​We’ve all heard the cliché, “mind over matter.” Use you mind to motivate or defeat negative impulses.
 
Last week, after the best player on our 55+ baseball team tragically ripped his hamstring while trying to beat out an infield hit, I modified that cliché. Which means, I guess, it’s not a cliché. The new phrase is, “mind over emotion” or “mind over reaction” or “mind over impulse.”
 
Let me explain the issue and the concept. Every year when our baseball team gets new players, I advise them to watch how they run the bases, to build up to their stop speed, and NOT to take off sprinting like the cops are chasing you.
 
This is all well and good (another cliché). Telling people to use their head and not their reactions or emotions though is like talking to a wall. They might hear you and even agree with you, but their spirit says, “run as hard as you f..cking can to first base to try and beat the throw to first base.”
 
That’s baseball. For any of you who’ve played it, or other active sports, you recognize this. You put everything into the play at hand.
 
In baseball that leads to many injuries. Witness star players hurt in the major leagues. Now consider the bodies of men 55-years-old and older. We are not as limber. The joints and muscles don’t respond and heal as quickly as they did 20 years ago. In fact, the joints and muscles just won’t do certain things that you used to be able to do.
 
Hence the need to use your mind to defeat emotion (reaction). Think before you run. Recognize your limitiations.

This is TREMENDOUSLY difficult, as you can imagine. Witness the injury of our star player noted above.

Every year I warn new players to protect their bodies and let the engine warm up before hitting the accelerator button. They all nod, knowingly.  But, yes, every year, we lose a player or three to a massive hamstring pull or calf strain or groin muscle popping. You can count on it.

All this got me to thinking about how incredibly difficult it is to moderate your sports reactive nature. No matter how much someone explains to you the possible injuries, players still give the game a full physical onslaught. Can we only learn by hurting ourselves?
 
That seems to be a really good question. How do we learn about our aging bodies and what we are capable of? If our minds stay in a younger mindset (“yeah, I can still do this”) then we set ourselves up for failure. But you don’t really find out that your body can’t do certain things until you do it, and experience the side effects (injury).
 
No matter how much I explain and warn new players, they don’t fully absorb the message. They generically understand, but somehow it doesn’t apply to them until they hurt themselves (or they are just incapable of slowing down and playing at 60 percent speed).
 
Somehow us players need a form of speedometer on our wrist to monitor our actions so our minds defeat our emotions. “You’re running at 60 percent effectiveness. Don’t go higher,” the watch should loudly (it needs to be a loud message because of how bad the hearing is with most older players) tell you. Maybe we’d listen then. But, I doubt it.

​The other day I had a discussion that moved onto the topic of bands we have seen in-person and ones that we wished we’d heard live. A nostalgic enterprise which also got me thinking about the types of music each of us listens to over the years, how we progress from one genre to another, from one musician to another, developing our tastes, a bit like life in general.
 
For the sake of fun, I started writing down the bands I’ve seen and the ones I haven’t but wished I had. Memories flowed. Go get a pen and paper and do the exercise yourself. It might surprise you what this gets you dreaming about. It also tells you something about yourself, your tastes and how the music has formed your frame of the world to a certain degree. You’ll remember who you were with, odd incidents that occurred, how the concerts made you feel, the stage of life you were in.
 
Bands I’ve Seen Live (in no particular order)
 
Jethro Tull
The Outlaws
Crosby, Stills and Nash
Charlie Daniels Band (twice)
Heartsfield
Marshall Tucker Band
Neil Young
Bruce Springsteen
J. Geils Band
English Beat
Stray Cats
Midnight Oil (twice)
Grateful Dead
Nickelback
Weezer
Pink
Maren Morris
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
John Prine (twice)
The Strawberries
 
Band I Wish I’d Seen But Haven’t (some I still could go see, so don’t close the door)
Rare Earth
Steppenwolf
Cream
The Doors
Ten Years After
Traffic
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
Led Zeppelin
Imagine Dragons
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (note above that I saw the first three together and Neil Young separately, would have loved to have seen them as a foursome in their prime; wow)
Lynyrd Skynyrd
The Allman Brothers
Lindsay Ell
Linkin Park
Public Enemy
OneRepublic
Lou Reed
Gil Scott-Heron
Parliament Funkadelic
Gang of 4
 
Writing this down takes me back and moves me forward. It’s a list longer than 50 years. I’ve danced my ass off in a high school gym with the temperature outside below zero and left the concert and felt the sweat freezing on my skin. I’ve seen a friend detained by police, and taken him off the officer’s hands so he didn’t get arrested. I’ve watched Springsteen jump into the crowd and get carried across the floor. And so much more.

