Spilt Melk, or, Shortcuts

Warning:  This is a baseball post.

Oh, and...

Warning:  This is a writing post, too.

As the Airman used to say to me, "Sit down, shut up, and hang on."

*****

This morning my favorite PBS affiliate, KQED in San Francisco, posted this article to Facebook and Twitter, an open letter from a fan to the Giants.  In it, the fan deliberates so many repercussions of SF Giants' outfielder Melky Cabrera's positive test result for performance-enhancing drugs.  KQED asked in their teaser, "Do you still love the San Francisco Giants?"

Oo, boy.

Yes, Virginia, I still love the San Francisco Giants.  I also happen to still love every other baseball team, with the exception of the New York Yankees.  I love all of the minor league teams, I love the college teams, I love the Little League teams, and I love the little kid who was at the park the other night in a batting helmet almost too big for him sending grounders past his dad.  I love baseball, pure and simple.  I love so many things about baseball.

But I've only loved them recently.

When I graduated from high school, I was a huge Twins fan.  Loved all things Kirby.  Had my own "Buy a vowel Hrbek" sign.  Wanted to see the park someday.  I still haven't got there--and won't because they are in a new ballpark now--but I got a little heartbroken along the way and got sidetracked.  In the mid to late nineties I sort of gave up on baseball...right about the time Mr. McGwire and Mr. Sosa started beefing up and hitting home runs all over the place.  I didn't give up on baseball because they had been found to have used drugs, but because baseball, by my definition, was a sport where you didn't look like an athlete of any kind of stereotype but yet you made amazing things happen.  I stopped watching baseball when they stopped looking like average guys and started looking like cartoon characters.  To me, the game didn't look amazing anymore.

And, of course, we all found out why.

(Someone that I dated once said that he stopped watching baseball when the players went on strike in the nineties.  Strangely, even in my cash-strapped position, that would be less heartbreaking than drug use.  A union fight is a union fight.  Drug use is a short cut.)

I didn't come back to the game until 2004, and that's only because my brother was fool enough to take me to a ballpark.  I was hooked at the entrance gate.  Keep in mind that I saw Bonds play that day, and while I wasn't impressed and knew what was going on already with him, I wasn't following players at that point.  I was following ballpark experience, the experience of going to a game at AT&T.  Since then I have visited the Coliseum (blech; sorry, Oakland, I love you, but I hate your venue) and Petco Park (nice ballpark, no excitement, though).  AT&T still wins.  AT&T wins regardless of whether the Giants do.  I attended games through the Bonds' era, and into the long drought after Bonds, and even when I had to fight to get seats from opponents' fans who were sitting around me waiting for us to lose and Johnny-come-lately Giants' fans who decided to start flooding the ballpark in 2011.  I loved AT&T after we sent Molina to Texas and Dave Roberts moved to San Diego and Mike Matheny left to heal from concussions.  I'm not there now, but I'm still there in spirit.

Let me just say this about Melky Cabrera:  I didn't hate him, and I don't hate him now.  I can say that even though he doped up AND even though he used to be a Yankee.  (Chris Stewart is now a Yankee, and I don't hate him, and I have always love Sabathia, so I think the Yankee hatred lies in their leadership...no, I don't like A-Rod, either.)  Honestly, I was sort of ambivalent about him.  I liked the idea that we got a better batter for an awful pitcher (Sanchez), but I'm sure that now someone in Kansas City is getting the last laugh on that one.  I was probably more hurt by Mota getting suspended for his drug use than Melky, because I didn't know Melky as well.  But any drug use is not okay.  When Mota comes back, I'll treat his bullpen time like I did Bonds' at-bats, with silence.  I will pause the passion and look away.  And I'll do the same for Melky.

I too have questions on how this could happen, and what the Giants (or any other ball club) could do to stop it in the future.  It all comes down to this--do you assume that any phenomenal player is using something as a crutch?  Should we presume guilt on Jeter, Fielder, Wright, Vogelsong, Cain, Dickey, Harper, Pence, Sandoval, Strasburg, etc, etc, ad nauseum?  What then, would be the magic number?  What's "too good" for you?

I didn't hate Melky.  But I was bored by him.  I'm not bored by the Giants, or baseball, in general.  Only if the player is too good am I bored.  Show me your humanity and I'm interested.  Which, remarkably, sort of makes the guys who take the shortcuts perfect for the job in my eyes, if it weren't for my love of integrity as well, and my hatred for shortcuts.

*****

As a side-note, I promised that this post would be about writing as well.

