The Brilliance of Ashleigh Brilliant

I got home from work this afternoon, my first day back at the office after a couple days of conferencing up north, eager to check the mail because I anticipated that a package would be waiting for me. And sure enough, there it was. Courtesy of my friends at BookMooch, I received a replacement copy of Ashleigh Brilliant's first book I May Not Be Perfect, But Parts Of Me Are Excellent. My original copy was lost several years ago when our basement flooded while we were away for the weekend because "somebody" unplugged the sump pump months earlier to use the outlet and forgot to plug it back in. But that's another story.

I have long enjoyed pondering Brilliant's epigrams (Ashleigh is a male and that is his true birth name.) He's kind of an off-beat hippie philosopher who originally made his reputation (and living) selling postcards of his sayings in the Haight-Ashbury in 1967. So yes, his "Summer of Love" credentials may be as strong as any person on the planet, especially since Timothy Leary, Jerry Garcia and Janis Joplin are not around to present as rivals to that claim. (Is Wavy Gravy still with us? I wonder...)

I strongly recommend a visit to Ashleigh's website if you don't already know who or what I'm talking about. He has some rules about his sayings and has proven to be highly prolific at this discipline over the subsequent four decades. I have a few of his other books and I appreciate them all but there's something irresistibly charming about his earliest sayings that distinguish them in my regard, at least. Here are a few that jump off the page at me as I flip through the book a moment...

I have just discovered the truth, and can't understand why everybody isn't eager to hear it.

You are always welcome in my territory, at your own risk.

If you don't let me make you happy, I'll make you suffer.

Force yourself to relax.

The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us is right.

Isn't it a nice coincidence that you and I are both alive at the same time!

For God's sake, tell me what to think!

There are a lot more, and they are funnier if you see the illustration and the calligraphy, but this may get you started on a path of discovery that I think you will thank me for if you didn't already know about this pivotal figure of 20th and now 21st century arts and letters.

CISM

I'm in Tustin, MI at a woodsy retreat/resort kinda place called the Kettunen Center. I'll be here until tomorrow afternoon getting training in Critical Incident Stress Management. That's the technique, methodology, discipline or what-have-you of helping groups and individuals cope in the aftermath of tragedies, disasters or extremely stressful circumstances. A couple months ago, my supervisor asked me if I would be interested in taking on this role since our Critical Incident Response Team recently lost a few members. It sounded interesting and doable for me, and since I've benefitted by being on the receiving end of such services, I was glad to be able to potentially return the favor and add some new skills to my social worker bag o' tricks.

The Michigan Crisis Response Association has an annual conference here in Tustin - this is their 19th gathering and a lot of the people here seem to know each other. I'd estimate there are around 150-175 out here in the woods at the moment, enjoying the lodge, the lake and a chance to get away from our busy jobs where we all have responsibilities of managing crises of various sorts and sizes. The group is made up of fire & rescue workers, police, EMTs, chaplains, social workers, counselors, therapists and others whose jobs push them into having to not just deal with risk, but to also show leadership and support in those situations. Last night we heard a keynote speaker from New York who related the lessons learned by those who provided CISM support to the 9/11 workers and all the volunteers who came in to help from all over the country.

Today's workshop basically walked us through several different types of interventions that I won't spend time describing in great detail here. But overall, I'm finding this information fits quite well with a lot of the other stuff I do as a staff trainer and occasional care provider. It should be interesting to see where this training takes me and what kind of needs and situations I will be addressing because of it in the months and years ahead.

Pivotal Saturday!

Yesterday was a pretty significant one for my family. The one thing that I expected to happen, did - Julie, Derek and I took a trip to Ann Arbor, MI to visit the campus of the University of Michigan. Derek is seriously considering that school as the place to get his education in Engineering next fall. The event was an Early Application Tailgater lunch where students and parents were given tips (and a sales pitch) on how and why we should apply to U of M. It was enjoyable and impressive and I have to admit that coming out of the meeting, we think that this is our first choice among the various options out there. Derek's a very bright student, especially in science and math, and we think his chances for admission are very good. But we'll have to see how it all pans out over the next few months.

Another thing that I was kind of expecting but not sure about was the news that Alyssa's second book is now in print and we'll be picking up 30 complimentary copies next week. I'll have pictures to post here once we get the new volume in our hands.

