Calico Joe--A Book Review

   I have never read a John Grisham book. Gasp! Sigh! There...I said it. I even have a paperback copy of Grisham's novel, "A Time to Kill", that was given to me by a former student that has been sitting in my attic waiting to be read since 2006. I don't know what it is. I find myself looking at the book sometimes telling it that, "Its me, not you." Its not that I'm afraid of Grisham or that he writes about things I'm not interested in. I guess it was the ever-present "New York Times Best-Selling Author" title that accompanies his name that makes me so nervous or self-conscious. I just had this vision of me picking up a book of his and Flannery O'Connor watching me do so from a chair in the corner and then shaking her head at me. However, several weeks ago, my mom mailed us a package of goody's and in the package was this book with a note that said, "I know you don't have time to read, but when you do, read this."And I decided to flub my nose at Miss O'Connor and my pride and settle down each evening to the words of Mr. Grisham, a "New York Times Best-Selling Author". My mother after all is the one who retaught me to read and then introduced me to the difference between just reading and reading good books. And there is a difference. It is akin to the difference of watching someone kiss in a movie and actually kissing or looking at a picture of a sunset and seeing one from the top of a lone mountain ridge and feeling as if you are the last human among a planet older and larger than life itself.

  It is odd how subjects move in cycles for me. Several years ago, it seemed like everything that made its way to me had something to do with cycling. Last year, it seemed like everything was about gardening and composting. But this year, it has been baseball. We have been to some games, we took Ford to his first game, the Braves made it to the post season, Ford and I have been making our way slowly through the Ken Burns documentary about baseball, and then my mom mailed me the book, Calico Joe, which was and is about baseball. So, 2012 may be an election year, but for me, it has been the year of baseball.

  I will make two good observations and one bad observation about the book. We will start with the good. Calico Joe, is a very easy read and this was a nice change of pace for me since the only time I really get to read is right before I fall asleep and if you ask Mel, I am getting better and better at that. (This may NOT be a good thing.) Several years ago, I used to think that books that were "easy" to read were easy to write and thus made the author either lazy or not very-talented, but I think very differently about this now. I have seen many authors ranging from Steinbeck to Twain and many others who say that if it reads easy, it was very hard to write. And I guess that is true in most anything else. When you watch a professional anyone or anything, they make whatever they are doing look easy. If you took any time to watch the Olympic Games, you know what I'm talking about. If you didn't catch them, go to the Food Network, watch one episode of the Barefoot Contessa, then find that same recipe and try it at home. You will then understand. Or go find a poem written by John Keats or Emily Dickinson, read it several times, then go try to write a poem about the same subject and try to fit all that he or she does into the same amount of lines. I'd suggest starting with Keat's, Ode to a Nightingale. Calico Joe, is both an easy read and it is also an enjoyable read. There are times when you feel the book and the characters in the book are real because Grisham does such a fine job weaving real events that occurred in baseball's long and storied history with events that he made up. I enjoyed this facet of the book very much and am so glad I got to read this book. And if you like baseball, I would suggest this book. It makes you want to visit a ballpark or at least go pick up your glove and get in some throws before you go eat some Stove Top from Johnny's house.

  Now for the bad...I really didn't care for most of the dialogue that was in this book. Each time it surfaced, for the most part, it felt contrived and forced. And please know I do not in any way think I know much of anything about writing in general or about writing dialogue. I do know that writing dialogue is exhausting and when you read it back to yourself, it all feels contrived, silly, and very forced. Many times, I would catch myself reading through the dialogue and asking myself if someone would really say that and I was left saying, "no". I wish that this wouldn't have been so because the dialogue really took away from the story rather than adding to it. All the people in the book spoke as you expected them to speak or spoke like characters in movies speak, not like people who breathe real air and interact with real, non-virtual people speak.

