Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes …

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Mike Shortall

Change is a word loaded with potential, dread, promise, and uncertainty. Change is powerful. Change is scary. Change is hopeful.

As a single word, “Change” became half the anthem (Hope and Change) of President Obama’s 2008 Presidential race. The word was a double-edged sword, cutting both to the positive and to the negative depending on which end of the sword you were standing. Five years later, whether you perceive that any real Change has occurred depends not only on your perception of Change, but also what you thought needed – or did not need – changing.

You hear references to Change in every facet of life eventually. Usually when you least want to deal with it. In the workaday world, Change is often sold as a panacea for everything from sluggish performance to being severely underfunded. In those situations, the attempts to sell Change with its accompanying catch-phrases can be annoying or downright foreboding.

The older you are, the more set in your ways, the more threatening Change can appear.

My perspective on Change is that it is inevitable no matter what your situation or station in life. Never count on anything remaining the same forever; and you can bet, when you find something in your life that is comfortable, enjoyable, or efficiently familiar, it will Change.

My personal demon in Change is the dreaded “Change for the sake of Change“, an underlying mantra in Government and its lecherous bureaucracy. I have experienced change in my Department of Defense job that was simply the result of one person’s hellbent desire to claim Change as part of their legacy, sad as that reality is.

These individuals resort to changing the work paradigm as they head out the door for leisure pastures, leaving those left behind to deal with the consequences. Like the engineering feat required to change the course of a mighty river, they view their ability to make the Bureaucrats bend to their will – even in a small way – as a personal feat of professional strength.

Rarely is such Change viewed favorably. The common reaction being, if it was such a great idea, why didn’t you pursue before you started heading out the door?

And so with that as a background, let’s look at a few examples in the recent news of good Change – bad Change, we Change – you Change. Being a male, my particular interests well-known here, most of these examples involve sports and politics.

Except this one of course …

State Patty’s Day

Authorities in State College, PA, home of Penn State University are offering three dozen downtown bars, restaurants and package stores $5000 subsidies to cut off sales of alcohol during the annual State Patty’s Day celebration. The party weekend, created spontaneously by Penn State students when St. Patrick’s Day fell over Spring break, has become a community nuisance. Excessive drinking, arrests and property damage became such a huge problem that community groups have been joined by the students themselves in seeking solutions to Change the paradigm.

Good Change … Good for the community, for Penn State, for law enforcement, and for the students themselves, But with a price tag of an estimated $180,000., you certainly hope the benefits outweigh the payoffs to be made in the name of peace-of-mind.

Beware the Walmart Mom

Sometimes Change is the result of how one sees their station in life being affected by those in leadership positions. Let us consider the political leanings of the Walmart Moms.

Some might consider the Walmart Mom moniker to be demeaning or perhaps a judgement of economic impotence. But the Walmart Mom has become a political force in recent years. The Walmart Mom has been studied extensively by both political parties as defined as a woman, who shops at Walmart at least once a month and comprises a significant 14-17% of the electorate.

In 2008 Walmart Moms voted for Barack Obama in 2008. In 2010 they switched to support Republicans in the mid-term elections. Then switched back again to support the President’s 2012 re-election.

A small group of Walmart Moms was the subject of a recent Philadelphia Inquirer article. (See above link.) The impression one gets is that the Walmart Mom views politics and the opposing parties from the perspective of how those parties’ politics and policies affect their lives.

The women, who were brought together during the President’s recent State of the Union address, recognized both parties as obstructionist whenever their opposition controls The Oval Office. They prioritized the issues facing them as women and mothers, feeling less supportive of issues like immigration reform and climate change. They support efforts to reduce gun violence.

The recent trend suggests the Walmart Moms could be persuaded to back a coherent Republican message in the 2014 midterms; yet they were baffled as to the current Republican message.

For Republicans, this potential for Change relies on their ability to prove to the Walmart Mom that they have their best interests at heart. At this point, the prospects for persuading the Walmart Moms to switch away from the Democrats has to be scary for the GOP.

Self interest is often the catalyst for Change. If your target audience sees you as no better than the current regime, you never stand a chance.

Appropriate artsy intermission:

Back to our program …

Change can be the source of anxiety, both welcome and foreboding. For examples we need not look any further than our beloved Philadelphia sports teams.

Charlie’s Last Year?

As the Philadelphia Phillies gear up for the 2013 MLB season, many of its fans speculate on whether this season will be Charlie Manuel‘s swan song. His current contract will expire at the end of the season; and at the age of 69, there is much to consider for both Manuel and the Phillies.

The Phillies have been grooming Ryne Sandberg, a Hall of Fame second basemen the Phillies stupidly traded before the 1982 season along with Larry Bowa for Ivan DeJesus (Don’t get me started!), for a shot at a managerial job. The question is … Is Charlie ready to move on?

One would think Manuel might be ready to move up in the organization, but not likely to move on to another managing job. And frankly, it would be an insult to push Manuel out the door, unless of course 2013 turns out to be a down year unrelated to the many injuries the team suffered last season.

In the best of both worlds, Charlie goes out when he’s ready as is worthy of a World Series winning manager; and Ryne Sandberg is still waiting in the wings to take Manuel’s spot as the team’s on-field General.

