alsace man's Open Salon Blog

I remember John Wooden

Sat, 5 Jun 2010 19:06:57 -0400

I earned my way through college by playing basketball at a Div. I university from a conference other than the Pacific 8, as it was known then. During one of my seasons, we played and defeated one of Coach John Wooden’s UCLA teams. It was during the time of his never-to-be-equaled championship run.

A few years after graduating college, I was an unpaid volunteer assistant basketball coach at my high school alma mater. Coach Wooden was still an active coach, and universally recognized as both a great coach and a great man. One summer during those years, the head basketball coach where I volunteered called me to ask if I would like to join him at a clinic for high school coaches that would be conducted by John Wooden on the campus of a Division I university in an adjacent state. I answered with a very enthusiastic “Yes,” before considering the fact that I was a newlywed husband of six weeks and would be leaving my new wife for a long weekend. Fortunately, my wife was a sports aficionado and an athlete herself and understood exactly what a rare opportunity the clinic represented for me. She OK’d my attendance with gusto. The clinic was an eye-opener. During two full days of workshops the great coach never mentioned winning. In roughly 16 hours of classes, we worked on things like how to construct a practice schedule, how to construct instruction modules, how to create pre-season vs. in-season instruction modules. It was all about coaching and preparation and not at all about winning. The operative philosophy was that highly detailed preparation and organized practices were the keys to success. Do those things well and success would follow. Two events in particular from that weekend remain vivid in my memory. At the end of both days’ sessions, the attendees gathered for a buffet dinner in the athletic offices of the field house where the clinic was held. Coach Wooden joined us for both buffets. It was an opportunity for attendees to ask the great coach any question on any topic we liked. I approached Coach Wooden, introduced myself, and explained that I had played on a team that had beaten one of his championship teams from the 60s. He remembered the game in detail. He was warm and gracious and congratulated me on how well we had played that night and how well prepared we had been. And he spoke of how fond he was of my college coach. There was no guile or artifice in him. The other event occurred during a Q & A after one of the classes. A coach rose to explain that he had a practice routine that he used as a test of a player’s motivation. He would roll a ball toward the sideline, near the bleachers, and ask his players, one by one, to dive on the floor for the loose ball. It was a drill that could expose a young player to injury, but it was a fast way to determine motivation, according to the coach who used this particular drill. Coach Wooden was calm in his response, but his anger at what he had just heard was visible on his face and in his body language. I cannot quote the words of his response verbatim, but I’ll never ever forget their essence: “Coach, the young men who play for you are teenagers who are not yet physically mature. They are not professionals being paid large sums of money. And they are not collegiate athletes being rewarded with a valuable college education. They are teens who play for the love of the game and you have no right to expose them to injury. As their coach, it is your responsibility to protect them from injury.” The coach who had asked described this loose ball drill quietly sat down. You could have heard a pin drop in that room. This weekend, with the news of Coach Wooden’s passing, those two memories jumped to the front of my mind. Now well into my 60s, I realize how lucky I was to have had the great good fortune to have had even these simple opportunities to encounter greatness. How lucky were those who played for him!

Do you know of Tristan's magic love potion?

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:01:38 -0500

I was in my 47^th year when the scales fell from my eyes for the first time and I opened them to see love. I thought I knew love, but I had been wrong for all those years.

I had been married and thought that was love. I was wrong about that. After my divorce, I had had a series of involvements and had been smitten by a few of them. These too I mistook for love.

This was something new and wondrous. The world was now a different place. I was Tristan after drinking the magic potion. I love that metaphor. The potion suggests that love comes from some magical source outside of us, and is thus beyond our power to control. It was, at any rate, beyond my power to control. And it still is, 19 years later.

But there is a snag. She is married and we have not seen each other for nearly 30 years. And for the past 19 years I have carried a torch and lived with my regret.

We had seen each other for about two years on an on-again, off-again basis. Then she was a tumescent 27 and I was a hormone ravaged 34. She was a singer-songwriter and pianist who has written music for jazz and ballad singers whose names you would recognize. We were lovers.

