Would You Go Skydiving?

Today's Long & Short Reviews prompt is not much of a challenge. Short answer:

"Would you go skydiving?"

No.

Some of the five other reviewers who have replied so far have explained why: 

https://www.longandshortreviews.com/miscellaneous-musings/wednesday-weekly-blogging-challenge-for-July-15-2026/ 

Book Review: Falling for My Grumpy Best Friend (updated)

Title: Falling for My Grumpy Best Friend

Author: Laney Crowe

Date: June 3, 2026

Too many romances these days use "grumpy" to describe someone who is polite, but not instantly infatuated with the person mislabelling person as "grumpy." Jason, on the other hand, really is grumpy--as in reasonably polite, but sometimes just a bit curt, harsh, or frosty, because he's just a bit socially awkward. He's young. He's an athlete, not a politician. He doesn't always say the right thing.

Kennedy is a little better at saying the right thing, most of the time, but she's not the most organized person. Sort of a millennial Annie Hall, you might think if you're a baby-boomer. She is Jason's good friend and public relations person. 

When somebody gets hold of a picture of Jason and an ex-girlfriend, rather than be distracted by gossip about whether that relationship can be revived (it can't) Jason blurts out that he and Kennedy are engaged. Of course they are, Kennedy backs him up, loyal to the end. Now they just have to work out whether they want to make it true, or report a broken engagement after the big game. 

This is a sweet romance so you know how it must end. I like it because Jason is grumpy, as distinct from angry or mean; he realizes it's a flaw and wants to improve. Most people's communication skills improve in between ages twenty and thirty, so there's hope for Jason. 

(Edited to add...)

The first time I read this e-book, I was in the middle of chapter 7 when Booksprout suddenly stopped working. Instead of showing the page it showed a message that the site was "down." 

I couldn't even double-check the young man's name...Drew is another PR person, in the book. Kennedy's grumpy best friend is Jason. For a full week, anyone who read this review and then read the book must have been saying, "Drew? What about him? What about Jason?"

I wanted the review to go live on schedule. So it did. This is a full-length book, with subplots I didn't mention, but it is a sweet romance. There's a lovable dog, a night when Jason and Kennedy are stranded in a blizzard and share a motel room chaperoned only by the said dog, an opportunity for the ex-girlfriend to show why she's one of the Women Men Leave...It was worth going back to read the whole story. 

Apart from getting the main characters' names right, though, that review of the first quarter of the book stands. The rest of the book is equally sweet. Jason wants someone who "won't expect me to be 'on' all the time." Kennedy doesn't expect that. They have a fair chance at happily-ever-after.

Book Review: For the Love of the Grind

Title: For the Love of the Grind

Author: Sara (Bei) Hall

Photo from Google.

Publisher: St Martin's

Date: 2026

ISBN: 9781250404299

Quote:  "I'm grateful to have found running. This is what I have been made for."

As a teenager, Sara Bei ran so much faster than the other girls that the coach made her run with the boys on the cross-country team. At Stanford, she made such an impression on the other champion runner, Ryan Hall, that they became personal friends and married after graduation. As adults, they've continued to run for more than twenty years, putting them among the longest-lived athletic couples in human history. 

This is Sara's story; she mentions Ryan Hall and the children they've adopted enough to show that she does have a home life, but avoids telling their stories. Her story is mostly about races run, injuries incurred, treatments indicated, and recoveries made. Readers learn about athletics and general health. We get to peek into the runners' world of training, racing, and squeezing in time for a little bit of a personal life. We get to share Hall's first feeling of empathy when she sees runners unused to wet track conditions hiding under every possible shelter on a wet day, followed quickly by triumph: "This will be my secret weapon." We hear the whine of envy as people tell the Halls that watching them run is a joyful experience, and others insinuate that it's a "selfish" career...as if preaching or singing were less of a mix of obsessive training, intense discipline, lapping up emotional support from a crowd, and radiating emotional support back to them.

The Halls are Christians who wanted to be missionaries and have built a house in Ethiopia with missionary intentions. This book walks the very thin line between giving Christian readers enough of a "testimony" that they don't forget to pray so that Christians won't worry about that, and not alienating readers from other faith traditions with a heavy evangelical message. Sara Hall reminisces wryly about debates over Santa Claus being a replacement for Jesus for little children, tells us that (although Little Debbie cookies are made by a bakery that's part of a church college community) she turned down a contract to endorse the brand after having had to run in lower-tech shoes that showed the right brand and deciding she didn't want to put sugary cookies in the children's lunchboxes, but she keeps these stories short and maintains a focus on what works for top runners...everything from diet and training through the magical thinking athletes tend to indulge in when competing with other people who diet and train as rigorously as they do. (Focus on the runner ahead of you, pace yourself to pass that person, imagine energy flowing out of person and into you as you pass...) 

Her commitment to faith and family, and intentions to help other Ethiopians in and beyond the athletic culture that has swept that country, always shine through. Sometimes I wonder how it's possible for the underdeveloped extrovert brain to have any spirituality. I think, despite moments of rebellion (she ate a "magic" mushroom, legally and with proper supervision, in Oakdale! And it felt "spiritual" to her!), this book shows how that works in practice. (In Hall's church the classic four personality types, often called by oldfashioned names that describe their typical weak points, are affirmed as "dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness." Hall is told that she excels in "influence," meaning that she's seen as an extrovert.) Hall doesn't do Christianity the way I do or the way most church ladies do, but she does it the way her unique brain and body are built to do. 

