Dugout Wisdom

Nothing like a rain delay to get you to daydreaming. While infosnacking on the Interwebs today (okay, while avoiding writing a synopsis!), I came across this nugget from Hall of Fame pitcher Leroy “Satchel” Paige:

“Never let the odds keep you from pursuing what you know in your heart you were meant to do.”

Timely advice, considering I was letting odds and everything else keep me from pursuing this particular book idea. This is the fourth book in a series I need to pitch to Dream Agent, and it’s bolloxing up the whole works.

Satchel Paige is rightly recognized as a true star of baseball, one who make the Negro Leagues such tough competition and classed up the joint once the Majors got their act together and integrated the sport. Not only that, but he pitched to major league hitters--Joe DiMaggio said that Paige was the toughest arm he ever faced--until he was 59 years old. Fifty-nine! That’s like 112 in baseball years!

He was colorful off the field, too. He named his nearly-unhittable fastballs and took pride in what he called his “be ball,” because it would, as he said, “be where I wanted it to be.”

But I have another reason to love me some Satchel Paige. My father’s favorite advice (and this is a man who grew up with a first-class raconteur in the house) was Satchel Paige’s famous “How to Stay Young” from Collier’s Magazine in 1953:

1. •Avoid fried meats, which angry up the blood.
   

2. •If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
   

3. •Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
   

4. •Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society--the social ramble ain’t restful.
   

5. •Avoid running at all times.
   

6. •And don’t look back--something might be gaining on you.
   

Good advice. Time to go work on that pitch.

Read more »

Mother Lode

There she is--Miss Carolyn, new mother of the first grandchild on both sides of the family. And there I am, all hair and bright eyes, bushy tail carefully concealed in a blanket. I posted this picture on Facebook and was astonished at how many people swore I looked just like my mother. The joke in our family is how much of a carbon copy of my Daddy I happen to be, so hearing from a fairly diverse group that I take after Mama was a surprise.

My mother never finished college--she left after two years at Queens to marry Daddy. Two years later I arrived, followed by a sister and a brother. She stayed at home with us. Despite her lack of degree, she managed to teach us all so much. Once Mama gets interested in something, look out. She can relate the provenance of every antique in her house and turn it into a history lesson or an explanation of furniture-making or restoring technique. She learned enough about drug interactions and anatomy while managing my younger sister’s serious asthma to sound like a walking PDR and impress seasoned doctors in the process. She’s an amazing cook and an accomplished tailor and dressmaker. She designed and sewed my wedding dress, cutting and hand-stitching lace medallions onto the raw silk so perfectly each side of the dress was a perfect mirror of the other (the same technique everyone went gaga over on the new Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding gown, I’ll have you know). She has a self-trained eye for design that’s never wrong--her work puts half the people on HGTV to shame, and she can do it on a real budget. And she mixes a mean bourbon eggnog.

In one favorite story from my childhood, Miss Carolyn schooled the dismissive manager of a Firestone tire center on the inner steel of the Southern woman. He wasn’t planning to replace her three separated tires--yes, they were Firestone 500s--without a hefty check first. Daddy took a crack at him while we three children and Mama lunched on some fried chicken and tried to ignore the 100+ degree heat (we were just outside of Columbia, SC, the town Daddy says in the summertime is a “direct pipeline to Hell”). Ten minutes later, Daddy stalks back, madder than the aforementioned Hell at the obdurate Firestone man. Mama wiped off her hands and sallied forth. Firestone man essentially rolled his eyes at her and told her to go fetch her husband again since menfolks handled that kind of thing.

Big mistake. Miss Carolyn is the elder daughter of a traveling salesman who taught both of his girls how engines worked and should be maintained. She coolly asked to speak with his district manager, burned up a chunk of change explaining the problem over long distance, and watched the color drain from Firestone man’s face when the “big cheese” got back on the line.

“Here,” Firestone man said, handing the phone back to my mother. “He wants to talk to you.” Big cheese told Mama that store manager would replace all four tires for the sum of $100 and have us all back on the road within the hour. “Thank you very much,” she said in that born-in-Florida, seasoned-in-Atlanta accent that has reduced men to mush for more than half a century, and hung up the phone. “Now,” she said, turning to Firestone man with a brilliant smile and putting on her sunglasses, “if you’ll just get my broom ready, I’ll get out of your hair.”

I tell you what--if I do resemble my Mama, I won’t want it to be for looks (although she has always been gorgeous). I’ll want it to be for her style. Happy Mother’s Day, Miss Carolyn.

Read more »

Mending Wall

One problem of living in the Sunshine State is the hellacious thunderstorms (go figure). We had a doozy last month--50 to 70 mph winds, crazy sideways rain, bend-over-and-kiss-your-butt-goodbye alarmist weather reports--and the long story short is that a tree between our house and the neighbor’s fell. Yep, creamed her new pool enclosure but good. It didn’t hit the main house, thank goodness, but it was a mess. Boy howdy.

