I remember as a child having this idea that Americans didn't bow to anyone. We believe in the equality of all men ("We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal ..."), which means no respecter of class: king or pauper all stand on even ground in America.
As a child, I remember thinking if I ever met a Queen or King, I would not bow. Americans don't do that.
Even now, working for a company that is very British, I haven't been able to help myself. There have been a couple of conversations with British counterparts where I couldn't help but mention 1776 (good naturedly, I hope; and I hope it was taken that way - although in one case I don't think the lady I was talking to realized the significance of 1776. I guess if I was British, it wouldn't mean anything to me, either).
That being said, three very interesting stories out of Great Britain recently:
1) Approaching the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, Education Secretary Michael Gove of England wants to give a King James Bible to every student in England, saying "It's a thing of beauty, and it's also an incredibly important historical artifact. It has helped shape and define the English language and is one of the keystones of our shared culture. And it is a work that has had international significance." Opponents want to give out copies of Darwin's Origin of Species instead. Interesting that both are books of faith, although the evolutionists try to claim Darwin is science.
Can you imagine the Secretary of Education in the United States deciding to send copies of the Bible to all public school children?
2) The government of Scotland seems determined to keeping marriage defined as between a man and woman on the basis that thousands of years of history have proven its healthiest for society. See one version of the story here.
3) The Queen of England in her Christmas address to the nation said, "Finding hope in adversity is one of the themes of Christmas. Jesus was born into a world full of fear. The angels came to frightened shepherds with hope in their voices: 'Fear not', they urged, 'we bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
'For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.' ... God sent into the world a unique person - neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive.
Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families, it can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities. It is in forgiveness that we feel the power of God's love."
(Source: an atheist site that protested the Queen's message)
Even with all the bad we hear and read, there is always a remnant and cause for hope.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Bourbon Street and thoughts on the nature of temptation
I may have been to New Orleans a time or two in my life without ever walking down Bourbon Street, but I can't remember it if I have. Bourbon Street is New Orleans in so many ways, arguably one of the most famous streets in the country, if not the world.
Over the years, Bourbon Street has changed, but in subtle ways. It still holds out the lure (for lack of a better word) of what I guess can be called the dark side of humanity. But as Bourbon Street has grown older, it is not as seedy as it once was, even though it is still pretty seedy. The old-timers can tell you about how it used to be the center for brothels and gambling and so many of those things we used to call 'vices' but now are politely called 'matters of personal choice.'
(Sidebar: I remember when I was very little, I was riding in the car with my family in Pensacola, Fla. There was a building that was notorious for having been the 'red light' building, or a brothel. I didn't know what that meant so of course I asked my mother. She described it as a place where you could find women who you could pay to pretend to be your wife. In my very young mind, I thought that was nice: a place where sailors who were far from home could find women who would cook and clean for them and let them watch TV in their living rooms while the men were far from home.)
Anyway, as I walked down Bourbon the other night, I started thinking about the nature of temptation. That's what Bourbon Street is really all about, of course: temptation. Those of us who have frequented New Orleans - and, therefore, Bourbon Street and the French Quarter - have seen how people seem to get to Bourbon Street and forget who they are. Being there becomes an excuse to be someone they only dream about being when they are at home.
As I walked by bars filled with smoke, I thought about how I've never really been tempted to smoke. Perhaps it was from watching relatives of mine who died from emphysema, but who couldn't give up smoking even while near death. Or perhaps it was just the foul smell of cigarette smoke. Plus, I tried it once and almost choked to death. It was one of those things that struck me as, "If I have to learn to enjoy it, why not just spend that time doing something I already enjoy?" Amazing how much of my life has been guided by that principle.
I walked by bars filled with people drinking alcohol, and realize I've never really been tempted to drink. Oh, I've tried that, too. But again, I never found an alcoholic drink that I liked the taste of and - well, see the principle above. Plus, I witnessed people doing too many truly stupid things, being truly offensive in their actions as well as their words, after drinking even just a few glasses of alcohol. If alcohol made them be that way, then I wanted no part of it because I have always been afraid of not being in control of myself, of what my unregulated self might be like if I lost the ability to keep that person within me reined in. It was easy enough when I discovered I had an allergic reaction to alcohol - almost anything with an alcohol base can give me a rash - to simply (and somewhat honestly) say "I'm allergic." I found over the years that was much easier than trying to explain to people that I never learned to like the taste of alcohol because too many people insist they can find me that 'drink' that I'll like.
I walked by the ladies who stood in the doorways of their particular establishment wearing only their underwear (and not much of that), who beckoned me in to see 'more' (if you know what I mean and I think you do). Now, I can't say that isn't a temptation, but it's not as much of one as it used to be. I have realized it's kind of like going into a restaurant, ordering and paying for a really fine meal, having it placed on the table in front of me, and then just sitting there and studying it for a half hour before getting up and leaving without having done anything with it.
Now, that's not to say I'm superior to those who give in to those temptations. I'm not. And I'm not even saying there is anything necessarily wrong with, at least, drinking alcohol (in moderation). Jesus, as a current country song reminds us, drank wine (so I think He'd be a friend of mine - to finish the lyric).
We all have our temptations, and I have mine.
But what I started thinking about was how we tend to see temptation as the urge to indulge in what most of us consider vices. Forget the ones above: how about getting dessert when I know I shouldn't or that leftover dinner roll as a snack when I'm trying to lose weight; or extending the speed of my car to five, then seven, then maybe 10 miles above the legal limit because, well, everyone knows that's OK; or spending money on truly frivolous and totally unnecessary on myself (rather than paying off a debt or feeding the family or helping someone in need) because I want it and, after all, it's my money that I've earned and don't I 'deserve' something nice for all my hard work?
You get the picture. Those are just some of my temptations; you, I'm sure, can think of your own.
But those are the easy temptations - easy in the sense that we often know what we should do, because we know what we believe to be the difference in right and wrong.
The really difficult temptations are the ones when we're not sure; when it doesn't seem to be quite so clearly a choice.
For example, Adam and Eve (of the Bible and the Garden of Eden) were not tempted with "Wouldn't you like to be like the devil?" or "Don't you want to disobey God?" No, the temptation was offered as, "Wouldn't you like to be like God?" What's wrong with wanting to be like God? Doesn't the Bible itself - the apostle Paul in particular - encourage us to be like God?
The other perhaps most famous temptation occurred with Jesus in the wilderness. A figure approached Jesus, and Jesus couldn't be sure at first glance if it was an angel sent to help him or Satan sent to recruit him. At least, I don't think Jesus (who was, after all, fully man) knew at first who the tempter was. Otherwise, it wasn't much of a temptation, was it? So this person comes along and offers Jesus relief - you're hungry? Turn stones to bread. After all, isn't it safer to test out your miracle-power out here to see how it works before you do it in public? The tempter offers Jesus a chance to have what the Jews believed the Messiah would achieve - commander of the forces of heaven, ruler of the world. If Jesus had not read the Scripture carefully, He might have believed, like the Teachers of the Laws and Rabbinic Scholars of the day, that the Messiah would be an earthly king like David. And here was his chance to have all that!
The toughest temptations are the ones where we can't be sure what is the right thing to do, because the end result seems to be admirable: be like God, bring justice to the world.
The question is not so much, 'What's right or wrong?,' but 'what kind of person am I going to be?'
