Ralph "Butch" Lassiter

From the day I met him, Poppy was the only name we ever called him. I don't know where that name came from, I suspect the oldest grandchild might have given it to him and it stuck.

I met Poppy at Carterville Christian Church in March of 2004. The occasion? His baptism. The short version of the back story is that shortly before this particular day he walked into a local used car dealership and told the owner - Van Benson, a trusted friend - that he needed "to be saved." Sometime earlier, Poppy had started attending church at Carterville with his granddaughter (Brittany...now my wife). Soon after his trip to see Van, he felt the Holy Spirit leading him to take the step of being baptized and so there we were. I don't remember the exact date, but it was early evening on a Thursday.

Statistics will tell you that very few 65 year-old men accept Christ as their Savior, but Poppy did. That meeting taught me a couple of things about Poppy.

First, that Poppy was a person who was more than willing to stand up for what he believed. In the 5 years I knew him, he was never one to be pushy, but he also made no apologies for making his faith known to anyone who would listen.

Second, Poppy was someone who knew how to and liked to celebrate. You can see how excited he is in the photo from that day.



Over the next few years, Poppy made a number of indelible impressions on me. Just a couple of stories.

When Brittany and I got married, unlike many of our friends from this area where the families have known one another or at least known of one another for many years, my family was completely unknown to all of Webb City - where all of Brittany's family is from. Our parents met in early 2005 before we got married in May, but that meeting didn't include any of the extended family. So when the grandparents all rolled in on wedding weekend my grandparents didn't know anyone on Britt's side. While at 80 years old each they certainly could handle a few hours of wedding and reception even if they didn't know anyone. But Poppy was having none of it.

The next thing I knew, Poppy had gone to my grandparents and was making them feel right at home. He had a gift for that. I don't remember if they ever got to see one another again after that day or not (I don't think they did), but almost without fail, anytime we saw either Poppy (and Nan) or my grandparents they would ask about one another.

One more story. One Sunday morning a couple of years ago Robin Sigars was giving announcements from stage during church it came time to have the small cardboard boxes that are used to collect the benevolent offering each month passed. Generally, Robin asks kids in the audience to come up and pass those boxes. On that particular morning none of the kids responded. Completely in jest, Robin looked over at Poppy and said, Butch, do you want to come help me pass these boxes? It was clear in Robin's tone that he was kidding. By this time, Parkinson's had made it difficult for Poppy to walk and there was no expectation for him to get up and circulate throughout the auditorium. Robin turned to the other side of the room and then realized that Poppy didn't know that he was kidding (or more likely decided to play along), because Poppy was half-way up the aisle running (no, really) toward the front. Poppy wasn't about to pass up a chance to serve. Robin commented later that if only he could get others in the congregation to be so willing to serve we'd never have a shortage of people to serve the ministries of the church. He was right about that.

I did not have the privilege of knowing Poppy for all that many years. The stories that Nan (his wife, Sue), his daughters (Pam, Kim, and Tracy), and his grandchildren tell only confirm my observations of him.

At 12:10am on Thursday, April 23rd, Poppy finished his race here on earth. After years of dealing with the effects of Parkinson's that all too soon restricted his physical ability, he now walks and talks without any hindrance. His family misses him terribly because he was so special to them (us), but they (we) understand that he is now far better off and for that we celebrate through the tears of saying goodbye.

Today at noon, Poppy was laid to rest at Mt. Hope Cemetery.

I've explained before that when I lived in Stillwater on the most solemn days as well as the ones of greatest celebration, we wore orange. I have chosen to carry that tradition forward. Today most certainly was a day for orange - both a solemn remembrance and a celebration of eternal victory.

Talladega Never Disappoints

Like it or not, when the Cup cars go to Talladega, it's going to be 3 hours of chess followed by 30 laps of bedlam. The end result is usually at least one big crash that takes a bunch of the field out of contention and at least one last lap pass.

