"Whimp" or "Wimp," redux

So, schools were called here with 4 or 5 inches of snow, although some say they received 6 inches (I find it's always a little bit more when people shovel).  Imagine New England!  I sent out feelers and reports came back in--startling!  Portland, ME...32".  Newburyport, MA, Simsbury and Farmington, CT...28-29".   One mate said he had drifts of 5' and 6', with snow piled a foot over the handle of his front door!  I guess, here, schools would be out a couple of weeks?  One of my mates thought, just thought, schools were called off tomorrow (Mon) out where he lives.  But, worse, imagine being without power in that. 

Leonard Pitts had a good column today (and I've not cared much for him the past year or so) about the courage of Rosa Parks.  Yes, that was one brave lady.  I remember reading that, after she had posted bail and been released from jail, sitting around the kitchen table that evening with her husband, he said, "Rosa, you know they'll kill you."  They, or at least he, thought the white supremacists would kill her.  And, that was the modus operandi of the South at the time.  Tell me that lady wasn't courageous!  It was also deflating that Pitts mention, as part of his column, how some people still get their "facts" and "opinions."  That is scary.

One of the basketball dads isn't particularly happy with my coaching.  Oh, he was polite, nicely phrasing his concerns.  It wasn't anything to do with his kid's playing time--all the kids pretty much play the same amount of time.  But, he wasn't happy.  I won't go into his complaint(s), but it's good that he voiced them--very good.  I initially was a bit put off by them, but then realized they give me an opportunity to live what I preach about my historical hero--Abraham Lincoln.  I reread his views and, although I still believe in my methods, can work some of his good ideas into the last three weeks' of practices and games.  I am not sure they will work, given the skill levels, but Lincoln's lesson is one I'm glad I remembered.  Yes, I believe you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Speaking of "old dogs," for whatever reason, 64 seems a lot older to me than 63 did.  When I put my age on surveys and whatnot, I think, "Wow!  64...that's getting up there."  I think I've noted how my mental faculties are slipping.  I know, I know--oh, oh.  There wasn't much there anyway and now I'm losing that?  And I'm more tired than ever.  I hate to get more than 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night; there's too much to do.  But I might have to concede I need more rest.  I refuse to give up anything as of yet.  64 was the age my mother died, but that doesn't weigh too heavily on me.  (Boy, it's been almost 18 years and I miss her as much today as I did, well, 18 years ago.)  Yet, I remember, she was in pretty good health, no smoking and no drinking, never had been sick--in the hospital just for her five kids.  From out of nowhere, poof magic!, pancreatic and kidney cancer.

You know, I love, just love how the kids talk sometimes.  I think it's great Bopper rarely uses a contraction.  He says, "I can not" instead of "I can't" and "I would not" instead of "I wouldn't" and so on.  Yesterday, he asked me what a "communist" is, since I call a lot of people "commies."  And, "Why do you call Uncle Matt a 'semi-communist?'"  I'll say, "the proverbial..." whatever.  The other day he said, out of nowhere, "The verbial...."  It took me a few seconds to catch on, but when I did I burst out laughing.  Ash provided a great moment for me yesterday when she asked me to buy her a "hock gawg."  How could I pass up buying her a 'hock gawg?"  I couldn't.  And, although she now corrects me, I still say "pack-ack" for "backpack."  And I always get a kick out of four-year old Codester, "But I'm your 'Big Guy!'"  Sometimes it's the little things that mean the most.

And, of course, Tue is Abraham Lincoln's 204th birthday.  I am always reminded of the words, written in 1922, of W.E.B. DuBois, who said, "Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the greatest figure of the nineteenth century. Certainly of the five masters,--Napoleon, Bismarck, Victoria, Browning and Lincoln, Lincoln is to me the most human and lovable. And I love him not because he was perfect but because he was not and yet triumphed. The world is full of illegitimate children. The world is full of folk whose taste was educated in the gutter. The world is full of people born hating and despising their fellows. To these I love to say: See this man. He was one of you and yet he became Abraham Lincoln."  (My italics.)  Wow!  "He was one of you and yet he became Abraham Lincoln."  What another great lesson!  How uplifting!

Somehow we've created another pair of synonyms that shouldn't be.  Americans have come to equate "leaders" with "politicians."  I would have thought Lee Iacocca's book of 15 or so years ago would have disspelled that mistaken connection.  (He called them--and many self-centered business leaders, too--"Bozos.")  Apparently, it didn't.  Perhaps when we get over this misconception things will straighten out.