The Golden Bear

Ohio’s gift to golf…

Pilgrim on a Long, Long Journey

In 1962 I attended Ohio State University’s Summer Center of the Communicative Arts as an ardent, 17 year old high school debater. I had an opportunity one day to visit the Sigma Alpha Mu frat house. During my visit we heard cheers well up in a nearby fraternity house. That was Jack Niklaus’ fraternity house and he had won his first PGA tournament, the US Open.

In 1974 I played tennis in a doubles group in Augusta, GA every day for a year. One of the four of us was a superb golfer. Not surprisingly he was the best tennis player in the group. Somehow he had befriended Jack, the Golden Bear, on one of Jack’s many visits to Augusta, the home of one of golf’s four majors, the Masters.

He described watching Jack on his basketball court where he would drop one jump shot after another with intense concentration…

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Hallelujah Anyway by Anne Lamott, a Review

One wonderful writer…

Pilgrim on a Long, Long Journey

Anne Lamott was born, raised and lives in northern California. That she is an inductee in the California Hall of Fame, as a writer, is an understatement about the extraordinary skill with which she pens her work. Ms. Lamott speaks directly to our hearts.

She did so in this masterful book that perhaps enhanced my own life’s journey to forgive my father. There is even an outside chance it has made me easier to live with, no small task.

The core of her book is her journey to become more loving, forgiving and merciful. That is, specifically, more merciful to herself and others.

Her personal journey has involved a battle with alcoholism. Its ups and downs are embedded here. To the believer it was our Lord’s speaking through others that guided her in her successful journey as a recovering alcoholic. To any reader, whatever their demons, it is an unforgettable…

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Control?

“What is sanity, after all, except the control of madness?” Josephine Winslow Johnson, the late American novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1935 at age 24 for her first novel.

The schizophrenic dream in daylight and the rest of us dream at night. There is a shortage of physicians but psychotherapists are numerous and busy. The contemporary philosopher Alain de Botton has said we should ask each other on our first dates, how are you crazy?, if a successful, serious relationship is our goal.

An article in Time four years ago declared, “Antidepressants are some of the most popular drugs in the United States, and their usage shows no signs of waning.” Panic attacks, depression, psychosomatic disease; and so, the list of common conditions continues.

There seems an emotional component to many physical ailments as well. There is a strong emotional component to the anti- social media. Each of us who faces Facebook appreciates that and that sometimes posts are completely over the top. There can be a fine line between emotional illness and “normality” whatever that is.

On top of everything else, there is an American stigma towards emotional illness and Covid-19 has made matters worse as to emotional health, generally.

“Houston, we’ve got a problem.”