Michael Jordan, now a Hall of Famer

The Sox had a rain delay tonight, but, lucky for me I changed the channel and caught Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame induction speech in Springfield.

Jordan, arguably the best basketball player ever, spoke well, used humor, and complemented his teammates, opponents, coaches (especially the ones who wouldn't start him), for "putting logs" onto his competitive fire. It is clear that Jordan still has drive, and he said he wouldn't rule out returning to play in the NBA when he's 50. He's 46, now.

So I went onto ESPN's site and they had lots of content dedicated to Jordan, including the top 23 (Jordan's uniform number)highlights of his career. Included were many game-winning shots, the 63-point (losing) performance against the Celtics in 1986, which I think I watched as a 13-year-old, monstrous dunks, including one when he drove the baseline and dunked over 7-foot-tall Patrick Ewing, and the layup he made when he switched hands in midair even though he didn't have to.

It is difficult to compare players. For a long time, Jordan didn't play for competitive teams. The Bulls sucked for the first few years he played. But then Jordan learned, thanks to the astute coaching of Phil Jackson, to involve his teammates and make them better. This launched the careers of Scottie Pippen, John Paxton, and even Will Perdue. Jordan ended up making everyone on his team better.

Was Jordan, though, better than Magic? Or Larry Bird? How would he fare in a one-on-one game against LeBron James? One-on-one ball may not be an appropriate measure of one's ability on the basketball court, but I'd have to believe Jordan would take these guys. True, there were better passers, rebounders, and long-range shooters. But, man, Jordan was clutch. Watch the ESPN videos and you'll (if you watched hoops back in the 80s and 90s) remember.

Jordan was the perfect combination of grace and power. This, coupled with his skills, led to his dominance. Few could guard him well. It was hard even to keep up with him and foul him. After many of his best plays, opponents were left shaking their hands and walking away from the play. He was that good.

Watching Jordan, I began to realize, although it was a bit late in his career, was a spectacle worth doing. You he wasn't going to play forever, and that what he was doing was special. I felt the same way when Pedro Martinez was in his prime while pitching for the Red Sox. The way he dominated, with power and location and deceptive speed changes, was amazing to watch.

Jordan, whose name now graces steakhouses and obviously the Nike brand even in retirement, talked in his speech about hard work. When you watch him, though, it seems effortless. But he lost often, has said he was frustrated when he played because of these losses, and ultimately it made him more determined. He could have been an Allen Iverson, a player with outstanding skill but unwilling to make sacrifices and do what it took to win. Jordan changed his game over the course of his career, and the improvements he made - learning to make assists consistently, rebound, and make his teammates better - turned him into an improved player.

Years ago, after Jordan's retirement, or one of them, I saw a Jordan poster that was so good I had to buy it. It's posted in my classroom, and has a quote on it that says:

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

Clearly, Jordan was in control of his emotions during his playing days. One point he drove home tonight was his absolute desire to win and how that motivated him. Tonight, he closed his speech, speaking about his own confidence and commenting that, for him, "losing, like fear, is an illusion."

Land of Confusion

While traveling toward Hartford on Route 2 last week, I looked over to my right and saw an interesting - if confusing - sight. A white SUV was moving in the right lane -nothing unusual about that. It was a Pratt and Whitney security officer driving the truck. Again, Pratt, the jet-engine maker, is in East Hartford, so one might expect to see a Pratt vehicle on the highway.

What was odd, though, was the make of the car - a Toyota.

With American companies constantly concerned about foreign "outsourcing", I was surprised to see that Pratt and Whitney, owned by United Technologies, based in Hartford, purchased a Japanese car for its security fleet. I would have thought that they would buy American.

But perhaps Toyota had the lowest bid. Still, you would think that a large American company would purchase a Ford or a GM vehicle, or some other American vehicle. Maybe Toyota or some cousin company in Japan purchases Pratt products, I don't know. But I found this peculiar.

