THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

I am an infrequent blogger now, having said most of what I have wanted to say, but occasionally I am moved to comment further.

In the world of sports, relatively speaking, life is short. Any number of factors can blight athletic careers: injury, poor conditioning, drugs/booze, psychological blocks---and age.

We live in a titan age of superb athleticism where emphasis on physical fitness and health surveillance on a regular basis have created a new breed of athletes. It's a list covering many sports: Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Mickey Cabrera, Albert Pujols, Derek Jeter, Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovich, Cristano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi---add your own to the list.

Their bodies are minutely-tuned mechanisms and are as fragile as eggs out of the crate. A tweak here, a spasm there, suddenly they are losing efficiency.

Then the psychological turn of the screw can happen. Perhaps an accident leads to a temporary sidelining and loss of agility. The athlete returns to his sport and gets beaten by a player to whom he has never lost. Or suddenly cannnot putt or find the natural rhythm of his swing.

Once he has lost his invulnerability, strange things begin to happen. He cannot hit or can't keep the ball within the fairway or the tennis court sidelines; Then he starts to lose to people to whom he has never lost before
---all kinds of disarray from physical to psychological factors take place.

Then add in age and the gradual (or sometimes rapid) dimunition of your skill.

We are seeing many examples in sports today.

Look at Tiger Woods whose body is suddenly betraying him so that he no longer dominates the field and has to take time off to repair that body. And a lot of young tigers of the fairway are waiting to pounce and take over his crown.

Look at Rafa Nadal, no doubt the greatest clay court player in the history of tennis. He has lost three straight clay tournaments, the latest of which, Barcelona, he had won seven times in a row, but this year he lost to another Spaniard, Nicolas Almagro, to whom he had never lost. He has also suffered from some traumatic knee injuries over the years due to the excessive torque he exerts on his knees, and such traumas affect your game. As in golf, a host of talented challengers are waiting to seize his crown.

Or, arguably, the best tennis player of all time, Roger Federer, reviving this year, currently ranked fourth, but still losing to people who a few years ago couldn't touch him.

In baseball, Albert Pujols, having signed two years ago, a ten-year contract to swirch from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Anaheim Angels at age thirty-two, went through two disappointing (by his standards) injury-prone years but seems to be off to a fast start this year. In terms of a ten-year contract, how effective and efficient will he be in seven or eight years? (Look at the example of Alex Rogriguez.)

No, many gods exist in sports in this golden (as in money) age of sports, but I think we are beginning to see the twilight for many of these gods. Such is the stuff of life...Sic transit gloria.

WELL, GET BACK, WHERE YOU ONCE BELONGED

                      

Last night, thanks to C.B.S., I turned back the clock to that signal night of February 9, 1960 when The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and changed the popular musical landscape indelibly.  For two hours I was in a state of minor ecstasy, seeing the original “Fab Five” in black and white, then seeing the surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, both in well-preserved seventies, in the audience and then performing. In addition to  the dynamic duo, the TV audience witnessed a plethora of today’s stars, from pop, to country, to hard rock, pay tribute to The Beatles, playing and singing their songs.

You could see the combination of reverence, appreciation and musical kicks on that C.B.S. stage last night, plus luminaries of stage and screen recapturing their lost youth. It was a love fest, a tribute to the group, more than any other, who made rock n’ roll a household word.

When my wife and I sat with the three of my four kids who were then born to watch that Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, we were in our mid thirties and simply looking to see what all the fuss from England was about. We were the younger edge of the “square” generations grown up on swing and jazz music. As a jazz buff, I had always liked what was known in the old racist days as “race music”, the rhythm and blues of the early pioneers of what became r & b. I dug Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Fats Domino, Leadbelly and the southern blues /folk school and was beginning to like the sounds of that white kid from Memphis who made some of those great black and blue sounds. By the time that show was over, I knew I was witnessing a force of nature, the way those kids synthesized the early "r&b” sounds and gave it their own inimitable twist.

So, thanks and plaudits, C.B.S., for transporting us back in time and reminding us what a legacy and library of great songs The Beatles bequeathed us. Their songs sounded great at the time---and equally well in the hands of modern artists who stamped their songs with their own mark. We got back to where we belonged and heard great music, better than ever after fifty years.  And , let me tell you, those two seventy-year-olds show eternally young souls.

I had a blast from the past and a big wind from today.

YOU, YOU DIRTY RAT!

Remember that line from an old Jimmy Cagney gangster movie, snarled just before he shot the stoolie who gave him away?  Well, I'm repeating it, only literally.