In the past couple of months we've heard some pretty wild things from the political ad campaigns and from non-fiction writers fabricating certain things in their books.  I won't point fingers; you've probably read/heard about them from MSNBC, Fox News, or other news organizations.  It makes it difficult for me to care about current events, or to pick up a memoir without wondering how much of it is a shortcut to get me, the reader, to pick it up.

Does that mean I'm going to give up on current events?
Does that mean I'm going to only read novels?  (Hmm, that's a thoug--juuuust kidding...)
Does that mean I'm going to give up baseball?

Lack of integrity, and the short ride instead of run to the finish line, could ruin the journey.  Or it could pinpoint who I cheer for.  I'm still cheering for the Giants, but not all of them.  I'm still reading books, but not all of them.  And I'm still following current events, but not all of them.

After all, I have my own race to run.  And I can't afford a shortcut.

Sit down.  Shut up.  And hang on, dear reader.  

Into the Wild: Kingsolver by the Sea

This past Friday I turned yet another book loose into the wild through the BookCrossing program.  I'm trying to find places that would be appropriate for the theme of the book (my last release was a book of poems by Mary Oliver, who writes primarily about nature, so I put her on a park bench at the top of the Pablo stairs), and since Kingsolver's book is titled "High Tide in Tucson" I thought I should take the book where tide and land meet, to Ocean Beach.

I'm perfecting the art of this kind of book release with each drop.  Ocean Beach is usually pretty populated, save for days that it's raining or there's the threat of tsunami (I've been there at both).  I know that my chances are better for getting stopped when I try places like this, but I also know how to pace things so that I can walk away from the book without revealing ties to it.  Today was a calm and cool day, and the population sparse, so I just dropped it on the bench.

I have dropped thirteen books so far with this program, and no one has registered them found and/or added notes.  This business is a haphazard one, very much a "message in a bottle" technique.  I can only hope that they aren't discarded--that someone finds them and enjoys them.  And if it's just the homeless finding them, well, at least I'm giving the homeless something at last.  And I'm giving them something that doesn't enable them to drink or get high.

BookCrossing has another type of release, called a "controlled release," where you go on the site and see if anyone wants your specific book and you send it to them.  I'm saving that for a mood booster--just leaving books and never hearing back can border on the "imaginary friend" side after a while.  And some of these books have me perplexed as to where to leave them; where, in God's name, am I going to drop the Reagan biography in Northern California without someone torching it?  That one may go to the library, she says with a wan smile.

In other notes:  I actually walked the three and a half miles from my apartment to the ocean to place this item, a refreshing walk in the cool morning through the forest of Golden Gate Park.  As I passed I was warned that coyotes had recently been spotted in the outer reaches, I passed a crowd of people heading to a bluegrass festival that wasn't strictly such, and I had the opportunity to see a newly-minted windmill on the approach to the sand.

I love the copper band around the rim, but...couldn't they have made the windows bigger?  I don't know my maritime architectural requirements.  It just seems as though with the view this building affords that windows so small are limiting the occupants.

Books next to release in the wild:

• "Dutch:  A Memoir of Ronald Reagan" by Edmund Morris.  Currently on page 500, with 192 readable pages to go and clearing about 100 pages a weekend;
• "Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way," a collection of poems by Charles Bukowski.  Currently on page 109, savoring at no discernible rate of consumption, but I know where I'm putting this one upon completion, and am looking forward to the drop--a location that I haven't been to in six years.

Onward, dear reader.

That Song by Buffalo Springfield, or, The Myth of Sisyphus on the Floor of a BART Station

Blogger's Note:  I will not respond to comments to this post.  Rip me a new one on your own.

Ah, yes, Monday, and time for another set of protests from our friends at Anonymous or No Justice No BART.  I feel for commuters.  I feel for the general public.

I feel like more and more of my posts these days should open with an apology.  This one won't.  I have been reading all kinds of input on the BART protests since July, and last week I almost thought that I wouldn't have a desire to write this post--Anonymous came up with something closer to making sense than anything else they had previously tried by trying a "Spare the Fare Day" with the gates, but that wasn't exactly what I was thinking of.  (And it didn't exactly work out for them, either.)

I should probably take a couple of steps back for a second.

First of all, I'm going to dwell on "Moneyball" again for about the length of a sentence or two.  Reading "Moneyball" taught me that the best player in baseball has accomplishment, proven experience of winning through small steps, and not just sex appeal and "heart."  The best baseball player has proven himself:  in high school, in college, in the minors.

