Random Thoughts December 2025

Ted Reads Random Thoughts

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Loneliness, I’ve come to think, might be defined as that moment when I reach out for an arm to steady myself… and find the shirt sleeve empty.

CNN is doing a special series featuring Anthony Bourdain—years after he took his own life. Unless his family is benefitting in some way, I can’t help but see it as profoundly exploitive. Something about it doesn’t sit right in my bones.

The other night I watched a movie called Rez Ball, and suddenly I was back on the Navajo (Diné) reservation, in a little place called Chilchinbeto.

How I got there is a long story, what I learned and its effect on me an even longer one. What came back to me as I watched the film was memories of those daily late-afternoon basketball games—after the heat finally loosened its grip on our lungs.

I became a favored teammate, not because of any scoring brilliance, but because I had long ago learned my role: I was a passer. College taught me that lesson. We had better shooters, so the two jobs with the least competition (and the most playing time) were the roles of passer and defensive specialist. I learned to pass and defend well.

On the Rez, I went from being the last guy reluctantly chosen on the first day, to the first, simply because they learned that I would pass the ball. That approach had worked when I played in college, in inner-city Detroit, and it worked here also. I didn’t want or need to fully expose my defensive skills. I intuited that they would not be welcome, and I was correct.

What the movie stirred up vividly was how the boys played in cowboy hats and cowboy boots—because boots were the closest thing many had to “shoes.” Some even played barefoot. Their agility and grace on that hard-packed dirt court amazed me.

Over dinner recently with a friend, one of us used the old expression, “Like a dog on a bone.”

That got me thinking, do we shortchange cats? “A cat’s meow” doesn’t quite seem to carry the same weight as visualizing a dog greedily and joyfully munching down on a big old meaty bone...

But then my friend reminded me that cats always land on their feet. At least that’s what people say. I can’t confirm it. I’d need a validated research study to believe it. But I don’t think the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee would approve the following proposal:

“We’d like to drop a dozen cats of various ages, breeds and weights, from various heights, to determine if they do in fact land on their feet. Also, we’d like to test whether cats truly have nine lives, which would require killing each cat eight times.”

I’m guessing the answer to that proposal would and should be a “No.”

So, are dogs favored? Are cats shortchanged? I honestly don’t know.

I often wonder how phrases like “I was taken to the cleaners,” “She took a bath,” and “He bought the farm” all of which sound positive on the surface, came to mean something unfortunate, even deadly in the farm expression.

These idioms must drive English learners absolutely batty, which raises the next question; Why did I just use batty?

A friend reminded me of a saying that feels especially important these days: “Don’t let your action be inaction.”

I believe one of the basic needs of human beings (certainly for me) is the need to belong. Belonging is as essential as my next breath out.

My coaching mentor, Jerry Johnson, taught me something I’ve never forgotten: “Practice doesn’t make perfect - it makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”  It really informed how I coached. That one, obviously, has stayed with me.

One recent Monday morning, I learned that a friend’s wife had died suddenly.  Friday morning, she was fine. They went for a walk.

By Friday night she was in the ER with respiratory distress.

By Saturday night the doctors said, “We can’t save her.”

By Sunday morning, she was gone.

They had lived and loved well—practically, emotionally, spiritually. Even though she’s no longer here, the stories, adventures, and memories remain. Permanent.

Events like this remind me that the veil between life and death is thin. I bump into that curtain from time to time myself. When news like this arrives, I pause—like a pilot reviewing a checklist—and ask myself what in my own life needs attention.

Warning: Political Reflections Ahead

I recently read a book called White Lies: How the South Lost the Civil War, Then Rewrote History by Ann Bausum.

The facts weren’t new to me.  The formation of the KKK, their purpose and the complicity of authorities who often were members themselves. But reading the details, the how and the who and the effects, I couldn’t help seeing parallels between the post–Civil War Klan and the current Border Patrol–ICE phenomenon.

I fully expect some folks to focus on the differences rather than the similarities. I understand that too. I’d simply invite them to prove me wrong.

As if on cue, I heard an interview with the man overseeing the Border Patrol–ICE operations. It was chilling. He spoke loudly and proudly, almost gleefully, about the “special techniques” they’d developed. Each city taught them how to do the next one “better,” he said. It was clear that he LOVED doing this.

I was reminded that some individuals love this kind of work. They aren’t reluctant troops performing a grim duty. They are excited, fueled and fed by the game they get to play. Against the other side who have no weapons or permission to defend themselves. I sometimes wonder what it feels like to live with someone who delights in that, and glad that I, or those I love don’t.

His excitement reminded me of Dick Winters, the man who led Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the group made famous by Band of Brothers TV show. I loved that series.  I’ve read every book printed about it.  Dick Winters wrote one.  He suggested that one of his most important jobs, in his own words, was to find and nurture “his killers.”  Those men who loved to kill - put them in front and others would follow.

The man being interviewed sounded like the one of those men Dick Winters would find.  This version excited not by liberating Europe, but by terrorizing families.

To the man being interview, all of the tactics employed are legitimate. He was proud of all the tactics; tactics that mirror those of the Klan.  Which tactics did the Klan and BP-ICE have in common?

·       Masked men carrying military weapons

·       Abducting people—sometimes at night

·       Targeting particular ethnicities

·       Creating fear, intimidation, terror

·       Using extra-legal methods

·       Actions designed to preserve racial dominance

·       Beatings, raids, physical abuse

·       Fear-based deterrence

·       Targeting marginalized victims unable to resist

·       Intimidation of helpers

·       Withholding medical care

·       Little accountability

·       Racially selective enforcement of existing laws

·       People disappear

·       People die

I regret being a part of a culture that permits and endorses all this.  How does one be a friend to one who endorses these things?