Bidding John Updike adieu

The author John Updike died yesterday at age 76 and I immediately thought of the Boston Red Sox.

Let me walk you through it. Updike was one of America’s greatest men of letters in the second half of the 20th century and quite possibly the most prolific – authoring 50 books, including 40 novels, countless short stories, essays and articles, and a book of poems. He won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice.

But if he had never written another thing, he produced one of the best pieces of sports writing ever at the age of 28, an essay called “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” which appeared in the Oct. 22, 1960 edition of The New Yorker. Here’s a link to it and if you love baseball, even if you hate the Red Sox, you should read it.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/hub_fans_bid_kid_adieu_article.shtml

“The Kid” was Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame slugger Ted Williams and the article was based on Updike’s observations after having attended the last game of Williams’ major league career, on Sept. 28, 1960 at Fenway Park.

Updike is no sportswriter, and in this case that’s a good thing, as the article starts, not with Williams, but with one of the most felicitous phrases I’ve ever read about baseball (“Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark.”). He goes on to perceptively describe the often stormy relationship that Williams had with both the Boston media and fans. It’s evocative and full of the emotion that only a fan knows.

Sports also played a part in several of Updike’s most famous works of fiction, the four “Rabbit” novels he wrote over a period of 30 years. His protagonist, Rabbit Angstrom, is a former high school basketball star who finds that real life is a lot more complicated than a basketball game. He leaves his wife and children and eventually attains material success in life, but not peace of mind or spiritual fulfillment.

I have to confess that I’ve never read those books, except for a few anthologized excerpts. But it’s a theme that I’ve thought about over the years as I’ve covered high school football in small towns, especially football-obsessed Texas, the Florida Panhandle and western Pennsylvania.

I don’t want to stereotype or be overly dramatic. But I think it’s quite possible that some of these young men will have received more public acclaim, and will have a greater sense of accomplishment, at 18 than they’ll have for the rest of their lives.

That’s a theme that a lot of sports literature over the years has tapped into. Updike, the chronicler of middle class, suburban and small-town angst, apparently did it especially well.

A heart-breaking tale of woe, misery and frustration

I debated whether to do today’s blog entry or not, but in the end, I decided it might be therapeutic, so here goes.

I managed to miss most of the Clemson-North Carolina basketball game on TV last night and it’s just as well. The Tar Heels’ 94-70 victory added another chapter of misery to the Tigers’ basketball history at Chapel Hill.

If you’re a college basketball fan at all, you’re aware that Clemson’s record of futility in away games against UNC is unsurpassed. Last night’s Tar Heel victory made it 54 straight, covering every single Clemson-UNC game ever played at Woollen Gym, Carmichael Auditorium and now the Dean Smith Center. It’s the longest streak of home court domination by one team over another in NCAA Division I history – Brown at Princeton and Washington State at UCLA fell by the wayside a few years ago.

A former student of mine left me a commiserating note on my Facebook page after the game. The young lady, a fan of Clemson and a native of Massachusetts, wondered if I was going to blog about the game and said, “And I thought being a Boston fan was tough stuff!”

I thought that that was a good comparison. To follow Clemson basketball, as I have for almost 40 years, is to know the pain that, say, fans of the Boston Red Sox felt for so long in that 86-year drought between World Series championships.

To be fair, the Tigers have had their moments of success on the court. Most of them have come in the last three decades or so, including eight NCAA tournament appearances. Clemson was actually one win away from the Final Four in 1980, losing to UCLA in the Elite Eight. And the Tigers advanced to the Sweet 16 in 1990 and 1997.

Current coach Oliver Purnell has brought the Tigers back to respectability in the five-plus seasons he’s coached the team, starting with an appearance in the NIT finals in 2007. Last season, Clemson made its first appearance in the ACC tournament championship game in 46 years and earned its first NCAA tournament bid in a decade.

But the one mountain they can’t seem to climb is colored heavenly blue. After last night’s victory, UNC now owns a 122-19 all-time record against Clemson. Almost all the Tigers' wins have come at Clemson, with one or two in “neutral court” games in Charlotte and exactly one in the ACC Tournament.