There are many joys to living in southwestern Florida, the best of which is probably the most consistent good weather in the country. Yes, the summers are a steam bath usually, but in a good part of the country you get really hot summers. But, when the big freeze occurs up north, we only get a moderate bit of cooler weather.

But one disadvantage is we have is an incredible number of rodents, snakes and other varmints. As my handyman put it, "Those critters like the good weather, too." One of the nastiest rodents is the palm rat which, as the name implies, loves to inhabit and gambol in the palm trees. Since I live on a golf course fringed with many palms, plus we planted some when we built the house, we have plenty of palm rats. These are nasties with long tails and bodies from 4"-7" and are quite repulsive.

In our first year in the house, we were invaded by palm rats, who happily leave the palms for the warmth of a house and whatever they can grub upon.  Fortunately, they did not get into the living quarters of our house. Living on an island we have to have two storeys, the bottom storey of which is a garage and large storage area because you are not allowed, because of flood possibilities in hurricane season, to live in the lower portion.  A different handyman we had at the time thought he hear a scurrying sound in the insulation and checked out the insulation in the basement which contained batting material held up by a nylon scrim. One of these lovelies RAN DOWN HIS ARM and scurried away. He confesssed, sheepishly, that he screamed. I replied that I would have had to change my underwear if that happened to me!  He found a whole family of the little monsters and got rid of them. We then had the basement sealed off, covvering all the beams.

Things were fine until a couple of weeks ago when I went into our "powder room" to use the facilities and was assailed by a rank decaying odor. It went away but returned last week with a vengeance, especially in the stairwell leading from the basement-garage to the main house. Because of droppings on tthe floor in a certain area of the basement, I had made the bad mistake of using De-Con a couple weeks before instead of setting multiple traps---a mistake my wife has forcibly reminded me of many times this week---and the De-Con poisoned the rats and they crawled away to die.  The handyman had to cut into several areas of drywall and, bingo, he found two biggies in a pool of urine and excrement, quite dead.  He thought they were male and female, and we hope they had not mated to reproduce a colony of babies.

After opening up the garage and basement area totally, garage doors and sliding glass doors and after multiple spraying of Lysol, the smell has almost disappeared. You still get faint whiffs in the stairwell, but it is disappearing. Fortunately, the living area has been fine, although we opened up windows in the bathrooms just to be sure and left them open for several days.

I'm pleased to report my wife is speaking to me again.

We are going to set multiple traps in the various rooms in the garage-basement. The handyman is going to check out all the walls and make sure any small opening, even large cracks, are filled with a plastic goop that even palm rats can't eat though.

I'm on a mission to get those dirty rats!

IN RETROSPECT: JFK

Newspapers and blogs have been filled with reminiscences of Where-I-Was-When-JFK-Died. It was a day etched in our psyches, never to be forgotten.. A plethora of articles on JFK abound these last few weeks, ranging form total adulation to poo-pooing him as a failure as President. I recommend in today's New York Times an analysis on the Op-Ed page by the noted historian Robert Dallek which offers a balanced perspective on his presidency.

One of the salient points made by Robert Dallek was the power of John F. Kennedy's charisma, which was more than charm and magnetism but a positive force to inspire. Who can ever forget his Inaugural speech and the famous "Ask not what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country"? Or "Ich bin ein Berliner."  Such were words that elevated us. He was the young President: as he pointed out in his Inaugural address, the first born in this century (the 20th) and thereby a fresh wind blowing in our stale air.

So, forget the womanizing, the lack of legislative action, the cautious politicking of not antagonizing the southern segregationists but remember the Camelot image of the young knight who had the potential to inspire our lives. If he had lived, I believe he would have accomplished many actions to inspire and direct us as a force in the world. I believe he would have emerged as a powerful force for attainment and good.

In these divisive times, I wish for a leader with that inspiring power.

DAYS OF OUR LIVES

Today, November 19, 2013 is an anniversary date in American history and my personal history.

In American history, 150 years ago Abraham Lincoln, on a cold foggy day in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania gave a two minute speech which has become the most famous speech ever delivered and is revered throughout the world.

In my personal history, today is the first anniversary of the death of a beloved nephew, suddenly and unexpectedly and shockingly taken from his and my family.  My wife and I, plus my wife’s sister and her husband, who were good friends of this nephew, are taking his widow to dinner tonight so that she will have companionship and comfort on such a dreadful anniversary.

All of which got me thinking about other signal days in our lives, many of which were shocking. Oh, we remember the good days, too, like the day of a marriage or the birth of children or grandchildren. But, frequently, we remember the horror days, such as, if you are old enough to remember---and I am---December 7, 1941 or November 22, 1963 or September 11, 2001.

These were days that altered our lives, changed our modes of thinking, rewired our emotional responses and modified our lives.

