But For The Grace of God

"But for the grace of God go I" .Please push play and listen to Chris Knight and listen to If I Were You. After you listen, go out and help someone less fortuanate.
Push Play

WACS

Every once in a while a friend of Waites would visit us at the Chili Parlor, she was wonderful, Tom called her Miss Odetta. Like Tom Waite and Guy Clark, she had a voice that would bring angels to our booth.

Click play below and listen to her version of "Midnight Special".

Play

Elizabeth

"Blessed are those who can give without remembering, and take without forgetting."

Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco

The Golf War

FromThe Website Doodlehaus

“The Zen philosopher Basho once said, a flute with no holes is not a flute, and a doughnut with no holes is a danish.” – Chevy Chase, Caddyshack




"Golf is a guilty pleasure that puts me at odds with one of my heroes, George Carlin. Carlin had a famous bit where he refers to golf courses and cemeteries as the two biggest wastes of space on Earth. His argument was that golf is a game for the rich and that the space could be better used.



Possibly. But efficient use of real estate aside, an examination of the game itself reveals a challenging endeavor that can teach you a lot about life. On the surface, the main life lesson seems to be “you suck, and should probably just give up.” But because I’m stubborn and don’t know when to quit (even when my partner turns to me and says “you should probably quit”), I have ascertained the following life lessons from the game of golf, which I share with you, free of charge.



First of all, while expensive equipment is nice, it doesn’t make you good. You can buy all the stuff that the greatest golfers in the world use, but if you don’t practice, you are in for 18 holes of pure, soul-crushing hell. To be good, or at least passable, you need to take hundreds of practice swings on the practice tee. You need to practice your short game. You need to practice putting. No short cuts, no excuses. You can dress like Tiger Woods, but you’ll still play like Ron Wood (note: I have no idea what Ron Wood’s handicap is, but I suspect he’s a much better guitar player than he is a golfer).



The next thing you’ll find is that even if you practice diligently, once you step onto the course, every shot is an adventure. There are things on the course that you don’t encounter during practice. Like all the goddam trees. And the rough. Rough left there by some vindictive greenskeeper who was too hung over to bother mowing it that morning. Grass so long that you’ll think you’re on a PT boat trip 20 clicks outside Da Nang with Martin Sheen and Laurence Fishburne on a quest to locate Marlon Brando. So, just as in life, your aspirations are often thwarted by the lazy and the drunk. And trees. And possibly Charlie.



If you manage to find your ball without getting napalmed by Robert Duvall, you will find the next similarity between golf and life: no matter where you go, there you are. No matter how crappy your lie, you’re not supposed to move your ball. Sure, you can cheat, but you’ll know it and the stroke you save will still be there. There may be one less tick on your scorecard, but you still cheated. And if there’s a God in heaven, that knowledge will eat away at you until you awake, screaming, in a pool of your own sweat and call me to apologize for cheating. Pardon me, I think I’m projecting. Suffice it to say, that in golf, as in life, cheating only hurts you.



Lastly, if you stick with it, you may discover the great Zen moment of golf. Every shot, like every breath, is a single moment in time completely independent yet strangely connected to every other moment. The ball is just lying there in the grass waiting for you to hit it. How it got there is no longer of any consequence. The only truth that remains is that you must either continue to play or give up.



Continuing to play is not always easy. Particularly, if you’re taking your sixth shot in a sand trap or carefully lining up your third putt. It can be embarrassing. Every shot can be loaded with shame, fear or guilt. However, if you forget about keeping score, forget about the equipment, forget about that useless excuse of a greenskeeper and, most importantly, forget about all the bad shots that came before and focus on what’s in front of you…well, occasionally you’ll get one of those gorgeous lofting shots that drops just a few feet from the pin. And that makes it all worth it.



Until the putt rims out."



“I don’t play golf for money…against people.” – Chevy Chase, Caddyshack

Rest

"The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep."

W. C. Fields

Life

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."

Mae West

Emotion

"Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth. "

Benjamin Disraeli

No Excuse

Coach Sullivan has taken the motif “No excuse, no explanation” in football this year. I am going to use this in my class as well. What a great way to live your life.