Bad Poetry: The Ice Dancers

Most of the Poets & Storytellers United have been watching the Winter Olympics. I have not, but I know the sort of eye candy that prompted this week's call for poems about dancing. I started writing a normal rhymed poem and then thought that this poem worked better with consonance rather than full rhymes...

They make it look so easy.

They're having so much fun.

We never see the hours

Of practice they put in.

Was it a planned and practiced move

Or a disastrous fall?

They're young! They're cute! They always grin!

We never can quite tell!

Whatever happened in real life,

They never let it show.

Defining grace in motion is

All they are paid to do.

For all our lives, and theirs, in our minds

They remain nineteen.

They go on to have private lives;

Nobody knows them, then.

Twirl on, the fairest of the land;

Your dances freeze in time.

Next year there will be different girls;

The dance will be the same.

1. Photo of Dorothy Hamill from Vogue

2. Photo of Tara Lipinski from facebook.com

3. Photo of Nancy Kerrigan from ebay.com

4. Photo of Michelle Kwan from britannica.com

5. Photo of Debi Thomas from alamy.com

Long & Short Reviews: No Plans to Watch the Super Bowl

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks whether we plan to watch the Super Bowl; why or why not.

Well, that's good for a short post. I don't plan to watch anything in my TV-free home. There have been years when I've been enticed into someone else's home to watch a professional sports event. The local lack of popularity of the teams involved makes it unlikely that that'll happen this year.

I am seriously interested in sports events when the kids playing, or cheering, or playing in the band, are related to me or to close friends. Otherwise, I can take them or leave them alone. 

I do have some tiny residual vestige of preference for some teams, based on where they call home, who's playing, and who else used to cheer for them in my family:

The Washington team, even in sports I don't watch, because Washington is my city. I even knew a few of "our" players; in fact a Washington Redskin who played for one season and then became a school coach was a masseur to whom I used to refer some clients.

The Green Bay Packers, because my father and an uncle used to cheer for them.

The Baltimore Ravens, because my husband used to cheer for them when I was cheering for "our" Redskins, just to make things interesting, he said.

The San Francisco 49ers, because the boyfriend used to cheer for them and they were a good team, that year, having both Jerry Rice and Steve Young.

The Indianapolis Colts, because my Significant Other used to cheer for them, because it was politically incorrect to like them. A colt is a young horse, a lovable lifeform that makes a good mascot, but the Colts got their name from a man whose ancestors might have raised or trained colts--who knows?--who made his fortune selling firearms. 

But, Seattle? New England? A team based that far away would really have to own a sport to have any following here, and they've not done it. Yet.

Book Review: Off the Court

Book Review: Off the Court

Author: Arthur Ashe with Neil Amdur

Date: 1981

Publisher: Signet / New American Library

ISBN: 0-451-11766-2

        

Length: 230 pages including statistics sheets

Quote: “Tennis is a metaphor for life.”

Arthur Ashe was the only African-American male tennis star of his day. In 1981 that was all he was known for. Fans expected his post-tennis memoir to be a tennis success story, and it is—lists of tennis scores at the back, memories of games, some harmless gossip about other athletes. About the rest of a young man’s life in the 1960s and 1970s it was, well, tactful. Ashe didn’t claim to have been a monk before marriage, nor did he tell sleazy locker-room stories; he didn’t claim to be un-bothered by race prejudice, nor did he rage about it. His image as a Perfect Virginia Gentleman never really slipped before, during, or after the writing of his first book. 

He would become famous for other things after 1981. Though trim and fit, he had a heart attack at 37 and had bypass surgery before publishing Off the Court. A blood transfusion, thought necessary to save his life, infected him with AIDS. A later book about life with AIDS was, briefly, an international bestseller.

Meanwhile, stardom had given Ashe unique opportunities to practice quiet generosity. Off the Court gives only passing mention to his belief that successful minority-group athletes would raise the social status of their groups even in segregated South Africa. It remained for the writer known as Mark Mathabane, and Ashe’s tennis-playing friend Stan Rogers, to describe what Ashe tried to do—and did—for South African youth.

This makes Off the Court an extraordinary, perhaps unique, specimen of the celebrity memoir genre. Most entertainers’ books downplay the well publicized mistakes these celebrities have made, and attempt to publicize—in a good way—the good things they are doing. Ashe was still fairly young, and in Off the Court he made some comments that seemed more outspoken than his quiet manner had led fans to expect, but he didn’t try to publicize his charitable efforts...and a few minor testosterone surges seem to constitute his biggest mistakes. He could, without attracting criticism, have included a full chapter on the young athletes he wanted to sponsor, their merits, their needs, and so on. He didn’t. Offhand I can’t think of another recent celebrity memoir that downplays the nice things a celebrity is doing.

Offhand I can’t think of a recent book in any genre that better explains what Virginians’ famous sense of honor requires of us. Off the Court is recommended to everybody. 

Book Review: Pawsable Cause at the Bow Wow Bakery

Title: Pawsable Cause at the Bow Wow Bakery

Author: Belinda Page

Date: 2023

Quote: "I spent the previous evening baking both sets of snacks at Max's Bow Wow Bakery, my bakery and the only bakery in town that caters to dogs and sells people treats."