Adam and Eve, here is a shortcut to being like God; Jesus, here is a shortcut to being Messiah over all the earth.
Of course, Adam and Eve took the shortcut, and all of creation fell.
Jesus did not, and all of creation will be redeemed.
So when faced with choices, you have to ask yourself, "What kind of person have I decided to be?
The great thing is, as long as you're breathing it's not too late. Even if you've messed up every choice up to now, it's not too late.
You say to yourself, this is who I am; therefore, this is what I do.
That's bigger than smoking or drinking, lust or lying.
Who are you? Who do you want to be?
Over the years, Bourbon Street has changed, but in subtle ways. It still holds out the lure (for lack of a better word) of what I guess can be called the dark side of humanity. But as Bourbon Street has grown older, it is not as seedy as it once was, even though it is still pretty seedy. The old-timers can tell you about how it used to be the center for brothels and gambling and so many of those things we used to call 'vices' but now are politely called 'matters of personal choice.'
(Sidebar: I remember when I was very little, I was riding in the car with my family in Pensacola, Fla. There was a building that was notorious for having been the 'red light' building, or a brothel. I didn't know what that meant so of course I asked my mother. She described it as a place where you could find women who you could pay to pretend to be your wife. In my very young mind, I thought that was nice: a place where sailors who were far from home could find women who would cook and clean for them and let them watch TV in their living rooms while the men were far from home.)
Anyway, as I walked down Bourbon the other night, I started thinking about the nature of temptation. That's what Bourbon Street is really all about, of course: temptation. Those of us who have frequented New Orleans - and, therefore, Bourbon Street and the French Quarter - have seen how people seem to get to Bourbon Street and forget who they are. Being there becomes an excuse to be someone they only dream about being when they are at home.
As I walked by bars filled with smoke, I thought about how I've never really been tempted to smoke. Perhaps it was from watching relatives of mine who died from emphysema, but who couldn't give up smoking even while near death. Or perhaps it was just the foul smell of cigarette smoke. Plus, I tried it once and almost choked to death. It was one of those things that struck me as, "If I have to learn to enjoy it, why not just spend that time doing something I already enjoy?" Amazing how much of my life has been guided by that principle.
I walked by bars filled with people drinking alcohol, and realize I've never really been tempted to drink. Oh, I've tried that, too. But again, I never found an alcoholic drink that I liked the taste of and - well, see the principle above. Plus, I witnessed people doing too many truly stupid things, being truly offensive in their actions as well as their words, after drinking even just a few glasses of alcohol. If alcohol made them be that way, then I wanted no part of it because I have always been afraid of not being in control of myself, of what my unregulated self might be like if I lost the ability to keep that person within me reined in. It was easy enough when I discovered I had an allergic reaction to alcohol - almost anything with an alcohol base can give me a rash - to simply (and somewhat honestly) say "I'm allergic." I found over the years that was much easier than trying to explain to people that I never learned to like the taste of alcohol because too many people insist they can find me that 'drink' that I'll like.
I walked by the ladies who stood in the doorways of their particular establishment wearing only their underwear (and not much of that), who beckoned me in to see 'more' (if you know what I mean and I think you do). Now, I can't say that isn't a temptation, but it's not as much of one as it used to be. I have realized it's kind of like going into a restaurant, ordering and paying for a really fine meal, having it placed on the table in front of me, and then just sitting there and studying it for a half hour before getting up and leaving without having done anything with it.
Now, that's not to say I'm superior to those who give in to those temptations. I'm not. And I'm not even saying there is anything necessarily wrong with, at least, drinking alcohol (in moderation). Jesus, as a current country song reminds us, drank wine (so I think He'd be a friend of mine - to finish the lyric).
We all have our temptations, and I have mine.
But what I started thinking about was how we tend to see temptation as the urge to indulge in what most of us consider vices. Forget the ones above: how about getting dessert when I know I shouldn't or that leftover dinner roll as a snack when I'm trying to lose weight; or extending the speed of my car to five, then seven, then maybe 10 miles above the legal limit because, well, everyone knows that's OK; or spending money on truly frivolous and totally unnecessary on myself (rather than paying off a debt or feeding the family or helping someone in need) because I want it and, after all, it's my money that I've earned and don't I 'deserve' something nice for all my hard work?
You get the picture. Those are just some of my temptations; you, I'm sure, can think of your own.
But those are the easy temptations - easy in the sense that we often know what we should do, because we know what we believe to be the difference in right and wrong.
The really difficult temptations are the ones when we're not sure; when it doesn't seem to be quite so clearly a choice.
For example, Adam and Eve (of the Bible and the Garden of Eden) were not tempted with "Wouldn't you like to be like the devil?" or "Don't you want to disobey God?" No, the temptation was offered as, "Wouldn't you like to be like God?" What's wrong with wanting to be like God? Doesn't the Bible itself - the apostle Paul in particular - encourage us to be like God?
The other perhaps most famous temptation occurred with Jesus in the wilderness. A figure approached Jesus, and Jesus couldn't be sure at first glance if it was an angel sent to help him or Satan sent to recruit him. At least, I don't think Jesus (who was, after all, fully man) knew at first who the tempter was. Otherwise, it wasn't much of a temptation, was it? So this person comes along and offers Jesus relief - you're hungry? Turn stones to bread. After all, isn't it safer to test out your miracle-power out here to see how it works before you do it in public? The tempter offers Jesus a chance to have what the Jews believed the Messiah would achieve - commander of the forces of heaven, ruler of the world. If Jesus had not read the Scripture carefully, He might have believed, like the Teachers of the Laws and Rabbinic Scholars of the day, that the Messiah would be an earthly king like David. And here was his chance to have all that!
The toughest temptations are the ones where we can't be sure what is the right thing to do, because the end result seems to be admirable: be like God, bring justice to the world.
The question is not so much, 'What's right or wrong?,' but 'what kind of person am I going to be?'
Adam and Eve, here is a shortcut to being like God; Jesus, here is a shortcut to being Messiah over all the earth.
Of course, Adam and Eve took the shortcut, and all of creation fell.
Jesus did not, and all of creation will be redeemed.
So when faced with choices, you have to ask yourself, "What kind of person have I decided to be?
The great thing is, as long as you're breathing it's not too late. Even if you've messed up every choice up to now, it's not too late.
You say to yourself, this is who I am; therefore, this is what I do.
That's bigger than smoking or drinking, lust or lying.
Who are you? Who do you want to be?
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Trolling while bowling ... a few more traveling stories
Outside my hotel window I can see the Superdome, where inside at this very moment Michigan and Virginia Tech are playing in the Sugar Bowl.
I'm back in the newly-reopened and remodeled (the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina) Hyatt Regency, a place where I spent many weeks after Christmas waiting to cover Sugar Bowls and/or National Championship Games.
I'm not inside the game tonight, having turned down a ticket to the game. It is, after all, Michigan and Virginia Tech; it's not like its real football (and if you're from the South you know what I mean by that).
But it does bring back memories.
Particularly the Hyatt. I can't think of the Hyatt without thinking of that trip in 1992. From the moment we arrived, we kept hearing from off to the west of the Superdome (where the Hornet's arena is now) what we thought were fireworks going off, almost non-stop. Since it was approaching New Year's Eve, we didn't think anything of it.
