A Game of Integrity

I've started playing golf this spring with a lot more regularity than I have in many years.  I joined the Ladies Eighteen Hole League at the club which plays on Tuesday mornings. In addition to that, I try to play  at least one other day during the week with the girls, and then on Sunday mornings, Ron and I play a round...of golf. 

I like to refer to the women I play with as girls.  It makes us sound younger and more vibrant, or at least less old and stiff.  There are some younger ladies who golf with us and while they can really rip one off the tee, when it comes down to chipping and putting, and it always does, experience trumps gas, and my money is on the seasoned vets every time. 

One afternoon after we finished playing, I was sitting on the little side patio at the club with a few of the girls and somewhere in between the wine, the beer, the chips and the pretzels, we began talking about the rules of golf.  One particular player who was sitting with us has been playing golf for upwards of forty years and knows the rules like most people know the alphabet, which if you have ever been pulled over after having a few beers you will find out that you don't just know the alphabet forwards, you know the damn thing backwards, too.  Speaking of which, I have always prided myself in knowing the rules of any game I play, forwards and backwards, and I play a lot of games, but I admit I have failed miserably in learning the rules of golf.

I'm not going to try to make excuses (yes, I am) but, I will say that there is no other game with as many rules as there are in golf.  It's no wonder that most people who play this game are ignorant...of the rules.  I remember when I first started playing.  Rules?  Who the hell cared about the rules? After whiffing and topping and more whiffing and more topping, I just wanted to hit the fucking ball!


Time passed and my golf game improved along with my knowledge of the game.  I  felt comfortable enough with what I knew about the rules and the etiquette to get by.  That was until recently when I listened to someone who had taken the time to learn what we call in tennis the "knotty problem" rules.  Those are the rules that apply to situations that rarely come up, but when they do, it's good to know how to handle them. Too often we find ourselves standing there scratching out heads because our balls are in such weird places that we don't know what to do...which is way better that scratching our balls because our heads are in such weird places that we don't know what to do!

But as our golfing guru told us when we talked about the rules of golf: golf is a game of integrity.  It's up to you to play it that way.

People Who Are Smarter Than I Am Said These Things

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Insight doesn't always lead to a change in behavior.

Good enough never is.

Experience is a hard teacher.  She gives the test first and the lessons afterwards. 

If you really want to do something, you'll find a way.  If you don't, you'll find an excuse. 

You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. 

The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do.  The hard part is doing it.

The Sound and The Fury

We knew the storm was coming; there were warnings all day long on television and across the Internet. I mentioned to Ron that maybe we should batten down the hatches. He looked up from his newspaper, nodded, grunted, then went back to reading. At that point I wasn't worried, but in an effort to err on the side of caution, I went outside and moved the two lightweight patio chairs that had in the past proved to be vulnerable in a mild breeze, to a more secure location up against the house. I figured everything else could weather the storm.
 Ron left for work ahead of the usual time...something about going on the air early because of the storm. As the afternoon passed and the weather and warnings got more precarious, I started to get a little worried and I urged PhillyTwo to cancel her evening class. She maintained, "I can't. I have students coming early to make up their exams." Luckily, she was safely back home before the apocalypse.
I was standing at the front door watching the wind and rain when the first hail started pounding the house. PhillyTwo was in the kitchen. She came running and we decided to get in the hall closet. But of course, we didn't shut the closet door. We stood with our heads poked out so we could continue to watch the storm through the front windows. The sound was so loud and deafening that we didn't even hear the dining room windows break, just a few feet away. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, but was probably five minutes, there was a reprieve. We emerged from our shelter and started looking at the piles of hail stones on the porch. Before long, the storm resumed at full throttle. Once again we retreated to the closet, but for only a brief stay. The hail stopped and the wind subsided, so we grabbed our flashlights and our cameras and headed outside. The porch and the yard were white with hail. The outdoor furniture that I had earlier decided could weather the storm was strewn across the yard, most of it ruined. Those two chairs I moved? They were right where I put them and they were fine. We found dozens of roof tiles (ours), a bunch of vinyl siding (our neighbor's), broken flower pots, ceramic garden animals with gaping holes in their heads and a busted spotlight. PhillyTwo's car was as dimpled as a golf ball and our front door looked like it was the victim of a drive-by shooting. We lost three windows and all of our front screens. The storm that hadn't worried us earlier had certainly left it's mark.