But the biggest, most immediate and surprising news was that my twin sons Brandon and Curt signed a lease and will be moving into their own apartment on October 6! There's been a lot of talk about this for a few months now but finally, some action. I'm a bit concerned about the lack of cash reserves on hand but also recognize that I moved into much more precarious circumstances when I was even younger than them... so I will be interested to see how this works out for them! They have a roommate who I've known since the boys were in middle school and he's a good guy so I'm fine with that. And it's a nice apartment just a few miles from here so we'll be able to keep a reasonably close eye on things while still giving the boys the freedom and independence they desire.

Now I have to head up north to a conference that I will have more to say about once I'm up there. But that's the news for now...

Back from Iraq

We went to a family gathering tonight to welcome my nephew Joe Lobbezoo and his friend Nate Meeuwse, who returned earlier this week from several months of Air National Guard duty in Baghdad. They are both trained firemen, so their duty was to tend to fire-related emergencies at the Baghdad Airport, and also to do some support work heading out into some of the surrounding areas to do search and rescue after bombs were detonated. Though they didn't go through what you might call "front line combat," they were shot at by snipers and had to shoot back on numerous occasions as well. We're all thankful that Joe and Nate came back pretty much unscathed, both happy to be home and fairly confident that they won't be returning to Iraq in the foreseeable future.

This is as close as I've gotten to having a direct line into the Iraq War. Due to the festive and highly populated nature of the gathering, I didn't get a lot of deep insight into what's happening over there - my conversation with Joe was more about the conditions he lived and worked in and a brief description of his assignments, going into details that he wasn't allowed to share in the emails he sent when he was over there.

Joe has a wife and a very young child. He's in his mid-20's and I've known him since he was just a little tyke (he's my wife's brother's youngest son.) Like the rest of Julie's family, he's "country" in his style and politics and I don't think he has many serious qualms about the US role in that country. But that's something I'd like to discuss with him at some other time, though I'm not sure when that will be. He'll be moving back to his current home in Tennessee at the end of the month and I may not have much time to visit with him before he leaves. But perhaps somewhere down the road, as the longer term picture of what's going to happen in Iraq clears up a bit, we can look into this matter.

I'm just pleased to see him home safely. Joe's a good solid guy and it would have been a terrible shame if anything bad had happened to him over there. No one in his immediate unit was seriously injured while he was there, though a couple guys suffered slight shrapnel injuries from random rocket attacks that fell fairly close to them with a steady-enough frequency. He noted that the frequency of these attacks has gone up in recent months - they saw a lot more action along these lines than the unit they replaced.

Just a little glimpse that I got tonight of something much bigger and messier than I will ever comprehend.

Facebook

Just a couple days after I dissed MySpace in a comment (found in the "Happy Music" post) I created a Facebook account. I'm not really sure why - I received an invitation from a former co-worker at my company email address a few months ago but never did anything with it. Then on Friday afternoon I was going through my backlog of emails and saw that invitation message again and decided to forward it to my gmail account so I could open it up on my home computer. And that's what I did last night. Now this morning I'm messing with it and adding more friends. I have no idea what I will do with this page or if it's just another webtoy thing that I will mess with for awhile and eventually abandon. But it "feels" better to me than MySpace. So we'll see... it's just weird how this all worked out, the timing of it and all. I'm sure there's some revealing psychological undercurrent having something to do with inner turmoil, self-contradiction and unresolved conflictedness that led me to behave this way, but I have neither the time nor the critical perspective to figure all that out.

Return On Success

I watched Bush's speech tonight which has strangely been described as his "troop withdrawal plan" as well as a sales pitch to somehow draw Americans together to support his leadership of the Iraq war. Sorry, I just don't see that happening. There were a few moments where I could feel a faint semblance of a tug of rapport with the guy as he tried to stir the emotions a bit and appeal to our sense of patriotism, love of country, admiration for the hard-working men and women who wear the uniform and all that.

But then he goes and throws in the tired old crud about 9/11 and the 36 other nations who have troops in Iraq and minimizes the disaster that his obstinacy and ideological blinders have inflicted upon so many lives, all for the sake of power and profits and some delusional hopes of salvaging a "legacy" and I am jolted again to realize what a dubious fate has fallen upon our nation to have a man of such ineptitude and mediocrity in the White House.

