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Saturday, March 16, 2013

Baseball Life - Looking for the Sign

I spend my life, 7 innings at a time, watching the complicated game of baseball. Because the breaks between action are frequent and often prolonged, my mind starts to wander. I ponder deep subjects such as what I can cook for dinner, the name of the parent I've sat next to for years but can't remember, and baseball's parallels to life.

For all of its strategy and rigorous adherence to routine, the game of baseball mirrors the condition of humanity. It is a struggle against failure. Coaches keep statistics to determine how well each player is holding up in the face of forces of defeat. The numbers generally sober any player too high on himself. Failure is usually in the lead.

But one advantage baseball has over our everyday existence is the nature of the approach. When I wake up start my day, it's total guesswork as to my next move. I plot my own course with little outside input and a heap of faith. Even when I look for signs, I get too preoccupied to notice them. But baseball players, as compared to me, are darn lucky. They know what to do next. They look for the sign and they receive it pretty clearly. I wish life was like that.

Of course, coaches and life are equally punitive when they give a sign and it's missed.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Augusta Family Magazine wins five national awards | The Augusta Chronicle

Augusta Family Magazine wins five national awards | The Augusta Chronicle

I'm thrilled to have won three of the five. At the same time, though, I'm stressed out that maybe I won't write as well this year. Is that what they call 'performance anxiety'?

Monday, March 11, 2013

The Holy City

Every year, late winter, I get together with a group of friends from college. We were in the same sorority. We made a lot of the same mistakes. We share the same memories. 



This past weekend we ate our way through Charleston, SC like Old Testament locusts, infesting O'Hara & Flynn, Fleet Landing, The Grocery, Jestine's, Magnolias Uptown Down South, Hominy Grill and The Noisy Oyster with our inside jokes, favorite stories and bursts of laughter.

Normally, we stay out on one of the islands and drive in for just a few hours, but this year we decided to go urban. The guy with the rental company that leased us the apartment for the weekend answered an affirmative 'yes' when we asked if the place was in walking distance of the lower peninsula. Perhaps the misunderstanding was in the way we phrased the question. I don't know. But, by his interpretation, it was also in walking distance of the Vatican City. 

Add that commute to our bouts of aimless wandering (caused by all of the blood rushing to our stomachs to facilitate digestion before we piled on the next meal) then factor in the number of years that have elapsed since college and you arrive at sore feet. As we briskly hiked up Meeting Street to no particular destination, with no particular goal, one of the ladies in my party turned to me and remarked, "I feel like a Hebrew in the desert."

To which I responded, "Only we've managed to pack 40 years of wandering into one day."

Needless to say, between the food, the drink and the foot pace, we didn't exactly spring forward with the rest of the world on Sunday. The Holy City had brought us to our knees.