Tomser's Blog

The news of the Indonesian soccer deaths has been horrible. Police cars overturned and set afire. People beaten by police with sticks and shields. Countless others teargassed, seemingly indiscriminately. 125 people dead. Another red-letter day in the annals of sports.

The interesting thing is that supporters of the opposing team, which won the contest, had already been banned from the stadium pre-match, so the conflagration was not caused by fights between rival fans. Nor was it caused by controversial calls. Instead, it was the anger of the home team fans at losing a game, the first loss against this rival on the home pitch in 23 years. Fans flooded the field after the game ended to demand of team management an explanation for the loss. Things deteriorated from there.

I have attested already to my love of sports in this blog numerous times. I am an addict. I turn to the sports page first thing every morning, even though I generally know the outcomes of the games already. I can’t turn off the Phillies, Flyers, Sixers or Eagles, no matter how bad it gets. But I often wonder whether it wouldn’t be for the good of humanity if we just scrapped the whole mess.

For way too many people the success of their favorite sports team becomes a substitute for success in their own life. It’s not just a matter of living and dying with each interception, or goal, but of investing the games with a mystical quality that transcends the players. It becomes a validation, or refutation, of their own existence.

I don’t want to overstate this. Hundreds of contests go forward every day without incident. Fans generally restrain themselves and save their anger for talk radio and social media. However, you get this sense that a more vociferous outbreak is brewing with every loss and disappointment.

The players feed this win at all costs mentality, but with them it makes sense. They would not have gotten where they are unless they had a burning competitiveness. We fans revel in the plays on the field, many of which look effortless, but often forget the hours of practice necessary to make those plays. Those who are unwilling to invest those hours rarely make it, no matter how naturally talented they might be. That drive is what makes them what they are. And yet, we still often see incredible graciousness in loss from them.        

Sports broadcasting takes its cues from the players and perpetuates this win or die attitude. Too many pundits give the impression that unless a team or player prevails in the Super Bowl, or the World Series, they are failures to be derided and mocked. I cringe whenever some talking head quotes Vince Lombardi saying that “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”. No Vinnie, you’re wrong.  

Accepting a loss is one of the most important lessons sports teaches. We do not live in a world where anyone wins all the time. And though it may be banal and cliché, it is also true that the true judge of character is how you bounce back from those losses. There is no shame in fuming about a loss, or throwing a quick tantrum in frustration, but if petulance is all you learn from the experience, then you have trapped yourself in an adolescent world that defies reality.

I don’t think that there is any surprise that the incident in Indonesia was sparked by fans who had not lost on the home pitch in 23 years. Just like a child allowed to win every game, these fans became spoiled. A win wasn’t something to celebrate, but their due in life. The game itself became superfluous, as long as it did not end in a loss. When the inevitable happened, they could not take it.

My favorite moment in my kids long and inglorious sports careers came at a little league game. Ny son’s team was up big early, but blew the lead because they were, you know, kids. After the game their coach gathered them for a talk and asked them how it felt being up by that many runs, then lose the game. One kid, God bless his soul, responded “I feel pretty good”. The coach turned red in the face, gritted his teeth and spit out, “This should be tearing you apart inside.” The kids looked at him like he was out of his mind. Me? I gained faith in the younger generation.

Being a Philadelphia sports fan, I have had more than my share of losing. And while we like to think of ourselves as unique in that respect, we aren’t. The sports world is littered with losers. Ask your friends in Cleveland or Buffalo (or two dozen other cities) about that. The nice thing is that when the wins do come, they taste that much sweeter (like when your team scores 6 runs in the 9^th inning of a playoff game).

The actions of the police in Indonesia were criminal. The actions of the fans that stormed the field looking for a scapegoat to assuage their lost identity were pathetic. Maybe they were used to winning, but, in life, they were losers just the same. Maybe a strong dose of disappointment would force them to finally grow up.     

P.S. Another sports story caught my eye this weekend, one not as tragic, but just as maddening in its own way. Two professional fishermen apparently cheated in the Lake Erie Walleye Trail fishing tournament by loading their catch with lead weights, hidden by frozen fish filets. While fishing lends itself to whoppers about the one that got away, it’s just not a sport you expect this kind of chicanery. Then again, the two cheaters might just throw up their hands and quote Vince – “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”.

