Wednesday, October 21, 2009
On to the World Series ... again!
Can this be the Phillies? The horrible team of my childhood?
As a Phan for over half a century, I still can’t quite get my hands around all this success.
The next goal is repeating as WS champs. If they can do it, they’ll be the first National League repeaters since the Big Red Machine in 1975 and 1976.
[UPDATE, October 22]
Since I’m getting a whole lot of hits because of the amazing success of the Phils, I suppose it’d be smart to get those people to look for the team logo here instead of last October’s posts. Here ya go, folks:
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Election thoughts, 2009
Has it really been almost a full year since we elected Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States?
Apparently so. This year’s election concentrates on local offices—King County officials, Seattle leadership, and the like. I’ve placed icons representing a number of the important issues and people I’m supporting over on the sidebar. Though they’re listed in ballot order, they’re also generally shown in descending order of importance.
Even more troubling than the danger of Susan Hutchison being elected King County Executive—this is a person who makes the similarly wingnutty fundamentalist Sarah Palin look like an experienced, competent public official—is the possible success of Tim Eyman’s latest and most invidious state initiative. I-1033 will do more than just hamstring essential state, county, and municipal programs. It will do more than just screw over the low-information voters who’ll support it while further enriching Eyman’s treacherous cronies. What’s especially insidious and evil about it is that it will continue to ratchet down state revenues year after year after year without even the slightest possibility of catching up in good times.
Sadly, in this low-turnout odd-numbered year, an Eyman initiative is really difficult to defeat. Perhaps the urban turnout in support of R-71 will spill over to help us with I-1033. But I’m not all that optimistic.
You’ll notice that I haven’t displayed an icon for one of the candidates for Mayor of Seattle. That’s because I still haven’t made up my mind. I voted against Greg Nickels for Mike McGinn in the primary, and I’ve been leaning toward him throughout the post-primary campaign. But I don’t feel strongly enough about it yet to make a final decision. I worry that he might be too quixotic, too my-way-or-the-highway on some issues. With Joe Mallahan, my concern is mostly that he believes his experience as a T-Mobile manager can guide him in running city government. However, private sector management principles simply don’t translate directly to the public sector. In addition, I still don’t get a picture of what compelled him to run in the first place. I’ll make my choice before November rolls around, but it’s more likely to be a nose-holding decision on which one I find less unappealing, rather than a positive vote for a mayoral candidate.
There are other races on the ballot, but I just don’t find them all that compelling. For instance, I don’t particularly want to vote for either Bagshaw or Bloom in their City Council race, and don’t know all that much about the School Board races.
All in all, I don’t have a good feeling about the outcome of this election cycle. I expect the horridly destructive I-1033 to pass, and I’m concerned that the incompetent, reactionary, oblivious blow-dried TV newsreader will take over Ron Sims’s former position. Either of those eventualities would be highly deleterious; the combination could be disastrous.
Friday, September 25, 2009
"...It's my birthday too, yeah!"
Today is the birthday of Catherine Zeta-Jones. I doubt it has anything to do with their marriage, but it’s also Michael Douglas’s birthday. Barbara Walters was born on this date in 1929, as was the taller of The Two Ronnies. That same day, Dmitri Shostakovich celebrated his 23rd birthday and William Faulkner turned 32. Shel Silverstein was born on Barbara’s first birthday, Glenn Gould on the day she celebrated number three.
Will Smith, Fletcher Christian, Cheryl Tiegs, Doris Matsui, Thomas Hunt Morgan, Ian Tyson, Felicity Kendal, Christopher Reeve, Mark Rothko, Robert Gates, Juliet Prowse, Heather Locklear, Robert Bresson, Aldo Ray ... September 25 babies, one and all.
September 25 is the birthdate of 50 Major League Baseball players, from George Cobb in 1865 through Brad Bergesen in 1985. By far the most famous is (undeserving, IMHO) Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto, who leads the birthday boys in most offensive career totals. Interestingly, Scooter was born in the same year (1917) as the winningest September 25 pitcher, Johnny Sain. Beyond those players, fans may recognize such September 25 birthday boys as Glenn Hubbard, Rocco Baldelli, Joel Pineiro, Geno Petralli, Tony Womack, Sal Butera, Steve Arlin, and Pat Malone.
