Christmas gifts

All I really wanted this year was to have my family - the six of us - home safe for a few days. We got that, and it was great, especially with our son's fiancee joining the crowd. Next year will be different, naturally, but this year was one to remember.

Our kids gave us a special gift for Christmas - they cleaned out and reorganized our garage. To understand the significance of that, understand that a typical Florida house has no basement and no attic. The garage becomes the attic. After nineteen years in the same house the garage collects a ton of stuff, to be polite, or crap, to be honest. It is our stuff, my parents' stuff, our kids' stuff - and it propagates in the middle of the night. We haven't had room for a car in the garage in more than a decade. To do this job they had to haul it all out into the driveway, add new shelves, put some of it back, and throw some of it out. They did it all in one day. Our job was to stay out of the way and not interfere.

So, in this strange bloggie diary that is open for the world to see, I want to proclaim that we have the greatest kids any parent could hope for. "Kids" is no longer the right word for these adults, but no matter how old we get they will be our children and we love them unconditionally.

notes from Atlanta

Yesterday I was in Atlanta, defending my city in the federal court of appeals. I won't bore you with the details but it was a building demolition case. The district court judge in Tampa ruled in favor of the city and we were defending his decision. To be there bright and early, I stayed overnight at the HoJo hotel downtown on Peachtree Street (of course), across from the Marta station and the entrance to Underground Atlanta. From there, you can walk one way to the courthouse and the other way to the hotel. An Atlanta taxi driver once told me Atlanta has seventeen Peachtrees - streets, avenues, boulevards, etc. I didn't take the taxi this time, though. Marta runs a nice train right downtown to Five Points, where the east-west line and the north-south line intersect.

The courthouse is a wonderful old federal office building. The courtroom has beautiful panelling on three walls with one wall of windows to brighten the place up. Everything about it oozes of proper courtroom dignity and legal majesty, like it ought to. The three judges hearing the arguments that morning (mine was the fourth and final case) had obviously studied everything in the files and were armed with pointed questions. You can never tell how the case is going by their questions - a "hostile" question might be intended to clear up a point before they rule in your favor, and a "friendly" question might spring a trap. You can plan on maybe a few minutes of speaking time before the questions begin. The last time I was there they gave me time to clear my throat before pouncing on me, and they just about beat me to death. We lost that one. This time I felt like the tide was running in our favor. Being in that beautiful courtroom, all dressed up like a lawyer, answering questions like hitting tennis balls back over the net, was a much more satisfying experience this time. How the case will turn out is anybody's guess, though. Never bet your lunch money on how people who wear black robes for a living might decide a case. If I could predict the outcome of cases I'd make my living at the race track. Ask me in six months if we have a decision yet and I'll tell you how it went.

catching up

It has been a quiet week, except for the national, perhaps international, news of the family in Orlando (why do these stories always come out of Florida?) where the parents are "on strike." Lemme see. . .the kids didn't pitch in with chores, so Mom and Dad are sleeping in a tent on their driveway. The kids have the run of the house, and what passes for winter in Florida is arriving. Who is winning, here? This morning the paper ran photos of their messy bedrooms. Messy? I can see most of the floors. What's the problem? When our kids were growing up, we had some high priorities, like school work. They did their own laundry and fixed their own lunches for school, or suffered the consequences. But the bedroom mess was not our problem. We could always shut the doors, and we often did. As long as we didn't smell smoke, no problemo. As long as kept their school work up, no problemo.

Did that work? Well, let's add it up. Four kids. Four high school diplomas, four National Honor Society memberships. Four bachelors' degrees, two masters' degrees. One additional degree to become a Registered Nurse. Nobody got a degree for keeping a clean room. Four well-adjusted, happy, productive young adults living in Boston, Boulder, and San Francisco. If anybody is in therapy or having a drug or drinking problem, they haven't told me about it. They grew up loving and respecting each other, their parents, and their large extended family of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Their mother did an excellent job of raising them. There were times when she thought about going on strike against me but, fortunately, we don't have a tent large enough for the mattress, air conditioner, refrigerator, TV, and sewing machine.

light bulbs

I had one of those fifteen minute projects that kills an afternoon this afternoon, the consequence of living in a house wired by a drunken handyman (a former owner, not me). The task was to replace burned-out exterior light bulbs in the side yards, rear yard, and over the pool deck. Aaaargh.

An understanding of the wiring and switches is critical to understanding how I took too long with this job: The switch for an exterior light at the NW corner of the house, shining down the side yard, is in the garage. The switch for the light at the NE corner of the house is in the living room. The same switch, in the living room, controls a light over the pool deck. There is another light, just outside the door leading in from the pool deck, controlled by a switch just inside that door. (That bulb, thankfully, was working and is not part of this tale.) There are actually two switches just inside the door from the pool deck; the other one controls the light in the rear yard. That's four switches, five lights. (I'm not even counting the light in the garage that blew during my labors, requiring me to change that bulb also.)

The light at the NW corner of the house has been burned out for so long that I forgot which switch controls it, and I assumed it was the switch in the living room. The light over the pool deck and the light over the door leading in from the pool deck are so close together that, when you don't have to change a bulb for several years, you tend to forget which switch is which - you flip a switch and there's light out there. This is sort of like walking and chewing gum; you tend not to give such things serious thought. To compound the situation, the light at the NE corner of the house won't come on after changing the bulbs, regardless of which switch you play with (but I know it is the switch in the living room). All of this left me stalking back and forth, inside and out, up and down ladders, flipping the wrong switches and wondering why there was no light.

The score, after taking entirely too long, is now 4 for me, 1 for the lights. Four lights work, one will not. If I also count the light inside the garage, the score is actually 5 to 1. But I am not done until I get the light at the NE corner working.

And I haven't even started putting up the Christmas lights yet.

moving day

Today, I moved my office. Actually, it began on Wednesday but I finished today. I moved all the way to. . .the room next door, but it may as well been across town for all of the hassles involved.

It is amazing what accumulates after four and a half years in the same room. Books in boxes (I have more shelf space in the new room), a lot of ring binders (some empty), files (only I understand the system), and stacks and stacks of paper. In a government office, paper flows in and in, sometimes out. You see something and think, I want to read this, and you set it aside with other stuff to read. Or you get quarter-final and semi-final drafts of various documents. You get maps. You get meeting agendas. They all end up in stacks on a corner of your desk, on a table, on the floor, on top of a file cabinet, wherever. Eventually they threaten to fall on somebody or catch fire through spontaneous combustion.

I jumped at the chance to change rooms in order to force myself to engage in some serioius TCO (Throw Crap Out). Now I have everything in a state of temporary pandemonium, but at least my computer works again. I irritated our ICS people by moving my computer myself. They think that's a job only they can do. Any fool can take a computer apart and put it back together; I can. Those stacks are sitting on two long window ledges where I cannot ignore them. I am going to engage in TCO until the window ledges have nothing but potted plants and maybe a couple of photos. And that's my New Year's Resolution for myself, a month early.

two kinds

In my last note to myself and my faithful readers (all four of you), I said there are two kinds of chess players.

Sheesh! What a trite cliche (or is that redundant?)!

There are two kinds of people - those who divide people and things into categories, and those who don't.

There are three kinds of people - those who can count, and those who can't.

There are 10 kinds of people - those who can count in binary, and those who can't.

This goes on and on - but enough!

chess

Lately, I've gotten hooked on chess - on the computer. Shockwave has a good chess game where you can play the computer or a live opponent. I first got interested in chess back when Bobby Fischer was playing the Russians for the world championship, but I gave it up because (a) it is basically antisocial (visualize a roomful of sweaty tournament players hunched over the boards, not talking a civil word to anybody), and (b) Bobby Fischer turned into the biggest flake since Paul Morphy (Googelize him, I don't have room to explain).

