Harper Having Power Outage in 2023

     I have been tracking the home runs and power production of Bryce Harper since his inception as a wunderkind in the early years of the twenty-teens. He was the number one draft pick over ten years ago, 2011, and made the difference for the Nationals and eventually the Philadelphia Phillies as serious contenders in their divisions and the overall league. Despite losing Bryce in 2019, the Nats performed excellently and won the World Series, the path or destination that elite players Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper had made the Nationals a serious club to reckon with. Until the World Serious triumph in 2019 where the fire sale of the best players decimated the club in the years since. 

    The Phillies have done well with Harper and other talent that they have acquired since, like Realmuto, Trea Turner, and others. No World Series yet, and this year they are struggling to stay in contention. We will see entering into the "dog days" of August. Some teams are doing really well, like the Atlanta Braves, and the surprising Arizona Diamondbacks.

    Harper is hitting well, percentage-wise, but he has only hit 5 home runs so far in 2023, which is quite a small amount for him. He is currently sitting 290 career home runs (172 all-time), while the amazing but lately oft injured Mike Trout has a whopping 368 career homers (84th all-time). Trout had a small home run year as recently as 2021, with 8, but he only played 36 games, again because of his recent health problems. He is out now again with injury, at the still relatively young age of 31. Bryce has not caught up much in the home run department, but now has achieved 6221 plate appearances to Trout's 6517. While Mike has 300 more plate appearances than Bryce for now, Harper has a ways to get to the ranks of the South New Jersey Mauler, my new nickname for this long-time loser with the Angels. Complete winner on a career losing team, granted.

    Again, the Phils are in contention now, as are the Angels, who are trying to use the amazing Shohei Ohtani to be competitive in the American League; Harper is trying not to bottom out with his fewest home runs since the pandemic-shortened 2020 or the injury-curtailed 2014, when he played 100 games, and the former with only 58 (out of 60 total compensatory with the world-wide virus sweeping the populations).

    Bryce has played a total of 72 games played so far this year; with another 60 or so needs to hit 10 plus long balls to be above his season lows. His batting average is good, better than normal, at .291, as opposed to his career average of .280. He is contributing and making his team competitive, winning, but these last two months should prove whether he and the Phils will live up to their billings. Some call it potential. Bryce has all of it, as always.

    We shall see. Soto and Machado in San Diego are battling to be in the same place. For the season, and in their respective great careers.

Hemingway Wrote Some True Sentences

    Most of us Americans, and many of the world: we know the works of Ernest Hemingway. He had a way with words. That is an understatement. I read some of his books while in my high school days, the time of secondary education, as it is called. Primary was over, it was time to grow up. Live and learn and know the sentences that make us who we are. That is a part of maturation and understanding. Becoming part of who we are, self-realization, or what we know and think as individuals and societies, running through the sentences, the stories, the books, the recurring universal themes of Ernest Hemingway. He won the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature. His books and stories accompany much of our present patterns and themes, some decades or a century later. One of our nation's and world's masters.

    I read For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Garden of Eden. An okay sampling. I should have read more. Like anything, some parts or randomized portions are not enough. A couple summers later, I checked out a large anthology of short stories by Ernest Hemingway. He wrote of a young man in Michigan, Nick, who would fish and hunt and live outdoors and experience life.

    An analogy and an allegory for all of us. We grow up simple; some of us move on to more complex places and stations. But, we never truly leave the young person within. We carry ourselves with us. We can change, but mostly we do not.

    Hemingway changed and matured through the World Wars, being damaged and healing in an Italian hospital, falling in love, returning to the peacetime and living in Paris, and Europe, especially Spain, and later Florida and Cuba, and places wild in the African continent. But he was still the young man Nick all along. He suffered tremendous concussive blows in those decades, that would lead to his eventual premature and tragic death. Depression and despair are one thing, heavy brain concussions are another. He ended his life under this duress. One particular blow in France with a military jeep was severe. A biographer concluded that drinking too much did not help either.

    I read a long biography of Hemingway a few short years ago. I have read his ubiquitous A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises, and I have labored with his likely under-estimated or under-appreciated Death in the Afternoon. I wrote on one of his most famous short stories in college, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. I think that I received an A on the paper that I wrote in Spanish for my Mexican professor, himself a cuentista, or short story writer.

    Hemingway is an icon and a brand, a style and a tour-de-force. With many true sentences, albeit fictionalized and crafted from his imagination, much of the time.

        Throughout it all he was the same young man discovering the world, one fish cast and boat trip at a time. One true sentence at a time.

    

    This is the story of us. The true sentences that he penned or penciled ring true with millions of us. His stories-- of a bull in the stadium of Spain, or a fisherman pulling in a large haul, or trying to, or an intrepid soldier finding the bridge to destroy behind enemy lines in an awful civil war: all of it reverberates and resonates in our hearts and intellects, one true sentence at a time.

