Retired Pastor Ruminates: September 2009

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Don’t be Afraid of Mussels

I write in defense of mussels, the stepchild of the shellfish world. I am not talking about the dreaded freshwater zebra mussels that are threatening our lakes here in the Berkshires, but the delectable marine blue mussel.

The French love them. You can’t walk a block in Paris without seeing a bistro with a “Moules” sign. For some reason though, Americans, who will happily pound down their weight in steamers and Littlenecks have been slow to warm to these succulent little morsels.

Many years ago I had a wonderful congregant, Gladys Brigham, whose father had been a Congregationalist missionary to the Middle East in the nineteenth century. He had gone to Bangor Theological Seminary, and the family still had a summer cottage on Isleboro, one of Maine’s most charming islands. When my children were still children Gladys invited us all to spend a few days there and she joined us for a couple of them. At low tide there were more mussels than you could shake a stick at, so I harvested a batch, cleaned and de-bearded them, and steamed them with a little garlic and white wine. “These are delicious,” opined Gladys, who was close to ninety, and had been coming to this very spot for the better part of the Twentieth Century. “I’ve never had a mussel before.” I was dumbfounded: “Why not?” “People here don’t eat them.”

I have a theory about this. First, mussels are subject to Red Tide (dinoflagellates), which is harmless to the mussel but contains toxins that can harm humans with paralytic shellfish poisoning. If back in the day Uncle Wendell got wicked sick from eating a mussel it might have put everybody off their feed for awhile. Today governments strictly monitor for toxins at fishing sites, so that is no longer a problem. And besides, clams are subject to Red Tide, too, so I don’t get it.

The other bad rap mussels get is that they are hard to clean, and it is true that if you harvest them yourself it is a bit of a chore to scrub them up, de-beard them, and scrape the barnacles off them. And if you are not careful, there will always be a closed one that is, in fact, just a shell full of mud and it will muddy your broth.

But the last few years I have been able to buy beautiful mussels from Prince Edward Island in the grocery store. These are fresh, clean, scrubbed and de-bearded, and need minimal handling. Just make sure that they are alive, discarding any whose shells have opened or are cracked. Give them a good rinse in cold water. I put them in a bowl and leave them in the sink with the water gently running for a while.

So get yourself some mussels. This is the best time of year for them, as the claim is that the best months to eat them end in “–ber,” and here we are in September with two more “–ber” months to go. And the best thing of all is that, although their flavor resembles that of the treasured lobster, they are cheap. My PEI mussels come in two pound mesh bags, and are often available for $2.49 a pound. I got some last week for $1.99 on sale. The lobsters in that tank nearby were $11.99. Tough decision? No.

There are many ways to treat a mussel, but I like them done with as little fanfare as possible (except when I make them Chinese style with garlic and fermented black beans, but that is another post for another day). Mussels contain a lot of water, so you don’t need to drown them when you cook them. Here’s a simple recipe similar to what the French call Moules Marinieres (they would use butter, reduce the broth, and add more butter at the end, but I like it this way):

2 lbs mussels, cleaned and de-bearded

4 tbs extra virgin olive oil

½ yellow onion, chopped

2 tbs garlic, peeled and finely chopped

½ tsp crushed red pepper (optional)

½ cup dry white wine.

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

Drain the rinsed mussels in a colander. You’ll want a wide pan with a tight lid. Heat the oil over medium heat, and cook the onion until soft. Toss in the garlic, crushed red pepper, and parsley. Then gently add the mussels (the shells will break if you’re hard on them.) Gently stir to mix, add the white wine and cover. Give the pan a gentle shake from time to time and start checking the mussels after about five minutes. If they are not opening turn the heat up a bit and cover again. They should all be open after ten minutes. You can serve them now, but I prefer to remove the mussels to a platter with a slotted spoon, and strain the broth through a sieve covered with cheesecloth to catch any sand. You can pour the broth over the mussels or serve it on the side (as I do). Enjoy.

Wine pairings: The French might drink Muscadet with them, and they wouldn't be wrong. A crisp Sauvignon Blanc is always nice. When we were with our daughter in Provence I ordered mussels (albeit Provencal style with tomato) and she said “Try the Rose.” I did, and it was very good, so a dry Rose from the South of France works just fine. But don't break the bank on cheap eats, any good dry white will do.

(Photo by R.L. FLoyd)

Monday, September 28, 2009

To Friend or not to Friend, that is the Question?

