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 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.

If there is one golf rule to change, it would be easy for me:  If your drive lands in a divot in the fairway, you would get free relief.

Too often, I have seen pro golfers hit a good drive only to be foiled by a fairway divot.

While pros have ability to hit out of a divot, they should not be faced with that challenge.

Neither should we as recreational golfers.  And, of course, in a gentlemen’s game at my Club, we would probably take relief from a divot, as long as we weren’t playing in a tournament with formal golf rules in place.

My on-line Links Insider asked this question in its most edition:  For PGA Tour players what One Golf Rule You’d Love to Change?”

Here is a summary of the results, with, first, a couple introductory paragraphs as written by Shaun Tolson:

“The rules of golf are generally clear, straightforward, and — most importantly — agreeable.  Every once in a while, however, golfers will come across a rule that seems antiquated or flat out unnecessary.  Amateurs aren’t taking their rulebooks out for most casual rounds of golf, but the pros are well-versed in the statutes of the game.

“With that in mind, we asked a handful of PGA Tour players which rule — either specifically for the tour or a general rule of golf — they’d most like to change or eliminate completely.  

• A Scorekeeper’s Dilemma

It may not happen often, but occasionally, a player will be disqualified from a tournament for signing an incorrect scorecard. It’s understandable that in the early years of competitive golf, such a rule was necessary to curtail cheating, but these days there are plenty of preventative measures in place for that.

• Keep It Moving

“If you find your ball out of bounds [after your tee shot], you have to go back to the tee.  Pro golfer Stewart Cink says the current rule doesn’t have a place in casual rounds. “I just don’t see how that really fits into weekend golf.  If you’re playing on a crowded Saturday and you find your ball out of bounds, you’ve got to go back to the tee and tell the group behind you, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I need to come back here and hit another shot while you wait.’  To me, that just doesn’t make any sense.”

• Lightening the Load

A rule change that pro Russell Knox would like to see implemented — at the professional level, at least — is a reduced number of clubs allowed in a player’s bag.  “I think 14 clubs is too many,” he says, adding that he’d limit the number of clubs to a dozen.  “The shot-making part of golf is the lowest it’s ever been.  With the latest technology, guys are turning the game too much into robot science.  It would be more fun if guys had to be a little more creative with shots and eliminating clubs would definitely help that.

• Playing Dirty

For many players, including pro Billy Horschel, the obvious rule to change pertains to balls that come to rest in a divot in the fairway.  “As I understand it,” Horschel says, “the definition of ‘ground under repair’ fits that perfectly.  If you’re on the green and you land in someone else’s pitch mark, you’re able to fix it.  It should be no different, in my opinion, when you’re in the fairway.”

• Or This

Instead, the big deal for pro Zach Johnson is not being allowed to clean mud off a golf ball that has come to rest in the fairway.  “If you have mud on your ball… arguably, you now have zero control out of the middle of the fairway.  But if you hit a worse shot off the tee — if you hit it 20 yards right in the intermediate rough — you can have more control.  There’s something wrong with that.”

• Too Much Information

If pro J.B. Holmes could change one aspect of the rules on tour, he wouldn’t change a rule, per se, so much as he’d change the way a rule is implemented.  More specifically, he’d prevent television viewers from calling in to alert tournament officials of a potential rules violation.

Moreover, he explains that, in many instances, players might be doing everything right to determine what their ball did prior to ending up in a precarious situation, since those details will determine if they’re entitled to a free drop.  However, if a camera used for a television broadcast captures evidence that runs contrary to what a player may have seen or what he has been told by witnesses on the ground, retroactive penalties can be administered, even if the player did everything by the book.

“It’s also unfair in that sense because not everybody in the field has a camera on them.”

And this conclusion.  The Links writer, Tolson, starts his story with this sentence:  “The rules of golf are generally clear, straightforward, and — most importantly — agreeable.”

No.  I have no idea how he reaches that conclusion.  To me, the opposite is true.  Golf rules are not clear, not straightforward, and not agreeable.

So, one of the best ways to answer the question about golf rules to change is to re-write them in a way that makes them more understandable.  Do they have to be a bit complicated?  Yes, because they apply outdoors to all kinds of settings.

But, as complicated as they are?  No.

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 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.

“Stentology.”

Yes, this is a word I coined to describe what has happened recently to my wife, Nancy.

And, what happened to me now just more than 19 years ago.

What?  Insertion of what are called “stents” in our hearts to re-enable adequate blood flow after arteries and other vessels had been blocked.

So, what is a stent?  It is a small mesh tube that cardiologists insert – incredibly, yes “insert” —  into the heart to re-enable the blood view in coronary arteries, which provide the heart with oxygen-rich blood.

Nancy and I are two of an estimated two million people who get coronary artery stents every year, and if you have coronary artery disease, there is a good chance your doctor will suggest you get one, as happened in our two situations.

Apart from a statistic such as this, one aspect of our experience impressed me more than any other:  It was the capability of our cardiologists for whom inserting stents is a routine practice.  To do the job, they either go through your wrist (yes, your wrist!) or your groin (yes, your groin!) to fish a tube up or over to your heart.

