Trumps and Chumps

      For two days here in Nova Scotia the provincial news has featured the story of a 12-year-old girl who wanted to break into a boys’ baseball team.  The manager, whom the newscasters did not interview, said that he didn’t coach girls.  But her father got hold of some provincial commission or other, and after a little wrangling, the girl was admitted to the team.

     All this was reported by a chirpy young lady, with shots of the girl tossing a baseball with her father, taking batting practice from him, and doing a lap around the field with the rest of the team.  She’s about as tall as the other boys, but tubby and slow.  She throws like a girl softballer, with that short snap throw from the ear, quick screen-pass style, all forearm.  Such throws don’t go far. They don’t have to, in women’s softball, where third-to-first is six feet shorter than home-to-first in men’s baseball, and when a typical fence is 190 feet down the line, a bit shorter than the Little League field at Williamsport

.  She chokes up on an aluminum bat, and swings with her arms -- no torque from the shoulders, back, hips, and legs.  In other words, she’s not much of a player, even at 12-year-old standards.

     The moral of the story, of course, is that you can’t have a boys’ team unless all the girls agree to let you, while you can and must have all the girls’ teams you can fill, regardless of what the boys want.  Said the girl, “This just proves that if you really want something, you should keep after it, even if somebody at first says ‘no’.”  I’d put it this way instead.  If you are a female right now in Canada or the United States, you don’t have to consult the common good, the needs or wishes or feelings of others, or the wealth of opportunities you already have.  There are plenty of softball teams here, and the whole nation is officially gaga over women’s sports.  Doesn’t matter.  Females are trumps.  When you play the queen of trumps, what difference does it make what other card is played?

      Same news program: the temperature has gone over 30 degrees (86 Fahrenheit).  Danger, danger!  “Keep your children indoors,” says the anchoress, a look of concern flashing across her eyes.  “If they do go outside, make sure they use lots of sunscreen.”  Ah, no matter that mankind has always endured a thing called “summer,” that children in used to love it and thrive in it, and that the thousands of fishermen and boatmen and contractors in the province are out working in the sun every day. No clue that sunscreen use and sheltering ourselves indoors have accompanied an increase in malignant melanoma, the only form of skin cancer that is truly dangerous.  Finally, no matter for the environment -- in Canada, understand, the environment is the closest thing to a state god there is.  Once you reach that magic mark on the thermometer, then of course we must turn to air conditioning.  Then there’s no talk about the waste of power or the unnecessary gases used in refrigeration.  Likewise, there is never any suggestion that electric clothes dryers are unnecessary, or that automatic transmissions should be done away with except for the elderly and infirm, or that it is a waste of space and energy to devote a large house to two professionals, or one, with no children (the birth rate in Quebec is 0.7).  I suspect that females – white-collar females with small or no families and indoor jobs -- are trumps here too.

     Then there was a report about a woman whose son was knifed to death in gang violence in Toronto.  The gangs are enjoying the run of cities like Toronto, Hamilton, and Vancouver, but you will never hear anything about why that is so.  The reporters did note that knifing deaths over the last four years have topped shooting deaths -- and drew the breathtakingly silly conclusion that knives too should be federally regulated, that there should be special penalties attached to acts of violence committed with a knife.  Can axes, clubs, and prussic acid be far behind?

     What was really noticeable about the woman’s family, and the other families interviewed for the same spot, was that they all smashed to smithereens.  No fathers were there, or were even mentioned.  Now people are dying because of this irresponsible nonchalance -- this official policy that states that a man may be a deadbeat father, but a woman’s abortions, divorces, out-of-wedlock births, multiple partners, and incompetent raising of her sons (and daughters) cannot be questioned. Even opponents of abortion say that their strongest argument is that it is bad for women.  In other words, they don’t contest that the Queen of trumps is the high card.  They only claim that they’re the ones holding it.  Females are trumps.

     The boys are doing even worse in Canadian schools than in American schools.  Their dropout rate is horrible -- but nobody cares.  Gee, it’s not as if men have actually invented anything critical to civilization, as, for instance – I am speaking historically -- civilization itself, the city and its complex systems of government and protection and division of labor.  No, the boys are the chumps, the butts of sad-sack jokes.  Females are trumps.

     Does it produce a lovely matriarchy, such as feminists invent for ancient Celts and Scythians? Hardly. Inner city Toronto, anyone?  Go to a penitentiary and ask the men there what their fathers were like, or where their fathers were when they were growing up.  But their ruined lives don’t matter.  There is no matriarchy, nor is any intended, if for nothing else than that the men check out, and the women do not really desire to govern them (as opposed simply to bossing them around; such women, and men, we will unfortunately always have with us), nor can they govern them anyway.  How can they, when evidently, using the feminist playbook, they cannot even teach boys?  Does that matter?  No.  Females – or I should say “well-to-do feminists” -- are trumps.

     And we men, who should be the heads of our families, what do we do about it?  We help the folly along, just to keep the peace, as if a great spiritual harridan had invaded the nation, one that must be appeased at all costs.  We are the chumps.  And women -- conservative, leftist, traditional, feminist, young and old -- despise us for it.  As they should, eh?

Comments

[mark]

Augustine defined sin as “the heart turned in on itself.”

Luther said the greatest expression of God’s wrath is His silence. He allows to go our own way. We prefer our sins to God and He allows the choice. St. Augustine said that the penalty of sin is sin. We choose sin and that sin is our punishment.

If I am lazy, being lazy exacts it’s own penalty. If I am gluttonous, then gluttony exacts its own penalty. If I am selfish, that selfishness exacts its own penalty.

Sin is the self turned in on itself. Look at athletes, celebrities, rock stars. When people get greater position, the ordinary rules of life seem waived; people think they can get away with it. The ego is fed and the self absorption grows, our natural narcissism expands to the point where perspective and sense is lost. And people do crazy stuff because it does not seem crazy in the bubble they live in.

Luther wrote about using reason. Between the believer and the unbeliever, you have to use reason. But I have long wondered at our ability to discern right from wrong using solely reason.

Reason is not absolute. We use it to justify abortion. It isn’t just that sin makes you stupid; sin makes you justify the unjustifiable. (Light has come into the world and men loved the darkness for their deeds were evil). For the sake of our sins, we reject the light, not just the light of Christ but the light in natural revelation.

