THE NEW AND THE OLD

As I said in my last blog, Wimbledon is in full swing, and my wife and I watch it by the hour. The coverage is fantastic with a host of good and knowledgeable announcers (or presenters, as the Brits call them), the king of whom is John McEnroe. By the time of the semis and finals next weekend, McEnroe will have moved from BBC to NBC to fulfill his commitment to American television. McEnroe, more than all the others, has the ability to transmit what is happpening in the players' heads, and some of his comments seem almost prophetic.

I won't bore you with any more match details, because most people aren't as nutty about the game as we are. I do want to comment, however, on the Williams Sisters. Many times in the past, I felt they have played the race card too often, especially Serena, but I do have to agree with Serena's recent complaint that they are not getting enough time on the "show courts", Centre Court and Court #1. Serena is, after all, the defending champion---yet she has only played once on those major courts. Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic have played on these venues several times.

I readily admit to being a male chauvinist on tennis in that men's matches are usually more exciting to watch, although this year several of the women's matches have been truly suspenseful. In general, due to the power, variety and length (five sets potential for men against three set maximum for women), the guys have more excting matches.

Wimbledon is slowly evolving, but the Old Boy Network is still in charge and has definite ideas on what they want. How many times at the U.S. Open, when you survey the crowd, do you see a liberal sprinkling of suits and dresses? Of course, Wimbledon has the Royal Box with obvious dress requirements, but even beyond the Royal Box, some suits and dresses with big hats, like the Kentucky Derby, are in vogue.

Doubtless, the Williams sisters collide with the old traditions and values. Usually, they are very tactful and play the game, literally and figuratively. In this recent case, Serena did not rant and shout but quietly noted by inference that she and Venus felt they were not being featured enough on the show courts.

It will be fascinating to see what happens in the future. The papers here are noting Serena's complaint, and commentators are weighing in. Tradition vs. the New World. It could be,as Arte Johnson used to say on "Laugh-in", VERRRRRRRY INTERESTING!

SETTLING IN IN OLD BLIGHTY

I am alive and taking nourishment in England. My wife and I arrived Monday morning at 7:15 a.m. G.M.T. (2:15 a.m. E.D.T.). We took a nap in the afternoon and then stayed up to 10:00 p.m. when we crashed and slept well. I must have had a small bout of food poisoning which had me barfing, followed by the shakes, right after I went to bed. But the shakes didn't last long and then I slept well. I've been fine ever since.

We went on a big shop yesterday at one of the finer supermarkets in England called Waitrose. They cost a bit more, but the quality is excellent. Let me tell you, we all gripe at food costs at home, but, wow, they are really high here. The real bargain are English strawberries and raspberries which are in season and at reasonable prices.

The weather is very English; in a word, variable: lots of showers mixed in with patches of sunshine, in the low sixties. After weeks in the nineties in Florida, it's a welcome change. This weekend it is supposed to be fair and in the low eighties. That we'll take, with pleasure.

We are in hog heaven, watching superb coverage in depth every afternoon of Wimbledon. The announcing is excellent: these commentators, including John McEnroe, know just what to say and when to say it. They are not afraid of some golden silence and letting the action speak for itself. Yesterday was one of the finest women's matches we've ever seen when Venus Williams barely prevailed in three sets over Kimiko Date-Krumm. The combined ages of the two women were 71 (Date-Krumm, 40; Venus, 31), but they played and moved like kids. Date-Krumm almost blew her off the courts in the first set, leading 5-1, when Venus rallied, took it to a tiebreaker and then lost. Venus won the second set 6-3, leading to a suspenseful third set which Venus won 8-6. We'll be glued to the box through the weekend after next with this spectacle.

So, we are settling in, adjusting to a different but enjoyable life style. We have many friends here and will soon be in touch with them, plus we have my wife's sister and husband nearby, and we have good times together.

Our small house is in good shape: we had German students renting it for nine months, and they took good care of it. Our small but lovely garden is in top form. You don't know what flowers are until you see English gardens. The temperate climate here with rain plus a chalky soil make roses look as big as peonies, for example.