The list of pro football players born on September 25 totals some 65 men. Maybe it’s because I’m less than completely knowledgeable about football, but I recognize very few of the names. Just about the only ones worth mentioning at all are Seahawks QB Matt Hasselbeck and All-Pro safety John Lynch. In contrast, the September 25 NBA list is short but sweet—only seven players, but it includes HOFer Bob McAdoo, future inductee Scottie Pippen, and All-Star Chauncey Billups. Only longtime defenseman Carol Vadnais stands out among the 16 NHL players born on this date. Finally, aside from the aforementioned Pippen, I can identify only four of the 288 Olympians whose birthdays are celebrated today—American pole vaulter Jeff Hartwig, sprinter Marshevet Hooker, and long jumper Grace Upshaw, along with Canadian figure skater Tracy Wilson (only because she’s now a skating analyst on CBC).
Mark Hamill, Hubie Brown, Aida Turturro, Red Smith, Jean-Phillipe Rameau, Paul MacCready, Feroz Khan, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Bell Hooks, Francesco Borromini, Eugenia Zukerman, Michael Madsen, Sir Colin Davis, Anson Williams, Erik Darling, Robert Walden ... all were born on September 25.
As was I, 59 years ago in Philadelphia.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
The Lion of the Senate, R.I.P.
Edward Moore Kennedy, Democratic Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, died last night. His struggle against malignant glioma—a particularly grim form of brain cancer—came to an end. He will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, near his assassinated brothers John and Robert.
After the passing of Eunice Shriver two weeks ago, Jean Kennedy Smith is the only surviving sibling of that tragically-storied clan.
Would that there were enough humanity, enough compassion, remaining in the Senate of the United States to honor Teddy’s career by passing a reasonable, workable healthcare reform. Would that this country could join the civilized world by replacing its corrupt, dysfunctional, profit-driven healthcare non-system with something like the sort of program envisioned by Senator Kennedy. Would that his memory could be honored by naming a rational and comprehensive approach to health care as a right after the late Edward M. Kennedy.
In that thought, I join Robert C. Byrd, one of only two individuals in the history of our country to have served longer in the Senate than Ted Kennedy (Dan Inouye will pass Teddy in a couple of months). Byrd’s sorrowful statement included these poignant words:
I had hoped and prayed that this day would never come. My heart and soul weeps at the loss of my best friend in the Senate, my beloved friend, Ted Kennedy.
Sen. Kennedy and I both witnessed too many wars in our lives, and believed too strongly in the Constitution of the United States to allow us to go blindly into war. That is why we stood side by side in the Senate against the war in Iraq.
Throughout his career, Sen. Kennedy believed in a simple premise — that our society’s greatness lies in its ability and willingness to provide for its less fortunate members. Whether striving to increase the minimum wage, ensuring that all children have medical insurance, or securing better access to higher education, Sen. Kennedy always showed that he cares deeply for those whose needs exceed their political clout. Unbowed by personal attacks or by the terrible sorrows that have fallen upon his family, his spirit continued to soar and he continued to work as hard as ever to make his dreams a reality.
In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health care reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American.
Hundreds and hundreds of tributes to Ted Kennedy have been written already, have been spoken already. Of those I’ve seen thus far, none have been more heartfelt than the words of Vice President Biden, who had shared the Senate chamber with Ted Kennedy for 36 years before his election to the vice-presidency:
I was particularly moved by his recollection of the thoughts of Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie, speaking what we all wanted to say:
He was ready to go, Joe ... but we were not ready to let him go.
Godspeed, Senator Kennedy. There will be none again like you.
[UPDATE] You simply must read “nemokc“‘s dKos diary, A Private Moment with the Lion.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
3 Days of Peace and Music
I was at Woodstock.
There, I said it. I’m well aware that the number of people who’ll tell you that they attended momentous events always vastly exceeds the actual count. It’s often noted that, for example, that a couple of million people were among the 34,320 fans in the Polo Grounds on October 3, 1951 when Bobby Thomson hit the Shot Heard ‘Round the World. (Parenthetically, Hall of Famer Dave Winfield was born on that very same day, in St. Paul MN.) In my case, though, it’s the god’s honest truth.
