A note on the windshield

UNJUSTLY ACCUSED!, plus Links of the Week: a new world in book publishing, a dad comes back to the chessboard, and much more

As you know if you’ve been following along, I spent this week covering the Westminster Dog Show. (All hail Trumpet.) I’ve been at the same hotel all week and got to see a lot of dog people come and go. Many of them have Sprinter vans and campers that they drive around the country to dog shows. It helps to find a parking space with a little grass nearby to run the dogs. So when folks find a good spot at a hotel, they sometimes set down traffic cones to save the parking space when they go somewhere.

I am telling you all this for a reason.

A couple of days ago I spent the day at the show and then came back to the hotel. I parked in the space nearest my room and didn’t think much about it. When I came back out, a few hours later, there was a note under my windshield.

The note under the windshield is an underrated form of communication. It definitely gets your attention. Occasionally it’s just trash, like some smoothie place offering 2-for-1s on Thursdays. But it might be a note from an ex, an apology from somebody who dented your door with a shopping cart … it could be lots of things. It could be a mysterious stranger telling you to hold off on assassinating a drug kingpin, like on “Better Call Saul.”

My note was from a woman named Linda who wanted me to return the cones I stole from her parking space.

Reader, I did not steal the cones from her parking space.

I did park in the space where she’d been parking, but the cones were gone, so I assumed they’d already headed back home. But Linda figured that no, I must have wanted that space so bad that I got out, removed the cones and then parked in her space. She gave me a stern reminder that it is NOT correct to steal and that (as noted above) GOD SEES YOU!

That was when I realized there are few things that can fill a person with righteousness more than being unjustly accused.

All of a sudden I felt 20 percent more virtuous. I had not sinned! (At least not this particular sin.)

I tried to track down Linda, partly because I wanted to find out if she ever solved the mystery … but partly, to be honest, to see if she’d apologize. I was looking forward to giving her an aw-shucks nod and telling her it was OK.

Never found Linda. But I did start thinking about that GOD SEES YOU thing. And I realized that, if God tallied up the things I’ve been accused of, but didn’t do, versus the things haven’t been accused of, but DID do … I might still be a bit in the red here.

I would now like to apologize for helping my buddy steal that ball washer from a golf course when we were 18. Somebody stole it from him shortly thereafter. If that matters, for scoring purposes.

10 things I wanted to share this week:

1. My earlier post this week was a quick dispatch from Dogland.

2. This week’s guest on the SouthBound podcast is Dan Chapman, whose fine new book A ROAD RUNNING SOUTHWARD retraces John Muir’s walk from Kentucky to Florida in 1867.

3. My dear friend Joe Posnanski on his father, and chess, and learning to play again.

4. If you’re interested at all in the book business, you should read this piece by Marcela Valdes on how some of the top jobs at the top publishing houses are finally going to people of color—and how they’re tapping long-ignored audiences.

5. DOG NEWS: While I work on my book, this slot goes to dog stories. This week: I mean, at this point, you just want to see some dog pictures, right?

6. OK, a bonus dog story: Dogjacking is a thing, and what they’re looking for most is French bulldogs. (I will have a LOT more about Frenchies in my book.)

7. Loved this piece by my bud Jonathan Abrams on Mark Williams and the long, hard path to the NBA. Here’s his lede:
   The training drill is named after LeBron James. Most people would be better off if they just let him do it.

   Dribble a basketball while sprinting full court. Dunk it. Rebound. No time to catch your breath. Turn around and do it again.

   Ten times.

   Is that how to spend a morning in Miami?
   (My team, the Charlotte Hornets, took Williams in the first round Thursday night.)

8. Yuxi Lin’s beautiful love song to Costco, and what it means to her immigrant family.

9. Jerry Brewer’s insightful column on Stephen Curry, and how he has changed the NBA. Among many other things: No one as small as him has ever been as great as him.

10. Steven Hyden’s ranking of the Replacements’ 50 best songs was not only well-chosen, but beautifully written. As he goes through the songs he explains how and why they were destined to make brilliant music, destined to fuck it all up, and destined to be remembered by anybody who hears the beauty in things falling apart. Plus (spoiler alert) he got #1 right. It would be #1 for just about any band.

I mentioned on Twitter the other day that there should be some EGOT-like designation for an album you’ve owned on LP, cassette, CD and streaming. LET IT BE is one of mine.

See y’all next week, everybody.