Tag Archives: #CHANGE
World Handicap System, distance technology impact, golf legends and golf alternatives, these are four interesting topics in the Spring issue of the re-launched United States Golf Association Journal. An inspiring interview with Don Cheadle is also grabbing. Awareness revealed that the question and answer format used by his interviewer, Mike Trostel, manifests unique stories for every golfer.
How did you get started in the game?
This writer grew up in Sherwood a small town in Northwest Ohio, fifteen miles from the Indiana state line and 27 miles from the Michigan state line. The town was all of 500 folks where Dad owned a family operated hardware store. Customers were hard-working corn, wheat, oats and soybean farmers.
Other than work or church, Orchard Hills Country Club, Bryan, Ohio, was a frequent “place to be” for Dad, Mom, my brother, Dan, and me while Dan and I we were growing up as kids. We all took golf lessons from Shorty Stockman and played golf as a family. Dad closed the store every Thursday afternoon and played golf with Harry Gardner, the hardware store owner in Bryan. Golf is in the genes.
What’s the best course you have ever played?
Stoney Creek Golf Club, Wheatridge, Colorado immediately comes to mind. This was a nine-hole, par 29 course carved out of 330 leased acres of a Black Angus cattle farm by the Larry Root family. Larry had grown up working at Pinehurst Country Club, Denver, Colorado where his father, Gene Root, was Head Golf Professional and in later years was elected to the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame. Larry had always dreamed of having his own golf course; and after tenure as Head Golf Professional at Applewood Country Club, he and his family launched the Stoney Creek project. Larry and his wife, Margaret, lived upstairs in the Clubhouse and the walk to and from work was a few stairs. A fond memory is when leaving the Clubhouse for the first tee was Larry’s inspiration, “Hit ‘em high and straight and don’t miss any three-foot putts.” The course is beautiful and remains quite testy: Stoney Creek comes into play on holes 3, 5 and 7; lakes are a challenge on holes 1, 2 and 8; pasture beckons on holes 6 and 8; and a country road invites a hook on hole number 9. The course record was 26; and your author could only get to 27.
What’s your go-to club?
A PING, Glide 3.0, 56-degree, 10-degree bounce wedge: 2.25 degrees flat (Orange), 36” long with a KBS Tour 110 Regular shaft and Golf Pride Tour Velvet Golf Grip. It feels great, looks great, sounds great, is forgiving; and chips, pitches, blasts from sand bunkers and makes scoring wedge shots greater than 30 yards.
During these turbulent, challenging times of change and transition, reflecting and sharing your answers to the questions might be fun. Give it a high and straight shot! Stay tuned for more questions and answers. If you would like to share, send your answers along to JohnDeVore@aol.com. Have fun!!!
As global guests we are in the midst of an interference blizzard—psychological overload of our very fragile human condition—because of scores of deliberate, unmanaged changes and manufactured messages that manifest as a sense of lost identity, confusion, chaos, infinite searching and loneliness that camouflage fear, anger and sadness. Some worldwide, current reality change symptoms are the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; non-stop blaming, undermining, defending, accusing, distracting, taunting, attacking and discrediting; anxiety coupled with the absence of compassion and caring; post-truth; diversity is perceived as weakness; corruption, mass shootings, cheating and stealing; escalating stress and sexual, drug and alcohol abuse; deconstruction of government institutions; crumbling ethics, morals, values and principles; daily, media are attacked and are host to drama and self-absorption, etc. Thich Nhat Hanh remarks,
There is a deep malaise in society…We absorb so much violence and insecurity every day that we are like time bombs ready to explode. We need to find a cure for our illness…Many young people (and adult people) are uprooted…We need roots to be able to stand straight and grow strong. (Living Buddha, Living Christ, 87-89)
Too many changes are planned with little concern for how they will affect people or what people will have to do to make them work. The assumption is that the changes are necessary and that people will simply adjust to them. William Bridges suggests that the psychological processes that change initiates are more like distress and disruption than adjustment: many changes that are meant to strengthen actually weaken and cause resentment and confusion. Fortunately, there are techniques for leading and managing the fragile, human side of change and it is called transition management.
A change normally has an ending, a new beginning and a transition, the neutral zone and psychological reorientation people, cultures and institutions go through when moving from an old situation and coming to terms with the new situation. Transition can be led and managed by 1) identifying the transitions, 2) managing the endings, 3) deliberately leading the psychological adjustment process through the neutral zones and 4) orchestrating and supporting the new beginnings.