Provided the upcoming season does not provoke a rash change in Uncle Charlie’s status, Phillies fans should feel good about Manuel moving on, whether it be into retirement or on to an executive opportunity here or elsewhere.

Of course Charlie could decide after the 2013 season that he’s not ready to move off the bench just yet. In which case Change will just have to wait.

Can a Duck help the Eagles?

The team on the other side of Pattison Avenue is facing a situation of an entirely different hue. After 14 seasons of Andy Reid‘s leadership, the Philadelphia Eagles are facing a challenge they have not experienced since the turn of the century.

New head coach Chip Kelly comes from the vaunted University of Oregon Ducks, a team that ran a very up-tempo offense that requires a lot of speed, read and react play by the Quarterback, and the ability to keep defenses off-balance by constantly pressing the offensive attack.

The Change has elicited a set of anxiety reactions in fans that covers just about every facet of play on the field and personnel management off it.

First and foremost is whether Kelly’s high-octane offense can work in the NFL. Indications are that it already is in limited ways on a number of teams, including the New England Patriots and Superbowl contender, San Francisco 49’ers. But the underlying cause for concern revolves around the question of player personnel and their suitability to run Kelly’s fast paced, attack offense.

The level of anxiety gets ratcheted up for some Eagles fans when they consider the prospects of promising, but unproven QB Nick Foles, and even more so when the Eagles decided to re-sign out-of-favor QB Michael Vick.

All you need to turn most Philadelphia Eagles fans into helpless bundles of anxiety riddled meatbags is to throw the above questions into a bowl; stir in huge gaps on the offensive line and the question of how Kelly and new Defensive Coordinator, Billy Davis will remake the team on the defensive side of the ball; and serve over a defensive secondary that at times couldn’t cover a casserole dish.

Finally, Change can be seen as threatening, while at the same time provide a wealth of opportunity.

That Lada … What a cherry ride!

Recently, Christine Armario wrote an article, featured on the Associated Press, about the extreme manipulations Cubans must go through in order to keep the island’s very, very old fleet of long outdated Russian automobiles running. The mainstays of the island’s remaining auto fleet are upwards of 30-year-old, ancient Russian Lada and Moskvich models, for which it’s almost impossible to buy parts.

While it’s hard to fathom a Cuban visitor to Miami having to walk into a certain auto parts store; walking out with a carburetor or a set of brake pads: and having to physically carry back to the home island. It’s even harder to rationalize this country’s continued reluctance to exploit – if you will – a country and a people so ripe for the depth and breadth of opportunities America can provide.

The problem? Well, it’s Cuba!

Long the bane of 1960 Domino Theory on the control of the spread of Communism … Site of President John F. Kennedy’s biggest foreign relations/national security blunder … Home of one of the most ruthless – and oldest – Red revolutionaries … And of course home to hundreds of thousands of Cuban expatriates currently living in the U.S. after leaving Cuba in the decades since the Fidel Castro-led revolution.

But it’s difficult to ignore a Cuba that is very backward in its economy, infrastructure, politics and human rights.

Imagine what a boon to American business to have a country just 90 miles off the coast of Florida as very needy destination for construction services, consumer goods, medical equipment, and technology. Imagine the inroads – now that Fidel is near terminal age – Americans can make in exporting its way of life, political freedoms and social philosophies.

Imagine how grateful the Cuban people, and maybe even the post-Fidel or post-Raul Cuban government might be, especially now that the Russians are no longer as influential internationally as they were two decades ago.

There’s a wealth of opportunity there. But it will require a sea change in public and political perceptions to make it happen.

Sequestration: The President’s ugly Child

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Mike Shortall

How many people realize sequestration, which The White House continually warns will be a “disaster” for the country and its citizens from Arizona to Connecticut, was actually The White House’s brain-child???

Don’t listen to the hype … or the lies. The sky, if it falls, will not be the sole responsibility of Congress. Heck, it wasn’t even their idea.

The Public is a pawn in this chess game. The political pressure being applied by The White House, in the form of Dire Economic Impacts on individual states and even the victims of Superstorm Sandy, is intended to force Congress (i.e. Republicans) – by portraying them as the troublemakers – to cave in so they can pass to the American people an even bigger financial federal budget burden without cutting a single one of the Democrats’ Sacred Cows.

Sequestration was the gamble suggested by then White House Chief-of-Staff Jack Lew (Secretary of the Treasury nominee) and White House Congressional liaison Rob Nabors. It was endorsed by President Obama before being presented to the Senate Finance Committee, and proposed as a negotiating strategy to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) during the 2011 negotiations to raise the National Debt Ceiling.

Certainly House Republicans accepted the sequestration as part of those negotiations, but it wasn’t their idea; it wasn’t their gamble.

It was the President’s idea of “leadership” in difficult political times. Push it off; deal with it later. Maybe, just maybe it will go away on its own.

Keep that in mind as you continue to hear about how Sequestration will damage your benefits; your income; your local economy!

Remember it when The President shows up on C-Span or the nightly news speaking about the dangers of sequestration and surrounding himself with Emergency Responders, teachers, healthcare workers, and seniors warning about all the damage the sequestration cuts will entail.

Sequestration: The President’s ugly child!

