War and baseball

"Sometimes a strikeout means that the slugger’s girlfriend just ran off with the UPS driver. Sometimes a muffed ground ball means that the shortstop’s baby daughter has a pain in her head that won’t go away. And handicapping is for amateur golfers, not ballplayers. Pitchers don’t ease off on the cleanup hitter because of the lumps just discovered in his wife’s breast. Baseball is not life. It is a fiction, a metaphor. And a ballplayer is a man who agrees to uphold that metaphor as though lives were at stake.

Perhaps they are. I cherish a theory I once heard propounded by G.Q. Durham that professional baseball is inherently antiwar. The most overlooked cause of war, his theory runs, is that it’s so damned interesting. It takes hard effort, skill, love and a little luck to make times of peace consistently interesting. About all it takes to make war interesting is a life. The appeal of trying to kill others without being killed yourself, according to Gale, is that it brings suspense, terror, honor, disgrace, rage, tragedy, treachery and occasionally even heroism within range of guys who, in times of peace, might lead lives of unmitigated blandness. But baseball, he says, is one activity that is able to generate suspense and excitement on a national scale, just like war. And baseball can only be played in peace [sic]. Hence G.Q.’s thesis that pro ballplayers — little as some of them may want to hear it — are basically just a bunch of unusually well-coordinated guys working hard and artfully to prevent wars, by making peace more interesting."

~ David James Duncan

Racket

an·o·dyne

ˈanəˌdīn/

adjective

1. 1.

   not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so.

Transcend

Meanwhile, back in future America

Yikes... I mean, just - yikes. Hunter S. Thompson* said "America is raising a generation of dancers." To where are we dancing? Who's calling the tune?

And since the ad pictured above is part of a campaign conceived in Colorado, here's a quote from Extreme Behavior in Aspen:

"We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear — fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer."

~ Hunter S. Thompson, February 2003

*It should be noted that Thompson was indeed a proponent of birth control.

Unfinished work

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863

That freedom highway

This land is your land, this land is my land, 

From California to the New York island;

From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters, 

This land was made for you and me. 

As I was walking that ribbon of highway, 

I saw above me that endless skyway;

I saw below me that golden valley, 

This land was made for you and me. 

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps, 

To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts; 

And all around me a voice was sounding: 

This land was made for you and me. 

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling, 

And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, 

As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting: 

This land was made for you and me. 

As I went walking I saw a sign there, 

And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." 

But on the other side it didn't say nothing, 

That side was made for you and me. 

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, 

By the relief office I seen my people; 

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking, 

Is this land made for you and me? 

Nobody living can ever stop me, 

As I go walking that freedom highway; 

Nobody living can ever make me turn back, 

This land was made for you and me.

"This Land Is Your Land"
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie