Make My Day

I'll admit it: I'm a fan of Catherine Townsend--well of her writing anyway. I don't know her personally although I would love to have coffee with her in a very public place (she scares me a little).

Her latest piece in The Atlantic, "How to Fight Like a Victorian Gentleman," is a great example of her writing skills, and it couldn't have come at a better time.

She starts like this: "It’s sundown at a small park in Burbank and I’m dressed in head-to-toe black, carrying a big stick and ready to street fight, Sherlock Holmes style."

Why is this important? At this point pretty much all my friends have been licensed to carry (a gun)--some in a "concealed" fashion, others right smack on their person, out there for everyone to see.

I'm honestly not sure why everyone has decided they need to bear arms. Is there some threat I don't know about that I could actually defend myself from if I were pistol-packin'? (Other than my armed neighbors who live in my "safe, gated community.")

Don't read this as bragging but: I've been to all five Boroughs of New York City, day and night. I've been to Chicago's north side and south side. I've been to the east side of St. Louis and Skid Row in Seattle, to Bourbon Street in New Orleans, to Washington D.C. and to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. I've been to Amsterdam, Paris France, and Venice Italy. I've even been to Muskogee, Oklahoma in the 60s with long hair and bell-bottom jeans, driving a VW bus.

And I've never feared for my life. Well there was that one time: a "lady" in Edmond, driving an enormous SUV, wearing yoga pants (I'm guessing) and doing something on her mobile phone was in front of me at a red light. The light changed, she didn't notice. I honked. She turned, flipped me off and said something with fire in her eyes. I couldn't read her lips because of the froth flying from her mouth. It was very scary.

Nippin' it in the bud.

Now, apparently there's a new threat in the air and I need to up my defense and offense somehow. The problem is I'm more of a Sheriff Taylor kind of guy, than a Barney Fife. Speaking of whom, I would be much more comfortable in the "safer" neighborhoods of our fair city if I knew that all the newly-armed citizens had only one bullet and that bullet had to be kept in their shirt pocket.

Somewhere in a closet we have a Red Ryder BB gun. I'm not sure which closet, and I have no idea where our BB might be, but that's all the arms-bearing I plan to do. I know right now there are some out there shaking their heads at my foolish naiveté. And they are appalled at my stupidity for posting to the worldwide web that me and my Amazing-Missus are home and unarmed.

But be not dismayed. I think I've found a solution in the words of my future friend, Catherine Townsend. In the aforementioned article, Catherine tells of her training in the ancient art of bartitsu. She explains it this way:

"Bartitsu was developed by Edward Barton-Wright, a British engineer who moved to Japan in 1895. After returning to London, just before the turn of the century, he created a mixed martial art hybrid, combining elements of judo, jujitsu, British boxing, and fighting with a walking stick.

The style was promoted to the middle and upper classes during a time when they were becoming increasingly worried about the street gangs and crime publicized by the tabloid newspapers."  

Catherine boils bartitsu down:

Basically it's half historical recreation; half beating the crap out of someone with a cane.

Bartitsu is sort of cool. It was incorporated into the fight choreography of the Sherlock Holmes movies starring Robert Downey, Jr.

“There’s all sorts of locks and chokes and various other techniques used to incapacitate someone. There’s lots of throwing hats at someone’s eyes, and then striking at them, if you can, with a walking stick."

The movies helped propel what a bartitsu expert calls the “fringe of the fringe” movement into the spotlight, and attract a growing number of women. Googling will help you locate classes for guys with titles like: "Sparring With Sherlock," and for the girls: "Kicking Ass in a Corset: Bartitsu of Ladies."

Catherine read my mind and asked the obvious, important question: "But could an anachronistic art really protect me against a modern-day bad guy?" 

“Chances are your opponent isn’t going to be walking through the streets of a major world city twirling a parasol. But the classes do teach practical information about body awareness, how to target an opponent’s weak points and escape tactics that could come in handy in any situation."

So with a few lessons and a walking cane, we'll all rest better knowing I'm equipped for whatever it is that seems to be lurking in the night.

Girl Power

You go Pope Francis! Normally I wouldn't pontificate so casually regarding the Pontiff, but this One seems to be inviting us to be more real and familiar.

I liked so much of what he is reported to have said in his recent interview. Particularly this, speaking of the social issues that the church obsesses over: 

The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently ...

We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.

How about the role of women? When asked about this, he sounded pretty much like all male authority figures in the church:

I am wary of a solution that can be reduced to a kind of “female machismo,” because a woman has a different makeup than a man. But what I hear about the role of women is often inspired by an ideology of machismo. Women are asking deep questions that must be addressed.

Let me say clearly, I don't understand an "ideology of machismo." Apparently it is much clearer in Latin cultures and this Pope would know much more about that than I ever could.