The Tar Heels have won the last 10 meetings. That includes three close games last year that I think were the best challenges the Tar Heels got from an opponent that they didn’t end up losing to. The one at Chapel Hill was particularly heartbreaking, as the Tigers extended the home team to two overtimes before falling, 103-93.

More of them have ended up like last night’s game, in which Clemson was competitive for about a half, then let the game get away from them. Of course, lots of teams come to Chapel Hill and lose, but the Tigers are the ones who have perfected it over time.

I’ve always thought that Clemson lost its best chance to break the string during the 2001-2002 season, remembered fondly by Tar Heel-haters everywhere as the year that Carolina had an 8-20 record. Two of those wins were against – you guessed it, Clemson.

I particularly remember the game at Chapel Hill, in which the Tar Heels played with a ferocity that teams usually save for a national championship game. (They should have played half as well against Kansas in last year’s Final Four.)

I was talking with a friend at church about it the day after the game, and it occurred to me that the North Carolina team played that game as if someone were trying to take away the last shred of its dignity. The rest of the ACC had taken the rest of it away from them, but by golly, they could still beat Clemson at home.

I could go on, but it’s just too painful. Maybe next year.

The Inauguration according to Facebook

I stayed home from work today because of a winter storm that hit the area, and a nice benefit of that was that I was able to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama as president from the comfort of my living room, with my dog Mocha by my side. (Unfortunately, Jayne had to go on in to work.)

As I explained in the last blog entry, I think the Inauguration is the quintessential American event, representing the best about our democracy. As somebody said on CNN today, no other country does the transfer of power quite as well as we do.

For example, back in the fall when we were in London, there was talk in the media when the financial crisis hit that Gordon Brown might be on his way out as prime minister. (And please don't ask me to explain the parliamentary system and how they call for elections -- I still don't know). We did learn, however, that if there had been an election and Brown had lost, he would have been out of No. 10 Downing Street the next day and his successor would've been in. No ceremony, no transition team.

Anyway, as I turned on the TV to get set to watch the proceedings, I also went to my Facebook page to check it briefly for messages, etc. What I found was fascinating -- I ended up watching the inaugural with the Dell notebook in my lap, riveted by another kind of running commentary.

As a rule, I try to keep my personal politics off Facebook or any other public forum. It's a learned behavior from my days as a reporter, where we weren't allowed to display a political candidate's bumper sticker, do volunteer work for a campaign, etc. Overall, I think it works out for the best.

But as I've described recently, I think I have a pretty wide variety of Facebook friends and many of them have no such reservations about airing their views. That became more and more apparent as the day's events progressed, and what I saw was -- well, I just said it -- quintessentially American.

(Names have been omitted to respect the privacy of those involved.)

Many of my Facebook friends, like the throngs that crowded Washington, D.C., today, were thrilled at the installation of Obama as the nation's chief executive. Some status updates:

"...just watched the inauguration and is proud to be an American.."

"...feels the pride and the promise."

"...is moved to tears."

and the ingenious: "..even if u r racist, it's all right. My president is black and his house is white."

Some couldn't resist a last shot at the departing George W. Bush. From yesterday:

"...is celebrating the last day of the worst Presidency of my lifetime."

Others noted the increased security around this year's event and the fears expressed by some for the incoming president's safety:

"...is very thankful for the amazing Secret Service."

"...is letting out a sigh of relief."

Others (including me) were inspired by the stem-winder of a benediction by the Rev. Joseph Lowery:

"...is Amen, Amen and Amen! Now that was a prayer."

But some were a little more skeptical or ambivalent about the day's events:

"...says yes we can, but will we?"

"...is hmmmm. Let's pray this change is worth all the talk."

"...misses the Bush administration already, but is proud to call a black man my President."

And still others were clearly downright disgusted or distraught:

"..is glad the dog and pony show is over. Get back to work."

"..is mourning the death of a once-great nation."