I wonder if you can distinguish between unbelievers who accept natural revelation and those who reject natural revelation. Believers have a better shot at understanding morality than unbelievers. Unbelievers who accept natural revelation have a better shot at understanding morality than unbelievers who reject natural revelation. I wonder if we are coming to the end of Romans 1, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

[mark]

Augustine defined sin as “the heart turned in on itself.”

Luther said the greatest expression of God’s wrath is His silence. He allows to go our own way. We prefer our sins to God and He allows the choice. St. Augustine said that the penalty of sin is sin. We choose sin and that sin is our punishment.

If I am lazy, being lazy exacts it’s own penalty. If I am gluttonous, then gluttony exacts its own penalty. If I am selfish, that selfishness exacts its own penalty.

Sin is the self turned in on itself. Look at athletes, celebrities, rock stars. When people get greater position, the ordinary rules of life seem waived; people think they can get away with it. The ego is fed and the self absorption grows, our natural narcissism expands to the point where perspective and sense is lost. And people do crazy stuff because it does not seem crazy in the bubble they live in.

Luther wrote about using reason. Between the believer and the unbeliever, you have to use reason. But I have long wondered at our ability to discern right from wrong using solely reason.

Reason is not absolute. We use it to justify abortion. It isn’t just that sin makes you stupid; sin makes you justify the unjustifiable. (Light has come into the world and men loved the darkness for their deeds were evil). For the sake of our sins, we reject the light, not just the light of Christ but the light in natural revelation.

I wonder if you can distinguish between unbelievers who accept natural revelation and those who reject natural revelation. Believers have a better shot at understanding morality than unbelievers. Unbelievers who accept natural revelation have a better shot at understanding morality than unbelievers who reject natural revelation. I wonder if we are coming to the end of Romans 1, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

[Abigail]

Back here in Rhode Island, the local movie theater, under the sponsorship of a baseball player's wife's anti-skin-cancer foundation, is showing free movies weekly to get kids out of the sun.

Somebody decided that the problem with kids today is that they spend too much time outside, and not enough time inside being electronically entertained. It's beyond parody. And if that's not delicious enough for you, there's another series of free movies being shown...to encourage kids to read more. You have to bring in a book report to get in. No kidding.

[Beth]

84 degrees? I hate the heat, and I am prone to heat-sickness, and I don't even notice 84. Good grief.

Of course, the real point you are making is far more important. It's so hard to try to help young people understand what it means to be a man of God, a woman of God, in a culture that destroys all that is good in both sexes.

[GL]

They should rear children where I live and grew up. Hardly a summer goes by when the thermometer doesn't hit 100 and the humidity does the same. Through some miracle, we managed to cope. We used the magic arts -- otherwise known as drinking a lot of water and going swimming during the hottest part of the day -- and taking breaks in the shade.

My father would likely be thrown in jail in Canada were he rearing me today. From the time I was half grown, I worked outdoors with him during the hot summer days and, worse, while we had air conditioning in the house, he would never let us use it, because he hated working in the hot July and August heat all morning, coming in for lunch to air conditioning, and then going back out to work all afternoon in the even greater heat.

Tony, those Canadians sound like wimps. (But then, I hate the cold -- I couldn't wait to move away from well-below zero wind chills in northern Ohio when I moved from there back south a few years ago. ;-))

[Judy Warner]

There's been a small resurgence of rickets in recent years because children kept out of the sun don't get enough vitamin D. A disease vanquished many decades ago, returned because of people's loss of any sense of being a part of the natural environment. You'd think with all the "green" consciousness and evolutionary theory that people would figure out we need sunlight.

[Michael]

This post reminds me of a basketball game I played when I was younger. The opposing team was playing a girl as a small forward; I am a small forward (insofar as anything in basketball, shy of Muggsy Bogues, is "small"). I was pulled in the second quarter because my coach was worried that I was committing "sexual harrassment" by playing the girl the same way I would anyone else on the court: one hand back, the edge resting on her hip so I would know if she was moving and I could pursue or breakaway, at one point she turned in for a pass and I wrapped around her to intercept the ball, which involved raising my arm to chest level. God forbid my forearm made contact with her pubescent breasts. If I had pulled the same thing on a boy, the coach would have been pleased, but instead I got courtside "sensitivity training." I did not play the next year.

The real wonder of this phenomenon isn't that feminists play the "I'm-a-girl" trump card; they were using that card long before the rise and success of modern feminism. It's that they can now play the trump and then change the game from Spades to Hearts during the same hand--no trumps, but touching the queen is the last thing you want to do.

[GL]

As to sun, I would note that the old timers wore long sleeve shirts and wide brimmed hats during the summer. Sun is good, as are many things, in moderation, but, also like many things, can be taken in excess. Using some common sense is not to be disregarded or condemned -- same for wearing helmets when riding a bike and wearing seat belts in a car -- we didn't do that when I was a kid either, but my kids do both now.

The trick is to go and have fun, but use some common sense and take reasonable precautions. Let your kids play outside in the summer heat, but hydrate them and make sure they take adequate breaks and take reasonable steps to avoid prolonged exposure to the sun. Let your kids ride their bike, but use a helmet if the speeds are going to be high and surface hard. Take a summer road trip, but wear a seat belt. All things in moderation.

[Tim]

Just spent a weekend with my 85 year old Uncle. Passed on to him a recollection from my 85 year old Godmother who still lives round his childhood home; Charlestown Beach in Rhode Island - "One of my fondest pictures of childhood is of Jack (my Uncle) and your father during summers at the beach. All I ever saw them in were trunks of some sort; no shirt, shoes, etc. And they were as black as Indians and as happy as clams, coming inside only to eat and sleep." Oh how I envy them their noble, savage childhood. I struggle to provide something similar for my six year old. It is really hard and very countercultural. We've all become wimps. Where are the barrel chested men? Where are they being made? Thoughts of Teddy Roosevelt enter my mind.

[Nick]

Just a question, why didn't the manager quit and start a new team? Even in Canada they can't follow him forever can they?

[Judy Warner]

I can't remember if we've discussed this here before: Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Maybe it belongs on the imagination thread, but that's old. At any rate, it's in the tradition of the Dangerous Book for Boys we talked about a while back -- letting your kids do the things kids have always done.

[Michael]

Nick,

Baseball Nova Scotia, the regional body that dealt with this (poorly), mandated that he accept Olivia Palmer onto the team. Even if he tried to start a new team and get sanctioned by the league--and it's not sure his team would have been accepted to participate in competition--he would have had the same oversight committee. 'Twould be rather pointless to start a new team halfway through the season that could not participate in any meaningful competition. (He could start a team "for fun," but as he's been coaching this boys' club for 20 years, I think the club has specific purpose other than activity, unlike Little League, which is almost completely volunteer and everybody is admitted.)

