Our precinct voting location is one of the additions to the Corpus Christi Catholic Parish. It is located just under a mile from our home.

Maureen and i walked there to vote this morning. Quite a few neighbors also elected to walk.

The morning was perfect San Diego weather. It felt good to walk and physically vote on the appointed day, a ritual more or less. One of neighbors was one of the volunteers.

It took me between five and ten minutes to copy my sample ballot i had filled in during my research and contemplation to the actual ballot. There were no campaigners or post-voting pollsters anywhere near. I felt like a good citizen.

For those who might wonder, i voted “NO” on the state’s Proposition  60. It’s the one that would require condoms and health measures be required for “Adult” films. The costs to the state, somewhat defrayed by fees on the industry, would run about $1 Million annually. i am of firm belief we should find the idiot or idiots put this on the slate and put them away somewhere.

And after month’s of consideration, i did vote in the presidential election. i also live in dread of having to listen to either of the major party candidates if elected talk for the next four years. Both are even worse than George W. Bush as far as public speaking goes.

i did not vote for either. Even though i think we need a woman to serve as president, i just could not bring myself to vote for someone who is so much apart of the system. i could not vote for any of the other party candidates either. They all had flaws to numerous to detail here.

But i voted for president. i sat down last night and considered who i would trust to be president. i came up with about twenty names and slowly filtered through them until i ended up with one. He has strong ties to the Democratic Party but he is an independent, and i mean independent thinker. He is a moral and decent man. He is a man of principal.

He ran for president once before but it was for a different organization and a long time ago. i did not get to vote in that one because i was at another place. i would have though. And i made up for it today. i wrote him in. George Henry Harding (Okay, Henry, i can’t remember if you are the IV, or V) for president.

My sister-in-law, Patsy Boggs, who is also a great friend, commented on my FaceBook post today with the photograph of my my grandmother, Katherine Webster Prichard, aka Granny, with my daughter Blythe just after she was born. i was either already gone or getting ready to join the USS Luce (DLG-7) in Korfu, Greece for the last four months of a Mediterranean deployment. Blythe was Granny’s first great grandchild and a tight bond remained until Granny passed away at 93. Patsy’s comment made me decide to re-post this poem.

Ode to Three Sisters and Their Mother

The old lady came busting out of the old century;
where she had been
an exquisite china doll of immeasurable beauty;
young men chased her
to allowable limits in the Victorian South
after we turned from reconstruction
while Teddy was roustabouting with Spain
in that little skirmish we often forget.
Remember the Maine.

But Granny came busting out;
fire in her belly, grit in her craw, pluck in her spirit, gleam in her eye;
with the handsome man who won the chase,
taking her and his bloodhounds
to the retired circuit rider’s farm out on the pike
where Granny’s circuit rider father would
preach occasionally without the horse or mule
in the hamlet of Lebanon,
smack dab in the middle of Tennessee,
Where some bright folks built the square
over a cold water spring
they discovered in “Town Creek”
in yet an earlier century.

…and the children would come around wartime,
dropping among the years of the first big one
we resisted until the Luisitania
took its hit and sank like a rock;
…and the children came,
five in all until one died
as young family members often did
in those pre-antibiotic days.
The handsome blood hound man who chased
criminals through the woods
took his own hit,
a decade after the war.
So the little maelstrom with grit in her craw
packed up the chillun’s and the belongings
making the trek to the groves
of central Florida
for a couple of years to
escape the sinking of the hound man
and the attendant feelings thereof.

In thirty-two, they came back home,
each with some grit in their craw.
Granny, the queen of grit,
went to work,
taking care of those who needed care
outside the family in order
to take care of her own.

…and the children grew up early,
cooking the meals, washing the clothes, cleaning the house,
gathering eggs, milking the cows,  pulling the weeds;
before playing ball,
earning money until
they went to college in the little town,
or went to work,
or both.

The second big war came, again
in a wave of terror,
This time in an atoll’s pristine harbor,
taking hits, sinking to the shallow harbor depths.
Remember the Arizona.
The brother went off to war after marrying
a woman of another religion from down the road,
west a bit, in the big city.
He flew a plane named after his lady Colleen,
returning to the Tennessee hamlet, still
with fire in his belly, grit in his craw, pluck in spirit, gleam in his eye
before leaving for the orange groved paradise
he found on the southern trek several years before.

The preacher man was gone;
The hound man was gone;
The brother was gone;
The three sisters and their mother,
fire in their bellies, grit in their craw, pluck in their spirit, gleam in their eyes,
with their three new men
stared at the world,
staring it down straight in the eye,
wearing it down with their labor
until the world cried “uncle,”
admiring their fire and grit and pluck.