  After reading this, I would say that I enjoyed the book. I would suggest the book. I would even go as far as to say that I might climb into my attic now that its not 150 degrees in the shade in middle Georgia now and get the Grisham book that I've kept locked away and place my beloved Indigo Bunting bookmark that I bought for $1 from the Birmingham Audubon Society seven years ago within its worn pages. Something I would suggest is reading Bernard Malamud's novel, The Natural, before or after this book and then comparing and contrasting the two. And I believe the teacher in me just came out, so I'd better finish off this post.

Happy Reading,

   David

Wednesday's Wisdom for Writing

    Over the past two years, I have been reading a certain book and that book is, "Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters". It has taken me this long for a multitude of reasons, but the main one is that for being  a book that is less than 200 pages (my copy contains 182 pages), it contains more wisdom and knowledge about writing, the writing life, and a plethora of other subjects than I've gathered from a single book in a very long time. When it comes to reading books about the subject of writing, I've only read five of them from authors that I put a little or a lot of stock in either what they wrote or how they wrote it. If you were to go to your local bookstore and locate the section where these types of books are kept, you would notice that the number of titles is mind-boggling. And what is even more bizarre to me is that almost a third of these titles are written by someone who has not written much else besides the guide. Yes, they usually have their Master's degree or PhD in Literature, but I just find it a little odd. It would be like me writing a guide on parenting because I've been a father for almost 6 months now. Of the books about writing that I've read, Flannery O'Connor's, Mystery and Manners, and now this book have had the most impact on me in relation to how I think about writing in general and how I attempt to approach my own weak attempts at setting my own thoughts down in written form. 

    I was going to do my usual book review for this book, but after finishing it about a month ago, I began thinking that just doing that would really sell it short after all that I had gathered from this book. As mentioned on the back cover, this book is not just Steinbeck waxing eloquently about how he writes, it is more like the book you would get if you mixed an autobiography, with a writer's workshop, and then added some personal letters in for either extra flavor or an added, edible garnish. If you have never heard of the book, stop what you are doing (except the reading of this blog, of course), go to the library, check this book out, and read it very slowly. The whole concept of this book is that each morning from January 29th of 1951 to November 1st of 1951, Steinbeck wrote a letter to his friend and editor, Pascal Covici, on one side of the notebook he used to write the original copy of his novel, East of Eden. He did this in an attempt to" get his mental arm in shape to pitch a good game...". Each of these letters reveal so much about the novel, Steinbeck himself, the trials and tribulations of the writing life, Steinbeck's love, care, and concern for his family, and lastly the "gladness and terror of writing". 

   So, what I've decided to do is each Wednesday, offer to you, my loyal readers of the HTH, some advice about writing from a master writer. I'm going to start with Steinbeck and then move onto O'Connor, add some Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dillard, and many others along the way. Wednesday's will for a very long time be known as, Wednesday's Wisdom for Writing, around this place. And yes,  your Wednesday's will never be the same. So here we go:

  "I am choosing to write this book to my sons...I shall tell them this story against the background of the country I grew up in and along the river I know and do not love very much. For I discovered that there are other rivers. And this my boys will not know for a long time nor can they be told. A great many never come to know that there are other rivers. Perhaps that knowledge is saved for maturity and very few people ever mature. It is enough if they flower and reseed. That is all nature requires of them. But sometimes in a man or a woman awareness takes place--not often and always inexplainable. There are no words for it because there is no one ever to tell. This is a secret not kept a secret, but locked in wordlessness. The craft of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness. In utter loneliness, a writer tries to explain the inexplicable" 

                John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel, pg. 4

Happy reading and writing, 

  

   David

Building a Simple Compost Bin-A How To

"Earth knows no desolation. 