This occurs when cardiologists do angio-grams or when they insert stents.   Sometimes, the two processes occur at the same time.

Here is quick background on the two separate situations affecting my wife and me:

• For me, I became sick on the evening of December 1, 2004, so, with my wife’s help, went to the hospital emergency room in the city where we live, Salem, Oregon.  It turned out that, as I arrived by ambulance, I was having a heart attack (I still call it an “episode,” a term I like better), so the doctor on call immediately inserted a stent that saved my life. 

I had two more non-emergent stents inserted the next day before I began a recovery process.  So, I now have three stents!

• For my wife, discomfort in her left shoulder a few weeks ago prompted her to consult a cardiologist.  And, while she did not have a heart attack, one was close, she was told, so the cardiologist inserted what turned out to be an emergent stent, then another one three weeks later.  So, she now has two stents, one less than me!

As I often do these days, I went on-line to get more information on what I call “stentology.”  So, I limit myself to the following top-10 list of questions and answers, which appear in no particular order of priority:

1. What percentage of blockage requires a stent?

Jon Resar, an interventional cardiologist and director of the adult cardiac catheterization laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital says this:  By clinical guidelines, an artery should be clogged at least 70 per cent before a stent is placed.  A 50 per cent blockage doesn’t need to be stented.”

• How long does recovery take after a heart stent is placed?

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute suggests that, for many people, a full return to normal, everyday activities can take as little as a few days or a week.

• What should you avoid after a stent?

In most cases, you’ll be advised to avoid heavy lifting and strenuous activities for about a week, or until the wound has healed.  Plus, no car driving for about a week.

• How long does a stent last in a person?

It is permanent. There is just a 2–3 per cent risk of narrowing coming back, and if that happens it is usually within 6–9 months after installation.

• Why do I have to carry a stent card?

It documents the patient’s details, the length of time the stent should remain, and contact details for the patient to use if they have not received any dates for stent change or removal.  All of which is helpful information in the case of an accident or further hospitalization.

• Can you live a long life with stents?

A person with a stent(s) can be more physically active, travel, feel more energetic, and notice improvement in overall health.  As long as one follows a person’s doctor’s advice and consults the doctor regularly, there is every chance that one has a longer and healthier life span post an angio-plasty.

• How often should a heart stent be checked?

As recommended in the National Disease Management Guidelines, patients with coronary heart disease and those who have undergone stent implantation should be followed up regularly (every three to six months) by their cardiologists.

• Which is better bypass surgery or stents?

A narrowing or blockage in the left anterior descending artery (LAD) is more serious than narrowing or blockage in the other arteries.  Bypass surgery usually is the best choice for a blocked LAD.  If the LAD is not blocked, and there are no other complicating factors, stents are more likely to be used, even if both other arteries are blocked.

• How do you keep a stent from clogging?

Although drug-coated stents are much less likely to close up than bare-metal stents, the price of this benefit is taking anti-clotting medications for a year or more and then aspirin indefinitely to prevent the rare but potentially deadly formation of a blood clot on the stent.

1. Can you go through a metal detector if you have a stent?

You will not set off any metal detectors after stent implantation.

Okay, enough, but this final question:  How much does a stent cost?  Well, the answer, pertaining to a stent that is coated with medicine (as most of them are now), is $38,000.

For my wife and me, worth every penny!

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 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.

The line in this blog headline came from a column in the Washington Post by George Will.

Agree with him or not, he writes well, including in the words in the headline, which convey volumes.

So it was that he started his most recent column with these excellent paragraphs:

“Although not all worrywarts are progressives, all progressives are worrywarts.  They believe that there are evermore things urgently in need of their supervision — things to ban or mandate or regulate to help society shimmy up the pole of progress.

“Senator Elizabeth Warren is progressivism incarnate.  The former Harvard Law School professor should possess, if there were such, a Ph.D. in Advanced Worrying.

“She represents the cutting edge of modern fretting, forever anxious lest something, somewhere, escapes the government’s improving attention.  So she has Xed (tweeted, for those who are not au courant) her joy that the Federal Trade Commission recently has been preoccupied with the menace of Big Tech is turning its disapproving squint at Big Sandwich.”  

Will continues.

“Roark Capital, a private equity firm, owns or otherwise supports various fast-food chains (Arby’s, Sonic Drive-In, Jimmy John’s, McAlister’s Deli, Schlotzky’s) that serve sandwiches.  The government disagrees with itself about the definition of ‘sandwich.’  Now, Roark reportedly plans to purchase the Subway chain for $9.6 billion.  The FTC evidently shares Warren’s worry that this might create, what she calls, ‘a sandwich shop monopoly.’”

So, regulation is in the wind.

Will, for one, cannot believe it.

And neither can I.

For one thing, the Warren proposal indicates a far too aggressive stance on the role of government.  If it moves or has life, then Warren wants to get government involved.

Further, I have often railed against the use of the word “progressive” in politics because it conveys that liberals like Warren who want an ever-expanding role for government believe their views will make “progress,” thus are progressive.

