Friends (if any),

I joined a fitness club a while back. I will now take a moment to tell you about the club as viewed through my eyes...

I'm not sure if the fitness club I joined is typical, but I'm not yet fifty years old and still I'm always one of the oldest guys in the place. Sometimes I'm the oldest guy in the joint by twenty years. I've been there when I know no one has yet reached his or her thirtieth birthday, that is, no one but me.

The club membership seems to be about half female, half male. I would say that about two thirds of the guys in the place spend almost all their time in the weight lifting section of the club. As for the women, I think it's just the opposite. I'd guess that two thirds do not bother with the weight lifting equipment but rather spend their time on the "cardio" equipment, which includes treadmills, elliptical machines, and stationary bicycles. That's where I am most of the time too, on the cardio equipment.

I've been a member at this fitness club for a while now and I've never seen anyone sweat profusely other than me. Not one person. I've seen a little dampness on a few tee shirts now and then, but never a shirt soaked in perspiration. That's what I end up with three times a week, a shirt drenched in sweat. That's what exercising is all about, an elevated pulse and the accompanying sweat, or so I was led to believe. I think that since everyone is fairly young, there's a reluctance to look anything but well-groomed. Just a theory.

There are no fistfights, no shouts of anger at the fitness club, but neither is there an abundance of overt friendliness. I'm always saying amusing things (at least I think they're amusing) to the staff. There's a "before and after" set of photos on the wall. Examples of what the club can do, or so they want you to believe. One example of a "before" photo shows a chubby woman wearing thick glasses. The "after" photograph has her slim and without spectacles. One time I pointed to the two photos as I said to a young staff member, "I would expect exercise to take off some pounds, but who would have thought that it can improve a person's eyesight?" The staff member was totally unprepared for such banter. Impromptu conversation just doesn't happen at this place. The staffer looked at me for a few seconds, bewildered, before bursting into a chuckle.

I'm not sure whether a lack of personality is common among fitness club members, or whether it's the younger generation in general that no longer knows how to have casual interaction with strangers. I tend to think it has to do with fitness club people, but I'm not sure. More study is required.

I try to never go into the club's locker room. I might give the room a visit if it had changing stalls, but it doesn't. See, I don't like taking off my clothes in front of men. I've never gotten used to it. If I'd been in the Navy maybe I'd be alright with it, but I was never in any of the armed services. Even if I'd even been on the high school basketball team I might be able to manage male group nudity. But I never made the basketball team either.

Aside from the problem with the nudity, I also hate the idea of sitting on a surface that has been in contact with the bare butts of others. I don't like the thought of sitting on such a surface while I'm wearing pants. Sitting on a locker room bench with my own bare butt is an utterly abhorrent thought. Just visualizing it makes me cringe. Anyway, I change out of my shirt in the men's room, by the sinks. I even do that quickly, to tell you the truth.

Anyway, that's a peek into my fitness club, a peek through my eyes. If any of you fellow members happen to read this silly blog entry, you'll know who I am. I'm the guy on the treadmill who's actually sweating. Say hello if you want. Since no one ever says hello to anyone, it'll shock me, but pleasantly so.

Your Buddy,

Galileo Smith

Pals (if any),

I'm on my computer now looking at some photos I took last summer, photos of a place called Lake Hope State Park. As I click through the pictures, I am once again made cognizant of the fact that I'm pretty darn sentimental. I think it comes from the fact that I seem to be able to recall a lot of my childhood. The parts I tend to forget are the not so pleasant parts. Anyway, one of the places, and times, I reflect upon sentimentally are our days at Lake Hope. My family, that being my mother, father, three sisters and I, would drive the seventy-five miles to Lake Hope once or twice a summer over a five or six year stretch. The first time we went was about 1970. I was around eight or nine. The last time I was maybe fourteen.

Lake Hope was, and still is a medium size lake in southeastern Ohio. It's nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians. Summers there are steamy, and the insects' trilling simply surrounds you. The largest town within twenty miles has a population of about three thousand. The average household income in the area is probably less than $20,000. It's not a fancy resort lake.

The "beach area" then, and now, cover about a hundred yards of shoreline. The Ohio Department of Parks and Recreation would spread a dump truck load of sand on the water's edge so that it looked a little like a beach. Apparently it looked enough like a beach to put "beach" on the signs.

