Howdy,

Okay, I don’t know that I could ever actually do this. Since it’s such a part of my routine; what I do, something I pay attention to, since I’ve always had an interest in sports.

Also, since, let’s face it … Since it’s such a habit.

But I’ll write as if it were true.

Pretend.

I’m done with checking in with ESPN for news with “expert” opinions on sporting events.

I’ll tell you why.

The headlines are terrible.

Thinking of the World Series, article titles and general sentiment have been something like …

The Chicago Cubs are destined to win! Besides, they’re just too good for the Cleveland Indians. The Cubbies ARE GOING to win their first World Series since 1908. IT’S HAPPENING!!! YAY!!!

Then Cleveland won All Important Game 1. Shutting out Chicago 6-0. And then the headlines were about the Cubbies being in serious trouble. I saw one that declared Chicago in a hole deeper than it even appeared. Like the ball club would never score another run ever again. Plus, their pitching would stink and Steve Bartman would show. Since he’s the easy one to blame.

Game 1 is all important … until House Money Game 2. After — a day later — the Chicago Cubs won Game 2 by the solid score of 5-1 to even the Series, the Cleveland Indians were declared as good as dead, since going back to Chicago for the three middle games meant the Cubs had an unstoppable momentum rolling. I mean, look how dominant they are.

In Pivotal Game 3 Cleveland beat the Cubs’ unbeatable pitcher, since the big bats got shutout. Again. This time tantalizingly. 1-0. But, as I’ve heard, you’ve got to score to win.

All the sudden it was hopeless for Chicago since it’d be facing Cleveland’s All Important Game 1 pitcher Corey Kluber, the ace who shut them out the first time. Countering with their No. 4 pitcher, Chicago’s sure championship title looked more like a three games to one deficit. In the headlines. Before it even started. The seven-game series basically over.

Finishing this piece, the Indians did defeat the Cubs 7-2 for that 3-1 lead.

Now what can ESPN (and other similar outlets) do in the headlines to swing the momentum, stir the drama? Outwit themselves? All for show, until the next show. In the 24-hour news cycle.

The mostly-ignored and little-known 2016 Cleveland Indians have convincingly pushed the National Darlings into a do-or-die elimination scenario for Must Win Game 5. Cleveland’s hoping to rain on a parade 108 years in the making, and, already, Cubs fans can be caught sneaking arms out with palms up instinctively checking for sprinkles.

Yet now it’d seem a bad time for Cubs to bet on any fair weather.

Oh, by the way, outspoken and unapologetic New York Yankees fan in the past, LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers is now openly rocking Indians gear and being loud about it, hashtagging it.

Outspoken, but now previous.

Go, Team-That’s-Winning!

—Billy

Reading. Writing. Living.

#RallyTogether #TribeTown #BandWagon

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Howdy,

—Hello. Hello? Hello!

—Hellooo-ooo-ooo?!

—HELLO???!!!

—Someone there?

—Thought I heard someone, something. It’s really dark in here. Can’t see a thing.

It’s not hard to imagine a big, important, invested project, goal, or stage of life — one once filled with new life and promise — diving down, tumbling, in descent to a dark place when exhilarating beginning or exhaling end slip out of sight like George Clooney with no Gravity. Down, and out, where hope, repeatedly sucked away, is lost.

The Dark Night of the Soul.

Continue reading

Howdy,

Yesterday was about living a “Happy Monday!” though it’s easy to want to curse the work week.

I toned it down from “death” but found a line with meaning and rhyme: “Ah, and one day closer to our last breath.”

It was about today, that we’d be one day closer. The idea being that, yesterday, we’d have “Something to think about as we live …”

Today’s the same.

I want to bring in lyrics on living life well from a new song on Where The Light Shines Through by Switchfoot. Continue reading

Howdy,

And happy Monday.

There’s a line for breaking through potential writer’s block. “Happy Monday.”

At first I wanted it to sound like, “Howdy, and Happy Monday!”

But since I’ve been opening with “Howdy” as my greeting for each post, mostly just for fun — not totally sure why, to be honest; other than for some reason being Billy Hawes, Six Shooter to some and that nod to Mariposa — I had to break up the “Howdy” and the “And happy Monday.”

I never had Happy capitalized, but that’s the emphasis I envisioned. Which is why initially I ended “And happy Monday” with an exclamation point. “… happy Monday!”

