Dividing the Plunder

Trying another link. The last one seems to have worked. Please check out our friends Justin & Tasha and the very nifty thing they do together. Dividing the Plunder The CD rocks--you should buy several.

Vacation!

Oh this'll be fun. Ruthie and I are off early tomorrow morning for our vacation. We're planning to catch ballgames at Camden Yard in Baltimore, Fenway in Boston, and The Stadium. Then on to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and home by way of our friends the Gills in Pittsburgh (no game there, but we've been to PNC Park and its beautiful!). Plan to be home early in the week of the 27th. I guess you'll have to keep up with Ichiro on your own for a couple weeks (its "EE-chee-ro"). Ruthie and I are excited about all the baseball, but even more about the time together and away from things here (where life is great). Talk to ye on the other side. Peace to you.

I Can Only Imagine...

Lotta talk this week about fixing baseball. Is attendance bad? Does everyone really hate the Yankees? Is there too much offense? Will no one watch the All-Star Game tomorrow night? Do we care about steroids? I don’t know, but people at work keep asking me what I’d do if I were commissioner, so here it is…

Dream with me for a moment. Imagine a world in which there are only sixteen major league teams—the original sixteen. Instantly 350 sub-par baseballers are demoted to the minors where they belong. The talent represented by the remaining 400 players is concentrated into eight teams per league who can all compete every year. Not only does the talent level automatically increase, but the limited number of roster spots makes competition more intense than ever before as players fight each day to keep their jobs (after all, the minors will be loaded with guys who just missed the cut). Pitching staffs are solid through and through. All-Stars from previous years are now utility guys and pinch hitters. The DH is abolished forever, further purging the game of the marginal and washed up. Furthermore, the TV revenue is now divided eight way rather than into thirty measly pieces. For the first time ever only the best of the best compete, for baseball is now be open to the black, the Latino and the Asian. The world has never known baseball of this quality! Would that I could make it happen.

The Teams:
AL
Baltimore (the old St. Louis Browns)
Boston Red Sox
Chicago While Sox
Cleveland
Detroit
Minnesota (the original Washington Senators)
New York
Oakland A's (via Philadelphia)

NL
Atlanta (the old Boston Braves)
Chicago Cubs
Cincinnati
L.A. Dodgers (via Brooklyn)
Philadelphia Phillies
Pittsburgh
S.F. Giants (via NY)
St. Louis Cardinals

Peace, love and pitchers who can bunt,
ben

Ichiro Watch

.352

Wordlessly Watching

What a great day at work. The right couple of managers were off (which means that the right couple of managers were there), the floor was visible in our receiving department for the first time in a year, the weather was as perfect as it can be in July and I got to spend an hour out in it on a forklift, it's Friday, and I'm leaving on vacation in five days. Joy doesn't come from our circumstances, but happiness sure does and today I find meself very happy to be alive. I've been having more and more of those moments lately--moments where for whatever reason (and sometimes for none) I realize that I've stopped whatever I've been doing and am still and aware that its good to be alive. I've never been a nature guy (too into the comfortable indoors) but the blue sky and the breeze today held me attention for a long time. And since there are no unrelated topics, this is a good time to mention that for me birthday I received the Crosby, Stills & Nash boxed set of 4 CD's. Its wonderful. Never in human history have three men been so created to sing together. "Helplessly Hoping" is as effective these days as the sky and wind have been. This life is good. I wonder if art (and today music specifically) isn't a little better for existing in a world that is fallen and is being redeemed than it might have been in a perfect world. Maybe I'm talking out of me arse, but the story in David Crosby's eyes is moving. Pain can callous us, but it can also sensitize us to the beauty, to the good around us. The contrast can be overwhelming. None of this is new territory and I don't intend (ever) to sound philosophical. Its just that for all of me ignorance, I know today that Stephen Stills is me second favorite acoustic guitar player, the sun is shining, I am at peace and I am happy.

Ichiro Watch

.351

New Mexico

Me friend Ted was down from Michigan this week and we got to spend some time together Tuesday. Occurred to us that we've known each other for over ten years now--hard to believe. I have a fistfull of friends whom I do not see nearly often enough to suit me, though I don't usually realize how much I miss them until we're together. Ted is one of those people. From time to time I find myself in some sort of group setting where someone will ask, "What are you looking most forward to about heaven?" The older I get the more consistently I answer, "Being able to spend the time I want to with the people who are special to me." Its an unfortunate thing that we spend most of our lives away from the people we'd like to be with (marriage takes the edge off the sadness, as does time like I'll spend tonight with Michael and Justin). Sometimes the problem is geography, sometimes schedules, sometimes just my own relational laziness. At any rate, its nice to think that maybe someday all that love will feel more immediate than it’s able to here. Maybe that's a lame thing to look forward to most about What Comes Next. Maybe I should say something about worshipping Jesus non-stop forever, or maybe I have. Wouldn't surprise me at all to find that Jesus enjoys, as much as anything else, the love for him that binds us in a love for one another and how hard those two loves are to distinguish from each other. So Ted, Jared, Josh, Shawn, Drew, Mike, Rob, love y'all. And you are so welcome here if you're ever in New Mexico.

Ichiro Watch

.349

A friend of mine Kevin Rains is trying
to teach me how to set links... if you click on his name it goes to his blog
then I've done it. If not, blame Kevin cuz all I did was cut and paste this
into a post....

