🏀 KuBuckets Archive

SigInt (the brief camera shot of treating Joel's injury court side) tells jBIE's basketball spies a whole lot about Joel's back injury.

Observed treatment: Joel laid on his back and a team official treating Joel pulled his right leg over his left and appeared to stretch the lower back in a spiral/twisting motion.

jBIE Basketball Spy Analysis of Signal Intelligence (television broadcasts):

1. Joel's injury seems to be located in the lower back in the frontier between the Thoracic and Lumbar vertebrae.

2. He does not appear have a fracture. No one applies such stretching, twisting motion to any lower back problem related to fracture.

3. Coach Self's quote in the Dodd article indicated that Joel's injury could be healed with four weeks of rest, but, Coach Self added, KU doesn't have four weeks left in this season to rest him. If it were to win the Madness, that would mean about 4 weeks of playing (note: this week with B12 tourney, and then three weeks of two game tourneys of the Madness.)

4. Coach Self also indicates it is more "significant" than a sprain.

5. What seems to be occurring on the video is stretching to stop a muscle spasm, or perhaps more likely an old fashioned attempt at an osteopathic "adjustment" of vertebrae of the lower back to "pop" the lower back; this usually means that some combination of disks, muscles, tendons and ligaments are allowing lower back vertebrae to shift out of alignment. In turn a nerve is probably getting pinched. The pinched nerve causes pain and weakness in the legs for awhile.

6. "Treatments" of cold and warmth and anti inflams, combined with "adjustment" give relief and the sensation of the pain going away after while. Thus we see Joel with a happy face in street clothes apparently suffering no back pain.

7. Alas, the instability can recur at almost any moment of lower back motion and the more stretching and treatments that are applied, the more the constellation of disk, muscle and ligaments that hold the vertebrae in place are stretched to relieve the problem, the more unstable that vertebral region becomes; i.e., the more prone it is to slip out again.

8. The difference between the first hitch in his git along that afflicted Joel and the second appeared to be a much more severe pinching of the nerve that lead to greater pain, and to much more loss of leg strength (i.e., more pronounced limping).

9. Healing involves ligaments and tendons resting until their normal range of elasticity is restored, and then exercises and weight training can be used to re-strengthen the muscles so that the constellation of ligaments, tendons and muscles can hold the vertebrae in proper alignment and prevent the disk and vertebrae from slipping an pinching the nerve.

10. If the apparent nerve pinching were not occurring, and not appearing to worsen with each recurrence, he would rest, get treatments and play until it went out again, then rest, get treatments and play again. Alas, the worsening pinching of the nerve is what is probably cause for all the delay, uncertainty about time of return and further diagnostics.

11. jBIE spies indicate that they have had this exact injury themselves when they were young and that it pretty much goes out without rhyme or reason, and leaves one essentially immobilized for a short while. During the adjustment one can actually feel a slight crick, or pop, and then experience sudden relief. Alas, the more it recurs the more likely it is to recur.

12. jBIE spies indicate that there could be some cascading connection between the knee injury and the pressure the braced knee and altered range of motion communicated to the lower back, but, maddeningly, it could also be completely independent of the knee injury.

(Note: jBIE spies of course are completely and wildly speculating here and doing so without any insider information, just the fading recollection of having had such a nagging injury over 40 years ago that still, once in a great while, goes out.)

Rock Chalk!

@jaybate 1.0-JB the "spin doctor."

Keep an osteopath on retainer from now on. Extended rest is a requirement. Wouldn't be at all surprised to have seen Joel for the last time in his KU jersey. Us old farts know exactly what you have described here.

You can bet the NBA will scrutinize this to the max. At L3/4, 4/5 there can be a lot of instability that may be virtually impossible to correct without surgery & even then, is a complete crapshoot on successful procedures. I was watching when he went down in pain both times & is eerily remindful of what you described. Once that pattern begins the future changes. I immediately feared for & envisioned the worst as there can be a snowball effect that never ever ends.

I'm not a doctor... but I had back problems after I suffered a complete detachment of my patella. Back then, I had to keep my leg straight for 4 months. I had to learn how to walk again and needed two years of PT just to become a healthy non-athletic person. In my second year of recovery I suffered back issues. My injury happened in a game and ended my playing days... skiing days... tennis days...

Today, half of my health maintenance is focused on diet. I wish what I knew now I had known back then.

