I loved having the chance to cheer for the old guy -- Greg Norman -- during recent weekend coverage of the British Open golf tournament.
Frankly, he isn't that old -- 53, a middle ager -- but in the competitive world of mainstream professional sports that's old. Yet there he was, leading the four-day Open at Royal Birkdale in England on day one, leading on day two, and leading again after day three going into the Sunday final round. Ultimately, he lost it but he carried with him a bunch of wannabes like me with gray hair and bad backs and creaky knees. Win one for the geezers, we told him.
Greg Norman has been a professional golfer for 34 years. He was the Shark long before there was a Tiger. Norman was winning golf tournaments before Tiger Woods was showing his stuff on the Mike Douglas Show as a 2-year-old in 1978. Norman was the world's No. 1 ranked golfer for more years than anyone, eclipsed only by the recent No. 1 record of Tiger Woods.
What I liked about the golf at Royal Birkdale was that it was miserable -- it was cold, it was rainy, and on Saturday and Sunday it was windy ... very, very windy. It made the professional golfers very human. They missed fairways. They missed greens. They missed putts. It was just like the down-to-earth golf that most of us very amateur amateurs play.
But Norman's experience -- the been here, done this experience -- was evident. He's played in countless miserable conditions in Great Britain over the years. He had the same 30 mile an hour cross winds to contend with as anyone else, but he found better ways, better shots to deal with it and as a result he was a two stroke leader going into the Sunday final round.
I've always considered golf as a metaphor for life. It has its ups and downs. Like good days and bad days, you have good holes and bad holes. On one hole you can breeze along as if the game was as easy as riding a bike. Then the next hole it becomes a disaster, every shot a painful stroke of futility. Learning how to cope with the twists and turns of the game is the real challenge. And the experience that comes with age helps some cope better than others.
That's what I was thinking as I watched Norman's first three rounds on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Norman used his wisdom of years to cope.
On Sunday, however, the magic of the moment, the possibility that Norman would become the oldest man to ever win a championship tournament poofed. It seemed a previous incarnation of Norman showed up to play on Sunday, the one who in his prime coughed up leads during the final round. His most spectacular was the 1996 Masters when he had a six stroke lead on Sunday, only to squander the round and lose by five strokes to Nick Faldo. Old tendencies die hard, I guess.
As it was, he finished the British Open tied for third, six strokes behind winner Padraig Harrington.
Even in losing, you have to admire Norman: Owner of a successful vineyard, married to former tennis superstar Chris Evert, architect of golf courses all over the world. He's a part-time golfer who almost wrote history. We should all be so lucky in retirement to have the wisdom of experience account for something great.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Does this technology make me look fat?
Most of us, when we think of technology, regard it in terms of machines: computers that compute faster, electronic servers that host infinite information on the internet , even cars that because of technology are more powerful yet more fuel economical than their predecessors 20 years ago. Not many of us, however, regard technology and clothes in the same thought.
Yet, technology has made great strides in the advancement of how clothes function, especially in the field of sports.
Take swimming, for example. Speedo has introduced a new swimsuit called the LZR Racer. It's expected to play a significant role in the Summer Olympics next month in Beijing, China. It was already the talk of the competitive swimming community during the recent Olympic trials for U.S. swimmers in Boise, Idaho, where records fell like a house of cards. The full-body LZR actually squeezes the body with 70 times more force than its predecessor, actually making the body more sleek -- and therefore less resistant -- through the water. One Italian swimming official described the suit as "technological doping."
We've come a long way baby from the little Speedo brief that Mark Spitz wore in 1972.
This compression technology has made its way into other sporting attire as well, both for the professional and more casual athlete.
I have two such pieces of clothing -- a compression top for winter running and a full-body wetsuit for my recent pursuit of learning how to surf. My problem with the compression technology is that it is very revealing. There's no hiding a body flaw with something that is so skin tight in can almost make the individual hairs on my chest show through. And my primary body flaw during these days of middle age is belly fat.
My belly isn't Type 2 diabetes threatening bad. Admittedly I could lose 10 pounds. In my normal day-to-day clothes it really doesn't look too bad. But my normal day-to-day clothes tend toward generously-waisted pants and loosely fitting shirts. It's when I stuff myself into those compression suits that it's an eye opener, in more ways than one.
To begin with, just getting into a compression garment is an aerobic exercise in itself, the equivalent of at least a mile on the treadmill at an 8 minute, 30 second pace. It can take your breath away with all the grunting and straining and effort to literally stuff 175 pounds into something seemingly made to hold 100 pounds.