If you've read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, and who hasn’t, you may recall running across Oxford Professor Robin Dunbar’s famous “Social Brain Hypothesis,” in which he posits that 150 is the average size of a group that is manageable for the human brain.

Dunbar and his researchers found numerous examples of social groups of about 150, where that was the ideal managable size, including church congregations, sustainable military units, and guild members in some on-line video games.

As someone who spent my entire vocational life serving as a leader in congregations this has the ring of truth about it.

Relationships in a congregation are pretty complex, but it is clear to me that each member has a different set of layered friendships. This fits with Dunbar’s findings. His team found a pattern where each person has five intimate friends, 15 close friends, around fifty in the next layer, and finally the 150 of the whole group.

This got me ruminating about Facebook, the popular social networking utility. Founded in 2003 at Harvard, Facebook expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, then to Ivy League Colleges and Stanford, and finally opened up to anybody over 13.

My tribe, the Baby Boomers, have discovered it with a vengeance. This has caused ticklish situations for the kids who still think of it as their space, and leave pictures of bongs, beer pong competitions, and their classy Cinco de Mayo tequila shot contest posted on their Facebook wall for Mom and Dad (not to mention prospective employers) to view.

Facebook now has over 300 million members world-wide and is growing, which means you may get “friended” any minute by people from High School that you haven’t seen in four decades. I joined a few months ago, and have already just broken the 200 friends mark, which according to Dunbar’s hypothesis, is too many for my brain to manage (and my brain is injured, which makes it even tougher.)

Facebook cross references your connections and suggests friends for you, and you soon realize that you know a lot of people. But are they really your friends? Do you want them in your life, even your on-line one? So to friend or not to friend, that is the question?

As a public service to my readers I offer you these guidelines:

Accept all friend requests if you actually know the person. This may sound obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people accept a friend request, and their first communication is “Do I know you?” Awkward!
Don’t drink and friend. My son taught me this one, so now when I’ve been dipping into the single malt late at night I refrain from making friending decisions. This eliminates next day friending remorse.
Don't over-reach. Some people like to friend everybody they can find in the world who shares their name, which might be OK if your name is Melchior Kwitkor, but unruly if it’s John Smith. Best to avoid this one.
Don't pad your friends list by friending or “fanning” a lot of celebrities and groups. If you love Van Morrison (I do) fine, become his friend (bad example, he probably doesn't have one), but don't become friends with the Sons of Lithuania unless you are actually Lithuanian.
Don’t friend your kids’ friends unless you are actually friends with them. Otherwise, it’s just sketchy.
Ask yourself, “If I actually saw this person “in person,” would we have anything to say to each other?”
Ask yourself, “Would I want to have lunch with this person?”
Ask yourself, “If I still sent out Christmas cards, would this person be on my list?”
Don’t friend old girlfriends or boyfriends. It’s just not a good idea. (See “Don't Drink and Friend,” above)
Don’t friend people you really don’t like. My kids call these “frenemies,” a distinction lost on me.
Don’t get all competitive about collecting friends. You’ll end up with way too many and you will begin to hate your Facebook page.

How many is too many? About 150.

Friday, September 25, 2009

More Ruminations on Prayer

Last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine article “Is There a Right Way to Pray?” (by Zev Chafets) stresses the dizzying diversity of practices among different religious traditions. But even within all this diversity there seems to be a common felt need.

This raises the question of whether the impulse to pray is a universal human experience, an example of what my tradition calls “common grace.” Could it be that we are “hard-wired” to speak our deepest needs, hopes and fears to the Other who transcends us.

Author Frederick Buechner suggests as much when he writes: “Everybody prays whether you think of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else’s pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else’s joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way.”

These are all prayers because in some sense they are addressed not merely to oneself but to an(other.) To use the language of Martin Buber, prayer in any form is an “I-Thou” relationship, where our address, even when it starts as interior monologue, finds the unseen conversation partner. The “I” finds a “Thou.”

My friend and former colleague Rabbi Dennis Ross and I used to talk about this from the perspectives of our respective traditions. He uses this language of “I-Thou” from Buber to explore all our relationships, including the primal relationship with God, in his fine and accessible book God in Our Relationships. Like Beuchner, Rabbi Ross (who is also a social worker) finds prayer not by looking inward to special spiritual states, but by paying attention to one’s relationships. It is here, in the shared quotidian activities of ordinary life that God may be discerned and known. Rabbi Ross says, “The I-Thou relationship comes easily and often, over breakfast or at work, in the classroom or at the gym as well as in turning points of life.”