However, later we found out what it was. My good friend and noted sportswriter Tommy Hicks was sitting in his room somewhere around the 16th floor of the Hyatt when he felt something sting his leg. He looked down and saw a bullet. He then looked at the outside wall of his room and saw a small hole. Yes - a bullet had come through the outside wall (not the window, the actual wall) and hit him in the leg.
Fortunately, it didn't hit hard enough to puncture the skin. But he was rattled. It's a long, very funny story - particularly when the hotel management asked Tommy not to tell his story to the media (this was the media hotel and it was full), to which Tommy replied, "You don't understand. I am the media; all my friends are in the media. They already know."
As I've said before, I've spent a lot of my life at bowl games, and there are some crazy stories.
Beatwriters - the guys assigned by their newspapers to the daily coverage of a team - used to arrive in the host city before the team so as to write about the team's arrival. That often meant spending a week in the bowl city location.
I've been to games in New Orleans, Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami, Shreveport, Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, El Paso, Fort Lauderdale - and so on. Most of those I've been to more than once.
The first Music City Bowl in Nashville was between Alabama and Virginia Tech and was played in Vanderbilt University's stadium (this was before the Titans' stadium was finished). It was the coldest I've ever been, so cold the ink in my pen froze, which was OK because it was too cold to write notes anyway. The interview room after the game was way too small, and the temperature change so great that cameramen had the lenses on their cameras fog up so bad they couldn't shoot decent post-game video. Shoot, there were guys' who wore glasses whose glasses fogged up so bad they couldn't see. And you could wipe them all you wanted and it didn't matter; everything just kept fogging up again.
We were in Tampa one year, and the team stayed in a hotel directly across the street from a strip club. Now in those days (and maybe it's still true), the strip clubs in Tampa were 'dry,' meaning they weren't allowed to serve alcohol. While this rule was designed to discourage attendance, I was told it also meant they could allow a younger age group into the club. And while they couldn't sell alcohol, patrons could bring their own alcohol in.
That's only relevant because I was standing in the parking lot of the team hotel with a former assistant coach when a certainly Alabama lineman came walking across the parking lot toward the strip club, carrying two cases of beer on his left shoulder. The coach stepped out from where we were talking to confront the player.
"Where you going?" he asked.
"Uh, out for a walk,'' said the player, who knew he'd been caught but was undoubtedly praying that this coach - who happened to be his position coach - was either stupid or incredibly merciful.
"What are you carrying there?" the coach asked.
"Uh, pizza, Coach,'' said the player. "Two boxes of pizzas."
Unfortunately the coach wasn't that stupid, and the player was sent home the next day.
Perhaps not surprisingly, that very same player was sent home from the next year's bowl game in a completely different city for a similar violation of rules. The guy was a starter, but I don't think he ever played in a bowl game in his career. I guess there was something about being out of town that he just couldn't handle.
Another oddity was talking to players from other conferences, particularly schools from the North. I remember Alabama was playing Michigan in the 1980s and I was doing a story on a Michigan player. He kept referring to the head coach as "Lloyd,"as in Lloyd Carr. I was surprised by this reference, but it turns out all the players referred to the head coach by his first name.
Later I found out it wasn't just Michigan. Notre Dame, Penn State - at almost every northern school I covered, the players referred to their head coach by his first name.
This was - and is - unheard of in the South. You'd never hear an Auburn player refer to Gene Chizik as "Gene'' or an Alabama player refer to Nick Saban as "Nick." I guess it's a cultural thing.
My favorite bowl trips were to El Paso and the Sun Bowl. It was a horrible/terrific trip; the joke was that El Paso wasn't the end of the world, but the end of the world was right across the border. Consider that if you flew from Birmingham to El Paso you usually had to change planes in Dallas, and it was disconcerting to know that when you arrived in Dallas you were still not halfway to El Paso.
But once in El Paso, the people there went out of their way to make sure you had a good time. No bowl committee came close to taking care of media the way the Sun Bowl people did. They had a hospitality room (food, drink, and sometimes even a live band) that was open 24/7. If you wanted to go somewhere, they had someone not just willing to take you, but insisting on taking you.
It was in El Paso that I bought my first pair of cowboy boots. The bowl took the two participating teams to the Tony Lama factory and the players and coaches all got boots. I was standing in the hospitality room with Donnie Webb, who worked for Anniston then but is now in Syracuse, and casually mentioned I'd like to get some boots. Donnie said he'd go with me if I wanted to go, and suddenly this hostess said, "Come on, I"m driving. We'll go to the Tony Lama factory outlet is, where they sell 'seconds'." And just like that we were gone (and both of us bought a pair of boots; in my case, the first of many).
You could say almost anything - "I'd like to go to a Chinese laundry" - and some member of the hospitality committee was there saying, "I know where one is. Let's go, I've got a car."
The other thing about El Paso is the weather could change faster than any place I've seen. One year, we arrived at the game that morning and it was warm and sunny. I think I had a light jacket. But by halftime, it was snowing - and the field was getting covered. It was the fastest drop in temperature I've ever seen. I remember we all left the press box to go to the souvenir stands and buy Sun Bowl sweat shirts. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced.
We were in Tampa once for a bowl game when the Alabama basketball team happened to be playing in the Red Lobster Classic up the road in Orlando. So we all trucked up to Orlando for two days and one night in the middle of the week for basketball.
Orlando was also famous for a row of strip clubs with names like "Thee Doll House." This was in the days when the company would give you 'advance money,' meaning all the money you'd need for the week - for hotels, meals, travel, etc. - in cash rather than you charging everything on your own credit card and then having to wait to be reimbursed. Often guys would go on the road with several thousand dollars in their pocket.
So that night, I'm sitting on press row at tip-off of the Alabama game and we're all wondering where this one sportswriter was. He showed up right before the end of the game, looking like he hadn't slept or eaten anything in 24 hours. But he did look like he'd had plenty to drink.
Turns out, he'd spent the night at what we used to call the "redneck ballet,'' where he'd met this one particular "ballerina."
"She was really a nice girl,'' he told us. "She started giving me two dances for the price of one. She was sweet."
She also got all of his money. All of it. His week's worth of advance money.
Fortunately he'd paid his hotel in advance, but he had no money for meals, for gas, for anything extra for the rest of the week.
Of course we pitched in and loaned him money. Even if we never got it back, we got so much mileage out of that story (and many others like it) that it was worth it.
And he wasn't the only sportswriter who had been known to spend all his expense money the first night in a new town.
This has gone on way too long, but two quick stories.
Another guy I know wore cowboy boots, too, and he often drank a bit too much. One night he passed out in the hospitality room, and we filled one of his boots with beer. He woke up, and we told someone had urinated in his boot!
He was disgusted. Even when we told him later we were kidding, that it was 'just' beer, he wouldn't believe it.
It was snowing the next day as he walked out of the hotel in his socks to the nearest shoe store, which happened to be just about a block away. He walked in and delivered one of the greatest opening lines ever: "Sir, you're about to make the easiest sale you've ever made in your life!"
The second story?
Another hungover sportswriter who showed up just as the game he was assigned to cover was ending. He was desperate, and somehow managed to convince a guy from another part of the state to let him copy his story (this was in the days before the internet, so it wasn't likely anyone would see both stories).
As the hangover raged and the sportswriter typed off the other guys' work, he looked at me with the saddest eyes and said, "To think that this late in my career I've been reduced to copying crap like this."