[GL]

As to TR, see the photographs of him as a cowboy:

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/876071.html

Note the wide-brimmed hat and long-sleeved shirt.

[Michael]

GL,

When building houses in Mexico, I think I'm the only one to wear long sleeves on the work site--and the only one to regret it when getting back to camp. I have opted for tees this year. I will let you know how wise this was upon my return.

[GL]

Michael,

As to skin cancer, you might only know that several decades hence. I doubt either of us will be blogging at MC by then.

I have known men in their middle to late years who spent a lot of time in the sun as youths and who developed skin cancer later, including one of my own grandfathers and one of my wife's grandfather. It is real and promoting the notion that one should spend a lot of time out of doors in the sun without sun screen or protective clothing is irresponsible.

Again, the old timers (none of whom are on your work site) knew better. I have nothing against getting a tan, but, again, all things in moderation.

That we all know old men who spent a lot of time in the sun and have never had skin cancer does not mean that there is no connection, it only means that some folks are more likely than others to have the problem based on a multitude of factors.

By the way, when I spent time out working in the summer, I often did not wear a long-sleeved shirt, but I always did during haying season. I also always wore a cap, but not a hat. I pretty much have a permanent tan on the back of my neck, making me a . . . ;-)

[Judy Warner]

My understanding is that the skin cancer that develops from too much sun is the superficial kind that can be removed, while a connection between the deadly kind of skin cancer, melanomia, and sunlight has not been established.

I agree with someone above who said it's more interesting to discuss feminism than this, but somehow we got onto sun, and we already know what everybody here thinks about feminism, don't we?

[Stuart Koehl]

The answer, of course, was for the coach to say, "Of course, young lady. Tryouts are Saturday, we have 25 slots on the team, there are 75 kids trying out. If you are one of the 25 best, welcome to the team. But we have only one standard of excellence here, for both boys and girls. If that's OK with you, see you Saturday.

[Michael]

Stuart,

From what I understand, the team had already been formed when the girl wanted to join. In other words, she was breaking on to an already closed team; she was not merely passed over after tryouts.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

>>> I was pulled in the second quarter because my coach was worried that I was committing "sexual harrassment" by playing the girl the same way I would anyone else on the court: one hand back, the edge resting on her hip so I would know if she was moving and I could pursue or breakaway, at one point she turned in for a pass and I wrapped around her to intercept the ball, which involved raising my arm to chest level. <<<

Yeah, sure Michael. Ah-uh. I believe you.

I think your small forward was getting to be a big forward. ;-)

[Judy Warner]

It's really a double bind for men. Most men, I think, have an instinct for chivalrous behavior towards women, and to go along with their requests. But what do you do when what women (and girls) want is to destroy you? How do you resist without seeing and feeling boorish? Probably there have to be women who lead the way in condemning this, and who go to bat or go to court to stop it.

That's what has happened in the parallel case of racial quotas and racial bullying, where most whites acquiesce for fear of seeming racist, or of believing themselves racist. The way out is being led by Ward Connerly, who is black, and who has succeeded so far in overthrowing the quota regime in California, Washington State, and Michigan. He is going on to hold referenda in several more states. This could not have happened if he had been white.

There are women's groups who speak out against this kind of gender bullying, like the Independent Women's Forum, but I don't know of anyone who has tried to win a case in court. I don't know if it would even be possible to win a case in court, either on legal merits or on the idea of keeping a cute little girl from fulfilling her heart's desire because of mean old males.

[James Kabala]

Here's an interesting story of pioneer female baseball player from my home area, taken from the website OldeWebster.com. Any thoughts?

Nellie (Twardzik) Thompson, [Bartlett High School] Class of 1937, gained national recognition in the 1930's as the only girl in the USA to play on a high school boys' baseball team.

When the Bartlett sophomore announced her candidacy for the team, controversy followed. However, her skill at first base was recognized early by Coach George Finnegan who reportedly said "Nellie can throw across the diamond better than any player on the squad, and fields the position better than most boys."

Newsreels and both local and national newspapers praised the skill and natural athleticism of the sensational first baseman. Nellie played for Bartlett baseball teams as a sophomore, junior and senior, receiving letters all three years. As a senior, she was inducted into the Sportsmanship Brotherhood.

Nellie was also a top guard on the Bartlett girls' basketball team, again lettering all three years.

In addition to sports, she was a member of the Footlights Club, Glee Club, Junior Executive Committee, Jr. Prom Committee and Student Council as Vice President.

After graduation she became assistant director of the Crawford Field Playground, as well as co-director and coach in the newly formed Dudley Lassie League.

Nellie's extraordinary career includes being named recipient of the 2004 Stasia Czernicki Sportswoman Award sponsored by the Patriot Newspaper. Also, copies of her scrapbooks constitute the "Nellie Twardzik File" in the National Baseball Library at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

Nellie has two daughters, Patricia Biron and Joanne Avery, and a son, Joseph Thompson. A daughter Mary Ellen, died in 1957, and another daughter, Kathleen Bazinet, died in 1983. She has five grandchildren and a great granddaughter.

[Joe Long]

"She’s about as tall as the other boys, but tubby and slow. She throws like a girl softballer, with that short snap throw from the ear, quick screen-pass style, all forearm. Such throws don’t go far..."

Shades of Shannon Faulker, de-genderizer of The Citadel and forever my mental picture of the breed. She had more than a YEAR of litigation time in which to prepare herself for the physical rigors of the school she claimed to desperately desire a degree from and to identify with the ethos of; yet she arrived in such pathetic physical condition that even a college desperate to avoid embarassment couldn't avoid pulling her out of training for physical reasons. If I remember correctly, she couldn't run a mile or do ten push-ups. She left.

It was okay; her mission was already accomplished, because her mission all along had been to change the college, without even a pretense at transforming herself in line with its ethos.

Michael, your point-guard dilemna was nothing: girls insist on being wrestlers these days, and so far as I can tell, wrestling OR refusing to wrestle them is bound to constitute harassment. Or even "harris-ment".

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>From what I understand, the team had already been formed when the girl wanted to join. In other words, she was breaking on to an already closed team; she was not merely passed over after tryouts.<<<

Then the answer was not to say "I don't coach girls", but "I'm so sorry, but the window for tryouts has closed. You'll have to come back next year". The following year he can give my little speech. Unless, of course, the girl turns out to have a wicked forkball and can hit an inside slider. In which case, "Welcome to the team, young lady".

