It was bound to happen, sometime. Indeed, two-thirds of the way through my sixth decade, with most of it spent near them, it surprises me it didn’t happen sooner.
There’s something about mining, and miners. We view those who go deep in the ground in a certain way, the way the Irish think of the men who go to sea.
The truth is I liked Tiger too much. I liked his youth, his ethnicity, his arrogance. Call me one who simply favors a front-runner, but I like excellence. At the least, I admire dominant athletes and teams as much as I hate them.
Earl Coen stopped by the other day. The pump in the aeration system had been misbehaving and Earl knows motors and pumps about as well as anyone you’ll find, so hereabouts he’s the man to call.
My old German grandmother used to call it “schnitlau,” though I’ve never seen the word used elsewhere. It was her name for the small wild onions that grew all over the place on our little farm — the same ones that grow all over the place hereabouts.
You’ve probably seen it: A movie or television drama that depicts news coverage of some anticipated disaster. It might be an alien invasion, or a nuclear attack, a volcano, an approaching asteroid, or — a tsunami.
We all know the word association game: I say a word or name and you respond with the first thing that comes to mind. Let’s try one. I say Mark McGwire. You respond with steroids, cheater, or liar. See you got the idea. Do you remember when your answers were that of a different tune?
There was something of a minor furor over Roberto Alomar’s narrow failure to be elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame by 8 votes last month. Alomar, the celebrated second baseman whose prime in the 1990s was celebrated even at the time, famously spat in the face of an umpire while playing for Baltimore. In short, the word is that he may have ruffled more than a few feathers.
We live in an age of confession. I don’t mean so much the heartfelt admission to ourselves and our Creator of our manifold sins and wickedness as a loud and public proclamation of some character flaw that henceforth is expected to excuse unsatisfactory behavior.
One of the best delights of the newspaper business is its unpredictability. Events, often unforeseen, dictate the course of the day. This can be exciting. Or, sometimes, it can be mortifying.