My interest was rekindled this summer when I saw my brother-in-law playing chess on his computer. He didn't understand the game at all, and was amazed when I showed him how to castle his king and how to take a pawn "en passant."

So I got into Shockwave's chess game. There seem to be two kinds of players - those who know what they are doing and those who don't. You can spot the latter by the fact that they bring their Queen out on the second or third move without developing their pieces or castling their king first. I love that because my opponent's Queen becomes my target. Every attacking move againt the Queen is a developing move for me. After about 10-15 moves it is all over but the technique of closing the game.

I don't consider this too big a waste of time. I've read that doing crossword puzzles is a good "brain exercise" that will delay the onset of Alzheimer's in old age. I'm betting chess will have the same effect. If it doesn't, I hope I find another chess player in the nursing home. Meanwhile, I'm having fun.

thanksgiving in Massachusetts

We had a traditional unconventional Thanksgiving this year, in Boston. Unconventional, in the sense that we flew up on Thanksgiving Day (hint: a good day to fly - don't fly the day before), and three of our children were having a family Thanksgiving with somebody else's families in three other states. The fourth had to work late, so the three of us ended up eating non-turkey dinners at a nice restaurant (Boston is full of them). The turkey had to wait until Sunday, so the good leftovers got eaten on Monday.

It was traditional only in the sense that we drove down to Plymouth, where it all began if you don't count earlier settlements like Saint Augustine. We saw the replica of the Mayflower. Your mind boggles at the thought of 102 passengers, including three pregnant women, crammed on board, setting sail for a trip to God Knows Where in a boat so small. We saw the Rock. You know it is the Rock because somebody has chiseled 1620 on top of it, and there is a nice plaque explaining the Rock's history in a way that makes you believe it really might be the first stepping stone into the New World.

So I'm looking at the Rock and thinking how cold and forbidding the New World looked to the pilgrims, who didn't have an Interstate Highway to take them to Philadelphia, except there was no Philadelphia there yet, either. My kids had an ancestor named Workinger in Philadelphia in 1750. The pilgrims, starting out with basically nothing and travelling on foot or by horseback, put in a lot of hard manual labor to make the colonies look the way they did by 1750.

The original Thanksgiving was to give thanks for surviving. It was not to usher in the beginning of the Christmas shopping season or to mark the end of hurricane season. Sometimes we need to get back to our roots and remember where we came from and how we got from there to here.

back to the blog, part two

When our son was a boy, I said something along the lines of, "The key to success is. . ." and he interrupted me with a question: "How many keys to success are there?" Good question. That's what I get for using the same cliches over and over.

Today I was thinking about a few tips I have received from other lawyers during my career. They aren't keys to success but they help cope with the occasional failure.

I was a young assistant city attorney in Boca Raton and the prosecutor in our municipal court. One day I came back to the office, furious that I'd lost a case I thought I should have won. So I asked my boss, "Red, what do you do when you lose a case you think you should have won?" He looked at me and grinned. "First," he said, "you say "Aw, shit.' And then you move on to the next case."

A friend of mine in Clearwater put it more elegantly: "I don't design 'em, I just fly 'em."

Another friend of mine from Boca Raton, who was not a trial lawyer, gave me this observation: "The basic duty of any lawyer is to give his client the best advice he can give - once. After that, the client is on his own." That has stayed with me because it helps me understand the basic relationship between lawyers and clients. Their problems are not really my problems, and they have the right to make "business decisions" on their own, as long as you point out the potholes and stumbling blocks they will encounter along the way.

back to the blog

I haven't blogged in a long time. Now that hurricane season and election season are over, with similar disastrous results, I need to change subjects. One more political note, however, before 2004 begins drawing to a close: I have been reading a lot of theories about why John Kerry lost. Most of them seem overly simplified. I have a few simple theories of my own.

One is that Kerry failed to hit back hard at the swiftboat vets who smeared him. Some of those guys have been smearing him since he came back from Viet Nam and began speaking out against the war. What happened to the swiftboat buddies he had up on stage the night of the nomination? They disappeared.

Another of my theories is that he didn't hit back at the constant Bush smear ads about the votes he cast in the Senate for more taxes, etc. He should have countered with a package detailing all the good things that he did vote for during his career in the Senate.

Thirdly, his own smear ads weren't as nasty as the Bush smear ads. No matter what the experts say, Americans love a good smear campaign. That has been true throughout American history. The only thing better than a smear campaign would be to have the candidates duke it out, bare knuckles, no rules, no holds barred.

Finally, he carried too much baggage marked "wealthy Eastern liberal." Speaking as a non-wealthy Southern liberal, I can say that sort of baggage does not sell well anywhere in the South or the Midwest.

Between now and the next election, the Democratic Party needs to find candidates who can get elected, like maybe a younger Jimmy Carter. Sorry, but Hillary Clinton has no chance - she carries the same baggage as Kerry and she also suffers the disadvantage of being a woman. We will have a woman for a President some day, but not Hillary. This will mean finding "centrist" candidates who are not afraid to disagree with the single-issue constituencies and who can speak instead of the greater good of the country.

Wild suggestion: Let's recruit Colin Powell to run as a Democrat. He'd get my vote.

If the Democrats can't find candidates who can get elected, we will see the party fold up and die. I hope that does not happen in my lifetime, which is not saying I am hoping for an early death. When I'm 88, I want somebody to guide my hand as I punch my absentee ballot from the nursing home, and I hope the Democrats will, at that time, be continuing down a long, long trail of success.

why are we in Fallujah?

Yesterday, listening to NPR while driving home from work, I heard an "independent journalist" from Baghdad accusing the U.S. military of committing "genocide" in Fallujah. I call it war, not genocide, but that raises the legitimate question, why exactly are we in Fallujah? Consider this, hot off the Associated Press "wire:"

"NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - Iraqi troops have found "hostage slaughterhouses" in Fallujah where foreign captives were held and killed, the commander of Iraqi forces in the city said Wednesday.

"Troops found CDs and records of people taken captive in houses in the northern part of Fallujah, Maj. Gen. Abdul Qader Mohammed Jassem Mohan told reporters."

The story goes on to say that the records they found did not indicate the whereabouts of hostages in captivity which are believed to be still alive. On the other hand, they aren't finished with Fallujah yet.

Like I said, I call it war.

success, finally

Faithful readers of this Blog (both of you) may remember my bragging months ago that I was taking a Scuba open water dive class. After a few interruptions (nasal surgery, Hurricane Charley, Hurricane Frances, Hurricane Jeanne, and several unnamed disturbances on both coasts of Florida), I finally finished the course by making my second open water dive this afternoon, at Ginnie Springs, up near Gainesville. See it here: http://www.ginniespringsoutdoors.com/

I don't think it was cave diving, strictly speaking, but we did get an in-depth look at the mouth of a freshwater spring. You could easily hide an 18-wheeler in the mouth, and the floor was almost 60 feet down, but it wasn't a "cave." There were no tunnels branching off to God-knows-where. You could see sunlight at the top, if you looked way back before the ceiling blocked the view and if the 20 other divers didn't get in your way. Cold, at 72 degrees, but not too cold; with a wet suit it was like a drink of cold water on a hot day. Loved it! And now I'm a certified, card-carrying diver. My next toy may have to be a speargun.

goodbye, Ralph Nader

One bright spot in Tuesday's election results is the miserable performance of Ralph Nader at the polls. In Florida, where the Nader vote made a difference in 2000, Nader got a mere 31,849 votes or less than one-half of one percent of the votes cast for the eight (yes, 8) Presidential candidates. To put it another way, he got substantially fewer votes in a statewide race than "Bubba the Love Sponge" got in a countywide race for Sheriff. "Bubba" got nearly four times the number of Nader votes.

