October 31–November 3 – The Halloween Blizzard, as part of the 1991 Perfect Storm, hits the Upper Midwest of the United States, causing around $100 million of damage and killing 2.
(It is interesting that 20 years after this perfect storm, the east coast has just gotten hit by one of the biggest October snows in history.)
So I thought I would post some of the pics from last week's game at the Metrodome. Yes, I was there! And it was a fun game. It was good to see the Vikings playing good football. I want the Pack to win, of course, whenever we play the Vikes, but it is always better to have a well-played game. As long as it doesn't get too close.
The Vikings, for the first time in, well, quite a while, had a young quarterback instead of The Old Man or Donovan McNabb. With a lousy start they have done two things- put in Rookie Christian Ponder and let Adrian Peterson carry the ball more.
But what was fun for me was to see some truly great ballplayers in the same game. I have pulled some of their pictures out of the many I took and cropped it down since we were in the end zone.
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| QB Christian Ponder being chased by LB Clay Matthews |
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| RB James Starks getting the handoff from QB Aaron Rodgers |
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| Adrian Peterson taking off after getting the ball from Ponder |
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| Ryan Longwell doing what he does better than just about anyone else |
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| CB Charles Woodson attempting a pick-off. Didn't get this one. |
No more for this year.
The season is over.
But one more time, this one with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly dancing.
--from the special, That's Entertainment
**** Top of First ****
7:06 Central Time- Game 7 has begun with a single by Kinsler getting the Rangers going against Carpenter. What a series it has been. Will tonight live up to it?
7:08 And Kinsler is picked off/caught stealing. How fast things can change. Oh yeah- that happened last night, too.
7:10 Hamilton gets an RBI double scoring Andrus and Ron Washington shows his great emotions.
7:11 Young scores Hamilton. Texas 2-0, one out. It is already looking like a hit-fest. It could be a long game at this rate.
7:13 End of top of 1st. 2-0 Rangers. It looks like last night is simply memory. So far.
**** Bottom of First ****
7:20 Now two out in bottom of 1st and Albert Pujols comes to bat in what may well be his last game in St. Louis. And he gets walked. First base runner for the Cardinals. Now the crowds get up as Berkman bats...
7:23 And walks. Along comes last night's hometown hero David Freese.
7:27 Freese doubles and gets 2 RBIs, tying the game. Yes, it is only the first inning. Molina bats. Wilson is warming up already in the bullpen for the Rangers.
7:29 Molina flies out to Hamilton. Third out. End of first. Game tied.
October 28–November 4 – The 1991 Perfect Storm strikes the northeastern United States and Atlantic Canada, causing over $200 million of damage and resulting in 12 direct fatalities.
When we were at the movies the last couple times we saw this trailer for an upcoming Christmas season movie, We Bought A Zoo (IMDb):
Between the two times we saw the trailer, the wild animal escape and massacre happened in Ohio. My reaction the second time I saw the trailer was one of an icky feeling. Bad timing, of course, but will it hurt. When I Googled it to write this I saw a post on the Wall Street Journal Blog that said the same thing.
From downtown Minneapolis on Sunday, I looked up and saw this "broken building."
Reflections and lines are such integral parts of modern urban architecture.
But you don't even notice until you stop for a moment, like a tourist, a take a picture.
We were in downtown Minneapolis yesterday for the Packers/Vikings game. As we walked toward the stadium, we passed the place where Occupy Minnesota was protesting. Nothing great or unusual. Just another protest, led by a trumpet player doing a rendition of "God Bless America."
There were signs
And people just standing around watching.
It sure doesn't look like the 60s.
I wonder if they really know what they are dealing with?
Human nature.
On a report on BBC, I believe, about the upcoming issues in Libya, they commented that one of the requirements of democracy is figuring out how to disagree. Democracy is, by nature, a playing of different and opposing opinions. Disagreement is part and parcel of the democratic process. It is, in fact, the political way most suited, theoretically, to deal with disagreement.
How do we get along when we disagree?
Libya has no recent history of that. They have no political parties.
Egypt faces the same issues. As does Tunisia. As will Syria.
To Americans, democracy seems like a no-brainer. (More in a moment.) We have been at it for 235 years. We got it from a country, England, that in spite of a monarchy in 1776, did understand representation. We expect other countries to be able to just do what we do. That is tough. Iraq shows us that as we now prepare to pull our troops out.