If Joel is having an issue with inflammation (good chance that he does), he can adjust his diet and make gigantic gains towards reducing inflammation. I'm guessing to what his injury is... but I bet inflammation is a big part of creating the pain in his back. It is a natural warning system. The body is telling him to take it easy so he doesn't do additional damage and he gives his body time to heal.

By reducing acid producing foods, and focusing on a healthy alkaline diet, he can reduce or eliminate most of his inflammation.

I had issues with all my joints from spending a lifetime (30+ years) of beating them on pavement and wood floors. 6 years ago I couldn't open a jar. The pain and stiffness in my fingers from three decades of ball jams and such became unbearable. Through a careful adjustment in my diet I have regained full use of my hands with ZERO pain and stiffness! I eliminated all the inflammation in my body by adjusting my diet.

I used to live a life in complete pain... back, joints, bad knee.... had problems sleeping and had a constant battle trying to avoid jumping on pain and sleeping medication for the rest of my life. That's all over now. I probably swallow two aspirin a year now, and have been like this for the last 5 years. All my friends keep adding pains to their lives and I removed mine!

Funny... but people don't want to believe that what they eat has much of an impact on their health.

Even a young Joel can improve every aspect of his life with a better diet. I know what these kids eat. I was a kid once... a long time ago!

This snip is from KUSports.com:

"“We’ve had a couple people reading different things (test results),” Self said, including the L.A. specialist in that group."

If you go to 7 specialists on back issues... you will receive 7 different sets of results.

I have personal experience to back that up.

This is interesting. When I read that Self said that it was more significant than a strain, I started thinking stress fracture or herniation. Then I read @jaybate mentioning that you might not do such aggressive stretching if that were the case.

I personally keep coming back to the knee injury as the root cause here. As @drgnslayr noted in his situation, a knee problem led to his back issues. In athletic movements, it can be a simple as trying not to land on the hurt leg, or even slightly protecting it in repetitive movements.

That said, I wonder about Embiid's flexibility. Tight hamstrings are a major contributor to back issues and can increase back problems once a leg injury occurs.

But I'm sure we'll know soon.

@HighEliteMajor

"I personally keep coming back to the knee injury as the root cause here. As @drgnslayr noted in his situation, a knee problem led to his back issues. In athletic movements, it can be a simple as trying not to land on the hurt leg, or even slightly protecting it in repetitive movements. "

In my case, I wasn't even doing anything athletic except my PT during that first year. What caused my back problem was the adjustment I had in walking. I didn't walk the same and needed at least 2 years of heavy PT to get to the point where I could walk without creating issues for my back.

Now imagine what kind of abnormal stress Embiid was putting on his back playing basketball!

@drgnslayr
Wow, I have a similar background of high impact athletics well into my 30's and have had increasing back, hip, and knee problems the past 20 years. I wonder if you can elaborate more specifics about your diet because I would like to try it.

@JayhawkRock78

You pretty much have to stay away from all processed foods. You have to become the processor! That means... there are only a few parts of the grocery store you should shop in. Start with the fruits and veggies. Some people say eating meat produces acid. I never stopped eating meat, but made sure it was hormone free and "happy animals" if possible. Happy, meaning... free range.

Soda... gone! Breads... gone!

I eat lots of produce. Veggies and fruit. I buy and grow organic.

And I supplement my diet with some "super foods." Lots of avocado. The fat in avocados is helpful for your heart and for mineral absorption. Other super foods I do include a shot of wheatgrass. At least an ounce a week. I also grow sprouts and micro-greens. Here is an excellent source on the net:

http://sproutpeople.org/ ↗

Forget all this nonsense you read about sprouts being risky. For one thing... grow your own instead of buying sprouts. Most of the sprouts that are sold are not the most-nutritious sprouts anyways.

I go overboard and get into fermented foods. I make kefir, kombucha and kim chi and other things. It's just my drive for total health. I also have a huge home garden, and I can, dry and pickle everything. This last paragraph is awesome, but I already had my good results before adding fermented foods.

There are plenty of great resources out there. Some of my better reads include:

Nourishing Traditions

Wild Fermentation

You'll need a good reading source for veggie nutrition, too. There is an adjustment period for changing your life. Once you get through that you will feel like a teen again! And then it is really simple to keep with the program because there is nothing in the world better than being at retirement age and jumping out of bed every morning (after a great night of sleep) with springs under your feet!