Another thing I found peculiar was a short blurb I read recently in a magazine that reported students who were home-schooled performed better than non home-schooled students on standardized tests. This was baffling, since a major reason why parents home-school their children is to avoid standardized testing.

I'm not sure about the validity of this study. How many students who were home-schooled and then switched to public schools were included?

While I support public education - I am a public school teacher, after all - I understand when parents choose to home school their kids. I didn't used to. But school districts, even the supposed "better ones", are increasingly under pressure to meet state and national standards, and it's getting more difficult even for the independent educational mavericks to ignore ridiculous federal and state policies. Independent schools, I think, are a good way to go, since home schooled kids tend to lack some important socialization experiences. But independent schools are expensive, and they can be elitist.

These two examples are but a small illustration of how we live in a "Land of Confusion," a place that doesn't always make sense. Perhaps we need to think a bit more about what we do before we do it. To quote the Genesis song of the same name:

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth living in.

Which side of the bed do you sleep on?

As I'm sitting here, on the left side of the bed, I wondered if there was any actual research on this subject by gender or sorted out another way, and if there was, what the findings say about people who sleep on the left or right side.

I've historically been a left side of the bed sleeper, pretty much since I was a kid - although when I was in elementary school, right before I fell asleep, I used to be on the right side, against the wall, with my face pointed down in the gap between the mattress and the wall. I claimed (to myself) that the air there was cooler to breathe. But then I'd turn over and fall asleep in the middle of my bed, if I remember right.

But for the last 20 years or so, I've slept on the left, sometimes very near the edge of the bed.

According to the limited information I found by doing a Google search on the subject, men tend to sleep on the left side of the bed more than women. Men also sleep on the side facing the door, presumably to protect his wife. Although one website listed women sleeping toward the door so that she could wake up and get the kids. Both genders justify sleeping facing the door so that they can have a direct route to the bathroom.

I was looking more for something that described what sleeping on the right side and left side means. What's the symbolism and significance of sleeping on the right or left sides? Is one side more "powerful" than the other? Is one side the "submissive" side? It would be interesting to know.

Perhaps a surveymonkey survey is in order here.

OK, it's down below. Take a minute and fill it out! Send it to your friends! Maybe we'll learn something.

Click Here to take survey

Here's the link for non-blogspot(Facebook)sites - paste it in your browser:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=cQZoHXSKGsHvXmALiBevOg_3d_3d

James Taylor talks about Tanglewood, the Berkshires

JT plays four shows starting tomorrow at Tanglewood. Here's a pretty good Q and A style interview with the musician.

And the story has good news! JT is playing the 4th of July at Tanglewood next year.

http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_13204217?source=most_viewed

Obama struggles with bipolar disorder

Don't take it from me. See for yourself.

Follow this link if the shortcut doesn't work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9k_nAbsNfI

Wrestling with the $%^&#!* carseat

This summer, I've surpassed every around-the-house self-expectation concerning yard, house and car maintenace - except for one thing.

I've replaced a rear tail light in my car, the rear windshield wiper on my wife's car. I've even replaced the flapper thing in the tank behind the toilet upstairs.

These may seem to be normal, simple things to take care of, but for someone who truly despises, and has no talent for, mechanical things, they took sincere effort. The only thing that kept me from paying someone else to do them was that I'd be laughed at when doing it.

Recently, though, we got a new car seat for me to install, a feat which brought me to the breaking point. Again.

I hate installing these things. The companies do not make it easy. The process makes me sweat intensely and swear to myself. This time I got rug burns on my knees from trying to use my body weight to push the seat down.

This is the fifth or sixth one I've put in (even though we have only two kids). But they tend to get nasty after a certain time (the carseats, not the kids) - about one year - since kids eat and drink and spill and vomit in them. Kids also grow fast in a year, outgrowing them pretty quickly.

And then there's the latest safety regulations that seem to change every three or six months. The car seats that we have now, for instance, make the ones we first bought five years ago, look like they belonged to the Flintstones, or some similar time period.