She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay."
-  George Meredith 

   When I was fifteen, I began working for this elderly woman who would pay me $15 every Wednesday when I worked for her from 3:30 to 5:30. Her name was Marion Smith. She was and is was one of the most interesting people I have ever gotten to know. She grew up in New York and her family lived on Long Island long before it became what it is now. I never knew her age because she was only old on the outside. Each Wednesday, she would have a list of jobs for me to do or for us to do and every Wednesday, she would have us a "pick-me-up" snack to eat at around 4. It was when we were eating our always healthy snack that she would tell me about her life in New York where she attended school and then taught school for 40+ years or about something she read in the New York Times or The New Yorker; two publications I'd never really heard of and definitely never read. She loved to talk politics and always made me think about my side of thought. It was one of the first times, I'd ever had to really make my beliefs my own. And I guess, there really isn't a better place to talk politics or books than while picking oranges and tossing them down to an old lady on a ladder or washing 150 windows in an afternoon before youth group. One of my jobs each week was to add things she had been collecting for a week to her compost pile and then turn the soil. And for some odd reason, I kind of liked doing it. I get some odd satisfaction from using a tool like a shovel and using it for the reason it was invented. It just feels right. So, I wanted to build us a compost pile like her's so that we could benefit from it like she did. And so, I looked up a bunch of plans on the ole' inter web and decided that I would ignore them and build a replica of what she had. I have seen better or prettier compost piles, but if it was good enough for her, it is going to be good enough for us here at Hines Terrace Herald. 

    Here is how I put our's together. It has been finished for several months now and the "compost" it is making is looking very dark and rich. I am looking forward to adding it to our garden boxes next spring. It is also more fun than I thought to save something each day to add to our compost pile. Between saving items for recycling and the compost pile, our daily amount of trash has been greatly reduced (one of the three R's, if you remember). The only downside is that often times, most of what I throw into it, some how makes its way back to our backdoor when our dog Jack decides he wasn't really ready to throw it away, but that is for another day or another post. So, without further ado....

These two create much waste, but Mel, Ford, and myself need it for some other endeavors. So, Eudora and Flannery, we salute you and thank you. Our lives are greener and fuller because of you. 

One good cleaning of our chicken coop gives us one good wheelbarrow full of what we will call "ideal compost".

Our green, full garden at its best this summer. We can thank the chickens for this. 

The nice little spot I picked out in the rear corner of our backyard.

The first thing you need for a good compost pile is a carload of blocks. (Car sold separately)

Then you can level out one side. 

Then you can lay out several blocks on one side and level them.

Now, its time to clear and level the back side of the compost pile. 

I made our compost pile three blocks wide, three blocks deep, and three blocks high. 

Now, time for the third and final side.

Two of the three blocks down and leveled.

Level one of our compost pile almost level and complete.

The beginnings of level 2. 

The leveling of the corners.

The pile with two layers.

The beginnings of the third level. 

The finished compost pile.

The first addition to our newly finished compost pile. 

And so our pile begins to grow.

A new delivery fresh from our eggstrordinary, poultry factory.

And so our new compost pile begins its baking of some new soil for our 2013 garden.

Happy Composting and thanks for reading,

   David

   

It is XC Season, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Steve Prefontaine--The Patron Saint of Running

    There is no sport quite like cross country and the reason that I think that is so, is in how the sport came about. 200+ years ago, school children of England and Scotland would play a game called "foxes and hares". They would pick several very fast kids and designate them as the "hares" and they would send them off for a small amount of time, then the rest of the kids would play the role of "foxes" and chase after them and the kid or kids that caught the "hare" were declared the winners. Many years rolled by and the game expanded to older kids or schoolchildren and they added barriers, like fences, hedges, and hay bales, for the runners to cross in their hunt for the "hares" and pretty soon the role of "foxes" was changed to the role of being a "huntsman". In the late 1800's, this game of chase began its its slow move to something a little more like the modern-day version of cross country and it is also when the sport made its way across the "big pond" and was brought to America. It was at this time, that some rules and a fixed course for the runners were laid out and made known. 

    Flash forward 200 years and we find one of the fastest growing sports in the country and a sport that is still very similar to its founding. Cross country is not included in the Summer or Winter Olympics because it is not considered a summer or winter sport, but rather a Fall sport. However, each year, there is both a US Championship XC race and there is a World Championship XC race.  The fixed distances for elementary and middle-school runners is somewhere between 0.5 miles (a 1k) to 2 miles (3.2k). The fixed distance for high school runners is 3.1 miles or what is known as a 5k. Once a runner leaves high school, this distance stays the same for women, but for men this distance increases to a 4.96 mile race (8k). 