You could call this Nader's Nadir. I hope this marks the end of Nader as a political figure. Goodbye, Ralph. Go away. You are unsafe at any speed. I hope we never hear from you again.

but can you fool all of the people?

As I write this, a different kind of writing is on the wall for the Kerry campaign. Let the smugness begin. I mean, I am going to sit back smugly and wait for Bush and his cronies to demonstrate that (a) they talk to God and God talks to them, (b) we really are winning the war on terror, (c) our economy is doing just fine, and (d) the Bush Administration is of such high moral caliber that we will not, during the next four years, see a single episode of corruption or feeding at the public trough by any Republican office holder or business executive.

Go ahead. Show me. After six decades, I am a patient man. We survived the Cold War and "duck and cover" drills (cower under your school desk to protect yourself from the atomic bomb aimed at MacDill Air Force Base that we all knew would miss and hit us instead). We survived Nikita ("We will bury you") Khrushchev and Fidel's Russian missiles. We saw the Berlin Wall come down (for which Reagan claimed entirely too much credit) and the USSR fall. We survived Reagonomics, although he embodied a hatred for government that still cripples the ability of the government to serve the people. We survived Ford and Clinton. We survived Newt Gingrich and his Contract on America. We have survived the first four years of George W. Bush, although few can truly say we are better off today than we were four years ago.

So, go ahead. Show me. I frankly do not believe you know God's will any more than Osama knows Allah's will. I do not believe we are winning the war on terror (a contradiction in terms), and do not believe any of the other "heifer dust" you have thrown at the people during this campaign. But I expect campaign promises to be kept. You have four years to demonstrate that you are as good as you think you are, even though a second-term President is answerable to no one.

In the meantime, may God help us all, if we are still worthy of his help.

you can fool some of the people all of the time

In our home county (Pinellas County, Florida), with election returns in from 254 of 380 precincts (hey, California, your polls aren't even closed yet, so get cracking), Prez. George Bush is leading Sen. John Kerry, 189,959 to 180,212 or 50.85 percent to 48.24 percent.

Further down the ballot, Bubba Clem has gathered 26.30 percent in a two man race for Sheriff.

Bubba Clem, also known as "Bubba the Love Sponge," is a former radio DJ of the "shock jock" genre. How bad was he as a DJ? Bad. So bad that the FCC fined Clear Channel Communications over $700,000 for his performances. He was fined $23,000 by the FCC in 1998 for airing indecent material. In 2002, he was acquitted of animal cruelty charges after a pig was castrated and killed during one of his broadcasts.

You can say what you want about his performance as a DJ but he is as qualified to be our next sheriff as our house cat. And we don't even have a house cat. Nevertheless, 26.30 percent of the voters in my county have voted for him, and 50.85 percent have voted for Dubya.

P.T. Barnum was right.

America's Team: Next year is finally here

There are times (rare times, to be sure) when the stiff, formal language called "legislative legalese" can wax poetic. Consider this, from the Massachusetts Senate Journal of October 28 (edited for brevity):

Whereas, on October 27, 2004, the Boston Red Sox, against all odds, won the World Series after a record-breaking 4 wins in a row against their arch rivals, the New York Yankees, followed by a 4-game sweep of the Saint Louis Cardinals; and

Whereas, the Boston Red Sox have been labelled "America's Team" because of their perserverance and spirit in the face of seeming insurmountable odds and have won the respect and admiration of professionals and sports enthusiasts with their dramatic come-from-behind victory against the New York Yankees to clinch the American League pennant; and

Whereas, the offensive team became a defensive nightmare for the opponents, evidenced by a World Series performance in which the Boston Red Sox were ahead for 34 of the 36 innings they played against the Saint Louis Cardinals, the remaining 2 innings of which they were tied; and

Whereas, after 86 years, next year is finally here and the Boston Red Sox team has brought the elusive World Series trophy home; now, therefore,

Be It Resolved, that the Massachusetts Senate joins with the Nation in saluting the members of the 2004 Boston Red Sox team, its managers and owners, on winning the 2004 Sorld Series.

one prediction I couldn't quite make

I predicted the Red Sox win (along with 80 percent of Red Sox fans), and then I questioned whether the Republican National Committee was behind the recent resurrection of Osama bin Laden - about an hour before Walter Cronkite wondered the same thing out loud on national television. (There's a new generation who won't remember how much we trusted Uncle Walter to tell it like it is. Only he could say what he said and get away with it.) But there is one prediction I've been holding off, believing it with all my heart but not wanting to look stupid: I was almost ready to post a blog note here predicting that Osama would be produced either alive or dead within 48 hours before the election. Here was are, five hours before the polls open in the East, and no Osama. Why I am up at this ungodly hour is a different story - visualize a flat tire, can't find my air pump, gotta be at the airport tomorrow to pick up my wife, but Wal Mart is open 24 hours a day and Wal Mart carries air pumps. There are no lines at Wal Mart this time of night. But that's a different story. Meanwhile, Osama is still out there. Have we doubled the reward, yet? How hard is it to find a guy over six feet tall who needs dialysis and hides out in the mountains?

memo to Osama: crawl back in your cave

Once again, Osama and the chief lunatics of the Middle East are demonstrating that they know nothing of the U.S. or of Americans. The threat to visit unspecified "consequences" if Bush is re-elected will have the specific consequence of making more than a few undecided voters vote for Bush, clean and load their weapons, and wait for warfare in the streets. I should say we only hope they wait, and not declare war on every mosque and every "Middle Eastern looking person" in their neighborhoods.

This tactic may work in Spain, but it will not work here. The reactionary consequences are so predictable that you wonder if the Republican National Committee didn't put Osama up to it. Naw, they are not that devious. Osama is reminding me more and more of Hitler and his desire to bring Gotterdammerung down upon our heads. Whatever the reward is for his head, it is time to double it.

the Red Sox victory - sheer lunacy

Am I the only one who noticed that the Heavens commemorated the Red Sox victory in Game Four by giving us a lunar eclipse?

Rest in peace, Babe Ruth

So much for that nonsense.

One impressive thing about this year's Red Sox team is how much baseball they played with two outs. When you are a kid, you hate to go to the plate with two outs. You don't want to make the third out but it seems almost inevitable. Your buddies in the dugout show their confidence in you by getting their gloves and catcher's gear ready to go on the field. But the Red Sox did a lot of hitting and scoring with two out. They also came back from the abyss, three games down, to win the next eight games. Maybe it had something to do with the terrible pounding they got in Game Three against the Yankees, which goes to show that it doesn't pay to humiliate somebody who makes his living with a baseball bat.

I disagree with today's Boston Globe. Pigs still can't fly, hell has not frozen over. But they got it partly right: The Impossible Dream can come true. Even if you have to wait a lifetime.

liberal, conservative - bah, humbug

For decades, politicians and other rabble-rousers in Florida have played the "pin the tail on the donkey" game. If I can make more liberal "tails" stick to my opponent's donkey, and keep a conservative "tail" attached to mine, I win. That's because too many people have a simple-minded view of life. If a person or an idea is a liberal, that's bad, but if the person or idea is conservative, that's good (or vice versa). Once the tail attaches to the donkey there is no longer a need to expend mental energy trying to analyze or understand either the person or the idea no matter how complex the subject might be. For some odd reason, most of the people who fall into this trap call themselves conservatives.

I'm happy to report that a long-time journalist for the St. Pete Times, who has spent a career following state government in Tallahassee, has written a nice piece exploding this nonsense. I'll let it speak for itself. Read it here: http://www.sptimes.com/2004/10/24/Columns/New_crises_facing_us_.shtml

fun and games in St. Louis

When the World Series resumes in St. Louis, new fans of the Red Sox who don't follow baseball very much will be shocked and surprised to see the one fundamental difference between the American League (home of the Sox) and the National League (home of the Cardinals): In the National League, the pitchers are in the batting order and are expected to bat. They will follow National League rules when they play in St. Louis. So, get ready to see Pedro Martinez at the plate with a bat in his hands and designated hitter David Ortiz playing somewhere (first base?) so he can stay in the batting order. I'll be happy to see the Sox win one of the three games they play in St. Louis.