Draw your own conclusions from all of this, but I'll just add the same thing I've thought since November: the winners need to be humble and the losers need to get over it. I put a lot of trust in the ultimate good sense of the body politic, which pulls extremists on both the left and the right back into line when they get too far out there.

And four years from now we'll all get to sit down at our computer screens again and speak our piece. That's America.

A great American ritual

Tomorrow is Inauguration Day, and I don't think there's better proof that our democracy works than this quadrennial ritual -- especially when the presidency changes hands to a different party.

We've had an election and all sides have accepted the result (with the possible exception of some conservative bloggers and talk radio hosts). The Bush Administration isn't barricading itself inside the White House and as far as I know, the Obama Administration has no plans to send thugs to hang Republicans from lampposts. (Again, you may get a different story from listening to talk radio.)

What we will experience tomorrow is the peaceful transfer of power, something we take for granted but that is far from a given even in some countries which say they're democracies -- see Zimbabwe, for example.

I'll be watching, probably on streaming video from CNN.com or some other on-line source, a sign of the technological times. This is the first YouTube inauguration, after all.

Times were simpler in January 1993 when Jayne and I attended the only Inauguration we've seen in person. We moved during the summer of 1992 from Pensacola, Fla., where we worked for a newspaper in the Gannett Co. to Pittsburgh, to take jobs at a new suburban daily newspaper the company was starting.

I've always loved it that I married a woman who has as big a sense of history as I do. And, just talking one night about a possible road trip, we decided that being a four-hour drive from Our Nation's Capital meant that we should go to the Inauguration, whether it was for a second term by then-President George H.W. Bush, or the first for the challenger, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

We knew we could get an inexpensive place to stay through our connection with Gannett. (http://www.gannett.com) The company leased some condo units in D.C. near its corporate headquarters and the offices of USA Today, Gannett's most famous media outlet.

The next challenge was to get tickets, which we started on after Election Day. I'm a native South Carolinian and we decided to contact the office of Sen. Strom Thurmond. (http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=t000254) We figured -- correctly -- that a Republican senator from a very Republican state would have plenty of tickets available to see the first presidential inauguration of a Democrat in 16 years. As we understand it, you're supposed to work with the senators or congressmen from the state where you reside in order to obtain tickets, but we fudged the facts just a little and gave our address as my parents' house in Laurens County. They were advised to play along if anyone called to check.

Skip to Jan. 20, 1993. Here's what we remember about that day. We had to pick our tickets up in person between 8 and 9 a.m., so we took the Metro into the city and walked to Sen. Thurmond's office on Capitol Hill. The Senator, who had just turned 90, turned the simple picking up of tickets into a Southern-style social occasion, greeting each person individually as his staff circulated with refreshments.

And he displayed the memory for names and faces that made him legendary in South Carolina -- I think his ability to relate to and provide service for constituents kept getting him re-elected long after his views on issues ceased to be relevant. He remembered meeting Jayne at some political event she was covering when she was a rookie reporter for the Laurens County Advertiser, more than eight years earlier. (On the other hand, I think I may be the only name/face that the Senator ever forgot. He didn't mention having shaken my hand in the press box at the Clemson-South Carolina football game in 1978.)

We then headed for the Capitol grounds to stake out a place to stand. And that's what we did for nearly three hours before the start of the ceremony. The weather was cold and miserable -- par for the course in Washington in January. The picture above shows our view of the action. Can you see the anticipation and the excitement on the faces of Bill Clinton and Al Gore as they prepare to take the oath of office? We could, because a guy in front of us had a battery-powered TV.

I don't remember much about Clinton's Inaugural address. And that's not terribly surprising - although there are plenty of examples of good ones, just as many have been unremarkable. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090119/sc_livescience/theworstinauguraladdressesever)

The poet Maya Angelou read her original poem for the occasion, "On the Pulse of Morning." (http://poetry.eserver.org/angelou.html) And after it was all over, everyone headed for Pennsylvania Avenue and the parade. We had thought before the trip about trying to get into an inaugural ball. But, instead of attending an event where we might or might not see the new First Couple for a few seconds, we opted for going to see political satirist Mark Russell at Ford's Theater.