Speaking of good lines - one more story (and any sportswriter has a million of them). We're at a dinner the night before a big game. A buddy of mine was a heavy drinker, to say the least. We'd travel together sometimes, and I remember he'd get in the passenger seat, pull out a bottle of Jack Daniels, unscrew the top, and throw it out the window with the farewell, "We won't be needing this anymore!"
Anyway, we're at this bowl-sponsored dinner the night before the big game. This guy is already drunk when they serve the steak. He decides he can't eat the steak, but doesn't want to give it up, so he slips it into the side pocket of his sport coat.
The next day he's at the stadium, wearing the only sport coat he brought with him. Completely serious, he asks, "What's this big stain around my side pocket?"
We tell him the story - which he doesn't remember - and he looks inside the pocket and, sure enough, there's a steak in there.
His reaction?
"Thank God they weren't serving soup!"
Ah, if only all of us Southern sportswriters could write as well as we could talk.
I'm back in the newly-reopened and remodeled (the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina) Hyatt Regency, a place where I spent many weeks after Christmas waiting to cover Sugar Bowls and/or National Championship Games.
I'm not inside the game tonight, having turned down a ticket to the game. It is, after all, Michigan and Virginia Tech; it's not like its real football (and if you're from the South you know what I mean by that).
But it does bring back memories.
Particularly the Hyatt. I can't think of the Hyatt without thinking of that trip in 1992. From the moment we arrived, we kept hearing from off to the west of the Superdome (where the Hornet's arena is now) what we thought were fireworks going off, almost non-stop. Since it was approaching New Year's Eve, we didn't think anything of it.
However, later we found out what it was. My good friend and noted sportswriter Tommy Hicks was sitting in his room somewhere around the 16th floor of the Hyatt when he felt something sting his leg. He looked down and saw a bullet. He then looked at the outside wall of his room and saw a small hole. Yes - a bullet had come through the outside wall (not the window, the actual wall) and hit him in the leg.
Fortunately, it didn't hit hard enough to puncture the skin. But he was rattled. It's a long, very funny story - particularly when the hotel management asked Tommy not to tell his story to the media (this was the media hotel and it was full), to which Tommy replied, "You don't understand. I am the media; all my friends are in the media. They already know."
As I've said before, I've spent a lot of my life at bowl games, and there are some crazy stories.
Beatwriters - the guys assigned by their newspapers to the daily coverage of a team - used to arrive in the host city before the team so as to write about the team's arrival. That often meant spending a week in the bowl city location.
I've been to games in New Orleans, Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami, Shreveport, Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, El Paso, Fort Lauderdale - and so on. Most of those I've been to more than once.
The first Music City Bowl in Nashville was between Alabama and Virginia Tech and was played in Vanderbilt University's stadium (this was before the Titans' stadium was finished). It was the coldest I've ever been, so cold the ink in my pen froze, which was OK because it was too cold to write notes anyway. The interview room after the game was way too small, and the temperature change so great that cameramen had the lenses on their cameras fog up so bad they couldn't shoot decent post-game video. Shoot, there were guys' who wore glasses whose glasses fogged up so bad they couldn't see. And you could wipe them all you wanted and it didn't matter; everything just kept fogging up again.
We were in Tampa one year, and the team stayed in a hotel directly across the street from a strip club. Now in those days (and maybe it's still true), the strip clubs in Tampa were 'dry,' meaning they weren't allowed to serve alcohol. While this rule was designed to discourage attendance, I was told it also meant they could allow a younger age group into the club. And while they couldn't sell alcohol, patrons could bring their own alcohol in.
That's only relevant because I was standing in the parking lot of the team hotel with a former assistant coach when a certainly Alabama lineman came walking across the parking lot toward the strip club, carrying two cases of beer on his left shoulder. The coach stepped out from where we were talking to confront the player.
"Where you going?" he asked.
"Uh, out for a walk,'' said the player, who knew he'd been caught but was undoubtedly praying that this coach - who happened to be his position coach - was either stupid or incredibly merciful.
"What are you carrying there?" the coach asked.
"Uh, pizza, Coach,'' said the player. "Two boxes of pizzas."
Unfortunately the coach wasn't that stupid, and the player was sent home the next day.
Perhaps not surprisingly, that very same player was sent home from the next year's bowl game in a completely different city for a similar violation of rules. The guy was a starter, but I don't think he ever played in a bowl game in his career. I guess there was something about being out of town that he just couldn't handle.
Another oddity was talking to players from other conferences, particularly schools from the North. I remember Alabama was playing Michigan in the 1980s and I was doing a story on a Michigan player. He kept referring to the head coach as "Lloyd,"as in Lloyd Carr. I was surprised by this reference, but it turns out all the players referred to the head coach by his first name.
Later I found out it wasn't just Michigan. Notre Dame, Penn State - at almost every northern school I covered, the players referred to their head coach by his first name.
This was - and is - unheard of in the South. You'd never hear an Auburn player refer to Gene Chizik as "Gene'' or an Alabama player refer to Nick Saban as "Nick." I guess it's a cultural thing.
My favorite bowl trips were to El Paso and the Sun Bowl. It was a horrible/terrific trip; the joke was that El Paso wasn't the end of the world, but the end of the world was right across the border. Consider that if you flew from Birmingham to El Paso you usually had to change planes in Dallas, and it was disconcerting to know that when you arrived in Dallas you were still not halfway to El Paso.
But once in El Paso, the people there went out of their way to make sure you had a good time. No bowl committee came close to taking care of media the way the Sun Bowl people did. They had a hospitality room (food, drink, and sometimes even a live band) that was open 24/7. If you wanted to go somewhere, they had someone not just willing to take you, but insisting on taking you.
It was in El Paso that I bought my first pair of cowboy boots. The bowl took the two participating teams to the Tony Lama factory and the players and coaches all got boots. I was standing in the hospitality room with Donnie Webb, who worked for Anniston then but is now in Syracuse, and casually mentioned I'd like to get some boots. Donnie said he'd go with me if I wanted to go, and suddenly this hostess said, "Come on, I"m driving. We'll go to the Tony Lama factory outlet is, where they sell 'seconds'." And just like that we were gone (and both of us bought a pair of boots; in my case, the first of many).
You could say almost anything - "I'd like to go to a Chinese laundry" - and some member of the hospitality committee was there saying, "I know where one is. Let's go, I've got a car."
The other thing about El Paso is the weather could change faster than any place I've seen. One year, we arrived at the game that morning and it was warm and sunny. I think I had a light jacket. But by halftime, it was snowing - and the field was getting covered. It was the fastest drop in temperature I've ever seen. I remember we all left the press box to go to the souvenir stands and buy Sun Bowl sweat shirts. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced.
We were in Tampa once for a bowl game when the Alabama basketball team happened to be playing in the Red Lobster Classic up the road in Orlando. So we all trucked up to Orlando for two days and one night in the middle of the week for basketball.
Orlando was also famous for a row of strip clubs with names like "Thee Doll House." This was in the days when the company would give you 'advance money,' meaning all the money you'd need for the week - for hotels, meals, travel, etc. - in cash rather than you charging everything on your own credit card and then having to wait to be reimbursed. Often guys would go on the road with several thousand dollars in their pocket.
So that night, I'm sitting on press row at tip-off of the Alabama game and we're all wondering where this one sportswriter was. He showed up right before the end of the game, looking like he hadn't slept or eaten anything in 24 hours. But he did look like he'd had plenty to drink.