Spammers should be dragged into the streets

Spammers should be dragged into the streets and shot. I've already had one "comment" here that turned out to be spam. That should be no surprise because Blogger is basically open to the world, but consider this: Several weeks ago, Juno announced a drastic change in policy regarding free mail users and so I decided it was time to create a new address elsewhere. I mean, ya know, I have five addresses already and it wouldn't do to have just four after dropping Juno. So I created one elsewhere. I won't say where, but I already have received six (6) (half a dozen) pieces of spam at that address despite the fact that I have never, ever used that address for any purpose whatsoever. They are using random address generators or something, sending these pieces of baloney out into the ether by the billions to nonexistent addresses hoping to catch new ones like mine. The real fools are people who open them and actually send money somewhere in response. Maybe they are the people who should be dragged into the streets and then separated from their money before they respond again.

Triumph!

Curious, but my blog post with this title has disappeared. Dropped out of sight. Gone. Ah, well, all I was doing was crowing about predicting the winner of Game Seven. I said the Yankee fans were better behaved than I expected, but they had eight innings to see that train roll down the track and the final outcome was predictable after the second inning. I also made some snide remarks about the relative size of the New York and Boston payrolls. Like, the difference in their payrolls is something like $57 million in 2004.

Now it is time to think ahead to Saturday. The Cardinals are a worthy opponent. No predictions here, but the Red Sox would probably win a barroom brawl and I suspect the World Series is going to have the ambience of a bare-knuckle fist fight. Red Sox in six. Not a prediction, just a guess.

Tonight, the Red Sox will triumph

Tonight is the impossible Game Seven, between the Red Sox and a team that began 3 - 0 and then lost the next three, between the Red Sox and a team that whipped them 19 - 8 but then lost the next three, and did I mention that the Yankees lost the last three games? Tonight they are still in Yankee Stadium but the Red Sox have momentum going. They will start with a better pitcher, they are going to play over their heads, and nobody will choke under the pressure. It will be a long game. The Yankees will not go down easy. Their fans will not be good sports about it. But they, too, will learn to say "wait until next year." I'm going out on the limb, here, but the view is good. From the end of this limb you can see the World Series.

Are the umpires wired?

A comment from an Alert Reader deserves a public reply. She finds the ability of the umpires to get together, discuss a wrong call, then make the right call without benefit of instant replay pretty remarkable, especially after seeing them do that TWICE in the same game. She wonders, do they have a radio so they can hear the announcers say "they messed that call up?"

Here is my authoritative answer: I don't know, but I will never make jokes about baseball umpires again.

These guys are famous for "calling it like they see it." Legions of managers have been ejected from the game trying to change an umpire's mind. I grew up believing their calls were final. . .and they almost always were before television. (There was baseball before television. There was baseball before radio.) On the other hand, even though the official rules don't actually require more than one umpire, the league championship games have six umpires on the field every night. You've gotta figure two or three are in position to see every play from a good angle. So, if one of them blows a call in a high-stakes game, I'm proud to see that they collectively want to get it right. If they are listening to the announcers by hidden radios implanted in their thick eyeglasses or their red and white canes, that would be OK with me. Uh oh, I did it again.

A-Rod deserved a 15-yard penalty

I mean, it was a deliberate foul, the way he slapped the ball out of Arroyo's gloved hand in the 8th inning. Every camera angle showed it. Joe Torre should have been ejected. The New York fans should have been ejected. I don't remember seeing a platoon of cops ready to restore order after a baseball game. Sheesh! Tomorrow night - er, tonight - will be the seventh game of the ALC Series, the first time a baseball team has ever come back from 3 - 0 to force a seventh game. Boston has the momentum. Boston is going to take it.

They'll win tonight, too

You heard it here first. Yeah, they are in Yankee stadium and yeah, the local fans have photos of Babe Ruth all over the place, but the team that wins tonight will be the last team to have a pitcher still standing. Boston has Schilling shot up with pain killers and he is hobbling, but Boston has Schilling on the mound. He is keeping a tight lid on the Yankees - ten batters in the first three innings, one hit. Now it is the top of the fourth and a Yankee fan in the left field bleachers has tried to knock the ball back into play, unsuccessfully trying to prevent Bellhorn from get credit for a home run. Tip: Next game, wear a white sweater so you won't be so obvious. Bottom of the fourth: New York gets two on with no outs, and they are left stranded. This will be a fast, low-score game. Yes, there will be a Game Seven.

The Red Sox are going to win

Yeah, it is 4-2 Yankees in the top of the eighth as I type this, but they are playing at Fenway, the fans have their rally caps on, and Timlin just struck out A-Rod. They want it. They wanted it last night. I can't explain Saturday night but this ain't Saturday. Just because no team has come back from being down 3 games to zero does not mean the Sox can't do it. Stay tuned. . .

Terrorists in Iraq are idiots

If there is any doubt in your mind that the terrorists in Iraq are mental defectives, consider this news flash:

Putin: Terror Attacks Aimed at Bush
Mon Oct 18,11:16 AM ET

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan - Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that terrorists are aiming to derail U.S. President George W. Bush's chances at re-election through their attacks in Iraq. "I consider the activities of terrorists in Iraq are not as much aimed at coalition forces but more personally against President Bush," Putin said at a news conference after a regional summit in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. International terrorism has as its goal to prevent the election of President Bush to a second term," he said. "If they achieve that goal, then that will give international terrorism a new impulse and extra power."

I do not doubt Putin's observations. This is further evidence that the terrorists understand absolutely nothing about the U.S. or its people. Bush supporters are fearful people. They are afraid of the terrorists, and they are afraid that Kerry is not strong enough to fight them. Bush himself is harping on that theme, accusing Kerry of being wishy-washy and not decisive enough to be the Commander in Chief of U.S. Armed Forces. Terrorism in Iraq or, worse yet, another attack in the U.S. would solidify the belief that Bush needs to be re-elected because of the "war against terror."

Up until a few months ago, I believed that the surest way to get Bush re-elected would be for peace to break out in Iraq, the kind of peace that would lull the U.S. into thinking it's safe to bring the troops home before November, 2004. The time for that is long past. A cease-fire on the eve of the election isn't going to happen but if it does, it will be viewed cynically and will have no effect on the election. If the terrorism continues or escalates, that would only help Bush.

reunions

I attended a reunion of the Naples (FL) High School Class of 1964 last weekend. There are more exciting things to do than be a spouse at a reunion of any kind, but this was sorta interesting because the "whatever happened to __" and "do you remember the time we __" chit-chat sounded exactly like what happens at my class's reunions (Clearwater High, Class of 1962, "the last of the great ones"). Some people don't find reunions worthwhile. They leave and never go back, and that's OK, but they miss the experience of seeing what time has done to their classmates. The old cliques have dissolved. The homecoming queen weighs 200 pounds and the football jocks are fat and bald. Nobody can find the address for the kid everbody thought would be the most likely to succeed. The girl nobody dated walks in looking like a million bucks and the guys slap their foreheads, saying wow, look what I've missed.