Probably the only thing I see drawing our nation together is a collective realization that the situation is monumentally screwed up and hard to act upon without incurring great risks, but risks are mounting every day that the current policy remains unchanged. At some point, the USA is going to have to swallow the bitter medicine and acknowledge that our leaders have engaged in behaviors that would be seen as criminal if they occurred on a smaller and more comprehensible scale.

I'm not sure what justice demands in such circumstances, and even less confident that even if we knew what the answer to that question was, that there's a realistic chance of ever achieving it, so deep are the layers of denial, legalistic justification and self-protective political maneuvers that shield the perpetrators from the victims of their misdeeds.


Tomorrow, Dick Cheney of all people is coming to Grand Rapids, of all places. It's really getting tiresome and insulting that Bush and Cheney seem to feel so comfortable coming to my town when they feel the need to take their wardrum-beating act on the road. The usual crew of protesters I know will be out there in the "free speech zone" to do what they can to raise Cheney's hackles, but I'm sure that Cheney's handlers will find a back-door entryway to wherever it is he's speaking and put extra dark tinting on the windows of his motorcade SUV so as to minimize the chance of him seeing anything too disturbing. I won't be in the crowd because I have other commitments at noon - a social lunch event at work that I am going to enjoy because I'm with people I respect and admire for different reasons than I admire and respect the protesters who will be outside the building when and where Cheney delivers another load. Actually I admire both groups for a similar characteristic of feeling passionately and working to the point of self-sacrifice to achieve something that to the rest of the world seems futile and impossible - whether its helping abused, angry kids turn their lives around, or trying to talk sense and compassion to angry, vindictive politicians whose currency is other peoples lives spent at no risk to their own.

This is one of those times I wish I could be in two places at once.

Happy Music

Here's some of what I've been spinning in my real-life, honest-to-goodness CD players (the ones in my car and in my bathroom where I take my showers) lately... I'm not all or only about listening to mp3s on my iPod... All 2007 releases - some fun, positive and uplifting sounds that perhaps you may be interested in hearing for yourselves

The Polyphonic Spree - The Fragile Army

Justice - "cross" (I apologize and warn you in advance that I'm linking you to a MySpace page but it's the only official site the group seems to maintain. I detest MySpace.)

Digitalism - Idealism

The Go! Team - Proof Of Youth (just came out yesterday, actually!)

These tunes may not be to all readers' tastes - they are all kind of young, electronic-oriented performers but I appreciate them all - and they each have their own distinctive sounds so I hesitate to lump them together. I'm happy to promote them a bit and would be happy to say more about any particular acts if anyone has comments or questions about them.

Power Out, Power In, Power Up

Today was a strange and busy one. At work, our campus was without electrical power for the first half of the day due to a scheduled upgrade by Consumers Energy (our main electric utility in the state.) So that pretty much relegated us to sitting around talking and doing some reading (research, we call it) which wasn't all bad, but it was weird not having access to email, voice mail, our documents on the server, etc. It also meant that I wasn't able to monitor headlines or listen to any coverage of events related to Sept. 11 memorials or the hearings on Iraq that are going on in Washington DC.

But the power came back on pretty close to on time and that gave me the chance to get plugged into the grid once again, which I quickly and eagerly did. I found out that there was a big debate going on about global warming on my email list, with the now nearly standardized exchange between those who sound alarm over melting Arctic ice and forecast from there doom and devastation for life as we know it and those who think that there isn't much people can do to affect the warming trend and that there may even be some benefits to certain parts of the world. I won't even try to summarize the discussion... it didn't really draw me in at all. I feel like it's a topic I don't really know enough about and don't want to get dogmatic on either way at this time.

Anyway, I had other important things to do which I turned my attention to. In the late afternoon and evening, I co-facilitated a physical restraint training, which was kind of an odd thing to do given that it's the occasion of 9/11 and all that. But we did the training, it went well and we got done early. That gave me time to set up for the First Aid and CPR training that I'm leading tomorrow morning. On the drive home, I spent a lot of time looking at the sky. For whatever reason, the clouds really held my attention as I traveled the familiar route, and for some reason, I remembered my drive home on 9/11/01 and how I watched the sky that afternoon, noticing how crisp and clear and mysterious the sky was that day, and how strange and unsettled the world really was and is when one stops to think about all the important and amazing and shocking and horrible things that are going on all at once, every given moment of our lives.

