Have I mentioned…

…that I like fitba. We got smoked last night, I hardly touched the ball, only two subs, a goal went in our net deflected off my arm, three cards were shown in an old timers friendly-type game and I am wracked with pain this morning from sprinting pointlessly over and over into the outside right corner into which no one passes. All in all a blast. And two inches off my gut in three weeks and I looked very natty in my new Ipswich Town jersey which I snagged off eBay for about 35 bucks delivered.

Red Sox on TV

One of my all time favorite TV stimuli is the one that says “Sox on Fox”. When I had a house, I could have a dish that got me Fox TV from Boston on which I watched the Red Sox play. The show was promo-ed as “Sox on Fox”. Dr. Seuss was a native of Massachusetts, albeit from the westerner end at Springfield, so the homage is just. While near Springfield last weekend, I got my Red Sox hat – the Boston Rob one with the velcro back. That takes a bit away from it. Like the little Nike logo. I can carefully snip away the embroidered Nike swoop, like we used to with logo dress whirts when they first came out in the early 80s.   I can’t, however, snip away the Boston Rob-ness.

I have had many hats. As a diaper wearer, I had a Toronto Maple Leafs minor league hat. I sat in the Fenway bleachers in 1973 in my Expos hat watching Luis Tiant. I still have a wool Atlanta Braves retro one I bought in the early ’80s because I did not wear it as much as the lemon yellow Bardall oil mesh hat I loved so much then. I often admired the 1970’s red hat, black brim Sox hat but never had one. But I like my new all black one. Nike was good enough to even put a lable inside that says “Genuine Merchandise”. You gotta love it when it is genuine.

All of this to point out that despite my lack of access to Sox on Fox and Gerry Remy‘s dulcet tones, this weekend and next I get to watch the Jays get smoked over and over by the Sox, starting tonight with a homestand in the second awfulest place on earth to watch baseball – the Skydome. The worstest apparently is in Montreal but I have never been. After sundown tonight, I will hunt out a fading WTIC 1080 for the later innings audio to synch with the Jay’s homie video.

First Two Legs

Best route ever from Kingston, Ontario to Portland Maine.   Highway 3
across the Adironracks, crashed at the Hotel Saranac, this morning down Lake
Champlain on the NY side to cross over at Rutland Vt., nip to Lebanon and down
to Concord NH, over to Portsmouth NH on #4 and up to Portland on
I-95.    At Rutland it was summer in the Maritimes – 20
degrees, leaves out, sunshine.   I lay on mown grass out behind the
Friendly’s after we ate lunch.   We drove through the birthplace
of the US Navy
on the south end of Lake Champlain, but made a note to check
it out on a shorter French and Indian Wars / Last of the Mohicans loop.

The Road Redux

Saranac Lake to Portland to Cape Cod to Holyoke to Cobleskill and back. A big north-eastern loop. Dispatches as possible. Attack cats unleashed at home so don’t try anything.

What Blogs Are Good For

Yesterday I needed someone 1,000 miles away to check in on someone and I was able to call on someone I write with regularly through these thingies. The person is notoriously decent but the medium has allowed me to keep up in such as way that I felt it was not an imposition to ask.  Thanks…and thanks…

I puzzle over what thing tool isn’t, given its associated great claims, that it is good to have illustrated what it can do.

Ugly Jerseys

I do not often endorse a business here but, as I have written before, one I love is Premiershirts which as I understand is a hobby turned business from a nice friendly guy in Oldham, England. I noticed he got a mention in an article in this month’s When Saturday Comes – which should cause a good bit of free buzz -and that he has updated his Hall of Shame of the worst jerseys of all time including Coventry’s 1970’s brown get up shown right.

Obligations

Jim Elve has a very interesting post on the process of getting citizenship in Canada which includes the following passages from a booklet, A Look at Canada, which is the study guide for the citizenship test. Jim states: “I think that the Citizenship responsibilities defined and the ways of Getting involved in Canada suggested can serve as a partial guide to a set of shared Canadian values.” The responsibilities set out are these:

Citizenship responsibilities

All Canadian citizens have the responsibility to:

  • vote in elections;
  • help others in the community;
  • care for and protect our heritage and environment;
  • obey Canada’s laws;
  • express opinions freely while respecting the rights and freedoms of others; and
  • eliminate discrimination and injustice.

Being a Canadian citizen is more than voting and obeying laws. Being a citizen also means getting involved in your community and your country. Everyone has something to give to make Canada a better place. Here are some ways to participate:

  • join a community group such as an environmental group;
  • volunteer to work on an election campaign for a candidate of your choice;
  • help your neighbours;
  • work with others to solve problems in your community; and
  • become a candidate in an election.

I suppose the oddest thing about this list is how utterly untrue it is – so while I respect the rights and freedoms of employed by Jim in making his quite honourable statment, I would myself express a different opinion freely.

Our democractic process has very little to do with joining the Boy Scouts, whose tenents this list bears some resemblance. I much prefer the list of Charter rights and freedoms as a description of our values. Amongst all the great and good freedoms and rights we enjoy both from and distanced from the state, it also confirms we have the right to be left alone, to argue, to make things uncomfortable for those who would require us to channel discontent into the political structure, to paint your house purple and lay around on the front law with your shirt off as passers-by tisk and the weeds deepen around you. We have ill-defined autonomy and are, honestly, more likely to enjoy beer and hockey on the TV than the company of many of our neighbours. Are not these our values?

Egg Hunt

Right in the middle of a four day weekend, the inhabitants of one street in Kingston gather to let over 100 kids run over their lawns for 23 minutes every Easter Saturday.

The crowd gathers: mass quantities of caffine consumed in preparation for the sugar rush

This took an amazing amount of time, 1500 eggs being filled Friday and spread out over 40 front lawns at 6:45 am. Some sort movies here:

80 pounds of candy for about 80 households worth of kids.