• Tag Archives basketball

  • Sollie Goes Home

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                         Waxing Garlic Moon

    Tomorrow I leave for Lincoln, Nebraska.  Sollie will head back to Denver with Jon.  Our goal here is to calm the dog situation down by getting rid of the extra dog and getting to work integrating Gertie into our pack.  She has a Jekyll and Dog personality; sweet and friendly, cuddly 90% of the time and all gnarly teeth and dog for 10%.  Trouble is, we can’t predict the 10%.  Outside humans seem to raise her hackles, at least sometimes, but there’s something between her and the other dog’s, too.  Our hope is that Sollie’s presence, a male among females, may have tipped the balance toward aggression in the doggy world for Gertie and that with him gone, she’ll calm down.  That may be wishful thinking.

    Mark finished a first course of granite blocks for our firepit. Now I have to find a steel fire ring.  It’ll be nice to have a place for a fire just in time for summer.  No.  Kidding.  It’s nice to have it done and ready for fall.  Mark’s helped out a lot.  I’ve found it much easier to do my work here if I don’t have to do the heavy work on both ends of a project.  (This will be the Agni fire pit by Mark Ellis.)

    I’m awake.  In addition to getting up at 10:40 I also had a 2 hour nap.  Staying out late is possible for me, but I have to have time to recover.

    Watched the NBA finals with Mark tonight.  Two Hoosier boys watching the big guys play ball.  We didn’t have the sound on.  Basketball is the one sport I know well enough to watch without commentary.  I decided, early on, that I wanted to see Miami win, so tonight’s decision pleased me.  It was a game right down to the final 4.0 seconds.


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  • Out, Out Damned Football

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                  Full Thanksgiving Moon

    Like quitting smoking, which I did cold turkey, I have quit watching football.  I don’t need the aggravation, especially with the Vikes and I don’t see the gain, if any, as worth it anymore.  Leaves me with Sunday to clear up piles, do Latin, that sort of thing.  On the other hand the Gopher basketball team looks pretty good.

    Kate’s home from her retreat with more stash and a few more projects.  She’s started on a Japanese quilt design that looks pretty interesting.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Sport 📎and tagged

  • The Celtics

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                Waning Planting Moon

    Just watched the Celtics beat the Lakers.  A good run in the fourth quarter by the Celtic bench, no, make that a great run, to take the Celtics from four points down to as much as 11 up.  I don’t watch much basketball anymore, my street cred as a Hoosier slipping further and further away.  This finish made me remember why basketball is such a dynamic, fun to watch game, even on television.

    The only thing you don’t get on television is the size, the astonishing size of the players.  Like the pro football players these folks are in a class of humans that occupy the extreme of the bell curve in height, weight and athletic ability.  Us 5 feet 7 inch guys literally don’t measure up.

    It’s been a long time since I watched any sport other than football.  Like tonight I’ll catch part of a basketball game, the end of the 500 mile race, maybe one of the triple crown races with Kate.  During the winter olympics I watch a few things like the skiing events and the luge, maybe something else like biathlon and in the summer olympics I like track and field events like the dashes, the shorter distance races, long jump, pole vault, sometimes the basketball, other than those not much.

    This is a culture change from my Indiana days when I used to watch basketball, especially college basketball, baseball, racing.  Other things to do.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Sport 📎and tagged

  • As American as Basketball

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    63  bar rises 30.17  3mph NW  dew-point 49  sunrise 6:26  sunset 8:04  Lughnasa

    Last Quarter of the Corn Moon

    The USA basketball team made this Indiana boy proud.  Not so much because they won gold, but because they showed that the ego driven individualism of the NBA can flow into team play.  The ego driven individualism of the NBA showcases an American individualism on steroids, true; but, aberrant it is not. The NBA demonstrates both the blessing and the curse of this signal American trait.  The blessing:  peak individual performance.  Think Michael Jordan.  Bill Russell.  Magic Johnson.  The curse:  destruction of group cohesion.  Think Kobe Bryant.  Stephon Marberry.

    Basketball and America go together like cricket and India, soccer and Brazil, rugby and England, hurling and Ireland.  We should find satisfaction in the skilled play of countries all around the world, since it shows the global penetration of a defining American game.  It is not yet time, though, for us to look at the rest of the world and see  how far they have traveled in outstripping us on our own court.  That time may come, probably will come when China matures as a basketball culture, but it is not now and for now we showed the world again how the game can be played.  We have not become Milan, Indiana and Bobby Plump, not by a three-point shot we’re not.

    The gardening part of life here in Andover picks up its pace as the temperature cools.  I look forward to it.


    📂This entry was posted in Sport 📎and tagged