We did have one unique experience in Naples last weekend: The girl everybody concedes was the most popular girl in the class was incarcerated years ago for killing her husband. The details were extremely murky, but the story was that she was "railroaded." Last weekend, we learned that she was free after serving three years, and she is now married to the lawyer who got her out of jail. Somebody had her phone number and a dozen or so of her classmates spoke with her at her new home out West. I met the lady in college and she's a beauty, not a razor-totin' woman likely to kill anybody. This is the modern version of the knight (a lawyer in this case) riding up to the castle, slaying the dragon, and rescuing the damsel from captivity. Stories don't get much better than that.

fall in Florida, finally

Like clockwork, the 25th Annual Clearwater Jazz Holiday [see link below] has prompted Mother Nature to send in the first wave of cool air, just in time for Halloween. It is spooky how these two events occur almost simultaneously - I mean, practically the same day - ever year. Fall has been creeping in for the past couple of weeks. . .the humidity dropped below 90 for a few days and the air was cooler in the mornings, but signs of fall in Florida are subtle and you have to pay attention. We are home for the weekend, having gone to Naples for a high school reunion last weekend. In Naples, to belong to the "old-timers club," you have to have lived there when Hurricane Donna came ashore in the fall of 1960. Because the ranks of that generation are beginning to thin out, they also allow spouses, children and grandchildren of "old-timers" to join the club. I may have more to say about that later, but I have run out of excuses for not mowing the lawn and repairing fence damage from two hurricanes ago. So, away from this keyboard. Time to get outside and crank it up.

Visit the Clearwater Jazz Holiday: http://www.clearwaterjazz.com/bin/site/templates/splash.asp

the French

October 5 was the 90th anniversary of the first air battle of World War I, when French and German aircraft exchanged gunfire. I don't know how that dogfight turned out but we all know how World War I turned out.

Yesterday, the President of France continued the French tradition of expressing their warm regards to the U.S. for helping the British and other Allies pull their fat out of the fire, twice in the same century, when he said:

Chirac lashes out against US cultural domination
Thu Oct 07 2004 21:37:42 ET

"French President Jacques Chirac warned Thursday of a "catastrophe" for global diversity if the United States' cultural hegemony goes unchallenged. Speaking at a French cultural center in Hanoi ahead of Friday's opening of a summit of European and Asian leaders, Chirac said France was right to stand up for cultural and linguistic diversity. The outspoken French president warned that the world's different cultures could be "choked" by US values. This, he said, would lead to a "general world sub-culture" based around the English language, which would be "a real ecological catastrophe". "

If Mr. Chirac wants to criticize American entertainers, especially those who wear their underware outside their clothing, look like $250 hookers from Fort Lauderdale, and have an IQ below room temperature, I would join his criticism. I can understand their historic resentment of anyone who uses English instead of perfect French. But, "catastrophe?" "Choked by US values?" "Ecological catastrophe?" As they say in France, give me "les break-o." When I think of French "values," I don't generally think of anything that the rest of the world should want to emulate except wine-making. Was he being critical of Prez Bush or the US involvement in Iraq? Was he diverting attention from allegations that France was cozy with Saddam Hussein? I don't think so. His comments were delivered to an audience in Hanoi. Here's the rest of the story: "Vietnam is a former French colony, but only around 375,000 of its 81 million people speak French. English is considered by most people a far more valuable and practical second language, particularly among businessmen." What can we say? C'est la guerre. If history had turned out differently he could be complaining about German, not English.

Barnum was right

To paraphrase P.T. Barnum, you can never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. Keep that in mind if you watch the "debate" tonight. George W. Bush speaks at a seventh grade level, with short sentences. John Kerry speaks at a tenth grade level, with longer sentences. We've come a long way since the days of President John Adams. Here is a link to his complete inaugural address on March 4, 1797, which includes one sentence containing 727 words (no, I didn't count them):
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/09/30/Decision2004/John_Adams__Inaugural.shtml

aah, power again

We joined the ranks of the powerless at noon on Sunday, and I'm happy to report that the power is back on as of about an hour ago. I really missed hot showers, the microwave, and a functioning computer. I did not miss TV commercials. But I can't complain. We have a home with a functioning air conditioner, kitchen, and hot water heater. A lot of hurricane victims are coping with a lot less. More later. Right now, it is time to watch the Red Sox playing the Devil Rays, a home game at the Dome, live. Time to chill.

Nature's beauty

The meteorologists were wrong about Hurricane Jeanne making a turn for the north - the eye is ESE of Tampa and it is moving WNW. This is giving us a rare opportunity to view the beauty of Nature. . . trees whipping around, rain hitting the windows. . . shortly before seeing the destructive nature of Nature. We won't see the full effect for another hour or two. Good news: The storm is moving quickly, like Charley did, and the winds are getting weaker. Bad news: They are coming here quickly and they aren't getting weak enough. We are getting power-on, power-off, power-on-again and I just heard a transformer blow somewhere down the street. Time to quit playing with the computer, get the waterproof boots and rain slicker out, and see what happens next!

kiss my fins, Jeanne

So we have this wandering headless-chicken of a hurricane out there, about to knock on Florida's door again. I was going to West Palm Beach to go diving this weekend, until Jeanne changed everybody's plans. To see how crazy this storm is, click here:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2004/JEANNE_graphics.shtml

This will show you a "movie" made up of predicted and actual tracks. If you are subject to motion sickness, take your Dramamine first.

If I seem obsessed by hurricanes lately it is because I am obsessed. We have been lucky in our neck of the woods. It is only a matter of time.

kiss my heinie, Ralph

I wonder what Ralph Nader smokes? Consider this, from today's news:

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader accused his Democratic rival Sen. John Kerry on Tuesday of being responsible for a campaign to try and keep him off the Nov. 2 ballot. . . .Nader's campaign said it was fighting 21 legal cases in 17 states in a bid to get the consumer advocate on the ballot. . . . 'The ballot access has drained our time and our resources,' Nader told a news conference. 'I have to hold Sen. John Kerry and Terry McAuliffe directly responsible.'"

Hey, Ralphie, let me tell you that a lot of Americans - including a lot of Floridians who remember the horror show of 2000 - hold you directly responsible for getting Dubya elected, and here you are, doing it again. I, for one, would like to drain your time and resources right down the toilet. "Independent?" You got onto the Florida ballot by convincing the Fla. Supremes, who have neither the stomach nor the spine for a rerun of 2000, that you are a party nominee. The party held its convention in a telephone booth, but under the law you are a party nominee. You are also one of the biggest jerks alive today.

things I thought I'd never see

I never thought I'd see any of the following in my lifetime:

1. The fall of the Berlin Wall.
2. The disassembly of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
3. The Pope visiting Cuba.
4. "Arabs start to look within to find source of extremism."
(Headine, St. Petersburg Times, 9-21-2004)

Regarding number 4: It's about time. I have been wondering when the average man on the street (no need to be politically correct, here) in the Middle East will get sick and tired of seeing his short-term hopes and his future blown to hell by those who would rather kill than allow the winds of democracy to blow free. Like, y'know, elections. This is not a "Muslim" thing, but a mind-set rooted in the ancient past. Well, let me correct that: It is a Muslim thing, like the Inquisition was a Christian thing - correct that, a Catholic Church thing - except that the democratic societies have banished that sort of insanity to the history books.

changing of the seasons

September in Florida is a cruel month for anybody from up North or out West who expects to see signs of fall. As a boy in Louisville, I associated the word "September" with going back to school, cooler weather, and the smell of burning leaves. Now, the kids go back to school in August, we can't burn the leaves, and there's no hope of cool weather in sight. But today, in a Walgreen's, I saw a shelf that held hurricane supplies a few days ago. Today it holds Halloween candy. Aha! There's hope after all.

dive, dive!

