Yes, Virginia, There is Climate Change - It''s hard to imagine how anyone could doubt it after this summer. July was the hottest month in recorded history, but there is more than just the "global warming", which itself is real enough.
I had always thought the global recognition of a changed climate would come through high winds, experienced globally, something like the Jet Stream coming down from the higher atmosphere into our level. Like the rising temperature, the high winds are a natural expression of increased energy released into our closed ecosystem from carbon sequestered from the remains of living things hundreds of million years ago. We see that uncontrollable wildfires are occurring in many parts of the world, the combination of weather conditions and troubled natural vegetation. These should be expected to continue, releasing even more carbon into the atmosphere.
From Baseball - TV broadcasters have an annoying habit of referring to players/teams as being the best (or worst) "in baseball", when they mean in our Major Leagues. As if there were no other games being played worthy of the name "baseball". Anyway:
Big Reds - There is a revival of fortunes this year for my team, the Cincinnati Reds. They are currently slumping due to a severely-weakened starting rotation, so not quite as hot as a few weeks ago, when they battled for the Division lead. It is time to be realistic: they passed on trading any of their rising infield prospects and arriving stars for more pitching, and we are seeing the result. They have time to rectify their rotation for 2024 and make a real run for it. In the meantime, my prediction was for third place, and I'm OK with that this year. If they do make the playoffs, probably as a Wild Card, I don't expect much at all.
Still Astros-Braves: They are the best teams in their leagues. Of course, anything can happen in short baseball series. The dangerous Dodgers are getting their star pitchers back, and the Padres, Brewers, and the AL's Angels all have enough to make surprise runs. The Cubs have caught the Reds and have similar prospects, short and long. There should be some AL East team opposing the Astros in the ALCS, though Texas, who has given Houston a run for it, could make things interesting in the AL semis (for the Orioles--the team I always fail to consider--or Rays, Blue Jays, Red Sox, etc.) As always, I warn to watch out for the team that gets in as the final (third) Wild Card--it will have just survived a tense competition and will be in peak form. Meanwhile, the top two teams in each league will face the challenge of using a week off to prepare rather than lose their edge. Those are pretty much set with the Braves, Dodgers, Orioles, and either Texas or Houston.
Meanwhile, we must all pause and consider the greatness of Shohei "Unicorn" Ohtani and his 2023 season. The question arises if there has ever been any season that rises to his performance, as there is no doubt there has never been one like his, for its combination of hitting and pitching.
Bottom line on the rules changes: the game absorbed them fairly well. The near-shift replaced the shift, and the game moves faster, with more baserunning and fielding involved. The lure of hitting to the opposite field remains.
Hero Departures
Sinead O'Connor - (July 26) Check out her voice on The Edge's recording of "Heroine" (correct spelling) for the soundtrack of "Captive" (some creepy movie that seems was never released). She could wail with the best of them. And she had things to wail aboot.
Lowell Weicker - (June 28) If I'm not mistaken, he was the last person running as Republican that I voted for, in 1976 (a blowout win for him). Who needs to be reminded of his heroic performance demanding the truth from Nixon's henchmen in the Ervin Senate Committee? His career as a Republican Senator and an Independent governor of Connecticut is a great example of how a true nonpartisan should behave, but where did he come from? The answer is, he was a classic rich Republican, an heir to a fortune like Jay Rockefeller (who was a Democratic Senator from West Virginia, repeatedly re-elected. Imagine that.)
Robbie Robertson (August 9) -- The lead guitarist and songwriter for The Band, which was Bob Dylan's group for a critical period in the late '60's and early '70's. He went on to a successful solo career and did soundtracks for Scorsese movies. His is an interesting heritage story involving native Americans and Jews and Canadians. But he practically invented Americana! A good lesson that America is more than just the US.
Paul Reubens (July 30) - Hard to say what I feel about Pee-Wee. Personally, I couldn't stand watching his show, though it was very popular in certain circles for being campy. He seemed to be very aware, very sensitive, even kind, but he had to do time for sex crimes.
John "Bud" Wilson (April 9) - I didn't know him, but he was famous, beloved. He had a spectacular career as a physician and surgeon, and then afterwards built a legacy from his land conservation efforts in the Lama area (north of Taos, in the mountains).
Milan Kundera (July 11) - I hadn't heard much from him for decades, but The Unbearable Lightness of Being remains a touchstone novel for latter-day existentialist thought. Written when his Czechoslovakia was behind the Iron Curtain, it helped us on this side of the Wall to understand how life was, and was not, different over there then.
Tony Bennett (July 20) - Like Reubens, I wouldn't say he was a hero of mine, but he was one for many. His jazzy versions of easy listening classics were one thing, but his public behavior and steadfast stance for justice, equality, and chill made him easily enviable.
Cormac McCarthy (June 13) - He had an uncompromising vision of doom and gloom in the post-modern West. I would say he had a good understanding of how the land could be "No Country for Old Men", but he rubbed our face in it, over and over. I loved "All the Pretty Horses", before his method began to wear on me. Still, deserves maximum respect for his honesty.
The War - Unlike all the phony crises in this tweener kind of year, Russian premier Putin has decided that we must continue to have a real one, spreading death and destruction widely. All efforts to contain it are subject to be overcome by both sides' desire to strike in new ways at their enemy, creating escalation without direction. Efforts to bring the butchery to an end are suspended until Ukraine can make enough progress to regain its sovereign territory, which has so far in this counteroffensive been slow or non-existent.
Today we receive word that Valery Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, who has both served and irritated Putin, was believed to be on a plane that crashed in Russia. How and why it crashed is something we are not likely to know, but that his days were numbered was an easy prediction. Which I made not long ago--his departure seems to have been accomplished sooner than I expected.
The 2024 Election-- I have enjoyed some respite from the continuous political wars--ignoring the dozens of emails daily requesting money for next year's battles. Alas, it seems we can avoid the looming struggle no more. I will be blogging on politics tonight as the GOP debate kicks off the unavoidable.
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