At your age, if you do the right thing now you will most-likely avoid many of the dangers that are coming your way within a couple of decades... like colon cancer, arthritis, loss of hair and vitality, loss of sexual appetite, forgetfulness, failing eyes... the list goes on and on.

My vision has improved., along with everything else!

Other advice: sleep with the window open or cracked. Get natural exercise.. like working in the yard, etc. I also juice now and then. In the warm months I buy lots of watermelon and I juice them. That is my natural Gatorade! It actually does what Gatorade claims to do! Only drink distilled water. You don't want naturally mineralized water. Water needs to be H2O... then it is "hungry water".. meaning... it is a solvent. It looks for other molecules to attach to and it cleanses your body.

Avoid processed sugars, too. Processed sugars = pure acid

I don't buy any packaged foods. No mac and cheese... pretty much nothing from the middle of the grocery store!

My hands haven't worked this well since junior high school. By the time I was in high school, I played too much ball and had constant finger smashes!

@drgnslayr

PHOF!

A link to this post should be put on the front page of the web site. Young men need to learn what you have just articulated; this is the truth guys. I am not living the religion totally, but I am moving that direction and it is working.

We all owe the eat healthy movement a huge debt of gratitude, because they stuck to their sound reason in the face of ridicule for being different.

Now, all we have to do is explain to young men that it is manly to eat well and we will be on the way to once again getting America moving in the right direction for all Americans.

Rock Chalk! Slayr Rock Chalk!

@drgnslayr
Wow,
This is a big 180 turn from what I've been doing and I carry the extra weight to prove it. Thanks for going into detail.
I've got to admit I don't think I can go cold turkey on my diet but it would be easy to get the fruits and veggies to a bigger %. We don't have a garden but that could change.
Thanks for the help and Jaybate your backup testimonial is appreciated. Can I wait to put this plan in action until March madness is over?.? I don't know it is such a fun time of year.

@JayhawkRock78

You don't have to go cold turkey... just start adding in some of the right things. It really isn't about living some kind of perfect lifestyle. You can always eat some chocolate cake! Just make sure you get the right things and cut back on some of the bad stuff. It won't be long before you start having an urge to eat better.

It is better to start gradual, and keep moving in the right direction. Then it is a lifestyle change instead of a quick trendy type of change (that never lasts).

Don't worry until after March Madness... especially if you have something that brings us good luck. A friend of mine used to always bring pizza to our gatherings because it brought us luck. It did! We were very lucky to eat lots of awesome pizza every game! ;)

Sports nutrition is the next big wave to come to sports. Superior forms of training are reaching close to its potential. So competitive advantages will have to come from somewhere else. Nutrition is where it is at.

I'm trying to remember the name of one of our past guards that lived on candy and ate too much and got sick before one of our games. I heard that and couldn't believe it.

Maybe Tharpe lives on processed sugar? Wow... Does the coaching staff monitor what these guys eat? I seriously doubt if they do.

Imagine trying to play a March Madness game on empty calories? Or... imagine a summer of Hudy workouts and you aren't eating the right proteins? Might as well forget all those dead lifts... because all you are doing is tearing down muscle and not giving them the fuel to rebuild.

Most athletes still think Gatorade is the right drink during a game! These kids should be eating the right meal before games, and if they need an uplift try a banana during a game along with some watermelon juice.

It blows my mind... all this energy, work, money, focus, effort... all to put a ball in a hole and no one thinks about their diets playing a part. It's a crime, and a pity.

I'd bet anything I own that if I could have control of the diets of our team starting today and running through the big tourney.. we would be a Final Four team. The impact makes that much of a difference.

All these sports medicine guys around the team don't understand nutrition. They understand muscle strains and injuries. Nutrition helps eliminate those problems, too. In the case of JoJo... it would most-likely ease his pain considerably.

@drgnslayr "All these sports medicine guys around the team don't understand nutrition." Even Hudy? I thought the weightlifting folks paid great attention to diet. Granted, with them it's weird stuff like dozens of eggs and no body fat at all, but still I can't believe Hudy wouldn't at least look into nutrition. She basically cooked all day for Sherron.

@drgnslayr thanks for the note about gradual change. That could work for me.

I will make a comment about nutrition. I was so scrawny as a high school soph I could hardlyin walk and chew gum. Two years later I graduated at 180 and still very lean for my6' 2" build and we lifted constantly.

