Learn to do Good! Seek Justice! (Isaiah)

     iPhone photograph, Charles Leck, 30 April 2013

As I get older, moving into my mid-seventies, I find I need to create some disciplines for myself in order to keep my mind alert and to continue acquiring understand. Having daily readings from certain books or writings helps. So does keeping  a daily journal in which I record activities of the day or thoughts I’m having. Another discipline is to read scripture at least every few days. I didn’t think it would amount to much but it’s having a major impact on me – and my mind – and my attitudes.
by Charlie Leck

Does anyone out there read the Bible anymore? Or is it passé? Sometimes I find a little scripture can go a long way.

Some people in my life, when I was young, innocent and not very adventurous, convinced me that reading the Bible was very important. Preachers and sunday-school-teachers – and even kin – sold me a bill of goods that, even in my current freethinking days, somehow sticks with me. Whatever it was that was implanted in me, it still causes me to reach regularly for one of the various translations of scripture that sits on the shelf just to my left. Not daily, but regularly, I read “the word” and contemplate its significance and relevance to life in the twenty-first century. Has it any? I refuse unthoughtful, reflexive replies! As much as Shakespeare, certainly! In many cases, it seems, I am certain, more.

So today, the Sojourners organization sent me some scripture (from Isaiah) to contemplate…

“Learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.”

I sit quietly after reading it. What thoughts come to mine?

Learn to do good!
Learning to do good is like exercise.
It has no benefit unless we do it habitually and dedicate ourselves to it.
And, like playing the piano, we need to practice it in order to do it well.

Must we seek justice?
Is it not apparent? Obvious? At hand?
Is it difficult to discover? Does it avoid us?
Is it also like exercise? Must we practice it and do it regularly?

What happens, when we seek justice,
if we find unfairness, transgression and villainy?
We were not searching for such; therefore, shall we simply move on?

We find the oppressed.
We discover uncared for orphans.
Widows abound. They, unsupported, have been left to care for a family.
How, in God’s name (I mean it!), do we rescue them?

Liberty and justice for all!
Really? Here? All around us? Really?

Scripture often tires me. There are simpler things to read. Less challenging! Less threatening!

I shall relax and read some Kirkegaard!

"… so the only thing that can save him is the absurd, and this he grasps by faith. So he recognizes the impossibility, and that very instant he believes the absurd; for if, without recognizing the impossibility with all the passion of his soul and with all his heart, he should wish to imagine that he has faith, he deceives himself, and his testimony has no bearing, since he has not even reached the infinite resignation.

Faith therefore is not an aesthetic emotion but something far higher, precisely because it has resignation as its presupposition; it is not an immediate instinct of the heart, but is the paradox of life and existence."

This absurdity? It makes me wonder!

Can we avoid sin? Escape injustice?
Is sinfulness a natural part of existence,
confronting us wherever we turn? Abundant? Dominant?”

I intend to play golf today, among the 15 percent. I have no time to seek justice. I simply wouldn’t know where to search for it. And, if I found it, then what? Why am I not commanded to seek injustice? Is it because such an assignment is not a challenge?

Am I being too pessimistic? This infinite resignation of which Kirkegaard writes? Is he on to something? Is it resignation that is at the heart of faith?

Daily Rilke Reading…

“Impermanence plunges us into the depth of all Being …in a sheer earthly, deep earthly, sacred earthly consciousness: that what we see here and now is to bring us into a wider – indeed, the very widest, – dimension. Not in an afterlife whose shadow darkens the earth, but in a whole that is the whole.”
                                               Rainer Maria Rilke in a letter to Witold Hulewicz, 1925

NEWS NOTE
(from this morning’s local newspaper):
It is estimated that the 2011 famine in Somali killed a quarter of a million people and that approximately half of those were aged five or under. This is according to a report, heavily funded by Great Britain and the United States, which will be published within a day or two. Contrary to the report, it will be argued by some that less than two-hundred thousand were killed.

Oh, absurdity!

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Portrait of the Tsarnaev Family

     An Angry Mother (Zubeidat Tsarnaev)

In the quiet and dark of a Minnesota morning, I read slowly the Washington Post’s extended account of the Tsarnaev family and followed carefully the timeline of its beginnings and its movement toward the destruction in Boston. I was left saddened and trembling and wondering how the rapid slide toward tragedy could have been circumvented.
by Charlie Leck

A Washington Post story of the Tsarnaev family
This is a remarkably thorough account of the family and how the two brothers got lost on their way toward fulfilling the American dream, showing that, for some, the process doesn’t work. A number of reporters and researchers contributed to the story. I recommend it to you. It includes some remarkable photographs and graphics.

