PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Why would I write about this – the passing of movie star Sean Connery?

Well, let me just say this – Connery starred in my favorite movie of all time – “The Hunt for Red October.”

Plus, writing about this means that I do not have to write more about Trump, that guys who sits, inappropriately, in the Oval Office as we wait for election day or longer for him to depart.

Now, with Connery’s passing, there never will be a sequel to Red October.  Probably, though a sequel was never really in the offing.  Hard to do one when the last scene in the first epic shows the stars – Connery and Alec Baldwin – riding a Russian submarine down a river on the East Coast after it had been pilfered by U.S. military forces.

My mind was captured the first time I saw the movie and nearly was able to memorize lines from it as I saw repeats on TV over the years.

Here is the headline and the first paragraph of a story from the Washington Post on Connery’s passing:

“Sean Connery has died. The Scottish-born actor, who was cinema’s first James Bond, was 90. “In a career spanning more than five decades, Connery developed a screen magnetism that combined the seductive charm of his honey-thick Scottish brogue with an alluring physical presence.”

Perhaps I liked Connery because of the Scottish brogue, the “honey-thick” one.  I don’t have one, nor am I of Scottish ancestry, though my wife is and, through her, I have developed a love for all things Scottish, including, it must said, golf.

Connery won much of his fame and fortune for playing British spy James Bond in six films in the Bond series, which developed almost a cult following over the years for at least a couple reasons – the so-called “Bond girls” and the upscale weaponry, including fast cars and pounding guns.

Famously, Connery as Bond was asked by one villain “Do you lose as gracefully as you win?”  “I don’t know, I’ve never lost,” Connery replied.

Overall, Connery made more than 60 films — most of them in the leading role.  The Bond series aside, only a handful drew critical acclaim:  “The Untouchables,” “The Man Who Would Be King,” “The Hill,” “The Offence” and “Russia House.”  Many were flubs such as “Zardoz” and the “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.”

But, many were audience-pleasers such as “The Hunt for Red October,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” and the Bond films.

Count me as one of those pleased by “The Hunt for Red October.”

As an aside, the submarine used for scenes in Red October has been resting for some years as an attraction near the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry on the east side of the Willamette River.

Well, enough of that.  Back to waiting for election returns as a political junkie.