A Poem in Honor of Golf

In My Hand I Hold A Ball,
White And Dimpled, Rather Small.
Oh, How Bland It Does Appear,
This Harmless Looking Little Sphere.

By It's Size I Could Not Guess,
The Awesome Strength It Does Possess.
But Since I Fell Beneath Its Spell,
I've Wandered Through The Fires Of Hell.

My Life Has Not Been Quite The Same,
Since I Chose To Play This Stupid Game.
It Rules My Mind For Hours On End,
A Fortune It Has Made Me Spend.

It Has Made Me Yell, Curse And Cry,
I Hate Myself And Want To Die.
It Promises A Thing Called Par,
If I Can Hit It Straight And Far.

To Master Such A Tiny Ball,
Should Not Be Very Hard At All.
But My Desires The Ball Refuses,
And Does Exactly As It Chooses.

It Hooks And Slices, Dribbles And Dies,
And Even Disappears Before My Eyes.
Often It Will Have A Whim,
To Hit A Tree Or Take A Swim.

With Miles Of Grass On Which To Land,
It Finds A Tiny Patch Of Sand.
Then Has Me Offering Up My Soul,
If Only It Would Find The Hole.

It's Made Me Whimper Like A Pup,
And Swear That I Will Give It Up.
And Take To Drink To Ease My Sorrow,
But The Ball Knows ... I'll Be Back Tomorrow.


P.S.
Stand proud you noble swingers of

clubs and losers of balls....

A recent study found the average golfer

walks about 900 miles a year.

Another study found
golfers drink, on average,

22 gallons of alcohol a year.

That means, on average,
golfers get about 41 miles to the
gallon.

Kind of makes you
proud. I Almost feel like a
hybrid.

National Gallery of Writing

I am so excited about this new National Gallery of Writing sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English. We could start our own gallery within this gallery called the Blue Hour Blue Moon Gallery and each submit a piece of writing. What do you think? Click on the title above to visit the gallery and scroll down to "Start a Local Gallery" to learn more about it. Then let's talk about my idea.

Dan Kohlhepp's Birthday Toast

A Birthday Toast
to
Jayne Marie Parrott Magee
on her
Sixtieth Birthday
April 10, 2009

The Literary Reference
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
Juliet, Romeo and Juliet


The Set-up
In the early 1990’s Jayne and I worked together in Doctor Lewis’s converted veterinary clinic at 415 East DuBois Street, and we had adjoining offices with the door between us always open. Thus, I was able to hear Jayne explain on many occasions who she was to dunder-headed people on the other end of the phone:

“Jayne like Mansfield;

Parrott like the Bird;

Magee, M-A-G-E-E.”

For my own amusement, I would replay Jayne’s response in my head and tried to find a suitable finish for her simile trifecta. “Jayne like Mansfield, Parrot like the bird, Magee like Gary? No, too confusing. Like Greg? No, too obscure. Like Garth? No, Really obscure. Like HK? I don’t think so.

Over the years, I got to know Jayne and her family better. While Jayne was like her mother and father, I realized Jayne was like her daughter, Meghan. She was also like her daughter Amanda. In fact, she was very much like her sons Gabriel and Galen. So I finally had my similes and her toast.


The Toast

Here’s a toast to Jayne Marie Parrott Magee, our friend:

To Jayne, like her mother’s best friend who battled polio and today survives as a tribute to the power of the human spirit;
To Marie, like her mother, Ruth Marie, who is a touchstone for her life’s realities;
To Parrott, like the man her mother loved and the father who raised her;
To Magee, like the spirits of her progeny, Meghan, Amanda, Gabriel, and Galen, who carry her dreams, passions and many kindnesses; and
To our friend, like the person we thank for making us smile and our lives richer!


Happy Birthday!

The Greatest Game Ever Played

I have never been an athlete. When I was in grade school, I was always the last one picked for the baseball team. I tried out for cheerleading every Spring of my high school career, but to no avail. Therefore, it came as quite a shock when at midlife, I realized that I had become obsessed with a sport: golf. On any given summer day, you will find me trudging across the links of the DuBois Country Club, pushing my golf cart that looks like a baby carriage (the irony of this simile hasn’t escaped my attention) up and down the hills as I smack a tiny white ball with a stick. Why do I insist upon torturing myself in this way, a sane person might ask. My response to this query would be that I am passionate about golf because it challenges me physically, mentally, and emotionally.