A Timeline of the Family
This is a remarkable timeline of the family – its movements and its significant events from 1991 through April 19, 2013.

A Shorter AP story
Here's a shorter Associated Press story about the mother!

  

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France and New Zealand Legalize Same-Sex Marriages

The momentum builds on the gay and lesbian marriage front. Civilized, reasonable countries are making the move. For the U.S. it is only a matter of time (let’s hope not too much time).
by Charlie Leck

Add France to the list of nations that recognize same-sex marriages. Just today (23 April 2013), legislators in France have passed a bill by an immense margin that will legalize such marriages. Under the new bill, same-sex weddings could begin as early as June.

New Zealand passed just such a law last week with very, very little controversy surrounding the action.

Call it momentum! It’s going to happen. The world is growing up and beginning to understand. There is some good old compassion at work here.

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Ice-Out, Anyhow!

     Photo from the Explore Minnesota web site...

You’ve got to be from this part of the country to understand the ice-out phenomenon, don’t you see anyhow? Ice-out is a pretty big deal up here in the northland. You betcha!
by Charlie Leck

What’a you think, anyhow?
When are you thinkin’ the ice will be out of Minnetonka? It is going to be late this year, don’t you know?

You know how some people have those contests – those pools – about which college basketball team is going to go deepest in the NCCA Championship – those March Madness play-down charts? Well, we do that up here in lake country about the ice-out. You can buy in and pick a date for this lake or that one – Lake Minnetonka or Long Lake, or maybe Mud Lake or Turtle Lake – or even that little bitty Lake Sarah over on the other side of my town. The definitions are all squared up so that everyone understands what ice-out means, don’t you know! When the local paper declares the date of the ice-out of Lake Minnetonka, that’s how the winner is determined. The paper usually says that the ice is out when the lake is relatively clear of any large bodies of ice that could do harm to a boat or a person.

A History of Ice-Out on Lake Minnetonka?
The earliest ice-out date for Lake Minnetonka was March 11, 1878 (when our state was only twenty years old). You sure wouldn’t have wanted that date for this year, don’t you know! We might be talkin’ an ice-out date in May this year or so anyway! The latest dang ice-out we ever had, anyway, was back there in 1856 when the ice went out on May 8. If this here weather keeps up like this anyway (its 37 degrees as I write this on Monday morning), we might just beat that date; and won’t Minnesotans be all excited about that – now that we don’t have any good ball teams to get excited about. Here’s a history of the ice-out dates on our beloved Lake.

People up here in the north-country get in those pools about ice outs, don’t you know? You buy a date for a couple of bucks and the winner takes the whole dang pot. A guy could make himself 80 or 90 bucks, anyhow, on one of them pools just like that (snap you fingers) – maybe even a hundred or two, don’t you know?

Last year, Lake Minnetonka saw its ice-out by March 21, anyhow! Yuh betcha! My friend, Marty, won that dang pool last year, for cripes sake! Yep! Two-hundred and thirty buckeroos he picked up for his little two dollar ticket!

We’re all lake-people up here, as you proberly know! We got more boats per capita than any state in the whole dang nation! We got us more lakes too, you can bet your bottom dollar on that – way more than the 10,000 lakes they always talk about! But, Minnetonka is the big lake and there are more bets on ice-outs from it than any other lake, don’t you know! It’s been a mean winter this year and we’ve already called off most of those early season fishing contests. The Lake Minnetonka crappie contest was postponed already. They set the date back to April 27 and they might not be able to do it then unless the weather gets a whole lot better’n this.

I just can’t imagine when those lakes up north are gonna let loose of their ice. Maybe it’ll be after mid-May anyhow! I know you’ll be just terribly interested, so I’ll keep you informed. You betcha!

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Chechnya

My curiosity was aroused this week about Chechnya. I guess it’s a natural reaction, but I needed quite specially to satisfy my interest because people with whom I chatted were confusing the land with the Czech Republic (from which I have heritage ties). In the last few days the Ambassador to the U.S. from the Czech Republic had to come out and make it clear to Americans that his nation and Chechnya are 2,000 miles apart and differ vastly from each other in countless ways. That’s an understatement, indeed!
by Charlie Leck

The ambassador to the United States from the Czech Republic had to speak out to the press in the last few days. People on social media were confusing his nation with Chechnya, the land that was receiving so much attention as a result of the Marathon Bombing in Boston.

