Winter                                               Waning Moon of Long Nights

As my new novel has grown into its second chapter, my writing here has become more and more about the weather.  Not a light hearted topic in Minnesota, nor one lacking interest, at least for me, still it’s not the only thing going on here.

There is, for example, football.  Cybermage and good friend Bill Schmidt sees a play-off scenario where the Green Packers return to the Dome–They’re Baaaaaccck–for a third go at former teammate Brett Favre, for the NFC championships and for the right to play in the big game.  Bill seems to think third times a charm, but in the parlance of the NFL, it’s just another game.

On a much more sobering note, I commend the following article to anyone with even the slightest interest in football.  Offensive Play, written by Malcolm Gladwell, asks if dogfighting (Michael Vick) is, in the end, very different from football. In specific, it chronicles a recent uptick in interest among brain scientists and neurologists in the impact of repeated impacts to the head, many of them not enough in themselves to produce a concussion, but enough to set stage for one.  This article would make me pull my kid out of football and makes me wonder, not about the dogfighting comparison so much, but about the oft made comparison between football and the gladiatorial arena of ancient Rome.  At least there you died right away, not gibbering and slow.

Lou Creekmur, former offensive lineman for the Detroit Lions and eight-time Pro Bowl player, was diagnosed with CTE by neuropathologist and CSTE co-director Ann McKee, MD. Creekmur played 10 seasons for the Detroit Lions, and was famous for breaking his nose 13 times while playing without a facemask. He died July 5, 2009 from complications of dementia following a 30-year decline that included cognitive and behavioral issues such as memory loss, lack of attention and organization skills, increasingly intensive angry and aggressive outbursts.

Three brain sections from Mr. Creekmur showing dense tau deposits (brown) in the insula (1), temporal (2) and frontal (3) cortices, amygdala (4) and hippocampus (5) in the absence of beta amyloid plaques. A normal control brain would not show any brown discoloration.