The scene in Washington distresses me. I think there are a lot of serious minded people in both parties who really want to do the right thing with this legislation (whether they voted for or against), and each sub-group, including the House Republicans brings needed balance to the whole equation. I don’t blame the vote utcome on Nancy Pelosi, but her speech was an absolute hyper partisan public embarrassment, immature and and reckless. Pelosi and Reid and Frist and Hastert before them are all pathetic.  And all the finger pointing done by members of both parties after the vote, and by the candidates for president after the vote makes me wonder, “Is there an adult anywhere to be found?”

Both parties were laying reelection politics with this thing, and not just trying to do the right thing, holding back votes of vulnerable members, etc.  I do think Bush wants to do the right thing but he is too impotent and inarticulate to sell the importance of this legislation and have it make sense. Maybe in the end it is best for the thing to go down, I don’t know. The markets seem to be OK today.

I tire of Thomas Friedman, but he made a good point in his article printed in the N&R today. We need to get about the business of creating real wealth, not just wealth on paper. We need to make things. Design things. Create things. Build things. And yes, the “Green Revolution” offers the best way to do that right now. We need more engineers, biologists, chemists, and more tech savvy workers, more creative people with real skills. I don’t think our public schools are going to be able to do the job. We need an Education Revolution too.  think our community college system all over the country needs to be beefed up. Not every person needs to go to a four year college. We need more people with actual skills.

So, why did they name it Greenland? For real?

Amidst the fog of migraine and migraine meds, still I know that God is good, and I rest in His loving care. But if he would feel fit to rid me of this personal plague I’d be happy with that.

Joel

The list at the time was kind of off the top of my head but I remmeber at the time thinking…”What am I missing?”…Ten Years After? Moody Blues?  Boston? Jethro Tull?

Well, the recent e-mail reminded me of one totally obvious songs I was missing - Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” I am not sure the organ on that song would be called a solo, but the story of it is so cool, and its not-quite-on-beat sound really makes the atmosphere of that great song, so I was very bad in leaving it out. Very very bad. And I realized I left out “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” I listened to DP’s “Lazy” on my iPod walking the other day (september 200*). Yes, I dig that song, and yes, outstanding organ solo.

I’m leaving piano and “keyboard” out on purpose, so that excludes a lot, but still, these are songs on the edge of my mind from the old days.. I can hear that organ or synthesizer playing!

So, who is playing organ today, anybody? The Wallflowers do. Who else. Help me out here! Any suggestions?

Do It Again, Steely Dan, Can’t Buy a Thrill
Get Back, The Beatles (Billy Preston), Let It Be
Green Eyed Lady, Sugar Loaf Sugar Loaf
Hoedown, ELP, Trilogy
Hold Your Head Up, Argent, All Together Now
House of the Rising Sun, The Animals Absolute Animals 1964-1968
In A Gadda Da Vida, Iron Butterfly, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
In Memory of Elizabeth Reid, The Allman Brothers, Eat a Peach
Lazy, Deep Purple, Machine Head
Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited
Mean Mistreater, Grand Funk Railroad, Closer to Home
Oye Come Va, Santana, Abraxas
Promenade, ELP, Pictures at an Exhibition
Riders on a Storm, The Doors, The Best Of The Doors
Roundabout, Yes, Fragile
Stormy Monday, The Allman Brothers Band, Live at Fillmore East
The Low Spark of High Helled Boys, Traffic, Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
Where the Streets Have No Name, U2, Joshua Tree
Whiter Shade of Pale, Procol Harum Procol Harum
Won’t Get Fooled Again, The Who, Who’s Next

OK, after I posted this, but before the aggregator could pick it up, I “You Tubed” “Great Rock Organ Solos” and got these two cool compendiums…

The Greatest Hammond Organ Solos I
The Greatest Hammond Organ Solos II

Back then kids learned how to play sports in the neighborhood. I had older brothers and there were older kids all up and down the street. We played ball in the street, in the backyard, in a field near the church, pretty much anywhere we could. I had baseball in my veins.

There was no travel ball then, no tee ball, no coaches pitch. There was no place to play baseball except Little League. So that’s where everyone, good and bad, played baseball.

I was a scrappy and competitive kid and simply loved – loved – playing baseball. The field was on the same property as my grammar school (Satchel Ford Elementary), about a mile from my house, and I generally rode my bike to and from practice.

Our little league was for kids 10-12 more or less. I played for “Custom Cleaners.” They had won the championship the year before I started, and did again my first year. We had cool green uniforms with the old fashioned baseball pants and striped baseball socks.