Then I got home, a bit after 8 p.m. and Derek was playing a video game (Metroid, a sci-fi adventure game that largely consists of shooting various power beams and bombs at alien monsters) and Julie was reading the paper and Brandon was playing with a new synthesizer that he got recently. I looked over the headlines and read the lead article which talked about how "Bush has found his exit plan from Iraq" which is to leave a huge military force in that country until his term expires and hand over the problems to his successor, and that this approach improved the chances that future historians would look more favorably on Bush's legacy because he didn't retreat or admit defeat in the face of adversity and it was just kind of astonishing to me (tho I should know better) to read such blatant propagandistic bullshit on the front page of my hometown paper. And then I checked the internet to see what else was happening in the world and I saw more headlines trumpeting the Bush "troop reduction" plan which is to continue the "surge" into next summer at which time he would consider pulling out the extra troops that were put in this past spring (when their deployments are due to expire anyway) so there's no real troop cut at all, it's just maintaining the level that was there at the beginning of the year, and pushing back to the end of his term any expectation that anything different or imaginative or humane or intelligent or trustworthy will be observed from this present administration.

So that's enough to dampen whatever pep or enthusiasm I was feeling as the evening settled into nighttime. I never did bother watching the TV news, which is a fine thing, probably. I feel sad for the people who lost loved ones six years ago today, and also for those who have suffered comparable losses in the wars that are fought in the shadow of those attacks. I harbor a substantial amount of anger, contempt and deep disappointment toward those who maneuvered our nation into its present state of discouragement and folly, but I have worked hard to not let it consume me or preoccupy my experience of life in general. It's hard to find a constructive outlet sometimes, when the fatigue sets in that comes from being insulted and lied to by those who purport to "lead" our nation. I don't like going off on these tangents very often, because I know there are plenty of blogs out there who have more facts at their disposal and can do the outrage-and-denunciation thing so much more effectively than me. And like I said, I don't really enjoy letting these kinds of thoughts and feelings loose if I can help it. I would just as soon avoid bringing people down. But for several reasons, I guess, it seems necessary now to be honest and genuine about what I think about what's happened to our society over these past six years, especially when I, like many others, once harbored a hope (maybe a delusional dose of wishful thinking?) that out of this tragedy, some kind of higher, nobler sense of purpose and community might develop and pull us together.

That seems far more unlikely than ever. But Barack Obama is supposed to make a big speech on the Middle East tomorrow. I'll be interested to hear what he has to say, but I'm not very confident that even if his expression is brilliant, that it will make all that much difference.

Sorry for such a bummer of a post! God bless America!

Not About Britney

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. Last night, when I was checking out football scores on the internet, I noticed some buzz on my iGoogle homepage about Britney Spears' appearance at the MTV awards show in Las Vegas. A lot of people that I assume are former fans were doing some heavy venting about how awful she was and basically cut loose on her career being over, her lack of talent, her lack of fitness for the outfit she wore, her being a human train wreck, etc. (I think the cliche "train wreck" can pretty much be retired for the next six months or so, they've been applied to this situation so heavily.)

Then this morning, there was even more chatter coming from all sorts of different places. Even the Huffington Post got into it, so that got me curious and I found the clip. Hmmm. I don't really get what all the fuss was about.

I thought her performance was perfect for the occasion - jaded, formulaic, fairly unimaginative and uninspired. Who knew that Britney Spears is actually a brilliantly intuitive performance artist?! She gave the industry and celebrities in the crowd pretty much what I thought they deserved, and I applaud her willingness to make plain for all the world to see the exploitive nature of what passes as the pop music scene these days. Though she is getting shredded by most of the media commentators, and the mass public is obediently following their cue, I think last night's performance will go down in her career as something close to the equivalent of John Lennon's "Two Virgins" album cover. I just hope she remains true to her artistic vision and doesn't let the criticism drag her down. She has enough pressure weighing in on her already, and even if the performance didn't go the way she envisioned, there's still something significant in what she communicated to the world last night.

Not About Football

... even though I've spent a lot of time watching and thinking about the game this weekend.

