Circle Game - Jim Buys a Gun

"Someday, you will be old, and you will be slow, and you will be frail. Someone will ask you what you did in your day, in your prime, when you were young, and strong and fast. You will say you were a New York City fireman. When the day is done and the page is turned, that will be enough." Veteran NYC firefighter Pete Critsimilios addressing fire academy class.

I grew up in... That's sort of subject to definition. I told a person in conversation I grew up "Back East." That was apparently unsat, allegedly because that term suggests there is something superior about The East such that naming the actual state or city is unnecessary.

It was a him thing.

I was born in Philadelphia. We lived in the suburb of Southampton until I was nine, moving to Rochester, New York. College (Boston) in 1972, and finally Colorado in 1977. So, when I say I grew up "Back East" there is validity to that claim.

When Gary Christenson called to say, "Buy a gun" I knew I needed to get right on it. New York laws were complicated enough that owning a handgun involved applications and legal gymnastics and the cops... But, wasn't I going to be a cop?

Greenwood Village gave me a list of approved handguns - all revolvers - and I headed for the nearest gun store. I had to borrow the money from the credit union, since I was all of twenty-four and most of my disposable income went to skiing. But, I was going to work as a cop, and I went to buy a gun.

I found what I thought was just the right firearm - a Smith and Wesson Model 64, .38 cal in stainless steel. It felt comfortable in my hand, was solid and seemed like something a police officer might carry. It was $100, which I could afford. "Okay, I'll take it. What do you need from me?"

"A hundred dollars."

Wait...what? No waiting period, no approval from the local sheriff's department? Not even some kind of letter from Sergeant Christenson that I was being hired by them?

"Where are you from?" the guy asked.

"New York." Nobody can say I'm impervious to lived experience.

"Yeah, that explains it. Nope. Fill out this federal form that says you don't have an arrest record, give me the money and you leave with your new gun. Good luck at Greenwood."

The shock of buying a handgun like that was replaced by a new shock. I was getting into my car carrying a gun. I would soon start my new job (May 1, 1979) and I needed the gun to complete my... Wardrobe?

Bullets. I'd need bullets. But, what kind? When should I load it? Should I practice?

I didn't want to appear naive to my new co-workers, so I didn't ask the hundred questions on my mind. I didn't ask the day Gary and I went to a police supply store to get uniforms. I didn't ask when we went to the small headquarters tucked into the Denver Tech Center off I-25 and Belleview to fill out employment forms and get a bunch of hand-me-down gear. I didn't ask when I got the next shock.

All of the cop cars in the parking lot had shotguns mounted in vertical racks, accessible to the driver.

My handgun was one thing. I'd become somewhat familiar with how it worked. But, a shotgun? A shotgun is a brutish, no joke weapon. The slang - "Scattergun" - means more than scattering the shot contained in the shell. At close range, it scatters the target, too. I was about to climb into a patrol car that contained a shotgun, in case I needed to...shoot someone with it.

Shit had definitely gotten real.

I met my training officer, a guy named Tony who was also from "Back East." I met a guy named Sam, who didn't seem to think much of the fucking new guy. I met a sergeant named Rick, who was nice enough to lend me a holster.

And on my first day wearing the green and tan uniform I got into a police car and went to work.

Tony showed me how to work the car radio (there were no portables), in case something happened to him and I needed to call for help. He showed me how to work the unitrol, the gadget in the car that turned on the overheads and worked the siren. He showed me how to handcuff people, how to make a traffic stop.

Three weeks later, I was on my own - "Working solo." I went to the police academy - 8 weeks at the Colorado Law Enforcement Training Academy in Golden - later in the summer. Yes, you read that right. Three months after I put live ammunition in my handgun, and my shotgun, I received my first formal training. Small agency Colorado law enforcement, 1979.

Before you get the wrong idea, Colorado law has changed dramatically since then. 

Many years later, working for the Lakewood Police Department, assigned to the Training Unit with supervisory responsibilities at the police academy, I would meet many police officers and sheriff's deputies on their first day. They were dressed in suits, they sat in a classroom. We spent the better part of the day (after the "Stars and Bars" had welcomed them to our little shop) establishing the pecking order.

They would meet hundreds of established cops over the next six months of academic and practical training, we told them. Each of their instructors had proven they could handle the street, could survive the hazards involved in policing a free society. Them? No matter who they were, no matter what they'd done - they would have to prove to us they were worthy before they ever put duty rounds (as opposed to practice rounds) in their guns, put on an agency uniform and called in service for field training.

