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My family moved into the house I’m living in now a little more than 50 years ago. My mother died six years ago, and my brother and sister and their families are all over the place. I’ve been back and forth across the country several times over a number of years, and returned to live here with my dad. Way back when we first moved in, my sister and I shared the room I’m in now. I was going into sixth grade, she into seventh. In other words, we were pre-teens. I know that means something different to all of us, but at the same time, there is some common ground when we think of pre-teen. Young enough to be far from driving, old enough to be thinking about dating (not doing it, but thinking about it). And in my case, right at that perfect age for teen idol worship.  Almost as if she knew, my mother bought each of us a bulletin board on which we could put whatever we wanted. Maybe she did know at that, since my mother was one of the screaming teenagers who went downtown to see a very young Frank Sinatra perform, wearing her trench coat and screaming, “Frankie!”
Eventually I discovered Tiger Beat at the drugstore, and my world expanded. Their pictures were glossy on every pages, not just the covers. Between the two, I spent several years adorning my bulletin, celebrating the ritual of the changing of the pictures. The time came when the subscription to 16 wasn’t renewed – I wanted something else for my birthday. The bulletin board had big gouges in the cork, and one week when my sister and I were away, my mother redecorated our room and when we returned, the bulletin boards were gone.
Why do I choose to write about this today? Well, today I put up a new version of a bulletin board in that very same room, more than 50 years later. Actually, it’s three smaller bulletin boards in hexagonal shapes, and of course, the pictures and items on it are quite different. The one similarity is that, just as it was more than 50 years ago, it is an expression of who I am today – what matters to me, who matters to me, my priorities, my dreams, my memories. It isn’t complete yet, but when I finish posting this I will go to my printer and take the little copy of the Mark Lindsay picture and put it up on my new bulletin board. I will honor the person I was then, and the dreams of my youth. I still dream, though my dreams look a little different now… 
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This week I thought I'd do something a little different. I'm going to share some pictures from the last few years and write a little something about each one. These will all be pictures I've taken myself.
 The sun is trying to break through the mist at Asilomar. Beyond that mist is Pebble Beach, where the Pro-Am golf tournament is underway. The wild winter ocean is raging, and you can almost taste the salt in the air.
Can you see the double rainbow on the left picture? It's harder to see on the left (same rainbow). I was driving home from work when I saw this, and had to stop and take a picture. At Asilomar, of course.
Hope you've enjoyed this little tour of Asilomar and the Aquarium. Enjoy the rest of the Olympics! Take care, Doc
It was a great way to follow the Olympics, and I often found myself rooting for people like Soviet skaters Irina Rodnina and Alexander Zaitsev after hearing their stories. I discovered the incredible Jean-Claude Killy, and learned about the Norwegian ski-jumpers. It broadened my world to see sports I'd never seen like luge, and realize that athletes in other countries had the same hopes and dreams as the US athletes. So, my original intention was to write about how this time I’m watching curling and beginning to understand how it works, and enjoying athletes from other countries, not just the US athletes. In a way, I enjoy our athletes more because I see them as part of a greater whole.
He was the host of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, and you always wanted to tune in because you never knew what or who you might see. He had a gift for fitting in no matter the sport or the athlete. For a time, he covered the Triple Crown, and although it was hard to let go of the quirky Heywood Hale Broun and the great Jack Whittaker, I came to love Jim McKay at the Kentucky Derby as well. It seemed he had the same affinity with the horses that he did with the human athletes.
With the Winter Olympics coming up, there are plenty of sports I watch that are dangerous, like luge and snowboarding. Two of my all-time favorite sports are horse racing and Indy Car racing, and those are also dangerous. I remember watching the Breeders Cup the day Go for Wand broke down. There were two races with breakdowns that day, and I cried my way through the races, but I didn't turn the television off. Steve Haskin wrote an incredible blog post a couple of years ago, One Death too Many, which brought up some similar questions. He started it off by saying: There comes a breaking point in every person’s life when you ask yourself if your passion in life is worth the heartache that accompanies it.
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Carol (Doc) Dougherty
An avid reader, writer, and student, with a penchant for horse racing, Shakespeare, and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Categories
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December 2019
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