Instead, I'll tell you about other things I was up to in order to impress upon you the idea that I lead an interesting, well-rounded life.

Yesterday I went to a special lunch event at a new hospital that will be opening in our community at the end of this month. My mom works at Metro Health, formerly Grand Rapids Osteopathic, where in fact I was born back in 1961. She's in their customer accounts department and her job is helping people who are struggling to pay bills to get assistance and come up with payment plans, so I consider her a colleague in social work, to some degree.

Anyway, Metro's move from inner Grand Rapids to the expanding and thriving middle-class southern suburbs has gotten a lot of attention, especially as GR tries to remake its local economy from being based on manufacturing furniture and auto supplies to a more vigorous service economy with a big emphasis on medical research and technology. The new "Metro Health Village" is a lot more than just a hospital. What were big ol' cornfields a few years ago with a few scattered houses at various four-corners intersections have been subdivided into a large campus with all sorts of medical support services and all the other stuff that pops up in an economic hub. Two Starbucks and a Beaners coffee shops are already in the vicinity, along with banks, fast food and sit-down restaurants and all the other stuff you see in similar complexes all over our country.

But the hospital itself is pretty innovative. It's one of just a very small number (maybe only two or three) hospitals that are fully LEED-certified. Basically, the grounds and infrastructure are all built according the latest in environmentally friendly best practices. The parking lot drain-off is diverted so that toxic chemicals don't seep back into our local water supply. A green roof has been installed (sedum plants cover its surface) - the hallways have aesthetically pleasing curves to them, the rooms are spacious, it's all cool and progressive and slick and clean and appealing - almost makes one long to be seriously ill in order to enjoy the comfortable surroundings!

Employees of the hospital and their families were invited so I was glad to get a look at the place and enjoy a free lunch (grilled brats & burgers, not especially "heart healthy" or the finest in "preventive health cuisine," but I won't be picky or snobby about it.) We had a guided tour and I was able to take a few pics as you can see.

Walking around the hospital was interesting, seeing this big, impressive bit of architecture and technology which will soon serve hundreds of ailing individuals each day. It got me thinking a lot about health, wellness and my own mortality as I move into my 47th year in this world. And how much fuss and bother our bodies demand of us all - even when we ourselves are healthy, people around us are often suffering from something or other, drawing in our attention and our resources to help take care of them.

One thing that really jumped out at me was the frequency and blatancy with which just about every significant section of the building was "branded" with the name of some donor (either individual or corporation) whose "generous gift" made that particular room or wing or service "possible." It's not just that there were little commemorative "thank you" plaques here or there. Instead, there were can't miss-'em BIG LETTERS, often in brushed aluminum or other such fine materials, apparently permanent odes to the magnanimity of the hospitals many benefactors. I don't know if this trend is happening all over the country or if it's a West Michigan thing, but it feels like it's getting out of control. Even single rooms where families meet with doctors for consultations are "named" - just a bit much, to the point where it may affect skeptical types like me to question the motives of the givers.

A weird thing for me to say, since I am involved in soliciting philanthropic gifts for the company I work for... That last paragraph probably offers more in-depth revelations of unresolved inner conflict on my part than I myself even realize or intend to provide. But oh well...

Other things I did this weekend was go to the 46th Annual Grand Valley Indian Lodge Pow Wow (unfortunately, the Lodge doesn't appear to have a website.) I am writing about local Native American experience for Wedgwood's "Diversity Digest" newsletter (which I edit) and I saw a good opportunity to see this culture express itself when I saw it mentioned in yesterday's paper. So I spent a bit of time there before coming home to watch football.

And I've been doing a better job at consistently exercising and jogging around the small lake/large pond at the nearby park, and I have a few lost pounds to no longer show for it.

Caught Up

I did it. Finally, nearly a year after importing my music files from one computer to another (and adding quite a bit ever since) I finally managed to listen to each mp3 track listed in iTunes! That's 26,316 individual tracks that have been played on either my PC or my iPod since Sept. 22, 2006. Of course, not each one was listened to with equal attentiveness, and many tracks were listened more than once... but as of this moment, there are no unplayed songs in my collection.

Of course, one trip to the library could add another 8 hours or so of listening that I'll have to do to get to this point again.

