meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow” Meschery's Musings of Sports, Literature, and Life Meschery's Musings on Sports, Literature and Life: Olympics and etc

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.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

Olympics and etc

I guarantee you our highly mentally disturbed president is not enchanted with the Olympics, you know, like, ah, man, how do I deal with these different colored athletes competing together, sharing lives together, embracing, honoring each other? I can hear his little weeny brain asking: You mean they actually respect each other? How can Trump possibly understand, coming from a lily-white, closeted environment of the super rich, and how absolutely color blind the world of sports is today? Probably, he wasn't watching the Olympics anyway, having embraced the recent statement of Fox News' Exec VP, John Moody, that there are just too many gays, coloreds, etc in the Olympics. By the way, how come Fox News hasn't fired that bigot and racist? Oh, yeah, I forgot, it's Fox "Klan" News.

Speaking of non-whites, did anyone see the performance of  Japan's Yazuru Hanyu's flawless and exquisite short program and his Gold winning performance on the ice last night? What an athlete! Both nights Winnie the Poohs by the hundreds sailed down from the stands onto the ice as he took his bows. And this young man's performance took nothing away from the three skaters who followed him onto the rink, his fellow Japanese teammate, Shona Ono (Silver) and the marvelously elegant Spaniard, Javier Fernandez (Bronze). All of them were Baryshnikovs on ice.

Sorry to see Mikela not make it to the podium in the slalom, but she won a courageous Gold the day before in the giant slalom. Let's hear it for the redhead Shawn White. What an athlete. As a team sports guy, I've always been impressed by the focus of individual sports athletes. On a team you always have your teammates to motivate you during the game. The skiers, the luge riders, the snowboarders, the cross country skiers, the jumpers, once the event starts, they're on their own. Individual sports are lonely sports that require amazing will power and the kind of physical and mental meditation of a Zen master. 

Lindsey Vonn gave it her best shot in the Super G but no medal. But in my mind she gets a medal for heroic comeback. Heroic comeback award also to Nathan Chin, who's short program mistakes were painful to watch, but his long program performance showed he'd be back in four years for another attempt at the podium.

Got to love the courage of our Warrior coach, Steve Kerr to stand up to the NRA. When will our politicians ever have the courage of Lindsey Vonn, and legislate into law a truthful and effective gun law? Perhaps  we should all pray for one. Praying and grieving seems to be all they are capable of doing for these poor slaughtered children.

I love how the poet connects the grace of swooping swallows to ice skaters in the following poem:

The Skaters    by John Gould Fletcher

Black Swallows swooping or gliding
In a flurry of entangled loops and curves;
The skaters skim over the frozen river,
And he grinding click of their skates
as they impinge upon the surface
Is like the brushing together of thin
Wing-tips of silver upon the surface 



1 comment:

Jim Dowling said...

HI Tom,

We didn't know each other very well but I have a photo of you, Fred LaCour, some other team members and me when we played in a post-season league at St. Peter and Paul's church league in the late 50's. Our coach was Father Heany. I remember that Heany took you, Fred and me to the Kesar Club for beers after at least one game. Of course, we were all under age but that didn't matter as enforcement was pretty loose in the City at that time.

I was on the SI varsity for two years and remember playing Lowell. I was not a starter but a backup center to Fred. I subsequently got kicked off the team because of a failure in one class.

I see you went into teaching after you retired from basketball, I retired from a career in law-enforcement and criminal justice and live in the Sacramento Area.

I had wondered what happened to you and discovered you live or lived in Truckee. It would be nice to see you again after all these years. Let me know if you are interested?

Jim Dowling