Mostly, it was exciting just being there as history was being made. A number of our students from Wingate will be among the literally hundreds of thousands of people in Washington tomorrow for the inauguration of Barack Obama. They'll hear an inaugural address that's widely anticipated and is already being compared to those of John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt.

That, of course, remains to be seen, but I hope the students will listen with the same appreciation of being a part of history, and of being an American, that our experience gave us.

Pfeiffer's flock of Falcons

My favorite sport to cover is basketball, and one of the reasons is that there are so many different ways to play the game. I saw one worth writing about on Saturday night when I covered a men's game between Queens and Pfeiffer at the Grady Cole Center here in Charlotte.

These two schools usually battle each other near the top of the standings in Conference Carolinas of NCAA Division II. This year is a little different as Queens is struggling through a 2-11 season with a lineup made up largely of freshmen and sophomores.

But Pfeiffer is doing what it usually does, wearing down its opponents with one of more unsual approaches to the game I've ever seen. Coach Dave Davis runs players in and out of the game in waves, generally substituting five-for-five every few minutes. And they play it at a tempo just a hair short of chaos. (It reminds me a little of a hockey game, with players going all out in 1-2 minute shifts, then replaced by a whole new unit.)

Davis, who has been at Pfeiffer for 15 years, says this strategy began as a way to evaluate a lot of players in a short time during pre-season drills.

"It sort of evolved into something we do all the time," he said. "There's no excuse for a player not to play hard in this system, because he's only going to be in the game for a few minutes at a time."

Davis played 13 players in the game, 11 of them for at least 10 minutes. And it eventually wore down the young Royals, who battled back a couple of times before going down to a 98-84 defeat. Eleven different players scored, led by senior forward James Crowder's 25 points. He hit 7-of-11 three-pointers.

"The only way to prepare for this is actually to play against it," Queens coach Wes Long said. "You can't duplicate it in practice."

Davis agrees. "You aren't going to see anything like this against anybody but us, so it does give us a little advantage."

Pfeiffer plays it this way against everyone, even the North Carolina Tar Heels in a November exhibtion game back in 2006. They lost by 36 points, but the 140-104 final score indicates that everyone at least got their entertainment dollar's worth, including the Falcons.

"We had the time of our lives," Davis said when I talked with him about it as we were watching a game at Belmont Abbey shortly afterwards. "Great fun."

WIth a little help from my Facebook friends

As milestones go it's not a huge one. But I added my 300th Facebook friend this week.

For someone of my age, I was a fairly early adopter of Facebook and I'd say at this stage I'm pretty much addicted, spending some time each day on the social networking site.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Facebook, it's a website which allows you to connect in a variety of ways with those who accept you as a "friend." There's an e-mail type function where you can exchange messages with others. I also check my "Wall," a public area on your site where people can post comments to you and which provides a "news feed" type of rolling update of what you've been doing on the site -- what applications you've added, groups you've joined and whose "friend" you've become. You can put pictures of yourself and others on your site.

It's all an interesting lesson in the concept of privacy, and how our world is becoming more transparent. People have more ways than ever before of finding things out about you. At Wingate, we particularly have this conversation with job-hunting upperclassmen -- don't put anything on the public areas of your page that someone might use to eliminate you as a candidate for employment.

One more thing that's possibly my favorite feature. You can also "update your status," letting people know what you're up to right now, whether it's a significant life development ("Steve and Marsha are getting married")or the most trivial and banal thing ("Keith is sitting and thinking")

So the addition of Friend No. 300 -- who will remain nameless to protect that person's privacy -- got me to thinking about what it means to have 300 friends on Facebook. Does that mean I actually have meaningful relationships with 300 people? I didn't know I knew 300 people... Who are these folks? (Also, one of these days I have to ask one of my students who has more than 1,100 friends how exactly you do that. Again, I'm three times as old and I'm SURE I don't know THAT many people.)