Sunday was no exception. In the last 2 laps, Carl Edwards was pushed past Ryan Newman and Dale Jr. by Brad Keselowski to the lead. Then just when I thought it was over (and was yelling at Jr. for letting them go by and not pulling out to catch their draft and contend for the win) everyone got a glimpse of why Talladega is different than everywhere else they race.

Aside from being the biggest, fastest track on the circuit there is one other peculiarity that came into play on Sunday. The Start-Finish line is all the way down by turn one. What this means is that when they come off turn 4 it's still a really long way to the finish line. Had this race taken place at Daytona (a very similar track where the Start-Finish line is in a more traditional place in the tri-oval), Carl Edwards would have probably been the winner, quite possibly in mid-flip.

Back to the finish. Keselowski looked high, Edwards moved to block, Keselowski went low and managed to get a nose under Edwards (think Cole Trickle's last lap pass at Daytona in Days of Thunder). At Talladega you can't go below the double-yellow line to advance your position, so when Edwards started down to block Keselowski who was partially along-side him now there were 3 options for Keselowski:
1. Lift (slow down) and take 2nd
2. Go below the line and take 2nd (or worse depending on how NASCAR viewed the move)
3. Hold his ground and see what happened

Let me be crystal clear about the following, what Keselowski did was not dirty (see Carl's post race interview). He had every right to put his nose down there. Carl is the one that turned down across him. Carl was quick to say, I just didn't realize he had gotten along-side me that quickly. At another track, Keselowski would have gone below the line and it would have been a photo finish. Instead, Edwards went flying, got hammered by Newman and landed short of the finish line with the car on fire. He then proceeded to get out of the car and jog across the finish line (I'm told Ricky Bobby did did that in - ironically - Talladega Nights, but I haven't seen the movie. Please spare me your shock at that fact unless you want to hear why.).

Keselowski went on to win the race (his 1st win in only his 5th career start) with his racing mentor Dale Jr. coming home second.

It was a great finish - from an excitement standpoint - but you never want to see wrecks like that. At least 8 fans were injured by debris from Edwards car flying into the stands. None of the injuries were life-threatening. You need to see the video to see what a great job the retaining fence did of keeping the car on the track and the entire thing not landing in the third row. Just like in baseball where balls and bats can enter the stands, in auto racing there can be injuries. NASCAR does everything they can to protect the drivers and the fans.

Long live the big tracks! Next weeekend back to short-track racing. :(

The Citgo Sign

A couple of quick things.

Yesterday the 113th Annual Boston Marathon was run in front of hundreds of thousands of people - most of whom are not runners and just came out to see the spectacle (who can blame them).

First, kudos to the 2 Americans (Kara Goucher and Ryan Hall) who both came home third in the women's and men's races respectively. That's a pretty big deal. For the last 20 years an American in the top 10 on either side was an accomplishment. To have one in the top 3 in both races is a big deal. And bigger still is the fact that both were within a minute of the winner.

If you saw ESPN's highlight package on the race you heard them reference Fenway Park (home of the Boston Red Sox). Fenway is an icon in sports and someone smartly ran the course right past it. Something they didn't show you was the Citgo sign.

When you go to run the marathon (and I can't remember if I blogged about this before or not) veterans will tell you that if you can catch sight of the Citgo sign you can make it to the finish. Why? What's so special about the sign? Nothing. The reason it matters and the reason they say it is that you first catch sight of the sign at the top of Heartbreak Hill (which is right at mile marker 21). From there the course is predominantly down hill to the finish. So the theory goes if you survive the climb to the top of Heartbreak and see the sign you can drag yourself to the finish from there.

Fenway and the sign are about a mile from the finish. So the second thing about that sign is that if you can get to it you're basically home. ESPN mentioned that it was with about a mile to go that Kara Goucher was passed by the eventual winner. That happened somewhere in the vicinity of the Citgo sign. By the time you get past the sign it's just a matter of a few turns through the city streets and the roar of the crowd will pretty much carry you.

I think that Citgo sign is a little like other markers in our lives. The thing itself may not be that important, but it shows an important spot or marks a critical point in a journey. In my experience at Boston, I was very happy to see that darn sign and even happier to run past it (it turns out that running down hill late in a marathon isn't easy when you come from the plains where there are no hills to train on and the stair climber doesn't really simulate the down hill part of the equation).