No.  They often regress, not progress.

Like regulating sandwiches.

So, I say, stop! 

Instead, devote government time and effort to a host of issues that need to be considered by those in Congress, such as:

• Immigration
• The war in Ukraine
• Anti-semitism, including on university campuses
• Simmering tensions in the Middle East
• The next presidential election in the United States
• Climate change that can be proved by science, not politics
• How to save American democracy
• Etc.

Leave sandwiches alone.

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 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.

At the risk of giving myself a compliment, a recent example underscores the worth of what I do most days, which is to read both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

The Journal on the right.  The Post on the left.  Neither to the extreme.

This week, I got what I expected – two views on President Joe Biden.

Rove is a critic.  Rubin is a supporter.

To illustrate, here goes:

From Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal

“In a wide-ranging interview, Kamala Harris was more fluid and articulate than her boss.  That’s something of a problem itself.   But she also showed that besides stock phrases and baseless assertions, there isn’t all that much to the Biden record that will endear it to Americans desperate for a better future.

“Voters are uneasy, angry, and deeply dissatisfied with the Administration’s performance.  Nothing Harris does will change that.  Less than a year from the election, the Biden-Harris team still hasn’t found a way to make its case.”

From Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post

“…In other words, the mainstream media would have to focus (not just for a single story but extended over weeks) on the consequences of electing a candidate echoing Adolf Hitler and vowing to use the military and Justice Department against his enemies.  They would have to look not at polling about the economy, but the actual economic record of the Administration, including inflation flattened, more than 14 million jobs created, and record low unemployment for Black people, Hispanics and women.”

So, two views.

Which do I accept?

Well, I might not write the way either Rove or Rubin do, but I will vote for Biden because a vote for Trump is a vote for a dictator who will use the powers of presidency for his own goals, not the country’s goals.

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 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.

Like many reporters, I’ve been operating in Casaubon mode for much of the past eight years, searching for the key to Donald Trump’s mythologies.

No single explanation of Trump is fully satisfactory, although Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer came closest when he observed that the cruelty is the point. Another person who helped me unscramble the mystery of Trump was his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Early in the Trump presidency, I had lunch with Kushner in his White House office.  We were meant to be discussing Middle East peace (more on that another time), but I was particularly curious to hear Kushner talk about his father-in-law’s behavior.

I was not inured then — and am not inured even now — to the many rococo manifestations of Trump’s defective character.

One of the first moments of real shock for me came in the summer of 2015, when Trump, then an implausible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said of Senator John McCain, “He’s not a war hero … I like people who weren’t captured, okay?”

I did not understand how so many ostensibly patriotic voters could subsequently embrace Trump, but mainly I couldn’t understand his soul sickness:  How does a person come to such a rotten, depraved thought?

That day in the White House, I mentioned to Kushner one of Trump’s more recent calumnies and told him that, in my view, his father-in-law’s incivility was damaging the country.  Strangely, Kushner seemed to agree with me:  “No one can go as low as the president,” he said.  “You shouldn’t even try.”

I was confused at first.  But then I understood:  Kushner wasn’t insulting his father-in-law.  He was paying him a compliment.

Perverse, of course.  But revelatory as well, and more than a little prophetic.  Because Trump, in the intervening years, has gone lower, and lower, and lower.  If there is a bottom — no sure thing — he’s getting closer.

Tom Nichols, who writes The Atlantic’s daily newsletter and is one of our in-house experts on authoritarianism, argued in mid-November that Trump has finally earned the epithet “fascist.”

“For weeks, Trump has been ramping up his rhetoric,” Nichols wrote. “Early last month, he echoed the vile and obsessively germophobic language of Adolf Hitler by describing immigrants as disease-ridden terrorists and psychiatric patients who are ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ ”

In a separate speech, Trump, Nichols wrote, “melded religious and political rhetoric to aim, not at foreign nations or immigrants, but at his fellow citizens.  This is when he crossed one of the last remaining lines that separated his usual authoritarian bluster from recognizable fascism.”

Trump’s rhetoric has numbed us in its hyperbole and frequency.  As David A. Graham, one of our magazine’s chroniclers of the Trump era, wrote recently, “The former president continues to produce substantive ideas — which is not to say they are wise or prudent, but they are certainly more than gibberish.

In fact, much of what Trump is discussing is un-American, not merely in the sense of being antithetical to some imagined national set of mores, but in that his ideas contravene basic principles of the Constitution or other bedrock bases of American government.”

There was a time when it seemed impossible to imagine that Trump would once again be a candidate for president.  That moment lasted from the night of January 6, 2021, until the afternoon of January 28, 2021, when the then-leader of the House Republican caucus, Kevin McCarthy, visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago and welcomed him back into the fold.

And so here we are.  It is not a sure thing that Trump will win the Republican nomination again, but as I write this, he’s the prohibitive front-runner.

Which is why we felt it necessary to share with our readers our collective understanding of what could take place in a second Trump term. I encourage you to read all the articles in this special issue carefully (though perhaps not in one sitting, for reasons of mental hygiene).