Epilogue.
There are forces out there that are just as dangerous as severe weather.
We had one small ceramic squirrel that was sitting unobtrusively on a back step. He had been newly-dubbed "The Survivor" because he had made it unscathed through the torrential rains, gale force winds and unrelenting hail. But after he lived through all of that, "The Survivor" fell prey to one of the most unforeseen dangers known to mankind...Ron. Yesterday, Ron decided to hose off the deck and in his usual clumsy, take-note-of-nothing way, he managed to knock the poor critter off the step and he broke our sole survivor. No wonder storm warnings don't scare me. I live with Ron.

It Takes One To Know One

Blogging about politics entitiles you to pass yourself off as a political insider about as much as making mac and cheese from a box qualifies you to pass yourself off as a chef. In other words, it doesn't. Just because you take the time to voice your opinion on a blog doesn't mean that you know more than a fifth- grader about the political arena. I'm not saying you shouldn't put your two cents worth on the screen. You should. It's healthy. But if you want to convince me that you're an expert on the subject, a po-li-ti-co, you have to tell me something I don't already know. You have to open my eyes, point me in a new direction, lead me to a place I haven't been before. Whether it will be something I can agree with or something I can't stomach, it doesn't matter, as long as it's the truth and it's something new. Because, my friend, if you write a political blog and all you do is beat the poor ol' dead horse, don't try to pass yourself off as an insider, 'cause you're not. You're just like the rest of us: opinionated with the slightest hint of knowledge.

And on another note: If you're campaigning for Mayor of the City of Knoxville, is it misleading, unethical or simply smarmy to have a logo that reads: Padgett 
 Knoxville City Mayor
                                        

Because, you're not the Knoxville City Mayor. You're running for mayor. Shouldn't you at least be required to include "vote" or "for" somewhere in there?
Where's the Bureau of Ethics or the Fair Political Practice Commission when you need it? Oh yeah, we don't have either of those in this state. Small wonder.

Forty Years Worth of Hit Records

I watched two-hours worth of the Bee Gees' last night on the Biography channel, which wouldn't be such a disco-era confession, except that I had seen the whole thing before, not long ago, and I managed to sit through it again. Two hours is a long time to stay focused on any show, let alone one that doesn't have a  panel of judges or a boardroom, and doesn't end with someone getting voted off or fired, but since the Bee Gees are one of my all-time fav's, I hung in there.

Only Michael Jackson could capture my attention for that length of time, and has. According to PhillyTwo, I've watched "This Is It" no less than fifty times. I think she exaggerates, but I do love that documentary. With the Bee Gees, it was their singing. With Michael, it was his dancing.

Like most angst-ridden teen-agers, I loved the sappy ballads of the Bee Gees back in the sixties: "To Love Somebody", "Holiday", "Massachusetts", and the most gut-wrenching of all, "I Started a Joke". Who couldn't cry to that and what the hell was it even about? It didn't matter. Their voices were filled with sorrow and that's all a girl needed to well up. But it wasn't until "Nights on Broadway" in 1975, that I became a true Bee Gees fan and it's still my absolute favorite.

Michael Jackson wasn't really in my radar (I was apparently asleep on the job) until the night he performed "Billie Jean" live on a Motown special. That was in 1983. I pretty much stayed a fan of his music and his dancing, but not his lifestyle or his actions, until his death. Longer, actually. I can feel more comfortable watching him now, since he's no longer a threat to children - his own or anybody else's. His judgement day has passed...he faced the music and I'd say the outcome was "Bad".