“The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two different entities,” Ambassador Petr Gandalovic said. “Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation.”

Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tasmarev, apparently the Boston Marathon bombers, came to America from Chechnya in 2002. They were raised near Kyrgzstan.

I needed to know more
and I soon discovered there is plenty of information available about this war-torn region in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains. The area is known mainly for its very violent struggles for independence from its neighbor, Georgia, and from Russia itself. Quite interestingly, Chechnya is a republic and more or less makes the system work. Its history, however, is certainly violent.

The North Caucasus region is on the southern edge of Russia and in the southeastern portion of Europe. Its capital city is Grozny. In the 2010 census the population of the nations was listed at about 1.3 million.

Chechnya’s relationship with Russia has always been shaky. Chechens rebelled against Russian control during the period of the Russo-Turkish War in 1905 and again during the Russian Revolution of 1917. They again rose up against Russian rule in 1940. After World War Two, Stalin severely punished many Chechens for the aid he claimed they provided Germany and sent many of them off to the Gulags of Siberia. Many of them remained there right up to the time of de-Stalinization after 1956.

Even after 1956, the Soviet Union continued a policy of the Russification of the Chechens, including an insistence that only the Russian language be used there.

It has always been a land ripe for militants.

After the Soviet Union fell (1991), Chechens initiated several attempts to establish their nation’s independence, best known as the First Chechen War of 1994 and the Second Chechen War in 1999. This second war has never really been settled and was used by very radical Jihadists as cover for its more terroristic activities.

Interestingly, the majority of Chechens are Muslim. It is thought that the conversion of the people there to Sunni Islam was encouraged by the help they received from the Ottoman Empire against the threat of Russian dominance from the north.  It is generally conceded that today there are strong ties between Chechen militants and Al Qaeda. The U.S. State Department has charged that Chechen rebels are financed by the same donors who finance other terrorist forces around the world.

There is barely any American presence in Grozny. It may amount to no more than a few families. Nearly all those people of non-Chechen nationality (Armenians, Russians and Ukrainians), who did live there, fled as strong militant Jihadist groups took control of government and began an “ethnic cleansing” at the end of the Soviet era (1991-1994). Today, there is a significant controversy as to how many non-Chechens remain in the nation. Many scholars believe that figures released by the national government are significantly skewed and falsified.

We need to recognize that the Tasmarev brothers not only left their homeland, but they supposedly fled from it. The land is recognized as a hotbed of Jihadist activity. The radicals of Chechnya have caused significant problems for Russia and Moscow, including a 2002 attack against a Moscow theater when more than 700 people in the audience were held hostage. Chechen rebels also claimed credit for bombing two metro stations in Moscow in 2010. Chechnya has been exasperated by ethnic tensions and incredible corruption. The father of the two boys still lives near Chechnya, in the Russian province of Dagestan.

Dissidents in Chechnya are normally handled by “disappearing” them. A 2009 article in the New York Times reported on the number of political kidnappings that happen there. [“…the republic is in the throes of an epidemic of kidnappings…”]

I traveled to Prague, in the Czech Republic, two years ago. I have no intention to travel to Chechnya.

If I’ve made Chechnya sound exciting enough to you that you want to travel there, well…… planes leave Moscow for Grozny three times each week….. or, trains, under heavy security, leave Moscow once every two days….. or, you may take a bus to Nazran…… or, I suppose, you may drive there. Interestingly, souvenir shops in Grozny are famous for the sale of swords and daggers. There are very few restaurants and cafes and there are no night clubs or discos. The 5-star Hotel Grozny City has an English speaking staff. It is near the presidential palace. Wikitravel says: “By traveling to Chechnya you are taking a serious risk. Kidnappings and unexploded mines and munitions are widespread, while terrorist activity and shootings still occur on a lesser scale. Thoughout the region, local criminal gangs routinely kidnap foreigners, including Americans, Canadians and UK nationals, for ransom.”  Bon voyage et bon chance!

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P.S. I strongly recommend Tony Rugare's blog concerning the "cherry picking of legal and human rights" as it comes to providing constitutional protections for Jahar Tasmarev, arrested suspect in the Marathon Bombings. You'll find it at: http://rugaremusings.blogspot.com/2013/04/cherry-picking-constitutional-rights.html 

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Republicans Don’t Want Strong Economy

Here we’ve been thinking… but we’ve been dead-wrong all along! The Republicans don’t want a strong economy; they just want to protect the wealthy 3 percent in America.

by Charlie Leck

Here’s the harsh truth to which we can’t face up! Republicans don’t care whether or not we have a strong economy. The Republicans only want to make sure the very wealthy stay that way.