The economy here is hurting with lots of austerity measures. Almost everything you buy has a V.A.T. (Value-Added Tax). It used to be 17.5% but is now 20% and really adds substantially to the cost of everything. For example, let's say you bought metal curtain rods. The metal producer pays V.A.T.; so does the middleman/distributor; and then the retailer tacks it on. You get the idea...

So, we are back in business here. More soon.

JUST BEFORE I GO...

This will be my last blog for awhile, as we are preparing to go to England for the summer. My British-born wife, an American citizen for many years, inherited in 1994, after the death of her parents, a small retirement house in The Meads, a former village now part of Eastbourne, E. Sussex, 17 miles east of Brighton, 70 miles south of London, on the English Channel. We leave Sunday, June 19 and will return September 11 ( no, I'm sure security will be at its max that day.). We're going to put the house up for sale this summer, and future visits will be shorter, and we should have no problems in the future finding short-term rental apartments.

All I can do is hope that somehow the economic malaise of today improves, but I don't see many signs that the polarized politics of today will improve enough for much good to be accomplished. The Republicans don't want to do anything to help the President, and their sole mantra is "Beat him Big in 2012". The Democrats aren't a helluva lot better in offering constructive programs (except to defend Medicare to the death), and even the President seems caught up in the quicksand of being the great compromiser and consensus builder. Where I'm going this summer, politically isn't any better---maybe worse as the austerity measures of the Conservative government have taken affect.

If the world is too much with you and you want a brief escape, go see "Midnight in Paris", the latest Woody Allen film starring Owen Wilson. It is not one of those Woody-being-neurotic-and-kvetching films. It is really an old-fashioned Romantic Comedy. The photography of Paris is like old post cards with every site in Paris shown, day and night, rain or shine. Woody's music, as he is jazz-oriented (like I am), is spot-on. Owen Wilson is also spot-on as a frustrated young American screenwriter who wants to write the great American novel. He is magically transported back to the twenties where he hobnobs with Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso, Gertrude Stein and the great artistic circles of Paris of that era. The character acting is perfect. It is funny, tender and, best of all, entertaining. I've said enough: go see it and enjoy a break from our tense world.

I'll be back at you soon. Have a good summer.

HOW TO KNOW YOU'RE OLD

I know there are many symptoms of old age: arthritic pain, senior moments, balance problems---you know, the usual suspects. But, if you really want to know you are obsolete, go into an Apple store.

Twenty miles south of us is a mega-mall called Coconut Point with every store you've ever heard of---and quite a few you don't know. My wife and I drove there Saturday because I needed to go to the Apple Store to check out my iPod.

Last summer in England, I cleverly knocked a glass of red wine with my elbow and saturated my iPod. I desperately and immediately sopped ip up with paper towels. It played in a muted way briefly and then conked out. I rarely use it here since I have it on my computer, but I figured, if I were to use it in England this summer, I better see if it were salvageable or needed replacement, so to the Apple I went.

We walked into this chromium and glass palace, a high-tech heaven, where the first thing I noticed was that I was light years older than anyone else in the place. At least 75% were teenagers or younger. and most of the remaining 25% were probably their parents.

I blithely walked up to one of the blue t-shirted floor walkers and started to explain my problem. He politely cut me short and explained I had "to make an appointment" and took me to the back of a store where another attendant, who looked seventeen, registered me on his iPad and informed me it would be twenty minutes before anyone would be available to help me.

We looked around the store, laid out in a series of tables filled with laptops, iPads and iPods, chockablock with people and sales personnel, testing, playing and explaining the variety of wares. It became increasingly apparent that this relatively young company is a sellers market. How many products do you know that generate 20 billion ($20,000,000,000!!!) in sales their first year---but that is exactly what the iPad did! They are brilliant marketers, creating a mystique that they are a special world, and you are lucky to be able to partake of it.

Within the twenty minutes, a sales rep came up to me. He in turn turned me over to another rep, who turned me over to another---a real double play. The first rep took care of my old iPod; the second sold me on the new iPod; the third explained it to my wife and me. I ended up with an iPod Nano and. by recycling my old red-wined iPod,got a very good deal on this new one. It is about 1 1/4" square, a quarter of the size of my previous iPod and has four times the capacity!

Now I know I'm truly obsolete! But, wow, I'll play a megaton of music.