Turns out, he'd spent the night at what we used to call the "redneck ballet,'' where he'd met this one particular "ballerina."
"She was really a nice girl,'' he told us. "She started giving me two dances for the price of one. She was sweet."
She also got all of his money. All of it. His week's worth of advance money.
Fortunately he'd paid his hotel in advance, but he had no money for meals, for gas, for anything extra for the rest of the week.
Of course we pitched in and loaned him money. Even if we never got it back, we got so much mileage out of that story (and many others like it) that it was worth it.
And he wasn't the only sportswriter who had been known to spend all his expense money the first night in a new town.
This has gone on way too long, but two quick stories.
Another guy I know wore cowboy boots, too, and he often drank a bit too much. One night he passed out in the hospitality room, and we filled one of his boots with beer. He woke up, and we told someone had urinated in his boot!
He was disgusted. Even when we told him later we were kidding, that it was 'just' beer, he wouldn't believe it.
It was snowing the next day as he walked out of the hotel in his socks to the nearest shoe store, which happened to be just about a block away. He walked in and delivered one of the greatest opening lines ever: "Sir, you're about to make the easiest sale you've ever made in your life!"
The second story?
Another hungover sportswriter who showed up just as the game he was assigned to cover was ending. He was desperate, and somehow managed to convince a guy from another part of the state to let him copy his story (this was in the days before the internet, so it wasn't likely anyone would see both stories).
As the hangover raged and the sportswriter typed off the other guys' work, he looked at me with the saddest eyes and said, "To think that this late in my career I've been reduced to copying crap like this."
Speaking of good lines - one more story (and any sportswriter has a million of them). We're at a dinner the night before a big game. A buddy of mine was a heavy drinker, to say the least. We'd travel together sometimes, and I remember he'd get in the passenger seat, pull out a bottle of Jack Daniels, unscrew the top, and throw it out the window with the farewell, "We won't be needing this anymore!"
Anyway, we're at this bowl-sponsored dinner the night before the big game. This guy is already drunk when they serve the steak. He decides he can't eat the steak, but doesn't want to give it up, so he slips it into the side pocket of his sport coat.
The next day he's at the stadium, wearing the only sport coat he brought with him. Completely serious, he asks, "What's this big stain around my side pocket?"
We tell him the story - which he doesn't remember - and he looks inside the pocket and, sure enough, there's a steak in there.
His reaction?
"Thank God they weren't serving soup!"
Ah, if only all of us Southern sportswriters could write as well as we could talk.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Blest Be The Tie That Binds (Happy New Year!)
For the greater part of my life, I have legitimately avoided the pressure of New Year's Eve.
It's one of the days of the year that I came to dread when I was in my 20s because there was such pressure to do something "fun" - which meant, usually, some elaborate dress-up party or dinner with a show or concert. And you have to find the 'perfect' place to be at midnight, and, of course, the perfect person to be with.
I can remember one New Year's Eve in downtown Atlanta with a girl I was dating at the time. I don't remember what we'd done that night, but I remember we were going to try to be on Margaret Mitchell Square, at the intersection of Peachtree and Pryor streets, in front of the big round Coca-Cola sign that was a landmark in Atlanta for so long (until Georgia Pacific bought the building that used to be the Loew's Theatre - where Gone With The Wind premiered - and tore it down to build its corporate headquarters. However, GP insisted it be given a Peachtree Street address, requiring the city to fill in Pryor Street, and then insisted the Coca-Cola sign come down, because Georgia Pacific didn't want its corporate headquarters to be over-shadowed by another corporate logo. Can you tell I'm still bitter about that, even after all these years?)
Anyway, we were on Peachtree Street at midnight, but what I remember most was afterward we walked back through the Hyatt Regency Hotel, and I swear the lobby floor was an inch deep in alcohol. I'd never seen anything like it. We were literally splashing through the lobby. I have no idea what went on in the lobby of the Hyatt that night, but I think it was wilder than whatever happened on Peachtree.
Another time I was in New Orleans for a Sugar Bowl, and was in this old jazz bar on Bourbon Street. I wanted to be outside on Bourbon Street for midnight, but it was so packed that I wound up crossing over into the New Year wedged in the doorway of the bar (I think it was called something like the "Horseshoe Lounge;" it isn't there anymore). Such was the crush of humanity that I could neither go out into the street, nor back into the bar.
For most of my adult life, I've been on the road for New Year's Eve covering some college football bowl game. If the game I was covering wasn't actually being played on New Year's Eve, the bowl game usually had a party planned for those of us in the media. I remember I was at the Orange Bowl on New Year's Eve 1999 for the Y2K scare, at a Gloria Estefan concert - although actually I think I was back in the hospitality suite on the top floor of whatever hotel I was staying at when midnight actually rolled around.
In those days, I spent an awful lot of those kind of moments with sportswriters and sports information directors. (Someday I should recount spending Christmas Eve in the bar in the lobby of this big old classic hotel in El Paso with - of course - a bunch of sportswriters.)
Yes, I missed seeing quite a few New Year's roll in with The Trophy Wife (the 'perfect person' mentioned above). She would go to parties and I would be where ever I was, but we'd always try to make sure we were on the phone with each other at midnight of the time zone she was in.
But I can't say I missed the pressure of having to figure out what to do on those nights.
Interesting (at least to me) is the fact that I spent the first 18 or 19 New Year's Eve of my life in the same place: church.
We had what we Southern Baptists called "Watch Night" services. I think the idea was that if The Lord should decide to come back either in the final minutes of the old year or the first few minutes of the new, He'd find a bunch of us waiting for Him in church.
I don't remember much about those services. I think they probably started later than a normal evening service. But what I do remember is that at the end of the service - I think after we'd share Communion (or "The Lord's Supper" as we called it) - is that everyone would get up from their seats and circle the sanctuary/auditorium and join hands. Often, it seems like we'd be two or three or four deep around the church, the "Body" unified.
And while much of the rest of the world sang "Auld Lang Syne," we'd sing "Blest Be The Tie That Binds."
There are certain things about the church I grew up in that will stick with me forever. Not all of them are good - this was the late 1960s-early 1970s after all, and there were issues between the generations (see here).
But there was much good.
For example, I can't see a baptism without hearing "Brother Paul" Van Gorder saying, "Buried in the likeness of His death; raised in the likeness of His resurrection; to walk in newness of life" - particularly because for the longest time when I was a child I thought the last line was "to walk into the supply room." I love that phrase (the real one, not the supply room one), and still repeat it mentally at every baptism I see.
Another is that ending to the Watch Night Service, the way we sang in the New Year. Perhaps it is age, perhaps it is nostalgia, perhaps - probably - it's both. But I miss the church gathered round in a huge circle, joining hands, and welcoming in the New Year with the words:
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
Before our Father's throne
We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one
Our comforts and our cares.
We share each other's woes,
Our mutual burdens bear;
And often for each other flows
The sympathizing tear.
When we asunder part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.
You know, now that I think about it, we might actually have gathered and sang "How Great Thou Art." We sang that song a lot.
It has been a long time. Both are great songs. Maybe we sang them both.
But for tonight, this is my story and I'm sticking to it.
Happy New Year!
It's one of the days of the year that I came to dread when I was in my 20s because there was such pressure to do something "fun" - which meant, usually, some elaborate dress-up party or dinner with a show or concert. And you have to find the 'perfect' place to be at midnight, and, of course, the perfect person to be with.
