The steady stream of masked diminutive persons who came to our door this evening set our son off. At the ring of the doorbell he zoomed to the door to hand the kids candy. Dressed in his Spider Man pajamas, he deposited chocolate truffles (and then when those quickly vanished, Three Musketeers bars) into the kids' bags. He grinned at the kids. Some wanted to hug him. Some scared him. All kept him positively thrilled. The trick or treaters tailed off around 8 PM and after a crazed interlude, he finally fell asleep about an hour ago.
For whatever reason (sugar, Giants win, post-Sounders loss agitation) I also caught the energy bug and can't sleep. I'm combing through my old journals, marveling at the fact that A and I were celebrating our newfound love and carefree college graduations on June 19, 2006, and by June 19, 2009 that love had produced a little person. What we would have said had we known!
I'm also marveling at all the time I had for prayer and people. And how open and entirely exposed that life was to an apophatic love that in my post-law school incarnation I can say I hardly know any more. I'll close with the following excerpt from Thomas Merton, which I think captures the wonder and grace that can come in those exposed, yearning moments of weakness and prayer:
"God my God, God Whom I meet in darkness, with you it is always the same thing! Always the same question that nobody knows how to answer!
"I have prayed to You in the daytime with thoughts and reasons, and in the nighttime You have confronted me, scattering thought and reason. I have explained to you a hundred times my motives for entering the monastery and You have listened and said nothing, and I have turned away and wept with shame.
"Is it true that all my motives have meant nothing? Is it true that all my desires were an illusion?
"While I am asking questions which You do not answer, You ask me a question which is so simple that I cannot answer. I do not even understand the question.
"This night, and every night, it is the same question."
- Thomas Merton, Fire Watch, 1952.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Sunday Otis Redding Blogging
The boy and I heard this Otis Redding song in the car on a run to the store Friday. We've been singing it ever since!
MLS Playoff Picks
With the first leg of the playoffs 3/4 finished, I'm just getting around to publishing my picks. Not a second to spare, so nothing further:
- Colorado Rapids over Construction Workers Local #679 of Ohio (Rapids lead 1-0)
- RSL over FC Dallas (Dallas won first leg 2-1 at the Hut)
- RBNY over San Jose (RBNY won first leg 1-0 at Santa Clara last night)
- Seattle Sounders over LA Galaxy (first leg kickoff tonight)
RBNY over Colorado to win the East
RSL over Seattle
RBNY over RSL for the title in Toronto.
For the record though I'm picking RSL to overcome a first leg deficit and advance to the Cup Final, I detest their counter-attacking style of play and consider them the least watchable MLS side in the playoffs (as far as non-playoff teams go, we'll always have Houston). Rooting for Sounders to go all the way, but RSL owned the flow of their last game against each other (which is to say it was unwatchable). If FC Dallas comes up with the stop at Rio Tinto next week, all hell breaks loose and you would be kindly advised to forget my foregoing divinations immediately.
- Colorado Rapids over Construction Workers Local #679 of Ohio (Rapids lead 1-0)
- RSL over FC Dallas (Dallas won first leg 2-1 at the Hut)
- RBNY over San Jose (RBNY won first leg 1-0 at Santa Clara last night)
- Seattle Sounders over LA Galaxy (first leg kickoff tonight)
RBNY over Colorado to win the East
RSL over Seattle
RBNY over RSL for the title in Toronto.
For the record though I'm picking RSL to overcome a first leg deficit and advance to the Cup Final, I detest their counter-attacking style of play and consider them the least watchable MLS side in the playoffs (as far as non-playoff teams go, we'll always have Houston). Rooting for Sounders to go all the way, but RSL owned the flow of their last game against each other (which is to say it was unwatchable). If FC Dallas comes up with the stop at Rio Tinto next week, all hell breaks loose and you would be kindly advised to forget my foregoing divinations immediately.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
McCall - Hatfield, Kitzhaber - Kulongoski?
When political historians reflect on the postwar era in Oregon, I think it's fair to say three main figures emerge in short order: Tom McCall, Mark Hatfield, and Wayne Morse (until his loss to Bob Packwood in 1968). I think the relationship between Tom McCall and Mark Hatfield is fascinating. On one hand their names have basically become shorthand for a brand of liberal Republicanism that once dominated the state but is dying or dead (I would argue the watershed moment for the Oregon GOP was in 1990, when Al Mobley and the Christianists sabotaged Dave Frohnmayer). They are known for an inclusive and, frankly, progressive tradition in Oregon politics that prized careful stewardship of resources and fairly localized approaches to national politics. McCall openly detested Reagan; Nixon almost picked Hatfield as his VP nominee in 68; Hatfield voted against the first Gulf War.