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

“Gimme! Thanks! Oops! And Wow!”

I always thought I had a simple explanation for the types of prayer. In innumerable sermons, children’s messages, confirmation classes, and adult education sessions I told people there are four kinds of prayer: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.

To quote from my own A Course in Basic Christianity: “Many prayers begin with Adoration, which is a prayer that asks for nothing but simply praises God and expresses our love for God.

Often such prayer brings us to a realization of God's majesty and power and our humbleness in relationship to it and we are drawn to Confession, which is prayer that expresses to God the things for which we are sorry and need forgiveness.

Thanksgiving is prayer that expresses gratitude to God for all the blessings we have received at God's hands.

Supplication is prayer that asks God for something to be accomplished, whether for ourselves, which is called Petition, or for others, which is called Intercession. If you take the first letter of each type of prayer, Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication, you get the word ‘acts.’”

Pretty neat and simple. But in Sunday’s NYT Magazine in an article by Zef Chafets asking “Is There a Right Way to Pray,” Rabbi Marc Gellman does it even better when he is quoted as saying, “But really, when it comes right down to it, there are only four basic prayers. Gimme! Thanks! Oops! And Wow!” Now that is simple.

Does it fit my template? Well. let's see: Gimme is Supplication (Gimme for me is Petition, Gimme for them is Intercession); Thanks is Thanksgiving, obviously; Oops is Confession; and Wow is Adoration. There you have it. Wow!

Monday, September 21, 2009

Where I Ruminate on My Ordination on this its Anniversary

I was ordained to the Christian ministry on this day in 1975 at the Newton Highlands Congregational Church in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts, by the Metropolitan Boston Association of the United Church of Christ. Dudne Breeze, the pastor, preached the sermon, and a good one it was. Jerry Handspicker, my teacher at Andover Newton Theological School and the associate pastor, offered the ordaining prayer, which asked God to endow me with all manner of things for my ministry, and he seemed in deadly earnest. After thirty-four years I now understand why. Jerry, ironically, also presided at the service of thanksgiving for my ministry when I retired five years ago, so he book-ended my three decades of active ministry. We sang “Holy, holy, holy,” and “Be Thou My Vision.” My then girlfriend, now wife, Martha, made me a handsome set of liturgical stoles. Good food was served. There were probably grape leaves.

There were no tongues of fire or other obvious signs and wonders, although the whole event was wondrous to me, and when the clergy laid their hands on me I felt an enormous weight, a feeling about ordination that has never entirely left me.

I got to my first parish in rural Maine and realized soon enough that I didn’t know what I was doing, and that feeling has never entirely left me either. My first congregations (I had two) taught me how to be a minister every bit as much as seminary, and I will always be grateful to them. God blessed me throughout my ministry with wonderful saints of the church who encouraged and sustained me, and put up with me even when I was acting like a damn fool.

Early in my ministry I refused all honoraria, and thereby offended nearly everyone that offered me one. I was shopping for clothes the week before my wedding, and the good Roman Catholic salesman at the haberdashery rang me up with a ten percent clergy discount. I tried to explain all the high-minded reasons I couldn’t accept it and watched his face fall. I called my mentor Fred Robie, the sage of Sanford, who simply said, “My Daddy taught me that when someone gives you something, you say ‘thank you.’” Lesson learned. Would that everything I needed to learn was that simple.

What else did I learn?

I learned that a wedding rehearsal is the meeting of two clans, and that at any moment violence might break out.
I learned that a pastor needs a tender heart, but a thick skin.
I learned that when you are relating to broken people some of their brokenness may get aimed at you. I learned that you aren’t supposed to take this personally, although I invariably did.
I learned that the faithful aren’t much impressed by the BEM document, especially if you want to move around the furniture in the chancel.
I learned that for some folks it’s not the height, depth, or breadth of a sermon that is decisive, but its length.
I learned that exercising discipline around baptism involves water, and lots of it is hot.
I learned that what I said in the pulpit and what people heard were not necessarily the same.
I learned that sometimes peoples lives were moved and even changed by what they heard even when it wasn’t what I said.
I learned to love some difficult people.
I learned that around pledging time Chicken Little competes with Jesus Christ as head of the church.
I learned that we clergy preach salvation by grace to the people, but act as if it were by works for us.
I learned that it is a high privilege to spend time with dying people.
I learned that struggling with a text all week, and then breaking it open for the congregation on Sunday sometimes felt like the best job in the world. And sometimes it didn't.
I learned that God is good all the time.