After a brief interlude communing with the Queen, it is time to return to the trauma of moving. I have not yet reached the point of catharsis. I want to rid my psyche of the angst which was my constant companion for four months. (I have tried primal scream therapy, usually while watching the Phillies, but it just doesn’t cut it). So on to phase two.

Once we made the decision to move, we were hit over the head with the realization that we had too much stuff. Our friendly neighborhood realtor spent two minutes complementing us on our house, before making clear that we had to get rid of at least a third of what we owned before we could even think of showing it to any prospective buyer. There was a whiff of condescension that led me to wonder how we ever had the boldness to let anyone into our home.

Looking with new minimalist eyes, I began to wonder whether I had thrown out anything over the last 26 years. I remember taking the trash cans to the curb every week, but were they empty? Did I just throw our accumulated detritus into the garage? How else can you explain my inability to walk from one side of a two-car garage to the other without taking a detour outside?

Frankly, if it was just rubbish it would not be a problem. Pile it up and toss it!!!! However, as I started to tunnel through the rubble, I realized that it wouldn’t be that simple. Could I admit that my softball days were over and give away my equipment? I know that I pulled two hamstrings last time I tried to play, but what if I find a senior’s league that will let me walk around the bases? Aren’t we going to need that ice bucket we used three or four times in the last 20 years? Decisions, decisions.

Of course, that was the easy stuff. After a moment of misplaced nostalgia, I realized that I was unlikely to ever swing a bat again. If caution is thrown to the wind, and I do play, someone else will have a bat I can use (my hamstrings ache just thinking about it). And who uses ice buckets anymore anyway?

After concluding that 90% of the garage was expendable, I waded into the house itself. I immediately realized that we had been living in clutter for years. There were odd pieces of furniture that we took for granted, that did nothing more than take up space. There were holiday decorations stuffed in closets. There was shelf after shelf of pre-school art projects, 3^rd grade report cards, class pictures (ten copies each), faded college souvenirs and mementos from trips I can hardly remember. I realized that I had to go room by room, closet by closet, nook by nook, cranny by cranny (can a cranny exist without a nook?). I told myself that I had to be willing to purge. I told myself that I had to be ruthless. And then I had to admit that I am nothing more than a softie.  

That admission was freeing. I didn’t have to toss the Scottie dog ashtray my father had in his office (heaven knows why), or the back issues of my underground tuba newspaper, or the Sunshine Award given to one son in his only year of football (granted, not an award that evokes hard-nosed gridiron play). I just had to sort and organize these treasures. Oh, joy!!!!

Going through the accumulation of 26 years opened doors to a flood of memories. Most of them good, some not so. I would find myself sitting in the middle of a room surrounded by postcards, random pictures and assorted souvenirs for hours on end. At some point I had to say enough was enough and put things into boxes for later ruminating.

And then there were the books. Hundreds of them piled on bookshelves in almost every room. I love books. The thought of disposing of these old friends was almost unthinkable. Yet I knew that many of these books had to go. Not out of a Marie Kondo conviction that books are useless clutter, but out of a (in retrospect misplaced) notion that the books would not fit in our new place. With every box that went to Green Drop a little bit of me died (I know that’s hyperbole of the grossest kind, but if Kondo can hate on books, I can revere them).  

Slowly, but surely, we uncluttered, or so I thought. What I came to realize is that it’s never enough. The prevailing wisdom is that people want to project themselves in a house, so no evidence of the current owners should be seen. No pictures. No mementos. As little on walls as possible. In other words, sterility.

I just don’t get it. Who wants to live in a sterile home? Don’t people want to see evidence of life? Don’t they want to see how others made this box a home, even if their choices would be different? I know that I do, but then maybe I just don’t have enough imagination to put myself into a blank space. So round 2 (or was it 3, or 4) of the clean-up commenced.

Finally, it is time to put out the For Sale sign, and I will leave things there, for now. I can’t say the angst has been eradicated, but I do feel better. And that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? Isn’t it?      