There were circles entwined with circles of family;
the circles orbited around the threes sisters and their mother:
all was well.
…and the world rolled on;
Granny finally gave up her pluckish ghost with grit in her craw;
no longer would she braid the waist long hair,
tying the braids atop her head
as she had done for so many years;
the three sisters rallied with
fire in their bellies, grit in their craw, pluck in their spirit, gleam in their eyes.

The grandchildren of the matriarch
spread with the four winds, remembering.
When the circles got together,
the three sisters remained the constant,
demanding the world stay in their orbit,
and the world was warm with laughter and love and
a sense the world was safe
as long as they all inherited
fire in their bellies, grit in their craw, pluck in their spirit; gleam in their eyes.
The world is older;
Granny is gone;
the youngest sister recently joining her,
the oldest failing fast:
The three sisters leaving us slowly with
the fire waning to embers, but still there is
grit in their craw, pluck in their spirit, gleam in their eyes;
staring down the world.

Such a lovely world they have shown us.

For all Cub fans: congratulations.  Your team has bought a World Series. i understand the glee, and i have said often, i was a Cubs fan. But they have beaten the curse of the goat. The world of Cubdom is giddy. Now, you should be like Dustin Hoffman’s character at the closing scene of “The Graduate.” What’s next? The article at the end should give you an idea.

Think about it. You have paid to see your team become another financial giant, a winner in a very unimportant part of our world, which thrives on buying  people from other people to be the best at their sport. Doesn’t that seem a little off kilter, a little wrong?

i have been a sports fan all of my life, so much of one i actually earned my living writing about sports for several years. i love to watch the best play football, baseball, and  basketball. i even had Padre season tickets for more than a decade. i gave them up when i faced the fact i was paying about $2,600 a season for two tickets to forty games; actually attending about half of those; and not counting parking ($10-20 per game) and beer, hot dogs, and peanuts (approximately $40 per game). Still i watch the televised Padre games almost every night during the season. And i never bought any gear with somebody’s name on it. Once, i did buy a sweatshirt for my daughter when it was unexpectedly cold at a Padre night game. It cost me $80.

Like my friend Pete Toennies has done, i’m close to giving it up. It seems the priorities are all screwed up. My Lebanon friend and fellow sports nut, Mike Dixon played softball into his seventies. He loved to play the game. i did too. i played baseball until i was 46. It was fun. That’s why.

Now it seems most everyone doesn’t play but watches, everyone except those who train from tee ball on (no sandlot games like there used to be: too dangerous), and then either quit in their early 20’s, suffer the difficulties of semi-pro and minor leagues, or make it to the “bigs,” which by the way means “big money.” The minimum season salary for a major league player is $520,000 and the average salary is roughly $4 Million.

And those owners, teams, and players are making a killing on our money.

i think we can do many better things with our money and time than watch pro sports.

i just don’t know if i can actually stop.

The below is a clipping from today’s San Diego Union-Tribune. i have included the link, http://enewspaper.sandiegouniontribune.com/desktop/sdut/default.aspx?pubid=ee84df93-f3c1-463c-a82f-1ab095a198ca, but am not sure you can see it without a subscription.

As noted in an earlier Facebook post, “Mighty Casey has sold out.”

As you might be able to tell from my posts, i’m on a roll.

It’s six in the morning. It’s dark. i’ve been up for about two hours. I’m on my third cup of coffee. The Sunday paper has not arrived and will be late because they print the damn thing in Los Angeles, which means the late scores of games won’t be available (deadlines, you see).

i’ve done most of my stretching exercises, but don’t want to do anymore.

i have a bunch of home tasks to do and have learned when the day is over, i may have actually completed one or two, but because of working on them, i will have added more than i completed: the list just keeps growing.

Some damn insects bit me on the leg Friday and the half-dozen bites itch like hell.

My left shoulder has soreness in it, and physical therapy starts soon. i’m hoping tomorrow’s x-ray proves it’s not a rotator cuff tear.

What happened to the Vols? and Michigan State? and Texas?

Why do almost all sports media ignore San Diego State’s Donnel J. Pumphrey who is the best running back i’ve seen since Gayle Sayers before the latter busted his knees? Pumphrey is now number six on the all-time rushing list and climbing, weighs 180 pounds and runs through giant defenders.

Why, with all of this negativity around  — and that doesn’t include the presidential race and the immoral tactics of both major parties: i’ve excused myself (mostly except for comments) from the disgusting election process — i’m sitting here feeling pretty good.

After all, i live in a good place. Will play golf at least three times this week in great weather, have a beautiful wife, inside and outside, who puts up with me, have two daughters who are talented and caring, a grandson with great promise, a sister and brother with wonderful families of their own.

At the urging of Maureen, i just walked out to the front yard and looked east;  and i see

“Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning,” and considering all of those bothersome things above and this dire prediction, as Rhett Butler once said, “Frankly, my dear, i don’t give a damn.”