Was there a best song or concert? I’m not sure. I’m partial to J. Geils Band. I will say this: The second time I saw Charlie Daniels Band was when I was biking across North America, staying at my older brother’s house in Dallas. When he cranked, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” I don’t think I’d ever heard something so electric and rousing, rocking the venue.
 
I hope to find new bands and see a few more concerts before I cash it in. Let me know which concerts stand out in your life and who is your list of bands you wish you’d seen.

​I had a column queued up for this week, but had to scrap it due to some magnificent and timely news. Aaron Rodgers (perhaps you’ve heard of him) made a decision about his NFL free agency.

This, alone, was probably not the story, no. Instead, to fluff it a bit more, the headline stated something to the effect of, “Aaron Rodger’s Free Agency Approach This Year vs. Last Year.” Now, that had to grab you, right?
 
If you happened to catch that headline on a news tracker, or social media, or the newspaper or to buzz you up for the upcoming television scoop of the century, it’s possible you chose to watch or read the segment. Or not.
 
When the eye-catching clip captured my attention, I yawned. Ho hum. Who cares? Seriously, tell me what segment of our population cares the slightest about that story?
 
I posed this question to multiple good friends. The best any of them could come up with as to the intended audience was: gamblers.  And, though I nodded my head when they responded to me that way, I don’t quite understand how gamblers would place a bet on comparing Aaron Rodgers approach to free agency from one year to the next.

What the headline and story say to me is this: there is no new news. There is no worthwhile news. News teasers, whatever type they are, will string together words to gain your attention. They’ll employ whatever tactics they have at their disposal – vague references, comparisons that no one cares about, predictions that make no sense.
 
Having been in the news business for most of my career, I keep an eye on these types of things. As our collective consuming of culture increased exponentially the past 15-25 years or so, “news” (read: opinions, prognostications, celebrity sightings, percentage polling) and its definition have expanded into the category of “less than one percent of society cares about that.”
 
Still, the stuff is out there. It keeps coming. It seeks our attention.

As the consumer (we all consume news like a product or food, eating it up), you must remain vigilant. You need to know when to blow off a story, when it’s total nonsense and strictly designed to agitate you or raise your blood pressure.

Take a deep breath. When you scan your phone, take a few extra minutes. Wait, you say you scroll through quickly? That’s where they get you. Those short bursts are designed to suck you in. First, they have to attract your attention.
 
How? They use names like Aaron Rodgers, or Kate Winslet or Yogi Bear. They find the familiar, something to arouse you. Yabba dabba doooo, Fred.
 
Now they’ve got you. “OMG, you mean Aaron Rodgers approached free agency in a different way this year compared to last? I gotta watch that one. My curiosity is killing me. Let me click it on.”
 
There you have it.  They got ya. Next you’ll want to know how Kate Winslet changed the way she ties her shoes and why Yogi Bear wears a yellow bow tie. You’re dying to know, aren’t you. And where is Boo Boo Bear? What’s up with him?
 
I’m not going to change the system. Still, I needed to get this off my chest. Thanks for letting me rant. Remember, no new news here, just some fun, and hopefully I got ya thinking, laughing, considering something you hadn’t thought about before.

​We all sleepwalk. I sleepwalk. You sleepwalk. Not literally.
 
Here’s what I mean: we sleepwalk through life. We gloss over things. We ignore things. We don’t pay attention.

We don’t do this with intent. We don’t purposefully miss the new carpet our spouse installed yesterday in the front hallway. We just overlook it. We’re focused on something else.

Think of all the things we miss every day of our lives. Beautiful sights, cloud formations, flowers blooming, the way a mountain ridge frames the sky. Scenery is but one of the things we blot out.
 
Sleepwalking means we’re on automatic pilot regarding many sensations – sights, smells, sounds. Here’s a personal story demonstrating how I never saw something quite simple for years.
 
