For years now I have held a special contempt for Senator Arlen Specter, despite his support for Israel. I felt that here was a guy who was smart enough to know what was right and wrong, yet he always set the bar lower. At least the average Republican would stake out a position, deplorable though it may be, and stick to it. Specter insisted on straddling the fence, giving hints that he was grappling deeply with the issue at hand and could very well break ranks as a matter of principle. And yet, always the same party line when it came time to vote. His switch to Democrat, further pandering, based only on a desire to get invited to the Obama-jama party. The man just couldn't help himself. He wanted everyone to like him, or at least 51% in every demographic.
Linda Greenhouse posted something today on NY Times online that would be funny if it weren't so sad.
Specter's recent loss in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary is just desserts. I'm sure he'll spend his Sundays wearing an Eagles jersey and a Steelers helmet.
May 21, 2010
May 07, 2010
Tres de Mayo
Tuesday got off to a rough start this week. Archie woke up ornery and stressed out. Something was bothering him and we couldn’t figure out how to get him on track. He stomped off at one point, crying. I followed him to our bed, laid down next to him and tried to reason, reassure, sympathize. He calmed down, but he also muttered “this is the worst day of my life.”
Such a comment is ironic from any five year old, especially because it was barely 7 AM, but in this case also because the worst day of my life was on the same date, May 4, fifteen years earlier. It was a Thursday, and it was the day I found out my childhood friend, Aron Sobel, had been killed in a bus crash in Turkey the day before. I first heard it from a friend, but accepted the news only when my father called to confirm it. I remember the phone conversations, where I was, how I reacted. But I also remember the day before, May 3, 1995. I remember feeling God that day.
I was working at the Law Offices of Gerard Dunne, a generally miserable experience. That afternoon the only other person in the office was Sue, a 40-something divorcee with a penchant for talking about her spirituality, wearing fire-red lipstick and drinking Chardonnay. Of the other employees at the LOGD, she was the most pleasant.
My office had a window to the outside, but I was sitting in a chair near Sue’s desk in the central, interior area of the office. I don’t remember what we were talking about, though a typical conversation was usually a hodgepodge of anecdotes relating to our boss’s latest temper tantrum, excerpted wisdom from Sue’s latest self-help novel, and complaints about my needy girlfriend. Though it was the middle of the afternoon on a warm spring day in Manhattan, a cloud cover created a darkness that abruptly overtook the room. I could barely make out Sue’s face. The room was hazy. Objects became pixilated.
As this was happening I told Sue that I suddenly felt very tired. It was more than that. I felt a rushing out from my body, I felt my limbs turn to rubber, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think, my brain was numbed, I had no thoughts other than I am feeling energy, I am feeling it move out of this room. The sensation lasted only a minute or two. The numbness left. The shadows exited the room, sunlight returned.
Sue asked if I was okay. I was fine. Aron wasn’t. At that very same moment his bus was plunging off a cliff somewhere in Turkey, he was taking his last breath, and 5,000 miles away I felt him exit this world. I have never again had the physical sensation I felt that day, that moment.
Aron and I entered the world on the same day – July 18, 1969. I was always proud of that, proud of the association. It has now been 15 years without him. I don’t even think we were best friends exactly, but we were like brothers to each other and we shared moments that are some of the clearest and happiest memories of my childhood. And in his final moments on Earth, Aron gave me something nothing else ever has: A tangible connection to the life-force that binds all of us together. I called it God here, but I don’t know anything about God. I only know what I felt.
The sun came up the day after the worst day of Archie’s life, and in the evening he suggested we order Mexican food in honor of Cinco de Mayo. The holiday is not widely celebrated in Mexico outside of Puebla, but what the hell. We’re all connected.
For more information about Aron Sobel and ASIRT, the foundation established by his mother to lobby for safer international road travel, please visit www.asirt.org.
Such a comment is ironic from any five year old, especially because it was barely 7 AM, but in this case also because the worst day of my life was on the same date, May 4, fifteen years earlier. It was a Thursday, and it was the day I found out my childhood friend, Aron Sobel, had been killed in a bus crash in Turkey the day before. I first heard it from a friend, but accepted the news only when my father called to confirm it. I remember the phone conversations, where I was, how I reacted. But I also remember the day before, May 3, 1995. I remember feeling God that day.