    May we find that young outdoorsman, that ambulance driver, that fisherman, that lover, that person of strength and courage, young or old, within us. May we let the true sentences of humanity and God rise up with and within us, and seep and distill into us, pushing us to who and where we need to be.

    One true sentence at a time. 

    

 Some Not So Stand Up Guatemalans

[Disclaimer: Talking about others, analyzing them and ourselves, sometimes in comparison to one another, and often simply reflecting on them in light of myself, ourselves, is not always a way of elevating oneself over others, but there is a non-selfish and honest pursuit in such searches and investigations. Trying to be honest and identify things in both ourselves and others is a good thing, over all. I have had plenty of negative thoughts and feelings about myself lately, the last few days, which if you have a long enough memory, which often times I do, adds up to a lot of years. So, I hope that my writings about the people below do not make you think that I am that great or better, or that I do not have serious flaws or committed big mistakes, or commit them regularly. Etcetera an on and on.]

I was reflecting about some people, some men, I have known from Guatemala. I thought about a few that did not leave great impressions on me... but like all of us, they are a mixed bag of good, bad, black, grey, and white. And I am not perfect, I know, and we should be careful of how we judge others...

I will change some names to protect those who may really know them. By the way, I have met and I know of some very upstanding people from Guatemala. But here are some cases...

When I lived at BYU-Provo (Utah) I got to know two brothers from Guatemala City (about 1994-95) who were nephews of a Church General Authority; both were extremely impressive individuals: they were polished, nice, smart, they had learned German besides their native Spanish and now English, and apart from their decent social grooming, they seemed to be on the path to economic prosperity and well being. Financial success is a big part of what we are and what we do, and how we judge ourselves. They appeared to me that they were destined for great futures, or at minimum quite respectable lives of wisdom and joy. Any college wants this for its students, yes?

I wish to discuss the cases of three men of Guatemala that had their virtues and their flaws, and perhaps derive some knowledge from them. All of them were born and raised in Guatemala, a place where I have met maybe thousands of people, mostly in California and Virginia, but also in places that I have lived all across the United States and the world.

1. Maximiliano of California, the man of other ladies.

Maximiliano had served his mission in Guatemala, maybe in the 1970s or early 1980s. He was a kind and somewhat authoritative man, he possessed an amount of gravitas or strength of personality, and after raising maybe his one child, I think a boy, with a faithful, devoted wife. He had some priesthood authority in my faith, and more or less in his own words could not help himself with a young lady in my church, outside of his marriage. Worse yet, this was not the first time that he was excommunicated for adultery. He had been through it years before, and this was his second chance that I knew of. Second time to cheat on his wife, be caught, and be tried in a Church court and dismissed. People that I knew that had known him and looked for support and fellowship were asking about his presence. He attended another church unit, of another language. I spoke to him in private, and with his wife, and he was still going to church. But I was definitely disappointed. It was more than just him, it was the dozens that cared about him and allegedly that he cared about.

Ugh, Max. So sad, and you took others with you, even younger children of the adults that loved and respected you.

Ugh, ugh, ugh. This was more than just you, Maximiliano. More than just you wife. Some of those in the lurch of might have served missions and affected thousands. But you betrayed them,

2. Efrain of Muscoy, the accused.

3. Jorge of Virginia, the reclusive technophobe.

 Original last draft: Draft

• Aug 15, 2020

 My Mother's Feet

    When I was little I would see my parents' bare feet on occasion. I would see my mother's exposed feet more than my dad's. Why? I think that he wore his socks more, while my mom had this habit of sitting on a recliner or couch and either "picking" at her calloused skin, mostly located on her back heals, or clipping her toenails, or maybe filing them, or all of the above. She would sit in her night gown, with naked legs. I distinctly remember her one time showing me the hard cornered edges of her pinky toes. I asked her "why are they pointed (unnaturally) like that?" She responded, "Forty years of wearing shoes."

    Was that it, her precise words? Verbatim quotes grow blurrier with time. Or perhaps her answer was pithier, like "Forty years of working in tight shoes." Either way, the point was made. Or points! I think she elaborated on wearing shoes as a nurse, which she had done a bit as a young woman, and less in that field when older, raising us kids and moving on to other career jobs. But, there was the proof of her footwear in her scrunched-up toes. She had a bad habit of picking at her callouses on her feet, which would be gross to most people, but that was just my mom. Diet Coke with ice or a Tab poured into a tall glass, of which I would steal at least a sip, at the side table of the living room recliner, and her working her working class feet.

