Elk Sky (my plates)

Been asked a lot about the plates: “Elk Sky.” It’s the name of a picture I took and have enjoyed ever since. There’s just something about it …

Elk is a tiny hamlet south of Mendocino. If you go, be sure to stop at Bridget Dolan’s for a beer or dinner!

getting older...

I love gray; it gives me that near-extinguished look.

'50s and '60s ...

 ... when everything was in large print!

Pluto was a planet; Wonder Bread built strong bodies twelve ways; you could depend on Social Security; the man in moon was in it, not on it; there were four channels in black and white; everyone hated Shredded Wheat; and Leslie Gore gave us all an out with, "that's the way boys are …”

You go, Sam!

I’ve watched him play in a surgical symphony of shots that raised eyebrows and caused that boyish smile and cackling laugh. He seemed surprised, and yet it is what he expects from himself—of the stuff where expectation and effort are expected to meet success, where failure boils and then comes to rest on lowered shoulders. You can’t help but feel for his dissatisfaction on any particular day should it point south, though you know and you’ll witness the phoenix in his play soon enough. The incredulous expressions he offers in both success and failure don’t surprise me. There are those who possess a passion that propels an effort connected to a personal cost: golf is not a game, but a challenge. It matters little that the foe is a reflection, it is the challenge that offers the breed more than satisfaction; only in accomplishment is a beer truly deserved and peace preserved … you gotta love that.

You go, Sam!

Yeah, I know, it ain't about golf, but WTF!

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name stripped from children’s book award over ‘Little House’ depictions of Native Americans

You cannot go back and decide today what a person’s motives, experience, and understanding were—a hundred years later! We won the Civil War; we raped and pillaged the South and taxed away their land until all they had left was the difference of opinion that lived in the bronze statues and flags, saying I felt differently from you. Nearly 300,000 souls died in the South and were buried under a different flag—one that is banned today—but morons still wave flags with swastikas on them. Any historian will tell you it wasn’t all about slavery.

Should we remove Jefferson from our coins and history books because he had slaves (as did Washington and most others at that time)? Are we going to decide that Germans should have known about 6 million Jews and take fresh action against them today for what happened 70 years ago? Do we boycott Mercedes and BMW and beer? When do we start a Pearl Harbor hate month: "Sushi is un-American!"?

What other retro arrogance can we now bathe in to cleanse ourselves against histories that are now viewed in black and white but that were made in color? If those histories became "lessons," so be it—use them as such. I wonder who will be first to suggest that we burn all Laura Ingalls Wilder books in the name of the view from over here now—and how very right we are!

Who makes up this shit?!  Michael Landon must be turning over in his grave.

Ever notice ...

... how golf can make you feel like Sonny on the causeway? 

Hey Joe...

It was written across his face, facing the white tees. The expected challenge, when it appears to have increased, allows doubt to double its threat. I believe it took about four holes for Joe Valdez to meet and pass the angst. “I didn’t think I could keep up”—a  sentence I would ordinarily turn into something lewd or at least off-key, but on this occasion I looked over at the sand-bagger riding shotgun in my cart and smiled.

There’s something humbling about a humble man; I missed the Humble Class long ago and still see d’Artagnan while shaving. We traded questions about golf, life, and yesterday—and left plenty of room for the moment. He never complained, just rose to the occasion (another opp—but then again golf is rife with them).

Joe Valdez is a curious man. I think curiosity is a trait that extends one’s life, because it fills voids and gains its own appetite. It’s the small stories in recent and not-so-recent pasts that often catch the listener and make him thirsty for another small revelation in the enigmas shoved deeply in another’s pocket. Trading such pearls on the way home with “The Hat” in tow, I found myself open to revealing the less capitalized version of my story and willing to show some vulnerable and even less savory sides of past shadows. There is comfort in the trust we make with confederates frozen in a set of seats going 65 mph, something in the laughs that loosens jaws, no matter the score that day. I might have just let this go, just thought about it instead writing about it. But for some reason, the comfort of the company made its way down to my fingers, and I suspect a humble man named Joe had something to do with it.