So I will write what I do know. For many years I had a role in ministry to young people, mainly adolescents. All of this was within the Southern Baptist Convention. I am so sad to say that the most conservative of this denomination still hold to a narrow view of the role of women in the church and, unfortunately, beyond the church walls too. I am very happy to say that I've been blessed to know many, many women who identified with Baptists who were strong, effective leaders despite the rhetoric and ranting of church fathers. All of the dogma on the matter comes from a few verses in the letters of the Apostle Paul. I don't know of anything in the words or life of Jesus that would lead anyone to the conclusions the church has drawn on the matter.

Judy, Jane, Paula, Brooke, Jessica are just a few of the young women I've known who believed they had a calling to serve the church. It broke my heart to know of the hurdles, roadblocks and discouragement they would face if they pursued this calling in a Baptist church.

Again the good news is, as I've already said, many women have just forged on anyway: my Mom, my Aunt Betty, my Mother-In-Law Betty, my Daughter-In-Law Kara and my own Amazing Missus Arlene.

Yes that's my youngest grand girl, Harper, in the cape pictured above. I hope she  always believes she has super powers. Her cape is just as significant to me as the priestly garments of the Pope himself.

You go Harper and Karlee and young girls everywhere.

Was I At Woodstock

1969: A man on the moon, the amazing Mets, Nixon in the White House, Woodstock, and the year I graduated from Will Rogers High in Tulsa, Oklahoma.(Not to say my graduation was of historical significance; just establishing time and place.)

A few years ago marketers were leveraging the 40th anniversary of 1969 with special edition books, album reissues, and another movie: “Taking Woodstock: A Generation Began in His Backyard.”

Apparently those who didn’t come of age in this era have grown weary of hearing about it all; especially Woodstock.

I was not at Woodstock: the event, but was immersed in the culture of it all, in a pseudo-hippie sort of way. That is to say, I did have all that was de rigueur of the persona: tattered jeans, with their own story if I might add (made that way by hard wear, not the fictional, faux-worn jeans stacked on department store shelves these days), the beads and leather bands, even the Volkswagen Bus. However, fear and good old-fashioned Southern Baptist guilt kept me safely removed from the drugs and free love (to a large degree).

One credo of the day was, “Don’t trust anyone over 40!” Here I am at 62 and my unspoken credo is now, “Don’t trust anyone under 40!” 

A word to those under 40: can you allow us geezers just a few more months of nostalgia? After all, if “they” are to be believed, Woodstock and all was my generation's “defining moment.”

I like to sail. One of the oldest and most trusted navigational methods is called dead reckoning. This is where you take what is called a fix on a known, determined location. Then using a watch and compass you can estimate where you are at any time by advancing that position.

It works great if you were correct about your original fix (or defining moment), and if you’ve reckoned your time, direction, and speed correctly.

No doubt those of us at a certain age remember those days better than they were. You will probably do the same with your wonder years. And, if I’m not misunderstanding the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, there is a danger is this exercise:

Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?” For it is not wise to ask such questions. Ecclesiastes 7:10 NIV.

So in an attempt to avoid that pitfall, but wanting to define my defining moment, here’s what the summer of ’69 did for me. I did learn to question authority (a key component of the culture), and in doing so, I worked out my own faith and worldview.

Enough reminiscing for now, because in the sage advice of the namesake of my alma mater:

"Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today." – Will Rogers

My Father-In-Law the Ass Man

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Kramer mistakenly received a new car tag from the DMV that said "ASS MAN"? It's season 6, episode 20, entitled: "The Fusilli Jerry," so called because Kramer crafts a likeness of Jerry out of fusilli pasta. Turns out the intended recipient of the tag was a proctologist (a word that always makes me squirm in my chair a bit). Kramer has a lot of fun being the Ass Man until the tag mess is cleared up.

My father-in-law, E.J., was a man of well-thought through philosophies. That sounds so much better than saying he was opinionated, right?

I attribute this to the long hours he spent every single day with his girls which numbered near 100, all of which he could recognize better from the backside than the front. He was a dairy farmer and twice each day, beginning in the wee hours of the morning, he would pat these old cows on the rump while placing a milking machine on their full utters then watching the milk flow through glass tubes in to a stainless steel tank. You give a guy hours a day looking at the asses of cows and he's going to develop a worldview.

One of the things I've looked forward to in the aging process is getting my license to be opinionated and to share my high and mighty view whenever two or three are gathered together. Even though I told myself as a young man, I would never become some cranky, narrow-minded old fart. Maybe it's just that with the passage of time we become more confident in the strength of our convictions.

Now I've promised myself I would, at least on this blog, try to avoid the the opinion-triggers like politics, religion and NCAA conference alignments. So this post is really just my reflection about having and expressing opinions, and being judicious about it because after all opinions are like asses--we all have one. So the quandary is how to have one and not be one.

Are you an ass; man?