Our team of brilliant writers makes a convincingly dispositive case that both Trump and Trumpism pose an existential threat to America and to the ideas that animate it.  The country survived the first Trump term, though not without sustaining serious damage.  A second term, if there is one, will be much worse.

The Atlantic, as our loyal readers know, is deliberately not a partisan magazine.  “Of no party or clique” is our original 1857 motto, and it is true today.  Our concern with Trump is not that he is a Republican, or that he embraces — when convenient — certain conservative ideas.

We believe that a democracy needs, among other things, a strong liberal party and a strong conservative party in order to flourish.  Our concern is that the Republican Party has mortgaged itself to an anti-democratic demagogue, one who is completely devoid of decency.

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 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.

As the introduction to this blog states, I am a former newspaper reporter, so I it is natural for me to spend time considering how reporters these days could go about their business in better ways.  Especially those who write about politics.

Two commentators in the Washington Post – columnists Jennifer Rubin and Perry Bacon – dealt with this issue in what they wrote a couple days ago.

Here are excerpts of what they suggested.

FROM JENNIFER RUBIN

“My dim view of polling a year out from the election is no secret.  To illustrate the foolishness of building punditry around meaningless, premature polling, consider what would unfold if pundits ran with a spate of recent polling in President Biden’s favor.

“Political reporters are so used to this flawed approach to campaign coverage that many might be stumped if you told them they could not base their reporting on any polling this far out.

“But what would we say?!  As media critic and New York University professor Jay Rosen is found of saying, they would need to cover “not the odds but the stakes.”

“In other words, the mainstream media would have to focus (not just for a single story but extended over weeks) on the consequences of electing a candidate echoing Adolf Hitler and vowing to use the military and Justice Department against his enemies.

“They would have to look not at polling about the economy but the actual economic record of the Administration (e.g., inflation flattened, more than 14 million jobs created, record low unemployment for Black people, Hispanics and women).  They would need to examine the decisions of Trump-appointed judges and the social uproar it set off, especially among women in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“In sum, the electorate would be much better served if the punditocracy and political reporting dispensed with horse race and analysis.  Our democracy might depend on it”.

COMMENT:  Good ideas.  Especially the point about meaningless stories about polling when, (a) when potential respondents don’t want to respond; (b) when respondents don’t answer honestly; and (c) when the election is so far off that regular people don’t care.

Doing with Rubin advocates would require extra effort, honest imagination, and hard work, given what is at stake in this country – as Rubin writes, “the consequences of electing a candidate echoing Adolf Hitler and vowing to use the military and Justice Department against his enemies.”

FROM PERRY BACON

Political journalism is in crisis. Over the past few months, BuzzFeed News, FiveThirtyEight, Vice and a number of other outlets that specialize in political news have substantially cut staffing and coverage. Even CNN and The Post have laid off journalists. And the political media is struggling to cover an increasingly radical Republican Party without seeming to be on the side of the Democrats.

“Political journalism is in crisis.  Over the past few months, BuzzFeed News, FiveThirtyEight, Vice and a number of other outlets that specialize in political news have substantially cut staffing and coverage.  Even CNN and The Post have laid off journalists.  

“And the political media is struggling to cover an increasingly radical Republican Party without seeming to be on the side of the Democrats.

“But there is good news, too.  Several new or expanding outlets are addressing some of political journalism’s long-standing shortcomings:  Insufficient coverage of state and local government and of people who aren’t White and upper-income; an over-prioritization of elections over policy; a failure to recognize that the courts are a central front in today’s political conflicts.

“And this matters.  I don’t care about the state of political journalism just because it’s my field.  The coverage decisions and priorities of news outlets affect the behavior of elected officials and the lives of everyday citizens.  Good political journalism is vital.”

Bacon lists seven outlets he says are re-imagining political journalism in smart ways.

• The American Prospect/If you want to understand what’s happening inside the Biden Administration and the broader Democrat Party, the Prospect is a must-read.  The magazine focuses on policy, not elections.

• Balls and Strikes/Until recently, many news outlets treated the judiciary, particularly the U.S. Supreme Court, as a high-minded institution not caught up in the partisan battles dividing the rest of the country.  But there has been a push to tell a different, more accurate story:  The judiciary is partisan and political, too.  And the Republican Party, in particular, has stacked the courts with appointees who carry out its policy goals. 

Balls and Strikes, which is an arm of the progressive group Demand Justice, most embodies this style.

• Bolts/When there is a high-profile incident involving race or the police, the news media tends to descend on a given city for weeks, write a lot of stories and then move on.  Not Bolts.  The magazine recognizes that voting rights, gerrymandering, policing, and other issues that often play out at the state and local level are increasingly at the center of American politics.

A recent Bolts story not only explained how Atlanta police have arrested protesters who object to a massive police training facility being built there, but described similar actions being taken against activists across the country.