You just go ahead and listen to their jabber about how they want to get the economy rolling again; and how they want to create more jobs; and how they want get the nation out of debt; and how they want lower taxes.

That entire Republican claim is a bunch of horse-dung. The Republican Party has only one long-term goal and that is to protect the wealthiest of Americans – and I mean the very wealthy wealthiest – from having to pay higher rates of income taxes. They pass off this goal as something else, claiming it will help get the economy rolling again, create jobs and strengthen the middle class. In fact, it won’t do any of those things.

What America really needs to do is restructure its income tax rates. We need to go back to the drawing boards and recreate the progressive income tax rates of the 70s, 80s and 90s. The very wealthy should be paying a much higher rate of taxation.

In the 1960s, Americans making the highest incomes in the nation were paying as much as 75% of their income in taxes. Even in the 90s it was as much as 36%. Someone convinced us to lower those rates, claiming the wealthy would then invest more in business and that would provide more jobs and income for middle America. Is hasn’t worked that way at all. Instead, America’s wealthiest one percent now owns forty percent of the nation’s wealth. Do I need to repeat that? Did you catch it? One percent of Americans own forty percent of the nation’s wealth!

The progressive income tax system was formerly a staple in this nation. It has to be again. If we want to rebuild America and make it great again, everyone has to pay his or her fair share of the cost of this reconstruction.

Otherwise, we’re just on our way to becoming a very mediocre nation! Don’t blame me! I’m just the messenger.

Joseph Stiglitz, a highly respected economist and author, in an April 14, 2013 column in the New York Times, argues that the U.S. tax system is stacked against 99 percent of Americans. And, I believe he’s absolutely correct. In the end, when all things are considered, the mega-wealthy are only paying a percentage of their annual income that is equal to the amount paid by America’s vast middle class. His facts and explanation are difficult to refute – and I would say they are irrefutable.

Stiglitz points out that “…the burden for paying that price (taxes) has been distributed in increasingly unfair ways.” The economist argues that the tax system is unfair – and more bluntly put: “the very rich don’t pay their fair share.”

“The richest 400 individual taxpayers, with an average income of more than $200 million, pay less than 20 percent of their income in taxes – far lower than mere millionaires, who pay about 25 percent of their income in taxes, and about the same as those earning a mere $200,000 to $500,000. And in 2009, 116 of the top 400 earners – about a third – paid less than 15 percent of their income in taxes.”

Just for the record
Under such a system, my wife and I would pay significantly more income taxes. We’re willing. America needs to get going again if it is going to be the place in which I want my grandchildren to raise families.

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Snow Day

    4 p.m., 18 April 2013, in Independence, Minnesota

Remember those wonderful days, back when we were in grade school, when the snow barreled down during the night – too much snow for the school buses to pick up the kids? “Snow days,” they were called.
by Charlie Leck

We’d hoot and holler when the radio declared it was a snow day for Chester Public School. “No school today in Chester!” 

Well, I’m declaring it a snow day here in Minnesota – even though it is the 19th of April. Over 12 inches of snow here on the old farm from yesterday afternoon and on through the night. It’s a snow day. “No blog today!”

    I struggled my way along awful highways from Minneapolis
    and finally got to my driveway at about 4 p.m. yesterday afternoon.

    Finally, a sighting of home, taken through my windshield
    with my iPhone.

 "It's spring! It's spring, that wonderful time of year!"

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Republicans Fight the Tides

I’m no Nate Silver (we all know who he is by now) but when I take a look at the results of a recent ABC/Washington Post poll, I see a Republican Party seriously whacked out and remarkably out of touch with the American people.
by Charlie Leck

I’ve written here a great deal about Nate Silver, the polling genius. Some of my blogs in which he makes a strong appearance were (1) Obama’s Chances, 4 Nov 2012; (2)Nate Silver and Opinions on Same-Sex Marriage, 27 March 2013; and (3) Obama, Ohio and Nate Silver, 22 October 2012.

Polling has gotten to be a very advanced and accurate tool that measures the pulse of America. For many years, I couldn’t trust polling results, but they have honed the art so that it is now remarkably accurate. Therefore, I’m rather confident about what I write in this particular blog.

