How 'bout them Dawgs!

 

I’m basking in the glory of the first Georgia Bulldogs National Championship since 1981, when I was 12 years old. I have many great memories of that last championship season. My sister, also a UGA grad, took me to the Auburn game that year where we clinched the SEC championship and a spot in the Sugar Bowl where we went on to beat Notre Dame 13-10. After we won the game the UGA cheerleaders threw sugar packets into the stands.

I remember watching the Georgia – Florida game that year with my mom and the Buck Belue to Lindsay Scott pass that won the game. Watch the clip and listen to Larry Munson call the play here. My memories of those two games are much more vivid than the national championship game.

After a late night I was up at about 5:30 and got the newspaper off the driveway. The front page told me that Georgia was playing for the National Championship against Alabama and that fans sure hope we will win. I’m old enough to remember when they would hold press time for the morning paper when big news was breaking. And for lifelong UGA fans, it doesn’t get any bigger. The front page of the AJC online edition was much better and posted here. Great picture, but it’s not quite the same.

The game ended in the final minutes of my birthday. I’d been telling folks for the last several days that all I wanted for my birthday was a National Championship, and I got it!! Along with two bottles of bourbon and a two pound bag of Twizzlers. Seriously.

My son picked up a t-shirt for me on the way home from his friend’s house last night and of course I wore it on all my calls today. It’s nice, high quality, but I sure hope it doesn’t have to last me another 41 years.

Go Dawgs!!

Episode 2. Track your stuff

I finished 2021 with 1,114 miles and 16,139 pages, up 3% in miles and 54% in pages.

Part of what I’ve enjoyed the most over the last two years is tracking what I’ve done. My goal starting out was to read more and run more and my primary tools have been Excel (no surprise if you know me at all) and graph paper, which is far simpler than any technology tool for tracking habits (did I run/read every day?). My Fitbit and Kindle have been in strong supporting roles.

One of the key decisions to make for capturing any kind of data is how much detail you want to try to keep up with. My bias is always to capture more data, but to borrow a phrase from a friend of mine, often the “juice isn’t worth the squeeze”. For my reading goal, I knew books wasn’t the right metric. My books length over the last two years has ranged from 50 pages (a BBC dramatization The Birds) to 1,008 pages (Fall of Giants by Ken Follett, not that great. It rapidly went from World War I historical fiction to a soap opera). I briefly toyed with words, but that was too too much. I quickly landed on pages. For a while I tried to track daily pages, but that was a pain, especially with audio books and more effort than it was worth. I ended up with pages by book with the start and finish date of each book and a few notes.

For running, I wanted to capture everything. Miles, pace, steps, heart rate, time, weather, route, you name it. My first tracker spreadsheet had 24 columns. Again, if you know me you probably are not surprised. I did it for a while, then ended up with two things. Miles and time. Let Excel do the rest. Pace is a no-brainer. My favorite metric is streak. I got up to 147 days until a spider bite and leg infection took me out for seven days over the summer. I recently added shoes so could keep up with the miles a pair and know when I should replace the vs. when my feet, ankles and hips told me I had to replace them.

Whatever your goals, tracking the right stuff, enough stuff, and not too much stuff is key. And make it easy enough so you can add/remove/change easily.

In lieu of a book/quote tonight, a brief comment on recent news that's been on my mind for the better part of two years. Maybe not LI appropriate. 

I’ve been running for the better part of 40 years. For that and many other reasons I’ve followed the case of Ahmaud Arbery, the 25 year old black jogger who was murdered by three white men who chased him down in a pick up truck and shot him to death. They believed, incorrectly and with no proof, that Ahmaud had been burglarizing homes under construction. The murder happened in Brunswick, GA, about six hours south of where I live in Atlanta.

They were convicted of murder just before Thanksgiving and on Friday they were all, thankfully, sentenced to life in prison. It’s good to feel like justice was finally served, but it was over two months before these men were arrested and the local police and DA initially chose not to pursue charges at all. A federal hate crimes trial is still pending. Partly in response to Ahmaud’s murder, Georgia finally passed a state hate crimes law and repealed the Citizen’s Arrest law. The law in Georgia dates to 1863 and was basically a “catch a fugitive slave” law.