Fresh Apples

And suddenly, my beloved red iPod Nano seems so.... old!

I wasn't expecting to be affected by the rumors of another Big Announcement to come out of Apple headquarters in Cupertino CA today, figuring from what I'd heard that it would be something to do with the iPhone and a new touch-screen iPod. But when the headline came up on my all-purpose iGoogle gateway page that the changes involved pretty much the entire line of iPods (except for the Shuffle - oops, even that got new colors, it appears) I suddenly became more interested. Seems that the Nano will now have video capabilities and will cost less than the one I bought last year, and to which I'm listening at this very moment (a song titled "You're Creeping Me Out" by Future Sounds of London, from their innovative 1995 album "ISDN" which was actually first performed as a live broadcast over the internet, back when such a concept seemed all bold and futuristic and amazing and stuff...)

But wait, there's more. They introduced some exciting new changes to the

However, I've just suddenly changed my mind and have second thoughts about turning this blog into an advertisement for Apple Corporation. Too late, I've already succumbed to the powers of the meme factory. My only act of resistance would be to delete this post altogether and act as if I'd never typed these thoughts, but I don't wanna do that. So I will take the bold stance of not posting a picture of the impressive, amazing, innovative new products, nor will I link to Apple's website.

I am an independent-minded consumer. No following the herd for me! I make my decisions based on cold, hard calculations of what is most valuable, necessary and efficient. And cool. Gotta factor in the cool.

Alright, I will stick with my rinky-dink 4Gb (PRODUCT) RED iPod Nano [2nd Gen] for now in the confidence that it will quickly acquire a hip and fun "retro" status in the weeks ahead. (Either that, or I will see them selling on eBay for $25 by Christmas.)

Last First Day of School

Today was our family's final "back to school" morning as Derek embarked on his senior year. We have this tradition of taking pictures on our front porch the morning of, so here is this year's version. It was pretty early since Derek has to start Jazz Band practice at 6:30 a.m., hence it was dark outside, hence our porch light was on or it would have been hard to see where he was standing. Aren't the flowers pretty?

Sometime fairly soon, I hope to get all of our old pics scanned into my computer so I can put the whole string of them together and you can all see our children grow up right before your eyes! But I haven't compiled the collection quite yet. I'll try not to wait too long...

Labor Day

Alright then. The figurative, if not calendrical, summer of 2007 is over. Tomorrow, school starts and we have no more paid holidays to look forward to until Thanksgiving. It's time to strap on the load, get serious, pick up the pace and get those thoughts of "vacationing" and "lounging" and "lazy hazy crazy days" out of our minds until next Memorial Day. TIME TO GET BACK TO WORK!

Tomorrow, that is.

Tonight, I'll just indulge in a few moments reflection. This has been a pretty nice season of the year for me. And today was a fitting wrap-up, if one chooses to look at it that way. Julie, Lys and I did some yard work in the morning, planting a Japanese Maple and a few other shrubs in front of our house and patching up a few spots where the mulch had worn thin. The weather was beautiful, so Julie & I decided in the afternoon to take up an invitation that my brother Doug issued on Sunday to come hang out with him on the beach at Grand Haven.

Doug is actually my half-brother, 18 years younger than me, born to my mom and my ex-step-dad (long story, will bypass it here.) He now lives mainly in Bellingham, WA but also spends significant amounts of time fishing for salmon and other aquatic life forms up in Alaska. He's a pretty free spirit and doesn't come back this way all too often. But he had some time off his fishing gig due to a severe cut he sustained on his thumb. He went to Salt Lake City to have the surgery and then came back here to recuperate for awhile. So he's been in town for the last week and we had a family reunion of sorts on Sunday where my mom enjoyed the rare privilege of having all three of her children together at the same time.

Anyway, Grand Haven is one of many great, classic beaches here on Michigan's West Coast and it was nice to get out there for the first time this year.
It was a perfect day for sun and breeze and the overall vibe was happy and relaxed. We met up with Doug as well as my aforementioned ex-step-dad and his wife. They treated us all to a nice dinner as the day drew to its close and it was nice catching up with everyone over the course of a meal.