We went on our first open water dive this morning, in a sinkhole in Hudson, FL. I've been in sinkholes in North Florida and expected to see the effects of tannic acid, which gives water an iced-tea color, but what we saw today was more like day-old coffee with a touch of cream. Visibility just below the surface was maybe ten feet. On the platform (22 feet down) I could see my hand in front of my face. Problem was, my instructor had to get in my face to give me the hand signals to do the various skill exercises like clearing the mask and buddy-breathing. I couldn't even see my buddy -- it's a good thing she didn't need help from me! After the initial descent, things got easier but not clearer. Good news: I stayed relaxed the whole time once I cleared my ears (hey, I'm breathing, I can see the surface, no gators or other obnoxious critters, so why not relax?). Next time: Take a good underwater light. My instructor's 24-year-old eyes can see in the dark better than mine. I borrowed a light and got to see the rock formation -- a vertical wall of limestone with nooks and crannies. On a hot sunny day, in warm water, a fun thing to do.

Bahama Breezin'

We are just back from Aspen and Boulder, with regrets. Five days in Colorado in mid-September -- way too short a time to enjoy the mountains, the cool fall weather, and the hordes of family and friends celebrating Jacqui's and David's wedding. Way, way too short. One clue that I married into the right family is that the dancers on their wedding night were almost entirely cousins and kin who couldn't tear themselves away from a rockin' band playing the good dance songs. We've now had two embedded-in-your-memories-for-life celebrations in the space of nine months, the other at Christmas, both in Colorado. Thank you, Jacqui and David, for hosting both events and for putting up with the mob. Thanks also to Amber and Megan for their party-and-food planning and their early arrival to pitch in and help take some of the load off of our host and hostess. And, thanks to Colin for driving us over Independence Pass and back over Vail Pass. We hope we didn't embarrass you or Sarah too much when we met Tim and Pam, Sarah's parents.

So, we are back in Florida where September still feels like August, the humid air feels like the inside of somebody's mouth, and where the bush-wa ugliness of Bre'er Bush's politics is manifested by our Secretary of State's putting Ralph Nader's name on Florida's absentee ballots despite a preliminary court order not to. Explanation? Hurricane Ivan, now headed for New Orleans, might interfere with the hearing in Tallahassee, scheduled for (drum roll) tomorrow, to make the order permanent. Go figure. Let me figure it for you: Ralph Nader is Bush's man, financed by Texas Bush-leaguers, for the purpose of diluting the anti-Bush vote.

But I digress. Back to more pleasant subjects. We got off the plane in Tampa in need of a late dinner, not too heavy. We stopped at a great place called the Bahama Breeze for a meal of shrimp and salad, and the Bahamian ambiance got us into a mood to tolerate the heat and humidity for awhile longer. I close my eyes and see mountains and golden Aspen trees but I can mix some margaritas and get into the mood to relax. God knows, we need it. Goodbye, Ivan. Don't even ask about Tropical Storm Jeanne yet.

Family

It has occurred to me that, with the exception of a cousin who lives three blocks away, there is no blood relative of mine (not counting our children, of course) who has called or e-mailed to see if we are still here. Not after Charley, not after Florence.

When my parents moved from Kentucky to Florida in 1951 they didn't realize that we were moving to the dark side of the Moon in terms of keeping up with the family. This is not to say we don't like each other. We do, but we never see each other.

What a contrast with the Workinger side of the family, which has spread out from one side of the U.S. to the other but still stays in close contact. All we need is a special event, like Christmas or a wedding, and everybody flocks back together.

Maybe it's e-mail and cell phones that make it so easy to stay in contact. As far as I know half my cousins don't use e-mail. Or maybe it is something else, but I haven't figured it out yet.

The big blow

The storm is out over the Gulf and we are finally getting kicked from the backside as the wind whips around and comes back at us from the west. Damage so far: One section of fence down in the back yard but the posts are still standing. Worse, a major limb on the key lime tree is broken off. That will seriously cut down on the key lime crop this year. Dang. But we didn't lose a roof or the house as hundreds of other people did. We didn't lose anybody at a school occupied by crazed terrorists who insanely thought they could bargain with a government that, like the U.S., does not bargain with terrorists. So from the global perspective, this is just a windy day.

A blustery day

So here we sit, with the wind outside kicking up to a bluster and the rain making half-hearted attempts. Flipping back and forth between CNN, the Weather Channel, and our local Channel 8 in hopes of learning something new and different, we see weathercasters and newsguys looking very tired and bored. Like wartime journalists who hope to stand in front of a camera with Baghdad under attack in the background - sorry, wrong war - the weather and news folks want to stand out in the breeze while pieces of stucco fall around them. The obligatory shots of wildly waving palm trees, traffic lights hanging by a thread, and the occasional tree on top of a car look like file footage from Hurricane Donna (1960). Yawn. The bad news: It is still on track to weave through Pasco County, just up the road. The good news: It should have lost its steam by then. So, just another soggy day in Paradise. I'm getting an urge for a cheeseburger and a batch of margaritas while trying to reason with this season. Let's not even talk about Ivan.

Waiting for Godot

Hurricane Frances has been approaching for what seems like two weeks. Charley stomped through Florida with paratrooper boots. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am and he was gone. Frances has become fat, old, and slow. Even as I type, the eye is finally beginning to come across West Palm Beach. The newscasters don't mention the Town of Palm Beach, the ritzy glitzy kingdom on the barrier island, or the City of Lake Worth immediately to the south where I worked. These cities are going to get pounded for twelve hours of heavy wind that will peel off roofs and throw trees through roofs too tough to peel. In Lake Worth they've undoubtedly disassembled the pier. Their pier has heavy planks which aren't nailed down but can be removed from harm's way. They didn't remove the planks fast enough a few years ago. A storm carried them up to Palm Beach and their lifeguards retrieved some of them.

Meanwhile, we sit here in Clearwater and wait. We tried to go to a movie this afternoon but the film couldn't be delivered to the theater because of Frances. We got a little rain around 6 tonight but otherwise you'd have no clue what's about to happen by looking at the sky. After seeing Punta Gorda and Arcadia, the huge old oak trees in our neighborhood don't look so substantial any more. Now I'm trying to judge where they will fall if the eye passes us to the north. Tomorrow will be a long day.

Scuba doobie, phooey

I mean, phooey on Labor Day, when the dive shop will be closed, and on the insane weather that has basically shut down the weekend. My goal of getting certified before going to Colorado next week is not gonna happen. So, I can't go diving in Colorado, not that I planned to, but I also won't have my "C-card" to show off to the other diver in the family. On Wednesday we had some free time in the pool so we played catch under water with a rubber torpedo with a missing fin, a fun way to relax. You don't get stressed over your gear or breathing techniques when you are trying to catch a crazy torpedo. More fun than it sounds, trust me. Now that i've learned to put the bottom half of my wet suit on without needing somebody to pass me the shoulder strap from behind, and to take it off without turning it into an inside-out figure eight, and to put my B.C. on without getting my hoses and straps tangled inside each other, and to take the B.C. off and put it back on under water, I'm set to go.

The Republicans convened

The Grand Old Party had a convention in the Big Apple this week, and I missed it. Missed every bit of it. I once took pride in myself for being a Democrat who voted Republican when they had the better candidate, but ever since Newt Gingrich's Contract on America and the takeover of the G.O.P. by the Righteous Right, I've given that up. I come from a line of Republicans, understand, except Mom was the black sheep who married a Democrat, voted Democrat, and argued with her brother at the drop of a hat. Her mother once tried to vote straight party ticket. . . straight Republican ticket, that is. . . in a primary election. This was in the days of the "new" voting booths with the flip-down levers and the big lever that opened and closed the big green curtain behind you. Nobody knows what she did but I think she had the right idea. Voting straight ticket saves a lot of mental effort. Voting straight Democratic ticket is going to be emotionally satisfying this fall, regardless of the outcome.