I was working at the Law Offices of Gerard Dunne, a generally miserable experience. That afternoon the only other person in the office was Sue, a 40-something divorcee with a penchant for talking about her spirituality, wearing fire-red lipstick and drinking Chardonnay. Of the other employees at the LOGD, she was the most pleasant.
My office had a window to the outside, but I was sitting in a chair near Sue’s desk in the central, interior area of the office. I don’t remember what we were talking about, though a typical conversation was usually a hodgepodge of anecdotes relating to our boss’s latest temper tantrum, excerpted wisdom from Sue’s latest self-help novel, and complaints about my needy girlfriend. Though it was the middle of the afternoon on a warm spring day in Manhattan, a cloud cover created a darkness that abruptly overtook the room. I could barely make out Sue’s face. The room was hazy. Objects became pixilated.
As this was happening I told Sue that I suddenly felt very tired. It was more than that. I felt a rushing out from my body, I felt my limbs turn to rubber, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think, my brain was numbed, I had no thoughts other than I am feeling energy, I am feeling it move out of this room. The sensation lasted only a minute or two. The numbness left. The shadows exited the room, sunlight returned.
Sue asked if I was okay. I was fine. Aron wasn’t. At that very same moment his bus was plunging off a cliff somewhere in Turkey, he was taking his last breath, and 5,000 miles away I felt him exit this world. I have never again had the physical sensation I felt that day, that moment.
Aron and I entered the world on the same day – July 18, 1969. I was always proud of that, proud of the association. It has now been 15 years without him. I don’t even think we were best friends exactly, but we were like brothers to each other and we shared moments that are some of the clearest and happiest memories of my childhood. And in his final moments on Earth, Aron gave me something nothing else ever has: A tangible connection to the life-force that binds all of us together. I called it God here, but I don’t know anything about God. I only know what I felt.
The sun came up the day after the worst day of Archie’s life, and in the evening he suggested we order Mexican food in honor of Cinco de Mayo. The holiday is not widely celebrated in Mexico outside of Puebla, but what the hell. We’re all connected.
For more information about Aron Sobel and ASIRT, the foundation established by his mother to lobby for safer international road travel, please visit www.asirt.org.
May 05, 2010
A Tiger to Admire
Ernie Harwell died at 92 yesterday. He was the radio broadcaster for the Detroit Tigers for 42 years, and is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. By all accounts he was a great guy, unflailingly polite and upbeat, a true inspiration. He was married to the same woman for 68 years. I didn't grow up in Detroit and don't have a personal connection to Harwell, but I would like to post his famous "My Definition of Baseball" speech, which he first delivered in 1955. It is a reminder of the days when baseball was America's Pastime. And even though Harwell was lauding baseball, I think he was also reminding us why we love sports, any sport.
One criticism of Harwell's speech though, and I know he was a devout Tiger, but if you are going to trumpet the color-blindness of baseball you might not want to reference the racist, vicious, hate-mongering Ty Cobb in your valedictory.
One criticism of Harwell's speech though, and I know he was a devout Tiger, but if you are going to trumpet the color-blindness of baseball you might not want to reference the racist, vicious, hate-mongering Ty Cobb in your valedictory.
Baseball is the President tossing out the first ball of the season and a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm. A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout. That's baseball. And so is the big, fat guy with a bulbous nose running home one of his (Babe Ruth's) 714 home runs.
There's a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh forty-six years ago. That's baseball. So is the scout reporting that a sixteen year old pitcher in Cheyenne is a coming Walter Johnson. Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.
In baseball democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rulebook. Color merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another.
Baseball is a rookie. His experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream. It's a veteran too, a tired old man of thirty-five hoping that those aching muscles can pull him through another sweltering August and September. Nicknames are baseball, names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.
Baseball is the cool, clear eyes of Rogers Hornsby. The flashing spikes of Ty Cobb, an over aged pixie named Rabbit Maranville.
Baseball just a came as simple as a ball and bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. A sport, a business and sometimes almost even a religion.
Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World's Series catch. And then dashing off to play stick ball in the street with his teenage pals. That's baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying., "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”
Baseball is cigar smoke, hot roasted peanuts, The Sporting News, ladies day, "Down in Front", Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and the Star Spangled Banner.
Baseball is a tongue tied kid from Georgia growing up to be an announcer and praising the Lord for showing him the way to Cooperstown. This is a game for America. Still a game for America, this baseball! Thank you.
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