But that cynic I talked about yesterday, the inner cynic who has been spoiled by nearly 50 years of American politics from the Vietnam Era on, wants to make a snide remark. You know- if we understand democracy so well, why are we having such problems working on agreements in Washington? Why has Congress, the States, the White House, the political parties and the pseudo-parties (Tea party, OWS) made such a black-or-white, either-or, my-way-or-the-highway debacle out of our American system in recent years?
Do we really want these new proto-democracies to emulate us as we are, or as we try to be? The realist within me, though not as cynical as all that, knows that our democracy is as fallible as any other. I know that we regularly get things all messed up. We regularly change our understandings of what "American" democracy and "American" freedoms mean in practice.
Somehow or another we have to be as diligent at home about making sure our democracy works and doesn't fall prey to extreme sides of the issues at hand, whatever they may be. The recent Ken Burns/PBS special on Prohibition was a good example of what can happen when the extreme side of an issue gets the upper hand and ends up bullying the majority to its will. "The Great Experiment" of Prohibition failed because of that. As freedoms were relegated to second-place or lower, when extreme opinions ruled the day and set out to punish and destroy the other side, we lost as a nation.
It can happen in any democratic country. It has happened here. It can happen in Libya or Egypt or here, again. My views on an issue may be a more extreme position than a nation can take. I am, for example, a pacifist. I know, though, that a pacifist position might be dangerous or even foolish for a nation. (I am willing to discuss that politely and offline.)
The role of the more extreme positions, right or left, is to keep the middle honest and aware of the wonders of diversity and to help the nation grow more in honesty, hope and integrity. The most extreme positions, though, remind us of the limits and show us what happens when extreme positions take over. Strong left-wing tactics will be as devastating as strong right-wing tactics since neither will allow any position but there own to exist.
Which brings us back to the leading question- disagreement as an essential of democracy. Getting along when we don't see eye-to-eye. Accepting differing opinions, ideas, world-views as having a place in the public forum. We seem at this point in time, as a nation, to be rattling around the edge of that again. I have hope that as we go through the next year of presidential politicking (that long?) we will find ways to work from our democratic core beliefs and discover ways to work together, without having to demonize the other.
Yes, you may say I'm a dreamer. I pray I'm not the only one.
First: Definitions
1. An attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others:
2. A scornfully or jadedly negative comment or act:
Second: Why
Well, I was about to get cynical when I sat down to work on this post. I realized in some depth of my heart and soul that cynicism was lurking, ready to rear its head and come out of my fingers onto the keyboard and then, my readers, on you.
As I realized that I also realized that I wasn't sure I could truly define what it was I was feeling. So I headed to find the definitions posted above on the Free Dictionary. As soon as I read those I realized what I was feeling. Sadness. Fear. Distrust. It is easy to get distrustful of others, especially their true motives. People are, well, let's be honest, people are human.That means they have mixed motives. Some of those motives are clear to them and others. Some of those motives are hidden to all. Many of those motives can only be seen in retrospect.
Working in the field of addiction it is easy to see all these kinds of motives. Working with people whose brains have been hijacked, short-circuited, and flooded with chemicals natural and otherwise. When this happens motives are often found to be suspect. Those unconscious, or pre-conscious, motives and thoughts come unbidden and even below the level of cognitive awareness. I know that sounds like double-talk. It is not. It is a fact of life that those working in this field have to come to terms with.
Or else cynicism becomes a norm. Even for the healthy ones. Even for those who know better. Things happen that challenge the hopes and expectations. We come face to face with the cynicism of others or the denial that permeates addiction and find ourselves swamped. Before we know it. It is not conscious. It is below the levels of cognition, buried in the mid-brain, the amygdala, and little used circuits of the workings of the brain-mind connection.
So what to do when at the end of a week cynicism bubbles up, around and through? Well, I Googled quotes to put me back into a healthier frame.
It worked. As did a day of nature yesterday, hiking the byways of God's house of the local state park.
Such is the power of personal inventory, stopping and listening to ones feelings and naming them, then opening them up and moving beyond them.
Here, then, I share with you some of the quotes that helped me:
Third: Quotes (Link)
First, a theologian reminds us to stay away from extremes. Being overly sentimental (or even optimistic) is as bad as overly negative.
I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.Yoko reminded me that this cynicism is not who I truly am. The soul is not meant to be that way. Cynicism is part of the hijacking of the brain and soul by things beyond who we really are.
--Reinhold Niebuhr
The cynicism that you have is not your real soul.Jeff Bridges reflects on cynicism as really the lost soul pieces, the hopeful, optimistic side of us calling out for help. "Show me that all is not lost," cries the promise of life within us.