Some of the current literature can support identification of some of the multitude of changes and associated transitions—psychological interference blizzard—we humans are experiencing in a globe overwhelmed by cyber operations, information overload and post-truth messaging; political, institutional and humanitarian unrest; military evolution from beans, bombs and bullets to hybrid warfare; and cultural, economic and financial volatility.
Change and Transition Uncovering Resources
Bacevich, (2010). Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War [American Empire Project]. NY, NY: Macmillan.
Browder, B. (2015). Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Carlson, T. (2018). Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Clapper, J.A. (2018). Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence. NY, NY: Penguin.
Clinton, H. (2014). Hard Choices. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Clinton, H. (2017). What Happened. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Cohen, A. (2002). Living Enlightenment: A Call for Evolution Beyond Ego. Lenox, MA: Moksha.
Comey, J. (2018). A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership. NY, NY: Macmillan.
Corn, D. & Isikoff, M. (2018). Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. NY, NY: Hachette.
Corsi, J.R. (2018). Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Keep President Trump. Amazon Whispernet.
Daniels, S. (2018). Full Disclosure. NY, NY: Macmillan.
Dawisha, K. (2014). Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia. NY, NY: Random. House.
Dzuiban, P.F. (2017). Consciousness Is All: Now Life Is Completely New. Amazon Whispernet.
Dzuiban, P.F. (2013). Simply Notice: Clear Awareness Is the Key to Happiness, Love and Freedom. Amazon Whispernet.
Farrow, R. (2017). War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence. Amazon Whispernet.
Frum, D. (2014). Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. NY, NY: Harper Collins.
Hall, K.A. (2014). Sovereign Duty. Kindle.
Hayden, M.V. (2018). The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in the Age of Lies. NY, NY: Penguin.
Harding, L. (2017). Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. NY, NY: Random House.
Heiser, J. (2014). The American Empire Should Be Destroyed: Aleksandr Dugin and the Perils of Immanentized Eschatology. Kindle Unlimited.
Howard, R. (2018). The Killing of Uncle Sam: The Demise of the United States of America. Amazon Whispernet.
Johnston, D.K. (2018). It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Kaplan, D.A. (2018). The Most Dangerous Branch: Inside the Supreme Court Assault on the Constitution. NY, NY: Random House.
Kasparov, G. (2015). Winter is Coming: Why Vladmir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped. NY, NY: Hachette.
Levin, M.R. (2009). Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Levitsky, S. & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How Democracies Die. NY, NY: Random.
MacLean, N. (2017). Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. NY, NY: Penguin.
McCain, J. (2018). The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Murphy, M. & Leonard, G. (2005). The Life We Are Given: A Long-Term Program for Realizing the Potential of Body, Mind, Heart, and Soul. NY, NY: Penguin.
MacLean, M. (2017). Democracy In Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. NY, NY: Penguin.
McFaul, M. (2018). From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. NY, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Newman, O.M. (2018). Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Peterson, J. (2018). 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. NY, NY: Random House.
Nance, M. (2018). The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies are Undermining America and Dismantling the West. NY, NY: Hachette.
Pirro, J. (2018). Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Trump Conspiracy. NY, NY: Hachette.
Ryan, A. (2018). Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the White House. Amazon Whispernet.
Sasse, B. (2018). Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal. NY, NY: Macmillan.
Scaramucci, A. (2018). Trump, the Blue-Collar President. NY, NY: Hachette.
Singer, M. (2009). Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies. NY, NY: Macmillan.
Unger, C. (2018). House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia. NY, NY: Dutton.
Wilber K., Patten, T., Leonard, A. & Morelli, M. (2009). Integral Life Practice: A 21st Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening. Boston, MA: Integral.ma
Wilber, K. (2016). Integral Meditation: Mindfulness as a Way to Grow Up, Wake Up, and Show Up in Your Life. NY, NY: Penguin.
Wilber, K. (2000). Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (2001). A Brief History of Everything. NY, NY: Penguin-Random House.
Wilber, K. (2017). Trump and Post-Truth World. NY, NY: Random House.
Wilson, R. (2018). Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Wolff, M. (2018). Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. NY, NY: Macmillan.
Woodward, B. (2018). Fear: Trump in the White House. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Following transition and change identification, some possible next steps: manage those pesky endings; deliberate leadership through neutral zones; and planned orchestration and support for new beginnings.