My friends are an interesting variety of folks. Some, like my wife, Jayne,who started her own page last year, are a daily part of my life. Most are either my Wingate students or, an even greater number, relatively recent former students, as you might expect. But I find myself now picking up friends from the former students from eight to 10 years ago, who are finally getting on board.

Some of these connections are current or former colleagues at Wingate. I recently had a friend request politely declined by a former co-worker who was trying to limit their Facebook page to people they knew on a more personal basis, high school friends, etc., which I thought was an interesting idea.

Journalists are increasingly using social networking sites as a reporting tool, so I have a network of former and current colleagues -- and sources and former sources -- in the newspaper business as a significant "node" of Facebook friends. (Facebook actually has an application that graphs this kind of thing for you, and to see the network of relationships in that way is fascinating.)

And some are people that I'm not sure I know, actually, but as Facebook helpfully tells you, I have a friend or two in common with that person, so, well, OK, I'll add them.

So, am I, as Jayne suggests, a "friend collector" who just wants to be popular in this online community? Hey, all I know is that 45 people wished me Happy Birthday on my page last Sept. 5. Even if you don't know all of them, it's nice to have friends.

A baseball note

The sports weekend on TV has been filled with college basketball and NFL football. (My assignment covering the Queens-Limestone game last night saved me from having to watch the Panthers' playoff debacle against Arizona.)

But earlier today I was going through some old VHS tapes -- yes we still have a VCR -- and I found the HBO movie "61*" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250934) that I had taped off TV when it came out in 2001.

Directed by comedian and lifelong New York Yankees fan Billy Crystal, the movie is a dramatization of Roger Maris' pursuit of Babe Ruth's single-season home run record in 1961. It's pretty well-researched, written and artfully-acted, especially by Barry Pepper (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001608) as Maris. (The Canadian-born actor has also portrayed Dale Earnhardt Jr. in a TV movie.)

As a sports writer, I've always found the movie's portrayal of the media coverage of the record chase to be quite interesting, if borderline stereotypical. But much has been written about the media's treatment of Maris, a stoic Minnesotan who was generally self-effacing, quiet and not very quotable, as he neared the magic 61 home run total. Reporters preferred the more approachable (usually) Mickey Mantle, who was always ready with a quote.

In case you've ever wondered, this view of the media is pretty much spot on. Reporters tend to gravitate toward the players who will give them the best story, while being much less charitable toward an equally talented player who may not be as good an interview subject.

I read a story today about former Boston Red Sox slugger Jim Rice, who is a case in point. This year is his last shot at being elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame before he goes into that pool of veterans who have been retired 15 years or more without being elected. Rice, whom I first saw play in an American Legion game in my hometown in the late Sixties -- he hit a couple of homers that may well still be in the air somewhere -- has career statistics that are probably Hall-worthy. But he gained a reputation in his career for being uncooperative and surly with the media, who are the voters for the hall. This also explains the absence of Dave Kingman (442 career home runs) from the Hall, I believe. Well, that and a .236 career batting average.

But I digress. On re-viewing the movie I was struck by a couple of things. The story starts in 1998, with the Maris family (he died of cancer in 1985) watching St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire on TV as he hits his 61st homer of the season -- they then get ready to fly from their home in Gainesville, Fla., to St. Louis to watch McGwire break the record.

The movie came out before the full extent of steroids use in baseball had received a lot of media attention, so there's a little irony in going back and watching it now in that context.

And I had to laugh at a little scene at the beginning of the movie. Maris, who had been traded from the Kansas City Athletics to New York in 1958, had won the American League's Most Valuable Player award in 1960 for a 39 home run, 112 RBI season. As the 1961 season started he had what apparently had become an annual conversation with his wife on buying a home in New York while keeping their residence in Kansas City, where the kids were in school.

"But, honey, you know we can't afford two houses," Pat Maris tells her husband.

I suspect it's been a while since the reigning MVP of any major pro sport has had to hear something like that.