Watching the responses to the death of Queen Elizabeth, I realized that the Sex Pistols had it right. More than anyone else that I can think of, it is hard to envision Elizabeth as a real person. Unlike us, she ain’t no human being. *

I assume that Liz was a real person to those who actually knew her – her family and friends, if she had any. To the rest of us, she was nothing more than a symbol, and a shifting one at that. It’s not her fault that this is true. In fact, in many ways it’s to her credit. She was born to a role and played it to its hilt. That role was to be a figurehead perched precariously on the front of a floundering ship – The H.M.S. Monarchy. By the time she came along, that ship had no real part to play, except as a museum piece. If she wanted to keep it afloat, she was going to have to let others use her to reflect their own reality. And that’s what she did.

Elizabeth kept herself above the antics of the other Royals. Prince Phillip would utter ignorant, misogynist and racist bon mots, but not Elizabeth (My favorite Phillip gem was his congratulations to a British hiker in Papua New Guinea for not having been eaten). Princess Anne had steamy love letters stolen. Prince Andrew will forever be linked to Jeffery Epstein. Elizabeth’s reaction to these shenanigans (which is much too mild a word for Andrew’s perverse behavior) always stayed behind closed doors.

Maybe the Brits have a better idea as to Elizabeth’s quirks and foibles. I know that much has leaked out about her, but it’s all been rumor and suppositions, or portrayals in movies like the Queen, or the TV show Elizabeth. My guess is that to the majority of those on the British Isles Paul McCartney summed it up nicely when he sang that she was a pretty nice girl, but she doesn’t have a lot to say.     

Her ability to keep her personality hidden from public view enabled her to be different things to different people. To an aging World War II generation, she could be a symbol of the nation that stood tall against the Nazis, second only to Churchill, but without his baggage. She wasn’t Queen during the war, but her stoicism was sufficient to suggest the sacrifice and strength that saw the nation through. She could not be flustered, and neither could they.

It’s harder to get a sense of what younger Brits feel about Elizabeth. My sense is that to many she has been an institution they have known all their lives and are therefore comfortable with. Maybe there’s some real affection there of the type you might have for a long-standing neighbor that you said hello to once a week, or a childhood stuffed animal (where have you gone Monkerscope???). I do not get a sense of anything much deeper than that.

To many of those that lived in former British colonies she was a symbol of the exploitation and degradation they felt. When Carnegie Mellon professor Uju Anya of Nigeria wished Elizabeth “excruciating pain” in death, she was not reflecting on any one thing Elizabeth had done, but on her position as a symbol of the seizure of lands and minerals from that country, and all that went with it.

My guess is that more than anything Elizabeth represented a stability that we all yearn for. There is so much change to deal with in life that it’s comforting to have something that exudes permanence, even if that something is remote and inaccessible. It’s a big part of the allure of old buildings, and antiquated ceremonies. The Queen was a walking, sometimes talking, monument.

I also think that’s why there were so many outpourings of sympathy from those of us across the pond. Few of us want a monarchy, but we still long for a greater continuity than democracy gives us. Many want a strong leader, and while Elizabeth was not that, her longevity, as well as the trappings of her position, gave her an aura of power. For some, that apparently created a bond.

For many years people, both in the UK and here, debated whether the monarchy should be abolished, but, for better or worse, that was not going to happen while Elizabeth sat on the throne. She was not going to give any openings that spurred a movement in that direction. She sat with the fixedness of a rock. There was no crowbar big enough to oust her.

It will be very interesting to see if her death sparks a movement to finally exile British royalty to the dump heap of history with the other European monarchs. King Charles is not his mother. Even calling him “King” Charles sounds off, as if a child adopted a nickname that doesn’t suit him (“From now on call me Buzz”).

Plus, it is too late for Charles to eschew a personality the way Elizabeth did. He will always be the guy who cheated on his beautiful wife in the most public way possible. That is what everyone will think of when his name is mentioned. Especially because that beautiful wife died a horrible death that immediately granted her public sainthood.

