Perspective from the 19^th Hole 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 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.

Nobody who happens to read this blog would know the answer to the question in the headline.

I do…because it’s about me.  But forgive the lack of modesty.

So here goes.

In a column in the Wall Street Journal, Ben Zimmer, who writes about the derivation of words (Isn’t in laudable that a newspaper like the Wall Street Journal pays someone to write about words?), used his regular column to describe the derivation of the word “re-boot.”

His column appeared under this headline and sub-head:  “‘Reboot’:  A New Start, Whether for a Computer or a Presidential Campaign;  A now familiar term for starting fresh dates back to taking hold of bootstraps in the 19th century.”

Who knew that “re-boot” I were related?

Here is how it happened.

Story #1:  Zimmer wrote that, when President Biden announced he would not seek re-election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democrats’ new standard-bearer, commentators turned to a highly appropriate word to encapsulate the huge shake-up in the political landscape:  ‘Re-boot.’

“’Inside the Democrat Re-Boot:  Joy, Hope and Fear,’ read one headline in Politico Magazine.  ‘The Democrat Party is rebooting,’ announced the Washington Post.  The Wall Street Journal reported on how Democrats have been ‘racing to mount an uncertain re-boot of their campaign.’

Zimmer goes on to cite the derivation of the word re-boot:

“The computing world is, in fact, where the term ‘re-boot’ originated.  It goes back to ‘bootstrap’ as the name for the process that allows the operating system of a computer to be loaded into memory.  The process involves a series of stages, each of which requires a small program to load and execute a larger program for the next stage.  Metaphorically, then, the computer is pulling itself up by its own bootstraps.

“And where does that notion come from? My research into the ‘bootstraps” idiom takes it back to 1834, when a would-be inventor from Nashville named Nimrod Murphree announced in a local newspaper that he had ‘discovered perpetual motion.’

“His claim was ridiculed in other papers, including one that quipped, Probably Murphree has succeeded in handing himself over the Cumberland River, or a barnyard fence, by the straps of his boots.’

“Over time, this comical image of an impossible task was transformed into a call for self-improvement:  To ‘pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps’ came to be a feel-good expression for bettering oneself without assistance.”

Story #2:  To get back to this blog headline, I happened to use “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” a long time ago – but accurately.

The scene occurred about 40 years ago when I served as deputy director of the Oregon Department of Economic Development.

Our department was asked by French officials to travel to the Clermont-Ferrand region to speak to students in a French business graduate school.

When the department director could not go, he asked me to go in his place and I was happy to do so.

French school officials told us they wanted someone from Oregon to describe how the state had transitioned its economy from timber and fishing to high technology.  In France, those same officials wanted to know how to transition from Michelin tire factories — there were several major ones in the Clermont Ferrand region — to a broader, more diversified economy.

So it was that, with my wife, I traveled to France prepared with a speech about Oregon’s successful economic transition, one that, in fits and starts, is still under way today.

On the scene in France, I spoke to the graduate school glass with a translator for the first time in my life.  The French students wanted to hear the speech in English, the most used business language in the world, but they still needed translation from English into French.

All was well until the question-answer period.  Actually, hindsight says it went well, too.

To answer one student’s question, I used a metaphor to explain one part of transitioning an economy.  I said, “Oregonians had to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.”

My translator had trouble with that idiom, so, afterwards, he told me he simply said – “pull yourselves up by the seat of your pants” – and, as he said that, he grabbed the back of his pants.

Well, not quite accurate, I suppose, but point made.

To state the obvious years ago, I did not have the benefit of the kind of research typical of Ben Zimmer’s writing on the derivation of words.

Wouldn’t have mattered, though.  The idiom I used, according to Zimmer, was exactly on point — “a feel-good expression for bettering oneself without assistance.”

Oregonians had “pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps.”

We should all be doing the same today.