Last week, I was sitting in the sauna at our fitness facility. A guy comes in. He walks over to one side, and takes one of those hourglass timers and turns it upside down which allows you 20 minutes before the sand runs out.
 
I go to him, “How long has that hourglass been in here?”
 
He goes, “As long as I’ve been coming in here.”
 
Me: “How long has that been?”
 
Him: “Oh, over five years.”
 
Me: “Holy mackerel, I’ve been taking a sauna here for close to eight years, since the facility opened, and I’ve never noticed that hourglass before.”
 
Not a big thing, but still, shame on me. How can you not see something like that for more than five years? I was sleepwalking, that’s how.
 
One of the biggest places where we miss out is driving our vehicles. We go so fast and must maintain our attention on other cars, their antics and stupid moves, so it becomes extremely difficult to gaze out the window in wonder at the scenery passing by.
 
When I bicycled across North America in 1982, one of the biggest takeaways was noticing how much I’d been missing when driving a car. Bicycling caused me to pause and take more in. You’re in the environment on a bicycle, not behind sealed windows. And you go slower, so you absorb more, contemplate more.
 
Those are good things. That summer allowed me to open my perspective on how I look at many things.
 
When we sleepwalk, we miss that contemplation time. We’re wound up about something else, our brains ripping along.
 
Recently, a tornado plowed through the area near our house in Wisconsin. We saw the damage in the woods surrounding our home. There were also some nearby gigantic trees toppled that stood out. That storm was several weeks ago.

Just this past week, I saw two trees downed less than a mile from our house that had to have come from the storm. I never noticed them before. I was sleepwalking. I paid attention this time because my wife was driving and I was able to enjoy the view out the window. “OMG, look at that tree that got ripped down. I never noticed.”
 
Downed trees materialized because I wasn’t driving. Sometimes that’s all it takes to eliminate sleepwalking. Give yourself some time to look around and enjoy the sights.
 
Other times you need to activate yourself. Take that step. Breathe. Smell. Look with intention.

Commitment can be a strange thing. It’s a word used to bind you to a goal, get you to stay with something, work through it, whatever that may be.

We throw the word around without thinking. It means a lot though if you stay with it (ha, committing to something). That’s where results occur. This also says something about who you are, that when you say something, others know you will follow through.
 
At the end of this past basketball season, I assessed my body and commitment relative to continuing to referee the sport in 2026-27. As my years have entered a seventh decade, the physical, mental and emotional demands of refereeing an intense sport take a greater toll.
 
For me, the biggest decision variable is the physical. How does my body feel at the end of the season? Can I meet the demands next year and keep my personal high standards on the court?  If not, then I don’t think it’s fair to the players, coaches, fans and my partners for me to go out again and blow the whistle.
 
Larry Bird, as I remember stories written about him, took two weeks off to recuperate at the end of an NBA season as he got further on in his years. He needed to rest, let the muscles lose their tension, stress and physical abuse they’d absorbed from November-April.
 
As I’ve got to my current age, the concept of stepping back to assess after a season has become stronger. I consider my aches and pains. Anything serious? Anything debilitating? Am I limping? Can I still get up and down the court effectively? How are my eyes (fans and coaches don’t think about this, I’m confident, but having good eyes is critical to high level officiating)?
 
This past year, as you’d probably expect, I was getting more worn out then previous years, which isn’t surprising giving my advanced age. I know the end could come any day when I have to hang up the black shoes, striped shirt and whistle. Or, it could come three, five or seven years (perhaps long, but highly unlikely) down the road. The point is, that day is coming whether I like it or not.
 
No one can referee basketball in a competitive environment forever. There are limits –  best to recognize them and go out appropriately on your own terms.

My wife has not heard me speak of my officiating in these terms (“You know, dear, this could be my last season. We’ll see.”). I spoke that way in March.
 
But, the spark remained and I made a commitment. You might find the following amusing.
 
To invest in next season, to make that commitment, I purchased new shirts, pants and socks. I committed. This wasn’t just about physicality, because more goes into officiating a sport than most people recognize.
 
There is a cost we bear as officials, like buying your own uniform. You also must have a belief in yourself that you are doing justice to others on the court. Do you enjoy officiating? You better.
 
Committing to new digs meant committing to how I will look on the court.  A new uniform means a fresh look, an improvement in how I come across to others.
 