• The Guardian US/The U.S. edition of the London-based Guardian is one of the few outlets that does these three things at once:  Covers up-to-minute news like the New York Times or The Post; openly acknowledges its left of center ideology; writes about politics without the “insider” approach (unnamed sources, an obsession with consultants and strategy) that makes so much political coverage hard to parse if you aren’t already an expert.

• Hammer & Hope/This magazine was created by some activists and intellectuals who have been at the center of the Black Lives Matter movement.  So, Hammer & Hope takes it as a given that anti-Black discrimination still exists in America and concentrates on what should be done to address it.

• Popular Information/Neither the grocer Kroger nor the restaurant chain Olive Garden was offering all of its employees paid sick leave during the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic.  Many companies have broken their promises not to donate to Republican members of Congress who refused to certify the 2020 election results.  

Cameron Sexton, the GOP speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, purchased a house in Nashville through a trust, perhaps trying to obscure that he and his family may functionally live in Music City, not Sexton’s home district about two hours away. 

Those are all stories that were extensively covered by other media outlets, but were first broken by Popular Information.

• States Newsroom/Local newspapers are shrinking, and most national media outlets mostly cover Congress and the president.  That has left a huge and important void as both parties increasingly enact their policy agendas at the state level.

Enter States Newsroom. Over the past six years, the company has founded news outlets focused on state government in 34 states.  They are usually quite small, only four to five staffers and a handful of contributing writers.  But because so much is happening at the state level and there are so few reporters in most capitals, these operations are extremely valuable.   I subscribe to the newsletter for the Kentucky Lantern and read it every day.

Bacon concludes his analysis by saying:  “We need more political journalism, but we also need better political journalism.  And amid all the bad news about the news, that better political journalism is emerging.”

For me, that’s good news.

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 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.

I didn’t watch professional golf on TV last weekend, but I did the next best thing – I read about it in my on-line golf blogs.

What happened?

It was, as this blog headline notes, a strange and complicated golf rules issue, which may be redundant because, in many ways, all golf rules always are complicated.

Here are excerpts from how GolfWeek described the situation which befell pro golfer Collin Morikawa who was hit with two-stroke penalty just before the start of his fourth round at the Hero World Challenge golf tournament.

It was reported that he “unwittingly” violated Model Local Golf Rule G-11 in the third round, so he started his final round two over par.

“NASSAU, Bahamas – Collin Morikawa was assessed a two-shot penalty for violating local model rule G-11, which restricts the use of green-reading material, on the fourth hole of the third round of the 2023 Hero World Challenge.

“The rules committee was alerted to a potential rule violation late Saturday night after a question was posed by a player in the field.  When asked if it was Morikawa’s playing partner during the third round, Matt Fitzpatrick, who brought the potential rule violation into question, chief referee Stephen Cox of the PGA Tour confirmed that was the case.”

What does the rule say?  Below, for everyone who, like me, is addicted to golf and its rules, I reprint the text below.  For now, this:

The “local” model rule was added in 2022 to protect the fundamental skill of reading greens.  Notice the word “local” in that sentence.  That means there is a rule that could be employed in a tournament if the “golf committee” for the tournament wants to use it.  At the Hero World Challenge, the committee had opted to use the rule.

What happened this time was that, in preparing for the third round, Morikawa’s caddie JJ Jakovac created a putting chart on the practice green.

Okay so far.

Then, he used a tool on the green — a level – to gauge putts, writing what he learned in the yardage book for the third round.

What he did created a later problem.

He used the book, with the notations provided by the tool, to judge a putt on the fourth hole in Saturday’s third round.

Under Rule G-11, that’s a breach.

The head rules official for the tournament, Cox, told GolfWeek:

“This is a very complicated issue.  We were very specific in the fact that these handwritten notes needed to be obtained through traditional methods to protect the fundamental skill of reading greens through our sport and that’s the foundation of why we put the model local rule in place.

“In this situation, again, unwittingly, the player used a level to determine degrees of slope on the practice putting green, which in itself, isolated, is not a breach, but what that player did was formulated a chart and transferred that into his book.

“Had Jakovac devised a chart using his feet and estimated the slope or simply retained the information obtained from the measuring devise to memory rather than as a handwritten note, there would have been no penalty.”

An unanswered question for me is how using a tool to gauge putts on the practice green would help on a specific golf course green, in this case green #4.  I suppose it would be that an experienced caddy would notice the same kind of slope on a green in play that existed on the practice and put his “tool knowledge” to use.

If there is good news in this strange and complicated situation, Morikawa eventually accepted the penalty, saying this:

“At the end of the day we made the mistake and it’s on us. Thankfully it only happened that one time.”

But one of my friends asked another very good question, which is why Morikawa did not get an extra penalty for signing an incorrect scorecard on Saturday.  Had he been penalized for posting a wrong score, it would have been much like what happened to Ladies Professional Golf Association golfer Lexi Thompson a couple years in a major tournament in Palm Springs.  She endured a “signing a wrong scorecard penalty” before starting her fourth and final round, generating loads of complaints for what she had to accept without knowing about it until she teed off in the final round.

When I first read about Morikawa’s problem, I couldn’t figure out how a rules official would come to have knowledge of the breach.  Then, I learned that it was through a report from another player, Fitzpatrick. 

