still water

Lot long ago I heard someone described as having a peaceful air about them. To my way of thinking, that was one of the most complementary adjectives I have heard used to paint another person.  Especially since I was under a considerable amount of stress at the time.

Most that know me best might be surprised to learn that I had come to a place where stress was beginning to affect my life. Like so many predators in our life, stress crept up on me and had a good solid hold before I had a chance to realize anything was out of the norm.  You see, was like a snowball, at first I begin to have poor sleep at night. Science tells that inadequate sleep promotes a certain hormone that craves large meals. So eating and drinking too much along with not getting enough rest my fitness pretty well evaporated. So now on top of the original stressors my body begin to not feel or look good which lead to more stress.  …And I’m back to the top of the circle.

As the saying goes, “when the student is ready the teacher appears” and as it turns out; there is an app for that. Like all major questions that we wrestle with, in today's smartphone world I  turned toward Google, iBooks, and YouTube in search of a road towards peace.  After several books and videos that produced enough positive results to motivate more searching I found Headspace and Andy.

For about 8 weeks I have been experimenting with Headspace and a couple of Meditation books. Not the kind of meditation that promise spiritual enlightenment with crystals and candles, but mindfulness practices that help train the mind to understand the brain more clearly (read that sentence again).   Amazingly, since this journey began, most of the problems that were causing so much stress have been repaired. I have to acknowledge a strong correlation to resolving the stressing issues and being able to deal with them from a new mindful perspective. Also, my fitness is improving again and my body feels and looks better. Sleep comes easier. So I think maybe I have discovered that wellness can snowball much the same way stress does.

My purpose for this writing is not in anyway to be boastful about my own personal journey and problem resolution. Instead, my hope is for the reader to be encouraged to begin your own walk without prejudice or judgment, toward mindfulness. Download the headspace app and give it the 10 days it ask for. If at the end of 10 days you find it is not for you all you’ll have invested is 100 minutes and about 90 MB of space on your phone.  If however, you land on the other side of the coin, you can begin to find still waters and blue sky that will lead to peace. Peace is a good thing.

https://www.headspace.com/

Saint Andrew's Cross

It been almost a year to the day that I have felt inclined to write, but after watching the headline of today I feeling like maybe I should express myself a little.

It seems that the horrible act by one individual  in Charlestown has turned a nation's attention to the Confederate Battle Flag flying in South Carolina's Capital. News Channels today are full of experts explaining how the Southern Flag represents hatred and racism. They then explain how 1,264,000 men died in an effort to clear up the issue of slavery in Civil War.  

Read that number again: ONE MILLION TWO HUNDRED SIXTY FOUR THOUSAND men.  Each side sustained roughly the same amount of casualties. 

So these experts are basically telling us that 620,000 southern boys charged bravely to their deaths in order to keep a race enslaved. Given that only about 6% of southerners owned slaves at the peak of slavery, it seems odd to me that that more than half a million boys would offer their lives defending a practice that was restricted to the uber rich. To my way of thinking most of those boys died defending their homes and families from an aggressive army from the north. Defending their fields from being salted, defending their livestock from being killed, defending their homes and towns from being burnt. 

So for the experts that have never walked through "The Cedars" or down the Union line at "The Hornet's Nest" I disagree with your assessment of why those boys fought the war. I and also disagree that the Confederate Battle  Flag is a symbol of hatred and racism. For most all true southern people the flag is a reminder of those ancestors that died in defense of the homeland.

However, the shame of the situation is that it only takes a few bad apples to ruin the bunch. It is absolutely undeniable that for years now a radical element has perverted that battle flag. The point is most easily highlighted by the shootings in Charlestown. Dylann Roof, clearly is a sick and misguided individual with hate in his soul. I don't think it would be unfair judgement to go as far as calling his soul evil. 

Due to the fact that so many radicals and racist seemed to have adopted the Confederate Battle flag, I can understand how so many people view differently than I might. It is too often the case;  a silent majority allows vocal extremist to taint a symbol or (more importantly) an idea. As evidence, I give you hundreds of thousands of peaceful muslims that have been grouped unfairly with ISIS and terrorist.  How many Mexican people have gone through the legal process of immigration only to find that most all people assume they are illegals?  The same is true now with southerns; those of us who respect our history are not necessarily card carrying members of the Klu Klux Klan.