On the other hand, McCall and Hatfield were almost diametrically opposed on major issues of the day, and personally disliked each other. McCall was very much a rah-rah patriot who supported the Vietnam War and privately ridiculed Hatfield's principled opposition. McCall was pro choice; Hatfield was adamantly opposed to abortion. Where Hatfield was crisp and cerebral, McCall was brash, bawdy, and desperately in need of praise from the voters he met.
What will future political historians who look at our recent history think about Governors Kulongoski and Kitzhaber? The same can be said about them as McCall and Hatfield, that their names have become shorthand for a period of political period and approach (especially if you believe Chris Dudley's advertising!), yet they have taken opposite sides on most major issues, differ in approach and also seem to have no love for one another. Kulongoski drew the ire of most in the Oregon Democratic Party by being a prominent supporter of the war in Iraq. Kitzhaber was a prominent dove. Where Kulongoski's great lasting legacy seems to be low-key bureaucratic managing and a push towards biofuels and tax incentives for renewable energy (BETC), Kitzhaber's first two terms included shaping his innovative Oregon Health Plan and showdowns with GOP leaders. In his current campaign he has discussed reigning in BETC tax credits. He's loathe to mention Kulongoski on the campaign trail except to imply that he should be elected to clean up Kulongoski's mess.
If Kitzhaber wins on Tuesday, what role will Kulongoski play in government? In light of the expected downward trend in revenue, what Kulongoski pet projects, if any, will Kitzhaber first gut? Are the two so indistinguishable so as to cost Kitzhaber significant votes?
A Plain Blog About Oregonania
(post title taken from Jonathan Bernstein [@jbplainblog]'s "A Plain Blog About Politics", which is excellent and should be daily reading for anyone who can get past the third line of a politics process story)
A handy maxim I learned in college was this: when you passionately love a topic, come to a point where you've read everything you could find about it, and think there is still more to be said, you really need to start doing some of the writing yourself. The exception to this rule was of course if the topic was assigned, and then the writing probably needed to start a couple of days ago. I've reached that point with life in western Oregon. No, this is not an assigned topic. Some of the things I anticipate bubbling up on here include the regular stuff I think about and bore friends and family with, including midcentury liberal Republicanism, soccer, Blazers basketball, Oregon beer and wine, special love for the southern Cascades and the Siskiyou Mountains, contemplative practice, stateside Catholicism, natural history, appreciation of good local reporting, local politics, food policy, bike policy & bike commuting, issues facing Oregon local governments, law and courts, the tragic soul-suck that is Seattle sports, history of NW cities, and of course soccer.
As far as cards on the table, I should put down a few.
- My partisan preferences lean pretty uniformly at present toward the Democratic Party, and I'm devoutly religious (As an illustration, I remember to pray for the salmon when I say my rosary).
- I am a hardcore soccer fan, and despite deep misgivings about the MLS in its present structure, spend an unseemly amount of time following a sport I never played and never cared much for until 2006. When I root, I root for the Portland Timbers. Although I developed a passionate hatred of the EPL when I lived in Italy, I'll pull for whichever teams have the best American players (presently Everton and Fulham FC). I am a Romanista, but that was before Daniel de Rossi cheapshotted Brian McBride in the 06 World Cup.
- I love local Oregon issues, and have a borderline autistic gift for remembering inane geopolitical trivia and history. My 16-month old son had been on all three trans-Willamette River ferries before he turned four months old.
- I love Oregon beer. The same 16-month old has gone with me to at least five breweries (Full Sail, Bridgeport, Terminal Gravity, Rogue Newport, Caldera) throughout the state. I also loved wine until I recently began repaying my student loans. Now that I'm poor again, decent pinot is just a noble (pun) aspiration.
- I'm relatively active in politics. I held a town hall for Congressman DeFazio in 3rd grade. I usually compete with other nerds to pick races in the state. I don't hate the other team. I vote for Republicans some times, and consider former Govs Tom McCall and Mark Hatfield two of my heroes. That said, most of the current Oregon GOP leadership is depressingly pathetic and regressive, and I think they deserve to be in superminority status in perpetuity in the statehouse until moderates start beating out the kooks.
- In terms of where I get my news, I get too much. We subscribe to local papers, read the Catholic press, listen to NPR, etc. I'm the only person my age I know who reads a real newspaper every day. I subscribe to the Atlantic and read the New Republic regularly Not a fan of Maddow or Olbermann, particularly. The liberal partisan stuff is generally just as disgusting as the conservative partisan stuff, if not as pervasive and overloud.
- I read the sports page first every day, and that's probably the main topic that is going to get discussed here.