Who were those people in the background?

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Mike Shortall

Now I know the Obamas receive a lot of criticism was those who do not agree with them politically, socially, economically, etc. Some of it is over-the-top, some of it valid as well.

But performances like tonight, where Michelle presented the Best Picture Nominees and Winner at The Oscars, is what gets people talking about their priorities and values.

As Michelle spoke live from Washington, D.C. to the Hollywood elite, many of whom contributed significantly to The President’s re-election, her backdrop consisted of several young military personnel in full parade dress.

(View the entire segment here.)

She spoke about overcoming obstacles, courage, the importance of art to young people, and “that vitally important work” being done in Hollywood …

Seriously … Their “vitally important work” …

But never once was the presence of those young people in uniform acknowledged, their service recognized.

It appeared that those courageous young people in their dress uniforms were there simply as drapery.

Did you notice?

What’s wrong with that picture?

Papelbon deserves credit for Honesty in Leadership Remarks

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Mike Shortall

Phillies closer Jon Papelbon

Don’t be too hard on Jon Papelbon for his remarks about a lack of leadership on the Philadelphia Phillies last season. He is dead-on correct. He nails the problem I had last season with players like Hunter Pence, Shane Victorino, even J-Ro.

No one – it seemed to me – stepped up to fill the void left by the absence of their injured stars/natural leaders. Someone to shake life into a team that wallowed in a state similar to the characters, Vladimir and Estragon in “Waiting for Godot“. Waiting for Someone to come along and show them the way.

Give Papelbon credit for seeing things like they were; recognizing his own role in the leadership void; and his promise to get more involved this year!

Nothing like a little honesty to set a tone for an important season!

Go, Phillies!!

Diet by App, February 22

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Mike Shortall

What have you lost for me lately? a Malayan Flying Fox!

What have you lost for me lately? … 2.5 lb. Malayan Flying Fox

First weigh-in since buying the Lose It! app. Down 2 pounds to 234 (Start weight: 236). Probably closer to 2.5 pounds had I entered my starting weight properly (236.4). About what I expected, in view of my learning curves.

One trick learned is the ability to push over-budget calories into the next day. Some might say this is “cheating”; but it helps me handle the ups and downs easier. First, it relieves some of the guilt and dietary pressure when you wander (i.e. bull-rush the feeding trough) off course. Second, you get the chance to make good on your wandering without forfeiting whatever progress you have already made.

This week the program was complicated a bit further when I chalked up another year on this Big Blue Marble. So sorry, Ms. Lose It! … Chocolate-frosted, yellow birthday cake trumps Diet App every time …

… along with the Imperial Wolf Fish dinner at Bonefish Grill, accompanied by several adult beverages forced upon me by several non-diet-conforming family members. (Which is why I love them!).

Also found that by pushing some of those over-budget birthday calories into the next day, ….

a) didn’t feel like committing seppuku the day after my birthday splurge;

b) could manage my “wild” birthday craziness by a little budget-cutting sacrifice the following day; and

c) still end up 322 calories UNDER budget for the week!

Tasted better than he looks

Solved the problem of accurately entering (to the best if one’s ability and time) the nutritional and caloric data from home-cooked meals and restaurant dining. By googling a meal, like my Imperial Wolf Fish dinner (450 with the au gratin potatoes), you can usually find a comparable meal described and valued for entry in the Lose It! app.

Don’t obsess over being down-to-the-calorie completely accurate. Close enough is good enough. Found several menu/nutrition websites that listed my Bonefish Grill meal. It wasn’t an exact match, if looking at a picture might indicate, but close enough for government work (favorite adage).

So far, so good …

Diet by App

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Mike Shortall

After years and years of fighting the urgings of friends and family, I have finally stopped resisting The Forces of Nature (Electronic) and sheepishly joined The Legions of The Empire.

Yes, I got an iPhone for Christmas!

So now I am finally plugged into to an even more convenient electronic umbilical, whose benefits in the past I have steadfastly questioned as unnecessary, more costly, and therefore unwelcomed. My old flip phone now lies as silent and as dormant as a February lawn.

My days of wondering how the outside world survived without my uninterrupted electronic availability are as far off as the hair of my long ago youth. I feel as I imagine Neo would, had he decided to swallow the Blue Pill instead of the Red. All I’m missing is a set of quick-connect cable ports.

Yet I have to admit, there are a lot of neat features to owning my Portal to The Matrix. There is indeed an App for Everything! Some are silly and superfluous, if silly and superfluous resides in the eye of the beholder. Some are fun to have, as I have fallen for a few of its games and gimmicks. And some appear of significant benefit!

Most recently, I have become smitten with a weight loss app, appropriately named Lose It!

Over the years I have tried any number of diets in one form or another. The Atkins/South Beach/We-Hate-Carbs, the LowCalorie/LowSugar/LowTaste, the JennyCraig/SlimFast/LeanCuisine …

They all worked for a while, and then they didn’t for one reason or another. Usually because I just lost interest and motivation. One factor in my inability to commit to a lesser me was the gut feeling that I didn’t know what I was doing; had no EASY way to figure out how I was doing; and had no interest in PAYING someone to lead me through it.