I HEAR YOU, BIG BROTHER

“By drastically expanding the scope of freely available information, the Internet has fundamentally altered the concept of privacy as well as how people form opinions of anything and, perhaps more significantly, anyone. The proliferation of blogs, online forums, and social media has created a space for fruitful exchanges of information between people across the globe. While readers often take what they find seriously, such content should not always be considered at face value. When it comes to information about people, the Internet and search engines often call up information that is private, untrue, or out of context.”

This quotation is from an article by Deanna Glick on AOL entitled “Weiner Provides Valuable Lesson About Online Privacy”. It rings true to me,

As one of the “proliferation of blogs” types she mentions, the article caught my attention. Anyone who has read my blogs has seen me decry the loss of privacy in the cyberworld, especially in the form of the social networks. I am an old fogy who refuses to join the world of Facebook and Twitter because of these privacy concerns. I have family and friends who are in the social networks, and I understand it’s a good way to keep up or rekindle friendships, but it is not for me. I’ll find other ways, thank you, to keep up with friends or refind old ones.

The world of the computer and the internet have put us in a new and exciting Age of Information. In the future when history is written, or whatever the future form of communication will be, we will be part of this Age of Information, just as people in the nineteenth century were part of the Age of the Industrial Revolution. It has created miracles and wonders for our lives. But with every blessing comes the flipside, and ours is loss of privacy.

All kinds of weirdos are out there: horny, frustrated, venomous, lonely---you choose the adjective---and they want the world to know it. It is a cry of frustration or a plea for attention. Look at Representative Weiner, a man of intelligence and ability, who has just screwed up his life by exposing himself, literally and figuratively, by his email “mistake”. On the net, you can’t take back your mistakes, as he so grievously discovered.

George Orwell in “1984” described “Big Brother”, the super-tyrant who controls our lives. In the cyberworld Big Brother lurks, and we all hear his footsteps too close and too often. Privacy is our last refuge. Let’s keep the door locked when we hear those footsteps.

WAY TO GO, DELTA

Those wonderful folks who bring you Delta Airlines have struck another blow for clumsy inept public relations by the recent to-do about charging soldiers returning from Afghanistan $2800 in excess baggage charges. It isn't enough that these soldiers have undergone the trauma of service in that hellhole, but then they have to be soaked by "America's favorite airline". I read in the "Huffington Post" that Delta made 3.7 billion in ancillary revenue in 2010 for food, drink and baggage--a very nice profit center, I would say.

34 soldiers were charge the $2800.00. A Sgt. Robert O'Hair did a Youtube interview and told of his charge of $200.00 for the fourth bag---his weapons case.

Delta better smarten up and allow airport reservation personnel to have some freedom to exert common sense. Probably most of that personnel have a thick procedural guide book spelling out the operating procedure, and the personnel are probably scared shitless to violate its sacred principles. Common sense and decency should still dictate action on the spot.

How to make friends and influence business, the Delta way. Not the right way.

THE WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND

Here we go again. I wrote a blog last October about Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) holding up the nomination to the Federal Reserve Board of Peter Diamond, a Nobel Prize winner and authority on joblessness, expressing my frustration that a man of this intellectual quality and with specific gifts to analyze the problems of joblessness in this threatened economy should have his nomination blocked.

Well, people, Dick Shelby and a bunch of bloody-minded Republicans and, to be fair, a lacklustre feeble effort by the Obama administration in support of their nominee have caused Peter Diamond, after fourteen months of frustration, to withdraw his name. Shelby smugly stated that he hoped the administration would come up with someone with "more bipartisan appeal".

Nice work, everybody. It symbolizes the state of inaction and impasse currently the standard oerating procedure in Washington. Just play politics, postphone important decisions until the election. The Republicans don't want to do anything that might give credit to the Obama administration. But Obama and his people aren't a helluva lot better right now in putting everything aside, including job stimulus, to deal with the deficit. I know the deficit is important---but job creation can help to get things going, spark the economy and improve the deficit situation. All we have is intransigence, scolding each other---and not getting anything done.

Let's get off this merry-go-round and let's go somewhere! In the meantime, a brainy man named Peter Diamond, who might have some good ideas, is walking away. It's a bloody shame.