Like everyone else I had my good days and my bad days. And like any moderately self-aware person who prays I know my failings better than anyone except God (and perhaps Martha). But I learned it really is all about grace. I am proud (in a good way) to have been a minister.

Friday, September 18, 2009

My Big Fat Greek Shrimp and Tomato Saganaki with Feta

We had something similar to this in the pretty seaside town of Molyvos on the Island of Lesbos back in 2003. Martha's grandparents emigrated to America from Lesbos, and it was her first time visiting there. It's a beautiful place.

This summer Andrew and Jess came back from the Greek Islands and reported having a version of it in Santorini, though they claim mine is better, which may just be because there is more of it. This is a tourist dish with no claim to authenticity, but it is yummy. And, once you’ve cleaned the shrimp, easy and pretty foolproof.

I use frozen easy-peel shrimp that come in 2 lb bags. You will need a heavy-bottomed skillet, and an ovenproof serving dish (I use a Le Crueset enameled one, but you could do it any shallow casserole or baking dish.)

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 yellow onion chopped

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

½ tsp crushed red pepper (or to taste)

2 lbs jumbo shrimp, peeled and de-veined

2 large fresh tomatoes in season, coarsely chopped (or use a 14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes)

1 cup of crumbled feta cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

¼ cup flat-leaf parsley, rinsed and chopped

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Heat the oil in the skillet over medium heat and cook the onion, stirring occasionally until it is soft, about 5 to 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute, then add the red pepper flakes and tomatoes, and let it cook for another ten minutes or so until some of the liquid has evaporated and the sauce begins to thicken. Add the shrimp and cook for a few minutes, stirring now and then, until they turn pink and begin to firm up (don't overcook them).

Turn the mixture into the baking dish, sprinkle the feta over the top, and put it in the oven for 10 minutes until everything is bubbling nicely. Salt and pepper to taste (the feta should be all the salt you need), and sprinkle with the parsley.

Although in Greece this is typically a starter, it will easily feed four people as dinner with some crusty bread and a Greek salad. In the best of all worlds your kids will bring you a white wine back from Santorini to have with it (as mine did), but any sturdy crisp white will go just fine (feta is a tough flavor match for wine.) White Retsina works if you’ve acquired a taste for it, which most people who aren’t Greek haven’t. Enjoy.

(Photos: R.L. Floyd)

Monday, September 14, 2009

Robert Reich explains the Public Option and it doesn't sound so scary to me

I have been hearing that the “Public Option” in Health Care Reform will never happen, that it is “off the table,” and a “non-starter.” So what makes the “Public Option” so scary to our elected officials?

I just watched this video by Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, and it doesn't sound scary to me. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to me. So who is scared by this? And what can be done to assure that our broken health care system can be fixed? As he says: this is our last chance. “In a few weeks this will all be history.”

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Where I Ruminate on a Week of Rude Public Outbursts

Everybody just calm down! First, on Wednesday, there was the shocking shout-out from Congressman Joe Wilson calling THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES “a liar” during the President’s speech to a joint session of Congress.

Then last night, in the semi-final of the U.S. Open Women’s Tennis Tournament, 11-time Grand Slam Champion (and reigning U.S. Open champion) Serena Williams threatened a line judge who had called a foot fault on her, brandishing her racquet in a threatening manner, and unleashing a string of profanities. This was the second most outrageous public outburst of the week (see Joe Wilson) but showed that boorish behavior is not limited to any gender or race.

Wilson did apologize to the president, but refuses to apologize to Congress. Serena had the

most extraordinarily clueless post-match press conference, where she not only never apologized, but had the chutzpah to mention that she is an admirer of John McEnroe, once known as the poster boy of bad court behavior (although now an admired elder statesman and commentator.)

This summer in town hall meetings on health care reform all across America speakers are routinely shouted down. Congressman Barney Frank, who can hold his own, had a now famous interchange with a woman holding a sign of the President with a Hitler mustache and wearing a swatztika. The irony was not lost on Frank, who gave as good as he got (see YouTube).

This outbreak of incivility troubles me. Just back in January we had a moving national moment around the Presidential inauguration, and a short-lived era of good feeling that is now supplanted by the most vitriolic rhetoric and ugly accusations of bad faith. This is not a time in our national life when we can afford to be childish. There are important matters to attend to (like fixing health care) that are not helped by such antics. A political party that imagines it will help its long-term prospects by making its opponents fail at the expense of the country underestimates the voters, not to mention its own lack of integrity.