I can remember one New Year's Eve in downtown Atlanta with a girl I was dating at the time. I don't remember what we'd done that night, but I remember we were going to try to be on Margaret Mitchell Square, at the intersection of Peachtree and Pryor streets, in front of the big round Coca-Cola sign that was a landmark in Atlanta for so long (until Georgia Pacific bought the building that used to be the Loew's Theatre - where Gone With The Wind premiered - and tore it down to build its corporate headquarters. However, GP insisted it be given a Peachtree Street address, requiring the city to fill in Pryor Street, and then insisted the Coca-Cola sign come down, because Georgia Pacific didn't want its corporate headquarters to be over-shadowed by another corporate logo. Can you tell I'm still bitter about that, even after all these years?)
Anyway, we were on Peachtree Street at midnight, but what I remember most was afterward we walked back through the Hyatt Regency Hotel, and I swear the lobby floor was an inch deep in alcohol. I'd never seen anything like it. We were literally splashing through the lobby. I have no idea what went on in the lobby of the Hyatt that night, but I think it was wilder than whatever happened on Peachtree.
Another time I was in New Orleans for a Sugar Bowl, and was in this old jazz bar on Bourbon Street. I wanted to be outside on Bourbon Street for midnight, but it was so packed that I wound up crossing over into the New Year wedged in the doorway of the bar (I think it was called something like the "Horseshoe Lounge;" it isn't there anymore). Such was the crush of humanity that I could neither go out into the street, nor back into the bar.
For most of my adult life, I've been on the road for New Year's Eve covering some college football bowl game. If the game I was covering wasn't actually being played on New Year's Eve, the bowl game usually had a party planned for those of us in the media. I remember I was at the Orange Bowl on New Year's Eve 1999 for the Y2K scare, at a Gloria Estefan concert - although actually I think I was back in the hospitality suite on the top floor of whatever hotel I was staying at when midnight actually rolled around.
In those days, I spent an awful lot of those kind of moments with sportswriters and sports information directors. (Someday I should recount spending Christmas Eve in the bar in the lobby of this big old classic hotel in El Paso with - of course - a bunch of sportswriters.)
Yes, I missed seeing quite a few New Year's roll in with The Trophy Wife (the 'perfect person' mentioned above). She would go to parties and I would be where ever I was, but we'd always try to make sure we were on the phone with each other at midnight of the time zone she was in.
But I can't say I missed the pressure of having to figure out what to do on those nights.
Interesting (at least to me) is the fact that I spent the first 18 or 19 New Year's Eve of my life in the same place: church.
We had what we Southern Baptists called "Watch Night" services. I think the idea was that if The Lord should decide to come back either in the final minutes of the old year or the first few minutes of the new, He'd find a bunch of us waiting for Him in church.
I don't remember much about those services. I think they probably started later than a normal evening service. But what I do remember is that at the end of the service - I think after we'd share Communion (or "The Lord's Supper" as we called it) - is that everyone would get up from their seats and circle the sanctuary/auditorium and join hands. Often, it seems like we'd be two or three or four deep around the church, the "Body" unified.
And while much of the rest of the world sang "Auld Lang Syne," we'd sing "Blest Be The Tie That Binds."
There are certain things about the church I grew up in that will stick with me forever. Not all of them are good - this was the late 1960s-early 1970s after all, and there were issues between the generations (see here).
But there was much good.
For example, I can't see a baptism without hearing "Brother Paul" Van Gorder saying, "Buried in the likeness of His death; raised in the likeness of His resurrection; to walk in newness of life" - particularly because for the longest time when I was a child I thought the last line was "to walk into the supply room." I love that phrase (the real one, not the supply room one), and still repeat it mentally at every baptism I see.
Another is that ending to the Watch Night Service, the way we sang in the New Year. Perhaps it is age, perhaps it is nostalgia, perhaps - probably - it's both. But I miss the church gathered round in a huge circle, joining hands, and welcoming in the New Year with the words:
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
Before our Father's throne
We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one
Our comforts and our cares.
We share each other's woes,
Our mutual burdens bear;
And often for each other flows
The sympathizing tear.
When we asunder part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.
You know, now that I think about it, we might actually have gathered and sang "How Great Thou Art." We sang that song a lot.
It has been a long time. Both are great songs. Maybe we sang them both.
But for tonight, this is my story and I'm sticking to it.
Happy New Year!
Monday, December 26, 2011
Christmas: Pressure to blog
I haven't written anything in awhile. I'm sorry (if you care).
For so long I wrote on deadlines, and it's nice not to have to worry about that now.
On the other hand, I feel the old newspaper pressure to keep something fresh on this blog as often as possible, just in case. I don't want anyone to come to this blog and be disappointed.
So I'm formulating some new ideas I want to get to.
One is about riding elevators. I struck me how elevators are little universes, where people come on and get off at random times, and the interaction between people on the elevators is always interesting.
Another is about family. Christmas does that to me. I started thinking about my own family, and then Jesus' family, and how unusual Jesus' family wound up being - how they doubted him!
And there is a whole blog about my review of Warhorse. Let me just say, my sons didn't want to go. I told them Steven Spielberg didn't make bad movies. They were right and I was wrong. It was really a waste of time on so many levels. But maybe I'll get to that, too.
Anyway, consider this all a 'tease' for when I have some time to write. But right now, I'm enjoying Christmas with my family. The boys are playing ping-pong on the kitchen island (see the pictures on my facebook page). I always wondered why The Trophy Wife insisted on putting in such a huge island in the kitchen, and now I understand!
Christmas was really a lot of fun, once we got everyone in the mood. We're at that stage in life where the Trophy Wife and I have to wake the kids up to open presents now. The night before, we'd actually talked about waiting until after church to open presents, but on Christmas morning the Trophy Wife woke up and couldn't stand it; she loves Christmas and family so much. So we got the kids up, fought over the attitudes of a few sluggards who didn't want to get in the spirit just yet, and had a great time.
The one gift that I thought was really odd was that ping-pong set. It was just a net, paddles and balls, and made to set up on a random flat surface. I thought it would never be used. Instead, we've played it non-stop; even while Christmas dinner was being prepared.
Funny how sometimes what seems like the most unlikely gifts turn out to be the best.
Anyway, I hope you had a Merry Christmas (whoever you are), and I feel rejuvenated and ready to write again. I hope you come back and take the time to read.
Meanwhile, the Princess Bear has returned from Brussels (When in Brussels) and returned to her Life in the Slow Lane blog (now called: Adventures of a Girl Raised in the South).
Peace and Goodwill ...
For so long I wrote on deadlines, and it's nice not to have to worry about that now.
On the other hand, I feel the old newspaper pressure to keep something fresh on this blog as often as possible, just in case. I don't want anyone to come to this blog and be disappointed.
So I'm formulating some new ideas I want to get to.
One is about riding elevators. I struck me how elevators are little universes, where people come on and get off at random times, and the interaction between people on the elevators is always interesting.
Another is about family. Christmas does that to me. I started thinking about my own family, and then Jesus' family, and how unusual Jesus' family wound up being - how they doubted him!
And there is a whole blog about my review of Warhorse. Let me just say, my sons didn't want to go. I told them Steven Spielberg didn't make bad movies. They were right and I was wrong. It was really a waste of time on so many levels. But maybe I'll get to that, too.
