Speaking of Improvising ...

Improvising is an essential part of life.  You can plan all you want, but life just keeps on surprising you with the damnedest things.  Your ability to improvise a workable solution to an immediate problem determines much of your success with a venture.  An inability or unwillingness to improvise when the situation is the most dire usually spells defeat.  Witness the imbecilic behavior occurring on Capitol Hill with the President, Speaker of the House (for now) of Babel, Senate Majority and Minority "Leaders", who can't get out of the others' way because they are too busy scoring political points to spend any time with actual governance.  They've known of their impending nosedive off the Cliffs of Finance for months and months and months.  They can't improvise?

No one can step into the fray and just creatively invent a solution?  It isn't humanly possible?

Of course it is.

Which is the upshot of my post of December 3rd, Jazz, Baseball, Politics and the Beltway Blues: Our American Dialogue, Part II. 

So for the education and encouragement of those who would like to believe you do not need a big salary, a big title, or years of training before you can improvise a clever solution, the video at the top of this page shows a ball girl at a minor league stadium (likely a volunteer who received nothing more than a T-shirt and the satisfaction of showing up a less-than-ambitious professional left fielder) making a catch worthy of Ken Griffey, Jr. in his prime.

If a little jazz improvisation from an improbable source is more to your liking, check out this amateur cell-phone video of Butterscotch, in the company of Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White.




Chick, Stanley and Lenny were duly impressed by Butterscotch's improvised performance, and accorded her the professional respect she had earned.

Jake the Outfielder looked as lazy and outclassed as he could be.  The ball girl's incredible athletic prowess and creativity earned a dull stare from him--but he did at least learn that an improvised solution is possible.

As Yoda told Luke Skywalker: "Do. Or do not. There is no try." 



It's a choice.