Society lives by rules and codes. In America we are proud of our elections and the peaceful transfer of power. It doesn’t happen everywhere. Part of why it happens is the vast public agreement on some of those rules and codes. You don’t interrupt a speech on the floor of Congress. You don’t publicly call the President a liar. When those rules and codes are violated the fabric of our common life is frayed and torn.

Tennis, too, has it’s own set of rules. Serena was penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct, lost the match and left the tournament. She hurt mostly herself, although her opponent Kim Clijsters, looked stricken by the events and was deprived of winning the match on her own, which she had every appearance of doing. Still, Serena is a talented and popular sports figure looked up to by many young people. She said in an interview that you can't spell “dynasty” without “nasty.” Well, her behavior last night was pretty nasty, and she didn't do tennis (or herself) any favors by it.

Such transgressions by high-profile figures against manners, etiquette, or protocol can entertain and amuse us. But they should disturb us. Nothing good can come of it.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

The best little bands you’ve never heard of! Volume 1: Middlefish Pond.

There must be thousands of them out there. Just in my own circle of friends there are a handful of guys (yes, all guys) who play in bands that only meet periodically, but have been doing so for decades. Many started with friends while in school, but keep meeting, writing songs, practicing and recording. Whether you call them garage bands or indie rock bands these guys are the true amateurs (from the Latin verb amo: to love), but their music is anything but amateurish. Some use professional sidemen when they record. All write their own songs, no cover bands here.

The first band I am going to feature is the oldest. Middlefish Pond will celebrate its fortieth anniversary next year. And I was there at the founding. During the beginning of my senior year at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa I met two very cool freshmen long-hairs named Tom Winter and David Kameras. Tom and I shared an apartment briefly the next summer, but the less said about that the better. David and I worked together on an underground newspaper called the Catalyst, which got us briefly busted in downtown Cedar Rapids for hawking papers without a license. David took a picture of the undercover officer who was questioning me on the street, and we put it on the cover of our next issue. But, as usual, I digress.

Soon Tom and David formed a band and were playing gigs at “the Pub,” which was the student snack bar in Coe's Gage Memorial Union, and, despite the promising name, didn’t serve alcohol.

But it was a popular venue for plays (I was in Spoon River Anthology there) and music, and Tom and David soon became sort of a house band for the Pub. They named their band Middlefish Pond, after a beautiful setting in the Amana Colonies we used to go to and hang out at, not to put too fine a point on it.

Their two-man mostly acoustic band was lots of fun to listen to. They played lively up-tempo tunes with irreverent often goofy lyrics, reminiscent of Steve Goodman, John Prine, and Frank Zappa. Both guys wrote songs and sang and they often had intricate harmonies. David played viola and drums, Tom played guitars and harmonica. He once tried to teach me to play guitar, and I can still play House of the Rising Sun and Cocaine, but unfortunately, there was little call for either in my 30 years as a pastor.

So the year went by and in 1971 I graduated and went off to Boston to seminary, and the boys kept playing at Coe and other venues in Cedar Rapids and Eastern Iowa, and they eventually graduated, got jobs, got married, and went their separate ways- but the band played on. I haven’t seen David since 1971, but recently reconnected on Facebook and was astonished to find out that MFP was still alive. Tom came on his motorcycle to visit me at the parsonage in my first pastorate in West Newfield, Maine about 1975, but there was a Church Ladies Bazaar going on, and I think it freaked him out, so he left abruptly. I couldn’t be happier that these two terrific guys are still making music, and that it is now easily available due to the wonder of the Internet.

Here is how they describe themselves on the album notes of their most recent album, Last Chance to Breathe: “Middlefish Pond is a two-person vocal group spawned in the fertile terrain of eastern Iowa in 1970, now a commuter relationship between Random Fill Studio (Chicago area) and Amanapond Music (ASCAP) (Washington area). The band, which plays original songs sharing a satiric blues-rock-folk-often political-Zen sensibility, is comprised of songwriters David Kameras on vocals, viola and drums, and Tom Winter on vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, bass guitar, harmonica and bazouki. The team has also drawn, as circumstances require, on kazoo, variable speed electric drill and ambient sound (including locusts on the current release). Speaking of which....    Last Chance To Breathe showcases the group's more recent efforts, touching on themes of love, loss, class, race, courage and obsession, filtered through a comic-mystical lens. This is music that reminds one of Chicago blues, Delta blues, Steve Goodman, Shel Silverstein, Siegel-Schwall, David Lindley, Warren Zevon, LeRoy Marinell and Frank Zappa, all in a good way, of course.   Shock your family, astonish your friends, or just settle back with a good pair of headphones and groove to Last Chance To Breathe pursue new and exciting, yet still irreverent, directions.”

