Baseball, After 20 Years in Boston
July 7, 2009
I came to the USA in 1989, expecting to stay for 3 years and then return to Europe. For the next three years, I lived in Cambridge, and came to like baseball, and especially the Boston Red Sox.
The first game I went to at Fenway was a pitching duel between Clemens, then of the Sox, and Saberhagen, then of the KC Royals. It was on April 18, 1991. I know because I just found the box score. The names (e.g., Boggs, Burks, Greenwell, Reardon) show how long ago that was.
Another indicator of how long ago that was: Tim Wakefield wasn’t with the Sox. I saw the most recent of his many Sox starts on Friday. It was a lot of fun, even though the Sox lost. They did so in extra innings, so it’s just as well the game was briskly played. Wakefield works quickly, even though his pitches don’t move quickly. His fastball is 70-something mph. That’s quite a contrast, though, with his trademark 60-something knuckleball. It’s also a contrast with every other pitcher we saw. The Sox relievers, and the Mariners pitchers, threw hard, with changeups going over 90.
It wasn’t Wake’s best start, and can’t have improved his chances of making the All-Star roster. But make it he did: Tim Wakefield is an American League All-Star. He’s the pitcher in the picture. I think that the hitter is Griffey.
Weekend and Water
June 30, 2009
We fled the rainy climes of Boston to spend the weekend in sunny Philadelphia. But there’s no getting away from water. Here’s my foot, being splashed my Maddie. Max is also in the picture/pool, and also obscured.
DoS: Death of Superstar
June 27, 2009
This is about the late Michael Jackson, memory, and a few other things. I am old enough to remember the Jackson Five: their early hits, their TV cartoon show. Let’s review:
That means I’m more than old enough to remember when DOS stood for Disk Operating System. Nowadays, I think of those three letters as denoting a denial-of-service attack.
Some sites, including Google, suspected that they were under a DoS attack recently, when what was really going on was the result of a different kind of DoS: the Death of Superstar Michael Jackson. I think that he was a very talented performer, but his work was never personally important to me. (I’ll leave his own personal life alone.)
I remember seeing him live in the south of France, where I lived from 1987-89. It was my then-girlfriend’s idea/insistence that we go. It was more her thing than mine, although I was impressed by the show he put on. I also remember illustrious keyboard player Greg Phillinganes being in the band.
Doing some web research, I see that it must have been part of the Bad tour. But the only list of dates for that tour that I can find shows only two French dates, both in Paris.
Is my memory playing tricks on me? Two things make me believe that it isn’t, and that I really did see MJ. First, I see open dates both immediately before and immediately after the Paris shows, so it’s logistically plausible that there were some other French dates. Second, I do remember Greg Phillinganes was in the band – I recognized his name from his work with other musicians – and that checks out.
Anyway, RIP MJ. We’ll always have Nice, or wherever it was.
Avoiding Infinite Reproach
June 24, 2009
There are many books I should have read, but haven’t. Among them is Infinite Jest. I recently found Infinite Summer, a project based on the challenge: “Join endurance bibliophiles from around the world in reading Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd.”
IJ is currently in my Amazon shopping cart, but I’m inclined to remove it. I’m more inclined to do so after reading an NPR blog post about The Shelf Of Constant Reproach: “that shelf filled with books you meant to read or, more likely, fully intend to read some day.” I suspect that many people have IJ on their reproach shelf, and I don’t think I’ll join them just yet.
So, on with The Little Book which is a lot longer than its title, but rather shorter than IJ.
Digging the Castle Island Beach
June 19, 2009
Wednesday was Bunker Hill Day, and so Boston Public Schools were closed. A bunch of us went to Castle Island in South Boston.
Some of the kids decided to build a seawater “bath.” Maddie (my 5yo daughter) was one of the kids on the project from start to finish. The photo shows the start. The finish would have come more quickly were it not for the following cycle:
- Let’s make a river from the sea to the bath.
- But water flows downhill [i.e. from bath to sea, rather than vice versa].
- Build a damn [to stop the water flowing out of the bath and into the sea].
- Once the damn was established, it was back to step 1.
I’m glad that real construction projects in Boston are better-managed…
Celebrating the Local
June 9, 2009
West Roxbury is local to us, although we actually live in Roslindale. Maddie takes classes at the Center for Asian Martial Arts in West Roxbury (it moved from Roslindale at the start of this year). She had her 5th birthday party at the center on Saturday. It went very well, mainly thanks to the instructors who made the party fun for the crowd of kids (mostly girls of 5 or 6).
Another local business that contributed to the success of the party is the Sugar Bakery. They did the usual excellent job with the cake.
Sunday saw my first visit to Seek Books (previously). I liked this recently-opened second-hand science fiction bookstore very much. It packs a lot of inventory into a smallish store, managing to be cozy rather than cramped. I bought an as-new paperback of Sabriel for $4.
Then it was off to Macy’s to pick up some wine. There were a couple of wines out for tasting. I particularly liked the “El Miracle,” a blend of Tempranillo and Shiraz.
We visited a bunch of other local businesses over the weekend, but as far as the specifics go, I’ll leave it at wine, cake, books, and martial arts.
Screenprint by Scott Saw
June 5, 2009
Artist Scott Saw is getting into screenprinting. I’m tempted by Deep Space, a limited edition print on black acid-free paper.
The web is great for visual art. As a consumer, I get to “sample” a lot of it online. I hope that it’s great for the artists as well, since they can easily give out samples. But you can’t beat the real thing, preferably signed by the artist, for your wall.
Travel Posters
June 2, 2009
The Boston Public Library is running an exhibition of travel posters. The site of the exhibition is Flickr. The collection spans many destinations, but I find this poster particularly pleasing and appropriate.
Good for the BPL!
The Geek According to Facebook Quiz
May 19, 2009
I’ve been taking too many Facebook quizzes of late. Much of the time, I’ve been following in the Facebooksteps of my usually-more-serious wife. I usually do better than her.
She was disgusted that she scored only 2/10 on the Geek Level quiz. I took it and got 7/10: studious. I rather like the sketch of the result.
Other quiz outcomes include my being Yale (among the Ivy League, strange since wife went to Yale and ended up as a “lesser ivy” on the quiz), being McCoy (among the characters from Star Trek classic, whereas my wife, the medic in the family, was some other crew member), and being the Dude (among cult movie characters). In the unlikely event that you want more, I’ll link to my Facebook profile.