The next time you see the Red Sox playing at Fenway, stop just long enough to see a wide-shot of left field. Just out beyond the Green Monster is the Citgo sign.

Answer: $25.79

Question: What was the total cost of our Friday night?

Here's how it totaled up:
- $14.71 for 2 burritos, chips, salsa, and 2 drinks at Q-doba
- $9.05 in gas for the 150 mile round trip to Springfield
- $2.03 for a venti Pike at Starbucks after the game
- $0.00 for tickets to the Missouri State v. Wichita State game
- Watching MO-State hammer the Shockers was (you guessed it) priceless.

Yes, we've got an advantage, Britt's brother Brayden plays 3rd base for MO-State, which means we generally get in on the player's pass list. Tickets are a whopping $8 at full price, so it's terribly expensive even for paying customers.

It was a great game...for Bears fans. After giving up 1 run in the top of the first, the Bears lead-off batter took the first pitch he saw in the bottom of the 1st out to left to tie the game. A couple of innings later a 2-run home-run put MO-State up 3-1, an inning later another 2-run home-run made it 5-1.

Meanwhile Tim Clubb was cruising through the Shockers lineup (which strangely had 4 Oklahoma natives in it including the starting pitcher) like they were a high school squad. Clubb retired the side in less than 10 pitches at least twice, maybe 3 times. He threw a complete game, gave up 2 runs (one of which should have been unearned, but a bad scoring decision upstairs gave a hit on a ball that should have been scored E8) and 3 hits. The runs were scored in the 1st and the 9th. Between those innings he was pretty much on cruise control.

The final score was 8-2.

For a baseball fan that likes big burritos, it doesn't get much better than that.

Print Your Own Currency

I found this article this morning and thought it was interesting - maybe I've been asleep at the wheel for not realizing that this goes on regularly.

Basically, some local communities are printing their own currency and businesses can choose to accept it. Local banks circulate the local bills. In the example cited in the article, $0.95 gets you 1 BerkShare (which is what their currency is called).

The purpose here is to encourage people to shop locally and increase community spirit. I'll give props to the ones that devised the program, they actually created a financial incentive to shop locally - by discounting from the dollar. If you pay in dollars you spend $1, but in BerkShares you'd spend .95. Doesn't sound like much, but over time and on larger purchases that 5% starts to add up.

"Buy Local" campaigns generally annoy me. I came from a small town where you had to drive an hour to do anything and to get a decent deal on anything larger than your groceries. I'm not anti small local businesses. They are vital to the economy. I am against paying more just to prop up a business than can't compete - and being told that it's my duty to do so. Sorry Comrade, I'll pass, that's not my responsibility.

Getting past all the debt issues that our economy is currently suffering from, it is this type of protectionist thought that is making it harder to right the ship. Case in point: Detroit. You have inefficient companies making products that people aren't that enthused about (based on sales) and can't be sold for amounts that will support the business model. But it's our "duty" to buy American. Yeah, I want to support American jobs, but that's protectionism and doesn't end well. If we are going to be a capitalist economy, companies have to find a competitive advantage where they can compete on a level field and not require government bailouts or other unfair advantages. If we insist on giving preferential treatment to certain companies we'll just keep having to do it to keep the next company in business.

So back to the local currency thing. It's an interesting idea and maybe with the 5% discount you might be getting competitive pricing versus larger businesses who aren't participating. While I hope that Joplin doesn't try this, in isolated cases it's not harmful and if it makes a group of people feel better about their circumstances then have at it.

For me, I'd rather see communities find other things to rally around. You see examples every day. For Webb City it's high school football (or maybe youth and high school sports in general). For Stillwater it's a university that is the life-blood of the community. You even see an occasional example in larger cities (sorry for all the sports emphasis here, but that's what I pay attention to) when one of their teams make a run in the playoffs (Green Bay is a prime example, but even Pittsburgh was pretty excited with a SuperBowl win).