I had been putting off the decision, uncommitted. I committed completely when I bought the new uniform essentials in March. I’ll be back in November, god willing. I’ll look better in the bright uniform, at least for a few months until the sparkle has worn off the stripes.

​People live in their own worlds. This happens to a greater extent, it seems to me, as we get older.
 
My wife and I discuss this often: the syndrome of people not paying attention. While distraction happens to a different extent depending on the person you are dealing with, we both notice the level of a person not paying attention gets worse past the age of 60 or so.
 
We know multiple distracted people in our interactions, and we have a dog, Pepper, who falls into this category as well. We laugh about the dog, and we wonder about the people (What’s going through their heads that they walk away during the middle of a conversation? Are we that boring? Did we say something offensive? Do they have a negative attention span?).
 
We don’t have the answers to those questions because as a polite human being, you don’ t ask, “Hey, bub, why’d you just walk away as we were talking?” Instead, you watch that person stroll away and question yourself.
 
Perhaps this syndrome is the way of the world today. People are distracted. They don’t listen. It’s the norm. I don’t like to think that way because I like to think the best of people, so I stick with the theory that it’s only certain people who appear to be getting more and more light-headed.
 
When you meet someone like this and have an interaction, you can almost see the individual not listening. They look off into the distance. You get an “mmmmmm” from them in response to your question and they show a faraway look in their eyes.
 
Then, they mosey along, like our dog Pepper. This is amusing and ties into the theory of living in your personal little world.

Pepper is 17-years-old, cannot hear (maybe barely) nor do her eyes function more than probably five or ten percent. She operates by smells and routine. She sniffs away, knows where she is, and moseys along.

This seems the way of the world with distracted older people: they mosey along, dum deee dum dum dum. Perhaps this is a good thing. Without hearing or eyesight, just puttering through your day could be quite enjoyable. No one would bother you. You couldn’t hear questions. Your personal world could service you quite well.

In some ways, that could also make your life easier, by simplifying things. Because you can’t hear or see very well, activities become constrained. You boil them down to the basics – eat my breakfast, take a walk, drink coffee, do the laundry, not listen to people, cut the grass, have a cocktail, whatever is in the basic daily routine. You have quantifiable routine things to do that can give you pleasure.
 
You do things at your own pace. “I’ll get there when I get there.”
 
Many years back I remember an interview with an elder celebrity who was asked what he looked forward to each day. His answer (more or less): “Having a couple of cocktails on the veranda with my wife before dinner and discussing the day.”
 
He probably moseyed along a bit each day, in his own little world, content and contemplating.

​Fourteen is the new nine. This has nothing to do with all those catchy phrases about age 70 being the new age 50 or 50 being the new 35. No.
 
Sociologically, there seems to be a desire to show some number equates another. This has a lot to do with perception. The examples above pertain to age, and what we think someone should look, act and feel like at a certain age. If you’re feeling and acting younger at age 50 than people did decades ago, then you’re the new 35. You break perceptions.
 
Fourteen being the new nine though has nothing to do with age. It has to do with how maniacs drive on highways in the United States (and probably elsewhere in the world).
 
For many years, the “safe” speed to drive on our nation’s highways was nine MPH over the speed limit. For whatever reason, that was the known safety zone where law enforcement would choose to not pull you over even if they hit you with the speed gun. Going 79 MPH in a 70 MPH zone was good. Up that to 80 or 81 and you were fair game for the state police.
 
My older brother subscribed to that theory. He would talk about setting cruise control nine miles per hour over the speed limit on long interstate highway trips and feel no need to worry about getting pulled over, which as far as I know, he never did.
 
Today though, those limits seem to no longer hold. Drivers don’t stay in the 9 MPH over the speed limit range. They’ve raised the ante.
 
As an example, today I drove to our first game of the senior baseball league in the Milwaukee area. I’ve got to spend 30 of my 45-minute drive on the highway. Several times I drove 9 MPH over the speed limit. During those time periods, I was passed repeatedly.
 
In fact, I wasn’t just passed. Drivers smoked me.

This says something about our flouting of laws, the feeling that you can get away with it (arguably, even going one mile per hour over the limit is breaking the law, but weren’t not going there; it’s relative). More and more, it seems to me, people feel emboldened to get away with stuff. Thumbing your nose at speed limits is one of those.
 