No disrespect to Fitzpatrick.  He knew the rule, he saw that it may have been breached as he played on Saturday, and reported it to tournament officials. 

It’s called “protecting the field.”

And, for any golf rules afficionados, here is the wording of the specific rule in question:

Restricting the Use of Green-Reading Materials (Model Local Rule G-11): 

Purpose. Rule 4.3, and specifically Interpretation 4.3a/1, puts limitations on the size and scale of detailed green-reading materials. But to ensure that players and caddies use only their eyeand feel to help them read the line of play on the putting green.

The Committee may further restrict the use of green-reading materials by requiring that players are limited throughout their round to using only the yardage book that has been approved for use in the competition.

This Local Rule is intended only for the highest levels of competitive golf and, even then, only to competitions where it is realistic for the Committee to undertake an approval process for yardage books.

When introducing this Local Rule, the Committee is responsible for approving the yardage book that players may use, and the approved yardage book should contain diagrams of putting greens with minimal detail only (such as significant slopes, tiers or false edges that indicate

sections of greens).

Players and caddies may add handwritten notes to the approved yardage book to help them read the line of play on a putting green, so long as those notes are allowed under this Local Rule.

Enough!

 

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 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.

 

I borrowed this blog headline from one that appeared in the Wall Street Journal in a story that caught my attention.

Why?

I am a dog lover.  With my wife, we have had two dogs, and both enriched our lives.  We wouldn’t have had it any other way.

And a number friends have dogs, too, and we have become attached to those pets, as well.

Here is how the Wall Street Journal article started:

“Owning a dog can teach a person as much about herself as about her companion, The Wall Street Journal’s Katherine Bindley reflected in a recent essay.  From the beginning, owning a dog requires both love and resolve.

“But the most enduring lesson a dog can teach might be its last, according to hundreds of Journal readers who read and commented on Bindley’s essay.  The inevitable passing of a pet and the processing of the subsequent grief is a powerful lesson in resilience.”

My wife and I experienced that first-hand in the case of our first dog, Hogan.  We loved that boy and, today, we think of him as looking down at us as he romps in open fields in heaven. 

More from the Wall Street Journal:

• Wisconsin, native Richard Nelson is all too familiar with the anguish that comes with losing a pet. 

“My most devastating experiences in life have been saying farewell to my best friends,” he said, referring to the three English Springer spaniels he and his family have owned.  Their fourth, Captain, is two years old. “When the others passed, the pain was, well, unbearable.”

• Losing a dog is a unique brand of grief, according to Nancy Curotto, a licensed psychologist specializing in pet loss. 

The relationship a person has with their pet is “one of the most intense bonds one can have,” Curotto said.  “This relationship is unconditional.  Your pet witnesses you in ways other relationships don’t.”

• Although most owners adopt with the tacit understanding that they might outlive the object of their affection, these deep bonds mean that coming to terms with the loss when it does occur is especially difficult. 

New Jersey, native Sandra Sori can attest to how integrated pets are into our lives.

“You spend more time with your dog than any human, including your significant other,” she observed.  Sori has shared her home with four dogs over the past three decades, including the two she owns now:  Ray, a 10-year-old Brittany spaniel, and Frankie, a 5-year-old St. Bernard.  “You have daily rituals and routines that you may not even notice, but when they’re gone, it’s such a loss.”

So, is the pain of potential loss enough to make even the most seasoned dog owners question whether the love of a new dog is worth the price?

Could be.

But, for my wife and me, when we lost Hogan, there was a vacancy in our family.  We toyed with leaving that vacancy open, but, in the end, we could not do so.

So, we went to the same breeder who had given us Hogan and adopted Callaway— he was in the same line as Hogan who, in human terms, might have been his uncle —  into our family and he has now been with us for six years.

Curotto, the licensed psychologist mentioned above, often reminds her clients that choosing to adopt another dog doesn’t diminish or replace the relationship they had before:  “Grief isn’t something we get over,” she said. “We grow around our grief.  You can grieve and love at the same time.”

Potential heartbreak is part of the detail with a new pet, but think of it this way:  Never owning a dog is to deny yourself one of the most beautiful relationships  life can bring.   There is no other love like it.

One resident on the East Coast told the Journal:  “I came to believe that, if I didn’t have a canine companion, I was merely denying myself a richness of life while also denying a dog, somewhere, a human they might desperately need.”

Great points.

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 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 THE SECOND IN TWO-PART BLOG SERIES ON AN IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARY FOR ME

With my wife, we just celebrated our 50^th wedding anniversary on October 20.  Quite a milestone!

But another anniversary for me – and for us – occurs today.

It is December 1, 2004.  The date marks the 19^th anniversary of what I call “my episode.”

Say what?

The “episode” was a completely unexpected heart attack that came close to taking my life.  Out of the blue it came.

As I reflect on the 19 years God has given me since 2004, here are reflections on two counts:  (a) some of the specifics of what happened on the evening of December 1, and (b) credit to those family members, friends, and doctors who made it possible for me to survive.