When I was a kid, Lake Hope had a fairly good sized "changing facility". The structure was made of split logs. As you approached the facilty from the parking lot, the right half was for men, the left half for women. Each half had an open shower to wash off the sand and dirt. I always put my swimming suit on at home, under my clothes, so I would have to spend a minimum amount of time between the parking lot and the lake's water.

The swimming area had a wooden pier that reached out into the lake about fifty yards or so. When the sun beat down upon the boards they would produce a faint but pleasant scent that's hard to describe. I can only say that it was a uniquely summer scent, like freshly cut grass, or new blacktop. At the end of the pier were two diving boards, one about five feet high, the other ten feet.

A person could find a crooked walkway north of the beach that would take him or her to a wood-plank hut about the size of a two-car garage. This was the snack bar/boat house. Two teenage girls usually ran the snack bar. For 35 cents a kid could buy a hamburger. A Klondike Bar cost a dime. Some old geezer was in charge of the boats. A rowboat was a dollar an hour.

We had a lot of fun at Lake Hope. A lot of fun. We'd splash each other, perform silly jumps off the diving boards, and when we got hungry, run over to the snack bar for a hamburger and a Pepsi.

One visit to Lake Hope my father and I went out onto the lake in a rowboat. My father bought a little box of night crawlers and rented some fishing tackle. We spent a couple of hours, just the two of us, catching bluegill and then letting them go back into the lake.

I'll bet we didn't traveled to Lake Hope a total of ten times back over those years. Still, I reflect upon it fondly, sentimentally. I think that's because nothing even remotely bad ever happened to me there. No adult chastised me while at Lake Hope. I didn't have to worry about school while at Lake Hope. It was summer and I was a kid. My memory considers Lake Hope a personal Shangri-la.

This past summer I visited Lake Hope. Nostalgia made me go. I went alone. I did not wear my bathing suit under my clothes, but I did take one with me, just in case. It's still pretty much the same, the lake and the swimming area. The old changing facility is gone, replaced by a couple of changing booths. The pier is gone too. There's no longer diving boards available for silly, juvenile, mid-air antics. But the snack bar is still there, virtually untouched by time. And the rowboats still await those who want to fish, or simply explore the lake.

I parked my car and stood a short distance away from the lake, gazing upon the beach area while a sentimental smile perked my lips. I stood there for about a half hour, watching the adults wade around while the kids hollered and splashed each other. Then I climbed back in my car and drove home an hour and a half away. I'm sure I'll go back again some summer day in a year or so. Why not? After all, nothing bad happens to me at Lake Hope.

Your Chum,
Galileo Smith

Friends (if any),

One thing that bothers me about a lot of people's political thinking is that they will not depart from the conservative or liberal platform in any area. An example would be a conservative who is pro-life, favor capital punishment, and quite possibly, skeptical of global warming. Right down the party line. And of course the liberal example would be a person who believes in women's rights, and is in favor of alternative energy sources as opposed to drilling for oil. The liberal's kid plays soccer while the conservative's kid plays peewee football. Having said that, I will now demonstrate my liberal conservatism. Or is it a conservative liberalism?

Anyway, for years I have been painfully aware that the United States still allows two types of discrimination, discrimination that should logically be unlawful based on anti-discrimination laws focusing on race, religion, sexual orientation, and age.

One group that is discriminated against is white folks. Particularly white males. The discimination comes in the form of Affirmative Action and various anti white male quotas. I sound pretty darn conservative, huh?

However the second group that faces discrimination is gays. And the discrimination comes in the form of anti-gay marriage laws. Now I'm sounding awfully liberal, aren't I?

No gay couple should be denied the right to marry. And there should be no white male passed over or rejected because he is either white or male. As for the gays marrying, the usual proclamation is, Marriage should be between a man and a woman. My reply is, Says who? You'd better not answer that by saying "God", because my god says that it's okay for gays to marry. And my god is equal to your god. I know because the Constitution says so.

As for white male discrimination, if a white guy is more qualified then he should get the job, or the seat in the classroom, whatever the case may be. It's time to end that discrimination too. After all, a black man was elected President.


Your Buddy,
Galileo Smith