The Rest of the Story

As promised, I will add the rest of the story to my last blog post just in case someone was unable to link to the website that covered the story. I hope you were. It is much more impactful than what I can write here. That being said here is the...

SPOILER ALERT! If you have not read the previous post about Good Sports, stop now and read that one first.

To recap, the story was of El Paso, Texas' Coronado high school's basketball team whose manager was mentally challenged.  Before the game, the coach, Peter Morales, had the manager, Mitchell Marcus, suit up and knew that tonight he would give the boy his chance. As the game neared the end, the team was 10 points ahead. The coach put the manager in and let him play. Unfortunately Mitchell missed throw after throw. Finally, with seconds left the ball went to the opposing team.

At that point the scenario changes.  Franklin High School Senior, Jonathan Montanez, gets the ball. Instead of throwing it to one of his teammates, he calls out Mitchell's name and throws him the ball. In the final seconds of the game Mitchell throws.....and the ball goes IN!

The stands erupt in cheers and students flood the floor. It can be noted here, that Coronado High School was still in the lead, and was going to win. But that really has nothing to do with the story.

• The coach was prepared to lose as long as Mitchell had his chance to shine.
• Jonathan Montanez was ready to step back to give another player the chance of a lifetime.
• The whole student body was ecstatic for Mitchell when he made the basket.

Sometimes it just feels great to step back and let someone else be the star. That's really the whole point of being a good sport, isn't it?

I Love a Good Sport

Teaching our kids to be good sports when playing games can be a difficult thing. Some kids are born to be naturally competitive and even people who aren't naturally driven to win, don't like to lose. Lately, the news too often covers parents who go a little crazy trying to urge their kids on in a game. So this month I was delighted to find two truly great examples of people being good sports.

The first was a contestant, Jean-Claude from Ottawa, Ontario, who was on The Price Is Right. On one of the challenges he was told that IF he won that game he would also be awarded a check for $20,000.00. Well, Jean-Claude guessed correctly, and when they presented him with the check he was almost overcome.

"Are you kidding?" he asked, his hands covering his face. Then he collected himself, and thanked Drew and the models presenting him with the prize. It was heart-warming to see such a grateful person. Fast forward to the end of the show.

Jean-Claude made it into the showcase and gave his estimate of the prize value. Jean-Claude was over by $5,000.00. (That automatically means he has lost.) The other contestant was nervous, but Jean-Claude kept saying "You're ok. You're good. You'll get it." And he stood back and clapped for her while Drew was revealing the value. When she won Jean-Claude could be heard shouting for her..."I told you it was good!" He shouted, he cheered, he whistled for her as she won the final showcase.

Jean-Claude wasn't just a good sport. He was truly grateful for his prize, but just as happy when he lost. He was a joy to watch.

The second story was totally different but even more heartwarming.

We have heard wonderful stories of coaches who put in bench warmers or even disabled kids for the final play. Usually they have a Cinderella ending where they make the final goal or basket. This story didn't play out that way.

Even though the team was ahead by 10 points when the coach put in the team manager, who was mentally challenged, his attempts at scoring time after time were futile. What happens next is where the story becomes beautiful, and where you meet a young man who understood true sportsmanship. I won't tell you the ending. Instead, click on the link to see it unfold.
http://www.kdcountry94.com/2013/02/27/good-news-high-school-basketball-player-passes-ball-to-mentally-challenged-player/

And just in case you can't make the link work my next post will give you the 'rest of the story'.

March Madness

March is here and if you are a basketball fan that means March Madness is about to begin. I am not a basketball fan and if you are reading this blog in hopes that it is about basketball, you might as well stop here and look elsewhere. In fact, to me there is probably nothing that could drive me to the bottle (vodka, that is) faster than February in Pittsburgh, except watching endless games of basketball in March. That is true March Madness for me.

However, March is also a rather schizophrenic month. For instance;

One day the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. That night I was star-gazing. The next morning I awoke to 7 inches of snow. It was still falling so hard I could hardly see the neighbors. By noon, the sun was shining. The sky was blue. The snow that had covered the deck railing had melted off. And the temperature was in the 40's. March Madness.

 Or the day it was 38 degrees outside. On the ground the snow was melting. In the air the snow was falling...Hard. Ten minutes later the sun was shining. March Madness.