Lessons learned from Charley

This is not original with me - it was forwarded from somebody in Lee County and might not have been original with her either, but it is too good not to pass it along:

Lessons Learned From Hurricane Charley

Coffee can be made on a BBQ grill.
No matter how many times you flick the switch, lights don't work without electricity.
Cats are even more irritating without power.
A new method of non-lethal torture - showers without hot water.
There are a lot more stars in the sky than most people thought.
A 7-lb. bag of ice will chill six 12-oz beers to a drinkable temperature in 11 minutes, and still keep a 14-pound turkey frozen for 8 more hours.
Contrary to most Florida natives' beliefs, speed limit on roads without traffic lights does not increase.
Aluminum siding, while aesthetically pleasing, is definitely not required.
Just because you're over 21 doesn't mean you can stay out as late as you want. At least that's what the cops told me during a curfew stop.
Crickets can increase their volume to overcome the sound of 14 generators.
People will get into a line that has already formed without having any idea what the line is for.
When required, a Chrysler 300M will float--doesn't steer well, but floats just the same.
Some things do keep the mailman from his appointed rounds.
Cell phones work when land lines are down, but only as long as the battery remains charged.
27 of your neighbors are fed from a different transformer than you, as they are quick to point out.
If I had a store that sold only ice, chainsaws, gas, and generators. . .I'd be rich.
Your water front property can quickly become someone else's fishing hole.
Tree service companies are under appreciated.
I learned what happens when you make fun of another state's blackout.
I can walk a lot farther than I thought.

Scuba doobie, two

We completed another pool session tonight. One more pool session and two open water dives (one fresh water, one salt water) stand between me and getting certified as an "open water diver" (beginning recreational diver). Not ready for cave diving or exploring the innards of wrecks, yet.

Here are two essential facts you will never know unless you take a Scuba course (or cheat by reading this):

1. A Scuba tank holds air equivalent to the air in an American telephone booth (80 cubic feet), but the deeper you dive the faster you use it up.

2. If you pee in your wet suit, it collects in your booties. To impress someone and make a new friend after diving, empty a bootie on his/her head.

Arcadia - let's buy a new home

The new manufactured homes are better than the old ones, they say.

Let's buy a new home

Arcadia - roof damage, plus

It helps tremendously to have them tied down. We saw an old one that was tied down, but it got lifted off its supports anyway - damaged, but not as bad as this. It may be unfair to show this particular photo because it was on the dealer's lot and, obviously, not fully installed. But it is symbolic of older mobiles homes that today look exactly like this one.

Arcadia - roof damage plus

Arcadia - some roof damage

Some of the oldest house survived with minimal damage, even the tin-roofed houses. There are some really fine old houses with porches all around that also escaped damage - God knows how.

Arcadia - roof damage

Charley in Arcadia

I joined a group of seven folks from Clearwater visiting Arcadia today (Saturday). Arcadia is a small "old Florida" town on State Road 70, east of Bradenton. Charley visited Arcadia two weeks ago and left part of it a shambles. Most of the damage was caused by trees but the wind peeled roofing materials up, ripped sheds and signs apart, and tore some of the homes into rubble. But, some of the homes and buildings were unscathed. Talk about the "Flying Fickle Finger of Fate!" We spent several hours cutting up trees and hauling the debris to the road.

Here's a question for the engineers I know: How much force is required to break a pine tree? Visualize a tall, healthy pine with a trunk diameter of two feet. The break occurs 8 to 10 feet above the ground. The lower trunk and roots are still in place, and the upper part of the tree is lying on the ground, still attached where the break occurred. I wish I had a photo to show you but if you break a toothpick with your thumb you'll get the idea. Now, visualize that kind of wind tearing through your neighborhood and you'll begin to get the bigger picture.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

Scuba doobie doo

My last posts have been entirely too "heavy." Time to lighten up! I went Scuba diving last night for the first time in. . .a long time. OK, it was in an indoor pool, not in the Gulf, but the last time I took lessons the other dive shop closed before I finished the course and I never got certified, so I'm starting from scratch again. It is good to be able to examine the bottom of a pool and breathe at the same time. Last time, I got in one ocean dive on an artificial reef in about 50 feet of depth off of Boca Raton before taking a break for surgery. I remember the underwater scene like it happened yesterday - the fish, the barracuda, the urchins on the bottom, the barracuda, the reef, the barracuda - I learned the barracuda are like the instructor said: Unless you are trying to stick your finger in its mouth, a barracuda won't hurt you. You swim towards them, they back up. You back up, they swim towards you. They like to maintain a "zone" like some people I know. But there were no barracuda in the pool. Instead, we had one helluva lighting storm outside. The instructor worried that he might need his wet suit, mask, and air tank for his ride home on his motorcycle but it slacked off to a drizzle. Fun! More on this later. . .

Hurricane Charley - eight days later

Last Saturday, a friend and I went down to Punta Gorda. The general objective was to link up with Methodists from Naples and then to lend a hand with whatever clean-up or repair work we could find. The Naples people arrived late and left early. Don and I spent several hours cleaning up tree limbs and debris around the house of an out-of-town minister. Later, we went out to the Cleveland Avenue Methodist Church and helped them pick up debris from a shattered shed and hundreds of pieces of broken asphalt shingles that blew from their roof.

Words can hardly describe the conditions we saw. I didn't want to be the kind of rubber-necking fool who stops on the highway to take pictures and so I missed several dramatic photos, but I did get a few at the end of the day (see below).

They had no power in downtown Punta Gorda. I got used to Florida's hellish heat and humidity as a kid but at least we had lights, refrigerators, fans, and TV sets that worked. They don't, and it has been more than a week. Some of these folks have tarps for roofs and plywood for windows. If they were really lucky, like the minister whose house we tidied up, they had falling trees that missed the power lines and their roofs. If they weren't lucky. . .life for them is going to be miserable for months to come.

Charley's calling card: roof, walls, trees, debris

Old ice house, Punta Gorda

Debris-lined street, Punta Gorda

The debris lines the streets in all directions. Most of this pile is fiberglass insulation. Elsewhere, the debris piles consist of trees, limbs, broken lumber, and scrap furniture. We wondered how much asbestos was in the air.

Trees, Punta Gorda

Trees, leafless and twisted, Punta Gorda

The eye of the hurricane passed over Punta Gorda. The winds got up to about 140 miles an hour. The trees blew first in one direction and then, after the eye passed, back in the other direction. Those that didn't bend, broke.

Cleveland Ave. Methodist Church, Punta Gorda

The "Cleveland area" was described to us as "five houses and a church." There are more than five houses. This is the church. They were waiting for a big truck to deliver food and supplies for distribution to the neighborhood. While we waited, we picked up broken shingles and debris from the field behind the church. When we left, the truck hadn't arrived yet.

Olympics: Bring on the wrestling

I look foward to the wrestling competition. That's wrestling, not rasslin'. Rasslin' is what you did as a kid on the playground. There was Saturday rasslin' on TV before it became the flashy World Rasslin' Federation. My Grandmother Galbraith, in her eighties, liked to watch the rasslin' on TV, especially the women rasslers. Rasslin' is the world of "Hulk" Hogan, who in real life is a decent guy.

Wrestling, as in Greco-Roman wrestling, is what they do in high school, college, and the Olympics. Originally, the winner was the guy who strangled the other guy to death. The rules gradually got more civilized. Nowadays, the rules are designed to prevent permanent injury.

I once took a wrestling class in college, taught by a P.E. coach who assumed we would someday coach high school wrestlers. He taught us the "coaching points." He also put us through a great conditioning drill, like standing on your head with your heels against the wall, rocking the head sideways or back and forth to strengthen the neck muscles. When the class ended I entered an intramural wrestling tournament. I lost in the first round to the guy who won our weight class. He didn't pin me. He got two points for a take-down, I got one for an escape, and that was the final score.

When you watch wrestlers, you may think they aren't doing much. Don't be fooled. They are locked in position with every muscle testing to see if it can gain some "purchase," trying for the take-down. A three-minute round is a very long three minutes for the guys on the mat.

