Is sports going the way of Hollywood?

To me,and maybe I'm being overly dramatic here.....but its hard to think of a positive future for America nowadays. I'm just sitting back thinking when's it all gonna finally fall apart? I dont if its the constant bombardment of negative news via the media, or the infusion of politics into ever facet of our society that's been wearing me down....

The is clearly a difference from the phrase BLM and the organization. In the BLM mission statement they actually say that they want to disrupt the tradition family and replace it with extended family and villages raising our kids??? I think it is safe to say the 90% of those people who hold up those signs have no clue to what the BLM movement is.

Clearly the media continues to pollute the minds of anyone who is willing to be persuaded. I did spend one evening focusing on MSNBC and CNN when the riots were taking place. CNN and MSNBC would constantly focus on mostly peaceful riots with a few shots of Police Officers using there Billy Clubs. When I turned on to Fox News they showed the same city at the same time where building were set on fire and looters were running around with stolen goods.

I returned from a Vacation to Siesta Key over a week ago. On they way home my family set next to an African American and just starting talking football as he saw my OSU gear and he was a huge Nebraska fan. We talked about our families where he had several kids and what would do to keep them inline as he raised them. He was in his 50 and his wife passed away last year with cancer. He went through his issues being a rebel growing up but eventually went to school and got his masters and is now a teacher. During that conversation we stayed away from politics almost the entire time. At the very end he did share with me that he was totally against defunding the police and then I shared with him that what happened in Minnesota was tragic and that can certainly learn from what happened to do better. I also shared that I was aware that poeple of color do get treated differently at times and that we can also do better but the way things are right now we can't even add our voice in the conversation. In the end we were really both on the same page and it was a very healing conversation for my family and hopefully for him.

I think what I am getting at is that the media does nothing but pollute peoples minds and if you just tune it out then you will see that this world is not all that bad. Just go out in your neighborhoods and see how people of all races are treat each other and it will give you a whole new perspective. I know that we all have a desire to get informed but pick your resources carefully and stick to them. Then just go out and live your life.

I completely tuned out of ESPN and refuse to listen to Clay Travis because he completely botched the Urban Meyer story and never apologized. When it comes to news I did find out that Bill O'Reily has made it back on the air at first tv. As far as media goes I tune into the updated corona numbers for Ohio once a day and Tune into O'Reily at 8 pm when I can. You will find that this world is a much much better place when you live it as opposed to being told how it is.

My facebook account got hacked just before the virus. I tried to get it reinstate but now looking back it was probably the best thing that happened to me.

You guys are inspiring. Candles bravely burning on a dark, dark night.

I've read... I love.... and, will respond when I can properly collect and organize my own thoughts.

But for now, thank you.

Hopefully you recognized the sarcasm in my post about Facebook and People. Facebook is a shit show these days. Everyone spewing off about politics. I can't be 100% sure about this but I'm guessing there are very few people who have voted based on something they read on Facebook - at least I hope that's the case. What a colossal waste of time and yet, there are people who spend their entire day posting political diatribes from both sides - makes me sick. 

I was thinking about this the other day. Imagine all the inventions and tremendous innovations men and women have come up with through the ages. They've cured diseases, learned how to fly, gone to the moon, sent space probes to Mars, built skyscrapers over 100 stories tall, bridges that span miles, navigated the seas, gone to both poles, scaled the tallest mountains, written stories that have been around for centuries, developed light, created moving pictures, recorded sound, made instruments of all shapes and sizes, figured out how to transplant organs from one person to another and countless other miraculous things - the wonders the human mind has achieved is astounding, they've figured out some pretty amazing things. And yet, there are people who simply can't figure out how to just get along with each other. The fact that there are still people who hate based on skin color just shows how far we have to go. Every choice you make defines who you are but there's one thing none of us had the opportunity to choose and that's the color of our skin (unless you're Michael Jackson). I don't get it.

I think I've mentioned this before but I went to Colonel White High School - a very diverse high school in Dayton, Ohio. Whites were definitely the minority. I was scared to death to go to this school - I had only gone to school with 3 or 4 black kids up to that point and everything I had ever heard about black people was bad. My parents had no trouble dropping the 'N' word. It was fairly common for my mom or dad to say, those 'GD 'N' words need to keep their asses on their own side of town. My dad would tell us black jokes that he heard at work. I'm sure that's how they were raised - my grandmothers were the sweetest women I've ever met in my life but they also hated blacks. 

So I start my freshman year of high school and my dad encourages me to play football. There were about 30 black kids on the team and less than 10 white kids. At first I was a bit scared but I quickly learned the black kids were just as scared of the white kids and we were all just a bunch of 13/14 year old kids trying to go to school - that was one thing we had in common. And I soon learned we had many other things in common. Long story short, they became more than my team mates, they became my friends. Going to that school was one of the most important periods of my life. It allowed me to live the Atticus Finch line - I was able to climb inside their skin and see what it was like to be them. And it was pretty ugly. 

My senior year we played Greenville High School. Greenville is a community about an hour north of Dayton. A small, farming community - I'm not sure of the number of blacks in Greenville back in the mid-seventies but I can tell you their football team didn't have any and I didn't see one black person in their fan base. So we're getting off the bus and as it happened, I was the first white kid to exit. All their fans were standing around watching us get off the bus as if we were an exhibit at a zoo. So when I got off the bus someone in their crowd yelled, 'Hey they have one white kid!' and they all cheered. That is one moment of my life that I'll never forget and the emotions I felt. i was embarrassed, I was pissed, but mostly I felt bad for my team mates. They played it off and laughed about it but I felt about an inch high. There was a little kid with his parents and he asked if he could get his picture taken with one of my black team mates to which the parent whispered - you can't do that, you'll scare them away! It was unbelievable. I wasn't a very good football player but on that day I had the game of my life. I was in on just about every tackle, the refs told our coaches they needed to calm #62 down. My coaches were shocked because I was never one of the most aggressive players but on that day I wanted to send a message - I was playing for my team mates. I'll never forget that day, it went a long way in shaping me into the person I am today. And 40+ years later I still contend that attending that high school was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I didn't learn a lot about Math or Science but I learned a ton about life. 

We lived off North Main - two blocks north of Hillcrest. Our street was Cliff Street, we were 3 houses away from Sandalwood Park, spent all our summers playing baseball there. That area is very run down and sad these days. I had a pretty good walk to CW...