Early in our marriage, Jenny and I were relocated with my job several times. In each new location we lived in a new house in a new neighborhood with plenty of homes under construction. I can’t imagine how many times I wandered through them, curious to see what was going into new houses. Occasionally I even opened a window or door after the houses had been locked up. It never occurred to me that neighborhood vigilantes would grab guns, hop in their trucks and shoot me down. We’ve made a lot of progress in the realm of justice and racial equality over my 50+ years, and I believe some of the credit goes to diversity programs at large companies like the ones I’ve been fortunate enough to work at. But we still have a long ways to go.

A Thousand Miles & Five Thousand Pages

At the beginning of 2020 I set a goal to run more and read more. Basic goal setting said that I needed more specificity (SMART goals, right?). So the goals evolved to running 1,000 miles and reading 5,000 pages in 2020.

Now as 2021 draws to a close I’ve logged over 2,150 miles and 26,000 pages in 81 books that I’ve kept up with for the last two years on a couple of spreadsheets. If you know me at all, that won’t surprise you at all. I’ve learned a few things over this time and while pursuing the goals that I think may be worth sharing. Hopefully you’ll find some of it interesting.

One of my goals for 2022 starts is to (finally) get a blog going that sticks. I love to write and I’ve had many fits and starts with this over the years. I know that “get a blog going” isn’t much of a goal, but I’ll figure the rest out later. LinkedIn will be my primary platform, but I’ll also post it to my Blogger account where you’ll find my some of my older stuff if you are interested. I figure since much of what I’ll be writing about will be on the topic of goals, it has enough business relevance that LinkedIn is a fair game.

I also plan to share a comment/quote/thought in each post about something I’ve read that I hope readers will find interesting or thought provoking. For today, I’ll start with one of my favorite quotes from The Alchemist (May 2020) by Paulo Coelho. “The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

Maybe a picture every now and then tool 

That’s it for today. More to come.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail Continued.

This post from June has held up pretty well. 

As a side note, I just finished Grant by Ron Chernow and started His Truth is Marching On (John Lewis bio by Jon Meacham). You can easily connect the dots from the start of the Klan killing former slaves following the Civil War to the white mobs beating John Lewis at the lunch counter sit-ins to the Trump mob assaulting the U.S. Capitol two weeks ago.  

Original post below:

This one post became 2 as I was writing it. 

Evening thoughts. June 30, 2020

Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Seth Godin and the 2020 legislative session.

Black Lives Matter.

During my Sunday run I found an audio performance of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” on Seth Godin’s Akimbo podcast. After listening to it I decided to pull a few excerpts into my latest blog. I won’t attempt to annotate Dr. King’s words other than to say that, like passages from James Baldwin and Langston Hughes I’ve shared recently, some of these words could have been written last week. Reading more Black authors is one of the best things I’ve done this year. Below are my selected excerpts. The hardest thing was trimming the list down. The full performance is here: https://soundcloud.com/.../dr-martin-luther-kings-letter...

Quotes from the letter. 

·       I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.

·       Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality.

·       You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being.

·       Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

·       History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

·       There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair.

·       I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the…Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice;

·       We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people

·       In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? Isn't this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?...Isn't this like condemning Jesus because His unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion

·       Was not Jesus an extremist in love? -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice? -- "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

·       So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

And a long passage on the church…

·       I have been disappointed with the white church and its leadership…all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.

·       In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sidelines and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, "Those are social issues which the gospel has nothing to do with,"

·       The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo.

Performed by: Winnie Kao, Mike "Ambassador" Bruny, Doc Waller, Darius Gant, Garfield Hylton, Jermaine Maree, Shaun King, Pamela Slim, DeRay McKesson, Dr. Ivor Horn, Charlie Gilkey, Neal Ludevig, Charles Davis, Soledad O'Brien, Greg Hartle, Kimberly Nadia Scott, Lisa Nicole Bell, Paul Drayton, Codie Elaine, André Blackman, John Montgomery II, Daniel Jarvis, James Lopez, Donna Queza, Marc Aarons, Stella Santana, Alex Chavez, Spencer Pitman, Ankit Shah, Cliff Worley, Keylor Leigh, Stephanie Hasham, Willie Jackson, Don Pottinger, Rachel Rodgers, Dr. Angelica Perez-Litwin, Akilah Hughes, Diana Alvear, Danielle Jenene Powell, Emmanuel Azih.