POST standards require certain levels of formal training and certification before anyone can work solo as a cop. Firearms training is demanding. Practice scenarios, law classes... Six months being in classrooms, out on practice fields, always being evaluated, always being assessed. Then, generally sixteen weeks in field training. That's the Twenty-first Century, here in Colorado.

Forty-seven years ago I had been a cop for four months, three of which were live - I was in uniform, on duty. Two and a half of them I was alone in the police car. I was making $9800 a year at a small police department. I was twenty-four, in my prime. I was strong, and fast. I was a working police officer, awaiting certification at the completion of the academy. 

I was sitting with a group of my peers, listening to a veteran officer talk to us informally after an academy run. We were interested in his perspective - what would our careers look like?

"Most of you will not complete careers in law enforcement," the guy said softly. "By the end of five years many of you will have concluded that it isn't for you. That's the usual progression. If you make it past five years...maybe you stay in, promote, do something meaningful. The rest will find another job. That's just the way it is."

That was the most important lesson of those early days. It wasn't a career for everyone. Even those of us in our early twenties, in our prime, at our strongest...

What would the next four years look like, and what conclusion would I draw.?

To be continued... 

 

  

  

Circle Game, continued

Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck):
I need your help. I can't tell you what it is, you can never ask me about it later, and we're gonna hurt some people.

James Coughlin (Jeremy Renner):
...Whose car are we gonna take?

"The Town" (2010)

That much thought went into my decision to ride a bicycle across the country. Depending on how long you've known me, your next comment is likely - "The planning stage was a feat of overthinking for the books." Depending on how long you've known me...

I've written profusely about this adventure, and will do so many more times during this 50th year anniversary, Good Lord willing and... All that. We intend to return to the bike trail in Eastern Colorado, camping near Eads and looking eastward across the Plains, as I did so many years ago. Return with the love of my life, the dogs, and the memories of a transformative road that led to...now.

Camp, Day One, Bigfoot Country

There were so many adventures, so many days of wonder and exploration, of finding that I could accomplish something wonderful if I let myself. I've told the story of Jeffrey City, WY and the unabashedly flirtatious teenage girls ("Long Time Gone"). "On Gossamer Wings" put the ride into a life's context.

I wrote two pieces about the late Charles Kuralt ("Preparing for the Road to '76" and "On the Road To '76") and his years-long journey to see an America most people either drive past, fly over or live in without noticing. Right now I miss Charlie, for the balance we desperately need as we are on the road to '26.

Glen Griffin makes a second appearance in "Like a River." Barbara Beck gets a paragraph in "It's the Mileage." Both figured far more prominently in the ride, and in where the "ride" took me afterward. than would be suggested by how many words I've granted them. 

Barbara and I kept in touch, met for a ski week in March 1977, and dated briefly after I'd moved to Colorado later that year (she was a student at DU). This is where the "intellectual exercise" of crafting life themes mentioned previously (Circle Game) collides with Alan Jackson's "Here in the Real World." When hearts get broken... Not fun enough. Not fun at all. But, stick with me. Shit continues to get real, and it's cool.

Glen...

I knew how to ride a bike when I started Bikecentennial, and the months of hockey coaching had given me the legs to begin the journey. Glen taught me how to be a cyclist, how to suffer in the saddle and not make a thing of it. How to solve problems on the road and make light of them. How to tell bike stories that involve you, but aren't about you.

We were in a camp in the Tetons. I'd been in an accident the day before and suffered minor injuries. He prescribed beer, a lot of it. A second group of riders asked if they could share the site with us, and then settled down to have a brew of their own. We were swapping stories, life on the road kinds of stories, and one of the new arrivals turned to me.

"Do you know who he is?" he asked, pointing at Glen.

"Glen."

"He was the road racing champion of California a few years ago."

No wonder I had such a hard time keeping his wheel. He'd told a bunch of race training stories, but never that he'd won a thing.

Some readers, especially those five of you non-family members who know me best (that's an inside joke) are now saying, "Wait a minute. That's a great story but do you really expect us to believe you sat around telling stories with people you hardly knew?" Yes. It was that kind of transformative experience.

Years later, as a bike patrol instructor... The echos of a thousand B76 miles in Glen's company - ha, in his wake - resonated as I tried to teach by example, to impart not just skill but the true love of spending a life on a bike saddle. Show, don't tell. 