We played six inning games, one during the week and one on Saturday, with no time clock, so sometimes we would be at the field a long time.

Our best player was Larry Chavis, probably the best all around athlete I knew growing up. Larry was our # 1 pitcher and best hitter, and I was the #2 pitcher. When Larry pitched I usually played short stop and when I pitched he played first. Larry was also a buddy of mine. His dad was the coach. I know people who have bad memories of coaches, but Mr. Chavis was as good a coach as I can imagine ever having. He was a very kind and decent man, yet was committed to our being a good team, and he played to win. When I think back,
the image I have of him merges a little with that of Andy Griffith. Imagine someone with Andy Griffith’s demeanor hitting ground balls and pop flies, running double plays and such until the team got it perfect, or it got too dark to play. In those days the parents waited, period.

Our second year we weren’t terribly good. We had lost a ton of players and were “rebuilding.” I did manage to throw a no hitter that year against one of the best teams (check out the box score). That was cool.

I was young for my grade so my third year of Little League I was in seventh grade as was Larry. The owner of Custom Cleaners, Mr. Allday, assisted as coach, and his son Greg was the catcher, and some time pitcher. I think five people from our team made all-stars my third year, Larry, Greg, Bob Dreher, Clint Freeman, and myself.

(You can see a team picture here. That’s Mr. Chavis back right, Mr. Allday back left, Clint Freeman back middle, Larry between Clint and Mr. Chavis, me between Clint and Mr. Allday. Debbie Carawan was the bat girl.)

One very cool aside: our primary umpire was Kirby Higby. Most of the adults just called him “Higby.” He had been a major league pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He even won a World Series game, I think in the 1948 World Series. He wrote a book called “A High Hard One” that is still in print. I have an autographed copy of the first edition. Sometimes, since Mr. Higby liked pitchers, he would call a game from behind the pitcher’s mound. He talked to the pitcher the whole game, giving advice or just talking turkey. It was super. He was really opposed to young pitchers throwing junk and was ahead of his time in that regard. I couldn’t throw a decent curveball to save my life, but I did have a screwball that I would use on occasion and he would razz me about it. This was also back in the day when parents felt free to express their opinions about umpire calls. It made the games, well, colorful!

The way things worked in our league the season was divided into two halves of nine games each. The winner of the first half would play the winner of the second half in a two out of three game playoff for the league championship. As I remember we won the second half and Garber’s Shoes won the first half, so we met in the playoff.

My third year a kid named Clint Freeman moved into town. He ended up on our team and became the catcher. Clint was a stud. In those days you could run over the catcher, but few people wanted to try to run over Clint. One time, in going after a little pop foul, he ran headfirst into the 2 by 6 cross beam of the dugout with his head and he broke the beam. Yes, he kept playing. Clint was a lefty. He could smoke the ball. He threw it back to me faster than I pitched it to him!

Toward the end of the season, Larry and Greg and I starting talking to the coach about trying out Clint at pitcher. I mean, nobody could have hit his heat. He pitched in a couple of games and did OK.

Anyway, we won the first game of the playoffs, with Larry pitching. I don’t remember the details of that game. I do remember the second.

Coach decided to start Clint pitching. We were home team so Garber’s batted first. Clint didn’t have any control that day and walked the first four or five batters I think. Mr. Chavis eventually pulled him and put me in.

Now in those days Little League was a big deal, and there were a couple of hundred people at the game, all around the field, even up in the trees past the outfield.

Well, they ended up scoring five runs in the bottom of the first. It was kind of deflating to say the least. Then we came up to bat.

They were pitching George Lee that day. George was a big guy, and a lefty, and he wasn’t my best friend. I was not a really great hitter and had spent half the season in a slump, but I had been hitting well the last five or six games. And for some reason I could see George’s pitches better than I could see most.

I batted fifth. When I came up to bat the bases were loaded and there was one out. I dug in and really wanted to get a hit or awalk. Now, it is pertinent to this story to know that at no time in my life, in practice, in a game, hitting around for fun, whatever, at no time had I ever hit any ball over the fence. Ever. I could throw it over the fence but I couldn’t hit it over the fence! I was a singles hitter and a really good base runner and loved to steal. But I had no power.