A new poll came out yesterday from the national newspaper, The Washington Post, and the national media broadcaster, ABC. It has some remarkable things to say about how ordinary Americans feel about certain issues. Even more remarkably, when I look at it and give it due consideration, I find that it shows just how whacked up and out of touch contemporary Republicans are with the feelings and wishes of the America people. This I think, because the Republicans are always arguing that they are the now the party of the people, is very significant – and very telling indeed.

Now, I’m not talking in generalities here. No, I’m talking about direct and convincing evidence. For instance, the poll shows that Americans believe that Republican politicians are “out of touch.” Moderates say the Grand Old Party is out of touch 70 percent to 23 percent. Independents say it’s 75 to 20 percent. Is that “out of touch?” Or what?

When the same groups are asked about whether the President is “in touch or out of touch,” the fellow in the White House does remarkably well – actually measured as “in touch” by 57 percent in one group and 64 percent in another.

Gun Control, Background Checks Favored by 86 percent
I don’t need to repeat that sub-heading. Read it and weep you Republicans. Check out the poll if you don’t believe me. You’ll find that 55 percent of Americans believe it is possible to pass strong gun controls laws without violating the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

This doesn’t do us much good right now because the Republican Party is just too dumb and stubborn to change its approach to these kinds of issue – too remarkably “out of touch” to get back “in touch.” In the long run, however, I think we’re going to see a continuously weakening Republican Party as people of common sense just get plain old fed up with the conservative lingo that is meant only to protect the very wealthy and very big business owners.

Again, I’m no Nate Silver, but I get the feeling that reality is going to begin setting in for Republicans. It’s my thought that it will begin with political nut-cases like Congresswoman Bachmann, who is as out of touch as any politician I know and the voters of her district have awakened to that fact.

Democrats will do very well, I think, in the November 2014 elections. The country has wised up after its little flirtation with the Tea Party and ultra-conservatism. I’m not saying that nutty states like Mississippi and Oklahoma are going to change, but we will begin to see some border states and more populated and urban southern states begin to change their voting habits.

Listen here!
Is it too much to ask that members of Congress listen to their constituencies and forget about those folks in the minority who are padding their pockets and campaign coffers? Lots of money is not going to help in the next election! Truth will win out!

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My Thoughts are with Boston

It is impossible to write this morning for nothing seems relevant except Boston and its sorrow; and I could not write of it.
by Charlie Leck

Such awful sickness some men have – this need to maim and kill. I am bent in two by it and left grasping for the life God meant for us.

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Renaissance Street Singers of NYC

Every now and again I watch a marvelous video on-line and I can’t help but shout about them!
by Charlie Leck

The Renaissance Street Singers
Imagine – in New York City – gathering the talented street-singers (those people who sing out on the streets, hoping you’ll pop a fiver into their donation box) to form a larger choral organization.

Just imagine!

This morning, as I browsed through the New York Times on-line (as I do nearly each and every day), I came upon this video of just such a choir performing in Grand Central Station (GC) under the direction of the fellow who had gathered them from lower Manhattan, Midtown, Brooklyn and the Upper East Side (et al). It was chilling to listen to them singing there in the big, hollow sounding central lobby at GC.

John Hetland, just an extraordinary man, formed such a group nearly 40 years ago and has kept doing it year after year. His choir sings some of the most difficult, but beautiful, classical choral creations. They are sacred songs, but it’s the great power of the pieces, sung in a very public place for wanderers, that is so special about this story.

If you’d like to watch the little video, produced just this month, and get yourself juiced-up, you can find it here…
http://www.nytimes.com/video/2013/04/05/nyregion/100000002151462/renaissance-in-grand-central.html

You can also visit the Renaissance Street Singers’ web page here!

Praise to the Lord!

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Keep Your Eye On This Guy

The beginning of a presidential campaign is still a year or so away, but you’ll observe lots of testing of the waters in the next few months as potential candidates position themselves to capture the spotlight. Here’s my prediction about the hot Republican who will be a serious candidate for that party’s top spot.
by Charlie Leck

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (Republican, Florida)
There’s a U.S. Senator down in Florida who is positioning himself, right now, for serious consideration as his party’s nominee for a run at the presidency. I claim no prophetic abilities nor any prescience here. I just observe how he is trying to look presidential; and how he is acting so bipartisan; and how he keeps flirting with the right wing within his party without giving up the center-ground that he has so carefully cultivated.