It’s been a hell of a week. Our trip to Concord and San Francisco was cancelled by my executive decision — it’s a rare event in this neck of the woods when the old retired commander pulls out his combination cover to take action. It proved a good but sad decision. It was our annual trip to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Hellman Hollow in Golden Gate Park where we spend three days with Alan, Maren, and Eleanor Hicks, along with 800,000 of our closest friends listening to a cornucopia of music but mostly bluegrass at the Banjo Stage. And this year, we had added a treat of seeing some of my favorite people: our nieces and their families from Maureen’s side of our family.

But recovery was required. And it turns out, the commander’s executive decision was a rare wise choice.

So i had my moon and Mars make it okay Thursday morning. Then Friday, i went and played golf. Boom, the world was back in the toilet again — no, not really: after all i was walking a golf course, even if my game sucked, in great weather with my friends. And where else but Admiral Baker, South Course, in Mission Valley could one find such insanity.

The thirteenth hole runs east along the San Diego River.

The golf course and the surrounding Navy recreation area is about the only thing preserving wild life in Mission Valley. The Admiral Baker area is surrounded by more apartments than the population of most towns, ditto the condominiums, several thousand car dealerships, an obsolete football stadium, a convention center or two; every hotel chain known to man and a few which aren’t, three thousand restaurants of which one or two are decent for dining, and two mega malls. In Baker, deer abound and run across the two courses with abandon; coyote hunt with seemingly no courtesy for interrupting putts; all sorts of other animals flock and hide in the edges of the river, and Friday, we watched eight egrets with wing spans of seven feet or more take off from the river and glide gracefully over the landscape for an hour.

But if you slice your ball into the river off of the thirteenth tee or dub a second (or third) shot into that river trying to get across to the green, you don’t go into the river’s abutting brush to retrieve anything, even one of your foursome. Snakes abound along with many other unknown wildlife. Hell, i wouldn’t even eliminate the possibility of an alligator or two being down in that jungle.

But there on the thirteenth tee and strategically located along the edge are several signs like this (thanks, Pete, for the photo — my phone’s memory was screwed up):

Well, i’m telling you if there are any children playing down there

1. A golf ball ain’t gonna hurt them. They are tough enough to beat the hell out of our entire foursome.
2. Their parents should be in jail.

But nothing else really mattered compared to the small thing that sent me into hysteric euphoria: As i was setting up my app on my phone for my golf GPS before we teed off, i noticed i had a reply to a text i had sent to my grandson Sam the day before.

It read: “i love you.”

There is nothing, not one damn thing in this entire world forever, that could make me feel any better. i’ve been floating on air for about 42 hours.

Then early last night, i’m having a typical day for someone who roots for underdogs: Vanderbilt, San Diego State, and the Padres lost, and i’m old enough to know there ain’t no such thing as a “moral victory.”

So i hit Facebook and find this:

My two daughters having fun together in Austin. It occurred to me they have an incredible capability to enjoy life to the fullest, and i know with certainty, they will be fine.

So there is another week i will walk on air.

♦     ♦     ♦

On another note, observing sports, something that has been an integral part of my life since forever, is about to lose me.

Televised sports is ruined by grotesque intervention by fans through antics, noise they hope will impact the contest in their favor, and boorish behavior; rules inserted with no real connection to the game itself because of fear of injury, commercial time, self promotion by the television channel; replay after interminable replay to try to get everything perfect in an imperfect world; the inanity, incorrect and over analysis by announcers who apparently think they are the two smartest people in the world who have to tell us how dumb we are, repeating those inanities ad infinitum; and profane amounts money spent on something that really should have no priority over education, equality, poverty, justice, and the American way. It’s downright embarrassing to be part of the same human race.

If it were not for video replay, which allows me to fast forward through dumb commercials, half-time drivel (i would even gleefully welcome back watching the marching bands, especially the Texas A&M Military Marching Band), and replay studies of silliness, i don’t think i could watch at all.

Finally, i had to turn off the Ryder Cup.

First, the fans were out of control. The chanting of “USA, USA…” grated. i don’t think the 50,000 plus had a clue why golf is such a wonderful sport. And then learning this morning, two fans were ejected from the event for screaming obscenities and other insults at our visitors, i was…well, just sick of out-of-line behavior. i wanted to watch some of the greatest golfers in the world compete, not idiots crowding the fairway. And how the hell do those folks in the bleachers sit there for ten hours or more?

One final note. Except for Tiger Woods, i did not see any people: players, marshals, announcers, or  fans with dark skin. There is something incredibly wrong with that. i’m not blaming anyone. I don’t know how to fix it. It is representative of something that remains truly wrong, wrong, wrong with our country. And we, individually;  not through legislation, not through protests, not through politically correct language, not through taxes, welfare or another program that gives some national figure a platform to enhance his/her own image, power, or wealth, need to fix it through each of us treating humans like…well, like humans.