My frosh year at KU I ate on the training table. LTake that X Physical Maturity X increased Training X more and advanced weight lifting and I was a beast.very explosive and agile. (Not a ball player but our bBall bigs were just plain slow with little explosiveness. I KNOW the weight training is much better per coaches I know still at the DIv 1 level. I know the food back in the day was good, and I'm sure there have been improvements. You can make sure the athletes do the workouts and lift right-but the diet is still a wild card-not everyone follows the program to the letter.

@ParisHawk

I can't speak for Hudy... but I doubt she is a nutritionist. Strength training people typically don't understand nutrition. It is a different science, like a different language, so they don't put all the study into nutrition as they do strength conditioning. I made some gigantic mistakes in my day when I listened to strength people and they were putting my on protein powders and other isolated substances, like amino acids. And it really messed with my mind. Definitely not a healthy way.

It takes some level of discipline and ability to change to accomplish good nutrition. It won't come easy... like by taking a pill or vitamin. Most (if not all) of those substances are harmful. That has (finally) been coming out recently, especially concerning multi-vitamins.

Thinking back to my days at KU... it would have been really tough for me to eat the right kind of diet, and I knew how to cook... even in my late teens. Nowadays, Lawrence has several good places to buy organic produce. That is a start.

I'm amazed at how much improved I feel, and I believe it would make a big difference with these kids. When I was their age, I still had issues with inflammation, energy fluctuations, mood swings, inability to focus... And I seemed to train train train and improvements came too slow.

@drgnslayr

Bill Self seems so open to the science of things and to new innovations in the things that create support the athletes that I wonder if there might be some pathway to get him to consider this healthy nutritional component to training. These guys are having sooooooooo much joint trouble. And it seems to be getting worse instead of better.

And your take that weight training professionals are not studying the nutritional factors makes me think that it ought to be explored seriously to improve athletes performances and to minimize the adverse effects of weight training on the players bodies short and long term.

The obstacle is that Self struggles with a weight problem from time to time and has undoubtedly had to eat wrong on the road for most of his professional life, and so now he is going to be resistant to it. But Bill Self has a bad knee he got at the end of his playing days. And if someone could talk to him, or someone close to him, about how nutrition can sharply alter inflammation issues, then that might be a topic very close to him that he might be receptive to thinking about.

It is the strangest thing that people are so resistant to eating healthy. I know I was long a poster boy for resistance to trying to eat healthy. And I came to it so late in life that I am not buying any life extension with my conversion. But I am buying feeling better during my remaining time. It works.

And the way it works is that you change your diet for awhile and you think, well, maybe I can tolerate this. And then you start saying, well, I will eat some of the meat that is clean as a kind of compromise, or slide in the side door approach. And then you start eating the salads and upping the vegetable intake. Then you start saying well I will eat two clean eggs instead of two dirty ones. And then you start saying, well, I will just have one clean egg and some clean egg whites to cut the yoke intake in half. And then you go from frying eggs in butter to frying them in olive oil, to using an olive oil mister. Then you start using clean bread butter and jam, and then less bread, and then no butter and then only jam that is all fruit and no sugar. And then you try to shift off the dirty cereal and onto the clean cereal, and then you shift off the clean cereals to oatmeal and grits, and then you find out that there are a few outfits putting out unprocessed grits with the germ still in them and you realize that it tastes way better than 5 minute grits. And on and on. And you start eating smaller portions of meat, and more chicken and fish. And then you start looking at the fish and saying I don't want radiated salmon from the Pacific, I will take my chances on salmon from the Atlantic, where there maybe heavy metals but no isotopes. And then you read a little and you see that all salmon has a ton of oil in it and so you start looking for smaller portions of fish. And then you start realizing that farmed fish are way more fatty than fresh fish, and then you start moving away from fish to chicken and turkey that is organically grown. But then you keep moving back to unprocessed grains and vegetables grown clean. And then you go on a trip and you start chowing down on road food and hotel food and after the rush of feeling the old familiar tastes then you feel like a log, and you're not moving as nimbly, and you don't feel very good and you get tired faster and suddenly, when you are alone, and looking in the mirror, or out a beautiful sunny day, and you think I would rather feel good than have these old familiar foods and then there is no dieting involved. It is all just preference driven instead of familiarity and dependence driven.