(EASY being an obvious requirement when I find eating much less aggravating than trying to figure out whether WHAT I was eating was actually helping or hurting. Having to lose weight is annoying enough, even when you KNOW your health would improve; but having to WORK at it was … Well, it’s just plain annoying times two!)

Now before you get to thinking this is a Lose It testimonial; I have only been plugged into this app for about week. So Success is a long, long way off. But since I sometimes have difficulty coming up with brilliant insights and marvelous story-telling with which to fill these pages; I thought I would invite you all to follow my journey to a Lesser Mike.

It MIGHT be fun. It could – like so many of my other dieting attempts – end up being a colossal failure. If Vegas had a line on this little venture, I’d bet the Under (achievement). If nothing else, it will be informative and – most likely – whiny, petulant and full of self-pity/loathing/flagellation.

From time-to-time I will let you in on how I’m doing; what I’m doing; and what the results look like.

For what more could anyone ask?!?

Here’s the point from where I started roughly a week ago as it appears in my Lose It! profile:

Starting weight: 236

Goal Weight: 200

Plan: Lose one-and-a-half pounds a week

Daily Calorie Budget: 2,020

Goal Achievement: August 3, 2013

Other considerations: I get to the gym at work at least 3 times a week, concentrating on cardio/calorie burning through elliptical and treadmill machines and throwing in core exercises (for golf and lower back) or light weight work. This usually allows me to burn somewhere between 250-350 calories a day.

So, what’s to like about the Lose It! app?

The app is oriented towards caloric intake, with goals broken down by Day and by Week; so if you have a Bad Food Day you can see immediately what it does to your program. Intermittent stumbling is inevitable, especially when you combine Me with Diet! So if you have a very bad Diet Day, you can adjust your next day(s) activities and food intakes to get your noncompliant self back on track.

Some of Lose Its features include:

a wealth of nutritional information on a broad range of foods and food products
a bar-code reader for purchased ingredients and packaged food products that makes inputting caloric data easier than attempting to divine said data from your 10th grade class on nutrition
feature that allows you to create and save meals and their nutritional and caloric values for repeated meals
an easy-to-complete profile that allows the dieter to enter baseline data and goals expressed as pounds lost by week
a graph that provides a visual picture of weight progress (dieter input of weight)
daily log of foods eaten and a rolling total of daily calorie intake
daily calorie budget, along with front-page display of how your budget stands for that day and week
more graphs on nutritional breakdown and weekly calorie budget
a Friends connection for group motivation

The app will store those foods and meals you select in a menu similar to your iPhone Contacts format for easy repeat usage. (I found it relatively easy to gather information on first-time meals not included in the Lose It! app by simply “Google-ing” the basic content of the meal, and looking for a nutritional website containing the necessary data. Once you build and enter the data, the app will store it for later use if needed.)

The feature I love most is the ability to calculate and value the calories burned through exercise, work, and simple everyday activities. The list of activities is about as all-inclusive as possible. You can find a broad range of workout activities and get calorie credit for such activities as gardening, golf, lawn mowing (a favorite of Cranky Man’s Lawn … duh), house cleaning, snow shoveling and … ahem … sexual activity!

Many of the activity choices allow you describe the level of vigor with which you pursue said activity, with accompanying levels of calorie credit.

In the end, I’m sure this – like any other weight-loss program – depends on the will and loyalty of the dieter. But from my point-of-view, Lose It! takes a lot of the guesswork out of monitoring caloric intake and effort output that many health professionals recommend as the way to shed excess cargo.

I just like that it makes it easier for those of us who disdain uncertainty and the constant research required to achieve that sense of knowing what one is doing.

Here’s hoping I found something that will work with me as well as for me!

Once loyalty withers …

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Mike Shortall

(The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names of the guilty have been changed.)

Philadelphia sport fans are generally religious when it comes to their teams. They will wear their emotions and allegiances proudly on their sleeve and wallow for weeks when hopes for a championship dissolve into disappointment.

They also travel well, whether that means staying loyal to their hometown teams when forced to relocate to other regions of the country or the simple prospect of traveling to other sports cities to support the Philly teams on the road. If you happened to watch any of the Philadelphia Flyers games this past weekend, you no doubt noticed the numbers of Philly faithful – both winter snowbirds and permanent transplants – taking the opportunity to see the hometown boys taking on the local Florida competition.

Of course, such is not always the case. And from time-to-time, former Philadelphia sports fans fall for the allure of a local team or the no muss, no fuss ease of jumping on the nearest bandwagon.

Sometimes you can see The Leap coming for months …

Thus, there was no real surprise recently when several familiar faces, long-time Philly residents who had relocated to points South, appeared on Facebook wearing the colors and whooping it up for the NFL successes of the local football team, the Baltimore Ravens.

Bennie A, renown for picking the British as his “AFC homeland”!

To protect their identity, we will simply refer to them here as Benedict and Arnold.

You could sense a change in the familiar sports attitudes emanating from a mid-sized metropolitan area in Maryland a few years ago, when idle chitchat during a family gathering took a turn towards the off-season prospects of the Purple and Gold. No big deal at the time, as Benedict’s brother – also once a Philly sports fan – had morphed into a Ravens fan after years of Maryland living.

