Rails from the Rails #7 - Reading Between the Lines

Rails from the Rails – Seven (originally posted on October 8th, 2007 at www.argonauts.ca)

All Aboard: There has been a preponderance of injured quarterbacks this season: Bishop, Allen, Printers, Calvillo, Burris, Ray, Dickenson, Pierce. And all this after the league has gone to great lengths to protect quarterbacks. If a defensive lineman looks at a quarterback in an unkind manner, he risks being penalized for it. This obviously isn’t working. But fear not, I have a solution. Instead of worrying about what defensive players are doing to Quarterbacks, the league should adjust the rules to allow offensive linemen to use all means necessary to keep their quarterbacks safe. I can assure you that if there were no holding penalties called on O-Linemen, the throwers in the league would be significantly safer. Problem solved: No holding in the CFL. I can’t see Defensive Linemen having a problem with that.

Tickets Please: I enjoy reading. Since I was young, I have found reading an easy task and I have enjoyed it as long as I can remember. I thought I would share some of the books I have read over the past year and some of the genres that I prefer. Ooops, I didn’t mean to startle you…yes, football players can read…really, we can.
The genre that I read most often these days is biographies. I find true stories of real people to very inspirational. I find motivation for life in them that can be applied to many different areas. They are also a great source of learning. There is much in life we will never experience unless we have the opportunity to live vicariously through others. Biographies are a good means of tapping into a resource otherwise inaccessible. During training camp, I would spend the evenings playing cribbage with Chad Folk. Yes, we are just like old men, thank you. Then, in the few minutes before my eyelids would come crashing shut, I would read biographies of two English authors. Michael Coren has written a short quasi-biography on J.R.R, Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings is by far my favourite work of fiction and I enjoyed Coren’s book on this literary giant. The other English author whose biography I read was Malcolm Muggeridge. It was a very interesting read. Over the past months, I have read some military biographies as well. A dual biography on Lee and Grant was fascinating. Following that military theme were books full of biographical snippets of military personnel written by Colonel Jeff O’Leary (Ret.). Though not a military man himself, Raoul Wallenberg was involved in saving Jews during World War II. The biography Righteous Gentile tells his story. He may have saved 100,000 Hungarian Jews from the holocaust. I found it hard to put that book down. Another genre I enjoy reading is spiritual/religious books. The Confessions of St.Augustine is a classic that contains both autobiographical information as well as spiritual enlightenment. St. Augustine is one of the foremost minds in Christianity’s history. I have his well-known City of God on my “To Read” pile. I spent many trips on the train reading through Alister McGrath’s textbook on Christian theology entitled simply Christian Theology. This was a difficult read but one that was well worth the effort. This past year, I also read spiritual works by Canadian pastor and author Mark Buchanan that I found informative and inspirational.
In an earlier column, I shared with you some of the things like to ingest through my mouth, now you know some of the books that I feed on through my eyes. As I look at this list, I have come to realize that I do not read fiction anymore. I am not sure when that stopped, or why it happened, but I think it needs to be remedied. I enjoy fantasy and science-fiction books so I think I need to find a few titles to read in the closing months of 2007.

Last Stop: Canadian children’s author David Carruthers and I visited quite a few schools this past year with a literacy program we call “Charge Through Life”. I have had the opportunity to encourage young boys and girls to become life-long readers. Reading is a skill that has enriched my life and the lives of countless others. Take some time to read, and more importantly, take some time to encourage some young ones to do the same.