Continued from An American Legacy Story Part I: Willie Rickwood (baseball) Field, Birmingham, Alabama. June 20, 2024.Baseball has been played at Rickwood since 1910, making it America’s oldest active baseball park. A baseball game will be played at Rickwood today. For over a century, thousands of baseball games have been played at Rickwood; Major League …
Banner photo: I shot this photo before a baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants, at Wrigley Field in Chicago, on the day after Willie Mays passed away. June 18, 2024. My wife and I were sitting, lower box, along the third baseline in Chicago’s Guaranteed Rate Stadium. The buzz started sometime …
There I was, on November 8th of 2016, standing in line at the polling place, minding my own business when my conscience tapped me on the shoulder, “Dude, you aren’t going to vote for Hillary, are you?”“Why not?” I asked. “Better than Trump.”“No shit. Hemorrhoids are better than Trump. Dog shit is better than Trump.”“So …
“Should we just go ahead and sign up for Apple TV?” I asked my wife, Cora. “It’s only ten bucks a month.” “Sure why not.” “Alright.” I answered. “The Giants are on Apple tonight, though I think it sucks that they’re starting to stream sports. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to watch Masters of the Air.” …
“Save Democracy!!” It’s the battle cry dujour. Google, “save democracy,” and you’ll get an almost endless list of articles about throwing America’s drowning democracy a lifeline. There’s even a 10 week course on how to reboot America’s democracy. As if 10 weeks would be enough. The pundits and the hacks are all over “Saving the …
“Leaving home was one of the easiest big decisions I’ve ever made. But once I left home, continuing the journey until it reached some kind of sensible conclusion or fully played itself out, was another matter – one of the hardest things I’ve ever attempted.” ~ William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways. ‘Just drive,’ I tell …
The aircraft is on approach, circling the regal city known as “La Dominante.” Forehead leaning against the window I look down and easily pick out the features. There’s the Grand Canal, busy with water traffic; vaporettos, working boats, and pleasure craft. I can even see the gondolas, little water bugs bobbing on canals big and …
Call this a memory jogger. Or call it a cautionary tale. Call it both. This is a look back to that period between June 15th, 2015 and, well, now. It’s also a peek into what America’s future might look like. The way we were We didn’t know it at the time, but that June day …
Back when I was a tweener/teener, that is to say the olden times, when describing Mick Jagger as spry wasn’t meant as a compliment to a nimble octogenarian rocker, and Dick Nixon was seen as the ultimate in political corruption (Little did we suspect), my three favorite magazines were Playboy, Mad, and Sports Illustrated. Playboy, …
“Too clever by half.” It’s a Britishism; one of those slang phrases from across the pond that has us Americans scratching our heads trying to solve an expression that sounds contradictory at best and at worst, like downright gibberish. “Too clever by half,” was coined in 1858 by George J. Whyte-Melville in his book,” The …
The Life in My Years 