A Gator then, now and always

I’ll be watching college football’s BCS National Championship game between Florida and Oklahoma this evening with a great deal of interest for several reasons. First, Dr. Jerry McGee, president of Wingate University (my employer), is going to be on the officiating crew. A college football official for many years, he’s going to be hanging up the whistle after this game, so it’s quite a way to go out.

Dr. McGee's son Ryan, a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, has written a tribute to his father's career and I include that link here. It's a wonderful piece of writing.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?section=magazine&id=3745784

But the main reason I'll be watching the game is that it involves one of my alma maters. I earned a Master’s degree from the University of Florida, and seeing the Gators play for their second national championship in three years is quite a reward for us older alumni from more frustrating football times.

When I was in Gainesville (1974-1976), the Gators had never won a Southeastern Conference championship, much less a national title. And they had gained a reputation in football much like the one my first alma mater, Clemson University, has had in recent years. Good, but never great – underachievers who are likely to let victory get away in the big games.

In both the 1974 and 1975 seasons, the Gators had Top 20 teams that had but to beat Georgia to claim that first SEC title. But they lost both showdowns in a couple of the most painful ways possible, to end the season in ultimate disappointment. They won that first SEC title on the field in 1984, only to have it tainted by NCAA investigations and probation and nullified by the conference as a result.

Then came Steve Spurrier.(http://gamecocksonline.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/spurrier_steve00.html) He’s worth a blog entry on his own, if only for me to work out my ambivalent feelings about the man.

The Ol’ Ball Coach, as he styles himself, is worthy of respect for his stellar playing career at Florida as a Heisman Trophy winning quarterback in the 1960s. He’s also a brilliant tactical coach and motivator. Anyone who can make a winner out of Duke football – as he did in the late 1980s -- must be an evil genius.

And any Gator coach who can beat Georgia as regularly – and with as much undisguised glee – as Spurrier did has my undying gratitude. Former Bulldogs coach Ray Goff once famously said that he’d like get Spurrier alone in a dark alley for five minutes.

He made the Gators the team that the rest of the conference loved to hate, too, starting a run in 1991 of five SEC titles in six years. That 1996 team also won Florida’s first national championship. And with his egotism and prickly personality, Spurrier was the perfect leader for the team.

I’ve read that athletic directors from opposing schools loved it when the Gators were scheduled to come to town. In the run-up to the game, Spurrier would invariably say something that would enrage the other school’s fans. And presumably that led to more ticket sales to fans hoping to see him get his comeuppance. And usually it didn’t happen.

But back to tonight’s game. The Gators coach now is Urban Meyer, an equally skilled tactician and recruiter without the polarizing persona. After the three unfortunate years of Ron Zook, who followed Spurrier as the Gators’ head coach, he’s restored Florida to national powerhouse status. One wonders how long he’ll stay.

But at least for tonight, he’s still a Florida Gator and as we say, it’s great to be one. Enjoy the game.

Beginnings and connections

Tomorrow is the first day of classes at Wingate for spring semester. And because I spent the fall semester off campus, it has the identical feel for me as the start of the school year. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of folks I haven't seen in a while.

I like the energy of the beginning of the semester and the idea that everyone has a "clean slate" in their classes and an opportunity to excel. Reminds me of the old sports cliche that everybody's unbeaten at the start of the season.

It's also a fresh start for faculty, and a chance to do it better than we did the last time and to try some new things. Not every job offers that, so I feel fortunate.

I've already resumed my "other job" since returning to the States on Dec. 13, covering sports events on a part-time basis for the Charlotte Observer. This time of year, I'm either filling in as a backup person for covering the Charlotte Checkers minor league hockey team, or working as the primary beat reporter covering the Queens University men's basketball program. I've done that since the 2004-2005 season.

Queens, like Wingate, competes in NCAA Division II, and I've found a lot of connections between the two institutions and my own personal history developing over the last couple of seasons.

Brian Good, who coached the Queens men's basketball team for the last four years, is now my colleague at Wingate, having taken the vacant head coaching position at our school during the summer.