I thought I might need something in the roomy size for my wet suit, but Tyler at the Summer Sessions surf shop in Rye, N.H., was careful to fit me to make best use of the technology that's meant to keep your body warm against the extended exposure in the cold ocean water of the Atlantic. He wanted me in a wetsuit that was as tight as possible without restricting my ability to breathe. I learned after the first day on the beach to get into my wetsuit beforehand at home ... best not to scare the little kiddies and their mothers with the grunting and swearing required of getting into the thing. Maybe that's why surfers are confined to more remote stretches of beach.
If nothing else, the compression running top and the surfing wetsuit give me the visual incentive to maintain an exercise schedule and try to eat a sensible diet that leans more toward lower fat foods.
Sure, the clothes make the man. But do they have to scare the women and children in the process?
Yet, technology has made great strides in the advancement of how clothes function, especially in the field of sports.
Take swimming, for example. Speedo has introduced a new swimsuit called the LZR Racer. It's expected to play a significant role in the Summer Olympics next month in Beijing, China. It was already the talk of the competitive swimming community during the recent Olympic trials for U.S. swimmers in Boise, Idaho, where records fell like a house of cards. The full-body LZR actually squeezes the body with 70 times more force than its predecessor, actually making the body more sleek -- and therefore less resistant -- through the water. One Italian swimming official described the suit as "technological doping."
We've come a long way baby from the little Speedo brief that Mark Spitz wore in 1972.
This compression technology has made its way into other sporting attire as well, both for the professional and more casual athlete.
I have two such pieces of clothing -- a compression top for winter running and a full-body wetsuit for my recent pursuit of learning how to surf. My problem with the compression technology is that it is very revealing. There's no hiding a body flaw with something that is so skin tight in can almost make the individual hairs on my chest show through. And my primary body flaw during these days of middle age is belly fat.
My belly isn't Type 2 diabetes threatening bad. Admittedly I could lose 10 pounds. In my normal day-to-day clothes it really doesn't look too bad. But my normal day-to-day clothes tend toward generously-waisted pants and loosely fitting shirts. It's when I stuff myself into those compression suits that it's an eye opener, in more ways than one.
To begin with, just getting into a compression garment is an aerobic exercise in itself, the equivalent of at least a mile on the treadmill at an 8 minute, 30 second pace. It can take your breath away with all the grunting and straining and effort to literally stuff 175 pounds into something seemingly made to hold 100 pounds.
I thought I might need something in the roomy size for my wet suit, but Tyler at the Summer Sessions surf shop in Rye, N.H., was careful to fit me to make best use of the technology that's meant to keep your body warm against the extended exposure in the cold ocean water of the Atlantic. He wanted me in a wetsuit that was as tight as possible without restricting my ability to breathe. I learned after the first day on the beach to get into my wetsuit beforehand at home ... best not to scare the little kiddies and their mothers with the grunting and swearing required of getting into the thing. Maybe that's why surfers are confined to more remote stretches of beach.
If nothing else, the compression running top and the surfing wetsuit give me the visual incentive to maintain an exercise schedule and try to eat a sensible diet that leans more toward lower fat foods.
Sure, the clothes make the man. But do they have to scare the women and children in the process?
Friday, July 11, 2008
Give the peace of summer a chance
One of my pet peeves is the marketing of holidays. Each year, it seems, advertisers start to trump a particular holiday earlier and earlier in order to spur sales. Last year, for example, we hadn't even gotten to Halloween when the advertising promotions for Christmas started. Now it's back to school that's getting me riled.
I know back to school isn't a holiday, but it's a significant seasonal event like Halloween or Thanksgiving or Christmas; it's an event that makes us sit up and take notice. The thing about back to school is that parents of students should sit up and take notice in August, as the month starts to nudge toward Labor Day. But we were barely beyond the Fourth of July when I noticed advertising inserts in my newspaper that were keyed to back-to-school sales. This drives me nuts.
In the same way that we have a biological clock, we also have a seasonal clock tied to the things that happen during the spring, summer, winter and fall. The rhythm of the seasons is important in the transition from one equinox to the other, especially for those of us in New England where the seasons can be so extreme from one to the other. Come Labor Day we can start the transition toward fall but not before. I'll accept Thanksgiving as the transition point to the Christmas season, but I don't accept Halloween as that transition point. Nor do I accept July 4 as the transition point from summer to back to school.
This must have caught the attention of the smart people at the Wall Street Journal who on Monday wrote a story about the earlier back-to-school advertising. According to the Journal story, back to school is the retailers' second-biggest selling period behind Christmas. And this year is especially important because consumers, battered by high gas prices and a jittery economy, aren't in much of a spending mood.
