The Weirdest Thing

This morning I checked my email and saw that my blog has sent out an email about an entry I posted on November 28, 2012 regarding my marathon training.

Not sure why that happened.  My blog is only supposed to send out the latest entry.  So we shall see what happens next.  Perhaps my blog will start randomly sending out other posts.  If so, this will become irritating to us all, and I shall put it out of its misery with sledgehammer or something.

The Song

Here's the link to my article in the March Manna (click on "The Song"):

The Song

Elias and his Wire Bot

Elias, age 12, brought home his school Art Class folder.  Found this inside:

This is the description he wrote:

My robot is a bot that scares away the birds that perch on telephone wires. It has clamps to grip the wire and special wheels to help it stay balanced.  It has lots of tools to fix the wires if broken.  It has an extra eye and a powerful flashlight to use in the dark.  It has brushes to clean the wire and is light so it does not weigh down the wire.  It also has a magnet to get tools it drops and rocket boosters to get him up on the wire.  It has an umbrella for the rain.  It has water guns and horns for the birds.  It has clippers and a grappling hook to get branches off the wires.  It also has a chain saw and axe to clear away fallen trees.  It has a very strong robotic hand to hoist itself up and finally extra wire to fix broken ones.  I like my robot because it has so many different tools..  MADE BY ELIAS TIMMONS

I especially like the rocket booster touch.  Elias Timmons.  Look for him in Wikipedia in the future under "Creative Genius."

The Georgetown Little League Horse Crap Call Incident

Georgetown Little League had tryouts today, and I was reminded of an incident last year involving one of our boy's coaches.  That incident was the subject of a previous blog post, and since it was such a colorful event, a portion of it is reprinted here:

Coming into Little League two years ago, we heard all kinds of cautions, mostly pertaining to overly competitive coaches and parents.  We have experienced none of that.  Georgetown Little League has been an outstanding organization, staff and parents alike.

We did have one small incident, the details of which are listed below:

• A visiting umpire made a questionable call.
• Elias's Coach Jeff tried to question the call, the umpire refused to discuss it, and as he walked away, Jeff muttered the words "Well that's a horse crap call."
• The umpire immediately ejected Coach Jeff from the game.  It was his first ejection, ever.
• A parent got involved in the situation (normally calm and extremely pleasant), and probably without thinking, let the "F" word slip.  He too was ejected from the field by the umpire.  The parent protested that he had just cut the grass on the field, and couldn't be ejected.  The umpire did not think these extenuating circumstances merited any leniency, and the parent was ejected anyway.  When he hesitated to leave, the umpire threatened to cancel the whole game.
• Another parent rose from the stands and shouted "It's all about the kids.  Let them play ball!"
• Our coach and the parent then quietly left the field.  No yelling, no kicking of dirt onto the umpire's shoes, which was very disappointing, as I thought these things were part of the game of baseball.  Apparently not in Little League.
• The term "Horse Crap Call" became a joke for the rest of the season.  
• Elias was called out at first base on a subsequent night by this same umpire.  The ball clearly reached the base before he arrived and the umpire called him out, but the first baseman apparently bobbled and then dropped the ball.  Jeff was coaching first base and politely asked for a revision of the call, which was ignored.  He elected not to use the term "Horse Crap Call", and let the call go in the interest of good sportsmanship and the fact it was closing night.
• Later, Jeff said he thought I should have gone to bat for my son, and should have used the "Horse Crap Call" line myself.  

Thank you Georgetown Little League.  Thank you coaches.  And thank you boys.  From your perspective,  you are just playing a game.  From ours, you are enriching our lives.

Sarah's Digital Design Class

This is a project Sarah worked on for her digital design class.  There are programs that will turn a photo into artwork automatically.  This wasn't done with one of those programs.  She started with her photograph, then used Photoshop to manually color the picture.  The butterfly is a stock image.

Maverick Sprouts

I was doing some yard work at a property we manage (what better time than February to do landscaping), and decided to trim up some bushes which sit in the front and back of tenant signs.  The bushes are Dwarf English Boxwoods - great for this application because they grow so slowly.  We keep them trimmed in a round shape.

The bushes when we planted them.

 About the time I began to trim, the thought occurred to me that the branches that get cut off are the ones that stick out, which is obvious, as the whole point of trimming is to make the bush uniform.  These branches are the ones that, for some reason, broke away from the crowd.  The bushes required very little trimming, except for these maverick branches.  In order to produce the desired effect, these maverick branches had to go.

Now perhaps you are trying to get one step ahead of me and are beginning to think of pruning as mentioned in the Bible.  Don't.  This is not where I'm going.  The pruning mentioned in the Bible is a different idea, at least I think and hope so.

What I did think about was people who break away from the crowd.  These are people who grow off in a different direction.  They poke out in odd ways.  They do not conform to the general shape which the rest of the people have formed.

The temptation is to want to trim off those branches - those people - in order to give the group a uniform shape, for the good of the whole, I suppose, or for some common goal.

This can be a mistake.  Trimming bushes is o.k.  Trimming people isn't.  Yes, sometimes people need some guidance if they are too far outside the box, but care must be taken.

Since I was the one holding the shears (actually, it was a pair of tin snips, which was what I had available in my truck) you would think I would be looking at the little bushes from the perspective of the gardener.  But I actually got caught up in the perspective of the branch - the one that pops out from the crowd.  It may relish in the moment, in which case it will be fine.  Or it may wonder why it doesn't look like the rest of the bush, and debate in its little branch brain whether it should be more "ordinary".  This branch may need someone to say "It's o.k. to be out there... you are there for a good reason."

Immediately, some people came to mind.  I called one of them on the phone, and assured him that while he may feel like he is stuck out there, he is actually one of the healthiest branches on the whole bush. (In all honesty, I called him, but didn't communicate this as clearly as I would have liked.)

The random sprouts from this bush got trimmed regardless.  No one would understand if I left them to prove a point.

A Friend with No Distractions

Here's a link to my February Manna article which just came out on-line.

A Friend with No Distractions