My experience of Woodstock was a bit different from what’s usually reported. Yes, we had some difficulty getting to Bethel NY, but we were fortunate to have started the drive from Hartford, not South Jersey (where I lived at the time). So we didn’t have to go to and through New York City. We ran into a lot of traffic, but we didn’t run into anything like Arlo’s bemused observation that “the New York State Thruway’s closed, man!”. My brother (then 15) and I had flown up to Hartford to travel to the festival with my Dartmouth buddies David and Bob. Unlike most of those who went there, we actually had tickets to the event ... my brother still has them.
We didn’t have a really good idea of exactly where we were going. We had a roadmap, of course, but it had very little detail of the rural upstate area we were visiting. Somehow, though, we got to within a few miles of Yasgur’s Farm. We pulled our tents out of the car, set up a little camp by the side of the road, and started walking with the crowd. We figured somebody had to know where to go.
Well, obviously somebody did, because we eventually arrived at the hillside on Max Yasgur’s farm. The fences that were supposed to have separated ticketholders from everyone else had long since been trampled down, so we swung past the stage and began to work our way toward a piece of open ground. At exactly the time we stepped onto the grounds, the first percussive notes of Richie Havens’s guitar rang out. As always with Richie, it was impossible to tell exactly which song was about to be played. According to Wikipedia, Richie’s opener was High Flyin’ Bird, but I couldn’t find any video of that song. But the looooong intro in the Woodstock video below (Handsome Johnny) might have just as easily become High Flyin’ Bird or any of the other songs in his set:
Friday’s set ended in the dark of night, with Joan Baez leading the crowd in We Shall Overcome (video below). It had drizzled just a bit during the evening, but it wasn’t really a problem that night. The entire crowd wandered off the hill afterwards. I have not the slightest idea how we were able to locate our campsite, but I know we did get there.
Many people were much the worse for wear as we headed back to Yasgur’s farm on Saturday. Water and food were scarce—the stores in the little village nearby, the site of the famed pond full of naked people, had long since sold out of everything. Thankfully, any number of the people living on the country roads between our camp and the venue generously offered water from their garden hoses to the endless stream of sunburned “freaks” walking past their homes.
We settled in for a long, wondrous, amazing day and night (and, it turned out, morning) of music that day. In the daytime, we heard (among others) Country Joe, John Sebastian, Santana, and Canned Heat. This was the first time I’d ever heard of, much less heard, Santana, and their set absolutely blew me away. It was rock combined with world music, with Carlos Santana’s jazzy guitar and young Michael Shrieve’s drumkit, creating an astonishing sound unlike anything I’d previously known.
The nighttime set was even better, except for one disappointment. This, as it turns out, was the only time I ever saw The Dead in concert, and they were, ummm, terrible. They made several attempts to start some of the tunes before they could figure them out. Unfortunate… But the rest of the night was sublime—Creedence was clean and concise, Janis Joplin wailed out her set, Sly & the Family Stone generated enough energy and funk to power a city, and The Who played Tommy in its entirety as the sky went from darkness into daylight. The poor unfortunate Airplane was left to play its set to an exhausted crowd in the early morning daylight.
We couldn’t stick around for the rain-soaked, muddy Sunday sets. No Cocker, no Ten Years After, no Band, no BS&T, no CSN&Y, no Hendrix. We didn’t have to deal with the worst of the weather or the worst of the traffic jams in trying to get out of Bethel.
The reason? Because we college students had to get back to our summer jobs on Monday morning. I’d already begged off on Thursday and Friday, and it would be very bad form to miss Monday as well. For the record, I worked that summer at the Frankford Arsenal. I was, in the summer of 1969, a civilian employee of the United States Army. I rationalized it as “subverting from within”, but I was participating in basic research on the protective effects of metal plating on steel when exposed to high ambient temperature and humidity. In other words, helping the Army figure out how to keep its weapons and materiel from falling apart in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia.
Woodstock was an irreproducible event. 3 Days of Peace and Music turned out to be exactly as advertised (and much, much more), despite logistical nightmares and serious weather problems. Unfortunately, the excitingly positive vibes generated by those 3 Days of Peace and Music couldn’t last. The Woodstock Nation, born on August 15-17, 1969, came to an end less than four months later, at the Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969.