For instance, Senator Rubio appeared on six (yes, 6) different talk shows yesterday, including two that were Spanish speaking.

The Senator has the challenging task of holding the center of his party while not losing his appeal to that conservative element that has become so powerful. How will he win back the Latino population (nation wide) that wants serious immigration reforms and not, at the same time, lose the conservatives that opposes immigration reform?

Now, I’m not sayin’ – I’m just sayin’
A local radio personality likes to use the above silliness. Sometimes I’m trapped into using it also because it says everything. Keep your eye on Senator Rubio if you want to get a good clear picture of what your next president might look like. Examine him! Flip him over and look at both sides in the clear light of day and truth. Has he got what it takes? Is there more there than charm?

It won’t hurt anything to get an early jump on these questions. You can bet the Democrats are watching closely – looking for any little weaknesses they can find. You can also bet that the Tea Party has him under a microscope, trying to determine if he might not be a wolf (Democrat) in sheep’s clothing.

Examine Senator Rubio’s stances on gun control, tax reform, marriage reform, refreshing the middle class, international policy and global warming.

One of the reasons for the Republicans’ poor showing in the 2012 presidential election was its lack of appeal to the Latino population. It’s a problem that Rubio doesn’t want to have. He’s working hard to gain strong support among that portion of the population. How will he do with women? With African-Americans? With environmentalists?

Keep your eye on him. You might also have some fun along the way.

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Tiger and the Rules of Golf (Masters 2013)

    I took this photograph 5 or 6 years ago at a golf club immediately
    next to our home (of which I am a member). It's the 11th hole,

    looking north into a beautiful late-summer sky. The man posing
    for me is Bud Chapman, a nearly legendary golfing personality
    here in Minnesota and one of my favorite people. I was working
    that day, for the very first time, as a volunteer rules official for the
    Minnesota Golf Association. That day I was in over my head!
    These days, I love studying the complex rules of golf and, though
    I still don't consider myself an expert, I'm much farther along than
    I was on that beautiful day back then.

Does it make sense to write about golf, and Tiger Woods, and the United States Golf Association’s care-taking of the rules of golf? Not ordinarily, but it might be okay on a lazy Sunday morning.
by Charlie Leck

This is a big controversy for golf!
Golf is usually free of controversy. The rules are so extensive and thorough that just about every matter is covered and we don’t normally worry about cheating issues. Right now, however, by innuendo and not by direct accusation there are a number of players who are suggesting Tiger Woods made such a blunder in violating a rule that he should have withdrawn from competition at the Masters. I think they are dead wrong.

Here’s what happened!
For those few of you who care, but weren’t watching the Masters, here’s what happened. Tiger Woods was playing the 15th hole at Augusta (a par 5). He hit his second shot into a lay-up position and short of Ray’s Creek which flows in front of the green. Let’s say his ball was lying at SPOT A.

From SPOT A, Tiger struck a brilliant shot into the green that likely would have ended up a foot or so from the hole (though where it would have ended up has nothing to do with this rules discussion). The ball struck the flagstick and caromed off to the left and into Ray’s Creek which circles around that side of the green. It was a terrible bit of bad luck (which is one of the extraordinary features of golf). The creek is a water hazard and is so marked by yellow lines painted on the grass. The point at which Tiger’s ball crossed over that yellow line is vital in the rules We’ll call it SPOT B, "the point at which the ball last crossed the margin of the hazard." Tiger now must do one of a few things by rule (rule #26 in The Rules of Golf).

(1)   He may play the ball (under the rules) from where it lies in the water with no penalty.

(2)  He may go back to the spot from which he played the original shot and drop a ball as near as possible to the spot from which the original ball was last played (SPOT A). [The word near is a bit of a cloudy issue here, but rules officials generally regard that as within a 4 inch area no closer to the hole than that from which the original shot was hit.]

(3)  He might also choose to drop a ball behind the water hazard, “keeping the point at which the original ball last crossed the margin of the water hazard (SPOT B) directly between the hole and the spot on which the ball is dropped, with no limit to how far behind the water hazard the ball may be dropped.

Is Woods bigger than the rules?
That is basically the question that a lot of folks are raising either directly or by innuendo. Frankly, I think they’re just dead wrong. They think Tiger Woods got favorable treatment by the rules guys and that is not correct. It was the rules administrators themselves who made the biggest error in this non-story and they, rather than Woods, should be blamed.