He was replaced by one of his assistants, Wes Long, who at 28 is probably one of the youngest head basketball coaches in any NCAA basketball division. He's a fellow Clemson graduate and his mother, Kathy Long, was a high school classmate of mine in Clinton, S.C.

Kathy's youngest sister, Barbara Nelson, became Wingate's head women's basketball coach last season after a long and successful career as a high school coach in Charlotte. She led Wingate to the Division II Elite Eight in her first season here. I remember writing newspaper stories about her when she was a feisty starting point guard as an eighth-grader at Thornwell High School in Clinton and I was a young reporter for my hometown newspaper.

I guess what all this proves is the longer you live, the more dots there are to connect in your life.

Snapped!

A brief entry today -- just file it under "Things We Like."

This past summer Jayne and I got hooked on a cable TV show called "Snapped." It airs on the Oxygen channel and there's a marathon on this evening to warm up the audience for the new season, which starts Thursday.

The general theme of "Snapped" is stories of women -- most of whom are interviewed from prison as part of the show -- who reached the breaking point and killed somebody, usually a husband.

Jayne used to cover courts and cops during her newspaper career and, to a much lesser extent, so did I. So we've always found true crime stories fascinating. (All couples should have a common interest, right?) Personally, I've always wondered what drives people to commit murder, and what it must be like to have your life spin so out of control that you end up being the subject of one of these shows.

I occasionally joke with our sociology faculty about a course called "Deviant Behavior" that they occasionally offer. I just find that course title amusing for some reason. Maybe they should make this show required viewing.

A visit to Tar Heel/Wolfpack/Blue Devil Country

I have college basketball obligations for the next five Saturdays, so Jayne and I took advantage of a day off today to make one of our favorite road trips -- to the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area.

We met up with Jayne's sister, Cara, in Greensboro and headed to the heart of Tobacco Road. (Actually, it was quiet on the basketball front there today -- the N.C. State Wolfpack were in Gainesville, Fla., losing 68-66 to my Florida Gators, while North Carolina and Duke open their ACC schedules at home tomorrow against Boston College and Virginia Tech respectively.)

But our trip today involved shopping. In these instances, I usually try to find the nearest place to grab a cup of coffee and read a book. But there's one shopping stop in Chapel Hill that I don't mind at all, and that's a wonderful store called A Southern Season. (http://www.asouthernseason.com)

After our London experience, going there now reminds me a little of our visits to the great food halls like Harrod's, Selfridge's and Fortnum & Mason. Anyway, it's the closest thing to that within a reasonable drive of Charlotte.

You can get everything from olives to thin-sliced mortadella to petit fours, all of which ended up in my shopping cart this afternoon. There's also a great variety of ready-cooked foods, from ribs to shrimp salad and a nice selection of wines, coffee, tea. All that and cookware and kitchen tools, too.

We had lunch at the Weathervane, an onsite restaurant which features some tasty salads and sandwiches.

After the shopping afternoon, which took us to both Raleigh and Durham, we made a last stop for dinner at another Chapel Hill culinary landmark, Mama Dip's. (http://www.mamadips.com)The attraction here is traditional Southern country cooking and there's absolutely NOTHING like this in London.

Jayne and I both had fried chicken -- mine came smothered in gravy -- and Cara had tender fried pork chops. My collard greens were perfect and the first rice and gravy I've tasted in months was also wonderful.

Topping it off with some banana pudding, I felt that I truly was back home now.

Dog days

It's been an eventful first business day of the New Year. Mocha made a scheduled visit to the veterinarian this morning (nothing serious, it turned out and our boy weighed in at 96 pounds) but had to fend off an attack by the neighbor dogs on the way out of the house.

We've returned from England to find that some folks with a pair of German shepherds have moved in next door while were gone. The dogs are inside a makeshift fence except for when they get out of it, which has been fairly often in the last couple of days. I've encountered them close up by myself on one of their previous escapes and I don't think they're as vicious as they look and sound -- although they've been scaring some folks in the neighborhood by running up to them and barking.