We kept in touch for several years after, went skiing together (and he showed me some very interesting M-1 Abrams prototype photos). He sent me a wedding present in 1980, a stained-glass lamp he'd made. I still think of him often.

In Kansas, I learned a valuable lesson about saying "Yes." I was camping, alone, at a rest stop when a pickup truck pulled up. The gregarious, cowboy-hatted obvious rancher got out and struck up a conversation. He was delighted to hear the story, had a million questions and invited me to toss my bike in the back of the truck and join them for dinner at their nearby farm. Whenever I think about him and his very Kansas manners I regret saying no. It's what introverts are inclined to say, and this encounter helped me to say yes more often in life, if only occasionally.

The East Trailhead, Yorktown, VA

Ah, the painfully shy introvert side of me - it took an awful thrashing. People would just walk up to me, or us, and strike up conversations. By us, I mean other riders whom I'd befriended, which in itself was a miracle. We got used to the repetitive questions - most of us used up two sets of tires and, yes, the saddle sometimes made us ache - but tried to be good natured about it. I learned...humility.

My parents and younger brother drove down to Virginia, to pick me up after it was all said and done. I was sitting in the lobby of a hotel when my mom caught sight of me. Her three steps toward me covered the fifty feet in nothing, flat. I had had an adventure. She had worried every day. I would only understand when I had kids of my own. 

I returned home, and enrolled in the police science school at the Rochester Institute of Technology, intending to transfer the credits to Northeastern, to graduate there with my Class of '77 as I had promised my parents. A course in Creative Writing sounded like fun, and it was. It gave me the chance to write a few essays about the summer I'd just experienced. It gave me something far more valuable.

The prof asked me to read one aloud, the story of a rider who was killed on the road. I had passed her group as they gathered at the local police station shortly after she'd died, and then encountered the woman's entry in a guest book. Someone had placed an asterisk next to the writing, noting that she had passed on the highway nearby.

I wrote about the anguish of losing someone to a road accident, how it made us all feel vulnerable. How the bright sunshine of enthusiasm and zest for life contained in the guestbook writing had made it all seem worse. How looking at the beauty around me was muted every time the sound of a vehicle approached from behind.

When I finished, there was silence in the room. The professor said she had encountered one of her assistants weeping at a copier. She'd been given the task of making copies, and had read the essay as the machine droned on.

I think it was the first moment I realized that, perhaps, I might explore being a writer. I had written from my heart, and touched someone.

A little over a year later I found myself in Denver, alone. I'd long since said good bye to Barbara, who returned to California and enrolled at USC. I was working a nothing job that allowed me a small apartment, with an occasional chance to ski. Police departments were hiring, but I was very slowly learning how to answer their oral board questions. It was a painful, often embarrassing process.

I was driving near Washington Park, looking for a place I would visit for one of our client insurance companies - yet another small change case where I interviewed someone on disability. There were crowds standing along the roadway within the park, so I stopped to investigate. Anything to delay a work assignment I hardly relished.

It was a bike race, the 1978 Red Zinger Washington Park Criterium. It was the day I truly fell in love with Colorado.

Less than a year later, I got a call. Maybe the call.

"This is Sergeant Christenson, of the Greenwood Village Police Department. We're ready to hire you. Go buy a gun."

To be continued... 

Circle Game

 First, I wasn’t hearing it. I had 19 different things on my mind, but then I did, and C.J., it was magnificent. It was genius. He built these themes, and at the beginning, it was just an intellectual exercise, which is fun enough, I guess, but then in the fourth movement, he just let it go. I really didn’t think I could be surprised by music anymore. I thought about all the times this guy must’ve heard that his music was no good...

Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen), The West Wing, "Galileo" (2000) 

There are certainly a few things that focus a person. One of them is to have a nurse hold out an IV bag containing this week's bi-specific chemo/immuno infusion and confirm - "Jim Greer, (birthdate) 71..." One can have nineteen different things on their mind and suddenly eighteen of them are bullshit.

The one thing that does not fade away as the nurse accesses the new "IV Port" surgically implanted in my chest is that the fourth movement has been played, for all of the world to see. What is left is reflection on the themes I have built in my life - bicycles, hockey, police work, family. We are, as Joni Mitchell wrote, captives on a carousel of time.

It's easy to write them in that order, because it's the way I built them. Bicycles were part of life from almost the beginning. Riding around our little neighborhood in Southhampton, PA with friends, tinkering (until she passed in 2015 my mom bought me a screwdriver every Christmas, as a reminder), and exploring ever larger circles of my home town.