My guess is that the monarchy will survive Charles, but it’s relevance, nominal as it currently is, will dwindle. Neither Charles nor his children will ever be a symbol of anything to anyone, unlike Elizabeth. He will just be that guy in the ermine robes with the funny hat on his head. The Queen is dead, ho hum to the King.     

*All photos used in this post are in the public domain (Take that Shutterstock!!!!)

As I am sure few of you have noticed, I have not posted anything in the last three or four months. Like the Blues Brothers, I have been on a mission from God, though it has not involved crashing any cars, or producing second rate versions of old R&B tunes. Instead, I have been engaged in moving. Anyone who has undertaken this process knows what a traumatic bear it can be (if there is such a thing as a traumatic bear).*

We lived in our house in Abington for 26 years. That is longer, by far, then any other place I have lived. Initially, I thought that this couldn’t be true, since the house I grew up in is so etched in my memory, but it is, and it’s not even close. We moved into my childhood home when I was three, and my parents moved out 20 years later. Do the math (I did, though I admit it took me awhile).

We bought this house when our second child was on the way. We owned a row home in the Art Museum area of Philadelphia, but it was not suited to four of us, especially with two kids under three years old. (The child’s bedroom without a lock at the top of the stairs was a dead giveaway.)

We sold our row home while the blizzard of 1996, the single biggest snowstorm on record in Philadelphia with a total of30.7 inches of snow, raged. We thought maybe we would stay in the city, but we could not find anything we liked, so we started the suburban search. Even though I had lived in Philly for over 10 years by that point, I didn’t know the suburbs well, so it was something of a crap shoot.

We looked at a house in Ambler that seemed perfect. The previous owners had added on a master (now “primary” in the PC of house hunting) bedroom, so it had plenty of room. It also had a pool, which was enticing. We were looking at it with my in-laws when my father-in-law took me aside and said, “Come with me”. Bill was a very nice, soft-spoken man, and an engineer to boot. He walked me down to the end of the driveway, where we turned around to look at the house. He didn’t have to say anything. Even to me the sag in the roof between the old portion of the house and the add-on was clear. We gathered up Julie and her mom and left.   

The owners of the house we bought had already vacated when we did our walk through. That made it difficult for the imagination impaired, like me. How would furniture fit into this place? Was the basement a total loss, or could it be converted to a room for the kids? Did the kitchen have enough countertop space, and was the pass through a good, or bad, idea? Luckily, I had a wife with better vision, who saw the potential where I saw only questions.

In 26 years, you learn the plusses and minuses of a home. Having a 95-year-old house is pretty cool, but it means plaster walls, porous windows, asbestos on cellar pipes, and weird, unusable nooks and crannies. It also means huge old tees that look great but are rotting on the inside and can come crashing down on your home (or a neighbors) if you’re not careful.

The bottom line, however, is that it is your home. You know the spots that get the morning sun and are therefore the best for reading. You have redone the kitchen so it’s a place where people want to hang. Yes, certain things are awkward (what’s that pipe doing jutting out from the wall), but you have developed your work arounds. Entering the house truly feels like entering your home.     

More importantly, there are so many memories, both good and bad, tied up within those four walls. You watched your kids grow in that space, filling it up and making it their own. You felt yourself age, taking the stairs you bounded up when you first moved in much slower as the years went by. The ghosts of game nights, Halloween parties and Thanksgiving dinners lingered. The past co-existed with the present in a very visceral way.

But none of those are reasons to linger past the expiration date. There were way too many rooms. The stairs were creaky, and so are our knees. If we were going to stay, money needed to be invested, and it was unlikely we would ever see that back. The market was hot, and all signs suggested this was a propitious time to go. So, we dove in.

Frankly, if I knew the angst that decision would cause, I am not sure that I wouldn’t have stayed perched on the end of the diving board (just like in junior high – a memory I wish I could forget). It would have been the wrong decision, but I would have been saved the never-ending list of things that had to be done, the 2:00 a.m. reruns of Perry Mason (which was a much better show before I knew anything about the law), the endless worries about financing, and the time deadlines that seemed both far off, and immanent at the same time.   