And that’s what got me thinking there’s mighty potential for shattering writer’s block with that line. Didn’t even have time for writer’s block on this post, though I admit it’s starting to feeling like a Dr. Seuss challenge in which he took a $50 bet with his publisher that he could write one of his children’s books with only 37 words or something crazy like that (it’s 50 distinct words for Green Eggs and Ham, and he just masterfully repeated, flipped, and reworked words and phrases; showing how words could dance, like the Dr. always did. We’ll see what I can keep getting out of “Howdy, and happy Monday.”

The potential?

Continue reading

Howdy,

Saturday morning I saw sunrise through our slider.

Its colors and light pulled me out quickly as I could pull my shoes on.

Thoughts of planning a post for Sunday, I contemplated writing and describing the sunrise, any sunrise. Half wondering why I’d ever even dare to write at all about anything (look at the artful creations each morning! Why would my words, my voice, be needed in this world or anywhere?) and half wondering how.

Fully committed and fully human.

How to describe a palette of such radiating beauty? A natural one with fresh light and cotton candy pink and blue. While cotton candy amazes in the sky, it’s cliched in phrase. I want to do more than spin sugar. How about picturing the lit expanse with western cotton candy melting east as background glue to striking bolts of transparent orange stickered to the sky?

Continue reading

Howdy,

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear … Papa
Happy birthday to you.

When did this happen?

Turning 37.

Turned.

Turning into Papa.

Turned.

Pretty crazy.

Pretty cool.

With three young boys, two that talk and call me Papa as well as “Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad!” and “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” I really didn’t know what they’d sing when it came to the “Happy birthday dear … ”

After dear, I didn’t know what I’d hear.

Continue reading

Snapshot of ESV

Howdy,

On our podcast — I say “our” because Matt Garman and I record our Thursday Night Conversations together, otherwise we’d be two crazy guys mumbling to ourselves — we talk about storytelling, or at least aim to while wandering and weaving through art and creativity, audience and content, or maybe what we had for Thursday Night Dinner with the Garman-side of the family, three-pronged in name: Garman, Schuller, and Hawes. Cousins all crazy, just the same.

Storytelling.

That’s what I was going for. I fear my introduction lacks the precision I’d like to highlight, with an intention to look at a Master Storyteller and elements of a narrative well told.

In parable form, today’s topic, we’ll see story spun sparsely; communication conveyed in the grip of a cultural tale yet amazingly condensed. Clipped and clean, as my master’s thesis mentor professor, Wilfred Martens, used to tell me; clip the “c” off of “clean” and get lean. Definitely still working on that, too obviously at times. (Cut an “I’m” starting that sentence and an “I” on this one, if that counts … )

College now days-gone-by, I need to clip the calories as well, which isn’t fun. Or tasty. Or something I’m great at, to be precise. Get lean. 

In a group Bible study from The Rock Church of Turlock, we recently covered a chapter of The Story (a great abbreviated and flowing approach on the epic narrative of Scripture) that included Jesus’ parables from the book of Luke. As I read, I thought, Jesus Christ is such a good storyteller. I mean, look. Look at the ground and truth covered in only a few words:

“So he told them this parable: ‘What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.’”

To be fair, the parables we’re honing in on come within a string of parables, but the others are both longer and shorter; and ours don’t even require larger context to speak as meaningful story.

Seen in the photograph, the parable of the lost sheep first appears to be seven verses. But the first two can easily be lopped off as background, giving us the quote above. Yet, then, I’d say the whole line “So he told them this parable” could be dropped for our purposes, which is verse three. Observing only Luke 15: 4-7, four verses, we have a parable, a clipped and clean story. Lean on words, not discourse.

Jesus immediately pulls audience in as character, gives the listener a value and purpose to that character as a commodity owner and one who’d search to recapture and maintain (conquest) his valuable possession (goal) even at a risk (conflict), describes emotion with the tenderness of shouldering the recovered sheep and rejoicing spontaneously alone and again in treasured community, and, with room to spare, wraps with words on a sinner, repentance, and heavenly joy.

Not bad for four verses, right?

Masterful.

But grumbling Pharisees and scribes, religious types — unfortunately that includes me sometimes — don’t usually get it easily. Jesus graciously gives it again, with another take, in three verses. Look again, the next image shows the parable of the lost coin: it’s a somehow-condensed version, with a female lead, of the already sparse lost sheep parable.

Snapshot of ESV

Three sentences. Story.

The Master.

I have much to learn.

FYI — For those who’ve been reading along, my Lumbar Epidural Steroid Injection went well on Wednesday. Thank you for your prayers. I’m blessed to be safe and sound and only a little sore.

Don’t know that I will, but I could probably even podcast tonight from the dynamic perch upon an exercise balance ball.

Having found further and further relief for my injured back the last couple months, now on to greater rehab and recovery! Time to get stronger and leaner.