So check these guys out. I think you'll enjoy Middlefish Pond. To buy Last Chance to Breathe go to:

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/middlefishpond or http://www.digstation.com/ArtistAlbums.aspx?artistname=MiddlefishPond or

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzerh2xf/middlefishpond/

To see their site with blog and pictures go to:

http://www.myspace.com/middlefishpond

(photos: above, then at Coe; below, now. Left to right in both, David Kameras, Tom Winter)

Monday, September 7, 2009

Help! My Facebook Page, like Billy Pilgrim, has become “unstuck in time.”

I noticed it earlier today, Labor Day, Monday September 7, 2009. I opened my homepage and the top post was from Rachel Flynn, who was “moving to New York tomorrow.” Wait a minute, I recalled that she had said that on Friday, and I knew there had been several posts since Friday. What is going on?

I looked at the previous post. It was from my New Zealand Internet friend Jason Goroncy promoting his excellent blog, Per Crucem ad Lucem, on Saturday at 8:13 pm.

The previous post was Donna Schaper enjoying the end of summer and looking forward to events in September, posted on September 3.

“And so it goes” at Kurt Vonnegut might say. In his book Slaughterhouse Five, one of my favorites, his protagonist, Billy Pilgrim “becomes unstuck in time” and experiences past and future events out of sequence. So one moment he is experiencing his life as a middle-age

d married dentist in upstate New York, and in another he may be back as a young chaplain's assistant in WW2 experiencing the firebombing of Dresden in a bunker the Germans have put him as a P.O.W, and in another moment he is naked in a zoo on the planet of Tralfamadore with B-movie starlet Montana Willdhack, both having been kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians as examples of earthlings. You get the idea.

If you are one of the handful of people on earth who read blogs, but doesn’t have a Facebook page, here’s how it works (when it isn’t broken): you scroll down your homepage, and all your “friends” posts cascade down the wall in order of posting time. To have your Facebook page become unstuck in time is most disconcerting.

I thought it might be a problem with my computer, but posted about it and got two responses from other people that said it was happening to them too. I can only access their posts from the little notifications thingy in the bottom right corner.

I just checked to see if they fixed it, but no: Rachel is still moving to New York tomorrow. Unstuck in time. Sorry Rachel!

I hope they can fix it.

Friday, September 4, 2009

What if we had to choose a former Red Sox Pitcher to be our Senator?

In yesterday’s post I gave the definitive reasons why Curt Schilling will not be Senator from Massachusetts. But it got me thinking. What if our next United States Senator had to come from the ranks of former Red Sox pitchers?

To start you can just eliminate some guys. There are certain Sox pitchers, mostly relievers, that just have no chance with the electorate: B.K. Kim, Calvin Schiraldi, Mike Torrez (remember Bucky Dent? I do, I was there!), Curtis Leskanic, “Heathcliff” Slocum are just a few of the many that spring to mind. There are just too many painful memories there.

And when I think back on the starters it doesn’t get much better, because the Red Sox management in my early years of fandom believed you could win pennants by stacking the line-up with hitters and pretty much let the pitching take care of itself. They were wrong. So there are guys from that era that did a pretty good job, but just don’t have that much name-recognition anymore like Dave Morehead, Dick Drago, Reggie Cleveland, Rick Wise, “Oil Can Boyd,” Roger Moret, and Bruce Hurst.

And we can’t count pitchers who came to us late in their careers, but made their reputations in other towns. Tom Seaver is a Met, Frank Tanana is an Angel, Bret Saberhagen is a Royal, Mike Boddicker is an Oriole, and Frank Viola is a Twin. They may have played for the Red Sox, but it’s just not their team.

So who else is there? Let us think big. When you think of iconic Red Sox pitchers the first name that comes to mind is Cy Young. He has great name recognition, with the eponymous award and all, but he died in 1955, and nobody except Strom Thurmond ever served in the Senate when he was dead, and Thurmond was alive when he was first elected, so that rules out Cy Young. Same thing for Babe Ruth; sorry Babe, most folks don’t even remember that you were once a pitcher, and a good one at that. Actually, most people don't remember that you ever played for the Red Sox, but we don't want to get into that.