 

My point in a nutshell is this: Let us be understanding of those people that see the Confederate flag as a symbol of hate and racism.  I can't believe that the boys who carried it proudly into war would want to be used in this perverse way. I think the correct course of action it to take it down and place it in a museum that will treat it with the proper reverence and respect.  Maybe by doing so we can lessen the hatred that so many have for it, and begin to educate again on it's true meaning. I think thats what the boys that carried would want.

Here are a few other thoughts:
1. The picture that brought all of this contivery to light shows Dylann Roof wearing a Golds Gym shirt. I think maybe we should start a campaign to have these removed from the nation's dress code.

2. Our neighbors to the west have no plans on abandoning the flag. So go job Alabama and Mississippi

3. The flag in question never flew above the sovereign nation of the Confederate States of America. Instead this one did. 

 4. This is not good for any of us. Anyone displaying this or anything like it should have their ass kicked

    

honor roll

Tonight is the hottest night of the year so far. Even at 9:00 the heat of the day is still heavy like a wool blanket, and no breeze anywhere to help ease the oppression. But… it’s the first night in a week that I have had time to myself to reflect on the last few days. So with the help of a good smoke and a pint of Jack Daniels I’m sitting by a hotel pool in Perry, GA USA doing my best to think back on Bob.

I really don’t understand why when you want to remember someone its so hard, but when your not expecting to think about them their face, and voice won’t seem to leave your head. Maybe something about a place years ago lines up with the place where you are now. Maybe the light at sunset; maybe a small smell of something, maybe something else can take a person back 15 or 20 years. Maybe if I had some fence paint …   Who knows???

Apparently not me

Anyway, I’m trying to conjure an old teacher of mine, and for what ever reason tonight its seems hard to do. But I do remember a weekend in Conyers GA rather well.  The horse park there was still new and the reining horse folks in Georgia were just beginning to get their feet underneath them. The weather was much like this, typical southern oppression.  I was probably just a freshman and college and more of a punk kid than anything else.

Nothing happened at that show that I could be proud of really happened personally. In fact quite the opposite happened. I don’t remember exactly but I neglected some sort of care that the my horse  needed. I think maybe I didn’t cool her down well enough on a hot day or something of the sort and some of the folks in the barn took time to tell me about it.  And it seems the lesson took; I’m still thinking about it 12 years latter.  Probably at the time I was able to laugh it off the way kids do when they don’t fully understand the opportunity that has been handed to them. Now it seems sad.

Thanks for the Memories Melisa

That show was the first time I got to see Bob show a horse too. I think he might have been riding horse named Happy Jack, but I’m not sure. AND it doesn't really matter what horse it was. What matters was Bob Anthony owed Conyers GA for about 2 and a half minutes. Everybody stopped what they were doing to watch an artist paint. And he and that horse did not disappoint. 

Every stride and every breath that horse took was mirror of how the best should look in my minds eye. From where I watched, the pattern was silhouette and the sun shown through the dust creating a Hollywood glow throughout the arena. For a moment in time all the gods watched Bob and that horse. It was something to behold. I wish now that Faulkner had been there to watch. He could have written a prose that would do it justice. I’m afraid I can’t find the words to describe a perfect union such as that.

Here is what I do know:  part of what I am now is owed to that weekend and others like it. 

So here’s to you Bob. Sorry I never got to say thanks for all you did for me.

the yard

Tonight I'm on the back porch with a cold beer and a good cigar enjoying what has to be one of the last warm nights of 2013. There is a crescent moon over my left shoulder accompanied by a few bold stars. The cricket are out in force; it feels very much like I'm listening to their swan song for the summer. All in all its a fine evening.

On a night like tonight it might be appropriate to turn the page from baseball for a few months so I thought I might share a few of the parks I have visited this year. I have come to appreciate the intimacy of the minor league ballparks that are scattered about throughout our southern cities. Each is different and affords, father and sons, young couples, friends, I place to sit and enjoy a game and each other company.  

The home of the Charlotte Knights is an old ball park that is probably
being torn down already. They are moving the Knights to down town next year.
I'm eager to see their new stadium

Turner Field
Its still to painful to talk about.