They were out loose this morning and rushed into our yard as Jayne, Mocha and I went out the front door to the car. Mocha received a little puncture wound on his cheek -- nothing serious, the vet says -- but didn't back away from those big dogs. We pulled him away before things got worse. By the time we returned, several people in our neighborhood had called Mecklenburg County Animal Control about the dogs.

They were taken away for a couple of hours before apparently being reclaimed by their owners. I sense an ongoing saga developing here, so we'll see what happens.

UNSOLICITED TESTIMONIAL: Mocha's veterinarian and home-away-from-home for most of his 5-1/2 years has been the East Lincoln Animal Hospital (http://www.eastlincolnanimal.com/) near Denver, N.C. It's a bit of a haul from where we live -- about 45 minutes -- but worth the drive, as they say. They know him by name and seem to like him a lot there, as they make a fuss over him on each visit. And he' s spent two New Year's Day holidays and one extended summer vacation there as we've been on our travels to various places.

How much do they like him? He received a treat-filled Christmas stocking in the mail from them last week. Folks, Mocha says thanks and Merry Christmas.

Jan. 1 traditions

Like many American males, I'm drawn to football for at least part of the day on New Year's Day. This year has been no exception. Clemson vs. Nebraksa in the Gator Bowl took up my afternoon.

New Year's Day bowl game viewing used to be pretty simple and manageable. Back in the day, it began with the Sugar Bowl or the Cotton Bowl as the early afternoon game (you had to choose one), followed by the Rose Bowl in late afternoon and the Orange Bowl as the nightcap. Then college football was done until September.

Now the New Year's Day landscape includes the likes of the Outback Bowl and the Capital One Bowl, and yes, now the Gator Bowl is also in the once-exclusive Jan. 1 lineup. And now the bowl season extends for another week -- with a day off for the NFL on Sunday -- culminating in the BCS championship game next Thursday between Florida and Oklahoma. In between, a half-d0zen more games from the compelling (Ohio State vs. Texas on Monday in the Fiesta Bowl) to the "why bother" (Connecticut vs. Buffalo on Saturday in the International Bowl in Toronto).

Today's Clemson-Nebraska game brought back a number of memories for me. Along with my friend and fellow Clemson alumnus Roy "Bart" Bartlette, I was in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 1, 1982, when the Tigers and the Cornhuskers last met. Clemson claimed the national championship by capping an unbeaten season with a 22-15 victory. And the old Gator Bowl stadium in Jacksonville, Fla., holds some nostalgia for me, too. I saw back-to-back heartbreaking losses by my Florida Gators to Georgia there in 1974-5 and was in the press box for the 1978 Gator Bowl game, when Ohio State coach Woody Hayes ended his career by punching out a Clemson player in the final minutes of a loss to the Tigers. (It was the worst seat in the house from which to see that incident, by the way.)

New Year's Day is also a traditional day for me to be in the kitchen. Most years, I fix the traditional black-eyed peas and collard greens for good luck and prosperity during the coming year. (I'm beginning to wonder about that, as the years I've skipped that tradition lately are ones in which we've done pretty well...)

Today's plan was also to grill up some marinated pork tenderloin, using a recipe from a Southern Living cookbook series from the Eighties. It's ended up under my name in a couple of cookbook compilations and it usually goes over pretty well. It's fairly simple.

Combine:
1/3 cup soy sauce (I use the low sodium variety)
1/3 cup bourbon whisky (any will do, but I use Maker's Mark)
2 tbsp. firmly packed light brown sugar

Mix well and pour over one package of pork tenderloins. Marinate for several hours or overnight in the refrigerator. You can bake in the oven, but grilling gives a better flavor.

Anyway, we'll have to try it tomorrow when we have a full tank of propane. The back-up dinner was outstanding, a recipe Jayne found online for a Philly-cheese steak type sandwich using cubed steak. Maybe we'll include that one in a later post.

Happy New Year, everyone!