And then the trouble started. We called our insurance company, gave her the information, and waited. In between then and now, there’s been power restoration, cleanup, some terse text messages about who said what about taking that tree down when, and then silence. Frankly, the ice storm that followed the thunderstorm has been worse. This week the fence guy came out, and now a chunk of the picket that used to be near the tree has been replaced with six-foot stockade. Ouch.

Robert Frost had a bit to say about fences and good neighbors. This extract from “Mending Wall” struck me:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself.

Mr. Man and I are going over with a bottle of wine to work on patching things up. Fences are one thing, but walls are something else entirely.

Read more »

The Bed List

There’s a clip in the opening credits for Castle where Nathan Fillion catches a glimpse of himself in a store window and exclaims, “I really am ruggedly handsome, aren’t I?” Why, yes, Mr. Fillion, you are. I may have come late to the party--never having watched Firefly and only picking up Castle recently, but I play a mean game of catchup thanks to streaming Netflix. If Nathan Fillion is anything like either Captain Mal Reynolds (a confident risk-taker) or Rick Castle (a clever rogue), then his ruggedly handsome self is welcome wherever, whenever.

Read more »

Stop the Insanity

It’s FCAT week in Florida, which means several things:

1. A)vomiting elementary school students
   

2. B)stressed-out high schoolers
   

3. C)overtaxed teachers
   

4. D)all of the above
   

If you answered D, go to the head of the class. You see, when it’s standardized test week in the state of Florida, time slows (if not stops altogether), kids bail, and normally sane teachers kinda lose it a little. There’s just something fundamentally wrong with all learning grinding to a halt so we can genuflect at the altar of Scantrons and #2 pencils.

But frankly, as long as we have folks like the current occupant of that nice brick mansion in Tallahassee, Gov. Skeletor, and other acolytes of the test-’em-hard-and-test-’em-often faith pulling the strings, learning will take a permanent back seat to numbers, spreadsheets, and charts. There’s nothing wrong with testing when it’s used to check progress and plan, but when test scores become the way we pit teachers and schools against each other, the kids lose.

This year, my students have lost three full weeks of instruction because of required testing practice. What could I have done in those three weeks? Taught another play. Analyzed a documentary. Directed seminars and discussions. Conducted two full sets of individual writing conferences. But I didn’t, because my kids were testing--and since they knew these tests didn’t “count,” they weren’t taking them seriously. Any parent with teenagers at home can tell you that if they haven’t bought in, they won’t bring much out, and that’s as true of standardized tests as it is taking out the garbage or cleaning that pit of a bedroom.

Michelle is Rhee-diculous. Bill ought to close the Gates to the giant testing companies who are the only entities truly benefiting from all of these new testing requirements. Last weekend, I spent two days in a group of 300+ master teachers who will conduct week-long trainings at seven different locations this summer. Those 300 teachers will reach roughly 2,ooo participants at each seminar, which makes fourteen thousand teachers who aren’t, as the common “teachers are lazy” meme suggests, sitting around doing nothing all summer. Don’t get me started on all the teachers who give up a week to score AP exams or who attend AP institutes or who plan for next year or do curriculum writing or...let me quit before I blow a gasket.

The point is, why aren’t the powers that be rounding up master teachers of all stripes--from all grade levels and all subjects, including the VITAL arts and humanities courses--and asking them what works to improve things? Oh, and while they’re at it, they can apply all the money they’re currently throwing toward the testing companies to do something substantive about children who live in poverty. I guarantee that’ll do much more for educational success than all the Scantrons in the world.

Read more »

Swamp Thing

After a weekend in California (where it was raining and chilly in “Sunny San Diego”), mimi can’t begin to say how happy she is to be back in her Central Florida swamp. The first time I ever flew west, I spent much of the time with my forehead pressed to the window, watching the landscape change from brilliant Southern green to hard-baked desert brown. After decades of Florida summers, punctuated by our typical late-afternoon thunderstorms, the arid California July was a revelation.

But may I just say that arid California weather coupled with two days of hotel meeting rooms and hours trapped in an airplane have wreaked absolute havoc on my sinuses? I now understand how Southern belles maintain their lovely skin--they aren’t having to slather themselves with moisturizer that seems to evaporate into nothingness. See, Southern women get plenty of moisture every time they step outside. We basically live in a giant terrarium!

Emerging from baggage claim at the Orlando International Airport after my trip, I could practically feel my skin sucking up the water. I felt like a walking tree frog--minus the sucker pads and green skin. Let me just say, I’m happy to endure Florida’s August weather (temps in the 90s, humidity in the 90s) if it means I don’t have to dry out and crack.

Read more »

Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!

mimi isn’t big on April Fool’s Day pranks (although the rubber band around the sink sprayer trick has proven reliable for years now), but foolery is something else entirely. Spending four years as the designated Court Jester at my college’s annual Christmas Madrigal Dinner didn’t happen by accident, you know. Neither was being cast as Puck in a freshman year production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Guess I was just born to wear jingle shoes and a floppy hat--or, in Puck’s case, horns. Enjoy the foolery--and watch out for that sink sprayer!

Read more »