We took note when the aforementioned Bennie received a brand new Ravens jersey as a gift recently, the name Suggs prominently stitched on the back. And as chance might have it, Bene’s brother has a well-appointed Baltimore Ravens man-cave in his home just a few doors down from Bennie and Arnie’s version of West Point (historical point of reference; see Arnold, Benedict).

You could almost HEAR the colors changing!

So of course, a week or so ago we were treated to assorted Facebook posts showing the midst of their Raven-esque AFC Championship game festivities and the hullabaloo the resulted when the Baltimore team won and landed a berth in the Superbowl.

Not being able to remain silent any longer, I challenged Arnold on where their loyalties lie. The Answer?

“They are our ‘AFC team’!”

uh huh …

Now, I try not to be cynical.

(OK … I don’t try very hard; but I try a little.)

So immediately, I imagine all sorts of possible scenarios that play into my somewhat difficult-to-resist cynicism.

Majestic Eagle …??

Would this phenomena occur in The Natural World, if say the ravens, notorious scavengers, unable to actively hunt to sustain themselves, were 4-12 in road-kill contests; but the eagles, proud and superior hunters, were 11-5 in superbly executed trout fishing attempts? Would fans of The Natural World be tempted into dumping the majestic eagles for road-killed squirrel-eating ravens, if success continued to favor the predator that serves as the National Emblem?

(Pardon me, I mean would they be inclined to supplement their loyalty with the raven as their designated “carrion-eating bird”?)

Back in the Sports World, I imagine I have missed many an opportunity over the years to adopt my own “AFC team”; thereby feeling free to enjoy the success and championship seasons of the cross-state Pittsburgh Steelers. After all, I could find no guidance on geographical limits to bandwagon jumping!

What if Bennie and Arnie decided they needed an additional American League baseball team? Actually , I’m surprised that hasn’t happened yet, since the Baltimore Orioles are just as geographically convenient, and they enjoyed a 14-games-over-.500 playoff season in 2012!

…. or this sorry excuse for a bird?

I just HOPE they aren’t holding out for another season before deciding they need an alternate NL East team, since the Nationals must look mighty tempting to anyone tired of waiting for the Phillies’ to work through their current rough stretch!

That would be the real dagger in the back of Philadelphia Sports Loyalty to which Bennie and Arnie still profess to cling. But once The Seal is broken, all kinds of contamination is possible!

They could insist on having another NHL team (Washington Capitals) or another NFC East team (Redskins)!

But of course, the BIG QUESTION is this …

What happens when their original home town Philadelphia Eagles and their “AFC team”, Baltimore Ravens face-off? That might be a sticky enough situation during the regular season, with that Ravens man-cave right down the street and all those Ravens lovers in such close proximity. But even worse …

What would happen if the Eagles and Ravens faced off in a Superbowl somewhere down the road?!? My doubts fester to a boil as I consider the possibilities.

I envision scenes of frequent bathroom visits to switch between the colors of one team or the other based on the state of the scoreboard!

Then it hit me!

The Answer to their conflicting emotions in such a situation … and a nice little niche market to be exploited by some enterprising merchandiser. Reversible football jerseys!

A jersey that would show the colors and emblems of one team that could be easily turned inside-out at the drop of a hat – or a change in the scoreboard – to show the colors and emblems of another!

And we will call them … Front Runners!

Losing more than Man’s Best Friend

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Mike Shortall

Friday night … I’m scrabbling around the house to meet a last-minute decision to see the late showing of the popular, Oscar-nominee Zero Dark Thirty. As I scramble to purchase tickets on-line, I run out to the car to grab my cell phone.

I see a lone figure walking down the street; but it’s too dark to see who it is, and I’m not even mildly interested anyway. Then I hear my name …

I squint to see who it is in the dark, and recognize a neighbor. He blurts out, “We just had to put Coco down!”

I know who it is now, and move down the driveway to offer my condolences on the loss many people face each day that tugs at the heart of pet owners even when it’s not your own four-legged friend.

As the neighbor draws near, I’m moved by what I see. A grown man of retirement age, tears streaming down his face and sobbing in fits and starts. As I approach and offer my hand, he moves in for a hug and cries almost uncontrollably.

I’m a bit embarrassed, even though no one is around. I know this neighbor, but we’re not close. We have socialized a few times, but nothing that ever developed into a “close friend” type of relationship. In fact I’m probably a bit put off by such an emotional semi-public display over a pet …

Then the light goes on in my head.

This canine companion had been their only child!

He and his wife had never had children. I knew some of the story. Trying and trying but never finding success.

So Coco, a 13-year-old reddish-brown Chocolate Lab, had been in all manner of relationship and dependence the child they never had.

And suddenly, I realized how much this loss meant to him, the proud parent, who was always seen walking his only child throughout the neighborhood several times a day in all kinds of weather.

So I stayed there with my grieving neighbor; trying to offer as much support and empathy as I could muster. His pain was genuine; it was deep; it appeared unbearable.

I invited him into the house for a drink in an attempt to give a chance to get out of the cold and vent a bit. I wasn’t sure what I would do with the movie tickets I had just bought; but it was obvious he needed someone to listen. But after a few moments he abruptly decided to head home, probably because his wife was back at the house dealing with the very same emotions.