Read the entire letter here. http://web.cn.edu/.../documents/letter_birmingham_jail.pdf

On my mind. July 3, 2020

On my mind. July 3, 2020

Cumming, GA.

Stacey Abrams, Barak Obama and Dave Chapelle.

I keep finding excellent podcasts to listen to while I am running and yesterday was no exception. I listened to Marc Maron’s WTF podcast interview with Stacey Abrams (http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episode-1130-stacey-abrams). Stacey is the former Georgia House Minority Leader and the first African American female gubernatorial candidate from a major party ever. After hearing this, I am unquestionably hoping for the Biden-Abrams ticket. Four years of Joe followed by eight with Stacey would be a good start to undoing the damage trump’s incompetence and neglect have done.

The interview also includes an excerpt from Marc’s 2015 interview with President Barack Obama (http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_613_-_president_barack_obama?rq=barack%20obama). I remember listening to the interview when it was first released. It also made me long for the days a few short years back when we had a president who could string together thoughts and ideas into a coherent discussion.

I mentioned a Dave Chapelle clip on George Floyd a couple of weeks ago. I watched his “Age of Spin” Netflix special list night. I’ve never watched him a whole lot, but now I want to get my hands on everything he’s ever done. His mix of comedy and social commentary is pure brilliance. He has two Netflix specials on right now. In “Deep in the Hear of Texas: Live at Austin City Limits” he tells the story of a couple of guys throwing snowballs at him and his sister. In Ohio, throwing a snowball is a misdemeanor. But since they called him a n***** when they did it, it’s a felony assault. So it’s good we finally got a Hate Crimes Bill.

Without Ambiguity. Black Lives Matter

Evening thoughts. June 29, 2020

Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Seth Godin and the 2020 legislative session.

Black Lives Matter.

During my Sunday run I found an audio performance of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” on Seth Godin’s Akimbo podcast. After listening to it I decided to pull a few excerpts into my latest blog. I won’t attempt to annotate Dr. King’s words other than to say that, like passages from James Baldwin and Langston Hughes I’ve shared recently, some of these words could have been written last week. Reading more Black authors is one of the best things I’ve done this year. Below are my selected excerpts. The hardest thing was trimming the list down. The full performance is here: https://soundcloud.com/williejackson/dr-martin-luther-kings-letter-from-birmingham-jail

·       I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.

·       Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality.

·       You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being.

·       Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

·       History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

·       There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair.

·       I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the…Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice;

·       We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people

·       In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? Isn't this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?...Isn't this like condemning Jesus because His unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion

·       Was not Jesus an extremist in love? -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice? -- "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

·       So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

And a long passage on the church…

·       I have been disappointed with the white church and its leadership…all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.

·       In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sidelines and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, "Those are social issues which the gospel has nothing to do with,"

·       The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo.

 

Performed by: Winnie Kao, Mike "Ambassador" Bruny, Doc Waller, Darius Gant, Garfield Hylton, Jermaine Maree, Shaun King, Pamela Slim, DeRay McKesson, Dr. Ivor Horn, Charlie Gilkey, Neal Ludevig, Charles Davis, Soledad O'Brien, Greg Hartle, Kimberly Nadia Scott, Lisa Nicole Bell, Paul Drayton, Codie Elaine, André Blackman, John Montgomery II, Daniel Jarvis, James Lopez, Donna Queza, Marc Aarons, Stella Santana, Alex Chavez, Spencer Pitman, Ankit Shah, Cliff Worley, Keylor Leigh, Stephanie Hasham, Willie Jackson, Don Pottinger, Rachel Rodgers, Dr. Angelica Perez-Litwin, Akilah Hughes, Diana Alvear, Danielle Jenene Powell, Emmanuel Azih.