This is a murder mystery, up to the standards of the genre, but after you know whodunit you can have fun working out recipes for the treats the characters confect. Bakers Sophie and Erin have their shop next door to a needlecraft store, too.

The murder victim is a marathon runner. Who could have wanted to murder such a nice, wholesome young man? Sophie suspects a competing runner. Her little dog Max, who led her to find the body in the first place, helps her infiltrate the running crowd by taking some overdue exercise, and helps her survive when she confronts the murderer. As murder mysteries go, it qualifies as "Cozy"; only one person is murdered, though others are attacked. 

If you like a logical puzzle decked out in cuteness, recipes, and needlecraft patterns, here is a book--or a series--for your whole needlecraft circle. Mothers, grandmothers, granddaughters, and the brave men who dare to join the circle should all enjoy it.

Book Review: Hugs and Kisses Charity

Title: Hugs and Kisses Charity

Author: Emily Dana Botrous

Date: 2023

Publisher: Emily Dana Botrous

Quote: "$47,818. That's how much the renovation would cost."

Charity is an extrovert but she's the kind of tough, self-disciplined, high-achieving extrovert I have to respect. It's hard not to picture her with Sarah Palin's hair and Anna Wintour's wardrobe. Her approach to her job resembles theirs.

Charity's mother has become a paraplegic after a traffic accident so it's not surprising that Charity doesn't feel very charitable about the gas-guzzling urban pickup truck that bullies its way into her parking space, especially when she learns that it belongs to a new co-worker. A better designed house would have had a wheelchair-accessible bathroom, already. Most early twentieth century houses were not well designed and most earlier houses, though better designed in many ways and easier to add one to, didn't have indoor bathrooms. Better late than never; Charity is going after a prize being held out to the employees who sell most insurance in the next few weeks--a chance to participate in a real-life "Amazing Race" game and win a $50,000 prize. There is no second prize.

Ben Halverson, the new co-worker, is a new Christian with a few lingering bad habits, including thinking a lot better of himself than he ought to. The type who might be attractive if so many people hadn't told him how good-looking he is. Nature has been rather generous in supplying young men with muscles and cheekbones and suchlike, which are enough to get a man modelling or acting jobs, but are not a valid reason for giving him anything else. In order to attract sensible women a man must show interest in one particular woman in an attractive way, and Charity just happens to have been at school with Ben the year a young hormone-sick idjit threw herself at him and Ben showed his lack of interest in a memorably off-putting way. Ben doesn't even remember Charity, now a highly polished and dressed-for-success yuppie who probably shows no resemblance to anyone in high school. He now finds her attractive--not only her looks, but her hard work and strong character--but she makes him work to prove it, which is a cardinal rule for women who find it possible to like a man who is generally considered attractive. 

Ben is rich, but not too rich to have a good use for $50,000. He's a winner in all categories and enjoys showing it as the game tests every kind of skills--beginning with the ability to work with a teammate who's seemed incompatible, and proceeding through logic, math, local history, driving in traffic, wall climbing, power shopping, bicycle riding, even choking down a heavy breakfast at a client's restaurant, to the final foot race. Ben and Charity are the winning team, and the first tests in the final round where they compete against each other are a close match, but they both know he can run faster.

Knowing who can run faster becomes the subject of a lovers' quarrel, after the couple know they're in love, and it's also the one thing I find not to like about this book. It's not true that any "reasonably fit" man is stronger and faster than any woman. I've upset enough expectations about that to know. It's not even true that the author believes that: we've already seen that Ben is the only man in the office who can compete with Charity. It's that Ben is, like Charity, not a professional athlete but a keen one.  Few people could do anything but be embarrassed in a foot race with either of them. Overall they're well matched; in the foot race, his legs are longer. So the author should not have asked "Why did the average well-built man have to be physically superior to even the fittest woman?" The average well-built man is built with a few specific advantages in muscle strength, but even in those he's not physically superior to the fittest woman. Ben and Charity run marathons. If Charity had been running a foot race against some thirty-year-old math-head who thinks he's still fit because he's not fat, but he's not actually run a mile lately, his longer strides and faster muscle twitches might keep him ahead for the first hundred yards, and then he'd be puffing and groaning, probably faking a limp, as she left him behind. If women had not been brought up in the belief that allowing this to happen would destroy the feeble male mind, we'd see it happen more often than we do.

It may seem heretical but I don't think women even want to believe that the men we love "are stronger" than we are. I think I, at least, am free from that craving. To be a man he has to have different kinds of strength than women have. When mixed classes of teenagers explore the high school weight room the boys find some of the weights easier to lift, and the girls find others easier. Different body shapes are formed partly by muscles that develop in different ways. I like people who use every talent they've got, to the greater glory of God. I like men who have used and developed the kinds of strength that come with the male body. In the absence of specific disabilities a man's not being able to run faster than a woman is a character defect--laziness. But male muscle strength is something to be enjoyed while it lasts. It doesn't last as long as the female variety. Most women who mate for life are going to end up playing sick nurse. Instead of playing up to a fantasy that men "are stronger," as if this were true in every way and for all time, women would do better to appreciate that men have complementary kinds of muscle strength that can be useful while they last.

And, "physically superior"? Say what? Show me a man who can move his pelvic bones enough to give birth to a viable-size baby...and live. Men do not have that ability because they were not designed to need it. They don't give birth. The species is designed to benefit from having males who survive and help raise their young, but to survive if men die before their offspring are born. Is disposability a "superior" quality?