Saturday was a full day for us. Travelling three hours away to the Williamsport area to spend the day with my newlywed son and daughter-in-law. We left early and stayed late. Off and on during the day I talked about what happened the night before and the emotional display that caught me a bit off-guard.

I made plans to visit my neighbors on Sunday morning, to check in and see how they were coping. Carol decided to accompany me; and when we got to their door we were a bit surprised by what we found inside.

After ringing the bell, we glance in through the glass storm door and see a baby barrier! We glance at each other and Carol asks, “Did they get a new dog already?!?” I was certain they wouldn’t have so soon.

When they answer the door, they both burst out crying. The emotions are still raw. The loss every bit as painful. And inside lying on the fireplace stone is a weeks-old Golden Retriever pup!

The neighbors seem a bit unsettled by the puppy’s presence, the insistent idea of a close relative trying to help them recover from their loss in the best way they knew how.

The pups new mom was almost apologetic. My friend from Friday night revealed his angst and admitted that he doesn’t know if he will ever be able to accept a new dog so readily.

We visit for about an hour, conversation shifting from sympathetic musing on the man-dog relationship, distracting pieces of everyday minutiae, and gushing over the cute fluffy ball of fur snoozing on the floor.

After a period of time, the sleepy pup rouses long enough to sniff and stretch her way into the kitchen where we sit, then plops down on the kitchen floor for another nap.

I watch my neighbor go from sorrowful grief to the affectionate scratching of an outstretched puppy in mid-yawn to the light banter about the differences in breeds and the unconditional love any sociable pet will provide its Master.

Later that day, I saw my neighbor walking his new companion; accepting the condolences of shocked fellow dog-neighbors; and introducing his new friend to the local canine hierarchy.

And I realized that the best laid intentions of a persistent relative was never to fill a void that was so painfully ripped out, so much as an attempt to round off the sharp edges of a very painful grief.

Such hasty action would not be the choice of many pet owners, but it seemed to work in the smallest way, by dulling the incredible ache with much larger prospects for helping a grief-stricken couple cope with a loss more devastating that losing a Man’s Best Friend.

The Wiffleball Kings

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Mike Shortall

In the late 1960’s Philadelphia Steel & Wire, a small steel processing company located on Belfield Avenue in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, decided to move its operations to a larger, newer facility to be built near the North(east) Philadelphia Airport in Northeast Philadelphia.

So, in 1966 our family moved from a twin on Penn Street to a brand new rowhouse in the Holmesburg section of the Great Northeast. Our old house, which was just across Penn Street (now Penn Boulevard) from the quaint red-brick buildings of Germantown Hospital, is long gone. Just a parking lot now; devoured at some point by the growing hospital.

The relocation was the end of the old; the beginning of the new. And for a 10-year old, barely familiar with the world outside of the five-home Germantown enclave he lived in, it was an anxious, unsettling move.

Much of our new rowhouse was still in its proverbial cellophane wrapper when this Germantown refugee walked outside to explore his new environment. One of my first memories of the new ‘hood was watching three brothers from down the street pour out of their brand-new rowhouse in a cacophony of harsh words and flying fists.

Great, I thought, I moved into a Three Stooges episode!

In minutes I was the unwitting ally in a fraternal civil war fought with stones and insults. But when the dust cleared, it was the beginning of a new stage in my young life.

For some reason, these three brothers, who were always at each others throats – or so it seemed – could do one thing without reaching for the Missile Launch Codes. They could play Wiffle ball!

Wiffle ball – for the uninitiated – was one solution to a city boy’s dream of playing ball in tight quarters without causing property damage. Played with plastic bats and relatively short-flight plastic balls with perforations engineered for the purpose of throwing junk pitches, it joined the ranks of half-ball, stickball, hoseball and boxball as urban versions of baseball, the game played by boyhood Heroes.

No need to find an open basketball court. No requirement to round-up six or eight compadres in order to cover a full football or baseball field. Just find a vacant lot suitable for a field and choose up sides!

Like all neighborhoods in large cities, our games were dictated by the surrounding geography. And although we had the luxury of the playground at Robert B. Pollock Elementary School roughly a quarter-mile away, the convenience of playing smaller games just a few houses away from the comforts of Home was hard to beat.

Our house sat directly across from a PECO (Philadelphia Electric) substation on Ashton Road. In later years our house and the fenced substation would serve as Home Field for our half-ball games. Homeruns most obviously defined by hitting one over the substation fence; triples up against the fence or falling on the sidewalk across somewhat busy two-lane Ashton Road; and doubles – if the fielder chose not to dodge the traffic – were those halfies that landed in the roadway.

But it was our wiffle ball field (Let’s call it Duplex Field, since it sat next to one of the two-apartment duplexes that framed each set of rowhouses.) was the only field of play that FELT like real baseball.

As with all great baseball venues, our wiffle ball field had its little quirks and unique characteristics that went missing when legendary baseball cathedrals gave way to the cookie-cutter, all-purpose stadiums that became the rage in cities like Philadelphia (Veterans Stadium), Pittsburgh (Three Rivers Stadium), and Cincinnati (Riverfront Stadium) in the 1970s.

