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What my musings are all about...

Blogging might well be the 21st century's form of journaling. As a writing teacher, I have always advised my students to keep a daily journal as a way of organizing their thoughts for future writing projects, a discipline I have unfortunately never consistently practiced myself. By blogging, I might finally be able to follow my own good advice.

The difference between journaling and blogging is that the blogger opens his or her writing to the public, something journal- writers are usually reluctant to do. I am not so reticent.

The trick for me will be to avoid cluttering the internet with more blather, something none of us need more of. If I stick to subjects I know: sports and literature, I believe I can avoid that pitfall. I can't promise that I'll not stray from time to time to comment on ancillary subjects, but I will make every attempt to be interesting and perhaps even insightful.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Hurrah for Our Pro Athletes

Let's hear it for the pros in the locker rooms around the country denouncing Donald Trumps'  misogynistic remarks about groping women. Not that raunchy stuff doesn't go on in locker rooms, but as one pro said, such stupidity and rudeness is attributable to the lowest common denominator of our kind. Do we want the lowest common denominator as our president? Clearly, America's professional athletes say NO. Trump has no  idea what the inside of a sports' locker room is all about. It's about loyalty, comradeship, and respect. With his behavior, Trump would be cut from any team I ever played for. He is not an athlete. He could never be an athlete. To suggest he was ever in a team locker room is an insult to athletes.

MLB playoffs. Baseball at its best. Here's a poem in honor of baseball and one of it's great legends. This poem also reflects the kind of traits best exemplified by true sportsmen. No one would ever write a poem like this about Donald Trump, whose character is so deeply flawed all that is left of him is empty ego. 

To Lou Gehrig   By John Kieran

We've been to the wars together;
We took our foes as they came;
And always you were the leader,
And ever you played the game.

Idol of cheering millions,
   Records are yours by sheaves;
Iron of frame they hailed you.
   Decked you with laurel leaves.
But higher than that we hold you.
   We who have known you best,
Knowing the way you came through
   Every human test.

Let this be a silent token
Of lasting friendships gleam
And all that we've left unspoken -
Your pals of the Yankee team. 

             * This was written at the request of Gehrig's teammates and inscribed
                 on a trophy which they gave him on "Gehrig Day" about a year
                 before he died.