Friday, January 02, 2009
Heading into the seventh
No, this isn’t a baseball post. Nothing in this post about stretches, no excerpts from Take Me Out To The Ballgame. The “seventh” I’m referring to is blog-years.
The first appearance of Peace Tree Farm as a blog was on January 2, 2003, so this place has been in existence for six full years. Tomorrow begins the seventh year of this blog.
At the time I opened this blog, the American death toll from the War in Iraq was 0. The shuttle Columbia hadn’t even taken off, much less broken up during reentry. Saxby Chambliss, Lindsey Graham, John E. Sununu, Lamar Alexander, Elizabeth Dole, Norm Coleman, and Mark Pryor were not yet Senators. No one had died of, been diagnosed with, or even heard of SARS.
When I started writing Peace Tree Farm, Robert Novak didn’t know that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent. Gray Davis had been recently reelected as Governor of California. No National Hockey League game had ever been played outdoors. Air France and British Airways operated daily Concorde flights to JFK. New Hampshirites could still look up proudly at their state symbol, the Old Man of the Mountain.
As Peace Tree Farm opened, the Anaheim Angels were the World Series champions and the Philadelphia Phillies had won the Series only once, over 20 years in the past. It had been 84 years since the last title for the Boston Red Sox and 85 years since the Chicago White Sox had won the Series. The Chicago Cubs hadn’t won the World Series since 1908, and hadn’t even appeared in the Series since 1945 (some things don’t change). Rickey Henderson, Joe Girardi, Mark Grace, David Cone, Mo Vaughn, Matt Williams, Ron Gant, Jesse Orosco, and Greg Vaughn were still active players.
The defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots had failed to make the postseason. Cris Carter, Darrell Green, Terrell Davis, Jumbo Elliott, Desmond Howard, Richmond Webb, Danny Wuerffel, Ray Crockett, Lomas Brown, Eric Metcalf, and Hardy Nickerson all had just played, or were about to play in the postseason, for the last time in the NFL.
The reigning NBA champs, the Los Angeles Lakers, were struggling at 13-19, though they would soon right the ship and get into the first round of the 2003 playoffs. Michael Jordan, David Robinson, John Stockton, Tim Hardaway, Steve Kerr, Shawn Kemp, Danny Manning, Arvydas Sabonis, Chris Dudley, and Danny Ferry were still playing in the NBA.
Defending their Stanley Cup championship, the Detroit Red Wings led their Division on the way to another first-place finish. In the spring, they would lose their opening playoff series against the eventual championship runnerup Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. Patrick Roy, Pavel Bure, Mike Richter, Doug Gilmour, Phil Housley, Claude Lemieux, Tom Barrasso, Adam Graves, Ulf Dahlen, Theoren Fleury, Craig Berube, and Sylvain Cote were still lacing on their skates in the NHL.
Much has happened in those six years, and I’ve occasionally commented on some of those events. In these exciting, albeit troubling, days, we prepare for the inauguration of Barack Obama 18 days hence (and will simultaneously celebrate what will likely be the happiest of my nephew’s 15 birthdays). There’s much more to come here at Peace Tree Farm.
Oh, in the spirit of last year’s blogiversary post, the standard acknowledgment for a sixth anniversary is candy or iron (traditional), wood (modern). If you’re going for candy, may I suggest something from here?