[Michael]

>>Michael, your point-guard dilemna was nothing: girls insist on being wrestlers these days, and so far as I can tell, wrestling OR refusing to wrestle them is bound to constitute harassment. Or even "harris-ment".<<

A number of my friends wrestled in high school, and they always bowed out of a match in the case of a female opponent. The wonder of this story is that their coach applauded such action and urged the rest of the team to follow this "honorable, manly" example.

Stuart,

If she has a forkball at 13, I imagine she might break the "gender barrier" in the MLB when she's drafted by the Devil Rays. They need all the help they can get, twenty-third chromosome be damned. I couldn't throw a decent slider until that age, and forkballs are a pain.

[Joe Long]

"Nellie can throw across the diamond better than any player on the squad, and fields the position better than most boys."

This, if it's true, is the difference between an offbeat and rather cool sports story, and the exploits of a gender-jihadhi: this girl was qualified, enough that coaches would merrily bend rules to GET her on the team.

A story from the segregation days: a University of Georgia recruiter is tricked into coming to see a football player, without knowlege that the kid is black. He grudgingly sits in the stands, watching the kid play a great game, and is heard to mutter:

"He can kick, but I can't recruit an African-American." (Yes, it was the fifties and he was a bigot, but I feel sure that's the term he used.)

"Well, he sure can throw, and it's a shame, but I can't recruit an African-American."

And a few minutes later, as the whole high school stadium is on its feet cheering, the inspired recruiter is heard enthusiastically shouting:

"Would you people just LOOK at that INDIAN run!"

[Judy Warner]

Gender-jihadi -- good and useful one, Joe.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>If she has a forkball at 13, I imagine she might break the "gender barrier" in the MLB when she's drafted by the Devil Rays. They need all the help they can get, twenty-third chromosome be damned. I couldn't throw a decent slider until that age, and forkballs are a pain.<<<

Reminds me of a joke (no longer applicable) from several seasons back:

A young boy is caught in the middle of his parents' divorce. In the course of the trial, each parent accuses the other of abusing the boy. At the end, the judge leaves it to the boy to determine with which parent he wants to live. "So tell me son", asks the Judge, "would you rather live with your mother or your father?" And the boy thinks for a moment and says, "Well, my mom beat me, and my dad beat me, so I want to live with the Detroit Tigers". "Why?" asks the judge. "Because they never beat ANYBODY!"

[Ken]

A girl in my junior high forced her way onto our school (American) football team. It was ridiculous. She had no desire or ability to actually play football; she just wanted to prove that she could. She quit after a couple weeks, but it was highly embarrassing for everyone involved. For instance, a standard part of any practice is tackling drills, and it didn't whether you succeeded, failed, or avoided tackling her, you can imagine the things a group of junior high boys could think to say about it.

All around, quite the display of the abuses of feminism *and* the sexism that makes it attractive.

[Judy Warner]

In what way was it a display of sexism?

[David Gray]

>She had no desire or ability to actually play football; she just wanted to prove that she could

Of course part of the piece seemed to indicate that this situation is problematic regardless of the girl's level of skill.

[David R.]

Anthony Esolen wrote:
The gangs are enjoying the run of cities like Toronto, Hamilton, and Vancouver...

I think this is something of an exaggeration. There certainly are problems with gangs in Toronto, and I completely agree with the root issues you speak of. That being said, the problems are far less than most any American city. In 2006 Toronto had homicide rate of 1.8 murders per 100,000 (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/070718/d070718b.htm). Compare this with the list of homicide rates of major US cities where not a single one has a rate less than 2.5 (San Jose was the lowest at 2.6) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States). Washington DC has a homicide rate close to 20 times greater than Toronto at 35.8! Pick on Canadian cities all you want, but if you were stuck downtown at night, I'm pretty sure you'd far rather be there than in any American city.

Also, having lived in Southern Ontario for some time, I've never once heard of newscasters telling people to turn on their air conditioning due to the heat. Rather, on days like today where the temperature topped 35 degrees Celsius (that's around 95 degrees Fahrenheit) they were telling people not to run their air conditioning as the power generation was being stressed.

[Ken]

"In what way was it a display of sexism?"

I was referring to the comments of the other boys on the team.

[Gintas]

This is just one of those teachable moments, as they call them. If my son were on that baseball team, I would tell him, "If you ever marry a woman like that, I'm disinheriting you, buddy-boy!"

[Nick]

Stuart,

You seem to be implying that her skills have anything to do with the matter. While I might cut some slack for baseball, which is one of the few sports where pre-pubescent children can compete on fairly equal ground, why can't boys have their own teams?

[Michael]

>>While I might cut some slack for baseball, which is one of the few sports where pre-pubescent children can compete on fairly equal ground, why can't boys have their own teams?<<

Because our great-great-great-grandfathers beat our great-great-great-grandmothers, and clearly that's all our fault. Didn't you go to high school?

[Caryl Johnston]

Thank you for the excellent post. I wish more people had written to express outrage at the totalitarian feminism instead of the admonition to wear sunscreen.
Related issue on a recent post on my blog - "Song of the Little Drone."

[Caryl Johnston]

Thank you for the excellent post. I wish more people had written to express outrage at the totalitarian feminism instead of the admonition to wear sunscreen.
Related issue on a recent post on my blog - "Song of the Little Drone."

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>You seem to be implying that her skills have anything to do with the matter. While I might cut some slack for baseball, which is one of the few sports where pre-pubescent children can compete on fairly equal ground, why can't boys have their own teams?<<<

Sure they can. But from a pragmatic standpoint, the coach picked a fight he knew he couldn't win, while stealth and guile could have achieved the desired result and circumvented the problem.

[Bobby Winters]

>>Sure they can. But from a pragmatic standpoint, the coach picked a fight he knew he couldn't win, while stealth and guile could have achieved the desired result and circumvented the problem.<<

Clauswitz or Sun Tzu?

[David Gray]

>Clauswitz or Sun Tzu?

Davy Crockett...

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Clauswitz or Sun Tzu?<<<

P.J. O'Rourke: "Age and guile beat youth and good hair".

[Joe Long]

P.J. O'Rourke: "Age and guile beat youth and good hair".

Hmmm...does that bode well or really badly for the next Presidential election...?

