Big Man Getting Smaller 2.0: Well, that's basketball

Sunday, January 20

Well, that's basketball

I am feeling gratitude. I have been working hard, and there have been times when I wondered if it was coming to anything. I am not wondering about that any more.

I marvel sometimes at the things that great athletes say. Sometimes a terrible ref's call would go against Larry Bird at the end of a close game and the Celtics would lose a game they should have won, and Larry would be quoted in the morning papers saying, "Well, that's basketball." He probably realized that everything would balance out, but sometimes it is hard to have the long view. The same guys frequently talk about how you can't get too low after a loss or too high after a win. It's a long season, a long journey, a long life.

So I am studying on that approach. It is important to keep doing the things that I need to do each day. My reading, writing, and arithmetic.

But just now at 7:15 am as I am writing this my son Danny called me because he had just gone online to check the bestseller list. He called to say "You passed Time." At first I thought he was saying something more cosmic, not that this isn't fairly cosmic.

Danny and I have a silly running joke now about having a bestseller and having to go on Oprah. The joke is that I will refuse to go on Oprah unless Danny and his fellow 3rd graders from the Fayerweather School can come on and sing his favorite song. Of course Danny says he doesn't want to do that anyway. It is just a goofy joke, which is my specialty in jokes.

When I said I had been working hard and it is coming to something, I was talking about the writing and publishing efforts rather than the primary campaign of BMGS. But that is going well, too. I just need to stay at it. I will.

I'm not going to write a whole Pheromones column here and now. The only book I have read the last couple of days is one of Bob Parker's Spenser novels, and as always I enjoyed it. But there are two things I want to share with you.

My friend Richard Brown and his Reunion Bluegrass Band are playing at at Johnny D's in Somerville on Tuesday, January 22 at 8:30 pm. Should be a good take.

Tomorrow is Dr. King's birthday. He was killed in April of 1968, my senior year in high school, while he was fighting for the rights of sanitation workers in Memphis. That happened here in this country. It is hard to believe sometimes, but the fact that it is true is part of why it is so important to continue working for what is right. Here is a link to a speech my friend Stewart Acuff gave last year to honor Dr. King, amidst some other material.