I don't want to make too big deal over the passage of one date on the calendar, but I do sense a shifting of focus on my part as we move into September. There are interesting winds of change billowing around our household as Derek prepares for his senior year, Lys gets into her last semester of college and our twins chomp at the bit looking for a way to move out of our house and into their own apartment. I'm also contemplating getting more "meaty" in my postings here - this blog has been more like a diary in recent months, which is fine because it captured what I wanted to relate at the time, but I'm thinking it would be good to dig deeper into issues and topics that are broader than "what's Dave Blakeslee been up to lately?"

You might notice that I have a new pic in my profile. I shaved my goatee on Sunday morning! This was after I got a haircut on Saturday. I had a pretty shaggy mane that had grown over the course of several months. For reasons that already seem dim and unfathomable to me now, I went a long time between haircuts. (I think I was trying to compete with the impressively thick and curly mops that my boys are able to produce without even thinking about it, but alas, it just doesn't work for me in the professional milieu that I spend 40 hours in every week.) So I get to go into the office with a new look and I suppose it will be kind of fun seeing who notices it and who doesn't and what the noticers have to say about it.

Football Mania Grips the Nation Again

At least, the game has got its clutches on my brain at this point in time.

Just as we settle into the last holiday weekend of the summer, symptoms of pigskinitis are everywhere. I helped get a new fantasy league started that includes some of my on-line friends (Julie, Matt, Kim and her family) and we had our draft bright and early this morning. This small, eight-team competition is a welcome diversion from the more seriously competitive work league that I've been part of for oh, 14 years or so, where we have "keepers" and are really more in the business of sustaining a franchise over the long term, with all the ego attachments, rivalries, grudges and barely concealed jealousies that develop throughout such a span of time. My lineup in this new league, like everyone else's, is ridiculously deep and star-studded, but that will make for a lot of spontaneous unpredictability as well as we rack up outrageous scores from week to week. Not much sweating injuries in this one, since there are plenty of good unsigned players to choose from and as always, some surprises will emerge as we get into real games and not these silly little pantomimes they trot out in the pre-season.

So here's my lineup:

QB Vince Young & Brett Favre
RB Frank Gore, Reggie Bush, Cedric Benson & Adrian Peterson
WR Terrell Owens, Larry Fitzgerald, Jevon Walker, Donald Driver & Jerricho Cotchery
TE Antonio Gates
K Robbie Gould
D Miami and Philadelphia

Like I said, absurd levels of talent, but that's pretty much the case with the seven other teams in the (ahem) PoMoXian Football League (hey, I'm the commissioner so I named it what I pleased!) With the prevalence of newbies in our league, not having to dig down to scrubs or reserve player levels is a nice way to introduce them to the game.

So we'll get the NFL thing going next Thursday and I'll have more to say about that as the season unfolds. But what about the college game? I am just shaking my head in disbelief, still trying to comprehend what happened this afternoon to the Michigan Wolverines. I didn't actually watch the game - honestly, I've never really been able to give a lot of attention to NCAA football. It's just a matter of priorities I guess, but in any case, I follow the story more than I actually get engrossed in the games themselves. So I was out getting gas this afternoon and I hear a local guy just groaning and muttering to the clerk about how Michigan lost to Appalachian State so I had to come home and check it out for myself. This story pretty much tells it all - sloppy defense, missed opportunities, questionable coaching decisions, a valiant comeback attempt that winds up getting thwarted in the most mind-numbingly agonizing way (a 20-yard chip shot to win it, blocked as time runs out!?!? You gotta be kidding me! That's too outrageous for the movies! And it was the second blocked FG of the game. Utterly Incredible!) And once again, the hopes and dreams of an incredibly loyal and dedicated fan base (of which I don't consider myself a member) are cruelly shattered. That has happened a lot over the past several years, let me tell you.

Oh the furies that have been unleashed on sports radio across the state. And I pretty much just have to laugh at the whole spectacle. This morning's local Grand Rapids Press sports section had a banner headline that reads "CLASSIC CARR" (referring to U of M head coach Lloyd Carr, whose presided over some major debacles involving a very good football team that's consistently been expected to do more than it's ever achieved.) I suppose tomorrow's header will be "USED CARR TURNS OUT TO BE A LEMON - MASSIVE RECALL EXPECTED SOON"

It's the kind of thing that leaves a team and its fans wanting a "do-over" in the worst possible way!