Never mind. (So far I'm tempted to wish they could all lose.) Stuart, it's true PC can sometimes be foiled with a minimal expenditure of energy and a little cleverness - but that's a game the other side's been playing long and well; sometimes it's better to seek legitimate confrontation than to challenge the perennially devious to a deviousness contest.

Didn't work in this instance, though...

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Didn't work in this instance, though...<<<

That's why you have to pick your fights carefully. In any case, with age, guile and great hair, I am practically invincible.

[James Kabala]

"(San Jose was the lowest at 2.6)"

It looks as if Bachrach and David had the right idea.

[Tony Esolen]

I disagree (a rarity) with Stuart here: in one important way, her skills indeed have nothing to do with the question. These are boys we're talking about, not professional or semi-pro ballplayers -- not grown men. The boys are on the team for many reasons besides baseball, reasons that are deeply important and perfectly natural, regardless of whether the boys would know how to articulate them.

As for the skin cancer, what I'd really like to see is the rate of malignant melanoma in various sectors of the population, throwing out all cases of squamous cell and basal cell carcinomas. MM, I believe, tends to show up where the sun don't shine. I have heard it claimed that sun exposure is actually a (modest) protective against MM.... and a more than modest protector against colon cancer.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I disagree (a rarity) with Stuart here: in one important way, her skills indeed have nothing to do with the question. These are boys we're talking about, not professional or semi-pro ballplayers -- not grown men. The boys are on the team for many reasons besides baseball, reasons that are deeply important and perfectly natural, regardless of whether the boys would know how to articulate them.<<<

Well, if I wanted to disagree with Tony, it would be to say that I think we should largely abolish organized sports for children in Middle School and below, and let them figure out how to play for themselves. Most of the dysfunctionality and lack of sportsmanship among young people today comes precisely from too much organization and too much adult involvement.

Why, when I was a boy. . . (Sheesh! I AM an Old Fart)

There was little league, but most of us didn't get involved in it, nor did the parents of those who did. Instead, I suppose I am among the last of generations of Brooklyn kids who played stickball, stoopball, and back-alley football, to say nothing of the dreaded tag and dodgeball (sometimes with rocks, but that's another story). We played wherever we could, using whatever we had, and our parents stayed well out of it, as did our sisters, for the simple reason that, being boys, we not only were icky, but our male bonding rituals were far too rough for them.

Regarding skin cancer--does everybody want to live forever, or just die in perfect health?

[Gene Godbold]

I'm going to live forever in more than perfect health...after I die decrepit and infirm.

I'd be interested in looking over the cancer data. The protective effect of the sun might indicate the benefits of vitamin D or perhaps (not likely) that folate aggravates the problem. Sun exposure generates vitamin D while it destroys folate.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I'd be interested in looking over the cancer data. The protective effect of the sun might indicate the benefits of vitamin D or perhaps (not likely) that folate aggravates the problem. Sun exposure generates vitamin D while it destroys folate.<<<

Apparently, there are studies showin chronic Vitamin D deficiencies in Muslim women who always wear the burka out of doors, as well as in the children they breastfeed. This would seem to indicate that one can err in both directions with regard to sunlight.

[Juli]

If her skills had nothing to do with it, why tell us that she was pudgy and inept?

[Judy Warner]

>>>If her skills had nothing to do with it, why tell us that she was pudgy and inept? <<<

Because it shows they don't even make a pretense of reasonableness in these instances. What else could it be but raw bullying to force a pudgy, inept girl onto a team? It's just a power thing -- see what we can make you do? We're wymyn and we're strong; you're men and you're weak and pitiful.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Because it shows they don't even make a pretense of reasonableness in these instances. What else could it be but raw bullying to force a pudgy, inept girl onto a team? It's just a power thing -- see what we can make you do? We're wymyn and we're strong; you're men and you're weak and pitiful.<<<

Which is why the coach should have insisted on a rigorous observance of the tryout regulations. "Hey, you want to be treated as equal to the boys? I'm treating you just as I would any pudgy, inept boy who wanted to try out for the team after the deadline had expired".

This approach exposes the disingenuousness of the feminist position. On the one hand, espouse equality between the sexes, and insist that women are equal to men; on the other hand, demand special treatment whenever it becomes apparent that women are NOT equal to men (or girls to boys). Heads, I win; tails, you lose.

[Isamashii Yuubi (Courageous Grace)]

Sunscreen is good for preventing things other than skin cancer, like sunburns. To me, that's the best reason to apply sunscreen before going outside, to avoid getting burned. Whether or not I get skin cancer, I'd rather not be limited to wearing halter tops for two weeks again (I went to Six Flags Fiesta Texas in San Antonio for a choir trip at the end of my last year of high school, and spent 2 hours in the lazy river wearing a halter bathing suit) due to the pain of anything touching my crispy red shoulders.

As to the A/C issues in Canada...I dare them to spend a summer here in Texas. It's been pretty nice here so far this summer (no days yet over 100 F due to the constant rain), but it's still gotten pretty warm, averaging around the low 90s. Canadians don't know what HOT is.

As to the feminism stuff, I refrain from commenting since my mother told me if I didn't have anything nice to say, not to say it at all. ;) I'm one of those rare women who choose to be feminine, not a feminist.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>As to the A/C issues in Canada...I dare them to spend a summer here in Texas. It's been pretty nice here so far this summer (no days yet over 100 F due to the constant rain), but it's still gotten pretty warm, averaging around the low 90s. Canadians don't know what HOT is.<<<

I was in Europe a couple of summers ago, when the temperature got up into the low 90s for a couple of weeks (you'll remember that 13,000 people, mainly elderly, died because their families and the entire National Health Service went on vacation that month, leaving people to die of dehydration in their flats). They were literally dropping in their tracks, but for me, it was refreshingly brisk as compared to Washington in July.

[Bobby Winters]

I grew up when kids were allowed to be kids. Here's a memior I wrote a few years back.
//
Googling and blogging as applied to crawdad fishing

By Bobby Neal Winters

When I was a kid, I read about a number that was one followed by a hundred zeros. It was called a Google. When the Internet came along it was so big and had so much on it, there was need for a means to search through it, so search engines were developed to sift through all of the information. One of those is called Google.

Google has now become a verb. I’ve got some writings posted online so every once in a while I google myself to see if I’ve been blogged. I have been blogged several times and it is not nearly as painful as it sounds.