Pearl Harbor Day began a war for America that altered many lives. It cost me the life of a brother and almost a second brother.  It did the same to millions of Americans. It started a chain reaction, not only with the atom bomb, but in world politics that we are still feeling today.

John F. Kennedy’s assassination, in the immortal words of Don McLean, was “the day the music died”: the day the last remnant of our innocence was lost, never to be regained. The Great American Dream vanished in three shots on a Dallas street.

The Twin Towers tragedy tumbled down the last of our smug certitude that we were invulnerable and that our power and might could overcome all obstacles.

We are wandering in darkness, I feel sometimes, not knowing where we are or where we go. I pray we can find some better days of our lives.

ANOTHER SATURDAY MORNING SERIAL

Most of you are too young to remember Saturday Morning Serials that always preceded the Saturday Western or action film.

Once again Hairbreadth Harry and his merry band (a.k.a John Boehner and Republican stalwarts) have caught the fair maiden just as she was toppling over the precipice---in spite of the efforts of the archvillain, Crabby Appleton (a.k.a. Ted Cruz) to thwart the rescue. How many times have we seen this tired old Saturday Morning serial?

And, once again, a bandaid has been applied on a wound requiring stitches and layers of dressing. Will we apply another bandaid in February, or, hope springing eternal in the human breast, will the politicos get serious and really get down to work in a bi-partisan effort to govern; yes, I said govern! Do you remember that word? It’s what governments, by definition, are supposed to do, In the case of Congress, govern means legislate, and legislate means thinking out courses of action for the good of all the people and enacting these actions into law.

I don’t know if it can happen in view of the fractured schismatic cesspool which Congress has become. The ability to sit down seriously together and find common ground seems to be a lost art. I hope I’m wrong.

I love America---and I have never been more ashamed of her government. The rest of the world must be shaking their heads and saying, “What the hell has happened over there?  Have they lost their senses?” The answer, apparently, is yes. How a power of our magnitude can lose its way so violently has to frighten the rest of the world. As the President inferred, our enemies are licking their chops; our competitors are rubbing their hands with glee; our friends are shaking their heads in sorrow. It is not a pretty sight.

The Republicans have rarely stood lower in public esteem, although the Democrats and the President aren’t a helluva lot better in ratings. I note that Big Business America, the bankroll for the G.O.P., is alarmed at the fractious nature of their party and its vociferous active minority called the Tea Party and want to start putting some money into campaigns to support more reasonable candidates. But then you have the cavernous deep pockets of the Koch Brothers supporting the Tea Party. I hope Big Business puts its money where its mouth is.

As an alcoholic attests at an AA meeting, admit we have been drunk and now are seeking sober ways. We have to get back on the path of responsible government. I pray it’s not too late.

UNDER THE BIG TENT

I suppose you could call what is going on in Congress a carnival or circus, except for the fact that circuses and carnivals are supposed to be fun. This display of misplaced intransigence and face-saving by the Republicans reminds me of the old adage about the lunatics running the asylum.

How a minority can hold a country hostage is a travesty against democracy.  The antics of the ringleader and prime voice of this opposition, Senator Ted Cruz, Canadian-born but an American citizen, make one think he is really an alien from outer space.  Cruz is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Princeton and a Cum Laude lawyer from Harvard Law School, impressive credentials but somewhere along the line his natural conservatism skewed into radical demagoguery fed by a massive ego. But he has a cadre of fellow Tea Partyites in the House, as well as the Senate, who go along with his garish side show. A House Leader who has forgotten how to lead doesn’t help.

America needs contrasting parties: Conservatives vs. Liberals, Federalism vs. States Rights, Pro-Life vs. Choice, Big Spenders vs. Austerity Hawks.  This is how democracy is supposed to work. Above all, however, is the National Interest where the good of the country is first priority. That national interest is being violated by the intransigence that refuses to fund the government and to increase the debt limit, Once more, in the eyes of the world, the American limousine is seen careening toward a deep abyss, and they must shake their heads and wonder.

Oh, I believe at the last possible minute, the debt crisis will be averted, probably with some temporary measure which will have to be dealt with again in the near future. This is not the way to run a government. 

In a divided government such as we have, true bi-partisanship has to be the answer, Lots of things need attention: Obamacare, tax reform, job creation, social security, infrastructure renovation and other pressing problems. Instead of holding the government hostage, pass the necessary legislation to fund the government, raise the debt ceiling and then form a bi-partisan commission to study and make recommendations for our many priorities. Work together, compromise but keep the good of the country the number one priority.

It used to work that way. Have we changed that much? Give it a try. Let’s try statesmanship and end the circus.