WHAT HAPPENED

On the early evening of December 1, I had arrived back home in Salem, Oregon after a day-long trip to Seattle to meet with one of my firm’s clients.

When I got home, I felt something wasn’t right physically, so I sat down on the couch and tried to catch my breath.  I told my wife I felt bad and might need to visit the emergency room.  She said I looked wan and was sweating.

I said, well, let’s go to the ER to make sure everything is okay, so I went out to the car in the garage, and she went to get the car keys.  By the time she arrived in the garage, I was down on the floor because, I knew I would fall down, so I got down, still conscious.

She hurried to call the ambulance and it got to house quickly, even though we live outside the center of the center. 

I was still conscious on the ride to the hospital on a cold, winter night over a bumpy South River Road.  About five miles to the hospital.

Long story short, it turned out I was having a heart attack as I arrived at the hospital and, because of the ambulance, was admitted immediately. 

Which I add is an important detail because, if you are in an ambulance, you avoid the normal admitting process to which you’d be subject if you were on your own.  And, this is also a reflection on yesterday’s blog, which reported that the heart attack victim in that Washington Post story was transported by car to the ER, then had to wait in line because, he was told, “everyone there had an emergency.”  The bottom line:  The ambulance is the best approach.

At the hospital for me, in only a few hours, the doctor (see below) had done an angio-gram and inserted a stent which unblocked the major artery to my heart.  It had been at least 90 per cent shut down.

The next day I had two smaller stents inserted in different arteries and, in three days, I was allowed to go home to begin the recovery process.

I went through a cardiac rehab program at Salem Hospital and that helped me get back to some measure of health.

To verify the “out of the blue” character of the “episode,” I had none of the usual symptoms of heart problems, other than higher-than-desired cholesterol on a couple occasions.  Three days before the episode, I played golf two days in a row, walking 18 holes both times with no problems.

So, again, out of the blue.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

When the episode occurred, my wife was home with me, so she took charge.  And so, there is no question but that I owe her my life.

Our son lived across the street from us and, when he and his wife happened to arrive home, they saw the ambulance, so he also took charge, alerting my friends and colleagues to the situation, though none of us knew what it was at the time.  The same can be said about my son – I owe him my life.

Coincidentally, with the ambulance out front, two of our friends drove by and told us later they stopped to pray.  Another good sign.

Our daughter, Lissy, too, began praying from her home in Woodinville, Washington, too far to come to Salem, but prayer works no matter where you happen to be.

At the hospital, Dr. Bill Stiles, from Oregon Cardiology Associates, was on-call and was the one who inserted the emergent stent, as well as the secondary stents. 

In my recovery over the next few years, he presided over all services for me until his retirement.  We had a great relationship.

After Stiles’ retirement, I was transferred to Dr. Kevin Thompson and he and I, too, have found good ways to be both “patient and doctor” and “friends.”

Here’s what on-line sources say about the cardiology services at what has now come to be called Oregon Health Center:

“Oregon Heart Center is the premiere cardiology practice in the Willamette Valley.

“With our specialists, we are committed to providing comprehensive cardiology services for you or a loved one.  Oregon Heart Center believes in a team approach to your care.  We work closely with your primary care and other specialist providers to ensure you get the best care.”

Services at the Heart Center have been fully and completely on target and effective for me.

My best friend who is like a brother to me, Morris Dirks, with whom I had worked for years at Salem Alliance Church, he as lead pastor and me as chair of the Governing Board of Elders, came down to Salem in the days after my episode to make sure I was recovering. 

As we talked, we agreed that God might have something more for me by sparing my life.

CONCLUSION

To state the obvious, I am glad to be, as we say in golf, “on the right side of the turf.”  I have been able to see my two children grow into being responsible adults and have watched three grandchildren grow into young people old enough to be considering college.

Plus, I continue to owe my life to solid medical practitioners, plus effective drugs.

Given my heart attack, my heart muscle was damaged in a way from which I was told it would never fully recover.  But medications, frankly, countered at least part of that prediction and helped me live good years marked by activity and travel – and, course, being present with family and friends.

So, give God the praise – praise which He richly deserves.

The classic symptoms of a heart attack are chest pain and pressure, but they’re not the only red flags

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 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 THE FIRST OF A TWO-PART BLOG ON AN IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARY FOR ME, DECEMBER 1, 2004, A DAY I ALMOST DIED; THE SECOND POST WILL RECOUNT MY SITUATION

Apart from a few specific details, the headline and subhead in this blog could have been about me 19 years ago.

I borrowed them from a Washington Post story that ran a few days ago.  Here it is, as written by Mark Shavin.

**********

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My best friend is a retired emergency room doctor, and he has seen it all. Yet when I met him for a weekend walk recently and told him I wasn’t feeling well, he and I both attributed my symptoms to anxiety.

In reality, I was having a heart attack.

The classic symptoms of a heart attack are “chest pain and pressure that radiates to the left arm and jaw,” Grant Reed, an interventional cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, later told me.  But they’re not the only symptoms.