Google has recently added a feature that allows you to search maps and satellite photos. When I discovered this, one of the first things I did was to google Harden City, Oklahoma to see where I grew up.
I don’t mean to be confusing, but I do need to tell you in the interest of honesty that I didn’t ever live in Harden City. Harden City was simply the place closest to where I grew up that ever had a name on a map associated with it. When I knew it best, it was a place where a gravel oil field road crossed a blacktop oil field road. During the early years of my life, there was a post office there, but during the Reagan Administration they came and loaded it up the back of a flatbed truck and hauled it off and put it in, I believe, the old post mistress’s back yard.

I don’t want people to think I came from Harden City when I didn’t because that would be putting on airs, and that’s to be avoided. My family lived in a cluster of houses that had a higher population density than Harden City if the truth be told. There was my family with Grandma and Grampa next door, two or three houses of Crabtrees, the Harris’s, and the Robertson’s. It was practically a city to itself.
When I looked at the satellite photo, I was able to triangulate on the location of our house by finding the various fishing holes around the area. This is due to early training. I used to ride around with my Grampa Sam a lot, and he navigated the countryside using fishing holes and pecan orchards as his chief landmarks.

My favorite childhood fishing holes don’t show up on satellite photos—at least not the ones Homeland Security will let us see—because they are too small. I am speaking, of course, about crawdad holes.
For those of you who don’t know, crawdads are also known as crayfish and crawfish, but I haven’t heard of anybody who calls them craydads. That would just be wrong. If none of that helps you, then think of them as tiny lobsters.

I’ve been thinking of crawdad fishing a good bit lately because the spring rains have started. About this time of year, my brother and I would begin bothering Momma for bacon. Actually, Jerry would bother Momma for bacon first, and then when she started running low, I would be sent in because I was cuter. (Some folks think I still am, but they are in the minority.) This was a serious thing to Momma because if she’d run out of bacon she wouldn’t’ve been able to cook.

The rain brought up the crawdads to build mounds on the tops of their holes, and we kicked the mound off of a hole and lowered a piece of Momma’s bacon into it on a string. We would let the bacon all the way down to the bottom and then slowly pull it up, hoping to feel resistance. If we felt something pulling back, that meant there was a crawdad on the other end.
This required patience, a light touch, and bravery.

The idea was to pull so slowly that the crawdad followed the bacon all the way to the top of the hole, and then when you saw pinchers, you were supposed to grab the crawdad and put it into a bucket. The grabbing was where the bravery came in because some of the crawdads were what we referred to as blood pinchers. This meant their pinchers were proportionally too large for their bodies and red to boot. We just knew that the redness meant they could pinch the blood right out of you.

This was done as pure sport, and we put the crawdads in the bucket mainly for score-keeping purposes. The only folks around ever hungry enough to think of crawdads as food were all down in Louisiana at the time. We ate squirrels, but we drew the line at crawdads. (There I go, putting on airs in spite of myself.)

Sometimes Grampa Sam garnisheed our crawdads as fish bait, but we took this as an honor.
As I look at the satellite photo, like Zeus looking down from Mount Olympus, I have to wonder if there are any kids who are still angling for crawdads with their Momma’s bacon or if they are all googling and blogging.
What a sad thought.

(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, writer, and speaker. You may contact him at [email protected] and you may buy his book Confessions of an Ice Cream Socialist from Amazon.com, or from Hastings in either Pittsburg or Joplin.)

[Bill R]

"We ate squirrels, but we drew the line at crawdads."

Good grief, Bobby. You ate squirrels and your Mom still thought you were cute?... ;-)

[Judy Warner]

What's wrong with squirrels? Years ago my daughter's nursery school class were asked to name their favorite food. My husband had been squirrel hunting recently and cooked a squirrel for her. She thought it so delicious that she named it her favorite food. We lived in suburban Montgomery County, Maryland, then. (Stuart will know what that means.) To most of the kids in the class it was as if she'd said she liked eating babies. That's probably when we began thinking about moving to the country.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>To most of the kids in the class it was as if she'd said she liked eating babies. <<<

Squirrel isn't that different from rabbit, which I think tastes like soapy chicken. Babies, on the other hand, taste like tender pork loins.

[David R.]

As to the A/C issues in Canada...I dare them to spend a summer here in Texas. ... Canadians don't know what HOT is.

We're from Canada, we're not supposed to know what HOT is! :-) I could issue a reciprocal dare regarding winter, but I think the the point is made.

[Judy Warner]

But you do know what blackflies are, David, eh?

[Joe Long]

My father passed on, from personal experience I have no intention of repeating, that oppossum is not palatable; "just a fat, greasy rat". (He was trapped into eating some by good manners, but that's his story and I won't try to tell it.)

Crawdads aren't even "adventure food"; any decent Cajun restaurant will have those! Never ate any I caught in the wild, though; the bait shop used to buy them. We didn't know the bacon trick, we just turned over rocks and tried to grab them, doubtless contributing to natural selection. I'll try the bacon thing with my youngsters when I get a chance!

Judy, I would surely have liked to see the faces in that class! Yes, indeed!

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>But you do know what blackflies are, David, eh?<<<

We know, don't we?

[Isamashii Yuubi (Courageous Grace)]

"We're from Canada, we're not supposed to know what HOT is! :-) I could issue a reciprocal dare regarding winter, but I think the the point is made."

Naw, I was born in Puyallup, Washington. I've had my fair share of winters. When hubby and I toured Nashotah House in Wisconsin last March, 2 weeks after a snowstorm that dropped 2 feet of snow, I was walking around with just a sweatshirt on while hubby's got his trenchcoat wrapped tight and several scarves on. I can handle both... :)

I do admit to falling victim to heat exhaustion quite often down here, especially now that I'm preggers. But all in all I think I'd rather be warm than cold, my joints appreciate Texas.

[Poppy]

I'm a feminist who doesn't understand why we can't just declare the U.S. a meritocracy. Of course, that wouldn't help the Nova Scotian Little League coach, but still.

[GL]

I agree with Stuart on organized team sports for younger kids. From what I have observed here, the coach's demand far too much time from the children, making the cost to the child and the rest of the family outweigh any benefit.

I also agree with him on sun exposure. Again, all thing in moderation. One can have too little or too much exposure.

As to eating squirrels and possums. I've eaten both and have no real desire to ever do it again. ;-) I don't ever recall eating crawdads, but I do like mussels and frog legs. We never ate rabbit growing up as my mother recalled people dying from "rabbit fever" when she was a kid. It was undoubtedly an irrational fear (rabbit fever can usually be avoided by proper handling and cooking and, in fact, is not limited to rabbits), but then I have a few of those myself.