The Journal estimated spending for back-to-school and college related merchandise will be flat to slightly lower this year compared to last year, which saw a slight uptick in spending in large part because of must-have electronic items such as cell phones and music players. There isn't a must-have item this year, according to the Journal story. In an effort to distinguish themselves from a discount retailer such as Wal-Mart, said to the Journal, major retail chains have created marketing campaigns to attract the attention of consumers. Kohl's, for example, is launching a back-to-school clothes and accessories line from singer Avril Lavigne.
The whole thing strikes me as back-to-school chaos. I don't have back-to-school kids who I have to worry about any more. My son David, who'll be a college senior, is low maintenance when it comes time to start classes again. But you can see the change in pace and attitude in the general population when the time comes to go back to school. There's no need to hurry that along. We need to invite less stress, not more stress into our lives and summer is the time to concentrate on less stress.
Everything is relative, of course. Summers are not as stress free as I remember them. We're buffeted by the turbulence of uncertainty about our jobs, the economy, climate change, our children's future, our future. But we should be able to use summer to ratchet down the apprehension. Summer should allow us to melt stress as quickly as ice cubes in iced tea on a 90-degree day. We should be able to sit on the ocean beach or the lake shore and read a book that takes us away from the here and now. We should be able to hike and bike, canoe and kayak, sun and surf, relax and rejuvenate under the glare of the sun, not the glare of desperate merchandisers.
They only fuel the anxiety at a time when our tank of anxiety should be allowed to run empty.
I know back to school isn't a holiday, but it's a significant seasonal event like Halloween or Thanksgiving or Christmas; it's an event that makes us sit up and take notice. The thing about back to school is that parents of students should sit up and take notice in August, as the month starts to nudge toward Labor Day. But we were barely beyond the Fourth of July when I noticed advertising inserts in my newspaper that were keyed to back-to-school sales. This drives me nuts.
In the same way that we have a biological clock, we also have a seasonal clock tied to the things that happen during the spring, summer, winter and fall. The rhythm of the seasons is important in the transition from one equinox to the other, especially for those of us in New England where the seasons can be so extreme from one to the other. Come Labor Day we can start the transition toward fall but not before. I'll accept Thanksgiving as the transition point to the Christmas season, but I don't accept Halloween as that transition point. Nor do I accept July 4 as the transition point from summer to back to school.
This must have caught the attention of the smart people at the Wall Street Journal who on Monday wrote a story about the earlier back-to-school advertising. According to the Journal story, back to school is the retailers' second-biggest selling period behind Christmas. And this year is especially important because consumers, battered by high gas prices and a jittery economy, aren't in much of a spending mood.
The Journal estimated spending for back-to-school and college related merchandise will be flat to slightly lower this year compared to last year, which saw a slight uptick in spending in large part because of must-have electronic items such as cell phones and music players. There isn't a must-have item this year, according to the Journal story. In an effort to distinguish themselves from a discount retailer such as Wal-Mart, said to the Journal, major retail chains have created marketing campaigns to attract the attention of consumers. Kohl's, for example, is launching a back-to-school clothes and accessories line from singer Avril Lavigne.
The whole thing strikes me as back-to-school chaos. I don't have back-to-school kids who I have to worry about any more. My son David, who'll be a college senior, is low maintenance when it comes time to start classes again. But you can see the change in pace and attitude in the general population when the time comes to go back to school. There's no need to hurry that along. We need to invite less stress, not more stress into our lives and summer is the time to concentrate on less stress.
Everything is relative, of course. Summers are not as stress free as I remember them. We're buffeted by the turbulence of uncertainty about our jobs, the economy, climate change, our children's future, our future. But we should be able to use summer to ratchet down the apprehension. Summer should allow us to melt stress as quickly as ice cubes in iced tea on a 90-degree day. We should be able to sit on the ocean beach or the lake shore and read a book that takes us away from the here and now. We should be able to hike and bike, canoe and kayak, sun and surf, relax and rejuvenate under the glare of the sun, not the glare of desperate merchandisers.
They only fuel the anxiety at a time when our tank of anxiety should be allowed to run empty.
Friday, July 4, 2008
How does my garden grow?
Some people at my stage in life -- one of semi-retirement -- stop and smell the roses. Well, I'm not stopping to smell the roses; I stopped and planted the rosemary.
For my 55th birthday I received from my wife Jane several vegetable and herb plants to grow in a non-existent garden.
The fact that I would even attempt to plant and care for a vegetable/herb garden is way out of character. When I mentioned the garden to family the universal response was, "You?!" It about as out of character as me spending time in a recreational vehicle a campground without room services. As my daughter once observed just before a camping trip with her boyfriend, "Dad, we don't camp."