I will tell you about two memories that now consume me

One lazy summer afternoon, after making love, she sat on the edge of my bed and wept. I asked why. “This is all we do,” she said. I tried weakly to console her. She was opening her heart to me; I did not open mine to her. If only I had. She wasn’t exactly right, I thought. We did many things together besides make love. But our times together always ended in lovemaking. I was hard on the rebound after my divorce and my myopia was acute.

One day she called to tell me she was going to Europe. A year or so later I got a call from her. She was back in California. Could we have lunch, she asked. We met for lunch and she told me she had gone to Europe with a man. A man she planned to marry. I told her I was happy for her. It was easy to say because I was now seeing someone else, one of those women by whom I mentioned I had been smitten. After lunch we shared a hug and busses on the cheek, and went our separate ways. It was the last time I saw her. It was 1983. I remember her dress, her hair, her almond shaped eyes, her scent that day.

The woman I was seeing at the time of that meeting was the last of the women whom I thought I loved. But when the moment of truth arrived after seeing each other for eight years, I was unable to commit. It was not because of the famous male stereotype of fear. It was because I knew that I was not truly in love. It was the last serious relationship I had. It was 1991.

My ensuing ruminations on my inability to commit was the event that caused the scales to fall from my eyes. That's when I found love. And I have remained in love for all of these last 19 years.

I know her married name, and where she lives. If I had the courage, I would make an attempt at being a homewrecker. I haven’t found that courage yet. I pray that someday I will. Until then, I am cursed with the affliction of unfulfilled love.

And when you appear
all the rivers sound
in my body, bells
shake the sky,
and a hymn fills the world.

Pablo Neruda

On Palin Posturing

Wed, 6 May 2009 19:05:07 -0400

At first I planned to write this in the response section of Kind of Blue's post on the political posturing of the Palins. But it struck me that there is enough here to warrant its own post.

Of course, Kind of Blue, there is political posturing going on here. The Palin clan happens to be a matriarcal family and Sarah dominates. Isn't that amply clear to even the most casual observer? She's the alpha female, so her wishes that are what matter. It has nothing to do with whether Bristol is a kid or not. And she's not, by the way. She's a young adult and she got knocked up because she had the urges that nature intended her to have at her age, and she answered them just the way nature intended. Who do you know who hasn't done the same? Be honest.

As for Levi Johnston, has anyone bothered to ask if he really is "just a redneck" as he claims? I, for one, believed him when he made that assertion. The suits and ties the RNC bought for him didn't change that. And like the redneck that he is, he was just out looking for a little poon tang, which he got from Bristol (not to single out rednecks; honesty compels me to admit I to have done the same). You'll recall that when word of the pregnancy first made the news, Ol' Levi said they weren't getting married. That was his first reaction, before the spin doctors from the RNC had a chance to step in to rewrite the script. He had spoken like the redneck he is! But when the spin doctors had finished, everything changed. Within a week, Bristol and Levi were a young couple in love and planning to get married. That line held until an appropriate time after the election. Then (behind the scenes, of course) the alpha female stepped in and put the kibash on it.

By the way, I have no evidence whatsoever to make that assertion. But I read the alpha female like a book and it's the way I see things having gone down.

Its pretty clear to me that Levi's pose as loving fiancee and father was bought and paid for with the same money that bought Sarah and the rest of this crowd the clothes and grooming that the RNC provided for appearances during the campaign.

The kind of bad blood between the Palins and johnstons that is now out there for all the world to see is not the kind of thing that someone as naive and as subsumed by her mother as Bristol Palin could have created in such a short time. Rather, it is the creation of a scheming and calculating mind. Anyone have any guesses whose mind that might be?

Was Levi Johnston just out for a little poon tang?

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:03:59 -0400

We recently learned that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston won't be entering into holy matrimony. Pity.

We also learned from Johnston's sister that Bristol thinks that Levi shouldn't spend much time with the baby because she doesn't want him to be influenced by white trash. Sounds like true love to me.

Am I alone in thinking that maybe ole Levi really is the redneck he claimes to be, and that his interest in Bristol was really just for a little poon tang? This begs a rather obvious question: in addition to his new wardrobe, did the RNC also pay him for his role playing during the campaign? I'm wondering why the reporters who are following the saga of Bristol and Levi haven's asked this question.