Chutzpah or Disregard

That wonderful old Yiddish word- Chutzpah- came to mind as I walked into a coffee shop with outdoor seating recently.

On the wall every few feet are signs that state:

No Smoking!

Right in front of one of the signs sat a man smoking a cigarette. I thought of taking out my iPhone and snapping a picture but thought that might be a little obvious.

Don't Miss This Piece

Roger Ebert.

To anyone who loves movies and has been around for more than a few years that is a name that rings with joy and passion.

Esquire has a fantastic article about Ebert's life today after surgeries and cancer. Titled "Roger Ebert: The Essential Man" it is heart-warming and challenging. It may bring tears to your eyes but mostly it will make you smile and love the life we each have.

LINK to the HTML version
LINK to the "print this" version. (All in one continuous page.)

And a LINK to Roger's response on his blog.

The Common Every-Day Stuff

The latest inanity brought to us by Facebook is that meme of the random 25 things. I have been reading a number of posts about how silly it is - and how snooze-inducing most of them are.

Really? What do we expect? Most of life is, well, life. It is common, every-day, normal, average, and far from the ordinary. Most of the posts, updates and comments on most of our Facebook walls are nothing more than the common chatter of life- background noise that we don't even pay attention to. Until now.

And we discover that for the moment at least we can't live without them.

Personally, I do enough of the inanity of 25 things on my daily posts here on the blog. I probably won't post that on my FB page. But I regularly check and post some of the un-important stuff on my FB page. I have found people I have been disconnected from for years. Some have surprised me with a FB invitation. I have surprised others.

What we discover is that it is in the everyday stuff that life is lived. It is how we do today and tomorrow that makes all the difference. The BIG THINGS don't happen very often. They are the surprises. But through stuff like FB we can discover the relationships and actions that really give our lives meaning.

Other people in relationship with us and others. The further into our technology we get, the more we discover the connections that help us stay grounded.

From Sunday on Football

Football can make news. Just think about Monday mornings. Whether it is the latest upset from the college ranks, the BIG, EXCITING Sunday Night Game that was a blow-out, or the ongoing controversy over cheating, we can sure get our news in many ways from football. Here were two that struck me as the Sunday night of football weekend came to a close:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Saying he knows what real heroism is, former New York Giants star George Martin began a cross-country walk to raise money for ailing ground zero workers.

A captain of the 1987 Super Bowl champions, Martin was cheered on by a few dozen volunteers Sunday as he stepped onto the pedestrian walkway of the George Washington Bridge, which connects Manhattan and New Jersey.

Off the field heroism is real. On the field heroism is an oxymoron in most instances. Thanks to George for helping us keep our perspective straight.

But then again, on the field can have its special moments, although I wouldn't begin to call them heroic. Brett Favre is one of those ongoing special moments in football. He is in an extremely elite corps of players who just keep on doing their job week in and week out. Yes, he's getting paid well for it. Yes, it is a job. But there are those who do their jobs with class. Lou Gehrig and Cal Ripken, Jr. come to mind. Brett is certainly one of them.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -- Brett Favre picked a near-perfect way to become the winningest quarterback in NFL history. Favre completed his first 14 passes of the second half and threw three touchdown passes to rally the Green Bay Packers to a 35-13 victory over Eli Manning and the New York Giants on Sunday.

The victory was the 149th of Favre's 17-year career and gave him one more than Hall of Famer John Elway. It also gave the Packers their first 2-0 start since they won their first three in 2001.

It may just be in the everyday things we do that we can have the most impact. Show up, suit up, and simply do your best. What more is there?