Saturday, January 02, 2010

Seven years ... and counting

Seven years ago, to the day, I wrote the first post on Peace Tree Farm.  It included the following:

Whatever I happen to discuss, my viewpoint will be one of seeking rationality, of following the subject to its logical conclusion ... even if that logic sometimes takes us to a reductio ad absurdum.  It’s a viewpoint tempered by 50-some years of living, by two years residence in the Pacific Northwest after spending most of my days in the Northeast, by a career of research into healthcare and the quality thereof, by Woodstock and the assassinations, by close observation of governments in action, by Herman Melville and Bill James, by Bob Dylan and Dan Bern, and by much, much more.

My viewpoint remains pretty much the same, even as I approach 60-some years and even as I close in on nine years as a Seattlite.

As for the examples of what I might opine about, I haven’t written very much about healthcare quality (nor do I work in that particular field any more).  Woodstock was my subject on its 40th anniversary, and also an important part of my post on the 30th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation.  The murder of John Kennedy has been recalled on four anniversaries thereof—2003, 2004, 2006, and 2008.

Except for the reference on Opening Day, I haven’t said a word about Melville.  Moby Dick is on my re-reading list, but I can’t promise that its author will be on my topic list any time soon.  Though I’ve written often about baseball, particularly in the recent years of Phillies ascendance, Bill James has made only a single, peripheral, appearance in a blog post hereabouts.  In contrast, Dylan has graced these pages regularly.  I marked his 64th and 65th birthdays, expressed my amazement when he did some bizarre TV ads, and referred to him or his lyrics any number of times over the years.  Finally, I was surprised how rare were my mentions of Dan Bern.  Though I wrote a post extolling one of his finest songs, there hasn’t been all that much more about Dan.  If he ever comes back this way on tour, I’ll be sure to put up a post about it.

In any case, the Peace Tree Farm blog now moves into its eighth year of existence.  I won’t pretend to suggest that my words have been of any great value to the world at large.  After all, although this was the Pacific Northwest’s first liberal blog—Dave Neiwert wrote the first entry on Orcinus six days after PTF’s debut—it may also be its smallest and least significant.  Hell, in these seven years I’ve drawn about as many visits and page views as DailyKos gets in two or three hours.  Insignificance ‘R’ us!

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Good riddance to the Not-Aughts

In just a few hours, we’ll be ringing in a new year.  Hanging on my kitchen wall will be a new Ansel Adams calendar, replacing the just-completed edition, awaiting events and appointments to be filled in over the next 365 days.

It’s not just the year that’s ending, though.  We’re about to start a new decade as well.  Now, I’m ordinarily of the xxx1-xxx0 school of decade-counting, mostly on account of the no Year Zero rule.  Until this fall, that rule also conveniently placed the most recent World Series victory by the damnYankees in a previous decade ... and in a previous century.  It was fun to say of the Yanks, “oh, they’re just so last-century.  Unfortunately, that snark doesn’t work any more.

But let’s face it—the decade of the 2000s, defined here as 2000-2009, really, really sucked.  No need to enumerate the disasters, both natural and man-made, that befell our little planet over the last ten years.  Even if switching over to a 2000-2009 decade marker results in Yankee bookends on the decade, we need to put this one behind us ASAP.  So, good riddance to the first decade of the 21st century.  Don’t let the calendar hit your butt on the way out.

It was such a sucky decade that we never even named it.  I mean, I’ve lived through the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, and ... what? The equivalent decade of the 20th century was unambiguously known as the Aughts.  In my childhood, older people would often speak of, say, the Wright Brothers’ first flight occurring in “nineteen-aught-three”.  But nobody ever used, or uses, “aught” in describing the years of the decade we’re finishing. 

It’s also quite unusual to hear anyone use such constructions as “twenty-number”, or even “twenty-oh-number”, for years in this century.  The latter was assuredly the common terminology for the 20th century analogue of the last decade, and the former was the standard for the remainder of the century.  Instead, what we’ve heard over the last ten years is usually in the “two thousand-and-number” format.

Most likely, the rest of the 21st century will follow the conventions of previous centuries.  “Twenty-ten”, “twenty-eleven”, and such roll off the tongue much more naturally than either “"twenty-oh-nine" or “two thousand-and-ten”.