--Yoko Ono
Most cynics are really crushed romantics: they've been hurt, they're sensitive, and their cynicism is a shell that's protecting this tiny, dear part in them that's still alive.British musician Coxon finally reminds us that cynicism can be planted, fed and watered, and finally blossom without the help of mind-altering substances. In other words, stay sober.
--Jeff Bridges
I think a lot of cynicism has dropped away from my shoulders since I stopped drinking.
--Graham Coxon
This doesn't happen very often. I have just NOT finished another book I started. Earlier in the month I mentioned not being able to finish Jerry Blavat's autobiography. Now I have put down Frederik Pohl's latest novel, All The Lives He Led. For those not science fiction fans, Pohl is one of the great and prolific authors of the genre, a multi-award winner, and a vision maker.
However this is not one of his better novels. It is almost as if Pohl was trying to be post-modern in his thinking and got lost along the way. The plot plods and the incredible stupidity of the supposedly street-smart lead character brings the structure down around him.
Since I am not a professional reviewer I wondered, like I did with Blavat's book, if it is just me. I found much of the same thinking. So, another one returns to the library unfinished. I found I didn't even care enough about how it ends to finish.
It's travel day in the 2011 World Series. It's been a real pitchers' series so far. And a good one at that.
But without a game, here's a short "music video" I put together the other evening. It is the 2011 pre-game graphics from Target Field and the Minnesota Twins followed by the memorial video for Harmon Killebrew that was shown in the 7th Inning Stretch at Target field. I couldn't get the sound live from Target Field so I put my own to it, but like the Twins, I used the same Sinatra song, Fly Me To The Moon, for the Killebrew video.
Enjoy- and think spring, all ye Twins fans.
Watching the World Series this evening, Tim McCarver and Joe Buck mentioned that today would have been Mickey Mantle's 80th birthday. One of the clay-footed icons of American sports, Mantle was- and remains- one of the baseball player gods.
The book by Jane Leavy, The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood, tells Mickey's story in all its ups and downs. Sad, tragic, almost Shakespearean in its tragedy, Mantle's life shows us the change in culture and sports in the last 40 years. Our heroes today are fewer and far more uncertain. We never know when, or how, our heroes will be knocked from their pedestal. Of who will work hard to complete the action.
In any case, today would have been his birthday. Mick- we wish it could have been different. Happy Birthday.
Sci-Fi master Frederik Pohl has a short and profound comment on his blog, The Way the Future Blogs that was posted in September. In light of the push and shove of the GOP debate the other evening, I find it quite appropriate.
His comment is simply to quote a few lines from a poem that is attached to a statue standing in New York Harbor.
Give me your tired, your poorHe then ends with his own punchline.
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
If that isn’t our policy, what sort of hypocrites are we?
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
Chapter 1
The rain leaves Oklahoma in late May, too early in the growing season. The sky and the earth grow pale. The new corn begins to dry up. The roads turn into dust clouds. In mid June, heavy clouds pass over Oklahoma but leave only a spattering of rain.Surprisingly I have never read The Grapes of Wrath. No reason, It's just never happened. Well, the other evening I was sitting with my Color Nook at the local Barnes and Noble and just decided to see what it looked like. I was amazed.
A gentle wind follows, which develops into a strong, steady gale. The corn crop is ruined, and the country is covered in a dusty haze. Men and women hide in their houses.
When the wind passes on and the dust settles, the people come out of their houses. The men look silently at the dry battered corn. "The women studied the men's faces secretly, for the corn could go as long as something else remained."
--Link
There was dawn- but no day.Remarkable writing.
He- is Harold Camping- the radio "preacher" who said that judgement day was going to be in May. When it didn't happen his way, he just said he misunderstood.
It is still going to happen.
This week. Friday, October 21.
Live Science has a post.
For real science, Live Science also posted the pictures of the week for last week. This one is just awe-inspiring.
Is it my imagination or does it remind you of a fetus?
I have often seen that there are many shapes in nature that are similar to other shapes.
Maybe even this one from the classic motion picture, 2001: A Space Odyssey
I will end with a quote from Henry David Thoreau for no particular reason but that it struck me as I wrote this:
"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"
The mechanics of pitching are, to say the least, unnatural. I have read a number of places that the overhand pitch used in baseball is not what the arm is meant to do. Tim Lincecum, star pitcher for the Giants is known to have an unorthodox delivery on top of the unnaturalness. I found this video from last spring training where they managed to use high-speed to get a slo-mo video. Here is what Wired.com had to say about it:
The delivery and follow-through of a big-league pitcher can be a violent undertaking, torquing up your body to throw a 5-ounce sphere of yarn, cork and rubber at speeds upward of 100 mph.