Hopefully, you will indulge me while I revisit those months in the next few entries. I just need to get it out of my system. Luckily, I think it all comes to a happy ending.

*Since my last posting I realized that many of the images I was uploading may be copywrited. As such, I have now gone to artists renderings, for better or worse.

The Ukrainian war is nearing its two-month anniversary. It is still too early to predict how this will play out. Russia is unlikely to simply throw up its hands, withdraw behind its borders, and say, “Never mind.” On the other hand, the Ukrainians will not go quietly into the night. While there have been negotiations, it is hard to fathom what is being discussed, since Zelenskyy has been clear that he will accept only complete withdrawal, and Putin is unlikely to accede to that embarrassment.  

What we learned to date has been confirmation about the nature of war. This conflict has been a microcosm of the inevitabilities of armed confrontations. As mundane as these lessons seem to be, it is worth going over them again because, as often as they have been confirmed, humans still don’t seem to grasp them.  

There has been a lot of talk recently about whether the Russian forces have committed war crimes in the midst of their invasion, but that focus misses the point. The invasion itself is a crime. When the first boot stepped over the proverbial line, there was a violation of the canons which govern human beings, or, at least, should. I don’t care whether there is a statute that can be identified, or a common law doctrine that can be cited. By undertaking to kill people, and that is what war is, with no overt provocation, the Russians deviated from what is justifiable. No ifs, ands, or buts. 

The Russians will no doubt counter that the invasion was permissible under some version of the preventative war doctrine, so recently espoused by the Bush administration to justify its invasion of Iraq. But reliance on that doctrine and that war is misplaced, because the Iraqi war was a similar crime, even if no one was ever held accountable. There can be no rationalization for initiating a war against a country that has not undertaken specific, substantial acts of violence against the invading country. Being afraid that they might do so is no excuse for murder.  

Once a war starts, atrocities will happen. They will be committed by the aggressors, and they will be committed by the defenders. Atrocities are endemic to war. The stress of the situation, the rhetoric that surrounds war, and the chaos of the battlefield make them inevitable. History gives prominence to the atrocities of the losers, but that doesn’t erase the actions of the victors. Atrocities occur on both sides of a conflict.  

A corollary of the inevitability of atrocities is that non-combatants will get hurt, badly. Today’s military strategists like to boast that precision weapons will allow them to limit civilian casualties. Maybe they’re right, in that they could kill a lot more ordinary people if they targeted them. But it doesn’t mean that civilians won’t be directly, and devastatingly, impacted.   

There is even more of a chance of civilian deaths as plans go awry. Frustration will mount. The military will be subject to increased pressure from the politicians. The only alternative will be to escalate attacks, which means increased disregard for anything but destruction of people and property. The civilian deaths that have occurred, and will continue to occur, are wholly and absolutely predictable.  

This certainty of escalation is especially troubling in the Ukraine. The politician pressuring the military is Putin, who has put his entire legacy on line with this invasion. It is clearly very personal to him. I am sure that he does not see failure as an option. There is no telling what that will prompt him to authorize.  

While atrocities and escalation may be predictable, nothing more about the war will be. The best laid plans might as well be shredded paper thrown to the winds. Tolstoy, in War and Peace, breathtakingly depicts the chaos and confusion that is war. He overtly mocks historians who clean it up afterwards and make it seem as if everything that happened was part of a grand strategy by Generals. What was true in the 19^th Century is true today. 

The events in Ukraine are a striking example of the uncertainty of the course of a war. We can view maps showing the battle lines, and the movement of troops, but they really do not reflect the incredibly fluid situation on the ground, especially as troops move into cities and neighborhoods. The Generals will make their plans, and the soldiers will go where they are told, but what happens from there is anyone’s guess. 

Finally, as uncertain as the outcome and progress of war may be, the ramifications are even harder to predict. We are still living with the aftermath of WWII, which arose from the unintended consequences of WWI. Did anyone discuss the possibility of ISIS in the lead-up to the Iraqi war? Were people attuned to the emergence of the Taliban when Russia invaded Afghanistan, and we decided to arm the Afghan rebels?  