Propaganda

Click below and see the ad that they would not air about the Hyundai Velostar.

Hyundai Velostar

Homesick

Guy Clark and Tome Waite were sitting with me at the Chili Parlor making fun of me for exercising and trying to lose wait when Guy says ""I get pretty much all the exercise I need walking down airport concourses carrying bags." I miss the Chili Parlor and the fellas.

Humanity

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

Horace Mann

The Alliance System

When I started this blog I never thought I would have the following that I have. There are more than twenty members and I have been viewed in more than 20 countries. The major countries that follow this blog are listed below. I will try not to let any of you down. Please, please, please, do not be afraid to comment.

Pageviews by Countries


United States 5,074

Canada 61

Ireland 55

India 33

China 30

Côte d’Ivoire 29

United Kingdom 27

Germany 24

France 11

Slovenia 11

Home

"I feel no shame I'm proud of where I came from, I was born and raised in the boondocks.

One thing I know, no matter where I go, I keep my heart and soul in the boondocks.

... I can feel that muddy water running through my veins, and I can hear that lullaby of a midnight train, it sings to me and it sounds familiar...I can taste that honeysuckle and it's still so sweet when it grows wild on the banks down at old camp creek, yeah, and it calls to me like a warm wind blowing.

It's where I learned about living, it's where I learned about love, it's where I learned about working hard, and having a little was just enough, it's where I learned about Jesus and knowing where I stand ,you can take it or leave it, this is me, this is who I am. Give me a tin roof, a front porch and a gravel road,and that's home to me, it feels like home to me."

Little Big Town "Boondocks

Courage

"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power. "


– Alan Cohen

The Battle of Horseshoe Bend

It is my goal to visit Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado river just outside Page, Arizona. Check out this beautiful photograph by Scott Remmers.

The Captains Thought

I was sitting at the Chili Parlor early in the summer and Tom Waits was sitting in the booth across from me having a 'Mad Dog' and a cigarette.

 He said looking at me with his crooked grin ,

"I’ve always been a word guy, I like weird words and I like American slang and all that and words that are no longer being used… I like to drag them out of the box and wave them around… this is an interesting one, it’s amazing how in addition to punctuation just a little pause in the wrong place can just completely transform the meaning of something."


— Tom Waits

New Weapon

I do not pretend to know much about wrestling, but the take down in this video was incredible. Click on the picture and watch Ellis Coleman perform the 'flying squirrel'.

The Push

As school starts, I am reminded of this beautiful little story by David McNally.

"The eagle gently coaxed her offspring toward the edge of the nest. Her heart quivered with conflicting emotions as she felt their resistance to her persistent nudging.

"Why does the thrill of soaring have to begin with the fear of falling?" she thought. This ageless question still remained unanswered for her.


As in the tradition of the species, her nest was located high upon the shelf of a sheer rock face.

Below there was nothing but air to support the wings of each child.



"Is it possible that this time it will not work?" she thought. Despite her fears the eagle knew it was time. Her parental mission was all but complete.

There remained one final task...the push. The eagle drew courage from an innate wisdom. Until her children discovered their wings, there was no purpose to their lives.

Until they learned how to soar, they would fail to understand the privilege of having been born an eagle. The push was the greatest gift she had to offer. It was her supreme act of love.

And so, one by one, she pushed them and...

THEY FLEW."

An Officer Gets Married

Johnny Black talked about when he heard my good friend Tom Waits got married.

Johnny Black (1981): "There's a favourite scene in gangster movies where the private dick is standing at the bar with the bad guy and the bartender slips him a note with his double brandy. "Look out kid, he's got a gun," it says. I had a similar experience when the phone rang an hour before I left my house and Waits' press officer nonchalantly told me, "You know he just got married?". "TOM WAITS? MARRIED?". "Yes. Last month, to a script analyst at 20th Century Fox." Waits' version of how it happened is more appealing. "Kathleen was living in a convent, studying to be a nun. I met her when they let her out for a party on New Year's Eve. She left the Lord for me." (Source: "Tom Waits: Waits And Double Measures". Smash Hits magazine by Johnny Black. March 18, 1981)