Anyway, consider this all a 'tease' for when I have some time to write. But right now, I'm enjoying Christmas with my family. The boys are playing ping-pong on the kitchen island (see the pictures on my facebook page). I always wondered why The Trophy Wife insisted on putting in such a huge island in the kitchen, and now I understand!
Christmas was really a lot of fun, once we got everyone in the mood. We're at that stage in life where the Trophy Wife and I have to wake the kids up to open presents now. The night before, we'd actually talked about waiting until after church to open presents, but on Christmas morning the Trophy Wife woke up and couldn't stand it; she loves Christmas and family so much. So we got the kids up, fought over the attitudes of a few sluggards who didn't want to get in the spirit just yet, and had a great time.
The one gift that I thought was really odd was that ping-pong set. It was just a net, paddles and balls, and made to set up on a random flat surface. I thought it would never be used. Instead, we've played it non-stop; even while Christmas dinner was being prepared.
Funny how sometimes what seems like the most unlikely gifts turn out to be the best.
Anyway, I hope you had a Merry Christmas (whoever you are), and I feel rejuvenated and ready to write again. I hope you come back and take the time to read.
Meanwhile, the Princess Bear has returned from Brussels (When in Brussels) and returned to her Life in the Slow Lane blog (now called: Adventures of a Girl Raised in the South).
Peace and Goodwill ...
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Merry Christmas
That's right: Merry Christmas.
For many of us, despite the shopping and parties and distractions, this is the season in which we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.
Just like Christians took over a Roman holiday to "Christianize" it and celebrate Christ's birth in December (not likely to have been the actual season of His birth), these days the "Romans" of society are slowly trying to re-take the holiday and de-Christianize it.
I heard someone the other day expounding on how we need to be sensitive to those of other faiths during this time - Muslims, those of the Jewish faith, Buddhists, etc. And I agree, we should always be sensitive to those of other faiths.
But they don't celebrate Christmas, for the simple reason they don't believe that Christ is the Son of God who came to take away the sins of the world. Therefore His birth doesn't carry the significance it does for Christians.
However, they do celebrate Christmas in the sense that this is not an exclusive holiday. So people of other faith or even no faith at all decorate, put up trees, talk about Santa Claus and buy and exchange gifts and some still wish each other "Merry Christmas."
Because the national holiday, as recognized by all the states of the Union, is "Christmas."
Does that establish a state religion? Or does it simply acknowledge a day that has been and continues to be special to millions of Americans for hundreds of years. Recognizing that so many people want to be with their families on that day, governments went ahead and rather than have people show up for work grudgingly went ahead and made it a national holiday.
It wasn't always that way. The Puritans tried to outlaw the celebration of Christmas (as did England during the days of Cromwell and what was essentially a Protestant Revolution), because they felt the emphasis was inappropriate.
It wasn't a recognized national holiday until the early 1900s. Congress was expected to meet and work on Christmas Day well into the late 1800s at least.
So what government did was simply go ahead and make official what was, for many Americans, an 'unofficial' holiday. If we're cynical, we recognize that government loves to be able to appear to do things for the voting public that costs little but reaps great public reward, and creating a holiday is one of those.
Not that I'm complaining.
Yes, if we're incredibly sensitive, we see the establishment of the Christmas holiday as some kind of step into establishing a state religion - although it would appear that state religion is commerce, as what has happened is the creation of the biggest economic boom of the year which is good for businesses and therefore taxes.
But enough of that rambling.
It's Christmas. Peace on Earth, good will to all people.
And yes, to many of us it's a significant spiritual holiday.
To many more, it's a chance to party.
But hopefully you get the chance to gather with family and/or friends during this time, and realize that the greatest gift we have is the gift of relationships with other people - hopefully people we love and who love us, who we care for and who care for us, who we accept and who accept us.
Because that is the message of Christmas: God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, so that whoever should believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
That's family, that's love, that acceptance, that's a gift.
Merry Christmas.
For many of us, despite the shopping and parties and distractions, this is the season in which we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.
Just like Christians took over a Roman holiday to "Christianize" it and celebrate Christ's birth in December (not likely to have been the actual season of His birth), these days the "Romans" of society are slowly trying to re-take the holiday and de-Christianize it.
I heard someone the other day expounding on how we need to be sensitive to those of other faiths during this time - Muslims, those of the Jewish faith, Buddhists, etc. And I agree, we should always be sensitive to those of other faiths.
But they don't celebrate Christmas, for the simple reason they don't believe that Christ is the Son of God who came to take away the sins of the world. Therefore His birth doesn't carry the significance it does for Christians.
However, they do celebrate Christmas in the sense that this is not an exclusive holiday. So people of other faith or even no faith at all decorate, put up trees, talk about Santa Claus and buy and exchange gifts and some still wish each other "Merry Christmas."
Because the national holiday, as recognized by all the states of the Union, is "Christmas."
Does that establish a state religion? Or does it simply acknowledge a day that has been and continues to be special to millions of Americans for hundreds of years. Recognizing that so many people want to be with their families on that day, governments went ahead and rather than have people show up for work grudgingly went ahead and made it a national holiday.
It wasn't always that way. The Puritans tried to outlaw the celebration of Christmas (as did England during the days of Cromwell and what was essentially a Protestant Revolution), because they felt the emphasis was inappropriate.
It wasn't a recognized national holiday until the early 1900s. Congress was expected to meet and work on Christmas Day well into the late 1800s at least.
So what government did was simply go ahead and make official what was, for many Americans, an 'unofficial' holiday. If we're cynical, we recognize that government loves to be able to appear to do things for the voting public that costs little but reaps great public reward, and creating a holiday is one of those.
Not that I'm complaining.
Yes, if we're incredibly sensitive, we see the establishment of the Christmas holiday as some kind of step into establishing a state religion - although it would appear that state religion is commerce, as what has happened is the creation of the biggest economic boom of the year which is good for businesses and therefore taxes.
But enough of that rambling.
It's Christmas. Peace on Earth, good will to all people.
And yes, to many of us it's a significant spiritual holiday.
To many more, it's a chance to party.
But hopefully you get the chance to gather with family and/or friends during this time, and realize that the greatest gift we have is the gift of relationships with other people - hopefully people we love and who love us, who we care for and who care for us, who we accept and who accept us.
Because that is the message of Christmas: God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, so that whoever should believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
That's family, that's love, that acceptance, that's a gift.
Merry Christmas.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Learning to stand up to bullies and critics
So I'm flipping channels the other day when I come across a black-and-white movie starring William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Frederick March, and just about every one of those actors who seemed to show up in every movie made in the 1950s.
It was a movie called "Executive Suite,'' although I didn't realize it until I looked it up. Turns out, according to one review, it's considered an "overlooked" drama, although it was nominated for a handful of Academy Awards. One interesting thing about the movie is that it has absolutely no musical soundtrack. And it does an outstanding job of covering issues of insider trading, board manipulation, and sexual harassment, proving that there really isn't anything new under the sun after all.
It's about a furniture company whose president dies, and the struggle ensues over who will take over and how the company will be run.
However, there was this one scene in the movie that struck me. William Holden and June Allyson's son has a big baseball game that is apparently very important to everyone in the town within which they live. It's basically a little league game - the kids look to be about 12 years old - but the stands are packed. Holden-Allyson's son is pitching, holding on to a 2-0 lead when he gives up a big hit that scores a run. Then he starts pitching to the next batter, and can't throw a strike.