We moved to Pittsford, NY in 1964 and had an even bigger, more rural environment to explore. My parents bought me an "English" bike - 26 inch wheels and three speeds in the rear hub. My brother Dave chose a purple Huffy Sting Ray, with high-rise handlebars, a banana seat and a 5 speed derailleur. I loved my new ride but the exposed shifting mechanism on the Sting Ray - there was technology to fire an imagination. It began a lifelong obsession.

1968 Schwinn catalog.

I bought my first ten-speed bike with paper route money, a blue Schwinn Continental.
27" wheels, down-tube shifters, hooded brake levers... There was no place I couldn't go - up hills, long rides in the farmlands surrounding Rochester, to work at Ward's Natural Science in the Village...of Pittsford, near the high school. This was not just useful technology. It was freedom.

I also bought skates, a particular kind. A very special kind.

Western New York introduced us to what actual winter looked like, and with it to skating. And hockey. We grew up on the frozen ponds surrounding our neighborhood, and one winter convinced our dad to build a rink in our back yard. My brothers chose wisely - Dave a forward, Mike a defenseman - the "tools of ignorance" fascinated me and I became a goaltender.

I didn't play organized hockey until, giving in to an insistent father's "suggestions" I tried out for the new high school team, expecting to be an early cut. By whatever fates I'll never know the young volunteer coach, a retired Rochester American professional named Don Cherry (you might have heard of him) thought I had some skills. For the next three years I improved from a fair pond hockey player to an established high school starter.

But, I needed goalie skates. As you can see, they are different than those worn by the other players. They are built lower to the ice surface, and are honed flat. Oh, that big plate on the side? The puck still hurt like hell after a "kick save, and a beauty." This is what they looked like, circa 1970.

Which takes us to a day in the fall of 1975.

My youngest brother was trying out for the new high school team - the Pittsford High I'd graduated became Pittsford Sutherland, his school, the new one, Pittsford Mendon... Named after the streets they were on. My dad - "There aren't any war heroes in Rochester they could name them after, for Christ's sake?"

 I took my brother to try-outs and sat down with a book. I was on hiatus - my mom refused to let me say I'd dropped out - from Northeastern University in Boston where I studied criminal justice, preparing for a career in law enforcement. I was working nights as a security guard at Xerox Corp. (1970s Rochester, remember) to make money for the cross-country bike trip I had planned during the Bicentennial summer, which left my afternoons free.

The team's goaltender situation was...fluid. The young coach, in his first years of teaching after growing up on Long Island, consulted with his senior players about how to solve his dilemma. I would later learn the conversation went something like this: "See that guy standing there," one of them said, pointing at me. "He was Pittsford's starting goalie when they went undefeated and won the league championship."

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that has outlasted time, distance and difference of opinion. Two and a half years later, in the booklet distributed at the season-ending banquet, I was "Asst. Coach Greer, who rode his bike across the country last summer and will complete his studies at Northeastern University this spring in anticipation of a law enforcement career."

At that point, it was just an intellectual exercise, which was fun enough. 

To be continued...     

   

Easy Read

 "I was in line behind this man, he was very skinny. I love skinny people, we are all God's children, but he says, 'How small is a small?'"

"It's small. The Mediums are medium, the Large is large. If you have to ask how small a small is you're not hungry enough, come back later. GET OUT OF THE LINE." 

The late John Pinette, at a Phoenix, AZ Dairy Queen.

I monitor my Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) dashboard periodically - meaning I look a couple times a day, to see what's cooking. Usually, it's "Eight-Balls." Zeroes. A few times a month I make a sale or three, or someone reads some pages. When your marketing budget is k-cups and internet access, even something weekly is worth celebrating. Then, there are moments...

Yesterday, someone picked up A Matter of Principle and read it. I mean, they read it. They blew through 477 pages (out of 497), the last twenty of which they polished off today. Holy cow.

There are several explanations for this much, this quickly. Here is the most plausible, derived from several comments and reviews from other James Greer novels.

Principle is an easy read.

How easy is easy?

Amy Painter is a straightforward kind of character. She is happy to share with the reader what's on her mind, and in her heart. She does hero things but doesn't require notice, or accolades. She is a professional without driving the point home unnecessarily.

And fully capable of making a point.

The story isn't complicated. It's believable, a reader can point to people they know who would do the things the characters are doing. They know people like Amy who have stood up when being counted mattered. Then, they look at the trade-offs in their lives and say:

"I'm not hungry enough."