The birds are feeling spring is in the air even if I can't find it. A bluebird has come to check out the birdhouse. A house sparrow has taken up residence. Papa Sparrow perches on top. Mama Sparrow sits inside, guarding the door. Papa Bluebird demands entrance. Flutters!...Twitters!...Squawks!; the Sparrrows prevail. The bluebirds fly off in a huff. March Madness.

The weather warms up. Across the street the snow has melted. A couple of women jog by in colorful, springy, outerwear and wave at me. I am bundled up in a sweatshirt, puffy vest, warm hat, giving my hydrangeas a spring trim. I have my snow boots on because the front of my house gets more shade than sun and I still have 3 inches of hard, crusty snow in my flower beds. March Madness?

In the midst of all this craziness today it is gorgeous! Sun! Blue Sky! 60's! Windows open! As Maggie and I go for a walk the breeze feels wonderful in my hair. Kids are all over the place.This is the kind of crazy I like! I love looking at how people dress on the first 'warm' day after living in the 20's. Shorts, T-shirts, flip-flops. Mind you, there are still piles of snow laying around. The ground is soggy and wet and cold. Who cares?

I'll just ignore the blizzard that Denver and the mid-west are getting today and that will pass through here in a couple of days. In March, you take what you get and join in the madness.

Changes

Today I am holed up in my office. Music plays on the radio. Lamplight gives the room a cheery feel. A candle fragrances the air. Photos of family smile at me. It is a cozy place to hang when outside it is cold, gray, and snow flakes flutter to the ground.

I think this is a Landmark Year for me. It is the end of February. Tomorrow March begins. It is snowing outside, if only ineffectively. The temp outside is hovering at 32 and the snow mostly melts when it hits the ground. This is the best of both worlds. I see the loveliness of the snow, but there won't be any shoveling to do later. In February that is always good news, because by now, I've usually had my fill of shoveling.

So why is this a Landmark Year? Because even with the gray skies I am feeling very even-keeled about the weather. It hasn't always been so. In fact, I was a little afraid to say anything until I survived the month without losing my senses and collapsing into despair even if only for a moment. Winter tends to try my sense of optimism at least once. For proof, go back to 2010 and read this post. http://viewfromanemptynest-connie.blogspot.com/2010/02/some-days-view-is-just-plain-cloudy.html
But this year, so far, so good!

Change doesn't come easily to me. (I alluded to that in my last post!) After many years in a warm, sunny--let me repeat that--SUNNY climate I was surprised at how hard I found the initial impact of a northern winter. I had grown up in Pennsylvania, so I figured it wouldn't be that hard. I expected the lack of sun to be harder than the cold and it was, but even more than I was prepared for. After 5 years, I seemed to have turned the corner on that albatross.

There may be some simple reasons for this improved outlook. The first one is simply Time. I've had time to adjust.

I first noticed a change of attitude last Fall. As the leaves disappeared I didn't groan in anticipation of a long, cold winter. I was back to my childhood self of enjoying each season as it came. Fall, followed by the 'holiday season' of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, which leads into True Winter--That season that has few distractions, except, perhaps, Valentine's Day.

There was another aspect that may have helped my attitude. Larry travels extensively in the winter. The first few years we were here I told people if we had a snowstorm, Larry was in Minneapolis. Because he usually was! In fact I remember getting up one morning to see his tire tracks in the newly fallen snow in the driveway. It had snowed overnight, but he had left at 5AM for the airport...leaving me to clear the sidewalks, steps and driveway.

This year our first snow occured over Christmas...and he was here to clear it out! I liked that! Of course, he was gone every other time it snowed, but you win some, you lose some.

He was also around in January a little more than usual. So that means I wasn't alone perhaps as much. And best of all, we haven't been inundated with blizzards or heavy snowfalls.

Whatever the reasons, the truth is still good news. I made it through February without losing it. I know spring will get here someday, but I'm no longer silly enough to think the month of March has anything to do with that! If anything, March is one more month to get through cheerfully. And I'm pretty sure I can do that.

I'll just keep the lights on, the music playing and light another candle.

The Little Miracles We Take For Granted

Steve Jobs once said "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
-- Business Week, May 25 1998

The other day I was sitting at my computer when the phone rang. Larry was calling from Phoenix, where he had just landed. He sounded tired. It was understandable. This is the time of year when he spends more time in airports and airplanes than at home. He had flown out of Pittsburgh early that morning. However, he didn't just sound tired. He sounded aggravated.