So I came up. I suspect George was glad to see me and not Larry or any of three or four other of our other batters right then with the bases loaded. ‘Easy out” I heard from their dugout. I can’t remember the count for sure, maybe 2-1. George had big looping windup. In came the ball. Now the ball just seemed big to me that day and I swung hard. I hit it hard but definitely got under the ball too much. From the feel of the ball off the wooden bat, it seemed like a high pop fly to me, so my first reaction was frustration. But I was well coached and started running. That ball went as high as any ball I had ever hit and it just seemed to drift deeper and deeper into left center. The left fielder and right fielder were converging on the ball as I was rounding first.
Even in these short periods of time a lot of things happen. I could hear my mother screaming “go ball go” and other people yelling at the ball. Both of their outfielders had reached the fence and were reaching out with their gloves for the ball when it fell just out of their reach, over the fence.

I had hit a home run! No, a grand slam! I will never ever forget the feeling of running those bases. Fans of our team were screaming and my mom was going juts. I was smiling ear to ear. I touched home plate and got all the congrats of my teammates, and when I went into the dugout Mr. Chavis kissed me right on the cheek. He was so happy, not just for me, but also because he wanted to win the game. We all did.

We scored nine runs that inning and won the game like 29 to 9 or something outrageous like that. I went 3 for 5, had a grand slam, and was the winning pitcher. It was my best sports moment ever. I close my eyes and I can still hear the noise and see the ball dropping over the fence.

My dad was a nut. He knew pretty much all the families and kids, and at one point one of their batters, Cam Creps, was in the on deck circle and he and my dad were talking trash to each other. Cam said he bet he would hit a home run. My dad never saw a bet he didn’t want to make, so right on the spot he bet Cam five dollars that he would not hit a homerun. Cam was pretty motivated. He hit the first pitch over the fence! Thanks dad!

It was a great day.

In all my years of playing, coaching, or watching baseball and softball I have had the privilege of seeing only two unassisted triple plays. Both of them were by my daughters, and if I may be so bold as to say, not by my daughters most gifted in the game.

The first happened with my third daughter Laurel on her 10 and under softball team. She played out of Summerfield, but the “league” was the “NW League” and included teams from Oak Ridge, Brown Summit, Huntsville, Bethany, Colfax, etc. It was mid June, and tournament time. Every year a double elimination tournament ended the season and decided the champion.

Laurel’s team had had an OK season. Middle of the pack. Seems Merle Norman was their sponsor. They had lost their first tournament game and were thus playing in the loser’s bracket. They were playing Brown Summit, a better team, with a coach pretty much nobody liked because he always argued calls and coddled his players. Laurel’s team wasn’t supposed to win the game against Brown Summit. My second daughter Heather also played on the team.

I was a merely a parent volunteer who often coached third base.

For some reason Laurel was playing shortstop. I think she mostly played catcher but not in that game. Maybe someone was hurt or on vacation. The game was in Brown Summit. It was a hot summer evening.

In the top of the first inning, BS loaded the bases with their first three batters. So, bases loaded and no outs.

Their clean-up batter hit a rope, a low liner right at Laurel at short. Laurel was playing in, pretty close to the base path.

Laurel had a good eye and good reflexes and caught the ball. Good thing. It would have killed her if she hadn’t! One out. As so often happens, runners tend to take off on hard hit liners. That happens even in the big leagues. So the runner from second took off and more or less ran into Laurel just as Laurel caught the ball. Laurel tagged her more by reflex than anything. Two outs.

The runner from third had taken off for home. Before the play was over she would cross the plate, and then run almost all the way back to third.

I was in the stands. I immediately started screaming at the top of my lungs “tag third” “tag third.” I’m still hoarse, ten years later!

The other coach saw what was going on and he started yelling for his runner to go back to third. There was a moment’s confusion on their side because the girl didn’t know she had to re-tag home on the way back. So, the runner is heading back to third. Everybody in the stands on both sides is screaming at this point. Laurel is confused. I don’t think she really had a clue at first! But then it was like she awoke, and off to third base she went. The third basemen had no idea what was going on so Laurel had to tag the bag. Laurel got to the bag just before the runner did. She tagged it. Out three. Unassisted triple play. Amazing.

Her team went on to win the game due in no small part to that first inning and a later home run hit by my second daughter Heather. After that the team went on to win the loser’s bracket and played for the championship. They lost but it was way way fun.

More briefly, the other unassisted triple play I ever saw “live” was by my second daughter Heather. She was at this time playing in an older age bracket in a game up at Bethany. Heather was also playing short. There was a runner on first and second. The batter hit the ball hard high into the air. At first it seemed to everyone, runner’s included, that the ball was long gone. But it got hung up in the wind. Heather drifted over toward second base. She was standing on the bag when she caught the ball and the runner from first ran right into her. Three outs within maybe half a second.

Laurel had done a search for unassisted triple plays on Google. There is an interesting Wikipedia article about them. They are very very rare and usually result from good fortune than great skill. I’ve seen two, the two described above.