[Francesca]

>>For two days here in Nova Scotia the provincial news has featured the story of a 12-year-old girl who wanted to break into a boys’ baseball team. The manager, whom the newscasters did not interview, said that he didn’t coach girls. But her father got hold of some provincial commission or other, and after a little wrangling, the girl was admitted to the team.<<

Good for her! Now she can run around outdoors in the hot sun, which will apparently protect her from MM and rickets, just as children did before being discouraged from doing so by concerned news anchoresses.

[Francesca]

>>In 2006 Toronto had homicide rate of 1.8 murders per 100,000 (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/070718/d070718b.htm). Compare this with the list of homicide rates of major US cities where not a single one has a rate less than 2.5 (San Jose was the lowest at 2.6) <<

Toronto is going to hell in a handbasket because this subversive little girl is playing baseball and because of The Feminists! Now please don't try to confuse this discussion with facts!

[Francesca]

>>I'm one of those rare women who choose to be feminine, not a feminist.<<

My huband chooses to be masculine and a feminist. I don't know why, but women -- conservative, leftist, traditional, feminist, young and old -- are supposed to despise him for it, yet all the women I know adore him. I'll try to explain to them about the problems this is causing in Canada ...

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I agree with Stuart on organized team sports for younger kids. From what I have observed here, the coach's demand far too much time from the children, making the cost to the child and the rest of the family outweigh any benefit.<<<

Soccer in America is Exhibit A. Youth soccer leagues, particularly co-ed or for girls, are huge (especially among upper income demographic groups which buy into the utterly un-American concept of "non-competitive" organized sports). Any given Saturday or Sunday morning around any large city, the playing fields are full of kids barely beyond rug-rat, running around in shorts kicking balls that come up to their waists. But a funny thing happens once those kids hit twelve or thirteen: they drop soccer like a hot potato, and either quit sports altogether, or take up another, more traditional sport. This, it seems, is pure self-selection: the relative handful of kids who continue to play soccer into their teens are the ones who truly enjoy the game. The ones who drop out are the ones whose parents (mothers, mainly) forced them to sign up. As soon as they get too big for mom to physically drag them out of bed and off to the field, they stop.

Now, my ideal of sexually integrated competitive sport is crew. My daughter has been involved in it for four years, since she started high school. Crew is, in fact, the largest single sport at her school--bigger than football, basketball, soccer, track and field, etc. There are 140 kids in Crew out of 1500 in the student body. Men and women belong to the same team. They train together--which means they spend upwards of 20 hours a week together throughout the school year (a lot of them choose to row in the summer, too, on their own nickel). But they compete separately--men's boats and women's boats (on some--indeed, most--teams, women can and do cox both men's boats as well as women's, but they have so many kids that they need not do that).

These are some of the most focused, dedicated and driven student-athletes you could ever meet (a slew of state and national championships to show for it, to say nothing of invitations to the Royal Henley Regatta in the UK). Crew is the most competitive sport in the most competitive school in the country. But they are also the nicest bunch of kids you could ever hope to meet, invariably polite, well-behaved, respectful to coaches, teammates and competitors alike, always good sportsmen. I am awed to be in their presence, knowing how much time and effort they put both into their athletics while still excelling academically (everybody in the varsity boats has taken Honors Calculus; half of them have perfect SAT scores).

Their sportsmanship is truly inspirational. They are good losers better winners. They never gloat, and on the rare occasions when they do lose, the handshakes they exchange with the winners are not pro forma. They have a running rivalry with one of the other premier teams in the U.S., Winter Park HS in Florida. At the end of Nationals last year, they all exchanged hats, and then went beyond that and exchanged unitards and jackets (no mean gesture--those GoreTex jackets are personalized and cost $200 a pop). All I could think of was the last day of Thermopylae, when the Spartans and the Thespians exchanged shields before going out to meet the Persians for the last time.

Wellington is alleged to have said that "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eaton"; In scholastic and collegiate sports at its best, we build the character of the young men and women who will carry the burden of leading our country into the future--which is why this is an issue that matters, and why we should be concerned when sport is degraded by excesses of competitiveness or political correctness.

One of the things I like most about them is the easy comaradery that exists between the men and the women (women, by the way, coach the men's boats, while men coach the women's boats; I don't know if it was planned that way, or if it just happened, but it works very well). These boys and girls are real friends at a very deep level. Perhaps it has to do with belonging to an elite group that has a lot of shared sacrifice and experience. They spend so much time in each other's company that if they didn't like each other they would loathe each other. And occasionally some serious romances blossom as well, some of which transcend graduation.

I think one reason it works so well is the men and women are not competing against each other, but within each group (and even there, the competition is tempered by a real desire to see each other succeed). They have opportunities to see the other as equals, yet their roles are separate. They help and sustain each other, but they do not impinge on the other in their own sphere. In many ways, it's a good preparation for a healthy relationship between the sexes.

[Bobby Winters]

Stuart,
My wife and I are utterly nonathletic, but we've taken our kids out for whatever sports they thought they liked. This was soccer. The first two gave up on it, but the baby (now eight) likes it and dance which we tried to steer her clear of, but she was just born that way. She's learned to become appropriately aggressive which is an area in which her mother and I have been late bloomers. As for the "non-competative" aspect, we parents quietly keep score.

[James A. Altena]

"In any case, with age, guile and great hair, I am practically invincible."

Actually, Stuart, what you have is ague, bile, and grating hair.

"(Sheesh! I AM an Old Fart)"

Likewise guilty. That certainly explains the frequency and length of our MC postings.

:-) :-) :-)

[James A. Altena]

"In any case, with age, guile and great hair, I am practically invincible."

Actually, Stuart, what you have is ague, bile, and grating hair.

"(Sheesh! I AM an Old Fart)"

Likewise guilty. That certainly explains the frequency and length of our MC postings.

:-) :-) :-)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Actually, Stuart, what you have is ague, bile, and grating hair.<<<

Judy has seen my hair, and will testify to its fullness and body.

[Clark Coleman]

Francesca: Thanks for the flippant remarks. They make a great substitute for reasoned discussion.