Anyway Charity is a strong competitive woman who wants a man who can, overall, keep up with her, which by definition means he can beat her in a foot race. That's what she gets. Meanwhile, the competition pushes her beyond her extensive limits and causes her to realize that, while leading an exemplary Christian life, she has some growing in grace and wisdom to do...

I'd like to read the reactions people in Michigan have to this book. It's set in Michigan and I think the author, who is not a native but has lived there, did a good job of describing the place and people. As they seem to a sojourner among them, anyway.

Morgan Griffith Remembers Virginia Tech Football Heroes

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:

"

For those who go to Virginia Tech football games, you will notice jerseys that hang in the north end zone of Lane Stadium.

The numbers signify the retired jersey numbers and names in the history of Virginia Tech football.

Everybody knows #7, Michael Vick.

As a Hokie, Vick finished sixth in the Heisman Trophy voting for the 2000 season. He was selected as the number one draft pick in the 2001 NFL Draft by the Atlanta Falcons and still has the most career rushing yards at 6,109 by a quarterback in NFL history.

Then there’s coach Frank Beamer, who is the most winning coach in Virginia Tech’s history, with 280 career victories, ranking 13th most by a college football coach in all NCAA divisions. He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.

Beamer played for the Hokies from 1966-1968 before becoming Virginia Tech’s head coach from 1987-2015. Beamer’s #25 is worn every week by one VT special teams player to pay tribute to his legacy of excellence.

Coach Bud Foster owns the lunch pail tradition. He moved to Blacksburg with Beamer and coached the Hokies from 1987-2019, making him the longest serving assistant coach at the same school. Foster was recognized as the 2000 American Football Coaches Association Defensive Coordinator of the Year after helping Virginia Tech to the 1999 Sugar Bowl.

Those names everybody knows, but what about the rest?

The first retired number in Virginia Tech athletic history belongs to #84, Super Bowl champion Carroll Dale. Mr. Dale, from Wise County’s very own J.J. Kelly High School, played 14 NFL seasons and amassed 52 receiving touchdowns and 438 receptions for 8,277 receiving yards.

He was an integral part of the 1960’s Green Bay Packers, winning two Super Bowls alongside Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr. In 1979, he was inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame. He still lives in Wise County.

Frank Loria, #10, was a defensive back for the Hokies from 1965-1967. He started every game the Hokies played throughout his three-year career and was known as a “coach on the field” due to his remarkable ability to recognize opposing team’s plays during a game. He tragically died as a coach with the Marshall football team in the 1970 airplane disaster.

Another defensive legend, Bruce Smith was a defensive end for VT from 1981-1984. As a Hokie, he was known as the “Sack Man.”

Smith entered the 1985 NFL Draft, where he was the first overall pick selected by the Buffalo Bills. Smith played 19 seasons in the NFL and remains the all-time career leader in sacks with 200.

In 2009, Smith was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

#73 Jim Pyne was a guard and center for Virginia Tech from 1990-1993. Pyne was Tech’s first player to be unanimously selected as All-American. In the NFL, Pyne played nine seasons before becoming an assistant coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the New Orleans Saints in the early 2000s. Pyne is on the ballot for the 2025 College Football Hall of Fame along with Vick.

Cornell Brown claims #58. Brown attended VT and played football as a linebacker for the Hokies from 1993-1996. The Baltimore Ravens selected Brown in the 1997 NFL draft and he earned a Super Bowl ring with Baltimore when the Ravens defeated the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV.

#64 belongs to Jake Grove. Grove attended Virginia Tech and played football as a center from 2000-2003. While at Tech, he won the Rimington Trophy for being the best center in college football and he was recognized as a unanimous All-American. In the second round of the 2004 NFL draft he was selected by the Oakland Raiders and later played for the Miami Dolphins. In 2006, Grove was honored by being inducted into the Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame.

Corey Moore was a linebacker for the Hokies from 1996-1999, and he became Virginia Tech's most honored football player following the 1999 season. Moore received the Lombardi Award, which goes to a collegiate player who best embodies the spirit and values of Vince Lombardi, and the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, awarded to the best defensive player in college football according to the Football Writers Association of America. Moore was selected by The Buffalo Bills in the third round of the 2000 NFL draft and later played for the Miami Dolphins. In 2010, Moore’s #58 was inducted into the Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame.

And now you know a little of their stories.

" 

Book Review for 7.25.24: Shoestring Dreams

Title: Shoestring Dreams 

Author: Andre Wade

Date: 2021

Publisher: Tellwell

ISBN: 978-0-2288-7093-7

Quote: ""Being a dreamer is about acknowledging the obstacles before you and overocming them."

Although it's a full-length novel in its own right, Amazon likes series, and this one opens a series. 

Eric just wants to get through grade twelve and into college, preferably with a basketball scholarship, since his grades aren't likely to win the academic kind. Eric is a nice, clean-living teenager who copes with things, from the physical strain of growing tall fast to the emotional strain of watching his beloved grandfather develop Alzheimer's Disease, by keeping his mind on basketball. 

More than anything else, this book explains to people like me who tend to feel that our society takes "sports" far too seriously how much a "silly little boys' game" can mean to, and do for, a teenager who might otherwise be "troubled." That's its social value.