American Cokes with High fructose corn syrup and Mexican cokes with plain sugar was what set all of my change in motion. Bottom line, both are rotten for you, but I noticed that Mexican Cokes tasted a wee bit better and the science was in that high fructose corn syrup was way worse that plain sugar. Think of me as the St. Augustine of eating. St. Augustine was in his youth a debauched human being that partook excessively in every vice then known. But something dawned on him and he began looking for a better way to live and it involved setting not just his mind, but his spirit and his body right. He did such an about face that he seems a hypocrite on one level. But the point was that he made it. He made the change. And it was good for him. And he gave back a lot of good once he made the change. I ate as poorly as a person could eat for 20 years from a health stand point, almost as an act of defiance. I ate the finest cuisines and cooking the world had to offer without knowing that a lot of the great cuisines were just covering up really bad quality food stuffs being used in the cooking. I learned that if I amped up the quality of the meat and vegetable and went back and researched old ingredients used 500 or 1000 years ago in the same chic dishes of today, they tasted a thousand percent better. Onions are actually a really cheap crappy substitute for leeks in some dishes and shallots in others. In any gourmet dish you love with onions in it, research whether leeks, or shallots, were originally used. Substitute the original ingredient and forget the onions for the rest of your life. But once you get hip to food you begin to realize that in some cooking the cuisine itself is the problem, or the ingredients that have been substituted for cost cutting are the problem. And so you begin to search for grand old dishes that if cooked in the ancient ways don't kill you eating them.

I am rambling here, but the key is NOT EVER to diet, but instead seek healthy and great tasting foods. Keep tacking toward healthy and great tasting. Your tastebuds are infallible if you just de-habituate the rotten processed stuff for even a month or so.

slayr's rule of thumb of become the processor and stop eating processed food is where all of this moves to.

He is way ahead of me in the migration, but the point is journey itself is a good one for your soul. There is no perfection to get to. There is only going back to the very primitive instinct of looking through the unprocessed world for really good and tasty things to eat.

It is like becoming a good basketball player.

You don't play basketball to lose weight. You play because you love it. And if you love something you are always trying to get better at it, because it feels good to get better. So you add this little move, and you shed this little bad habit, and you add a bit more squat and you quit going for that little fake, and over time you just keep getting a little better at what you do well and do a little less of what you do poorly, and in time you are net sharply better.

Its the same with food.

You can do exactly what slayr does and have a great diet, but you might not hang on to it. Better to follow his rule, then let it help you make your choices each day as you try to get a little better and a little better at eating what is healthy and tastes good for you. Over time you are going to wind up very near to what he is doing, but it will be yours arrived by your tastebuds and reasoning. You are a hunter gatherer by evolutionary predisposition. You like to hunt and you like to grow stuff and gather it up by nature. It is what you do in a grocery store or a fast food joint. The problem is you are often hunting in a particular forest that just has a lot of stuff that is easy to get, but doesn't taste very good and is sometimes poisoned enough to slowly kill you. What slayr has done is say, "find your self a better forest to hunt and gather in."

Accccc----centuate the positive.

I don't know how you guys twist a topic on Joel's injury into a nutrition study. :-) Wish Embiid were here long enough to benefit from all the nutrition and training he might receive.

Now I do wish Coach Self would rest Embiid for the rest of the season, and just as importantly Embiid chooses to come back for a second year.

I recall Self saying that, in addition to learning the game, language and other things, Embiid didn't know "how to eat right" when he got to Lawrence. I assumed that meant there was a nutritionist working with the team and observing Embiid's habits specifically.

@drgnslayr The Sports Medicine Department at the University of Kansas ↗

Why not contact the guy?

@ParisHawk

Good Link, I read a story a while back on how the different sports programs staffs work with nutritionist to come up with highly customized diets for specific athletes based on specific needs. I remember the one Withey was on to gain bulk was extensively discussed. Coach Self has also mentioned it from time to time in his radio show.

@drgnslayr-When you rehabbed for the 2 yrs, was that done under the supervision of your team/trainer while still playing or on your own after your career? Was there any deterioration or shrinkage in the tendon to complicate surgery (ies)? Also just out of curiosity, lol, how long did it take to give up the fun stuff/bad habits-wine, women, song, Skoal, beer, etc. I'm not really trying to sound like a jerk slayr, just trying to keep it on the light side as tobacco has always been the toughest for me.

How many yrs ago did you tear it? I'm under the assumption that the patellar may be the strongest tendon in the body and one cannot fully understand how serious the potential risks are with repair from donors, grafts, rejection, etc., not to mention the complications of infections which can literally be life threatening.