    Each year, I look forward to the next cross country season the day the preceding one ends. I have coached basketball, soccer, track and cross country and nothing comes close to excitement and joy I find in the sport of cross country. Yes, basketball is a true spectator's sport and its fast-paced and exciting. Yes, soccer is the number one sport in the world and very fun to watch and has even been known to cause riots. And yes, track is fun and every four years, the world stops to watch it. But...for me, there is nothing like standing in a little huddle before the start of a race and breathing in the calm before the storm, praying in earnest for swift feet, calm nerves, and stable footing. Watching each runner read his/her best times written in Sharpie on their hands along with a memory verse. Hearing the pre-race instructions for the 1000th time and waiting with heavy anticipation and my finger on my watch for the blast of the gun or the deafening sound of the air horn to go off. Watching the runners release all their anxiety within the first 100 yards. Dashing to the 1 mile mark to write down times, count runners, watch my watch, call out times, and shout my head off before I rush to the two mile mark. Then running against the runners telling them to pick it up and standing at the 2 mile mark and shouting at my runners to be strong than themselves, where they are in the race, that they can easily run just a mile more, and once again the counting of runners. And then the mad scramble for the finish line shoot where they throw off all their excuses and find that extra gear and go into that place deep inside themselves that they never knew was there. And the ever-present tick of those red numbers at the finish line measuring how fast a man can run 16,000 feet or 3.1 miles. And lastly, the joy or the anguish of the runner who has either given their all or who hates the fact that they had more to give, but didn't. It is the most honesty that one can see in life on most days. And as a XC coach, I get to see all of this and remember what all that felt like and to know that I get to let these runners know that one bad race doesn't define them and that one good race is only the beginning. 

   XC season is short and fast and many times, I am glad it is so. Many days, it is so hard to go straight from teaching for 8 hours to another 2 hours of coaching and instruction, but once I am halfway through the warm up and my little group of runners are getting into the stride and feel of practice, I am so glad that I am getting to share that small piece of life and earth with them. We are running where others have run long before us and we are taking part in a ritual that has been taking place for as long as mankind has walked this planet. We are breathing the freshest of air and moving our bodies in ways that we were created to do. XC is not the most popular sport and I used to be bitter about it, but know I feel like it is my little secret that I get to share with only a handful of people each year. XC is like no other sport and I'm so glad it isn't. 

Happy Running and may the next three weeks of the XC season go slowly,

  David

My Return to Blogging, Lance Armstrong, and the USADA,

    I have not blogged since August 17th. I hate it, but that is just how things are. There is just no time. I feel I am living in a constant state of being incomplete. My house is in disarray. My yard looks like a jungle. My pile of papers that need to be graded is about a foot tall. My ankle is rolled and sprained. I pulled my groin running a mere 50 yards.  My car is dirty and covered with some sort of sap. My garden is dying and full of weeds. I could go on, but I don't think I need to. And the sad part about all of it is that I love having everything done. It brings me great comfort to leave a clean house, wearing clean clothes, riding in a clean car, going to a place where all things are prepared and ready to be either handed out or presented, and then coming home to a place where my list of things that need to be done isn't as long as the Continental Divide. I won't pretend that I have ever had all of this, but there have been times in the not so distant past that I had it pretty close. And also know, that I won't for a second pretend that it was all me. I am attached to a much better 3/4 who carries so much for me and does it all with a smile and more grace than I have ever seen.
  When I look around me, I realize that for the time being, I can't change much about my current situation and don't much want to after holding a newborn the other day and quickly wondering where that time went with Ford and realizing it vanished faster than smoke on a windy day. I would rather have this little boy of mine sleep on my chest after a long, hard day at work than do or have most anything. But...I do want to keep up this blog. So, once again, I will pledge before the ever-loyal readers of HTH that I will attempt to set my little fingers to the keys and try to churn out a few posts here and there. I hope they are worth reading. I hope they are interesting. I hope they find you well. And there is no easier place to begin than with a little post about something in the mainstream news that I am trying to make sense of. Here is my little take on the hurricane of a storm surrounding Lance Armstrong. Hope you enjoy and that you will be on the lookout again next week or so for another fresh post. We will do our best.

