is, really. I mean, what makes anyone think they have anything to say that other people care about? Ego. I accepted that a long time ago.
In fact, I had a Christian writer by the name of Patrick Morley ("Man in the Mirror") admit as much to me while talking to him at a conference years ago in Birmingham. And that always bothered me, because I have always believed part of what we are called to do as Christians - followers of Christ, of which I am one - is to suppress our ego and pride to replace it with the servant-attitude of Christ.
Yet if God has given us a talent and, more specifically, a message, then it's wrong not to share that (just ask Jonah).
So the delimma becomes, is this ego? Or is it the correct use of a God-given and, hopefully, God-inspired gift (recognizing there are different levels of gifts, some greater than others. For example, the gift of C.S. Lewis' writing compared to, say, mine).
That, then, becomes the call of the reader.
Please don't tell me, however. Just read - if you stumble across this - and decide for yourself whether it's worth checking back on, or whether it's just my own ego-driven ranting and rambling on a wide-range of topics.
Because it will be wide-ranging. Sometimes it will be politics. Sometimes it will be faith. Sometimes it will be life and family and music and random observations.
And yes, sometimes it will be sports because that is what I have some measure of reputation for and some deeper level of knowledge.
To paraphrase: anything worth saying is worth saying well.
Of course, whether anything we say is indeed well-said is really in the ear of the listener or the eye of the reader.
As for me, I just feel the need to write again.
By the way, maybe at some point I'll go into further explaination of the title for my blog - not that it's all that complicated. But the "Eden'' I'm referring to is not that small town in East Alabama off the I-20 exit. It's "the Garden of ..."; the place the Bible says we all started but from which we have been banished; the home we've never known; that place deep down we all long to return to whether we realize it or not. I just happen to have realized a long time ago that I have a longing to live life in a way that doesn't seem to exist, that I was created for something different than the world I find myself in.
And if I long for some place else, a place that I can't find and have never known, then maybe it is some memory buried deep within my genetic code that I can't quite shake.
Some place like Eden.
I have a strange idea about where Eden really is. At least, my wife believes it is strange. It makes perfect sense to me. Maybe one day I'll get into that, too.
Until then ....
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