Amazing.

I love baseball (and softball)!

I have pasted information right from his sight below and put it in italics. I am going to put a small post for each of my 100 things as i settle on them. But since he lays down the rules, I thought I would post them.

Again, the following is Dave Bruno talking - follow the hyperlink above.

100 Thing Challenge

The 100 Thing Challenge is my little way to personalize my efforts to “Challenge Stuff” and fight consumerism.

Goal: By November 12, 2008 I will only have 100 personal things. I will live with only 100 personal things for one full year, until November 12, 2009.

Rules: Remember, this is my 100 Thing Challenge. I get to set the rules and decide when a rule can be stretched or outright broken. Basically I’m going by the spirit of the challenge not the letter of the challenge.

1. “Personal Things” means things that are entirely or mostly mine. Clearly family-shared and household things (e.g. dining room table, piano, bed, plates - though apparently not silverware, etc.) are not considered a personal thing. Right now my wife and daughters are curious about what I’m up to, but they prefer to observe rather than participate.




2. Memorabilia - I am going to keep up in the garage two small plastic storage containers for memorabilia. Some things would be wrong to get rid of for the sake of the 100 Thing Challenge. In an earlier post I gave the example of the Bible my grandfather took with him to WWII, which my father took with him to Vietnam. But, the storage containers will be small and come November 12, 2008, I will not open them for one year.




3. Books - Ah, here’s the rub. We’re avid readers in our home. And even the books I don’t read thrice a year look so very attractive as they collect dust on the bookshelves. I am considering getting my (not my wife’s or my kids’) books down to 100. But it’s not a focus of the 100 Thing Challenge.




4. Woodworking Tools - Some day I’d like to do more woodworking. Right now life is too busy (blogging, among other things, takes time). I don’t have a lot of tools because I have a minimalist approach and mostly want to use traditional hand tools. But for now, I’m keeping them and not counting them as part of the 100 Thing Challenge.




5. Marklin Trains - I have a small collection of Marklin Z gage trains. This is kind of a personal thing. My father sold his collection of Marklin trains and I cannot bring myself to do the same. I should probably just see a therapist and then make good money on eBay. But for now I’m going to keep them but not open the box for a year.




6. And finally, a few items are counted in groups. This includes underwear and socks. I’m not keeping a lot of either. We do, though, run a household. The idea of trying to manage laundry with a few pairs of skivvies and socks is both unrealistic and gross.

1. Bob Dylan

As I sit here, with a push of a mouse, I can listen to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan from the early 60’s, to Modern Times of 2006 (including “A Hard Rain’s A’Gonna Fall” to “Thunder on the Mountain”), both albums being excellent collections of songs from the master himself, separated by over forty years. And what a wealth and richness in between! What an amazing career! So many of his songs speak to and touch me, and are so musically and lyrically interesting, that it is hard to know where to even start taking about his music. I will say this though: as much as I already liked Bob Dylan, it was buying The Times They Are a Changin’ a couple of years back that made the ultimate connection and pushed him to number one on my list. Specifically I think it was the “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol” that sealed it. Odd, after so many years with Bob Dylan as part of my life, it was that song that pushed away all competitors in my heart to him having the number one position.

2. Jackson Browne

What can I say. When my brother Mike gave me Jackson Brown, better known as Saturate Before Using, for my 17th birthday, a musical love affair began that has never abated. I will admit that I favor the older stuff, but I’m learning to love some of the newer stuff too. I wish he would get David Lindley back with him on an album. But I want to say this – the guy can still sing, he can still play, and he still has that winsome humor that make his concerts so delightful. When he played here a couple of years ago and started with “Looking into You” I thought I would cry, that being my first or second favorite of his songs. It was a magical night. No musician has dogged the ups and downs of my life like JB. To him I say “thank you for filling my life with your songs.” If you don’t know his music I might start with Late for the Sky.

3. Iris Dement

I first heard Iris Dement on Prairie Home Companion. I then illegally downloaded a bunch of her songs (which I don’t do anymore) and was hooked. I have all her CD’s now, so hey, I’m clean. Iris Dement sings with a high twangy voice that carries one over the other side of the other side of the hills, and yet, there is such a surreal beauty to her voice. Her songs are simple though clever, heartfelt though not indulgent, and so very real. she has struggled in her life. When I saw her at Cat’s Cradle there she was in all her, well, plainness, self deprecating, with that great slooooow drawl when she introduced her songs, almost the antithesis of charismatic, and yet the audience was absolutely transfixed. I can listen to Iris for weeks at a time without getting tired of her. For an intro to her music I might suggest My Life.