    Further Distance

   

     My mom moved out of the house the summer after my sixth-grade year. It made sense to most people in my home, including her, I think. It was what it was. My parents broke up. So, for us it was a long, hot summer. She made a visit to the local hospital at one point, she stayed there a bit. I cannot recall how long it lasted. I visited her there one time with my sister; it was hard. Things were hard that summer; I think that I tried to deal with it in different ways. Maybe that was the summer I became more involved with following sports? A healthier distraction from the real world, perhaps. Who knows?

    I would visit with my mom twice a week after she got her own place by herself, beginning Tuesdays and Sundays. Later we switched it to Thursdays and the Sabbath. I did this in seventh grade, up through the last week before I left on my mission at age 19. For six years. I maintained a close relationship to my mom even though I did not sleep over at her apartments or house. We stayed close, and on my mission to far off South America, she would write me weekly. Back then before there were emails, or any Skype screens or texts. Old fashioned letters. For two years she sent the steady handwritten missives of love and commitment, to her "# 1 Son" as she affectionately referred to me. I was her only boy. Maybe in that time she learned the ways of reflexology, or foot massage as therapy. 

    My mom's gift of foot massage as far as timing in my life is hazy to me now. Perhaps she would give me a wonderful foot massage after returning from my two-year service, after I wore out a few pairs of shoes in Chile as a young man. I spent a year back home in Bloomington, then I moved away for five years, sometimes not talking much to my mom on the phone, but we kept in contact, always. I would visit on the Christmas holidays. I think I would receive an amazing foot massage when coming home in the cold winter, perhaps once a year.

    I found myself back in Indiana once more in my late twenties, chagrined by failed relationships and not finding the right woman, the right partner. Or succeeding in a career, for that matter. My mother was a source of closeness and spiritual and physical tenderness; she would recommend certain young ladies to date. She was my cheer leader and advocate. I would spend dinners and evenings with her and her sweet husband weekly. She and my stepdad and I had good laughs and good times, they both becoming deeper close friends as I approached my thirties. We were adult friends and close buddies. 

    Gratefully I found my bride and soul mate (right?) when moving away from the Mid-West for the third time. I met her in Southern California, the state and region where my own parents originally met. We would come back to visit Indiana, each year with an ever-growing family, kids in tow. Did my mother give me foot massages when I was married? Maybe. The times now all blend together, the decades and recollecions have amassed.

    It was while I was away from everyone in the conflict of Afghanistan, having turned forty-two, when I found out that my mom was diagnosed with cancer for the second time in her life. When she had it when I was ten years-old she dealt with radiation therapy and came out of it pretty well. Thirty years later the liver disease was not meant to be recovered from as nicely, despite an organized chemical treatment which amounted to months of no avail in defeating the disease. I spoke with my mother frequently on Skype in those months, which was a huge blessing for me, being on the other side of the planet. 

    She handled the terminal sentence with grace and good spirits. We were grateful to see each other and talk as we could via screens across the continents, and by phone upon returning home. She passed in early March of 2014, at age 73.

    The Last Week, the Last Day, The Last Farewell

    The Thursday night before she passed she called me on the phone, and there was a definite sign in her voice of her body taking a turn for the worse. She became emotional as she explained that she would miss her grandchildren. I drove to Indiana that weekend, and arrived to see her in a bad state of mind and physical condition. Her body and brain were failing her. She could not act or think straight. She was not herself, really a shell of her normal bubbly personality.

    She died at the hospice on a Tuesday late afternoon. I was dropping off her older brother and sister at the house when I got the call from her husband of 28 years. I arrived at the bedside a few minutes later. I gave her a kiss on the cheek, and I felt emotions of our shared lives well up and flow.

    I thought of her feet. Her body still had life warmth in it. I moved to the foot of the death bed, and lifted the covers, and held her feet in my hands, hugging them and wept.

    I think I dropped some of my tears on her toes, the ones so well worn and cramped over the years. Her bare feet were the last real contact I made with her. 

    Later my sister and wife were able to dress her body in her final clothes for the funeral and burial. Her last garments to carry her before the resurrection. They probably placed socks and shoes on her feet.

    My embrace of my mother's feet symbolize what I care for about her. The vehicles that made her as a spry youth, that made her a nurse, a young mother, a growing and then mature mother, wife, friend, servant to others.

    Mysteries Abound

    There are a lot of mysteries surrounding the human psyche, the human spirit, the human soul, the human animal. These enigmas and puzzles can relate to me, or relate to supernal human (and Godly) figures like Jesus of Nazareth. There is conjecture, debate, and beliefs if He ever married as a mortal, or even could have had children. I am not sure, but I do not believe that any of those things would constrain Him as Who He claims to be.