So, Anonymous?  No Justice No BART?  Let's remove your "heart" and media sex appeal from the equation and consider this situation.

Ready?  Show me your accomplishment.

You need to hit BART with competition.  Period.  I don't know what that "competition" is, exactly; chartered buses over the span?  But make it easier, sexier, to NOT ride BART, with a viable alternative other than sitting on the bridge.  You need to hit BART in the moneybags.  Make it sexy to not...ride...BART.  I'm sure there are corporate enemies of BART who would love to fund their downfall.  To convince these enemies to back your better idea you do need a very important trait, though:  professionalism.

You can demonstrate, yes, but you can't demonstrate professionalism.  That's your biggest problem.  It's like a batter that can't get on base.  "Look!  I can hit!" you say, but you're only hitting pop-ups and fouls.  You need to get on base.

Tell me, how professional do you look with a bunch of masks you won't keep on ("Whaddo I wanna wear a mask for when I can be on TELEVISION???")?  How rational do you look yelling in the face of cops who can't change the policy or action of one of their fellow men in arms while they're standing in formation protecting the public?  How rational do you look shutting down traffic on Market Street and angering the public?  Who, in fact, are you saving?

It's too late to save those men who died.  And if BART really wanted to stop these cases of mistaking guns for tasers, they would have already felt enough public pressure to do just that.  But they won't if the only protesters and media bring the drama.  Things won't change until you have the public overwhelmingly on your side.  And right now the protesters and media have the wrong poster children. The public is dismayed, yes.  Outraged?  Nope.  The BART police haven't shot the wrong person yet.  Will they?  The odds are there.  It just doesn't look inevitable.

Bottom line:  if these protest groups want to change BART, they have to get the public behind them.  I don't care what right is being violated here--you can't accomplish anything without the public behind you.  (Hint:  Getting innocent bystanders/commuters hurt or killed in your protests won't do it.  Just sayin'.)  If you don't get the public behind you, BART looks like the sane one.  I'm not saying they ARE the sane one, they just LOOK like it.  That is all you need to continue your actions.

I can show you calm, rational, effective grass roots movement.  It was called Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.  It was called the Civil Rights movement of the 60's (on the minority side, not on the law enforcement side).  Did both of those movements hit all of their targets?  Nope.  But they made a DAMN FINE START.  I'm not sure what Anonymous's and No Justice No BART's objectives are.  I'm sure there are printed documents somewhere (knowing our luck written in crayon left-handed), but the point is, if your public doesn't know from your actions what your goal is, then you're just wasting your breath.

Sadly, some of those protesting don't even know the particulars.

You can protest smarter.

You protest smarter?  Hell, I'll join you.  I'll write your demands.  I'll meet with BART myself.

That's not the goal, though, is it?  The goal, ultimately, is to get on camera, isn't it?  And that's all the commitment you want.  If you wanted actual change, you would have a message your public could get behind once that camera is on you.

But what do I know?  I'm just counting stats in the cheap seats at the ballpark on this one.

P.S. - This song is the inspiration for the title of today's post.  My apologies to Albert C.

That Song by Gloria Estefan, and the Food Network Teaching Me

If you've read any of the other posts in this blog, you'll know my writing history. Perhaps it would be best to give a brief teaching history, if only for philosophy.

I started teaching in 1997, for a sporting goods company called Bass Pro Shops. When I first began, the goal was just not to fall on my face--someone had selected me as a teacher, with no prior experience on my part, after having me as a student in their class. (Sadly, I wish I could say that teacher was good. She wasn't my cup of tea.) After teaching a while though, I found I got a high from one thing specifically--watching that wave of "Oh, NOW I get it" crossing the face of the student. I live for that moment. It happened a lot when I first started, too, because most of my classes were beginning employees, and, against modesty here, I'm good at teaching.

The second phase of how to be a good teacher didn't sharpen in me until the last four years, working at Grainger--if you want to be a good teacher, beyond beginners, you better enjoy listening too, so that you create a learning plan that gives back more and more of those "Oh, NOW I get it" moments. By the time I left Grainger I was damn good at listening--but the missing link was having very little or no empowerment, as an ASSISTANT manager, to make changes. I taught things and watched them fall flat, sort of like flying a kite by running all day instead of having a good wind behind you.