Petco Park’s homage to Duplex Field

Our long ago Field of Dreams was much more like present-day Citizens Bank Park and Camden Yards. It had features that rivaled images from Connie Mack Stadium, Crosley Field (Cincinnati) or Ebbetts Field in Brooklyn, New York. Or at least it did for a bunch of 10-year-olds.

The physical characteristics of Duplex Field included a Petco Park-type brick building, the duplex running the length of the 3rd base side; jutting precipitously into the left field corner; and offering an imposing challenge to the dead-pull right-handed hitter who wanted to yank one down the left field line.

The outfield “wall” was a chain link fence (Aaron Rowand meet Citizens Bank Park!) protecting the outfielders from a nasty plunge into the sunken yards of the row homes of Ryerson Circle. The right-center field portion of this fence was fronted by triples-producing trench (a Bizarro World reversal of those famed warning track mounds at Crosley and Ebbets Fields), usually full of leaves and discarded paper that made retrieval of in-play balls a slapstick farce of flailing arms and flying trash.

Crosley Field had The Terrace hill. Imagine instead a trash-filled trench …

The most endearing feature of Duplex Field was the rock strewn diamond itself.

Real estate limitations and the flight dynamics of the plastic wiffle ball made a true outfield totally unnecessary. We could barely fit a reasonably sized infield into our bandbox ballpark; so the rough dimensions of our diamond made up almost the entire playing surface.

Second base sat maybe four feet from the centerfield fence. First base crowded the guardrail boundary of the neighboring gas station (at Ashton & Willits Roads), and third sat on a slight incline bordering the lawn on the duplex property. Homeplate enjoyed its own green space backstop where the at-bat team could loll about in semi-suburban luxury.

And that’s how we spent the two or three summers when there was little else to worry about other than how to fill up those idle summer hours. We were Wiffleball Kings!

In a time when parents would see their children – especially their sons – at breakfast and not again until dinner time, there were no video games, no cable TV (three channels unless you had a UHF-capable set), no internet, no DVDs in stacks by an entertainment center. As kids we found all sorts of distractions and activities to fill those long summer days.

For us in the middle years of the 1960s, before we were pulled away by the semi-grownup responsibilities of newspaper routes, part-time jobs, and – gulp! – girls, we did little but play wiffle ball. We would start at 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning and play all day, or at least until the woman running the developer’s office in the basement of the duplex had enough of the noise and chased us off!

And when she climbed into her pink Mustang and went home for the day, we played until dinner, then played some more until the dark chased us on to other idle meanderings.

At times we went a bit too far in trying to emulate our real-life baseball heroes. Keeping records and statistics that rendered our games more adult and serious than they should have been. But our games were also a doorway that opened up our own little world to the larger neighborhood we would live in as teens. Challenges received and issued with other neighborhood clans expanded our circle of friends and introduced us The Outside World.

In the end, wiffle ball was a portal to relationships that would blossom in the years to come.

Our field became the preferred wiffle ball venue, our own version of the old, original Cathedrals of Baseball. It was the perfect melding of the grown-ups game with that of the kid’s size game. The grown-up world with the life of a kid.

It was the kind of life we took for granted as all kids do. The kind of life you never thought would end, would never change. The kind of life that in later years you looked back on with nostalgia and – maybe – a touch of envy for the carefree existence you wish you could recapture if only for a day … maybe even for just a few hours.

It was a time when there was no bigger aspiration to live up to than being a Wiffleball King!

PRUPDATE: (Kind of an pre-update since I haven’t even posted this yet; hence the term prupdate.)

I was going to include several pictures of the old wiffle ball field in this post. Even drove down to the old ‘hood to take pictures like some creepy tourist.

But the pictures of Duplex Field suck (a technical photography term) from the point of view of giving you a true appreciation of our once semi-magnificent field. I post them below, just to back up my earlier “teasing” up of this story on Facebook.

I was shocked when I saw the old field, really just another yard. I said to myself, “Where the hell did all these trees come from?”

Oh yeah … That was almost 50 years ago. Then I uttered the “C” word …

That was almost half-a-Century ago.

No … Not a very good moment.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

One Conversation I’m unable to Avoid

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Mike Shortall

This is one conservation so many believe we need, but not like this. It’s a conversation we really ought to have; but no one wants to have it for this reason. The conversation should be informative and problem-solving, not confrontational and vindictive.

It should be honest. It should be direct. There should be no finger-pointing, no accusations, no belittling any lack of proper terminology or cultural understanding.

We should be reasonable and pragmatic.

I wrote the above in the days following the Sandy Hook tragedy. I smirk at the sentiments expressed there now, as if there was a chance this “discussion”, which was more like shouting that started within minutes of the Breaking News reports hitting the internet, could somehow be non-confrontational, without vindictiveness, without finger-pointing.

A few months earlier I wrote of the immediate reaction to such senseless violence shortly after the Aurora massacre.

But this time I just wanted to get some thoughts together with the intention of waiting until after the funerals for the victims at Newtown, CT were concluded. But in the meantime, most reason on both sides went out the window, ensuring only that no one would really listen in an attempt to solve anything.

To refresh everyone’s memory, I’m not a gun owner. Never was one. But I am considering getting the required permit that would allow me the option of acquiring a gun should I think it necessary or preferable somewhere down the road.

