Little Stuff
Anyone for a round of "Guess Who Said It"? OK, players. Here's the quote: "...we face a motivated Fish." Nice try for those of you who guessed "Captain Ahab", but the actual speaker was Goran Prpic, captain of the Croatian Davis Cup team (that's tennis). The "fish" he was referring to was Mardy Fish, an American player brought in on short notice to take the place of injured Andy Roddick. I just thought it was cool the way Prpic said it. BTW, he needn't have worried. Croatia wins, joining Spain, Israel and the Czech Republic in the semifinals. No, I wouldn't have picked those, either.
On a brighter note, maybe it wasn't much of a surprise that the US soccer team throttled Honduras 2-0 last week. The "only in America" note comes from the fact that the goals were scored by Santino Quaranta and Brian Ching. I wonder where the team went for their post-game meal?
That Steve McNair business - ugly. An ex-NFL star with a wife and kids somehow falls for a 20 year-old waitress who, for reasons we may never know, shoots him dead in his sleep, then kills herself. It's easy to bring out the old phrases: "swelled-head jock", "thought he was entitled", "cheater deserved it", and so forth. But the people who knew him well in the Memphis area thought well of him as a person. They liked him, and not just as someone who could throw the ball a long way. So perhaps we should hold back from casting stones (if we think of this at all) and just call it what they would have in Shakespeare's day - a tragedy.
Now for things local. Our side yard goes down to a major gully which must be 60 or 70 feet deep. It's full of wildlife, which sometimes come up. Yesterday a doe with two tiny fawns strolled up onto the grass. I don't know what species of deer this is, but they aren't very big. The fawns were smaller than terriers, probably not more than 20 pounds each. My view was through the window, about 40 feet away. Through the same window today, I saw a little skunk in about the same spot - and was careful NOT to disturb it.
Finally, a name which just won't go away. Yes, it's Dick Cheney again, like a dripping slow flow of news from which we never quite get full. I won't rehearse the latest accusations, which are complex and nowhere NEAR complete. But ask yourselves. When is the last time you recall his name in a headline that represented GOOD news?
On a brighter note, maybe it wasn't much of a surprise that the US soccer team throttled Honduras 2-0 last week. The "only in America" note comes from the fact that the goals were scored by Santino Quaranta and Brian Ching. I wonder where the team went for their post-game meal?
That Steve McNair business - ugly. An ex-NFL star with a wife and kids somehow falls for a 20 year-old waitress who, for reasons we may never know, shoots him dead in his sleep, then kills herself. It's easy to bring out the old phrases: "swelled-head jock", "thought he was entitled", "cheater deserved it", and so forth. But the people who knew him well in the Memphis area thought well of him as a person. They liked him, and not just as someone who could throw the ball a long way. So perhaps we should hold back from casting stones (if we think of this at all) and just call it what they would have in Shakespeare's day - a tragedy.
Now for things local. Our side yard goes down to a major gully which must be 60 or 70 feet deep. It's full of wildlife, which sometimes come up. Yesterday a doe with two tiny fawns strolled up onto the grass. I don't know what species of deer this is, but they aren't very big. The fawns were smaller than terriers, probably not more than 20 pounds each. My view was through the window, about 40 feet away. Through the same window today, I saw a little skunk in about the same spot - and was careful NOT to disturb it.
Finally, a name which just won't go away. Yes, it's Dick Cheney again, like a dripping slow flow of news from which we never quite get full. I won't rehearse the latest accusations, which are complex and nowhere NEAR complete. But ask yourselves. When is the last time you recall his name in a headline that represented GOOD news?
posted by Mark at 8:57 PM
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