[Judy Warner]

Yes, I agree that Stuart has great hair. So do his wife and daughters. I don't know about the guile.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>The first two gave up on it, but the baby (now eight) likes it and dance which we tried to steer her clear of, but she was just born that way. <<<

Dance can be wonderful, although time consuming. Both my daughters took dance lessons almost from the time they could walk, but it was my younger daughter who took to it, and for the past two years has been in the Jazz/Tap Company at Arlington Dance Theater. This served to get her out of PE in Middle School. She also plays the harp and sings in chorus (selected for the District 10 Chorus last year). Next spring she wants to go out for Crew with her sister. This might prove a bit much, as dance requires six hours a week, harp one hour of formal lessons plus seven hours of practice, and crew (as I said) about 20 hours a week in season. Put the typical TJ load of homework on that, and you run out of hours in a day pretty quick. So we will have to see. Our rule for years has been "No more than three extracurriculars at a time. Learn to choose". It has served us well (but remember, you learn from your mistakes, in this as in other things).

[Judy Warner]

On second thought I've decided to ruin Stuart's image by telling you that in my opinion he is absolutely guileless. That leaves only the age and great hair, and he's not all that old.

[Truth Unites...and Divides]

Professor Tony Esolen writes: "The boys are doing even worse in Canadian schools than in American schools. Their dropout rate is horrible -- but nobody cares. Gee, it’s not as if men have actually invented anything critical to civilization, as, for instance – I am speaking historically -- civilization itself, the city and its complex systems of government and protection and division of labor. No, the boys are the chumps, the butts of sad-sack jokes. Females are trumps."

I was in Starbucks reading the in-store magazine and I came upon the following article which argues a thesis directly opposed to Dr. Esolen's. The name of the article is "The Myth About Boys" and it's published in the July 26, 2007 article of Time Magazine.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1647452,00.html

(My apologies if someone linked to it already earlier in this thread.)

[Gene Godbold]

Down here in Greene county (Virginia), Stuart's observation about soccer and ages holds true. After 12, the kids not really interested desert the field. My second kid remains interested and he is on a travelling team--but once the games start, it becomes a real imposition on time because you've got to spend a lot of time in the car to get to the places you're playing.

GL,
Rabbit fever is also known as "tularemia" and it is quite deadly. It's caused by Francisella tularensis and the infectious dose is probably less than 10 organisms. The Soviet Union weaponized it (along with plague and smallpox). The usual way of a hunter getting it is to skin an infected animal and get some of its blood in a cut.

[Francesca]

>>The name of the article is "The Myth About Boys" and it's published in the July 26, 2007 article of Time Magazine.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1647452,00.html<<

Good article! There's also research by the Canadian Council on Learning that shows the actual number of boys dropping out of school is declining. It was 19% in 1990-1991 and only 12% by 2004-2005.

I feel the original article underestimates boys by suggesting that they are so weak and mean-spirited that they descend into failure and spite when forced to share opportunities. I don't see this. I asked my 11-year-old cousin how he'd feel about having a girl on his currently all-boy baseball team. His response was that "as long as they weren't completely annoying" he'd rather have two girls because he was concerned that a lone girl would feel left out (is he a sweetheart or what?!:-).)

[GL]

Gene,

Thanks for that information. I guess mom's concerns were well placed.

[James A. Altena]

"On second thought I've decided to ruin Stuart's image by telling you that in my opinion he is absolutely guileless."

Impossible to ruin in any case! :-)

Stuart's frankness and bluntness is reminiscent of Richard Wagner --

"Wagner, thank the fates, is no hypocrite. He comes right out and means what he says -- and he usually means something nastry." - James G. Huneker

:-)

by the way, Stuart, Judy told me that your family and hers had an absolutely marvellous dinner together!

[GL]

Well, I've been keeping my kids indoors the past week and definitely will this week. We hit 103 today and will be above 100 every day this week, with Wednesday projected at 107 -- those are temps, not heat indexes. And unlike Arizona, it's a wet heat here, a very wet heat!

Before you jump on this, Francesca, the records in jeopardy are all from the 1930s and we are not projected to break Tennessee's all-time record for heat, 113 degrees in 1936. This may be why the "new ice age" was all the rage in the 1970s. These things run in cycles.

[Bill R]

"On second thought I've decided to ruin Stuart's image by telling you that in my opinion he is absolutely guileless."

Or he was. No guy with great hair is completely guileless. "Verily I tell you, they have their reward." ;-)

[Bobby Winters]

>>I feel the original article underestimates boys by suggesting that they are so weak and mean-spirited that they descend into failure and spite when forced to share opportunities.<<

I once went to a math conference wherein a professor from Berkeley was talking about gender in the testing of mathematics. She had tried numerous schemes and rated the differences between male and female. In every possible scheme the males were ahead, but there was one in which she had hope because it brought male scores down.

Men don't descend into failure if forced "to share their opportunities." They drift off from occupations that have become women's work. In our search for fairness, lets not forget that it's not a contest. The human race goes up or down with the success or failure of either gender.

[Beth]

GL, may I ask what area of TN? It's been inordinately hot in the Dayton area, but I don't think we've hit 100 yet -- or maybe our thermometer broke! :) It was nice waking today to a comparatively cooler morning.

[Gene Godbold]

I believe GL's dwelling is in Memphis, which is justly known for its sickeningly high level of humidity. I once visited in August (2001) and found it very difficult just to draw the soupy atmosphere into my lungs.

[GL]

Yes, I am in hot, soggy Memphis -- along with all the out-of-towners who have come for Elvis Week. What was he thinking, dying in August? ;-)

[Gene Godbold]

August killed the King of Rock & Roll.

[Beth]

Ah, I see. Sounds like Jackson, MS, where I kept looking for gills on the locals who claimed to be able to breathe the water just fine while I gasped for oxygen . . . :) Come on over closer to the mountains; it's not quite so bad here. Unless, of course, you have hay fever . . .

[Gene Godbold]

In partial response to Beth, our former curate had this posted on his refrigerator:

If you live a good life, treat others kindly, and are generous to those in need, then--when you die--you might get to go live in Virginia.

That's central Virginia, you understand, in the foothills and bunions of the Blue Ridge mountains.

[Judy Warner]

I concur, Gene. The only place that's better than where I live. (Though it's getting overrun with Washington types, isn't it?)

[Nick]

I'm not that impressed with the Time article. It can be summarized like so:
"Boys are doing terrible, but there not doing as terrible as they once were!"

You'll notice that comparative (male/female) statistics are mostly lacking they only use absolutes as measured against boys. That's a shifty sort of tactic.

I'm also confused in how the boys in the article above are sharing anything. They were forced into that situation. If I hold a gun to your head and ask for your apple you haven't shared the apple.