Some of the adults in the stands are cheering and clapping, but some are booing.
That's right: booing! The adults - the parents of the kids playing the game - are cheering and clapping and booing and calling out what I guess was 1950s trash-talk from the stands.
Today, of course, that scene would be considered so offensive as to warrant boycotts of the movie - except that such a scene would have no more of a chance of being included in a movie today than terrorists in a movie actually being identified as being radical followers of Islam.
And then the climax of the movie involves this impassioned speech by William Holden's character in which he says the company will go back to making the kind of furniture that made the company famous, quality furniture that the workers in the factory will be proud to make and that the salesmen of that furniture will take pride in showing to potential customers.
The ending doesn't sound very exciting, I know. But the truth is, it's remarkable that there is no force or trickery or deceit but just an impassioned speech on quality and pride.
And it hits me that the qualities that William Holden stands up for are the qualities his movie-screen son learns by performing in front of a crowd of people that aren't worried about hurting his self-esteem or wounding his pride. They're simply watching a ball game, treating the kids playing like ball players; ball players who sometimes do well and sometimes don't do so well.
Today, of course, we'd have to cheer the young boy as he throws ball after ball simply for trying.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not for booing young kids at little league baseball games. But neither am I for giving everyone a trophy just for showing up and telling a kid who blows the big game, "That's all right; you did your best."
I was a kid once. I played a lot of sports. I knew when I didn't do well and I knew when I did.
But I also knew the kids that weren't very good, the ones whose parents fought to make sure there were enough "all-star'' teams so that every kid that wanted to be an all-star got to be one; that did away with trophies for first place and made sure every kid on every team got a trophy; who did away with recognition for being the best and made sure everyone was recognized for trying.
And the only kids it fooled were the kids who weren't really trying in the first place.
It occurs to me that our modern American world is being run by those people who, as children, never learned to face their own failure or to stand up in the face of negative reaction; kids whose idea of 'standing up' to the playground bully was to attach themselves to an authority figure for protection, looking to the adults to stop other kids from being so mean, and rallying around the motto "It's not fair!"
You don't learn to stand up for yourself, to face down your fears and critics, to develop confidence in yourself if you're not challenged. And honestly, is there anyone who doesn't learn more from failure than success? What was that famous story about Thomas Edison and how he failed to produce the light bulb the first 14,000 times he tried, but still considered everyone of those 14,000 failures a success because each one taught him something and got him closer to success?
Yet today's society would remove all such challenges from all of us - particularly our children - if they had their way. No wonder we're living in a society that believes government should look after us; that government is there to enforce artificially created standards that says each one of us is a success in our own right.
OK, the analogy breaks down at some point. In fact, I might actually have gotten lost in there somewhere.
The point is that in facing the school yard bully, or being put in positions where it is obvious we succeed or fail, we develop the kind of character that causes William Holden to stand up to his fellow executives, face their apparently unknown (to him) conspiracy, and win the day with an argument based on truth, self-worth, and restoring a sense of pride in what they can produce and sell.
By the way - the kid in the movie? After throwing three balls, he came back and won the game.
We don't know how. Williams Holden didn't stay for the end of the game because he had to get to the board meeting that would determine the future of the company.
But at the end he asks wife June Allyson who won and she answers, "We did."
It's one of those 1950s moments where you understand she's speaking for them all.
It was a movie called "Executive Suite,'' although I didn't realize it until I looked it up. Turns out, according to one review, it's considered an "overlooked" drama, although it was nominated for a handful of Academy Awards. One interesting thing about the movie is that it has absolutely no musical soundtrack. And it does an outstanding job of covering issues of insider trading, board manipulation, and sexual harassment, proving that there really isn't anything new under the sun after all.
It's about a furniture company whose president dies, and the struggle ensues over who will take over and how the company will be run.
However, there was this one scene in the movie that struck me. William Holden and June Allyson's son has a big baseball game that is apparently very important to everyone in the town within which they live. It's basically a little league game - the kids look to be about 12 years old - but the stands are packed. Holden-Allyson's son is pitching, holding on to a 2-0 lead when he gives up a big hit that scores a run. Then he starts pitching to the next batter, and can't throw a strike.
Some of the adults in the stands are cheering and clapping, but some are booing.
That's right: booing! The adults - the parents of the kids playing the game - are cheering and clapping and booing and calling out what I guess was 1950s trash-talk from the stands.
Today, of course, that scene would be considered so offensive as to warrant boycotts of the movie - except that such a scene would have no more of a chance of being included in a movie today than terrorists in a movie actually being identified as being radical followers of Islam.
And then the climax of the movie involves this impassioned speech by William Holden's character in which he says the company will go back to making the kind of furniture that made the company famous, quality furniture that the workers in the factory will be proud to make and that the salesmen of that furniture will take pride in showing to potential customers.
The ending doesn't sound very exciting, I know. But the truth is, it's remarkable that there is no force or trickery or deceit but just an impassioned speech on quality and pride.
And it hits me that the qualities that William Holden stands up for are the qualities his movie-screen son learns by performing in front of a crowd of people that aren't worried about hurting his self-esteem or wounding his pride. They're simply watching a ball game, treating the kids playing like ball players; ball players who sometimes do well and sometimes don't do so well.
Today, of course, we'd have to cheer the young boy as he throws ball after ball simply for trying.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not for booing young kids at little league baseball games. But neither am I for giving everyone a trophy just for showing up and telling a kid who blows the big game, "That's all right; you did your best."
I was a kid once. I played a lot of sports. I knew when I didn't do well and I knew when I did.
But I also knew the kids that weren't very good, the ones whose parents fought to make sure there were enough "all-star'' teams so that every kid that wanted to be an all-star got to be one; that did away with trophies for first place and made sure every kid on every team got a trophy; who did away with recognition for being the best and made sure everyone was recognized for trying.
And the only kids it fooled were the kids who weren't really trying in the first place.
It occurs to me that our modern American world is being run by those people who, as children, never learned to face their own failure or to stand up in the face of negative reaction; kids whose idea of 'standing up' to the playground bully was to attach themselves to an authority figure for protection, looking to the adults to stop other kids from being so mean, and rallying around the motto "It's not fair!"
You don't learn to stand up for yourself, to face down your fears and critics, to develop confidence in yourself if you're not challenged. And honestly, is there anyone who doesn't learn more from failure than success? What was that famous story about Thomas Edison and how he failed to produce the light bulb the first 14,000 times he tried, but still considered everyone of those 14,000 failures a success because each one taught him something and got him closer to success?
Yet today's society would remove all such challenges from all of us - particularly our children - if they had their way. No wonder we're living in a society that believes government should look after us; that government is there to enforce artificially created standards that says each one of us is a success in our own right.
OK, the analogy breaks down at some point. In fact, I might actually have gotten lost in there somewhere.
The point is that in facing the school yard bully, or being put in positions where it is obvious we succeed or fail, we develop the kind of character that causes William Holden to stand up to his fellow executives, face their apparently unknown (to him) conspiracy, and win the day with an argument based on truth, self-worth, and restoring a sense of pride in what they can produce and sell.
By the way - the kid in the movie? After throwing three balls, he came back and won the game.
We don't know how. Williams Holden didn't stay for the end of the game because he had to get to the board meeting that would determine the future of the company.
But at the end he asks wife June Allyson who won and she answers, "We did."
It's one of those 1950s moments where you understand she's speaking for them all.
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