Tiger blew his drop and it was clearly illegal (against the rules). I sat up straight in my chair as I watched on TV and had two immediately feelings – one, that Tiger was dropping in an incorrect place; and, two, that Tiger must have known something about the rules that I did not. Was he mingling option 2 (above) with option 3, believing he could go back to the original spot and then drop as far behind as he wished? Whatever, he dropped in the wrong place and proceeded to play the shot. I was 99.9 percent sure that he had committed a rules violation!

Here’s where something went very wrong!
Now, after Tiger played his shot and after he finished his round, but before he signed his score card, the rules officials rushed to him and had a conversation with him. Here’s where something went very wrong. After that conversation the rules officials determined that Tiger had done nothing wrong and he was cleared to sign his card that indicated the 6 he had taken on the 15th hole. Bear in mind, now, that there is a penalty of disqualification for signing an incorrect score card. I am very surprised that the officials did not watch the exact videos of the drop itself.

In came the emails and telephone calls!
There are a surprising number of golfers out in TV land who know their golf rules. CBS and the Masters’ rules officials were inundated with calls and emails about the matter and they urged the officials to go and look at the drop on video. Finally, the officials did review the matter on video and they were able to determine that Tiger had indeed dropped the ball in a manner that is not permitted by the rules.

Should he have been disqualified for signing an incorrect score card?
This is the complex issue over which everyone has been getting their underdrawers all bunched up. Should Tiger have been immediately disqualified and eliminated from the competition?

Rule 33-7: The Committee; General
This is a rather new addition to the Rules of Golf. I’ve tried to find out just when and why it was added but I’ve so far been unsuccessful. It’s the first sentence of rule 33-7 that is applicable here: “A penalty of disqualification may in exceptional individual cases be waived, modified or imposed if the Committee considers such action warranted.”

The rules officials who talked to Tiger after his round, but before he signed his card, should be considered, in this circumstance, to be the Committee referred to above. They told him, as I think they should not have, to go ahead and sign his card. In fact, they should all have looked at replays of the drop and they would have been able to see the violation of the rules immediately; and they (the Committee) could have invoked the 2 strokes penalty before Tiger signed his card.

The reason Tiger was not disqualified
Tiger was not disqualified because he followed the instructions of the Committee. Ernie Els may not like it and neither may Brandel Chamblee or David Duval, but Tiger was not and should not have been disqualified under the Rules of Golf. The Committee should have been penalized for handling the situation poorly and lunch should be withheld from them all day today (Sunday).

Should Tiger have voluntarily withdrawn?
Aha! If Shakespeare will forgive me, I’ll say: “That is the question!” I think it would have been masterful if he had (excuse the pun). I think it would have been Bobby Jones like (I’m sorry I don’t have the time to explain that to non-golfers). Yet, this is a decision that Tiger had to make on his own and only Tiger needs to deal with the issue. All others should refrain from making moral denunciations. By the pure rules of golf, Tiger received his penalty of two shots and also by the pure rules of golf he was not disqualified and should not have been.

I will not be shocked this morning if, when I turn the telly on, I find out Tiger has thought through the whole situation and has simply withdrawn from the remainder of the competition. I won’t either be surprised if he tees it up and plays and I will make no moral judgment, good or bad, either way. And, everyone else should refrain from moral judgments also.

“In the 1925 U.S. Open at Worcester Country Club, (Bobby) Jones called a penalty upon himself, stating that his ball had moved when he addressed it. Nobody but Jones had seen the ball move, and the ensuing one-stroke penalty put him into a playoff with Willie Macfarlane, who beat him the next day.

“Later, when Jones was praised for his sportsmanship, he bristled.

“‘There’s only way to play the game,’ he said. ‘You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank as to praise him for playing by the rules.’”
                                                                                 [Don Wade, And Then Jack Said to Arnie…, 1991]

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Rilke, Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn and Other Men’s Wars

I’m a sensitive guy. Some people who know me wouldn’t agree with that. I am, however. When I praise a book and then have a friend tell me he thought it was not a very good read, I cringe and wonder about myself. I recoil and wonder if I need to rethink things.

by Charlie Leck

In my Rilke readings (A Year with Rilke), I just finished reading the Spanish Trilogy (III) that comes from Uncollected Poems. I was so moved by them. I recall that a friend, and reader of my blog wrote, saying he did not like Rilke at all. When I finished reading these three wonderful works, beautiful even in their translation, I wondered how it is possible not to like his gentle poems. The third of the trilogy is printed below.