WHAT A TRIUMVIRATE IN A NEW WORLD

My favorite sport is tennis, and what a smorgasbord of talent and great matches was on display in the just completed French Open. To no surprise, Rafa Nadal, the number one player in the world (but just barely) maintained his number one ranking by beating Roger Federer in a suspensful match 7-5, 7-6 (3), 5-7, 6-1. Every point was fought as two gladiators fought to the death for the first three sets before fatigue and Nadal's unrelenting pressure broke open the last set.

It is a real treat to have two players of the stature of Nadal and Federer---and now made a triumvirate by the fantastic streak of Novak Djokovic who won 43 straight matches from December of last year until beaten by Roger Federer in the French semi-finals two days ago. If Federer had beaten Nadal in the finals, Djokovic would have attained the number one ranking.

I have been a tennis buff since my early teens when tennis replaced baseball as my favorite playing sport. We have had a galaxy of stars over the years, but I think the present period, with these three collosi bestriding the tennis world has the greatest depth of talent I've ever seen. Of course, the game has radically changed since I was a boy. From the days of wooden racquets with Jack Kramer and Pancho Gonzalez or the Aussies Sedgman, Laver and Newcombe,or John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker, to name a few, the game has morphed into a new dimension.It produced Sampras, Agassi and then the latest crew headed by the triumvirate.

Why and how? Several reasons: new equipment: major innovations in space-age materials to create new racquets with the velocity (it seems sometimes) of guns; new mixtures of nylon ang gut strings in new configurations; the incredible emphasis on top physical conditioning of today which has created a new breed of fit warriors;
the mechanics of the game where it has even changed the way the ball is struck. In the old days, flat line drives and "cuts" with emphasis on serve and charge the net to volley were the standard operating procedures. You hit the ball with a "shaking hands" eastern grip or a modified slight turn of the racquet to a Continental grip for serving or volleying or a more pronounced turn of the wrist for a backhand. Now they hit with Western grip where the racquet is turned over in the hand and the swing, instead of pointing to the net, ends up somewhere over your head, while the ball rockets into the opponent;s court and has a high kick when it lands. It is a totally different game. If I tried to play it, I'd get killed!

And then you reach 2011 with this dominant triumvirate, and,in the near background moving up fast, are a host of young giants ranging from 6'5' to 6'9" who are readying for a challenge. And they are all fast and fit!

Ah, it's fun to be alive and see this treasure trove of talent. It's going to get even better---you watch.

THE ULTIMATE GAME

I note that Sukanya Roy, a fourteen-year-old Indian-American girl, won the National Spelling Bee last night. The winning word was CYMOTRICIOUS, meaning "having wavy hair", as any idiot should know. I often describe myself as being cymotricious. O.K., I'll put out my funny cigarette and get serious.

I happened to watch some of this spelling bee at lunchtime on ESPN2, while I was hoping to see the French Open, but found it fascinating and. in its unique way, suspensful. Sukanya Roy was the fourth straight Indian-American winner of this event. By far the largest proportion of contestants were of Indian or Oriental descent.

Why do I note this? Am I a racist? Hell no, it simply goes to show that the work ethic and desire of students whose parents had to struggle to achieve the "American Dream" (which is currently a bit of a nightmare, I might observe) passed on these achieving genes to their progeny. For many years, it's been the same story: at most high school graduations, the valedictorian of the class is Indian- or Oriental-descended. It has been this way for thirty years or more. I remember when my kids graduated from high school in Ohio thirty-odd years ago, the valedictorian was either Korean, Chinese or Indian.

What do we have to do to light this kind of fire in other kids, Afro-American or Caucasian? I know there are many notable exceptions, but as a rule my theorem holds true. I also realize that in today's world where stay-at-home moms are a rarity and both parents are working and struggling to make ends meet it is not so simple. I know Arne Duncan, the excellent Secretary of Education, is fighting hard to lift academic standards, weed out deficient teachers and to challenge students and their parents to strive for excellence. If only we could make academic achievement as important as sports. And I love sports, but I try to remember they are games.

Achievement in life is the ultimate game. I hope more American kids from a wide range of backgrounds learn to play it well.