    We do know quite conclusively that Christ had a special and close relationship to His mother, of whom it is recorded in the New Testament and Quran, to name at least two authoritative sources. He very much loved her, and she most certainly loved Him: as a baby, a child, a grown man. Even as a God. Many of us have this belief and relationship with our Divine Master. But there can only be one birth mother.

    Me, I have married and made myself, or been made, into a person that I am today. I am a product of the person that my mother and father, and derivatively others over time have made me. My mom and I had a special relationship: spiritually, cosmically, emotionally, physically. 

    I was her buddy on at least one occasion traveling up to Indianapolis for her radiation treatment when I was 10 and she was forty. She made it past that hurdle, but in life we know that most tangible things will not last. Human life is precious, is transitive, is at times too ephemeral.

    But I knew as I hugged my mom's feet that cold and snowy Tuesday afternoon, the sun fittingly setting on the west side of town, the city of my birth, for a new night of change and transformation and life altering conditions, I knew that touching and weeping over her last warm tissues, for me, was a way to welcome her transition, say a fond and heartfelt farewell, and give a kiss to the future and welcome feet of my Lord and God Himself, the Anointed One of Israel. The mother of all my earthly living that I knew who brought me into this great, big, beautiful and terrific, ever-expanding world and its surrounding universe. Behold, thy mother! Jesus said in his tremendous waning moments on this mortal plain. It was an exclamation, charge, and commandment.

    Would we all have such a deep and loving connection and relationship to our earthly and heavenly mothers. I am blessed for having had this, a bond that does not ever end. It goes on in perpetuity. As the favorite hymn of my mother proclaims, "there is no end to love."

The last verse of "If You Could Hie to Kolob", that we sang at her Saturday funeral says:

There is no end to glory;

There is no end to love;

There is no end to being;

There is no death above.

There is no end to glory;

There is no end to love;

There is no end to being;

There is no death above.

https://lyricstranslate.com

    

    Long live my mom, long live her calloused and now eternally guarded feet.

7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!

    Isaiah 52:7. King James Version

Grateful to be American on the Fourth and Every Other Day

 We know the United States is rich and powerful, and suffers from hubris and is mighty flawed and too often hypocritical. It is a large, prosperous place of opportunity, but also has plenty of economic and social problems.

    But, from every war and peacetime accomplishment, I must say that this is the land of overall good. Capitalism is "bad" or immoral, the socialists and communists cry for over a century?

    Look at the sad and awful legacies of those attempts in China and North Korea alone! Despicable. Deprave. Slavery, government sanctioned rape, hunger, starvation, oppressive lack of freedom.

   No, we will not abide that. We cannot. We would rather die. Even our rich and powerful will die to crush these despicable tyrannies and despots, evil systems of authoritarian control and disgusting power over human will.

    Russia? Please. We will always oppose your strong-armed and cruel, sadistic ways. You cannot wipe out your neighbors, and you prop up the worst regimes in the world, like Assad in Syria.

    We threw off the British, the strongest kingdom in the world over two hundred years ago. They were our best enemies ever, possessing many inklings of democracy since the Magna Carta centuries before our nation's Declaration of Independence. We hashed out and signed the Constitution, collectively ratified one of the best documents ever. The Bill of Rights and our multiple amendments, to include the Articles added under Abraham Lincoln and our crushing the wayward confederates who were based on the economy of human chattel.

    We take on and defeat the big, mean, gross ones: Hitler, the Japanese autocrats, the Communists of many lands, the terrorists and despots of many more.

    Yes, we have continued to be the world's best stalwart hope and promise. We are grateful and acknowledge our strong and peace-loving allies.

    And I am forever grateful and proud to be a part of it, and working on the errors and flaws, celebrating the overall achievements and presence.

    Happy Independence Day to us and to all others that choose to enforce freedom and liberty.

    

    

For those that think that we put too much money and effort into our military and arms? Think that over very carefully. I challenge you.

    We are as free and prosperous as we are today because around a million veterans have died in the last 240 years so that you can so loftily and mistakenly opine.

    Stars and Stripes forever, land where my fathers [and fellow citizen soldiers died]. For me, you, and every person that you have ever known. Buried and spread out across every continent and ocean of the planet.

    I have but one life to give to my country, and I am so glad I have been given that right and privilege.

    I love the country that I was born and raised in not because that I am beholden to it as a native born of her, but because I know that it is the best bastion of freedom that exists. I will sacrifice and love it to the death. I will live for it, as I do, and I would take a bullet for it when the time comes.

    To protect and serve, and in the end give all for the place that has saved the world time and time again.

    I am sorry for the natives of our proud land killed and persecuted, and those of other lands innocently killed. It has happened. However, overall, we save more than we bring down under ruin.

    We, the United States of America, we are a place and a powerful system, a space of committed peoples and institutions where all humans are learning to be counted and counted upon. Sign me up, again and again.