So, as indicated in the title, good riddance to the Not-Aughts.  Happy New Year, all! 

And, coming up in just a couple of days, Peace Tree Farm marks its seventh blogiversary…

Friday, November 20, 2009

Ventriloquism

Hey, look at that!  I got Goldy to speak for me on 2009 voter turnout…

In actuality, we’d been talking about the general election and the (mis)perception of low turnout in King County for quite some time.  Goldy had previously written a couple of “election factoids” (here and here) as a followup to his earlier rants (here and here) about the Washington Secretary of State’s crusade against the state’s current “postmark” deadline for casting ballots.

For reasons that are no longer completely clear to me, those conversations inspired me to undertake the analysis he discusses today—voter turnout in this month’s big-city mayoral elections.  The spreadsheet and its data analysis are my work, but Goldy draws his own conclusions (and turns his own phrases) about what can be seen in those numbers.

I will point out that it wasn’t always easy to find the information presented in my spreadsheet.  For some cities, I had to go to the precinct-level canvass report to locate the total number of ballots cast (including blanks undervotes), and/or the voter registration data.  That entailed summing up the values from each precinct to derive an otherwise-unreported city count.  Thankfully, none of the cities in which such machinations were necessary have anywhere close to the ~1000 precincts here in Seattle.  Whew!!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Lest we forget

Today is, of course, Veterans Day.  Today, we honor those who served in the armed forces of our nation, in wartime and in peacetime.

I remembered, as I do every year, that November 11 is Veterans Day.  I remembered as well that it was originally called Armistice Day, as a commemoration of the agreement to end hostilities in the Great War (that is, World War I).  At the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

What I forgot this morning is that today is a no-work holiday for me.

My first clue might have been that only one other person stood at my bus stop when the 7:51 run turned the corner to pick us up.  But that’s happened before.  And perhaps I might have thought something was different when relatively few passengers boarded at later stops, but that too has happened before.  At the downtown stop where I changed to a different bus, and going up the hill to my workplace, I again failed to note that anything was different about the day.

Even when I walked past the entrance to my building’s underground parking garage and saw that its gate was closed, I did little other than wonder whether there might be construction or flooding or some other problem down there.

It suddenly all made sense when I got to the building’s front entrance ... and found that the door was locked. 

I knew that the University of Washington and related organizations trade a federal holiday for the day after Thanksgiving, and it had somehow gotten into my mind that the traded holiday was Veterans Day.  In a flash, as I pulled at a door that wouldn’t open, I remembered that our traded holiday is instead Columbus Day!

Sheepishly, I retraced my bus trip.  So I’m back at home now, prepared to enjoy a relaxing day off.  I missed the blessed opportunity to sleep in, but I won’t miss a delectable midweek lunch at nearby Paseo Caribbean.  Mmmmmmmmm…

While we’re not forgetting, let’s hail the 120th anniversary of Washington’s admission to the Union as the 42nd state.  On November 11, 1889.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Liveblogging Game 6, 2009

I tried doing a World Series liveblog of last year’s Game 5, but that turned out to be rather unsatisfying when the game was suspended due to rain in Philadelphia.  Looks like the weather’s much better in New York, so perhaps we’ll get a full game out of this one.

Also, I really, really hope that this won’t be my last chance to talk about the 2009 postseason.  IOW, that the Phils win tonight and take it to a Game 7 for all the marbles.

For the record, I’m going to pop in one of those Phillies logos after every refresh of the liveblog.  That won’t be every half-inning, at least I don’t think so.

[5:08pm, middle 1st, 0-0] Top of the first was uneventful, save for the fact that Victorino is playing.  McCarver correctly noted that his injured right index finger—hit by an A.J. Burnett pitch in Game 5—will hurt him much less batting righthanded against Pettitte than it would (will?) hitting from the left side.

[5:11pm, end of 1st, 0-0] Three up, three down for Pedro.  Boy, it would be great if he were to beat the hated Yankees for another red-wearing team.

[5:17pm, top 2nd, 0-0] It’s odd how players go hot and cold.  Ryan Howard carried the club in the NLDS and NLCS, even winning the MVP in the latter.  Here in the Series, though, he can’t do a thing.  Yeah, lots of lefties on the mound, but he’s looked pretty bad against everybody.  Not much happening yet, even though neither pitcher has shown me great stuff.  Pettitte is throwing a whole lot of breaking balls.

