It’s fantasy season in the United States. Now, of course, one can fantasize about being a princess or drift into reverie about winning the lottery, any time of year. I’m talking about a specialized kind of fantasy. An ongoing, all-consuming, often dead-serious one that’s geared to different seasons. An obsession, shared by an estimated 35 […]
The Super Bowl(er)
Posted January 13th, 2012 at 5:48 pm (UTC-4)
This is the story of a superstar and his sport, though whether what he did for a living is a sport has been debated since the . . . activity . . . was invented. The fact that I spent quite a few evenings engaged in it when I was a young man makes it […]
American High School
Posted December 2nd, 2011 at 4:46 pm (UTC-4)
I don’t know if there’s anything in the world that quite compares to a high school football game in the smaller towns of America. I went to Macomb, Illinois the other day and the first thing I noticed when we drove into town were signs saluting the local high school foot ball team, the […]
Tilting at (Golf) Windmills
Posted September 21st, 2011 at 4:45 pm (UTC-4)
In the novel by Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote takes his lance and “tilts at windmills” as the saying goes, imagining their blades to be a giant’s arms. I can relate. I, too, have tilted at windmills — and usually lost . . . on the putting green. Not one of those manicured, meticulously shaved […]
Sports and the Black Dog
Posted September 7th, 2011 at 6:03 pm (UTC-4)
One night a couple of weeks ago, I was walking home from the Metro subway stop to my home, listening to a sports-talk radio station in my ear buds. On came an hourly update that included news that a body had been discovered on the grounds of Mike Flanagan’s four-hectare country estate north of Baltimore, […]
Re-Creations Not Going, Going but GONE
Posted July 26th, 2011 at 7:01 pm (UTC-4)
Nat Allbright died last week in a Virginia hospital at age 87. Unless you’re an American over 60, an ardent baseball fan, and a bit of a history buff, you’ve probably never heard of him. In his day, Nat Allbright was a legend — a craftsman, an artist, a master teller of baseball tales so […]
Aardvarks on the March!
Posted January 12th, 2011 at 2:42 pm (UTC-4)
I’m on a bit of a nickname kick, as you know if you read my last posting about nicknames given to the 50 U.S. states. Some things actually cry out for catchy names. You couldn’t very well talk about a college sports team as “that Harvard squad” or “the Texas A&M team” or “those Clemson […]
Rudolph, Our Hero
Posted December 24th, 2010 at 10:09 am (UTC-4)
I’m posting this early on Friday, Christmas Eve. For millions of American children, tonight will be the most exciting night of the year. Bigger than New Year’s Eve. Bigger than Independence Day’s fireworks at dusk. Even bigger than Halloween, when they can beg bagfuls of candy from their neighbors. Kids get so excited on […]
The Real Bedford Falls
Posted December 20th, 2010 at 4:27 pm (UTC-4)
A Christmas tradition in millions of American households is to curl up in front of a television set — and ideally a fireplace filled with crackling logs — and watch an old, black-and-white movie that never fails to rekindle the warm good feelings of the holiday. The 1946 movie classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” put […]
South Dakodak
Posted September 24th, 2009 at 4:41 pm (UTC-4)
If you’re like me, you sometimes look back at an earlier period in your nation’s history and think, “Those were the days!” We romanticize the slower pace and what today seems like their relative innocence — even if reality was something else again. I’ve already told you that I sometimes linger over old photographs — […]