There are some other high name-recognition guys, but they all have fatal flaws. Jim Lonborg, the star of the 1967 Series (although we lost) is probably not remembered by the younger generation. Besides, he went to Tufts Dental School and became a dentist after retiring, and why be a Senator when you can be a dentist; the pay is better.

Roger Clemens was once very popular with the voters, I mean fans, but now is universally scorned in New England for committing the unpardonable sin, and I don’t mean the doping. And he is so from Texas.

Pedro Martinez was about as good as it gets for several years with the Sox. The dominant (and Dominican) was 117-37 (not a missprint) for his career with them, although marred by the infamous Grady Little 100 pitch non-decision. The non-citizen thing might be a problem, plus going to New York (even if it was to the Mets).

The next name that comes to mind is Luis Tiant, who for many years of my fandom was the only decent Red Sox pitcher we had. In 1966 he pitched four straight shut-out victories, one of only five pitchers to do that. “El Tiante” has some valuable gifts for the Senate. For one thing he can look one way and pitch the other.

Tiant is personable, wise, and colorful, although sometimes I have trouble understanding what he is saying, but that shouldn’t really be a problem in the Senate. Besides, he has a new documentary about him just out called Lost Son of Havana, which would give him a quick media bump. He actually lives in Massachusetts, and I think he is a citizen, which is a plus. If not, he was born in Havana in 1940 (more or less) before the revolution, and we pretty much owned Cuba then, so I’m sure with a little paperwork from the State Department it could be worked out. People here love him. So he’s a possibility.

A guy that would probably make a good senator is Bill Lee. The former left-handed pitcher, nicknamed “Spaceman,” is articulate and has outspoken views on most subjects. He once said

his marijuana use allowed him to jog to work at Fenway Park without being bothered by the bus fumes. He also said that since the right hemisphere of the brain controls the left side of the body, and the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body, only left-handed people are in their right minds. Sounds good to me, but I’m right-handed, so what do I know. But the downside for Bill is that he isn’t a resident of Massachusetts (he has a lumber company in Vermont), and his appearances on Charlie Moore’s NESN fishing show looking like the Unabomber might scare away some voters.

So that leaves me with the last, best, obvious choice. Yes, you guessed it, Dennis Eckersley! Hall of Famer Eck had two smoking seasons with the Red Sox in 1978 (20 wins) and 1979 (17 wins), but then, frankly, he was pretty bad until he left in 1984 when he was traded for Bill Buckner (Oh, the irony!).

Eck never really had it again as a starter, but in 1987 he got traded to the Oakland Athletics and Manager Tony La Russa used him as a long reliever. When closer Jay Howell became injured Eck filled in and never looked back. He won the AL Cy Young award as a reliever in 1992 as well as the MVP. He ended his career with 390 saves and went straight to the Hall of Fame. Most Sox fans forget how bad he was here toward the end, and those like me who remember have forgiven him long ago. So we can all feel good about this extraordinary Red Sox reliever who is in the Hall of Fame, even though he wasn’t a reliever for the Red Sox. Eckersley is the final proof that F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong when he said, “There are no second acts in American lives.”

Today as a commentator for NESN Eck is extremely popular with the fans, and he even lives in Massachusetts (although he is such a California dude). He is smart, funny and articulate. He does have his own unique lingo and likes to coin new words or use old ones in new ways. He coined the term “walk-off home run” after Kirk Gibson victimized him in the 1988 World Series.

I can imagine him in the Senate kibitzing with Al Franken, saying something like, “Wow, that new Senate Environmental Bill is hard cheese with hair on it!” It’s true that he might not want the job, or move to Washington, since it would cut into his golf time, but it never hurts to ask. People should approach him and see if he is interested.

If we have to have a Former Red Sox pitcher for United States Senator I vote for Eck.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Senator Curt Schilling? I Don’t Think So.

Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling told the New England Cable Network that he had been contacted by people seeking to recruit him to enter the race to fill the vacant Massachusetts senate seat to succeed the late Senator Edward Kennedy, and that he hadn’t ruled out the possibility.