The San Francisco Giants’ Tim Lincecum, a two-time Cy Young Award winner as the best pitcher in the National League, is especially well-known for his unorthodox mechanics, owing mainly to his short stature. Listed (generously) at 5-foot-11 and 170 pounds, Lincecum consistently launches his fastball at speeds averaging 93 mph and has led the league in strikeouts three years running.
For a glimpse into how his body is able to handle such speeds with ease, Red Bull corralled the 26-year-old flamethrower during spring training last month and filmed him with a Phantom Flex high-speed digital camera system, one of about 50 in the world. The result is a trippy look at the extraordinary forces it requires to be one of Major League Baseball’s best pitchers.
--Link
La Tierra del Olvido: The Land of the Forgotten is the latest in Playing for Change's world shifting videos, linking people in a hope for peace through music.
From the website:
This video features over 75 musicians across the country of Colombia. Throughout our journey we have learned that music is the greatest tool for healing broken countries, cultures and hearts. With this video we set out to unite and inspire the people of Colombia so they can move forward from years of conflict and create a positive future. Listen to the music, see the smiling faces, and remember that we are going to make it as a human race!!
Moneyball. The movie about Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, based on the book by Michael Lewis. (Tomatometer: 95%; IMDb; Movie site.) I read the book back in the mid-2000s when it came out and found it intriguing. I
What Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) did was unthinkable prior to 2002 because nobody would take the risk. He and his associates (a fictional composite in the movie, played by Jonah Hill) decided to use the overly geeky statistical analysis pioneered by overly geeky Bill James to fill up a ball club that had a very small payroll.
Among other things, the BIG awareness they came to was the something called On Base Percentage (OBP) meant more than the traditional intuition of scouts and baseball mythology and perhaps even of such stats as RBIs and batting average. No matter how you got on base- you became a potential run. If you got on base more often than others - regardless of the reason, such as walking, you were more likely to be more valuable to a winning team- or even make your team a winning team.
That in a nutshell is the story. Sounds dull and boring. How can one make a move about the economics (dull) of baseball statistics (and boring)? Easy- get Brad Pitt to star and Aaron Sorkin to be one of the screenwriters and you have a winner. (Kind of goes against the baseball premise, doesn't it?) It is not an action movie. Even the baseball scenes in it are there to carry the story and not for baseball activity. (We do get to see the Minnesota Twins portrayed a couple times, though.)
Like baseball, it is not a fast-paced movie. There is plenty of time for the premise to develop and to watch Brad Pitt act in great close-ups and various moods. Philip Seymour Hoffman underplays A's manager Art Howe quite well. He has a deer in the headlights anger as his cherished traditional understanding of baseball is falling apart.
It is a movie about ideas and theories and we see them portrayed quite well. The intricacies of baseball lore, managing or the new statistics are kept simple and straightforward.
It is also a movie about taking chances, hanging in when they don't seem to be working, and finally, perhaps, taking the biggest chance of being true to ones own place in life.
As Billy Beane tells us a couple times in the movie, "It is easy to be sentimental abut baseball." Fortunately this movie does that with class and a lot more to spare.
This post originally published on BlogCritic
What an incredible fall we have been having, at least through earlier this week. Temps were in the 80s. Sun was bright. The leaves were magnificent thanks to plenty of rain earlier in the spring and summer.
FINALLY, after three months without any bike riding due to my back surgery, I got out on the Root River Trail between Fountain and Whalan on Sunday for a 21 mile ride.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the author of the challenging book, The Black Swan, an exploration of randmoness, Taleb's philosophical specialty. The Bed Of Procrustes is his latest, a collection of aphorisms challenging just about everything.
The Procrustes of Greek mythology was a cruel fellow who stretched or shortened people to make them fit his inflexible bed. Mr. Taleb’s new book addresses the modern day ways in which “we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies, and prepackaged narratives, which, on the occasion, has explosive consequences.” In other words, we live under self-imposed delusions.I picked up the book at the library last week and found it fascinating. As a collection of aphorisms it is just that- short statements on different topics that are far more than bumper-sticker thinking. They are in the best tradition of wisdom sayings, proverbs, that point out the frailty of humanity and our accepted ways of thinking.