The old seat that I ripped out was supposed to be "the best one" and it cost more than $200. But it didn't hold up very well for a one-year-old; our daughter Alison pretty much destroyed it.

I lost the instructions for the new one, a Graco, but wasn't worried since the prodeure is more or less the same. Our car has LATCH clips which are supposed to make it easier. However, it is difficult to get the belts tight enough. This led to the scabs on my left knee as I pounced on the car seat with all my weight.

The thing with car seats is you're not supposed to put them in half-ass, like I usually do things. You've got to really secure them; they're not supposed to move at all.

Once, when we went to a police station a few years ago to get ours checked, the cop asked, "Who installed this seat? as it wobbled around like a loose tooth. "Um, I think it was my brother-in-law," I said. (We'll see if my brother-in-law really reads this now.)

After spending an hour in the driveway putting in the latest car seat, even taking it out and starting over because of a folded-over belt (ugh!), I felt relatively satisfied. It shook a little, but seemed generally safe. No, it's definitely safe. It barely shakes.

But if anyone knows how to get them to remain completely still, I won't resist the help.

Feeling useless at a crime scene

So here's the short version: Teenage girl, presumably home for the summer from college, gets robbed at knifepoint in a study room in Glastonbury's library this afternoon.

I got involved when the girl came running into the study room I was in (right next to hers) and, frantically and hysterically, screams that a guy walked into her study room and, after pulling a knife on her, demanded money and anything else she had that was worth money.

This is not the kind of thing one would expect on an otherwise calm late afternoon in an affluent Connecticut suburb.

After the girl came to me, she led me toward the front door, as if in pursuit of the thief. He stole her laptop, cellphone and some cash. Although she did not get physically hurt, the girl had suffered emotional damage, and you could tell this was the kind of thing that could possibly generate nightmares and issues with being alone down the line.

Here's how the girl explained it to me: The guy, who fit the description of the guy who was in the study room I was in before I arrived (I had to kick him out because he didn't sign out the room), knocked on her door and asked for change for a dollar. She proceeded to look for the money when he came into the small room (about five feet by eight feet), turned the lights off, pulled a knife, and demanded her money and anything else of value. She ended up giving him her laptop (you could tell it was prized and done probably with some hesitation), cellphone, and cash. He told her to turn around before he opened the door, then he left.

After that, she came to my study room, where I was tutoring, and just fell apart.

You want to think that you can be of some help in cases like this, times when you are called upon in emergencies and stressful circumstances, to truly provide assistance. I was able to help the girl communicate to the librarians to call 911 after explaining what had happened. But the poor kid. She was not just in shock from having a knife pulled on her (the last thing she probably thought would happen while studying for Organic Chemistry - I saw the books and chemical formulas spread across her desk), but then she lost her personal possessions.

In the end, I was of minimal help - the case was in the police's hands within 10 minutes. As they began to question her, I felt that even they were of limited help at that point. Ten minutes had passed; the crook was miles away. The damage was done. Today will be a horrible memory for her for a long time.

I have to say, as a witness to the aftermath, both library staff and police seemed to respond slowly. Perhaps it was me, being caught up in what had happened, my adrenaline was certainly flowing, but the librarians barely moved after she explained what happened. They did little to console the girl. Police talked with the girl for a while, but they spent more time walking around the library, slowly, aimlessly, than anything else. I understand they thought the guy could have still been in the library, but a witness who saw the guy leaving contradicted that. For half an hour, the cops walked around, seemingly doing nothing. Perhaps they felt useless, too.

I would have expected a little more assertion on their part. A young girl was robbed at knifepoint in the center of Glastonbury in the library! Are you kidding me!

I checked in with the girl a couple of times, asking her if she needed anything, or if I could do anything for her - her parents couldn't be reached when she first tried to call them - but I knew when I asked that, as essentially a complete stranger, my efforts to help were exhausted. She didn't come to know my name; I didn't know hers. I was just the first person she talked to after being threatened with a knife. It was the strange sort of life experience where you feel personally involved with someone one minute, and then you'll probably never interact with them again.