Read the whole thing here. http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/letter_birmingham_jail.pdf

 

The 2020 Legislative Session

A weak Hate Crimes bill passed, overwhelmingly, but without the support of any of the Forsyth County delegation. I’ve mentioned my call with Todd Jones and Greg Dolezal a couple of weeks ago. Their rationale for voting against the bill? It should follow Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act (translation, don’t include LGBTQ, who, thankfully, after the recent SCOTUS decision are now covered under the Civil Rights Act). Also, you shouldn’t value one life over another in sentencing (translation, All Lives Matter). These guys all have to go.

 

More from Seth. Seth Godin says more in a daily 100 or so word blog than others say in pages of prose. From a recent blog (https://seths.blog/2020/06/without-ambiguity-black-lives-matter/):

Without Ambiguity…Black Lives Matter.

The systemic, cruel and depersonalizing history of Black subjugation in my country has and continues to be a crime against humanity. It’s based on a desire to maintain power and false assumptions about how the world works and how it can work. It’s been amplified by systems that were often put in place with mal-intent, or sometimes simply because they felt expedient. It’s painful to look at and far more painful to be part of or to admit that exists in the things that we build.

 

From the Cape Up podcast. Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post, interviewing Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility:  “And I would just ask, what happened to us that we don't have an emotional reaction to (George Floyd) being murdered in front of our eyes? But we have a emotional reaction of some people taking some food out of a shop or breaking a window?” Full podcast. https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/cape-up/the-author-of-white-fragility-doesnt-think-most-white-people-care-about-racial-injustice/

 

 

 

 

 

Evening thoughts. June 16, 2020

Evening thoughts. June 16, 2020

Cumming, GA

Rashard Brooks, the budget and Dave Chappelle

Thinking about Rashard Brooks and three of the times I got pulled over by the police. First time was in college. I was not driving, but I was in a car full of drunks. One of our number was getting sick and we had to pull over so he did not puke all over us. While we were pulled over a Clarke County Deputy pulled up behind us and came up to the car. I am sure it reeked. He checked on us and sent us on our way (note, one of my regular readers, long-time friend and Facebook friend was with me in that car 30+ years ago). Time 2. Still in college, coming back from Atlanta. I had one beer to drink at the event and by that time it was at least a couple of hours later. I got a breathalyzer out of that. I was way under the legal limit and he sent me on my way.

Time 3…about a year ago. I’d been driving all day. It was about 2 am, I had dropped Claire off at her dorm and was about a mile from my house. I was pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy. He asked if I knew why he pulled me over. I had no idea. Turns out I ran the red light coming off 400. I had no recollection of it. I am sure I fell asleep. In one day I had driven from Cumming to Dahlonega to Statesboro attended a funeral drove back to Cumming to Dahlonega and back to Cumming. The last two hours were fueled by Diet Mountain Dew and Milky Ways. The deputy checked my license and plates and let me drive the rest of the way home. Only about a mile at that point.

All this to say, at none of those stops was my car ever inspected, was I ever frisked, cuffed, etc. It’s really not even in my imagination that that would happen, even though it very easily could have. That is some SERIOUS White Privilege.

Which brings me back to Mr. Brooks. He falls asleep in a parking lot and then he’s dead. Let the man walk home. Better yet, offer to take him home. Even better…just knock on the guy’s window and check on him. Why does this call for police response and an arrest? This is why policing needs to be completely overhauled. Seems an arrest should be a last resort, not a first.

The budget. I was discussing this with some friends this week. The issue is not that there isn’t enough. The issue is how we choose to spend it. At the federal level we spend it on wars and weapons and tax cut and don’t have enough for healthcare and education. At the state level we can spend a billion dollars on sports stadiums and cut taxes, but we can’t pay our teachers or expand Medicaid. In my town our kids go to school in trailers but we get a snazzy new $100 million jail. A dollar is a dollar, it’s how we choose to spend it. Personally, I’d prefers schools, education and healthcare to bombs, fighter jets, wars, stadium, jails and tax cuts.

Last, this Dave Chappelle clip is raw. It’s from his new Netflix special 8:46. He goes off on George Floyd’s murder about 4 minutes in, starting with the 35 seconds of the Northridge Earthquake in 1994. “the wrath of God…it’s not for a single cop, it’s for all of it, fucking all of it…this is the streets talking for themselves” https://youtu.be/3tR6mKcBbT4

 

Louie Giglio needs to go to the church of Dave Chappelle and Killer Mike.