Put some Soul in the Game

It's time. Time to start the new millennium, finally, rather than living like we were still ensnared in the 1950s only without Eisenhower to lead us.

The Obamas are about to take the White House, and (like every president elect) Mr. Obama is calling for sacrifice. Or warning that it's inevitable, which are two different things.

Here's the crux of his thinking in the last 10 weeks, by way of warning and inspiration, both:

"We know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful… that we will get there."

Requiring "a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice," the other night he called for something even more simple, more vivid: "Everybody is going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game."

In case you haven't heard that phrase, "skin in the game," I'm told it's a Warren Buffet product. Mr. Buffet used it first, at least in public, to describe the willingness of company managers or officials to put their own money in their own outfit — to risk their own financial skins to make their companies successful, in other words.

Maybe Mr. Buffett got it playing street ball in Harlem or Bed-Stuy or Cabrini Green, or somewhere. It's street for sure; either that, or the coinage of a great phrasemaker who admires street.

But what does this mean for us here in Southwest Florida?

Well, first, it means you have to put your horse in the race that's offered, or your cow, as the case may be (see last week's Florida Weekly, describing the history of the cattle industry here). You have to commit.

Frankly, the only committed people who really have their skins in the game right now are currently about 7,000 miles away, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we hope not ultimately in Iran or Gaza.

We can barely keep up with our fighting needs these days, which brings me to the first suggestion for putting "skin in the game."

Suggestion one: In Collier County now, according to Census Bureau statistics, there are 6,692 college students. In Lee, that number is 12,539.

I encourage every single one of them to join either the United States Navy, the United States Marine Corps, the United States Army, the United States Air Force, or the United States Coast Guard, unless of course they want to join Teach America, which is much more difficult than military service and might require not only skin, but soul.

Either go out and kill somebody, or go out and teach somebody. Never mind skin. Put some Soul in the Game by investing in 21st Century America, and then come back to school on the G.I. Bill. (Thank God I'm old and I don't have to do this myself. But remember, hypocrisy is the art of parenting or columning, either one.)

Suggestion Two: Among the great issues in Collier and Lee is transportation, and in particular, the future revenue to be earned from Alligator Alley. To get money upfront, the governor wanted to sell off the Alley in a 50-year lease to a foreign company, who would have managed it, raised the tolls and accrued hundreds of millions of additional dollars lost to us, over time. (The plan is on hold, but not dead.)

But this is our children's money, and our lifestyle, and our Everglades, and our Alley. And so far we've turned the Alley into a soulless and profiteering American road slicing through one of the most vivid landscapes on earth.

So I encourage every serious food vendor in Collier and Lee counties to volunteer to put food tents at cut-outs in the Alley, and to make it the most exciting road in the nation, a real culinary highway.

Then Americans would flock from all over to pay the tolls, and to drive it and eat it — stone crabs and shrimp and smoked mullet and barbecue and collards with cornbread and key lime pies and fresh produce in winter, such as tomatoes, strawberries, citrus and watermelon. The Alley could become, during the Obama administration, the longest farmer's market in the world.

And we could make that happen — by putting some Soul in the Game.

And finally:

Suggestion Three: No matter what you do every day here on the Way- Down-South Gulf Coast, and no matter where you live or what job you have or you don't have, I encourage you, in the name of Obama and the 21st century, to find a way.

Find a way to give or sacrifice one small thing to one other person, every day.

Find a way to say one distinguishing thing to one other person — and I leave the gamut to you, from shrieking profanity to creamy kindness — that causes that man, woman or child to think about putting some Soul in the Game.

And if you can't do that, for God's sake start dressing differently. I know you can do it. I know you can dress more boldly, more like a committed American. In other words, dress more like you're Michelle Obama and less like you're little Miss/Mr. Gotrocks, which is putting some cloth in the game, if not skin or soul.

And if that won't work for you, as it won't for about 98 percent of the population, then dress like your parents or grandparents would have, back when service and sacrifice were part of everyday life.

Put some Soul in the Game, in other words, and then get ready to ride. Because things are going to change.