What's not to love? A lot of Eric's time is spent in the gym and the locker room, and the author is far too good at bringing that mood, the noise, the smell, etc., of places some of us preferred not to be, vividly into readers' minds. If you loathed your high school gym, insight into what the gym means to Eric may not be your idea of a fun read. Well...I never liked gym, but I'm glad I stuck with the book.

New Book Review: Helium Farm

Title: Helium Farm

Author: Melinda Poling

Quote: "Uncle Theo seems to have hit an all-time low."

Blake's father is a chemist. His Uncle Theo is a farmer. His father has sent Uncle Theo a special new fertilizer made from helium to boost the farm's profits. Instead, the farm gets into trouble as the summer weather gets hotter and drier--helium-laced fruit start floating into the air, then dropping in inconvenient places all over northern California. Blake's father just feels that he needs Blake to come along and try to help on the farm. Blake wants to spend his time practicing with his Little League team, but feels obliged to help Uncle Theo.  

The problems created by testing new fertilizers, not to mention pesticides, should only be so funny and so easy to solve in real life. With lots of barnyard humor as the fruit splatter all over the farm, Blake bonds with the farm hands and helps them trap floating fruit on the way up. When their work seems not to be enough, Blake remembers about prayer. He's not mentioned praying before, but he is a very young Christian.

C.S. Lewis observed that sometimes God supplies amazing answers to prayer for new Christians, but nobody needs to count on such minor miracles recurring. 

The problem with this extremely appealing book for middle grade readers is that it may give a misleading idea about prayer. Blake is a very nice kid: he cares about his teammates, even during the week they've been giving him a hard time about stiking out; he doesn't seem close to the older sister who plays on his team or the brother who's just beginning to walk, but he writes about them with proper loyalty; he's intimidated by bigger, older farmhands, but he speaks to them with courage and humility; he plays hard; he works hard; he's qioet. smart, and tough. He's almost as terrific as your grandson, or my nephew. But God doesn't hand out special prayer hotlines as rewards, no matter how nice a person is. Blake is not better than some other sixth grade boy who might pray for his beloved uncle to succeed in business and, instead, see his uncle die. We might say that God blesses whom God chooses to bless,, or even take the pre-Christian view that God is too far above us to bless us at all.

If we note that Poling never actually says that God does anything merely because of Blake's prayers, that the characters in this story do what they need to do to create a happy ending, then we can enjoy this little idyll for what it is. In this life God doesn't promise us all of the happy endings we may deserve, but in the story, at least, Blake and his family deserve a happy ending and get one.

Sunday Book Review: Race to Victory Lane

Yes, this is an oldie from Blogjob, saved for a rerun on a day like this. This weekend I had a virtual stack of beautiful Christian e-books, some from Plough, some from Harlequin, I think there was supposed to be one from Spiegel & Grau--books whose publishers' names promise at least skillful writing, books to look forward to. And my eyes were bleary, and my brain was fogged, and I didn't read a single book. I don't know what new poison spray, or combination, we can thank for this. Anyway, I still have vintage Christian books to sell, and reviews of them. In the case of this particular book, I'm not sure whether they've all sold, but at one time we had a half-dozen copies; John Earnhardt belonged to the same church Grandma Bonnie Peters did, and she bought copies of this book in bulk.

Title: Race to Victory Lane

        
Author: Crystal Earnhardt

        
Date: 2003

        
Publisher: Review & Herald

        
ISBN: 0-8280-1775-1

        
Length: 75 pages

        
Quote: “John, I want you to meet Dale Earnhardt...your ancestors had a lot more in common than just a family tree!”

        
Race to Victory Lane is not a biography of the NASCAR superstar. It’s a biography of his relative, John Earnhardt, who became an evangelical Christian preacher, written by John’s wife and dedicated to their children. Nevertheless, the blurb promises race fans that “Some say they feel close to Dale through” John Earnhardt.

        
Though never each other’s very closest friends, Dale and John Earnhardt were close to the same age; they went to school, worked, and raced together as teenagers and saw each other regularly as each climbed his career ladder. Dale Earnhardt’s fans find enough about the racer in this book that they’ll probably be willing to overlook its Sunday-School-story narrative tone.

        
Although a Christian, Dale Earnhardt was not known as one of NASCAR’s more overtly religious drivers, nor did he join the church where John preached. Looks, temperament, and publicity built up his image as anything but a possible hero for Sunday School books. He was easily typecast as the rough, burly, blue-collar challenger to nice-guy Richard Petty. Like any man who weighs over 200 pounds and isn’t fat, he looked dangerous—and his “Intimidator” racing style was a very dangerous game.

        
However, what impressed fans were the showmanship, the precision, and the control of “The Intimidator.” There was no room for recklessness or bad temper in an act like that one. Even for Earnhardt and his series of incredible cars, everything had to be exactly right for Earnhardt’s “rough” racing style to work. In some intuitive way Dale Earnhardt was a physicist.

        
He was in control off the track, too. If he’d been challenging a driver whose lock on the nice-guy role was less solid than Petty’s, Earnhardt could probably have cast himself as a nice guy; his son has done. A little yelling and swearing at autograph hounds fitted The Intimidator's image, but Earnhardt fans remembered how, when a normal-sized driver actually swung at him, Earnhardt placidly held the smaller man at his own arm’s length until the other man calmed down.