"What are you doing?" he wanted to know.
"Not much," I said. "Where are you?"
"I'm sitting at the freaking car rental and I CAN'T rent a car!"
This wasn't sounding good, so I proceeded with caution. "Ohh, hmm, uh, (pause) er, why not?"

Deep sigh, disgust, frustration...."because I left my driver's license going through security at the airport."

Here is where I suddenly experience a rapid series of wild imaginings. Stolen drivers license, identity theft, long months of tiresome work trying to get a mess straightened out.

"So," he continued, "you need to head out to the airport to pick it up and overnight it to me."

OHH! "You mean, they have it?" I asked in disbelief.
"Yes, I called my travel agent and he checked and TSA has it. You just have to go get it and send it out to me."

So, I did just that. I headed to the airport. I wasn't sure where to go when I walked inside. I saw a man in a gray uniform and asked, uncertainly, if he was TSA? No, he wasn't but could he help?

"My husband left his driver's license here this morning." "Rosenberry?" he asked.

Really? The first person I talk to knows exactly why I'm there? He told me where to find TSA and 10 minutes later I was walking back to the car with Larry's drivers license. (Don't worry. I did have to show proof of who I was.)

I had no idea where there was a Fed-Ex office so I pulled out my iPhone, opened maps, typed in Fed-Ex and discovered there was one 3 miles away. I had parked about 25 yards from the terminal door and before I had gotten back to the car, I had directions in hand.

Fifteen minutes later I was leaving Fed-Ex. Larry would have his license by 8:30 the next morning.

There are so many ways this could have gone wrong. But it didn't. And that's really not the point I want to make. Instead I am in awe of how easily everything worked. And I am suddenly appreciative of the many conveniences we have today.

First of all, Kudos to TSA! The people at the security checkpoint did just what they are expected to do. Sometimes people don't, so it's important to recognize them when they do. That was the first hurdle.  Finding, protecting and getting the license was done. Transport was the next one. Not so long ago that would have been the hard part.

I don't embrace change quickly. When cell phones came out I thought they were ridiculous. Who couldn't handle being away from the phone for the 30 minutes it took to get from work to home? I have an iPhone now but it's an iPhone3 that I got when I traded in my falling-apart-old-cell phone that couldn't even text. The iPhone4 had just come out so the iPhone3 was free if I signed up for a 2-year plan.

I remember Steve Jobs making that quote about designing things for people they didn't even know they wanted. As much as I admired Jobs, and love Apple products, I scoffed at his assumption that it was up to him to figure out what we wanted before we knew we wanted it! I scoff no more. Not all that long ago Larry would have been calling long distance from a pay phone. Overnight delivery was non-existent. We paid extra for airmail that took 3 days to get there. This would have been a major event.

Thanks to Steve Jobs, Fred Smith (founder of FedEx), and other visionaries, we live in a world of convenience that we often take for granted. I may scoff at most new inventions but I'm glad there are creative people who imagine them. I'm grateful for the crazy fanatics that wait in line for hours before every release, thus ensuring it's initial success. And if those new fangled gadgets hang around long enough I'll jump on the band wagon and benefit from all the ways they improve my life.

I love my laptop. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll finally own an iPad.

Family

I grew up with 3 older sisters and no brothers. My sisters were 8, 10, and 12 years older than I. They were around for my younger years, but were off and married during my adolescent years.

Our parents were amazing. Somehow they managed to raise 4 highly individual daughters and yet maintain a strong family connection. Even more importantly they raised us to respect each others' differences. Perhaps one significant aspect of our individuality was that there wasn't a lot of reason for competition among us.

Because my sisters were so much older than I when they married, their husbands became more like older brothers to me than just my sisters' chosen significant others. They were just as different from one another as my sisters were. I was young enough to look up to them and embrace their individuality. They were fascinating men.

First came Joseph. He married my sister, Mary. Poetic isn't it? Better yet, he is Jewish--an addition to our Christian family. Joseph is Canadian--an addition to our American family. He and my sister are scientists. He is an activist, a pacifist, who studied nuclear science. Through them I learned so much about our world, its environment, and our responsibility to it. They lived in 3rd world countries teaching in their universities, or working in their villages. (And I got to visit them in some of those countries! WoW! What an opportunity for a young girl.)  They taught me that as great as America is, she doesn't have all the answers. From the beginning, Joseph fascinated me. He was outspoken, fun, warm, and lively. My earliest and fondest memory of him was sitting on the couch with him and my sister, reading "Winnie the Pooh". I was just hitting my teen years. He was a wonderful reader who laughed and chuckled his way through the book. He is probably the reason that book became one of my favorites.