[5:27pm, bottom 2nd, 0-0] Uh oh, a 4-pitch walk to ARod.  And now that we’re back in the American League park with that %#*& designated hitter, Matsui is back in the lineup.  Gotta say, I don’t like what I’m seeing from Pedro so far ... some awfully good swings from Matsui.  They’ll send ARod on the 3-2 pitch, so here’s the first important pitch of the game ... and of course it’s fouled off.

[5:34pm, bottom 2nd, 2-0 Yankees] Well, to be honest, I’m not surprised that Matsui took one deep.  He was really locked in on what he was being thrown.  What Pedro has to do now is get it back together and stop the bleeding right away.  Ah, whiffing Posada and getting the heater up toward 90 MPH ... that’s the way to do it.  After the Cano liner, let’s retire Swisher and end the inning, OK?

[5:45pm, top 3rd, 2-0 Yanks] Whoa!  A triple for Ruiz?  He’s not a totally lumbering catcher, but it again shows the weakness of the OF arms of the Yanks.  Great that he got to third, though, as the Rollins fly (hit it on the ground, dammit, Jimmy!) scores him.  Tempers the damage from the previous inning, but I’m still quite concerned about whether Pedro can go very far tonight.  Happ and Myers better be on their toes, because Manuel has to have Pedro on a very short leash.  This is do-or-die!

[5:54pm, bottom 3rd, 2-1 Yanks] What was Victorino seeing on Jeter’s liner?  The last thing you want to do is give these guys an extra out.  It’s called a hit, of course, but that was definitely a misplay on the part of our CF.  With the meat of the order coming up, and with Damon fouling off every strike, the tension just keeps ratcheting up and up and up.  Pedro, I fear, won’t be out there much longer.

[6:01pm, bottom 3rd, 2-1 Yanks] Well, here it is.  Damon walks, Teixeira HBP, and now it’s ARod with the bases loaded.  Pitching up in the zone seems to be just about the only thing that’s working so far.  Huzzah!!!  Called third strike for the second out (which would have been the third out if Victorino hadn’t misjudged Jeter).  Now we’re back to Godzilla, who owns Pedro thus far.  Well, damn, a single on the 0-2 pitch and two more Matsui ribbies.

[6:08pm, bottom 3rd, 4-1 Yanks] I dunno, I might have pulled Pedro after the hit.  But he does seem to be OK against everybody else in the lineup, so maybe it’s OK.  And the Posada flyball justifies Charlie’s faith in his starter.  But I can’t see how Pedro will still be on the hill to face Matsui the next time his spot comes around.

[6:15pm, top 4th, 4-1 Yanks] Well, well, Damon pulls a calf muscle and is pulled.  I wouldn’t ordinarily do this with someone hurting himself, but—good!  He’s a damn Yankee and he’s a damn pest and he’s been damn fine this Series, so I’m pleased to see him gone.  I hope it’s serious enough that he won’t be able to play Game 7 if the Phils rally and win tonight.  And I hope it hurts.  A lot.

[6:21pm, top 4th, 4-1 Yanks] Hmmm, Pettitte seems to be losing the touch just a bit.  Back-to-back walks to Werth (great eye on him) and Ibanez.  Now Feliz with a chance to do some damage ... but he doesn’t come through on the 3-2 pitch.  Oh well, get ‘im next time.  So now I ask myself whether Pedro comes out for the bottom of the inning, and I answer that I think he will; after all, Matsui isn’t due up for a while.

[6:27pm, bottom 4th, 4-1 Yanks] Hah, I’ve channeled Charlie Manuel correctly.  OK, now let’s see Pedro come through for us, OK?

[6:33pm, end of 4th, 4-1 Yanks] There ya go, Pedro!  See, that wasn’t tough, now, was it?  Now let’s get some runs back on those guys.

[6:42pm, middle of 5th, 4-1 Yanks] Jimmy, I take back what I said earlier about hitting it on the ground.  I didn’t mean that you should hit into double plays.

In keeping with the “tradition” I established last year, I’ll take this below the fold now that the game is official.