- I'm devout and also a longtime baseball fan, but in the same way the calcifying hierarchy makes being an American Catholic in public life a depressing affair lately, the country-club-ification of baseball is killing my love of the sport. I was a big fan of Moneyball when it came out- I LOVE SCIENCE - but the overreliance on skills learned in college to jack up OBP/ OPS at the expense of unpolished adoloscent athleticism, together with the divestment in promoting baseball in urban areas is killing the game. I can remember following Giants baseball since the 1987 season, and this is the franchise's first year without an African-American player. For the franchise of Bobby and Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Ellis Burks and Daren Lewis, that's embarrassing.
- Why are there no female cardinals? Wouldn't appointing a suitably right wing, retrograde mother superior of a traditionalist order be a logical starting place for adapting to the 18th century and giving women a voice in church leadership? What am I missing?
Beer, faith, soccer, healthy stands of douglas fir, state senate campaigns and hatred of Seattle- what more could you ask for in a blog?
A handy maxim I learned in college was this: when you passionately love a topic, come to a point where you've read everything you could find about it, and think there is still more to be said, you really need to start doing some of the writing yourself. The exception to this rule was of course if the topic was assigned, and then the writing probably needed to start a couple of days ago. I've reached that point with life in western Oregon. No, this is not an assigned topic. Some of the things I anticipate bubbling up on here include the regular stuff I think about and bore friends and family with, including midcentury liberal Republicanism, soccer, Blazers basketball, Oregon beer and wine, special love for the southern Cascades and the Siskiyou Mountains, contemplative practice, stateside Catholicism, natural history, appreciation of good local reporting, local politics, food policy, bike policy & bike commuting, issues facing Oregon local governments, law and courts, the tragic soul-suck that is Seattle sports, history of NW cities, and of course soccer.
As far as cards on the table, I should put down a few.
- My partisan preferences lean pretty uniformly at present toward the Democratic Party, and I'm devoutly religious (As an illustration, I remember to pray for the salmon when I say my rosary).
- I am a hardcore soccer fan, and despite deep misgivings about the MLS in its present structure, spend an unseemly amount of time following a sport I never played and never cared much for until 2006. When I root, I root for the Portland Timbers. Although I developed a passionate hatred of the EPL when I lived in Italy, I'll pull for whichever teams have the best American players (presently Everton and Fulham FC). I am a Romanista, but that was before Daniel de Rossi cheapshotted Brian McBride in the 06 World Cup.
- I love local Oregon issues, and have a borderline autistic gift for remembering inane geopolitical trivia and history. My 16-month old son had been on all three trans-Willamette River ferries before he turned four months old.
- I love Oregon beer. The same 16-month old has gone with me to at least five breweries (Full Sail, Bridgeport, Terminal Gravity, Rogue Newport, Caldera) throughout the state. I also loved wine until I recently began repaying my student loans. Now that I'm poor again, decent pinot is just a noble (pun) aspiration.
- I'm relatively active in politics. I held a town hall for Congressman DeFazio in 3rd grade. I usually compete with other nerds to pick races in the state. I don't hate the other team. I vote for Republicans some times, and consider former Govs Tom McCall and Mark Hatfield two of my heroes. That said, most of the current Oregon GOP leadership is depressingly pathetic and regressive, and I think they deserve to be in superminority status in perpetuity in the statehouse until moderates start beating out the kooks.
- In terms of where I get my news, I get too much. We subscribe to local papers, read the Catholic press, listen to NPR, etc. I'm the only person my age I know who reads a real newspaper every day. I subscribe to the Atlantic and read the New Republic regularly Not a fan of Maddow or Olbermann, particularly. The liberal partisan stuff is generally just as disgusting as the conservative partisan stuff, if not as pervasive and overloud.
- I read the sports page first every day, and that's probably the main topic that is going to get discussed here.
- I'm devout and also a longtime baseball fan, but in the same way the calcifying hierarchy makes being an American Catholic in public life a depressing affair lately, the country-club-ification of baseball is killing my love of the sport. I was a big fan of Moneyball when it came out- I LOVE SCIENCE - but the overreliance on skills learned in college to jack up OBP/ OPS at the expense of unpolished adoloscent athleticism, together with the divestment in promoting baseball in urban areas is killing the game. I can remember following Giants baseball since the 1987 season, and this is the franchise's first year without an African-American player. For the franchise of Bobby and Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Ellis Burks and Daren Lewis, that's embarrassing.
- Why are there no female cardinals? Wouldn't appointing a suitably right wing, retrograde mother superior of a traditionalist order be a logical starting place for adapting to the 18th century and giving women a voice in church leadership? What am I missing?
Beer, faith, soccer, healthy stands of douglas fir, state senate campaigns and hatred of Seattle- what more could you ask for in a blog?
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