It is impossible to know the long-term effects of the Ukraine war. Even if the war ended today, how would we move forward in a world where the leader of the 3^rd most powerful nation has been branded a war criminal? What are the economic consequences of the on-going disruption to the flow of Russian energy resources to Europe? Is this invasion going to embolden China in its territorial aspirations? What other scenarios exist that we can’t even envisage?  

I wonder whether Putin thought he could control the direction and impact of this war. Could he be that blind to the lessons that history has taught again and again? Apparently so. I guess that the final confirmation of the nature of war is that many will die due to his blindness. Vlad the Impaler indeed.

One of the few fun things to emerge out of the pandemic has been a virtual film discussion series sponsored by my local non-profit movie theater. Each month a new movie is chosen, and a discussion led by Hannah Jack, who writes those pithy movie introductions for the Turner Classic Movie hosts. The movies have been an array of Hollywood fare, with everything from westerns, to dramas to screwball comedies.   

A recurring theme has emerged within these discussions. Not surprisingly, many of the old Hollywood films are misogynistic and/or racist by today’s standards. These movies arguably reflect the prevailing attitudes at the time they were made, but would not pass muster in today’s cultural climate. The question becomes how do you approach those concerns in viewing these movies today. 

Often the discussion will split between those that express their discomfort with the tropes they are seeing, impacting their enjoyment of the film. Others argue that you have to view the movie through the lens of the era in which it was made, and not be concerned with how the attitudes expressed look today. They purport to possess the ability to transport themselves back in time, and seem not to understand why others cannot do the same.      

This all came to a head with, believe it or not, Pillow Talk, starring Doris Day (who does nothing for me) and Rock Hudson (a pretty face, if ever there was one). This is a typical 1950’s Hollywood rom-com, with Rock adopting a persona so that he can lure an unsuspecting Doris into his bed. Of course, it all blows up in his face, and he realizes that he is helplessly smitten by Doris’ charms. Along the way there is an attempted date rape, a planned weekend abduction and other assorted chicanery. 

In the ensuing discussion, a number of people said that they were turned off by the unabashedly misogynistic nature of the film (including me). Some, who consider Pillow Talk one of their favorites (heaven knows why), were seemingly morally offended by those comments. They saw the misogyny as all in good fun, and seemed to consider those turned off by the nature of the antics portrayed hopeless prudes.   

This debate is nothing new. The question of how we view historical figures, especially American historical figures, comes up all the time. However, unless your goal is to enshrine those figures, you can note their strengths and accomplishments, while at the same time condemning their troublesome blind spots. To use just one example, you can laud Jefferson for his contributions to the rhetoric of liberty, while at the same time castigating his hypocrisy, which saw that rhetoric as applying to white males only.   

Entertainment, or art, is something different. A film, a book, or a sculpture, stands on its own, outside of its maker. We absorb what it has to say within the confines of its presentation. We can talk about the artist separately, but it is the piece itself that we are reacting to.  

That reaction is governed by who we are at that moment. Our beliefs, our values and our tastes. It is impossible, at least for me, to shut those values off, and try to absorb whatever I am viewing as if they do not exist. Not only can’t I do that, I do not want to.  

Much of the reluctance to apply personal standards of taste comes from our disdain for critics. A critic is rarely appreciated. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to create something, and here comes someone else intent on doing nothing but ripping it down. Plus, critics have an annoying tendency to disparage in such harsh, condescending terms that the criticism often seems designed more show of the critic’s wit than it does to assess the piece being deprecated. 

Social media has further deflated our respect for critical judgement. Appraisers on social media seem to care less about justifying their opinion, instead trying to be as nasty they can be. Any attempt to question the morality of a film or show is just going to get you a knee-jerk accusation of political correctness, and a ton of abuse.    

And yet, it is a dangerous thing to shut down one’s values in assessing art, or entertainment. A critical eye is essential to appreciating and understanding what is being presented. It also enhances the experience. We are not just taking something in at a surface level, but truly engaging with it. If we aren’t doing that, we are wasting our time.  