When I re-enter, alone, the city’s crush
and its chaos of noise
and the fury of traffic surrounds me,
may I, above that hammering confusion,
remember sky and the mountain slopes
where the herds are still descending homeward.

May my courage be like those rocks
and the shepherd’s daylong work seem possible to me –
the way he drifts and darkens, and with a well-aimed stone
hems in his flock where it unravels.
With slow and steady strides, his posture is pensive
and, as he stands there, noble. Even now a god might
secretly slip into this form and not be diminished.

In turn, he lingers and moves on like the day itself,
and cloud shadows pass through him, as though all of space
were thinking slow thoughts for him.

I shouldn’t be so disturbed that a good friend doesn’t like something I find so remarkable, but here I am this morning, asking how anyone could not like something so beautiful.

The same friend questioned my taste in reading because I so liked Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Again, I wonder how, when there is such meaning in beautiful writing like this (for which, by the way, the author won numerous literary awards and was a finalist for the National Book Award), that this friend cannot avidly applaud its author, Ben Fountain. The following excerpt quotation comes after Billy Lynn and his fellow hero-soldiers, all of whom have become quite famous, are shown on the big video-tron screen at a Dallas Cowboy NFL football game.

“No one spits, no one calls him baby-killer. On the contrary, people could not be more supportive or kindlier disposed, yet Billy finds these encounters weird and frightening all the same. There’s something harsh in his fellow Americans, avid, ecstatic, a burning that comes of the deepest need. That’s his sense of it, they all need something from him, this pack of half-rich lawyers, dentists, soccer moms, and corporate VPs, they’re all gnashing for a piece of a barely grown grunt making $14,800 a year. For these adult, affluent people he is mere petty cash in their personal accounting, yet they lose it when they enter his personal space. They tremble. They breathe in fitful, stinky huffs. Their eyes skitz and quiver with the force of the moment, because here, finally, up close and personal, is the war made flesh, an actual point of contact after all the months and years of reading about the war, watching the war on TV, hearing the war flogged and flacked on talk radio. It’s been hard times in America – how did we get this way? So scared all the time, and so shamed at being scared through the long dark nights of worry and dread, days of rumor and doubt, years of drift and slowly ossifying angst. You listened and read and watched and it was just, so obvious, what had to be done, a mental tic of a mantra that became second nature the war dragged on. Why don’t they just … Send in more troops. Make the troops fight harder. Pile on the armor and go in blazing, full-frontal smackdown and no prisoners. And by the way, shouldn’t the Iraqis be thanking us? Somebody needs to tell them that, would you tell them that, please? Or maybe they’d like their dictator back. Failing that, drop bombs. More and bigger bombs. Show these persons the wrath of God and pound them into compliance, and if that doesn’t work then bring out the nukes and take it all the way down, wipe it clean, reload with fresh hearts and minds, a nuclear slum clearance of the country’s soul”

I remember when I first read that long paragraph. I had to stop and lower the book into my lap and tremble just a mite and give thanks that I'd never had to go to war. Coward! Draft-dodging bastard! Commie shit!

“…a slum clearance of the country’s soul.”

Oh, my! Had I ever heard it spoken or written so well? Did the readers of the book understand? Who fights – really fights, I mean – America’s wars?

“…a slum clearance of the country’s soul.”

“No man (or woman),” I thought aloud, talking to myself, “should be sent to war unless we, as a nation, are absolutely certain there is no possible alternative. The motives for war, in my adult lifetime, have all been too unclear and fragile to support such actions.”

It isn’t the only time I shuddered while reading this book. It isn’t the only time I paused and thought long and hard. The men of Bravo are Fountain’s way of describing the massive innocence of boys at war – boys called to sacrifice themselves because the grown men who make the decisions of war don’t need to.

How do I rate Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the book? A strong A and nearly an A+ -- and a book that America needs to read and digest (but won’t of course).

Not everyone has to like the book. I know that! For some, it is more than one wants to read. I remember having the same feeling – asking myself why I was reading this – when I devoured Tim O’Brien’s extraordinary books, In the Lake of the Woods, and his tour de force, The Things They Carried.

I shouldn’t be so sensitive about criticism. It’s a new resolution as my time winds down. Word came today that a dear friend and classmate, from high school days, has died. A bit of criticism about my reading tastes is not so vital. I hope you are resting among the stars, Mike.

Read, if you dare, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk [Harper Collins, New York, 2012].

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