Also, do check out TNC Podcast, to find out that Matt and I are just two crazy guys talking to each other — and you. We’d love to have you listening.

—Lean Machine

Reading. Writing. Living.

Please subscribe to mailing list for the Reading Writing Living journey we’re on and get the goodies that’ll come from time to time with my newsletter. Thank you.

Howdy,

On Saturday I sped through my old stomping grounds of Petaluma, California.

OLD stomping grounds, as in we moved from Petaluma about 30 years ago, I believe. It’s a little hazy — on account of it being another lifetime ago. Another life. Good memories. Those I can remember. Mostly roaming the hills rolling west of the 101 as a young boy and catching black mosquito squigglies and tiny dark tadpoles in an old scummy well with my younger brother, Christopher. He’s more-so Chris now, but then again he’s not three anymore, and I’m still Billy, so I digress.

And SPED, as in speed limit on Highway 101 since our old house hugs the highway just south of Petaluma. A dilapidated dump, with construction happening adjacently so no doubt about to be pushed over, but it’s a million-dollar-line-of-Marin-and-Sonoma-counties-dump so I’m not ashamed. I’d take it. Plus the old Victorian also on the property would make for a great old ghost house, if you’re into that sort of thing. It’ll probably get leveled too.

I don’t even know how many acres and acres that childhood Petaluma property was. Probably worth a billion dollars … But it never was ours.

Anyway, I traveled to Petaluma with my brother-in-law Matt Garman and his childhood friend Jeff Dershem, a recent guest on our TNC Podcast — Episodes number 22 and 23 — to sit in as studio guests for Leo Laporte’s television, radio, podcast shows The Tech Guy with Leo Laporte and The New Screen Savers.

I’d never followed Mr. Laporte or his works, but Jeff is a knowledgeable follower and fan and Matt’s definitely in touch and years ago visited one of his many shows when Leo’s studio was in San Francisco.

Jeff arranged our visit, and I’m glad he did. Besides the fun, bombing in on the studio was an education.

Awesome time with @Matthew13tweets & @BillyHawes_com at TWIT today pic.twitter.com/Kd4KRKngCm

— Jeff Dershem (@avman26) October 16, 2016

First off, all the members of the studio staff were wonderful hosts. Thank you to them for being so warm and welcoming and shooing us in rather than out. We were literally told to just watch our heads for the hanging cameras and allowed to wander all over the sets; high-stepping AV cords and bobbing and weaving cameras and screens suspended from walls and ceilings. I believe we even made it on the shows a couple of times — in the livestream, if nothing else. Couldn’t blame them if they edit us out for the final piece. A blast being behind the scenes.

Then simply watching an obviously (very apparent) seasoned veteran do his thing. For The Tech Guy show, being aired on radio in Los Angeles and wherever else, including the internet with live chatroom, and later as podcast, Leo Laporte ran his own camera shot switches, pulled up websites, held running conversation with callers and the scrolling chatroom commenters, read ads, invited in remote video guests via Skype, pulled up websites for live review, answered questions, and acknowledged us in his “intimate” studio: it was the three of us and a man from Australia, Richard, who sat in with The Tech Guy. Richard had traveled to see some of the States, but certainly also to see Leo.

And Leo Laporte founder of the TWiT network did it all sitting — no bouncing — on an exercise ball. No chair behind his desk for his 3-hour show; just a balanced ball for his behind.

I asked him his reason, and he quickly responded he wanted the energy it brought. Bouncing, on his toes, not slumping in his chair with no life. The balance ball helped him bring it.

I’ve blogged the experience of driving past an old home from another life and about visiting a broadcasting studio, but this was the thought for why I wanted to write about our travels to see Leo Laporte: thinking about this approach to life, living and working on our toes and finding tools to keep us balanced and bouncing atop challenges, with energy, smiles, joy, and readiness.

I’m thinking Matt and I should podcast perched on our own balance ball all the time, not just like he exercised in this episode. (Unless, maybe shortly after a spinal injection.)

Our Australian friend Richard even later got to open and introduce The New Screen Savers show, which used a much more complex studio — though also all impressively arranged in a modest space; lighting and use of space deftly employed. Tiny corner sets appeared full on screen, as we were privileged to witness scenes play out on both.

On our journey, may we be Living, approaching life bouncing the whole time on a balanced ball. It’s good for the core and our crowd.

—Billy

Reading. Writing. Living.

Please subscribe to mailing list for the Reading Writing Living journey we’re on and get the goodies that’ll come from time to time with my newsletter. Thank you.