Now I truly admire Curt Schilling, and will never forget his performance in game 6 of the 2004 ALCS against the New York Yankees, when his victory forced a game 7, allowing the Red Sox to become the first team in history to come back from a 0-3 deficit, and go to their first World Series since 1986. This was the first “bloody sock” game; the second was in game 2 of the World Series, which Schilling also won, and the Red Sox went on to win their first World Series since 1918. So Schilling is much beloved by Red Sox fans here in New England, and much admired for his charity work, but he will never be senator and here’s why:

He has no political experience. Now one might argue the case that this is an asset, but one would be wrong.
He isn’t really from Masschusetts. He was born in Alaska, and grew up in Arizona, where he attended college. He considers the Pittsburgh area to be home. There have been other carpetbaggers with state flags of convenience; Robert Kennedy and Hillary Clinton both became senator in New York on slender evidence of residency, but this isn’t New York.
He doesn’t have a college degree. In Massachusetts that matters.
He is known for being something of a hothead and shooting off his mouth, which can be entertaining from an entertainer, but disastrous for a politician. He admitted as much yesterday, saying, “That is probably another one of the reasons why I wouldn’t make a good political candidate right now is that there is an enormous amount of house cleaning that has to be done and I don’t have a really good filter,” Schilling said. “My first press conference could be my last.”
He has spent much of his public career sparring with the press. The war of words has been fun to follow, but journalists have long memories. He has publicly called Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy a “tool,” a “hack” and an “idiot.” And these are just the ones I can print in a family blog like this. I'm actually not a big Shaughnesssy fan myself, so I find these amusing, but they won't help Curt run for office. The Boston media would have a field day with him in the run-up to an election.
There is still some resentment against him among some fans for his last year with the Red Sox in 2008 when he squabbled with management, and never threw a pitch.
His views are pretty conservative. Ours aren't.
He can’t legally run as a Republican. He says he’s registered as an Independent. In Massachussetts law one must be registerd in the party for 90 days before the November 3 deadline. He doesn’t have 90 days. He would have to run as an Independent.

It's just not going to happen.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

September Signals a New Chapter

Something about the beginning of September makes me feel like starting a new chapter. Perhaps it’s all those years of getting a new blank notebook to begin the school year. It’s been many a year since I went back to school, but old habits die hard.

The weather here in New England changed this past week. We’ve had a miserable summer, rainy and humid, by turns too cold and too hot, but always damp and sticky. Now the air is dry and the sky is high and blue, and it is cool enough to work outdoors without losing your weight in sweat. I trimmed my hedges today and hardly worked up a sweat. Perhaps the change in the weather sets off some internal clock, like a migrating bird, that says it’s time for a new chapter.

For me September is the real beginning of a new year. It marks the end of summer and the approaching Fall. It marks time like a turning hinge, from then to now, and from now to what now?

This cool weather reminds me of a September day twenty-seven years ago in 1982. We lived in Maine, 20 minutes outside of Bangor on a 100-acre farm. We had a new baby, born July 22, our first child, Andrew, and we were in transition. I was about to take a new job and we would soon be moving to a new state. I had accepted a call from a search committee, but hadn’t been voted on by the congregation yet. That would take place on September 12 down in Massachusetts. These votes usually work out, but New England Congregationalists take their prerogatives pretty seriously, so it was by no means pro forma. I was still working at my old job, although I can’t say my heart was fully in it.

It was Labor Day weekend, and my Dad and his wife Virginia (my mother died in 1967) had come up from New York City to see the new grandchild (my Dad’s second, but first in almost a decade. His first one was Adam and he asked me dryly, as only Larry Floyd could, if the family was working their way alphabetically through a Biblical Concordance).

The weather was bright and cool like it is today. We were all having a good time, still in summer vacation mode, and a new baby is a great distraction from whatever else might be vexing you. We went down the road to the next small town to eat, nothing fancy, but good Maine summer fare: steamers, lobster, sugar and butter corn, blueberry pie.

Driving home in the dark I noticed a spectacular display of the Northern Lights, so when we arrived we took our flashlights and some lawn-chairs, and went out behind the barn (to escape the inevitable big rural floodlight our landlord had on the front of the barn.)

We sat silently in the dark and watched this extraordinary display of God’s grandeur. I have never seen anything like it, before or since. Martha quietly nursed our new baby. I took it all in, the sky, my family, my wife and new son, my Dad and his wonderful wife. Life was good if a bit uncertain. There was a new ministry ahead, a new town, a new house, a new chapter.

That day was a hinge time. God is good to us to let us live and enjoy the moments we have. This was one of them, and the change in the September weather always reminds me of it.

It was my Dad’s last September for he died the next July. These rare moments we are given when life seems especially good are to be embraced and remembered. Like this great September weather they only last so long.