The wrestlers start up on Sunday. One good thing will be that the wrestling commentators are not like the anal-retentive gymnastics commentators. Nobody will lose points for failing to "stick." But a wrestler will lose points if the other guy sticks him into the mat.

Olympics: Oh, shut up

In case I didn't express my contempt for the commentators strongly enough, let me try again: If the Olympics are represented by a statue, the commentators are the ass end of it. Last night, after Paul Hamm made a sitzplatz in front of the judges, the disgusted commentators were ready to drive him to the airport. "He will remember this moment for a long time," said one. "For the rest of his life," said the other. I turned off the TV and went to bed, missing what may be the greatest comeback in all of sports history. This morning, the local sportswriter gushed so effusively in his first 20 or so paragraphs I had to turn back to page 6 of the sports section to see what happened. The story concluded by saying Hamm's accomplishment "belongs to all of us." No, it doesn't. It belongs to Hamm, who hung in when it all seemed finished. The rest of us are mere spectators, not counting those of use who went to bed early.

The Summer Olympics

I love watching the Olympics, summer and winter. I absolutely cannot stand the commentators, those whining, anal-retentive voices telling me how this athlete, after a super-human performance of some extraordinary event, should lose 0.125 points for having one eye closed during the dismount. Or whatever. My long-suffering wife usually hears me say two things during the evening: "Wow, how did she do that?" and (to the commentators) "Oh, SHUT UP."

I just watched an American woman miss a bronze medal in a swimming event, the 200-meter butterfly, by 0.14 of a second. That's a hair less than one-seventh of a second. Can you clap your hands seven times in a second? One of those claps would be the difference between third and fourth place after churning through 200 meters of water. And that leads me to one of my pet peeves about the Olympics, the idiotic notion that there's something wrong with a silver or bronze medal. Yeah, everybody goes for the gold, or you'd not have the motivation to be there. But, hey, in a field of world-class athletes, any medal that says "Olympics" on it is a valuable thing to bring home. I don't have an Olympics medal of any color. Neither do most of the sports columnists in American newspapers, who generate more manure than an equal number of Clydesdales.

NBC just flashed an invitation to download Paul Hamm's favorite songs. Great idea. They should also let you download whatever it is that Micheal Phelps listens to. Better yet, they should play music as an alternative sound track on TV. Let me watch the athletes performing while listening to their favorite music. Let me hear the commentators only when they are saying goodbye.

trying to reason. . .

It took the St. Petersburg Times only 72 hours to publish the first letter criticizing the National Weather Service for not predicting the path of Hurricane Charley any more precisely than it did. I seldom write letters to editors any more but that one set me off. I pointed out that a hurricane is a tornado with a forty-mile diameter that can stop, go around in a circle, and go off in a different direction. I respect hurricanes like I respect lightning and alligators, all of which are unpredictable and deadly. Any fool who doesn't understand that should go back to Milwaukee or wherever he came from. I wasn't that blunt in my letter, but should have been.

We had Earl churning across down there for awhile, but old Earl has disintegrated. This is not the time to relax, yet. The really nasty hurricanes tend to arrive in September.

I need to find a lighter subject to write about.

trying to reason with hurricane . . .

Devastating. That is the one word used most often to describe the effects of a hurricane. The word "hurricane" is even part of one dictionary's definition of "devastating:" (adj) wreaking or capable of wreaking complete destruction; possessing annihilative power; a "devastating hurricane." Note the "complete" in "complete destruction."

When I bragged yesterday about going back to the old hum-drum, I wasn't thinking of the people who first lost their windows, then their roof, then everything they owned. They no longer have a hum-drum to go back to.

I was ready to claim credit for our close call because no hurricane has ever made a direct hit on any town I've ever lived in. But, this morning, the paper has a story about some old Greeks in Tarpon Springs who believe St. Nicholas (the saint, not Santa) protects their city. They may have something there. Donna went way east, Alma (1968) went to the north, and now this. It makes no sense and you can't reason with it. I can subscribe to the Greeks' theory.

Trivia for today: The muscles you use cutting with two-handed limb-loppers are basically the same as the muscles you use swimming freestyle. The lactic acid left over from Thursday's pool session told me so.

trying to reason with hurricane season

There is absolutely nothing like being in the path of a Category 4 hurricane to focus your mind. I have lived nearly all my life in Florida - since 1951, if you need to know - and this is the first time in all that time that a hurricane has actually aimed itself at me and my hometown. Naturally, this causes everybody to stop their normal humdrum routine and think serious thoughts, like: What if I have no home to go home to after tomorrow? What if I have a home but the roof and three walls are gone? What if the walls are standing but a large oak tree has crushed the roof? We've had the oak-tree-roof experience already, thank you; that is once is too many. Now I'm looking at my neighbor's old oaks, wondering which way they might go down.

So we got the day off from work. OK, now what? Got the tank of gas, got the cash from the bank, got the prescription refilled. Time for the final pre-hurricane checklist: Water, check. Beer, check. Movies, check. Overhanging tree limbs? Better do the trimming I should have done a month ago. OK, check. Gutters? They need to be cleaned every 19 years whether they need it or not. OK, check. Better stake down the new young replacement oak so it won't blow away. OK, check. Move the potted plants in before they become missiles. OK, check. That killed half the day, and now it is time to take a hot shower and relax.

Relax? What's this? Our Cat 4 storm has taken a right turn. After avoiding Naples, it turned and came ashore across pretty little Captiva and Sanibel Islands. I hope it didn't ruin everything. There was an island north of Clearwater Beach that got carved into two islands in 1921, and now they are separated by "Hurricane Pass." There's no film on TV from Captiva or Sanibel Islands, which seems ominous. Now it is heading up U.S. 17, following the highway like an Army aviator following a Triple A map, in the direction of Orlando. That is not good. Yesterday they were probably yukking it up that poor Tampa Bay was going to get clobbered. People from here went there to avoid the storm. Today, they are hustling for the plywood, water, etc.

Why do I have a sense of regret that the storm missed us? We have been missed before. Hurricane Donna was a close one. That's the one that wrecked Naples and worked its way up the state in 1960. My father, principal of Palm Harbor Jr. High School, opened the school as a hurricane shelter. That was some kind of adventure with the rain and wind, but we had no idea how close we were to disaster. They didn't have satellite radar maps and non-stop talking heads on TV then. That was also before the coasts of Florida filled up with high-rise condos and hotels. There are old-timers, older than me, who have wished out loud for a good hurricane to flush it all away. I don't share that sentiment because I know some of those folks. They invested their retirement money in a cube of air in the sky and they do not need to come back and discover that the surrounding walls, etc., are out in the Gulf somewhere.

But you have to admit, an unmitigated disaster of that sort might discourage the further "improvement" of what's left of Florida.

Jimmy Buffet staggered off the hammock and into the nearest bar to get another bloody Mary (in the song). We celebrated our good fortune with a batch of Margaritas. Tomorrow, I will haul a ton of cut tree limbs out to the curb for pick-up on Monday. Then, the normal humdrum begins again. Thank God for a normal humdrum. It could be much worse.

bloggin' along

I don't have this blog business down yet by a long shot. I'm not sure if this is like a personal diary that the entire world can read, an unsent e-mail that sits here waiting to be seen by who knows who, or an outlet for a bush-league creative writing talent stunted by a career of writing legal stuff. My high school Latin helps with the legal writing, but doesn't help at all with the creative part. Legal writing has limited objectives: (1) Persuade judges that justice is on your client's side, (2) memorialize an agreement with specificity, or (3) state what you cannot do where, when, and with whom, as in a city ordinance. Even the description of legal writing is boring. I'm learning not to react to what I read on other blogs, which adds to my confusion. Check back the end of August. Maybe the muse will have struck in the meantime.