As I watched car after car after car blast by me on the way to today’s game, I was struck by how it only takes one vehicle going for it. Others follow. They see the leader and they fall in behind, and fly.
 
Perhaps we have more and more stressed people today who are behind on their schedules and feel pressed to get someplace. Maybe people don’t budget their time as well, so they feel a need to speed more to catch up. It’s possible that more and more drivers just don’t care; they figure the police can only chase so many people, and figure it won’t be them.

I don’t know the motivations. There are more than mentioned above. What I do know is that 14 is the new nine for a gigantic segment of our society when it comes to putting your cruise control on during highway driving.
 
You might get away with it. Or not. Coming home from the game, a woman in an SUV flew past me as I was going six miles per hour over the speed limit. A police officer was on the side ramp, and turned on the lights to chase her down as I putt-putted away in my zone. Yeah, I broke the speed limit, too, but not as much, and somehow that made me feel righteous.

​For those of you who read this column with any degree of regularity, you recognize I’m no technology genius. So, it’s slightly amusing to me when someone else puts me in that category.
 
I have a good friend who calls me for advice occasionally on how to access something on the internet. This makes me feel smart even though I know how challenged I am relative to the experts on accessing data, figuring out where to go on web sites for the information you seek or establishing an electronic payment system to my account that actually functions.
 
Those examples above can frustrate me, no doubt about it. I can remember one time, for example, trying to get my banking information inputted to some app so one of my clients could pay me, and it took several hours and multiple new curse words to accomplish. I did it eventually, so there is something to that, but it doesn’t mean I know how to duplicate the process for something (or someone) else.

The flattering part about my friend calling me for help is that he believes I can duplicate it. In fact, he has a degree of faith in me that I don’t have in myself. I feel good when he calls, and I work hard to help him, and I think I do most of the time.
 
What his calls do for me is put me in a position of expertise I don’t have. It’s odd. You step back for a minute to consider his questions, wondering if you actually know something. When you realize you don’t, but you are capable of somewhat faking your way through the foggy information haze, you roll with it.
 
That means wading into the deep surf. I’ve got to break through the tension of the surface water to find the layers beneath and figure out how to share what I DO know with someone else.
 
And, one of the points of this, is all of us know something. If we know something, we can share it. Sharing knowledge with someone else also helps us learn.
 
These calls become teaching moments for me. I’m not talking about teaching my buddy. I’m talking about teaching myself. Running through the numbers with him, I find myself “getting” the online confusion he has and breaking down where I messed up. From there, I can give him sound advice.
Messing up is tremendously important. Never forget that. As I’ve gotten to the latter stages of my life, it comes up over and over in my mind how I’ve picked things up and really absorbed them into my brain’s operating system when I was lost and then found the solution.
 
Those are frustrating but rewarding situations. We learn in many ways. My friend trusts my instincts and knowledge and perhaps my ability to explain things which make sense to others. Ultimately, he learns differently that I do, but he trusts my system to help him.
 
Most of the time I can help my buddy when he calls. I’m a technology neanderthal, but he makes me feel like I’m a genius.
 
To give you a sense of perspective, he has yet to memorize the pin number for his bank account. Now that I’ve got down pat. And I can explain how to use a pin pad.

​Time for a story about friendship. Six women from our high school recently got together for a pilgrimage they take regularly to commune with each other for the umpteenth time (one of them could probably give me the exact number of these gatherings; we’re older, so let’s just say the number of times they’ve done this is a lot).
 
One the face of it, that might not sound unusual. Many of us stay in touch with high school friends, go to reunions, hang out, drive over to see someone to have coffee, dinner or a drink.
 
What stands out to me about this group of six (and sometimes more) is the commitment they have to each other and their respective friendships (as a group and one-to-one).
 
I’m not privy to their most intimate conversations. I’m confident though that they laugh, sometimes cry, support each other, do new things to enhance the collective lives. I know them well enough to understand that about them: their desire to be there for each other and enjoy hanging out.

Seems so simple, but elusive in today’s world. I wonder about the magic (can we call it that or is it something simpler like commitment and caring) that keeps all of them connected and supportive.
 
It’s a marvelous thing they have. You can see it in the photos they share, how they react to each other when you are fortunate enough to share time with them.
 