4. Bill Mallonee

Bill Mallonee is the best singer songwriter that no one has ever heard of. He used to front a band called The Vigilantes of Love, but even then he wrote all the songs, sang them, and played guitar. I have heard him with and without band. Hey, he is available for a house concert this month if anyone is interested. It would be one of the most memorable evenings of your life, I can promise you that. Bill Mallonee has written more good songs than most song writers could ever dream of writing. He speaks from a Christian worldview, but his songs are full of the realities of the fall, that is, the real world, and counts himself amongst those who need help from the outside. For a starter I might go with To the Roof of the Sky but they are all good.

5. Bruce Springsteen

With all due respect to the E-Street Band, which I think is fantastic, I still think of Bruce Springsteen as a simple singer/songwriter at heart. Again, we have a man who has had a long career, and who writes as well now as he ever did. I did not like Springsteen early on. He grated on me. That started to change with Tunnel of Love, then Nebraska, then The Ghost of Tom Joad, “Streets of Philadelphia,”, and then, finally, The Rising. The Rising really got under my skin. Parts of it, like “You’re Missing,” are almost too much to bear. I confess I am partial to the more mellow Springsteen, but either way, he writes as every man, and what man cannot connect to his lyrics.

6. Hank Williams

The very first LP I ever purchased was some sort of Best of Hank Williams, which I bought at a Roses store after I watched the George Hamilton movie Your Cheatin’ Heart about the life of Hank Williams on TV with my parents. Funny how he spoke to me as an older child. I have his whole collection now, and never cease to be amazed at the uncanny ability he had to put word and music together, and the pathos and humanity of his voice! “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” is maybe my favorite of his songs, but I’ll take him anyway I can get him! I love Norah Jones’ cover of “Cold Cold Heart.”

7. Johnny Cash

From “Folsom Prison Blues” to “Like the 309″ Johnny Cash is another artist who was creative and compelling over the course of decades. I am forever thankful to U2 and Rick Rubin for knowing that Johnny Cash had a lot left in him! On top of his incredible abilities as a songwriter, Johnny Cash could cover other people’s music in a way that brought new aspects of the song, not revealed in the original, and I am talking about many of the greatest songs ever written, such as “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” my vote for the most beautiful popular song ever written in our language. Johnny Cash’s “When the Man Comes Around” gives me goose bumps, well, maybe because I believe with him, and anticipate the same terror and wonder and beauty of that day.

8. Keith Green

When I was a teenager, around the time I was first exposed to the Christian faith, I had the blessing of seeing Keith Green in concert several times. He had an “in” with a Christian music station in Columbia and they promoted him heavily. The concerts I saw were just Keith Green and his piano. His songs were not finely produced and slicked up – there was a raw power in the piano playing that matched the power of the lyrics – to convict, to draw, to delight, to terrorize. And he only got better and better until that fateful day in August 1982 when his plane went down and he died an untimely death. Of all overtly Christian artists he remains the one that “gets to me” the most. I would suggest No Compromise as a starter, if you can find it.

9. Van Morrison

Well, first of all, he is still writing great songs, even forty years later. I just have to respect this. I don’t have the time or money to have or know all of his music, but Astral Weeks, Moondance, Tupelo Honey, Saint Dominic’s Preview, Hymns to the Silence, and Back on Top are enough for now. But really, Astral Weeks and Moondance are enough. Moondance, I think, is my single favorite album ever. Astral weeks is a little too, well, odd, to be that high, but is so hauntingly and beautifully and wonderfuly odd I can only call it brilliant. It is like one long song, a symphony with movements. I t is hard to listen o without tears.

10. Lucinda Williams

I started listening to Lucinda Williams about the time she came out with Sweet Old World. I had seen her on Austin City Limits. It became a favorite right away, filled with pathos and affection for the world I inhabited. It took a while, but Car Wheels on a Gravel Road was perhaps even a better Cd. I would read accounts about how anal she was about the CD production, which explained the time it took to get new ones out. I lost touch for a while until I saw her in concert last year, which got me listening to her three newer records, and exploring her three older records before Sweet Old World.  Her older records seem like more straight up well, maybe alt country. Great stuff. Her newer stuff is more, I don’t know, atmospheric almost. Lyrically simpler, but more musically evocative, more poetic. She grows on me more and more.

Others Receiving Votes

Carole King
Gordon Lightfoot
Joni Mitchell
Glenn Campbell
John Prine
Roberta Flack
Janice Ian
Sarah McLachlan
Neil Young
Norah Jone
John Mayer