AT&T Golf Tournament Prep Revving Up

The whole Monterey Peninsula is beginning to gear up for the AT&T Pro-Am golf tournament that's coming to town soon.  After the Super Bowl of course.

Many folks around the area are very devoted golf fans and not only play the game frequently but love to volunteer at this traditional tournament that was begun years ago by Bing Crosby.  Locals called it The Crosby, and that was that.  As a matter of fact, those of us who heard the tournament referred to by that name for so many years still automatically call it that.  Officially it's The AT&T for short.

The unique format of the tournament and the early date on the pro golf calendar made the tournament a special favorite for pros and a chance for autograph hounds to get an up close and personal view of not only those pros but celebrity performers and famous people who also played golf.  Mr. Crosby was himself a big fan of the game and rounded up a good number of his celebrity friends to play, too.  Traditionally, a hefty amount of money was donated to local charities, a tradition that continues to this day.

Dozens of volunteer groups perform all manner of preparatory service duties to help the tournament run smoothly, and hundreds of volunteers put in a lot of time making sure the logistics and needs of the fans and players are handled smoothly.  There are a few senior citizens who have been volunteering at the tournament nearly every year since its inception, mostly doing clerical work or helping set up.

Our local swim club has for years had the assignment of passing out golf tournament programs to all the local hotels and motels that asked for them.

With so many citizens pitching in to help, the whole area feels a part of it all.  There is no denying that golf is an expensive game and requires a huge investment by those who have a great deal of money to produce and maintain courses.  Cost often excludes the local blue-collar segment of society from really participating in the game much.  So, the effort of the AT&T tournament to at least donate money to service clubs to benefit kids and underprivileged people takes the sting out of feeling excluded by virtue of economic hardship.

If the weather cooperates and behaves itself this year, golf fans and players will have an excited gallery of fans to cheer their play, and the teens, kids and older locals will be doing their best to help make it all look easy and beautiful.

What I Hope I Remember

Okay, I put my keys down right here.  I know I did.  Then I went in the kitchen to get my coffee cup.  Now I can't find them.  Where did they go?  I need my glasses.  Where are my glasses.  I won't be able to see the keys unless I find my glasses.  So, they were over there on the shelf when I answered the phone.

Remembering is a topic of more frequent conversation among my peers (Baby Boomers) who anticipate their golden years more anxiously now than they ever did before.  In the past, retirement hardly seemed relevant, and those of us who were in good health felt ourselves warmed by an eternal flame of vibrant youth.  The joke was that aging was only something that happened to wine, cheese and our parents.  Most of them got more mellow with age, but some got stinky and difficult to tolerate.  I am happy to say my own parents are ones who have mellowed and who are still fine examples of their generation.  

Let's see, I forgot where I was going with this.  Oh yeah.  Memory.  By now, enough scientific studies have proven that memories are able to stick around longer if they are associated with emotion, pain or adrenaline.  If a car nearly runs you down as you step out into a busy street, it's safe to say that that particular memory and its associated lesson for survival will be vivid in your mind's eye for, oh, the rest of your life.

When you write a grocery list of ordinary things and set it down while you look for your keys, no emotion or adrenaline is attached, so the memory fades about as quickly as your breath on a mirror.  If you write a grocery list while you feel stressed about whether you can get back in time to cook the chicken before the family comes home, that mild stress will help you remember things better; you probably won't even need to write it down.

On the other hand, if you are trying to remember tiny details and you are near panic, the blankety-blank shopping list will be impossible to deal with as your nervous system will be primed to fight or flee.  One way or another, you've noticed by now that some things are clear and other things are very difficult to recall.  Science is working on this whole realm of brain neurology feverishly these days, but there still remain many questions about how our memory works and how to improve it.

The blank in memory about ordinary details such as what actor played the main role in that movie that won the Academy Awards in 1966 is not cause for dismay as far as I'm concerned.  More important to me is a consistency of character, living in alignment with one's beliefs and values.  I might forget a few things, but I am going to act in a way that is congruent with honesty, loyalty, honor and a few others I can't remember at the moment (just kidding).  Except for those of us stricken with Alzheimer's disease,  good character and being aligned with one's values will perhaps be the more important focus for me and my peers.

No matter what age I am at the moment, living honorably and with love more prevalent in my life than fear, I'll be well served; it's how I intend to live.  As long as I remember to keep my values, I'll probably be okay.

Hey!  I found my keys.  They were right here the whole time.

Hapa Helps Me Celebrate

I think I'm going to take a day off from writing and celebrate.  (Wait, wait, wait, why am I writing? hmmm...)

I had a final swim clinic workout today and got some positive feedback on my breaststroke work from that wacky swim coach putting us all through various paces.  That would be Monsieur Temple, here from the hockey-loving nation to our north.  Lucky us.  For a change, I put a few lengths together to the point that he noticed an improvement.  That was pretty gratifying.  Too bad it was on the very last day, and I'll have to go back to my usual swim time to continue fitness improvement.  But, I'll take the compliment; they don't come that often.