While touching base with one of the women recently, we discussed the rejuvenating aspect of getting together with long-term friends. We gain perspective. We see the world a little differently and return to our daily lives with a jolt of joy running through our veins.
 
As we passed text messages back and forth, I related a recent reconnection for me with a great friend from Marquette, MI.
 
When we visit, there is a spontaneous release of joy. We’re on the same page, up for an adventure, see a band, dig up dirt, drink beer, be goofy, climb a mountain, listen to his creative piano playing, walk along Lake Superior as 30 MPH winter winds rip through your jacket. It doesn’t matter what we do. What matters is the hang-out time, reliving a few good memories and creating some new ones.
 
I’ve found over the years that I return from these visits with an improved attitude. There’s a certain purification that goes on, a release of some bad sh…t that may be stored inside, replaced by good sh….t that gives me inspiration. That’s a huge reason for us to gather.
 
When my high school friend got settled this year in their retreat house, I wrote on her Facebook page that they should rent and watch “The Big Chill.” I’m sure they didn’t because they were having too much fun together.
 
But, “The Big Chill” says a lot about what it means to stay in touch. with  important people in your lives, sharing the bumps and bruises we encounter and celebrating those highlights we savor. Life would be so much less without this.
 
Those six women from our high school are, quite frankly, amazing to me. I tell them that when I see them. I think it’s unusual to see a group like that remaining so close and actively connected over oh-so-many years. If they could bottle that energy and sell it to others, all of them would be rich many times over. I think they already are rich in spirit, and they probably could care less about the money anyway.

When you leave the United States for more than a week, it offers a time of reflection, a chance to look back, contemplate and consider how and why we live the way we do. My wife and I recently returned from a lengthy trip to New Zealand. During those 15+ days abroad, I found myself reflecting on the way of life in New Zealand compared to the United States.
 
I came away with one overriding reflection: Kiwis (New Zealanders) put much more effort and care into protecting the native environment than we do in the U.S. I make that statement based on lengthy visual observations while being driven to natural habitat restoration sites in the southern half of the upper island and a lengthy circuitous route along the coast and Southern Alps (Kā Tiritiri o te Moana is the name of the mountain range in the Maori language, hence the shorter Engish version used for simplicity and understanding) of the southern island.
 
Why do I say this about care for the environment? In the days we were there, we found virtually no garbage anywhere along the roadways.

Simple statement. Doesn’t seem like much. But, take a second and think about it.

When you drive ANYWHERE in the U.S., when is the last time you have seen the side of the road you are driving/walking on pristine? And, I mean spotless. No plastic bags fluttering in trees. No abandoned beer cans. No cardboard boxes or cigarette butts. No plastic wrap or Styrofoam or tires or shattered glass. Just grass, trees, bushes, undergrowth, flowers, greenery, the way it is meant to be.
 
If you are like me, you cannot find a street anywhere near where you live that has not been turned into a dump. The only time you see those areas cleaned up, is BRIEFLY after Earth Day or after a Rotary Club or some other do-gooders get out for their one-day-a-year to clean up the mess that others have created 364 days a year.

How do the Kiwis do this? How have they developed this ethic of protection, caring and cleaniness? I asked around.

The answer is simple. They care.
 
I spoke to multiple individuals from the country while we were visiting. The answer was similar from person to person.
 
First, parents instill a reverence for the land. Don’t throw things out the window or onto the ground. If you see trash, pick it up, parents explain to their young children.

Second, the ethic is taught and reinforced in school. Lessons about respect for the environment and the importance of keeping it clean start early. When you instill that way of thinking, it becomes modus operandi as life moves on.
 
Finally, concrete steps like banning plastic bags at retail shops or charging a $1.50 fee per plastic bag discourage wasteful behavior. Plastic bags are not “offered” at checkout; you must ask for them, then pay the fee. Quite frankly, if we taxed plastic bags in the U.S., our Department of Treasury might become rich. Maybe we could eliminate the income tax. We can hope.
 
I do love the U.S. We have a naturally beautiful country, but it doesn’t stay that way when far too many people dump their refuse on the side of the road. Being in New Zealand got me reflecting on that and how much it angers me about our country. We can do so much better. And it would be so easy. Make it a mission.