Oh, & since you do the organic garden thing, make sure you do check out that link from www.gardensalive.com. I was not kidding about using little or no pesticides for my place, only the pyola spray when absolutely necessary. Last year I had watermelon, cantaloupe, beans, peppers, early sweet corn and about a dozen tomatoes and did not spray once. I have more trouble from rabbits, deer, moles & coons that anything, & of course climate, rainfall & high temps have a great effect on the situations. Also if you live in the South-Texas, La., even Ark or Ok. like some others, your winters are probably not harsh enough to kill many pests. Sub zero temps can be beneficial in that regard even though they are a witch to deal with from a human or animal standpoint. Never ever have missed chopping the ice in the ponds when I was a kid.

@drgnslayr Why don't you publish a book? I would buy it! I've long been a believer that diet (and exercise) would cure or prevent just about anything. The thing is, I don't know how to research it and I haven't stumbled across the right combination of "stuff" yet.

It would be a blessing to have a step by step guide on what to do.

Not joking - please do this !

I'd buy that book too.

The scientific nutritionists are waaaay better than nothing, but the problem with scientific nutritionists is that it is utterly beyond their grant research base, or their typical frames of reference, to think about food consumption in the terms Slayr has take it to.

I was on the frontier of diabetes and talked to a great cardiologist, endocrinoligitst, and nutritionist. They steered me toward a high protein, low carb diet, that worked. But...

They never once framed discourse in the way Slayr just did for people. Never as the hunter gatherer looking in the forest for what's best, never in terms of becoming the processor, never in terms of turning distilled water into an edge, never in terms of the larger picture that you have been living in an advanced economic forest that has evolved to provide you things that are efficient to the advanced economic forest, but neither efficient, nor healthy for you. The advanced economic forest is not out to kill you, it just doesn't care if it does.

Now, let me preempt those that would call what slayr is describing by some discriminatory name, like, oh, he's just an organic, or he's just an obsessive, or he's just a food conspiracy nut, or he's been off the grid too long, or he's not living in the real world, or he just got traumatized by the exploitation of his body in sport, or "look, I've been eating this way forever and it hasn't hurt me."

I am grateful that board rats here are giving our resident dragonslayr an honest listen.

In our advanced economic forest, persons that reduce others to discrediting monikers like food conspiracy theorists, or hip and organics, or what have you, are persons deeply afraid of what they have been overlooking and so are too afraid to give it an honest listen. They resort to simplistic, knee jerk rejection either aloud, or internally. You don't have to agree with slayr, or disagree. All you have to try to do on this subject is open up and consider its reasoning and then make an informed judgement for yourself. This can be hard to do when judging one way might implicate some vulnerability and wrong headedness on one's own part.

More broadly still, to call someone a conspiracy theorist (still my current fav among frozen-think speak) is to say, "I cannot yet think clearly enough about what you have said, so I am going to deal with the overwhelming feelings you provoke in me by killing the messenger, rather than thinking critically and analytically about the message."

It is important to note, as I believe slayr would agree, that he is way out front on this topic. And the cutting edge is necessarily subject to just as many potential mistakes, as the trailing edge, or the middle of the curve. That's the key IMHO.There is no path that is inherently risk free. Conservatism and liberalism and do nothing-ism on any subject have risks. But if one distills slayr's POV on eating, it is to err on the side of what your body evolved to do in the first place, when more recent technological processes are not yielding net benefits they claim. The reasoning is hard to refute and empowering. He is saying about food what our founders said about ideas. Get the ideas about governing ourselves out there and let a whole bunch of free men and women explore them without the impediments of monarchy, or only one axis of private oligarchy removing them from consideration before they have even been considered and tried. We can shorten the bench of ideas in a crisis, but not when not. We can get better faster than the no-thinkers making the same mistakes again and again without any competition propelling them out of their habits.

Great work, slayr.

I have been gutting out posting again, when I was ready to hang up the keyboard, precisely to get some fresh first hand experience from others.

Go, slayr, go!

Hang tough old guy, we owe it to everyone to lend the ear, not just rats or friends, but as the good book says, even our enemies.

@globaljaybird

Copy and paste. And especially our enemies for if we can make of them a friend, as Lincoln said, is that not as good as vanquishing an enemy?

He was so, so very wise in the midst of his greatest trial.