I don't take "It's an easy read" personally. In fact, I glory in it. If it only takes you a day to see what Amy Painter does when confronted by bullies, it leaves you more time to discover what happens to Karen Sorenson when she goes undercover on a sailboat in the Bahamas. 

As Time Goes By

 Play it, Sam. Play...As Time Goes By. Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), Casablanca, (1942)

Our phone rang, twenty five years ago. I want to recall I was sitting in our dining room, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. In the great scheme of things... Right?

The caller was Sue O'Brien, at the time the editorial page editor for The Denver Post. Okay - "Oh...hello?"

There are several ways to tell this story. Start from the very beginning - a mild temper tantrum, a published letter to the editor of rival Rocky Mountain News? A stray comment from my wife - "There's a writing contest The Denver Post does every year. You should enter." Defying all previous life experience and actually sitting down, reading the list of entry requirements, writing something... No, this is the best way.

Daughter Katy and I are at a Rockies game, back when they actually might contest the outcome for more than an inning or two. We're wandering the lower level, probably getting a hot dog, and my cell phone rings. It's Sue. There is a problem with the column I've written as a Colorado Voices essayist, one scheduled to appear in a few days on the editorial section of the paper. It has been OTBE'd - overtaken by events.

Timothy McVeigh (The Oklahoma City bomber) was set for execution, but there was some sort of procedural wrangling involving (shocking, I know) discovery foul-ups by the FBI. My column was a review of the record - he did it and everyone knew it - and WTF was the justice system waiting for? In a sane world there was only the sentence of death to carry out. Etc.

Except, between the time I'd submitted the column for publication and...then, the procedural niceties had been addressed and the sentence was going to be carried out. The writing was stale.

Not to worry, she said. Together, we re-wrote sections that expressed surprise things had taken so long, that even the defense's submissions seemed muted because he'd obviously confessed to his attorneys, and that the sooner he was no longer with us the better for everyone. Satisfied that the writing was once again meaningful she wished Katy and I a pleasant day at the ball game and we hung up.

That's when it hit me. Sue O'Brien was a whirlwind, a force in public Colorado halls, a woman pioneer in jobs usually filled by men. She'd been in TV, had been a tenured CU professor, had important jobs for governors Dick Lamm and Roy Romer (his campaign manager) and now oversaw the editorial page of an established major American newspaper. And... We'd just worked together to rehabilitate something I'd written so it would appear under my byline. Me, a patrol sergeant at a modest police department with an entirely normal family life.

Sue was also the kind of gruff and straightforward that any cop would admire. During the initial phone call, to tell me I was one of twelve (I think) successful applicants who would write six columns each in the 2001 Voices cycle, my expression of glee was apparently insufficient. "This is an honor," I said, somewhat blandly.

"You're goddamned right it is," she snorted. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

As an alum I had a chance to do a guest column from time to time. I wrote one questioning the conduct of the Tattered Cover book store and the sanity of the Colorado Supreme Court. "You aren't being fair," Sue said. Then she printed it. Two weeks later, a card appeared in my work mailbox - Colorado Governor Bill Owens had liked my opinion piece. "Keep writing," the note said. 

Sue passed away two years later, the victim of cancer. At her funeral Dottie Lamm, former First Lady of Colorado, told the story of Sue bringing a "dime bag" - marijuana - to the Governor's mansion, to help with Dottie's nausea during chemotherapy. At the time, depending on the amount, that was a serious act. Apparently, Sue was just brassy enough not to care. Even the priest conducting the service broke into unrestrained laughter.

On the wall of my study hangs a framed example of the column Sue said was her favorite of mine, presented to each of us at a luncheon after our gigs were over. It is a celebration of the Colorado Avalanche Stanley Cup win in 2001, the great Joe Sakic to Ray Bourque Cup pass. I glance at it from time to time, to remember.

I've written millions of words since my last work for The Denver Post. But that phone call, that voice... An assurance from one of the tough people who made up Colorado journalism at the turn of the 21st Century, that I was a good writer who deserved whatever success I enjoyed.

Twenty-five years on, I wish I could send her one of my books and tell her what that all meant to me. 

 

The Right Side of an Inch

 

Rule 1.3 - Division of Ice Surface

1. A red line, 5.08 cm (2 in.) wide, will be marked 3.35 m (11ft.) from each end of the rink, parallel to the end boards. This line will extend across the rink and be known as the Goal Line

   Official rules of ice hockey

    

   
   
    A game of inches.

