Last Day of the Month = Poetry

Pace

A peaceful ride at 5:30 in the dark morning,
it feels plenty fast enough at 60 miles per hour.
Snow-wrapped trees appear and disappear mutely
through our side windows;
no other cars share the four lane highway,
our world is void of all other motion.

A tanker truck barrels by on the right,
breaking the silent darkness
like a gleaming silver missile, intent on its target,
relegating me to the status of a bug in its path,
the afterburner of his taillights quickly becoming a speck
over the next knoll of blacktop.

The night has now been pierced,
and silence no longer envelops our short trip.
Now I feel we must get there, be done,
finish the job, join the multitude
that only finds meaning at an inhuman pace,
and my right foot races the engine past 75.

Baseball Hall breaks another barrier

The Hall of Fame in Cooperstown became significantly more diverse today.

The first woman selected for the baseball Hall of Fame is Effa Manley, an African-American. Effa Manley was owner of the Brooklyn/Newark Bears of the Negro Leagues into the 1950’s, a woman who loved baseball and was not afraid to challenge the established white major league owners who wanted to raid her team.

In one swift move, the Hall of Fame broke down all kinds of barriers, just like Effa did.

Once again, a member of the local baseball community had a hand in this. Jim Overmyer of Pittsfield, Massachussets published a major study of Manley and her team, Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles. Jim toils for a New York State agency in Albany, and was a member of the local Society of American Baseball Research chapter – the same chapter that championed George Davis of Cohoes, New York for the Hall in 1998.

Nice goin’, Jim!

Every Four Years in the snow

The Winter Olympics happen every four years. Once again, I swore that I would not watch hours of Olympic events every night. The television coverage is America-centric, the events happen hours before they are broadcast in eastern standard time, and then there are the constant commercials….It runs counter to my intent to reduce the time used up in front of a television.

But then that theme starts playing. The screen is filled with white snow, sharp skies, and all those colorful skiers slashing across the mountains. And I watch.

I even become a hockey fan every four years. Not because of the American team. They play the usual brand of dump-and-run hockey that predominates in the NHL: all the action happens along the boards between bodies smashing against each other, skates and sticks poking an an inert rubber puck. The European teams are more adept at stickhandling, passing, and strategic play. Much more fun to watch.

Add to that, the Finnish team was having a great run through the Torino Olympics. They allowed only two goals during the preliminary round and were undefeated. They out-skated the Czech team and beat the Canadians. Their key players led the Olympics in scoring and assists. The Finnish Lions became the darling team of the tournament.

So I flew the flag. I tracked the games on the internet. They knocked the American team out in the first round of the medal competition, 4-3. They then shut out the Russians, who had become a favorite for the gold. The final was an all-Scandinavian affair when the Swedes eliminated the Czech team. As the Helsinki Sanomat proclaimed, it doesn’t get any better than this. Nine million people in Sweden, five million in Finland, and nary a television set tuned in to anything else.

At 8AM this morning, my television set joins them for the gold medal hockey game. I could only watch the first two periods, and the score was 2-2 before I had to go off to church. The Swedish team snatched a quick goal in the first 10 seconds of the third period – and it was over, save for mad rushes by the Finns at the Swedish goalie over the final few minutes. To no avail.

All those beautiful winter pictures in the mountains. Skiiers slashing through fog and blizzard down the slalom; downhill racers going 75 miles an hour over the icy snow, and catching an edge; cross-country skiers poling down a track with sweat poring off their faces; distance skaters bent at the waste, one pulsing arm pulling them around a turn in the oval; ski jumpers pushing off the end of the ramp, leaning out over the hill, framed against the blue sky. Plenty of contrasts and sharp lines between glorious color.

Too bad it’s nearly over.

How I write

W.H. Auden: “At any given time, I have two things on my mind: a theme that interests me and a problem of verbal form, meter, diction, etc. The theme looks for the right form; the form looks for the right theme. When the two come together, I am able to start writing.”