Age-group swimmers (adolescents) were zooming back and forth in the first four lanes and we oldsters in the other four.  Then, those groups were subdivided by ability (fitness and coordination) or by stroke.  Most of the oldsters are freestylers, but a couple of us were working on "strokes."  I do breaststroke better than the other strokes.  Of course, I had to kick with the bucket and then pull with various other implements of evil (paddles, tubes, pull buoy).  There are all sorts of things that have been dreamed up by diabolical demons (coaches) to emphasize the areas of the stroke that need special focus.  For me, it's timing and strength.  When is it ever NOT timing and strength, right?  (swimmers are all rolling their eyes and nodding heads yes).

Two other things:  First, I bought a new CD by Hapa called Surf Madness, after having been on Kauai in December and hearing a cut from it that I liked a lot.  The song sounds grand and celebratory to me.  The other is that I am sitting here looking out at gathering clouds and feel the air cooling down.  Rain is possible tomorrow, but so what, right?  Here's why I don't care:  I'm playing Hawaiian slack key music and getting in a Hawaiian groove, and I'm happy I put in the time to get fit again and do some bucket drills in the predawn hours since that's what it takes sometimes.  Check out Hapa, the cut called He'eia, and channel some ancient Hawaiian power.  Pretty cool.  (I saw this group play ten years ago and have been keeping an eye on their music, always feel it has a special energy and reach.  Hapa, by the way, means half in in Hawaiian.  One guy's haole and the other is Hawaiian, both talented and worth a listen.)

A Life Of Plenty

You may think that this winter kale captured my eye at the farmers market today, and you would be right.  You may also believe that I was lucky to be able to walk in a leisurely fashion around a bountiful and lush market in a town such as this, and you would also be right.  

Amidst many other bins of the most fetching varieties of produce, the kale was exquisite, so I took a moment to take its picture for this post.  But I was thinking about Egypt and Tunisia and Mexico and yet was unable to.  There is chaos and pain in those places, suffering and indignity, atrocities I cannot really imagine since I do live here and my life is based on good fortune and pure luck of birth.  I have no idea of it really, no concept of mortal danger.

I photographed the winter kale and noticed its shades, its texture and its shape, how it was arranged in the bin at the farmer's table.  I was not hungry, but I imagined I would begin to have a more noticeable appetite sometime soon.  The kale is safe, clean and delectable, and it is offered to shoppers who may make a multitude of choices about what to cook for dinner or decorate their dining tables with or what they will buy plenty of just to have on hand so that they may have comfort and reassurances in all parts of their unflooded, unburned, unbombed homes.  It seemed so weird to imagine both possibilities at the same time, life and death occurring simultaneously, not because of natural disasters but because of human evil contrasting with human goodness.

There is no answer to why I was born here and not in a place where existence is tenuous and life can be an agonizing crush of pain and savagery.  I just was.  The answer I have to the question why is to honor love and gratitude, to conduct myself in ways that do not support brutality in other countries or even in neighboring cities.

How did a bin of kale bring me to this mood?  It was beautiful, plentiful and the ordinary human beings around me were safe from threat and evil and I knew it.  That's the only way I can explain it.

Weeding Out

The day was warm.  Perfect, actually.  Not hot at all.  After a morning of fulfilling obligations, I changed into my Whack-A-Mole clothes, donned my Teflon-coated gardening gloves, clipped on my clever little tool pouch and stepped into my Crocs.  Ready to survey my Garden Domain, I took a deep, pollen-laden breath  of summer-like winter air and descended the stairs into the back yard.  I cracked my knuckles and shrugged my shoulders to loosen them and prepare for what I anticipated was an hour of work to tidy up the yard.  I began to look around, and...

Oh, my poor plants.

One little miniature tea rose had three leaves, spider webs, one little shriveled flower.  Pill bugs ran for cover when I lifted pots.  Slugs mocked me.  Weeds thumbed their noses at me, and acorns planted by jays last autumn were sprouting up into baby oak trees in my geranium pots.

It's very obvious I have been a neglectful gardener over the past three or four months.  If it hadn't been for the rain we were doused with in November and part of December, everything would be dead as a doornail.

I set to work.  My pruning clippers are a fine tool for potted plants, needle-nosed and small in size.  Weeds and dead stems flew and compressed dirt became fragrant once I dug into it.  The spearmint plants looked really bedraggled, but they'll spring back with regular attention.  All the aromatics like lavender, mint, oregano and thyme perfumed the air.  The scented geranium and society garlic were especially fragrant as I worked around them.

All the steady work this afternoon made me wonder about other things I've drifted away from over time, things I once did with a lot of enthusiasm and that were a pleasure to do.  Things like cycling for instance.  Where once I rode my bike everywhere for years, my bike now sits waiting for me as it has for even more years.  There are quite a few things like that.  I also wondered what happened to certain friendships that once meant a lot to me.  People have drifted away and I've lost track of them.  Where are they now?

On the other hand, I have a few old plants that are far past their prime, withered and gnarled with time.  Instead of going and getting some new interesting varieties of flowers, I keep prodding the old ones along.  Should I let them go for good?  What about relationships that just take so much darn work?  Drop them?

I took a look at a once-manageable flowering shrub in a planter and realized what a beast it has become. It might need tools I don't own, a saw or something.  Procrastination and neglect have not done me any good.  Like swimming, I need to keep at my garden regularly.  The payoff is terrific in spring and summer when flowers are brimming over every pot and roses are blooming again.  It took probably two or three solid hours today and more are needed to get the rest of the plants back in the pink once more.  By the time April is here, I'll be ready for a garden party.

Now to round up some of those old friends...