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“People can experience a range of symptoms that also include shortness of breath, sweating, nausea, and other symptoms.  Females and diabetics can have many of the symptoms other than discomfort,” Reed said.

That was the case for me.  On that recent fateful weekend, I told my friend I was anxious, attributing it to stress about my elderly mother’s health.  My breathing also felt shallow, and my left arm was numb.  But I didn’t have chest pain or pressure, nor was pain shooting down my arm.

As we began our walk through a park, my friend checked my pulse repeatedly.  It was steady, and he recommended measured breaths to help me relax.  I did as he instructed, but as we continued our walk, I couldn’t get a deep breath.  And after walking half a mile, I had to stop.

“We need to go to the hospital and have this checked out,” my friend said.  We turned around to walk back to where we parked, and I called my wife.  After a few minutes, I had to stop again.  Then, my friend noticed I was sweating profusely.  That tripped his alarm.

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I’m 66 years old, and 12 years ago, I had my first wake-up call when my doctor spotted an anomaly on a treadmill test during my routine physical.  Subsequently, a cardiologist placed two stents, or mesh coils, inside my arteries to keep them open and improve blood flow.

Walking has always been a respite for me, and for 15 years I’ve met my doctor buddy once a week for a stroll.  But on the day of my heart attack, I knew something wasn’t right.

As my symptoms worsened, my friend offered to summon an ambulance or to drive me to the hospital, but I was afraid to be alone while he went to get his car.  I texted my wife, and she arrived within minutes and rushed me to the emergency room, only four miles away.  My friend called ahead to alert them that I was coming, and yet, when I walked unsteadily into the hospital, the staff sat me down in a wheelchair in a line behind four other people.

“I’m having an emergency,” I said to a passing attendant.

“Everyone here is having an emergency,” he said and kept walking.

“You’ve got to get me help,” I told my wife, as my voice and breathing grew weaker.  She flew into action.

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The next thing I knew, the emergency room staff was slapping a defibrillator pad on my back.  Someone gave me an aspirin with a sip of water.  Someone else put a nitro-glycerin tablet under my tongue.  They pulled off my shirt and started to unfasten my shorts.  I grabbed at my underwear, clinging to a shred of modesty, but was rebuffed.

“Everything’s coming off, sir.”

Moments later, an electro-cardiogram revealed I was having a heart attack, and a nurse and an orderly propelled me on a stretcher down a series of hallways — ceiling lights flashing by at breakneck speed — to the cardiac catheterization lab, where imaging of my arteries revealed the total blockage of one of my previous stents.  A cardiologist cleared the obstruction and inserted a new stent inside the old one.

All of this happened on a Saturday.  While still recovering in the cath lab, 15 minutes after my procedure, I asked the cardiologist, who had just saved my life, if I could go back to teaching my college journalism classes on Monday.  He was incredulous.

“Don’t you understand you’ve had a heart attack?”

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I didn’t.  Nor did my wife until that moment.  In fact, it turned out I’d had a so-called widow-maker heart attack, in which the largest artery in the heart — the left anterior descending artery — is blocked.  That artery provides 50 per cent of the heart muscle’s blood supply, and “a widow-maker is immediately life-threatening,” the Cleveland Clinic says.  Mine was 100 per cent obstructed.

Cardiac arrest — when the heart stops — kills 300,000 to 450,000 people in the United States annually, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.  Reed told me later that the obstruction in my artery could have been fatal had my heart stopped, but that I was lucky.

“You also paid attention to your symptoms and were with someone who helped you get prompt medical attention,” he said.  “Some people either do not pay attention or don’t know enough to recognize the symptoms could be a heart attack and come in hours into their heart attack.”

In that case, Reed said, a lot of damage may already be done:  “Heart muscle function may not be restored even when you open up the artery. It’s important to seek medical attention early to keep the heart from being permanently injured.  We say, “Time is muscle,” he added.

Reed and my friend both noted that panic attacks often mimic heart attacks.  Shortness of breath is common to both.  Typically, though, panic attacks resolve in about 10 minutes, Reed said.  “Definitely seek medical attention if your symptoms do not resolve quickly. … The consequences of missing a heart attack can be very severe.”

“I think the only lesson to be learned is, if there is any doubt, have it checked out,” said my friend.

I am lucky to be alive — lucky, too, to have a devoted wife who rushed me to the hospital and, through her tears, reassured our three children that I was okay.  I am grateful to have a caring friend who sat with my wife in the hospital from the moment I was admitted.

After a few days, I left the hospital with a damaged but grateful heart.  But before my wife drove me home, I asked her to drive me back to the park.  I needed to see the spot where my life almost ended.  I needed to feel that eventually I could resume the healthy habits of my old life.

I know I need to make changes, particularly to reduce my stress.  I have started cardiac rehab, but I am also tending to my emotional well-being, the bouts of sadness, even despair, that are common after a heart attack.

I am looking at my life through a new lens, working hard to visualize a future that feels hopeful and worthy of the second chance I have been granted.  I have a long road ahead of me, but I won’t have to walk it alone.