How about this. Let's stick to the dollar. Other local currencies are going to be tied to it anyway. Let's agree that we're going to let businesses compete, because when that happens innovation happens and people find ways to provide products and services that buyers actually want to buy (and the buyer gets a better deal). And let's find something other than local protectionist policies to rally our communities around - here's an idea on Easter weekend, how about Jesus. I'm just saying.

Start Writing

I read something this morning that I'd never really taken note of before. In Deuteronomy 17:18-20, there is a description of some of the expectations of the king(s) that would rule over Israel. The thing that caught my attention was that the king was to write for himself a copy of the law on a scroll to be kept with him during his rule. Verses 19 & 20 read, "It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not to consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel."

I found this interesting. I haven't done the research to see if Saul, David, Solomon, and others actually did this or not. Clearly God was very intent on the king - which you might remember God didn't really want to have in place at all - remaining faithful. I am guessing that the numbers of copies of the law available in those days was very small - as they all had to be done by hand. That God would require the king to copy it down himself makes it pretty clear He was serious about it. I suspect that if we each had to copy (by hand) some large body of scripture and keep it with us, we'd probably tend to know it better and perhaps follow it more faithfully. Just a thought.

Now, shifting gears a little and forgive me if you find the following offensive.

Taking this principle that was laid out in the Old Testament and applying it to rulers in modern times, what would it be like if the first duty of a new president after the inauguration ceremony was to copy the Constitution by hand? I wonder if that would change the reverence our leaders show toward defending and protecting the document that our form of government was based on? I am not trying to spiritualize the office of President of the US, claim that the US is a Christian nation or is somehow chosen by God. I'm just saying this principle might keep an administration from running rough-shod over the document this nation's founders wrote to establish and regulate the function of this union. Maybe it's time for President Obama to breakout a G-2 and start transcribing - let's be sure someone is watching him when he does it so he doesn't change anything to suit his political philosophy.

Recap of March

It's amazing how quickly 4 weeks can go by without blogging. Here is a quick recap:

-Brittany and I spent her spring break in the Tampa/St. Pete/Clearwater area. The weather was great, the major thing we wanted was to go somewhere warm. We got fried the first day we were there on the beach at Sand Key. We got to see the Yankees and Pirates from Steinbrener Stadium - special thanks to the security guard that told us the night before when to get to the stadium to buy the limited number of tickets remaining. We spent a couple more days on the beach and generally tried to relax.

- The week following spring break was all about getting ready to leave for Florida MOVE. It was a short, quick week that included celebrating my mom's birthday on March 25th.

- All of that was followed by 7 days in Panama City Beach (plus a day to get there and a day to get home). A few observations:

1. I don't care what route you take, it's a long way down there and there's no good way to get through southern Alabama.

2. The quickest way to bum out a spring-breaker (specifically one down there to party) is to tell them that the herd of high school students crossing the street are heading to a "private party". They have no idea!

3. Sometimes local law enforcement gets bored - just ask the guy who pulled me over on the way home in southern Alabama because the Penske truck I was driving only had a tag on the front and "in Alabama you have to have a tag on the rear of the vehicle AT ALL TIMES" and "it must be visible from 50 feet AT ALL TIMES." Here's to packing the tools and zip strips right on the back of the truck!

4. Sometimes you have to give people more information than you want to in order to get them to do what they need to do for their safety. This was exhibited when we started rushing everyone into a ballroom to take cover during a tornado warning on Thursday morning. As the CIY staff and Southeast adults rushed throughout the motel to get everyone where they needed to be, many of the students (and some adults) were less than responsive when first asked to head to the ballroom. While I have worked very hard not to be too direct with people, when it comes to their safety I'll make few apologies (especially when I ask nicely and they either just head the other way or reply with questions about which bus their luggage goes on). At that point I decided to just shoot straight with them - "There's a tornado warning, drop what you're doing and go right now!"

It's good to be home. There have been several things that I wanted to blog about over the last few weeks, but most are now not current enough to mess with (however I've got a feeling there's a GM blog coming in light of what happened last week). Stay tuned.