        
And although he didn’t publicize it, he had a real gift for turning the trivia of a race into human-interest stories. His cars were built to send other cars into aerobatics that made even spectators dizzy. After a particularly dramatic wreck Earnhardt jumped out of his own intact car and ran back along the track, calling the victim’s first name...and the calculation he applied to these matters could be heart-warming, or chilling, even to sponsors and promoters. When young, handsome, overtly Christian Davey Allison died in a helicopter crash, Earnhardt shed a few manly tears, but he was also reported to have said wistfully that it was too bad the accident hadn’t happened during a race. While some Earnhardt fans disliked "challenger" Jeff Gordon intensely (and a few still do), Earnhardt had quietly recognized Gordon's potential fan appeal and taken him on as a business partner; it was no accident that a majority of licensed NASCAR souvenirs displayed their colors.

        
As Earnhardt’s challenge to Petty’s record built NASCAR into a million-dollar sport, publicity—and the IRS!—pushed Earnhardt into displays of generosity that would have threatened his redneck-chic image if they’d been publicized. America’s richest redneck began quietly making donations to schools, churches, and charities that were downright (shh!) gentlemanly. There were reports of mild self-indulgence, the big house and the vacations, but no orgies. NASCAR racers don’t have to fit any particular body type, as some athletes do, but they do have to have stamina; the ones who don’t take care of their health wash out quickly.

        
And in 2003, after his accidental death, John Earnhardt outed Dale Earnhardt as having waited to receive a printed Bible verse from a prayer partner before he’d attempt his act. There are probably some race fans who may think less of Dale Earnhardt after reading this detail...but his most dedicated fans will remember that he always did support churches, in a quiet way.

        
Not that John Earnhardt’s purpose is here, or ever was, to detract from what Earnhardt’s act was always all about. It was what Dave Barry would have gleefully called a Guy Thing. It was about driving extremely fast, and banging extremely large arnd expensive pieces of metal together, and bouncing out of a smoldering heap to wave to thousands of screaming fans, and the possibility that one day you or one of your friends might not be able to bounce out of the wreck. Although a minister, John is still a guy, and he does appreciate these things.

        
But the stories Crystal and John Earnhardt have a right to tell middle school readers in this book are, mostly, stories about John’s middle school years. He had to drive his parents home when they’d been drinking. He shot a squirrel—good ol’ boys will recognize this as a feat of marksmanship, but he’s not bragging—and felt sorry for the poor little animal. He went along with schoolmates when they robbed a store, but apologized humbly enough that the storekeeper let the kids go. He aimed his gun at a man, once, but decided at the last minute not to shoot, and has always been glad.

        
Looking back, John compares where he was with where Dale was and feels that, though not a millionnaire, he’s had the better life, or the better “victory.” Well, he’s certainly had the longer one. He once challenged Dale to a foot race, which he thought he could win, and he lost. He seems to be trying to compete with his rich, famous, deceased relative again, in this book, but exactly where the track or the finish line is remains unclear.

        
There are a few stories about Ralph Earnhardt, Dale’s father, also a NASCAR champion, but there are more stories about John Earnhardt’s parents (real rednecks, nothing chic about it) and how Christianity helped John steer clear of some of the mistakes they made, such as alcoholism.

        
Race to Victory Lane is recommended to all race fans, especially to those who remember Dale or Ralph Earnhardt and those who now root for Dale Junior.

Book Review: Althea

Title: Althea 

Author: Sally H. Jacobs

Date: 2023

Publisher: St Martin's

ISBN: 978-1-250-24656-1

Quote: "When Venus and Serena published a Black History Month newsletter in their high school years it was Althea who they put on the back cover,"

All tennis stars' biographies have one plot: Once upon a time there was a young person who played tennis better than all per friends did. Person was sponsored and encouraged, and per game got better. Person grew older and more interested in more adult pursuits; person retired and, if the story is written long enough after the person's birth, person died. The End. I find in this book much more than a tennis star's biography. For one thing it may shed some light on today's concerns about atrazine-damaged boys wanting to play girls' sports as "trans-women"...but read on.

Althea Gibson's story gains some additional drama from the extraordinary amount of bigotry she had to deal with. She caught hate on at least six different levels: as a Black athlete, as a woman athlete, as an underprivileged athlete, as the child of a dysfunctional family, as an introvert, and as a person who may have been genuinely gender-confused, though the few people who seem to have seen her wearing less than she wore in the photo above seem to have accepted her as female. 

She had a few other nicknames besides the predictable "Gib" and "Gipper," explained in the book, but the one that seems to have lasted longest was "Big Al." In a generation where the average woman's height was 5'2", Gibson was 5'10". At birth she was described as a boy, a "big fat one" though she wasn't fat for long, and was called Alger. Before she was a year old this had been dismissed as a mistake, and the name was changed to Althea. Her lanky build, low voice, and athletic carriage were often perceived as mannish. College dorm mates thought she was a lesbian, though no suspected girlfriends were ever named. As a teenager she was told by a doctor that she'd never have children. She had boyfriends; apparently there was the one on whom she had a crush, the one who was a lifelong good friend, the one she married later on for practical reasons, and possibly more. Jacobs seems to accept the claim that she was a lesbian while presenting evidence that seems more supportive of a claim that she was physically gender-confused. A female roommate said she talked about sex, presumably with men, though women of their vintage often tried to be so indirect and use so many euphemisms that it was hard to be sure. At least, neither the man with whom she reportedly spent days locked in a room, nor either of the men to whom she was married, reported any surprises or complaints. Some people who have male, or partly male ("chimeric"), DNA develop superficially complete but sterile female parts; Gibson might have been one of them.