Then came Larry. He married my sister Susan. Larry was Christian Science--a bit of a stretch for my parents (my dad, the MD, and my mother, the nurse). They tried to dissuade my sister, but when she said he was the one, they accepted her decision and welcomed him into the family. (One way my parents taught us unconditional love.) Larry was just plain fun. He loved to have a good time. (He still does!) A favorite memory of mine focuses on our summers in Connecticut. We played King of the Mountain, swimming in the pond with rafts and inner tubes. It was the best, because he always gave us a good fight. His laugh was deep, rumbly and contagious. One memory I've carried for years is watching Sue and Larry walking ahead of us at an amusement park, holding hands, Sue skipping along beside him. He and my sister had such a good time playing. But they were devoted to their faith and we had many interesting discussions about it. He helped me think more about my own faith, defining and understanding it.

Last was Lee. He married my sister, Jean. Lee was Protestant. (I can almost hear my parents sigh with relief. "Phew!") He was the son of a banker, from our home town. But he was clearly his own person, and was destined to follow a different path from Banker's Son. Lee was not a scholar, or student as defined by college degrees. But if you read about the forefathers of this country, George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, you see how many subjects they studied and learned on their own, by reading, researching and practicing. Lee would have been highly successful in those days. That was how he did it. Following a set education was never Lee's way. But I know of few (honestly, I don't know any) people who have learned more and taught themselves more than Lee did.

His first love seemed to be electronics. As a high school kid he set up the electronics systems for his church. His bedroom was loaded with speakers, amps, control systems. Engineering was in his blood, but he couldn't sit still long enough to get through the basic classes in college that either covered stuff he knew, or covered stuff he couldn't imagine needing to know.

Through his life he was an electronics technician, a volunteer fireman, and EMT, a dairy farmer, a veal farmer, and a custom cabinet maker. 

My young children were in awe of him. He built the veal farm from the ground up, as well as a large Salt Box style home. For his house he designed a 3-way heating system that could support oil, wood or solar so it would never be without heat. As my daughter, Jen, put it, "I didn't think there was anything he couldn't fix."

Through it all, he harbored a deep interest in boating and owned a few boats, but it wasn't until he and Jean had a two-year stint in Australia that he was close enough to water to really get into it. Boating and boat rescue became a big part of their lives. And this led to the final dream.

Lee and his son decided to build a boat. First they designed it. It would be a 42' Trawler. Then, III went to a shipyard to help build the hull. From there it was 7 years of 'every night and weekend' working on the boat. Every inch of it was built by them. When he was fiberglassing the wheel house I asked him if he had ever done fiberglass before. "No", he answered matter-of-factly. "Then what made you think you could do it?" I asked.

He shrugged and said, "I read up on it, asked some questions and figured I could do that."

That pretty much sums up the way he looked at life.

The boat was beautiful. He and my sister were lucky enough to spend 5 years living on Miss Ruby, cruising the inter-coastal, making friends wherever they went, and even collecting the 'keys' to a couple of cities. And constantly learning.

What did I learn from Lee? That if you truly want it, you can do it. Success begins with a dream, depends on a plan, and comes to those who follow through.


My brothers have been amazing. Each one has enriched my life, taught me so much about life, faith, and the world. My sisters were fortunate to have met such great men. I was lucky to be young enough to enjoy getting to know them and learn from them.

I grew up with 3 sisters. But I inherited 3 awesome brothers.

A Not-So-Ordinary Day

Sunday Afternoon. Kids in shorts, parents in Tees. Children playing tag or football or just plain 'try-and-catch-me'. Dogs chasing and barking joyfully.

An afternoon walk. Windows open. Birds singing. A gentle breeze, a sunset through low clouds that promise rain. Neighbors jogging. Neighbors cleaning out gardens. A buzz saw cuts through the air. Neighbors cutting dead wood into firewood.

Windows OPEN.

What's not-so-ordinary?

It is JANUARY in Pennsylvania! 2 days ago it was 20 degrees. Tomorrow night it will be 20 degrees. 

Today it feels like late April.

It is the perfect time to Sieze the Day; (or more accurately 'enjoy the day for time is short').

And we all did. Carpe Diem!