Finding Freedom in the Cage

Told ya. Yesterday's post seems so whiney that I'm tempted to delete it. Something tells me Kevin wouldn't approve, so I suppose it stays. Got to be something to be said for carrying on with life when you don't feel like it. I spent the weekend wondering for the first time whether or not Home Depot was a good place for me to be (almost let meself say "productive." God, deliver me from language like that) but this morning I went anyway and hadn't been there very long when Randy wandered back to me cage and we talked. Great stuff about the emotional damage we do to one another (all of us, not me and Randy) and the value of therapy and the good a small group of people can do for one another if they'll commit to doing it. Randy pointed out something that not enough people are talking about loud enough, which is that lots (most?) of the ways in which God answers our prayers and blesses and heals and redeems us are through the people in our lives. (Here I'm tempted to say, "instead of the supernatural," but I'm not sure I buy the distinction anymore.) At any rate, relationships like I have w/Randy remind me that Home Depot 3822 is a good place for me to be right now, not because he needs anything I have, but because I need him. Lots of people there love me unconditionally (whether they'd call it that or not) while I'm still surprised when I find that among churchy people. (Maybe I haven't been transparent enough to give them a chance). At any rate, the assembling of ourselves together took place around nine this morning in a dusty 12 foot chain link cage in the back of a hardware store. Lasted about 30 minutes. Happens all the time, and I don't intend to forsake it.

Peace to you.

This too shall pass.

Cranky today for a half-dozen reasons, none of them very good, which makes it worse. I've been predominantly excited for the last couple weeks, so I was bound to come down, but you're never quite ready, are you? Several people asked me this morning, "how are you" in a polite way and I tried to answer honestly, but its hard to say. "Cranky" isn't quite accurate (though it's getting more and more accurate as I cultivate this mood). I think I'm tired. Tired of work, tired of being hot, tired of being patient, tired of being dissatisfied with things, tired of caring. Told me friend Becky today that if I could just stop thinking for a week, I think I'd be okay. Told Tommy I'd like to go off to a cave somewhere (where I wouldn't get no mice stole off me either). What I need to do is stop reading books for a while up (or at least stick to fiction). I'm not sure that anything good is ever going to come of pursuing this whole "New Kind of Christian" thing. And I'm aware as I write that last sentence that I don't mean it, its just the mood I'm in. I'm also tired of complaining when I have such a fabulous life. Truly, I have nothing to complain about. Why then have I allowed myself this mood for the past day or so? The spiritual among you might suggest that I pray or read or sing a song or something, and maybe I should, but what I'm going to do is get up in the morning, clock back into work and try to live real life. My wife loves me, my dog is aware that I'm here and being well-adjusted is overrated.

Ichiro Watch

Ichiro's got it up to .347--I love this guy.

Barber's Adagio and the Star-Spangled Banner

Today is July 4th, which is making it feel ironic to me that yesterday I was finally able to have a conversation I've been hoping for for a year. I have a friend named Bill who was in Vietnam 31 years ago, and I've been eager to hear his story since I first began to get to know him. The whole Vietnam thing has been compelling to me since Rob and Glen and Mike and I walked to the theater behind Rob's mom's apartment to see Platoon. I think it was 1986 and if it was, I was 13 or 14. We blabbered all the way there about baseball (Boggs or Mattingly?) and practiced our cussing. Mindless stuff about slurpees and video games. Non-stop noise from the time we left Rob's mom's apartment, all the way through the previews (yeah, we were those kids you hate) which I do not remember, right up until we heard, for the first time, Samuel Barber's adagio for strings, which begins the movie. From that moment, all the way through the movie, not a word (which was unprecedented for us). We were overwhelmed by what we saw, by what we felt, and by the fact that all of this had just happened to our fathers' generation (and to some of our fathers). There's never been a better marriage of a film and a piece of music. After the show we walked the whole way back in silence. We weren't as unwilling to talk as we were unable. Anything we could have come up with would have profaned the experience we had just shared and no one wanted to end the moment. Looking back, as we walked home, we weren't kids anymore. We certainly weren't men yet, but having seen that film, we would never quite be children again.

And so I've spent the years that have followed that Saturday afternoon eager to talk with--just to listen to--anyone who had really lived the things that Oliver Stone communicated to us so effectively in Platoon. Mostly I've just paid attention and looked for opportunities. I'm aware that there are lots of Vietnam vets who, for a long time, were unwilling or unable to talk about what happened over there and I respect that, but when the opportunities come, I'm rivited. A few years ago my friend Henry described stepping off of a helicopter and watching his buddy next to him have his head shot off. We were interrupted before he could go on, but I don't believe he was going to anyway. I once heard my Uncle Gary talk about shooting the monkeys that would come around his tent baring those big monkey fangs. Brief stories mostly, so when Bill seemed willing to talk yesterday at work, I couldn't have cared less that we were at work and that there was lots to do and that managers kept passing us as we stood there. Inventory prep has never seemed so irrelevant. Thirty years ago it all happened--he was 19 years old--and its all as clear to him as if it had been this morning. Told me about two of the three times that he thought his life was over. About being literally blown out of the chair he was sitting in and hiding under the desk with his buddy. About a time-delayed bomb that landed in the middle of their compound and terrified everyone. About the one that blew his barracks away. About being gassed in a bus and thinking that was it. About finishing his term and having to stay an extra week because his unit was too surrounded to get a plane to them. We talked longer than I've been able to with anyone else so far, but it still seemed too short. What a story.

Today the TV at me folks house will provide several renditions of The Star-Spangled Banner (which may be me mother's second favorite song, behind God Bless America) and I will listen with different ears to the part about the rockets' red glare and the bombs bursting in air, and I will wonder if Bill would consider Barber's Adagio a more appropriate selection.

Ahoy there. Not sure how to go about this (or why) but Kevin told me to, and sometimes that's enough. Can't write long--just enough to get started--because we're watching Fight Club tonight and folk will begin to arrive soon. So there it is. More later. Peace to you.