 As a teenager she was more of a mess than average. Reports of her learning to fight by hitting her abusive father back, spending weeks on end on the streets, brawling and stealing and so on, may leave local readers with one really burning question: "She wasn't one of our Gibsons was she?" Apparently not. "Gibson" was a fairly common English name. Althea's family traced it to an English slavemaster in South Carolina, not the English freethinker from whom our Gibsons descend. Anyway tennis "saved" her from a life of crime, but she was seen as a wild child, a neglected brat from the ghetto, with neither manners nor morals, for a long time. 

But she was good at tennis. She went to FAMC, Florida's all-Black college, on a tennis scholarship and coached as her student labor job. She did well enough in the all-Black tennis league to be invited to play in the White league. The expectation apparently was that the presumed inferiority of the Black mind would keep a girl like Gibson from actually beating the likes of Margaret Dupont or Louise Brough. Gibson trounced them--and, luckily for her, they enjoyed the novelty of being challenged. The image of big, often Black, challengers mopping the floor with cute, naive rich kids who thought they were athletes was a thoroughly worn-out stereotype before it started being used against the Williams sisters; Gibson did more than anyone else to create it.

Her career may even have owed its peaks of success to a horse. In the early 1950s Maureen Connolly was the brightest star in the sky of women's tennis. Big Al had a five-inch height advantage, but Little Mo was Irish. As Jacob tells it, both athletes had actually been longing to meet someone who could give them a real game, so they liked and respected each other. Connolly won a good two-thirds of the time and looked adorable while doing it. Then she had that tiresome injury, riding her horse, and retired, leaving a clear path for her only real competitor to become the Queen of Tennis.

All through the 1950s and 1960s Gibson smashed one prestigious "amateur" title after another. She was sent on world tours to show the world how successful it was possible for Black Americans to be. She won Wimbledon. She curtsied to the Queen of England. She was given a ticker tape parade in New York City. She was barred by league rules from ever earning more than $75 per month from tennis, barred by her tennis schedule from having a better paid job, and, when she'd established that she owned the sport, barred from cashing in as a tennis "professional" by sponsors' reluctance to invest in promoting women's games. Her fellow athletes, some of whom were close friends, married and had children. Gibson didn't have children and didn't stay married long, and after reaching retirement age she felt "broke." 

For the next generation of tennis stars, the game was much more profitable. Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, Billie Jean King, and their colleagues didn't have their incomes capped to maintain "amateur" status, and were free to earn what their talents were worth on the market while still being eligible for events like Wimbledon. Gibson seemed carefully to avoid directing resentment toward the young stars who admired her. When Chris Evert beat her, Gibson laughed. When invited to appear in public with Ashe, making some sort of public-spirited statement--apparently it happened often--Gibson did; she seemed partial to Ashe in a motherly way, more than resentful of the "class" difference. She blamed the "system," not the young athletes. She was, nevertheless, bitter about the fact that this younger generation of tennis stars were getting so much more money with so much less effort than she ever had. 

It wasn't only the income cap, or the stricter rules about dress codes and other aspects of "ladylike" conduct, Jacobs shows. Gibson was always given clearly to understand that her breaks and her sponsorship depended on her being a good sport about the state of race relations--in other words, her ability to deny that, at the time, the state of race relations was a sort of undeclared war. She was ghetto girl enough to look people in the eye and deny, deny, deny that she'd encountered any particular difficulties because she was Black. In historical fact, Jacobs documents, she had. Gibson did encounter friendly, supportive White people--probably more often than the other kind--and her early life in the ghetto had been so wretched that the close friends of her middle-class adult life were a mixed group, mostly White. Still, there were occasions when her affirmations of interracial good will must have felt like efforts to persuade herself, or like outright lies. If some White people made very large gestures of good will and respect for her, and they did, she still had to shrug off plenty of petty, tacky little gestures of White hostility.

By way of reward for denying large parts of her reality, after whippersnappers like Evert started beating her Gibson was employed by the federal government to deliver public-spirited messages to the world. She addressed, for example, seniors groups on the topic of exercise. Her wages were low, and her Social Security pension, when she qualified for one, unlivable. At one point she threatened suicide. Her better paid friends rallied around to set up a fund that raised her income to what she and they agreed would be modest comfort, in which she spent the rest of her life (1927-2003).

One way this book could have been improved would have been a recognition that. even if her way of communicating it was a product of her ghetto experience, Gibson's introvert personality was as much a permanent physical part of her as her height and color were. She was remarkably free from any need for "mental health care," heroically levelheaded about reality, even the reality that after reaching a certain level of age and illness she wasn't able to live on her income. No matter how many people, in the twentieth century, bought into Sigmund Freud's erroneous belief that all people suffered from extroversion, the medical fact is that many of us don't. What introverts need is respect. In Gibson's lifetime, respect for the personality that made it possible for a juvenile delinquent from the ghetto to mature into a gracious and lovable "self-made" adult, though obviously deserved, was as rare as appreciation for Gibson's kind of face and hair. (At least a similar historical coincidence allowed Gibson's shape to be described in the media as a "rangy" and "supple" "gazelle," in the 1950s, rather than the sort of "You're ugly!" reaction Alice Walker showed a thin young woman getting in the 1920s.) Gibson was wired to understand how much better it was to become a responsible, law-abiding adult, even if she had to lean heavily on denial to do that, rather than to flame out as the sort of "wild child" she'd been. 