   Much has been made, in the immediate aftermath of the US victory over Canada in the Men's Hockey final, of how the teams played. Some commentators (partisans on either side of the contest) have written that the Canadians "dominated" the game, or at least the second and third periods. A few have gone so far as to claim that Canada was "the better team," having outshot Team USA, and that the Americans won by virtue of a hot goaltender and little else. A very few then grudgingly observe that the final score reflected: USA 2, Canada 1.

   One would be remiss to ignore the wonderful opportunities the Olympic Games affords to expand lexicons. During one of the curling matches involving the USA women, an announcer suggested that the stone placement had such narrow tolerances that it put our team "On the wrong side of an inch." This was immediately appealing as a way to say a lot by saying a little.

   In hockey, an accomplished team with a balanced attack and defense is often described as having a "Two Hundred Foot Game." That is, they are proficient the entire length of the rink. To be that, it requires six players working in harmony. One of those players - the goalie.

   The goaltender doesn't guard the net, even though their crease (the "blue paint") is immediately in front of it. It's the tendie's job to mind the line, to see to it that the puck doesn't cross (completely) that horrible "wrong side of an inch." That 5.08 cm that divides victory and defeat. Twenty-four square feet (6'x4' goalmouth) that is two inches deep.

   In essence, hockey is about defending that thin red line in the blue paint at your end of the 200 feet, and attacking their red line in their blue paint. How a team does it... There are no style points. A beautifully crafted, superbly drawn up, exquisitely placed goal counts the same as something that ricochets off the helmet of a player, bounces off the ass of the tendie and dribbles a millimeter over the goal line.

   Who is responsible for guarding that line? As a former tendie, it would be easy for me to say it is the goalie's job. It isn't, entirely. It's up to all six players to make that happen.

   Sometimes, teams do it by dominating possession of the puck. If my team has it, it's very hard for the other team to score. Simple, right? Except - no style points there, either. Skate around all you want. Team Canada can tell you where one miscue can lead.

   The other is by accepting that, either in one game or generally, your tendie is the best player on the ice. So, you try to make sure that, while the other team is working itself into a lather shooting the puck at him/her, you are making them take low-percentage shots. 

   The goalie is generally responsible for the shooter - that is, everything being equal their job is to stop the present shot on goal. Most competent NHL tendies will stop almost every shot made from a reasonable distance. The other players' job is allow them to see the shot, cut off any passes and gain control of rebounds.

   Really good goaltenders are expected to dazzle even jaded fans with a "sparkling save" from time to time. They anticipate a pass across the ice and appear at the last minute to stifle what looked like a sure goal. They foil a breakaway. They make two or three saves in quick succession at their "doorstep." Maybe they even steal a sure goal with reflexes, or acrobatics.

   Guys like USA goalie Connor Hellebucyk? All of it, all day long.

   So what does his team do? The opponent can shoot the puck at him repeatedly and so long as he can see it, can anticipate the play and the rebounds are managed as a team - fire away. They'll only get tired of it. Maybe it will make the other team press harder, become frustrated. Maybe they make one pass too many. Maybe they try to be too perfect, and miss the net instead. And maybe, in overtime, one of the best players on the planet indulges a bad position and the fabulous goalie's team is off to the races and Gold Medal Glory.

   Full strength hockey is played six-on-six, not 5 on 5. There are no style points. Shots on goal are a metric, and not a very precise one. Dominated?

   Not when you control the right side of a two-inch red line on the ice.

   Congratulations, USA Hockey. We're proud of you.  

Picking Your...Preferred Medium

 “There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.” -Bertrand Russell

No promises.

Okay, maybe I can't promise that you can announce at your next - whatever - that you've read my latest book and people will be impressed. There is a real chance that someone will say, "Who?"

That don't confront me. I wrote something that says things about small minds, tough people, and that sleepless nights and angry dawns can give way to hope of the most basic kind.

And then...

I've mentioned Zack Mayo a couple of times (A Sequel to Embrace). You know, Richard Gere screaming at Lou Gossett, Jr - "I got no place else to go!" That Zack's larger story was never told is a shame.

I didn't do the same thing to Amy.

Pick your poison - Kindle, Audible or print. Amy is an admirable character. Boast? I do - about a person who lives out many of the challenges readers will recognize from their own struggles. And I got to enjoy where I left her, this time.