Ray was a simple, complex person, which helped make him a master at combining simplicity with complexity. He expressed more depth in the fewest words of anyone I ever knew. In an email he once wrote:

Personally, I belong to the school of Antoine de Saint-Exupery,
the Little Prince guy, who said, "Perfection is achieved, not when there is
nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

In a way, that sums up Ray. He excelled at addition by subtraction, never wasting a word, as if words were precious stones to be doled out sparingly. It must be part of why he decided to host his own Hemingway challenge, where all one had to do was write a story, beginning, middle and end, using exactly six words.

From the original Hemingway contest entrants, among others, there were:

For sale, baby shoes, never used.
Shiva destroys earth. Well, that's that.

From Ray's Hemingway contest entrants:

I bought a baby on eBay.
Hey, these penis enlargement pills worked!
Great anticipation, exhilaration, humility, despair: golf
1918. 3. $125,000. 86. 2004. 1.
Emails. When will they ever stop?
Expired, I collapsed. Inspired, I rebounded.
John, Paul, George, Ringo, Paul, Ringo.

About his golf, he would say, "Today I was okay off the tee and sensational on the green, and barely managed to stay in double digits. Which gives you some idea of the shots in between."

How many of us have taken more than 20 minutes to say less about our own rounds?

We all reveled, admired, and, at times, were awed by his words applied to advertising. Once, I thought I may have spotted an example of his work at a web site and sent this email to him:

Hey Ray: I went to the Old Rip Van Winkle bourbon web site. They have a quaint set of messages there that rotate periodically, and there's one that looked as though you may have had a hand in it. It said, "We make fine Bourbon. At a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always Fine Bourbon."

He shot back, "I'd have written something more like: "We make fine Bourbon. What we can, we make a profit on. What we can't, we drink."

Let us not forget his uniquely insightful color analysis of all things Red Sox. During the 2004 season, with things looking up for the home team, Ray's attitude was decidedly buoyed. At one point of the season, he pointed out:

"When Gabe Kapler and Johnny Damon play right and center, respectively, one can look out from the bleachers and read "19 and 18" on the backs of their jerseys.

The new NFL record for consecutive wins is 19....was....18

Once, a long time ago, I was 19, that came after I was 18.

The auguries, at least--if not the shards of common sense, are with us."

And Ray's wide range of entrepreneurial ideas were enough to make Ralph Kramden jealous. After the Sox miraculously sealed the fate of the Yanks in the 2004 AL Championship, Ray had this epiphany:

Here's an idea:

We all pitch in and buy a million par of white stockings, and the five of us
bleed all over them. Then we put them on Ebay, and advertise them as THE sock worn by Schilling, and start the bidding at, say, $200 per sock.

Shaun, you have to bleed the most, because you're the biggest.

What do you think?

Seemingly, his expertise knew no bounds. On parenting, I once asked:
"At what age do the brains kick in to listening to what parents have to say?",
to which Ray replied, "Well, let's see... My eldest is 36. So I'd say,... maybe 37?

And when it came to marital advice, one could seek family counseling for years and not obtain the caliber of guidance that he could deliver in a single sentence:

Once, I stepped over that boundary of personal disclosure and admitted to Ray, "My wife, Beth, and I need more balance."
He gently advised,, "Maybe if you moved lower on the hassock."

I tried to return the favor. I sent Ray a link to each of the Playboy centerfolds going all the way back to the first issue. This elicited:

"When I was a senior in high school, I dated Miss February, 1954. She was a classical cellist, fluent in seven languages. We met through our mutual interest in non-perceptual algorithms and passion for Hungarian cuisine.

We studied together. She was a virgin at the time, and all we did was whisper to each other in French. "El tronco es la parte central del albol," was one of the things we whispered, as the withered leaves of capitalism blew down from the dead gray limbs of democracy onto the fairway of life. High tide and the heron cried, "Break not thy wrists, asshole," and the ball chunked short of the green.

Can you believe I had a martini on the way home?"

For a moment I tried to come up with something he didn't already know about the vast area of personal advice, but decided to save my time, and divert his attention to the topic du jour: Email hoaxes. Not missing a beat, he shot back:

"I generally hate hoax warnings, but this one is important.
Please send this to everyone on your e-mail list.
If a man comes to your front door and says he’s conducting a survey and asks you to show him your ass, DO NOT show him your ass.
This is a scam; he only wants to see your ass.
I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid and cheap."

And then there were the jokes, especially his proclivity for turning any joke into a golf joke. Over dinner with Gail, Ray, Beth and I at the Chandler Inn in Newport, I told Ray and Gail a joke he liked, and the next day I received,

"Great fun last night--and great joke. Thank you for both.

Did you know that in a recent British study, involving some 10,000 different jokes, the one you told was the winner? Here's how it can play as a golf joke (using your stupid "golf camp" allusion, thank you):

At golf camp, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson pitch their tent. In the middle of the night, Holmes nudges his associate awake and whispers to him sharply, My dear fellow, look up at the heavens and tell me what you deduce.

I say, Holmes, astronomically, the Big Dipper is in the northeast sky, which means it is late autumn, with only another month of good golf weather in this latitude. Astrologically, I note that Mercury is aligned with Saturn, with the moon in its second house, from which I infer that we shall likely play well tomorrow. Meteorologically, I see a ring around the moon and cumulous clouds blowing southwesterly, from which I infer that the weather should be fair and the temperature moderate, with a two-club wind directly against us on the fifth, ninth, and thirteenth holes. Philosophically, I observe billions of stars and galaxies with the staggering likelihood of extraterrestrial golf courses in parallel universes to our own. And you, Holmes, what do you deduce?

Watson, you dickhead, someone has stolen our tent."

In a way, Ray, you stole all our tents. Thanks for that subtraction.

Here's one more from Ray's Hemingway challenge:
A bientot, au revoir, bon Papa.