Leaving and working alone, you would think I wouldn't be able to teach anyone. I'm alone about 85% of the time now. (When I define alone, I mean, not with people interacting with me. In a City like San Francisco alone is all relative. I've been known to go to bars and coffee shops to CREATE interactions, but, I digress.) I'm a writer, which, for overall best productivity means that the writer sits alone, even in a cafe, and spins out a world of words. My expectation of REACH, either by association or by teaching, is low for two reasons: I'm in a solitary occupation, and in the last occupation I did get a wind to keep my kite up from the Airman, but no one else. Not expecting to having impact, I keep writing, and I keep going to my writing Meetups, even on nights where no one else is there or only one person shows up. Read me, or don't. Meet me, or don't. My devotion has to be the same whether I have wind or not.

This past week all kinds of wind brought in all kinds of "Oh, NOW I get it" on faces, even when I couldn't see them. Tuesday I wrote a piece about an event at a local bookstore as part of my work as a contract writer with the Examiner, and got all kinds of feedback from readers. I was stunned. Someone was reading me and, of all things, LIKED what they read. The article created new interactions on Facebook and on Twitter, and my audience got bigger. I REACHED someone. No, I'm not teaching at Harvard yet, but I'm teaching. Somebody learned something. Including me.

Last night I hosted what may be my final facilitating gig with Meetup for a little while. (When I first got into Meetup I had no intention of EVER being a facilitator--I was a manager at the time and just wanted to be a "student"--but people had the tendency to see dependability in me, so if they couldn't lead then they asked me to.) I have to be honest--I was dreading it. The facilitator who asked me to host has been asking about four weeks out of six, and I was wrestling with taking care of this group with a) no credit to my name for doing it, or b) no compensation for doing so. Facilitators of Meetups don't do it as a profit, but I was looking at this from a just-a-few-weeks-ago manager perspective: "What? I'm not listed as the Big Kahuna? Screw you." I sat down the last couple of days and did a lot of writing about it, and remembered why I teach, and tried to apply that: "Look for the recognition in the eyes, Jo, and give the group a place of no judgment from which to write." I had to go back to the writings of Natalie Goldberg, to the teachings of the Good Doctor, and to the question from the Healer asking me two weeks out of managerial jail, "Why do you want to write?" I want to write to reach someone. Normally, filling in for this facilitator, I'm all nervous because I want to make him proud that I can hold down the fort for him. Last night, nothing to lose, no judgment and wanting only recognition that the participants can do what they desire as writers, I OWNED that time. I was a teacher again, the good kind, and this morning two of the participants voiced how much they were able to accomplish with the group last night. REACHED them again. (To understand why I think that I've reached them is to know that I haven't seen comments the next day from this group since I joined in 2007. For ANY facilitator.) Five pairs of eyes, "Oh, NOW I get it."

God, I love teaching.

(Before you ask, I will probably facilitate again. But I have to be a student again for a little while, with a different branch of my writing Meetup, to help get it off its feet. Going where I'm most needed, I'm off to be someone else's wind. Selah.)

*****

Along with teaching and re-grounding myself, I'm seeing something else happen in my art...I'm getting leaner.

I'm sure all of my readers have seen the Food Network, so this analogy might be best unfurled with the following metaphor. There are two reasons to strain something when you are in food preparation: one is to strain to get out the big unwanted pieces, as in jelly, sauces, or stock; and the other one is to remove unwanted liquid, as in marinades, starchy vegetables, and yogurt. Lately my writing has reminded me of the second example--I write about five hours a day and publish about an eighth of that, if I'm lucky. (And most of that is self-publishing, which means a lot of stuff doesn't meet my own standard.) I noticed that the liquid was getting strained out this morning in particular when I came up with a poem. Now, I don't write poems unless I'm sitting in the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto--for some reason that's the only place I can get inspired for poetry, and where I came up with one about not knowing Spanish in a bi-lingual state. (I'd link it here but apparently it's up and gone, like a fart in the wind. So I'll type it out and get it in the blog another day.) This morning, however, after weeks of writing, reading, and reading a little poetry every morning, I wrote one:

Pears

They're red, not green,

But sit cockeyed in a green bowl

With high walls like a vase.

Their red necks turn this way

And that way,

Leaning on each other

Like fat, rednecked drunks

Wearing their union stickers

"308, Inspected by Local,"

Proudly.

Whether or not it's good is up to the reader. I like it, but I like the imagery of pears as blue-collar fruit, so sue me. What was most interesting to me was that I wrote something compact and poetic in a place that didn't involve black-and-white film and a huge organ. I squeezed out the formerly necessary setting, a lot of extra stuff that I don't need in my daily round, and now...Something's changing in how I do this writing thing, and I like where it's going.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S.-This is where the title of this post of Life for Rent comes from. (The Olympics in the 90's meant something to me, what can I say.)