As a soon-to-be sixty-year-old woman, golf is a physical challenge. First of all, golf is a physical challenge because I am short. I have tall friends who can hit the ball a mile. I think it has something to do with physics. Having used that as an excuse, I must confess that my best golfing buddy, JoAnne, is exactly my height and she plays par golf. However, JoAnne works much harder at it than I do. Secondly, golf challenges me physically because I really don’t have any muscle strength. Granted, I go to Curves several times a week, but I don’t make time to do the weight lifting required to build up more muscle mass. Thirdly, golf challenges me physically because of the weather conditions. When it is almost 90 degrees and the humidity rivals Florida, my face gets so red and I sweat so much that I have often been stopped by fellow golfers who fear that I am having a stroke. I am—a heat stroke. Therefore, I have learned the hard way that, for me, the best times to play golf are in the early morning or early evening. What I love about golf, even though it pushes me beyond my physical limits, is that it is a game I can play well into my senior years. I need only to observe the 85-year-old woman who plays in our weekly golf league--and beats the socks off me--to test this theory.

In addition to the physical challenges of golf, golf also challenges me mentally. I have been told by many golf coaches that you play the game of golf “between your ears.” This means that golf is a mind game! It is no coincidence that my best golf scores occur on days when I am golfing alone or with my husband. No, it isn’t because I am cheating on my scores. On those days, I am totally relaxed and just doing it for fun. Conversely, my worst golf scores are always posted on the days when we have our Lucy League (the woman’s golf league at the DuBois Country Club, named after the 1950s TV show I Love Lucy) or when I am asked to play in a tournament. I get myself so psyched out that I am lucky to hit my ball off the tee and not hit a tree or send it splashing into the creek. Golf is a game that requires total concentration. If I am worrying about my kids, my spouse, or my finances, I can guarantee that I will have a score of 70 for nine holes of golf. However, it is because golf requires my full attention that I love it so much. I have to leave all my worries behind me whenever I head to the golf course.

Lastly, golf challenges me emotionally. When we first started playing in what we like to call “The Big Girls League,” my friend, JoAnne, and I would set a goal to just make it through nine holes of golf without crying. If we were successful at that feat, we considered it a victory. There is nothing like playing in a 4-person Scramble on Couples’ Night while your spouse glares at you and/or swears at you every time you add another stroke to the team score to stretch one's nerves to the breaking point. As my friend, Dan, loves to remind me, the game of golf requires “great ego strength.” I have had to learn not to judge my own worth or value to society by either my golf score or the numbers on my scale!

As the daffodils poke through the dirt and the snow melts off the ground, you can find me in my garage excitedly cleaning my clubs for a new season. In spite of the physical, mental, and emotional challenges of this frustrating sport, my passion for golf remains undiminished. Every Sunday of my youth, my father watched golf on TV after he got home from playing 18 holes of golf. I thought he was nuts. Now that he is playing golf in that beautiful country club in the heavenly realms, I am the one playing golf on all Sundays and holidays and watching Tiger Woods play in the US Open. Who would have believed it? Certainly not me or anyone who knows me. So if you see a short, chubby, middle-aged woman teeing off with her Pink Panther driver, and you hear someone melodiously bellow, “Fore!”--duck and run!

* Note: the short video clip below provides me with inspiration for the 2009 golf season.

Poetry Commentary

I have just started reading Robert Frost poems again. Anyone have a favorite that they enjoy that we can chat about? I just read "Mending Walls" and really enjoyed the way the poem is a conversation between two speakers.

Everyone Has a Story to Tell

Dan Kohlhepp gave me a terrific article about writing memoirs that appeared in the AARP magazine. I use it in my classes for writing prompts. If you click on the title above, it will take you to this link. You can even order the entire book if you wish.

What I would like to do is use any of one of the prompts mentioned in the article to get all of us writing. So here goes the first one, taken from this article:

Write two paragraphs that end with “You can’t get away from it.”

Let's Share Our Writing

I am inviting anybody who is writing anything to post part of it on the Blog for all of us to read and comment upon. I am learning all about digital technology at a workshop at Lakeland, so I will post some of my assignments and get your feedback on how well they work. Remember that if you add a Word file, to save it in rft (Rich Text Format) so everybody can read it. You can also post it in pdf format. Please add links to your texts, rather than type in the entire text as a Post.

Introduction

Introduction:

I am Loretta, 77 years old. I am new to blogs, so I will make some mistakes. I am retired from teaching composition. I used to journal every day and write a poem once in awhile.

Let's Try Again!!!

We haven't been on this blog for awhile. I think it is time that we try again. I'm adding a link to a video on ted.com. about genius. Just click on the title above that is underlined, and it will take you to the link. We can all watch it and discuss what we think about it and then maybe share some writing???