I had been considering this for quite some time, as a method of protection should it be needed … down that road. You never know.

I live in a bedroom-suburban community with plenty of local police protection. Never felt threatened by crime or potentially isolated by disorder. But if something were to happen – personally or in a larger social sense – you want to have options. So I consider obtaining a gun permit a responsible thing to do, even if I don’t follow through right away with a purchase.

I would simply have kept my own personal options opened.

So yes, I am a non-gun-owning appreciator of the 2nd Amendment, as stated in that Bill of Rights as an adjunct to the original U.S. Constitution. And yet, after what happened a few days before Christmas, I can’t help but think something has to change.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on guns, gun law, or current restrictions on what’s allowed or not allowed to be owned. I have heard or read some things on guns, which as presented here should be taken at face value. If I’m wrong, I’m sure someone more knowledgeable will correct me; and I have no problem with that since I’m clearly not an authority.

However, this discussion cannot be solely about guns, weapons capabilities, ammunition and clip capacities.

It has to include school safety and the optimistic concept that declaring a “Gun-Free Zone” somehow makes our children safer.

One of my first reactions, when horrors like this originate from within a family setting, is to ask what the parents/guardians were doing, not doing, thinking, and otherwise managing the individual and their mental health status in the time leading up to the crisis.

In this case, the parent responsible died as a result of what steps she took – or didn’t take – to get her son the help he needed. But without all the details of what transpired, it’s a dangerous jump to conclusions to simply blame that parent.

And so, we have to speak of our handling of mental health issues, where caregivers and parents stand the risk of – at some point – being overwhelmed by their charges. In this vein, I offer the following story of a mother faced with an increasingly violent, hostile 13-year-old son.

(Much has been written about Long’s blog post since it was published. The internet exploded with reactions – both sympathetic and highly critical – to her story. I offer no judgement, and only skimmed a few of the responses to her saga. My point here is to simply present it as an example of what some parents face – aside from parental choices and skill sets – when dealing with a growing child with potential mental health issues.)

You should read it to get a sense of helplessness some parents face when dealing with a seemingly uncontrollable child. How would any Parent(s) react to the challenge described by this single mother?

Having to make sure your younger children have a safety plan when the eldest acts out is no way to live.
What happens when that hostile but manageable son becomes too big for his mother to counteract or control?
Is tossing her son into the criminal justice system, as one social worker suggests, her only option for help? Obviously it cannot be the best option for either Child or Mother.

So many – if not all – mass shooters are found to have some form of mental defect. What is the mental health system’s responsibility in all this? Are we paying now for those decisions over the last few decades that made treating these individuals in society’s mainstream? Are we reaping the consequences of shuttering those institutions that were infamous as hell holes for the mentally ill? Could we have done this better?

Again, I’m not an expert.

I would be the first one to admit that suggesting we need armed guards or police inside our schools is an extreme reaction. But then I look at some schools in cities like Philadelphia, where well-armed police take up station each day to prevent violence during arrivals and dismissals.

And then there’s the evolution among law enforcement on the proper response to “live shooter” situations, be they in a school, a theatre or a mall.

Unlike the Columbine shootings, where police waited outside the school to assess the situation as the shooting went on, police now actively attack the attackers … with guns and violence – if need be – in order to bring the shooting to an end. It’s been learned to be better to confront and stop as soon as possible, as opposed to sitting and hoping for the return of sanity.

And suddenly, the armed school guard idea doesn’t sound all that wacky or reactive. Problematic and risky? Yes. Wacky or without merit? I don’t think so.

When we advertize schools as “gun-free zones”, regardless of the merits of the intent, one of the consequences is to essentially highlight schools as “soft targets” where an attacker knows he can kill and accomplish his dastardly goals virtually uncontested.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m not pushing that as The Answer either. But we should be completely honest about our expectations when it comes to the safety of our children.

The knee-jerk reaction is to blame the guns. But they are just the tools most easily accessed and used. Certainly we can do a better job keeping guns out of the wrong hands. Yet no system of prevention is foolproof.

It’s easy to argue that certain changes in the types of guns, accessories, and ammunition should make a difference. And yet as early as 1927 a school board official in Bath Township, MI was able to murder 38 elementary school children, 6 adults and injured another 58 without even touching a gun!

Again, I offer no claim to being an expert on guns, their types, or the accessories that make them more efficient weapons; but tightening access to them, whether designed to keep criminals or dangerous personalities from using them appears like a no-brainer.

High capacity ammunition clips are already illegal to own. No one can walk into a store and walk out the same day with an assault weapon. Except supposedly you can at certain gun shows. That – I can agree – should stop. But then where do you go?

Now consider the fact that our own Government – such as in the “Fast and Furious” controversy – cannot seem to get out of its own way when it comes to the most lethal weapons and access to them by the most dangerous criminals. When one hand has knowingly pushed the most dangerous weapons to those very same criminals, it’s incomprehensible that anyone would expect the law-biding to willingly surrender their access to those very same weapons.

Obviously, restricting gun access is not the panacea so many think or wish it to be.

And once you get to that point, you realize this problem is a lot more complicated than the mad man’s choice of weapon.