Pawn Shop, Skaggster and Crash

I've had a lengthy and little-needed leave of absence from this blog as my band (more like a quartet) of loyal followers have pointed out, so I might as well get cracking.  I'm actually writing this on my "new" laptop, and by new, I mean the one I picked up at a pawn shop last week. And by laptop, I actually mean  "fattop",  a term PhillyTwo coined as soon as she laid eyes on the dinosaur I brought home. And if she thinks her nickname for my computer bothers me, she's mistaken. I like my honker of a screen. Let the young-ins buy those itty bitty scratch pads. Size matters to real women. Real, old sight-challenged women, that is. We like our laptops like we like our men: in good working order, handy, dependable, turned on when they're with us, in hibernation when they're not. Now, I want to mention something about my Dad, his old mandolin, and Ricky Skaggs one last time before I put that topic out to pasture. I first wrote about it here back in September, 2010, after Ricky Skaggs performed at Rhythm and Roots in Bristol, my hometown. I did a short follow-up here when Ricky Skaggs, or as we affectionately call him, the Skaggster, called my Dad (known affectionately by his grandchildren as Roy) and chatted him up about the three common bonds they share: their love of bluegrass music, interest in the history surrounding it and the Skaggster's mandolin that once belonged to Roy. They had a nice conversation and that was the end of that...or so we thought. At the end of January, 2011, the Appalachian Cultural Music Association honored  our 89 year old guitar-playin', mandolin-pickin, music-lovin' father, Roy Webb, and who should appear to share the moment with him...you guessed it...the Skaggster. When he got wind of the event, he called Roy and said, "I wanna be there." So Roy said, "Come on." And he did. But he didn't just come to the event  - unannounced to the public and unpaid by anyone, I might add - he showed up at the house early in the day, visited for a few hours, had lunch with the whole family (what a brave man), then he came downtown to the Paramount Theatre and performed with Roy that night. It was such a remarkable thing for him to do and it's a memory we will have to carry with us forever. Meanwhile, back at the ranch...Like clockwork, I brought the fattop home and the trusty desktop crashed like it was a dot-com company and this was April 10, 2000. I went from flush to hangin by a thread in a matter of minutes. I mean, I love my "new" fattop but I need my ol' reliable. This morning I schlepped that tower to the doctor like it was my sick child and hopefully after some hi-tech penicillin it'll be as good as new. Not that I'm all that into "new".

A Plug For Jeopardy

I'm an avid Jeopardy viewer, so it's no surprise that I caught Paul Wampler's first appearance on the show, three days ago. Paul is from Knoxville and I said from the start, "I know him from somewhere." His face was so, so familiar. He has continued to win every day and I've continued to rack my brain, not only to try to come up with Jeopardy answers, but to try to figure out how I knew the champion. It wasn't until the chat segment in yesterday's show that I finally remembered. A big wad of tobacco strategically tucked into his lower front jaw would have given me the edge I needed, but when Alex mentioned that Paul's dream is to play in the World Series of Poker main event, the jig was up. I've played poker with him...or should I say, against him. Either way, I'd rather be pitted against him there than on the Jeopardy show. He's one smart cookie.

And for the record, this is the second time in recent history that I've seen a familiar-faced contestant on Jeopardy. About six months ago, PhillyTwo and I had just settled into our usual spots on our couches to watch the show, when who should appear as a contestant, but Jelisa Castrodale. Now that name may not ring a bell for most of you, and rest assured it didn't for me either, but her face sure did. I had seen it many, many times. Not only was it was part of the masthead at the top of her blog, "The Typing Makes Me Sound Busy," but over time, she had posted lots of pictures of herself in the blog. So even though I had never met the girl, I felt like I knew her. Both PhillyTwo and I had been regular readers, so we were excited when we saw her and thrilled that she won that first day. Unfortunately, she got eliminated the next day, so her reign was short-lived, as was her blog. She stopped posting there about a year ago, but I'm sure she moved on to other projects. She makes her living as a writer.

Paul makes his living as a computer programmer. His gig on Jeopardy has already netted him $50,000, but he's still alive (as a contestant) so it could get bigger. Maybe he'll take some of it to Vegas this summer to make his dream come true. Go Paul!!!