--Crosshairs Trader
Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but makes the fool vastly more dangerous.I remember hearing a study a number of years ago about counselors and counselor training. What they discovered was that people who were not "naturally" good at counseling and helping were actually made worse at it (and hence more dangerous to their clients) by education in counseling. They think that knowledge is what makes one good at a career or vocation when it reality it is far more intrinsic than that.
Over the long term, you are more likely to fool yourself than others.In my field we call it denial. And it is powerful and devastating.
Those who think religion is about "belief" don't understand religion, and don't understand belief.That is one that makes my mind say "Right on!" but at the same time scratch my head in wondering what Taleb is thinking.
A few weeks ago I went to my last Twins' game of the season. What a surprise to know that the Budweiser Clydesdales would be out in the plaza before the game. What a great opportunity for some good pictures.
Of course I am not now, then, or ever trying to be free advertising for Bud. But the purpose of these appearances of the Clydesdales IS for free advertising.
The dog is as stately as the horses.
Shooting up and over the display of former stadiums with the horses in the background.
Another juxtaposition was the no pedestrian crossing sign.
They brought them into Target Field and led them around the warning track before the national anthem.
They were a beauty to see and a nice addition to the day.
Steve Jobs get to the heavenly entrance and immediately does what he does best- innovate and re-design. "So, what's with all these pearly things. So out of fashion. Wouldn't brushed aluminum look better.
"And let's not call them 'gates.' "
All I know is that at the moment it is NOT in southeastern Minnesota!
At 7:00 pm, Saturday, October 8, 2011, I am sitting at my favorite Caribou Coffee wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals.
Outside in the dark it is still 76 degrees (F).
My bicycle is calling for a fall ride tomorrow.
What weather!
Jerry Blavat was an iconic figure in 1960s radio in Philadelphia and around the country. The "Geator with the Heator" was a BIG NAME. His involvement in the growth of rock and roll radio was incredible. But...
One of the things I remembered about those days, colored by years, was that I never really cared for Blavat. Nothing personal. I just felt he was always over the top. I didn't know the word for it at the time. Today I would call it "narcissism."
But I still picked up his autobiography which was recently released. You Only Rock Once is his story. And it is HIS story, make no mistake about it. It was interesting, sort of. It was difficult to read, bogged down in Blavat's own high opinion he has of himself. I got about 150 pages into it's 350+ pages and couldn't continue.
"Was it about me?" I wondered. "Is that why I couldn't finish it? Old tapes playing?"
So I did a quick search for a review and found one on Kirkus Review. There I found the last two sentences that said the same thing:
...his narcissism, combined with his generally plodding prose style, saps much of the youthful energy of the early chapters.
Blavat has an excellent perspective on four decades of the music industry, though his remembrances too often drift into self-hagiography.
--Link
October 7 – War in Afghanistan (2001–present): The United States invades Afghanistan, with participation from other nations.
October 6 – Egyptian president Anwar Sadat is assassinated during a parade by army members who belong to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization
Apple says the company’s co-founder Steve Jobs has died. He was 56. “We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today,” the company said in a brief statement.A moment of silence for the man who probably did more to change our world in the past 40 years than just about anyone.
They may not be as nationally famous as the groundhog in February, but I have spent years watching in the fall for the wooly bear caterpillar. I have been told that they are great predictors of the severity and type of winter we are going to have. Even Dr. Jeff Masters has commented on this in his WunderBlog at Weather Underground:
According to legend, the severity of the upcoming winter can be judged by examining the pattern of brown and black stripes on woolly bear caterpillars--the larvae of Isabella tiger moths. If the brown stripe between the two black stripes is thick, the winter will be a mild one. A narrow brown stripe portends a long, cold winter.
--WunderBlog
So, this past weekend I finally saw a wooly bear that I could get a picture of. All the ones I had sort of seen in passing (in the middle of the road as I drove looked similar to the one here on the right.
Griffin was a white native of Mansfield, Texas and the book describes his six-week experience travelling on Greyhound buses (occasionally hitchhiking) throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia passing as a black man.It was an eye-opener for many, myself included after reading it in college a few years later and the civil rights was making more headlines. Even today, in a different era, it brings chills to the senses. I often fear we have not come as far as we think we have.
--Wikipedia
Dream Variations
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.
October 1 – Baseball player Roger Maris of the New York Yankees hits his 61st home run in the last game of the season, against the Boston Red Sox, beating the 34-year-old record held by Babe Ruth.