Every year we seem to read another news story about another ghetto youth whose athletic or musical ability may be as promising as hers was, but who doesn't seem to understand what he (most of them are male) needs to give up in order to get the benefit of his talents. Getting Althea Gibson from the streets into a teacher training course required the school to cut her some slack (Gibson apparently romped over several college rules) and also required her to give up brawling and stealing, and she did. At the time social support for "Judeo-Christian morality" provided reinforcement for the improvement in teen Althea's behavior, even though popular culture blamed and hated her insistence on privacy and adherence to her contractual obligation not to become the sort of civil rights activist some wanted her to be. Today, with people in the school system openly preaching atheism and challenging our culture's "traditional morality," we badly need support for the physical structure in Gibson's brain that supplied that crucial sense that becoming a law-abiding adult would be better than remaining a delinquent. We badly need to understand that Gibson's insistence on privacy was a valuable aspect of that vital part of her brain, even more valuable than her talents for music and tennis.

Some of us may not yet be capable of recognizing that depression (a symptom more often than a separate disease) and thrill-seeking "suicidality," as discussed by Clancy Martin (probably a distinct disease) and a clearheaded, rational rather than emotional, sense of conditions with which we are and are not willing to live, are three separate things. Even if we want to focus on preventing suicide as an end in itself, we need to realize that when people think and talk about ending their lives because they're not willing to live with certain levels of illness, poverty, dependency, etc., handing them serotonin boosters for a quick emotional "high" is likely to make them feel happier and more decisive about suicide. Althea Gibson would not have lived nearly as long as she did if she'd suffered much from depression or thought of suicide as a response to depression/ She seems much more like the type of person who is, by nature, cheerful and confident enough to be able to feel, acknowledge, and recover from the unpleasant emotions that come and go. When Gibson called an old friend to say she'd decided to end her life, she was expressing a mature, detached consideration of her medical condition, her finances, and the value her presence had for other people. Fortunately for her (and, I believe, for her friend's prospects in the hereafter!), the people Gibson knew were intelligent enough to recognize that the only possible way to improve her situation was to demonstrate the value her presence had for them, specifically, by improving her finances. 

So, if young readers of this book don't want to pay their debts and live within their means, should they read this book as encouragement to threaten suicide whenever they could use some money? Of course not. No doubt it was helpful for Gibson's friends that, by the time Gibson decided her situation was unlivable, she'd been coping with reality quite well for at least the last fifty years, and her income was much lower and her medical expenses were higher than her friends'. What they should take away from this book is that her friends had enough sense not to leap to conclusions about her suffering from depression as a separate disease (she didn't) or needing to be punished with a clumsy, misguided, utterly irrelevant approach to "mental health." Gibson's mental health was fine. Even her physical health was better than many of her generation's. She just plain didn't have enough money to live on. In that case, and not in the cases of depressive or thrill-seeking suicide threateners, the one correct solution to her problem was a cash infusion. She got that, and lived fairly happily until some additional disease factor ended her life with a brief physical illness, diagnosed as blood poisoning, in her late seventies.

What I'd like to see older readers take away from this book is an appreciation of the fact that Gibson's friends also knew better than to babble about "help" coming from the federal government. In the late twentieth century, federal funding was allocated to "supplemental security" for retirees who couldn't live on their Social Security pensions. Bureaucrats prefered to subsidize various unhelpful boondoggles that promised direct relief of their agreed-upon "needs," such as slum "housing" and horrific nursing homes to address rent, mortgage, and housekeeping expenses, but in some cases, recognizing the morale-boosting benefits of making one's own budgetary decisions, they actually sent these retirees supplementary checks. This was not what Gibson wanted or needed, and her friends had enough sense to recognize the fact. There are retirees, like Carolyn Heilbrun, who--rationally, not emotionally--choose to end their lives rather than depend on large-scale handout "programs" for anything. Gibson fortunately didn't have to make that additional decision, because her friends knew that a big part of her decision was based on their affirmation of the value her individual life and work had for them. 

Telling people "There's a program that might meet your need for..." is, in fact, telling them "You have no worth; you are only a bundle of needs; your existence has no value to me." If you are concerned about someone you know, even if you feel tempted to rationalize that as long as what the person needs can be expressed in dollars and cents and the federal government just collected several dollars and cents from you last month, be very sure you don't mention handout programs or "needs." Never let that kind of thought cross your mind! If the people of concern to you are, like Gibson or Heilbrun, responsible competent adults whose reality problems involve money, bear in mind at all times that money becomes a reality problem for people to whom money represents the value other people set on their worth. They have no "needs." They have only worth--if you want to be heard as telling them anything other than "Choose suicide now." (They probably will not choose suicide now just because they hear you telling them to, but they will most certainly revise their opinions of you.) If these people wanted cash alone, they could be exploiting their credibility, as active and competent seniors, to set up all kinds of frauds and scams. If you want this type of person to be able to live with any level of disability, be sure you use the word "need" only in reference to yourself, as in "I need to show my appreciation of what you do and have done."