But here's the irony. I plan to take an RV trip or two in semi-retirement. So in the same vein of "Why not?" comes the garden.
I think Jane is operating under the old assumption: "Idle hands are the devil's playground." I'm not sure just what trouble she thinks I might get into while she's at work, but she must have been thinking that if I had plants to look after every day I wouldn't be straying off the reservation doing something crazy like buying a kayak and paddling around Great Bay by myself. (Hmmmm, I want to do that too.) But I like to cook and she figures some of what might come up in the garden might find its way onto the dinner table some day.
At any rate, I had to start from scratch in the preparation of a garden in which to plant a variety of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and herbs. There is a sunny area against the south wall of the house, so that's where I started, hoe in hand, loam and fertilizer at the ready to plow my back 40. Where are oxen when you need them? That hoeing was hard, sweaty work. Had I known it was that much exercise, I wouldn't have bothered with my exercise run that morning.
The plants are in and on occasion I remember to water them, though I prefer the ease of the afternoon thunderstorm to do the work for me.
It's ironic that the things we want to grow -- flowers, vegetables, herbs -- take so much time and effort and care. Meanwhile, the things we don't want to grow -- weeds, hair from our ears -- just seem to proliferate uncontrollably with absolutely no effort on our part. The weeds in my garden are prolific. I pick them out in the afternoon and more are starting to come in by the next morning. I'd be real, real good at growing a weed garden.
I believe in a practice of Darwinism when it comes to my garden: the strongest survive. But the survival of the fittest plants has part to do with nature and part to do with my inability -- or disinterest -- to garden. If they're going to survive, they'll have to survive me.
I'll do what I can on my part to be nurturing and look forward to the bounty -- however limited -- that might make it to the kitchen. The good news is that there is a sign of at least one pepper and some of the tomato plants are beginning to show some flower buds, which I think is a good thing. The herbs, upon close sensory inspection, smell great, and I should be able to grab some sweet basil, cilantro and rosemary soon.
Wait ... on second thought, forget the rosemary. There isn't any in the garden ... shows you how much I know.
For my 55th birthday I received from my wife Jane several vegetable and herb plants to grow in a non-existent garden.
The fact that I would even attempt to plant and care for a vegetable/herb garden is way out of character. When I mentioned the garden to family the universal response was, "You?!" It about as out of character as me spending time in a recreational vehicle a campground without room services. As my daughter once observed just before a camping trip with her boyfriend, "Dad, we don't camp."
But here's the irony. I plan to take an RV trip or two in semi-retirement. So in the same vein of "Why not?" comes the garden.
I think Jane is operating under the old assumption: "Idle hands are the devil's playground." I'm not sure just what trouble she thinks I might get into while she's at work, but she must have been thinking that if I had plants to look after every day I wouldn't be straying off the reservation doing something crazy like buying a kayak and paddling around Great Bay by myself. (Hmmmm, I want to do that too.) But I like to cook and she figures some of what might come up in the garden might find its way onto the dinner table some day.
At any rate, I had to start from scratch in the preparation of a garden in which to plant a variety of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and herbs. There is a sunny area against the south wall of the house, so that's where I started, hoe in hand, loam and fertilizer at the ready to plow my back 40. Where are oxen when you need them? That hoeing was hard, sweaty work. Had I known it was that much exercise, I wouldn't have bothered with my exercise run that morning.
The plants are in and on occasion I remember to water them, though I prefer the ease of the afternoon thunderstorm to do the work for me.
It's ironic that the things we want to grow -- flowers, vegetables, herbs -- take so much time and effort and care. Meanwhile, the things we don't want to grow -- weeds, hair from our ears -- just seem to proliferate uncontrollably with absolutely no effort on our part. The weeds in my garden are prolific. I pick them out in the afternoon and more are starting to come in by the next morning. I'd be real, real good at growing a weed garden.
I believe in a practice of Darwinism when it comes to my garden: the strongest survive. But the survival of the fittest plants has part to do with nature and part to do with my inability -- or disinterest -- to garden. If they're going to survive, they'll have to survive me.
I'll do what I can on my part to be nurturing and look forward to the bounty -- however limited -- that might make it to the kitchen. The good news is that there is a sign of at least one pepper and some of the tomato plants are beginning to show some flower buds, which I think is a good thing. The herbs, upon close sensory inspection, smell great, and I should be able to grab some sweet basil, cilantro and rosemary soon.
Wait ... on second thought, forget the rosemary. There isn't any in the garden ... shows you how much I know.
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