 And so we begin anew.....again....

   I wasn't going to give ole' Livestrong a place on HTH, but it has gotten to a point that I feel I need to comment on it. Mr. Armstrong doesn't need to be defended and isn't exactly the kind of person we like to hang around, but what is currently happening to him is just not right. I say this because he left his wife who stayed with him when he was dying of cancer. He has had a whole string of questionable girlfriends. He is arrogant. He is prideful. He gives God no credit for his life free from cancer. He is a professional jerk or that is at least how he portrays himself in interviews, but that is neither here nor there for me in the midst all of this.

  If you have been asleep while walking the planet as of late, I will summarize the situation. Lance Armstrong is a cyclist. He won the hardest cycling event in the world a record 7 times: The Tour de France. Le' Tour is a 2500 mile cycling race. The first time he won was in 1999. 1999 was the first time he got taken to court over doping allegations because no American could actually win a European cycling event and be clean, right? He won again in 2000 and again got taken to court. Flash forward to 2012, Mr. Armstrong is still fighting in court over the same charges. Every year, a new case is brought against him. He goes to court. The case gets thrown out for lack of evidence or for some other silly reason. Two months ago, Lance Armstrong got his name cleared from the FDA case against him and two weeks later the USADA (United State Anti-Doping Agency) brought another case against him. He said he wasn't going to fight any longer. He had wasted his time, efforts, and money defending his name and having his name drug (no pun intended) through the mud, having lies told about him, etc. for 13 years. The media and the USADA said this means he is guilty and they declared him guilty, they banned him from any athletic competition, and declared all his results to be void, and said that he was to have his 7 TdF titles taken away from him. The only problems with this and the only reason I am defending him is that A) the USADA's case of him is based on anecdotal evidence from the like's of Floyd Landis who had his TdF title removed from him because he failed a drug test and Tyler Hamilton who had his Olympic gold medal taken away for the same reason, B) it never went to a court of law, C) the USADA doesn't have the power to strip him of his titles. Only the UCI (the International Cycling Union) does, D) Armstrong took part in over 500 drug tests and never failed one, E) And lastly, the USADA has yet to even show anyone the "evidence" they have against Armstrong, but they and the media have declared him guilty. So guilty, that the Chicago Marathon denied him entry into their race based solely on a verdict passed down from a group and not a judge.
     I am defending him because the only place where he has been found guilty is in the court of public opinion. And that is scary to me. Truth has become perception. He passed the drug tests. He overcame court case after court case. He has never been found guilty by any court of law. The USADA has yet to present anything real except simply saying they have "numerous alleged violations" and as many as "10" people who are going to testify against him. And even if he is guilty,  neither the USADA or the UCI can award those seven titles to anyone because each year he won, the rider who came in second place has been found guilty of doping by failing a drug test. The same drug tests that Armstrong passed, but the media and the USADA have ignored.  And lastly,

But, according to the UCI President Pat McQuaid, the file still has to be sent to them, despite requesting it as soon as the decision was announced on August 24.  

and today September 22nd as reported by ESPN.com

"UCI assumes that USADA have the file, the full file, as they've already made a decision based on it and therefore it's difficult to understand why it hasn't arrived yet," McQuaid said from the Road Cycling World Championships in the southern Netherlands.

  And there you have it ladies and gentlemen....a piece of something I don't really understand. A huge decision against one of the greatest cyclists of all time (a sentiment I will hold to be true until someone actually proves this to be incorrect) based on evidence that no one has seen and upon the word of two cheaters. I know there are two or three sides to every story, but I'd like to see and hear the other side (s) before I discredit greatness. I find two things very fearful in this story and that is that we humans have become so cynical of great things that we smell the rat before it ever shows its head and the second is that we are sacrificing hero after hero in an effort to be "honest" before we ever see a shade of the truth. 

Happy reading and hope you can help me understand the world around me. Thanks for reading.

David