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.

This is a new department I run as director.  I just formed it with no one to answer to other than myself regarding how it runs and how it conducts its operations.

Yes, you see I am a dictator.  Not just a director.

The other departments I direct are the Department of Pet Peeves, the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering, and the Department of “Just Saying.”  You also might add that there might not be much difference between the new department and the Department of “Just Saying.”

True.  But, remember, I am dictator.  So, there are two departments when there could be one.

How do I have enough time to direct another department?  Well, the title of the new one speaks for itself.

So, with so much time on my hands…

• …I am thinking that I would not want to be the first patient on which a new surgeon worked to begin perfecting his or her skills (Someone has to be the guinea pig; I just don’t want it to be me.)

• …I am thinking that it appears I will never be able to watch Congress find middle ground on tough public policy issues because no one wants to compromise

• …I am thinking that I would not want to drive a Tesla to experiment with automatic driving (and I think about this because of all the Tesla vehicles I see here in La Quinta, California, which, so far, have not crashed into me)
  
• …I was thinking, yesterday, that I would play golf more than watch the Super Bowl because, with the Super Bowl, there is far more hoopla than football (Actually, I did both, and especially in the fourth quarter, there was something for most football fans, even me.)

• …I am thinking that I would not want to play golf with pro golfer J.B. Holmes because I would go to sleep between his strokes

• …I am thinking that pro golfer Phil Mickelson should play more good golf and do less talking about how he hates the game that has produced so much for him

• …I am thinking how much fun it would be to play a golf round with seven clubs, not 14…an idea proposed by one of my favorite golf writers, George Paper, editor of Links Magazine

• …I am thinking that I’ll close this new department until I have more time on my hands