This is the coolest yard I saw this year. It is built from a civil war train depot/ prison in downtown Montgomery Alabama. Its the home of Tampa Bay double A affiliate, the Biscuits.  

Above and below are Atlanta's double A and Single A Clubs. I got to watch
Alex Wood pitch his last game for Double A Mississippi before being called up to the big club.

This is the home of the Birmingham Barons. This was the parks first year in operation and its
 absolutely spectacular with the city right behind left field.

I’m not really sure where I’m at this morning, but according to my compass  I’m headed 140° south east. From here mostly the ground is distant and hazy; hiding behind a sheet of clouds.

So I think while have spare hour or three I put up a few pictures

This is the best part of traveling.

 just south of Minneapolis   

  

common thread

Last night we all watched with sympathetic eyes as one of the great pitchers of last ten or so years lay in foul ground clutching his catcher's hand in agony. It wasn't but a few seasons ago that we felt the same twisting feeling as the great Number Ten lay at third base with a knee that was all but torn in two. It's easy to conjure those images in my minds eye, maybe because traumatic injuries are just so unexpected they leave an imprint somewhere close to the top of the brain. Its is, though, as equally as easy to remember the great moments: the walk offs and the strike outs. Its the greatness that is on my mind tonight, and not just the exploits Huddy and Chipper.

There must be some common thread all outstanding people share. It seems to be a rare trait that is hard to pin down from one individual to the next.

As I was growing up I knew an old horse trainer that was well regarded as elite in his particular field. Looking back at my memory of him I see what I believe was a kind heart, but he could be cranky and unpredictable with his moods. Somedays he would be quick with a joke and belly laugh the next day somber and detached. The one thing that never changed; when he was on a great horse he was amazing to watch. He didn't sit in the saddle like a normal person does; he didn't moves his hands like you or I would. He became something more than himself. He became something truly great; a spectacle that can't be forgotten.

One of the athletes competing at the CrossFit Games this week is an young woman that somehow shares something with the old man above. She is very much the same person from day to day. Always a warm smile and genuine kind word can be expected. She is very much different than the old horse trainer, as she wears her compassion for others loosely around her, almost like a subtle piece of jewelry. But the way she moves is very much like him. She becomes something more than she is.  She becomes a mixture of  grace, and strength that I have not witnessed before or since. She shares greatness with an old horse trainer.

Its really not a stretch to tie the pitcher, horse trainer, and crossfiter together. Its obvious that they all hold on to an uncommon gift.  They have not taken their gift for granted, instead they chosen to devote their lives to refining and sharpening that gift. Somewhere along the way, it seems to me, that the line between the gift of athletic ability inevitably becomes blurred with the gift of perseverance.

So tonight, after  two or six drinks of whiskey, I have decided that greatness is understanding your gift and having enough grit to own it.
       

byways

Every town in this country looks the same from the interstate. There are Outback Steak Houses, Academy Outdoors, and Applebees at every exit on every interstate in every city: and they all are the same damn place. No matter whether they are in Atlanta Georgia or Nashville Tennessee the food is same, the bartenders are the same, even the people at the bar are the same.

A few weeks back, after a good couple of days in the southern Louisiana swamp, I decided to get off of Interstate 10 and take Highway 90 east for a few miles. It was one of those decisions that was made with out any real consideration, or regard to outcome. I just got off the interstate.

   After deciding to drive down Highway 90 I washed my hands in the Gulf of Mexico, and  found a great hand tossed pizza and a cold Southern Pecan on tap at an outside table with this view.

I decide then and there that if I have to be on the road all time; I should take it upon myself to REALLY experience all the southern US has to offer. After all, every town has something unique. Baton Rouge has grilled cheese sandwiches; Jackson has a good baseball team; and Tuscaloosa has ribs.   Then I decided to do my best to share it, so I packed a camera and started taking pictures.

I’ll post them with absolutely NO regularity.

On Highway 25 North a few miles south of the North Carolina line the foothill begin to look impressive

On the first base side of home in Pearl Mississippi. 

almost 500 Confederate solders are buried on the campus of Ole Miss. Their football stadium is about 500 yard to the left of the frame.  

A bank clock in Hendersonville North Carolina

Carl Sandburg (no kin to Ryan) lived here after he wrote a few poems