The only way to engage with something is to use what we have. We are not engaging if we try and approach it with eyes that are not our own. We cannot place ourselves in another’s shoes, or truly assess their intent. In trying to do so we are simply ceding betraying everything we are. We all need to be critics.  

That doesn’t mean that we should not try and understand the motivation behind a creation. In fact, that’s part of the critical process. But understanding it, and accepting it as legitimate, are two different things. We can understand that a filmmaker in 1958 might find that it acceptable to use a full, frontal, sexual assault for comic relief, but that doesn’t mean that we have to accept it, and just laugh along. 

Critical judgement is the essence of appreciation. Burying that judgment, or trying to put it aside, is just a means of vegetation. And that judgment must include an assessment of the attitudes being expressed. That’s true whether what your viewing is 2, 10 or 50 years old. So, commence the commentary!!   

It is March Madness time again. That annual bacchanal of basketball that never fails to provide moments of emotion and exhilaration, interspersed with boring blowouts and continuous commercials. It is a madness best enjoyed with others, as well as a ready supply of beer, so as to enhance the tense moments, and give you something to do during the inevitable, interminable, interludes of inactivity. 

This year’s Madness is proceeding as expected. The first two days saw eleven games won by twenty points or more, eight games decided by five points or less and nine upsets (a higher seed beating a lower seed). None of the upsets was more exciting and unexpected than the 85-79 overtime win by the St. Peter’s Peacocks over the perennial powerhouse Kentucky Wildcats. 

The moment that most caught my attention in the St. Peter’s game was not any miraculous shot, or clutch free-throw, but what happened immediately after the game. It was a moment that will not show up on any highlight reel, and was bypassed by the announcers, but which had more impact on me than the game itself. 

The game was not decided until the last 30 seconds. It was only then that the outcome was assured. As the clock ticked down, the St. Peter’s players understandably were ready to explode, but their coach, Shaheen Holloway, would have none of it. As soon as the final horn sounded, he rushed onto the court, with a no-nonsense look on his face, to corral his players and get them in line for the post-game handshake. 

I don’t know what was going through Holloway’s head at that moment. Maybe the NCAA had warned coaches about excessive on-court celebrations. Maybe he was concerned that his players would enact an old-fashioned pig pile and someone would get hurt. However, it looked to me like in this moment of triumph he wanted to make sure that his players did not rub salt, even unintentionally, in the understandably gaping wounds of the Kentucky players. It was a moment of class that warmed the cynical cockles of my heart.  

This would usually be where I unleash my inner cranky old man and complain about a lack of sportsmanship generally, where every play, no matter how mundane, seems like an excuse to preen. Or, I could conflate sportsmanship with the toxic nature of social media. Better yet, I could use bad sportsmanship as a metaphor for the degraded nature of what passes for political discourse. But to do any of that would undermine Holloway’s gesture. 

The problem is that positive news, or acts of kindness, do not grab us like the sordid and audacious. I am just as guilty as anyone in this. I spent the better part of four years indulging in every stupid, nasty, idiotic utterance of a certain politician, who shall remain nameless, until I realized that it was a soul sapping indulgence that led nowhere, and only fed the ego I was trying to belittle. Even after that realization hit me, I had trouble looking away.  

The fact is that Holloway’s sportsmanship was not an isolated incident. For every insulting time out in a game already decided, there is a Nikki Hamblin and Abbey D’Agostino helping each other across the finish line after colliding during a race at the 2016 Olympics. For every doping scandal, there is the Florida Southern pitcher carrying an injured opponent around the bases after she hit a game winning home run against her. For every juvenile tantrum, there’s Paolo di Canio catching a pass during overtime of a Premier League soccer match to stop play and allow the opposing goalkeeper to receive treatment for a knee injury.   

The truth of the matter is that these acts of kindness go on all the time, but are generally glossed over. Leave it to David Bryne to recognize this and do something about it. Bryne started “Reasons to Be Cheerful” (admittedly not a great name), which publicizes stories of progressive governmental action, positive activism, and grassroots problem-solving, through a website, social media posts and other, larger projects. This venture seeks to “balance a sense of healthy optimism with journalistic rigor, and find cause for hope”.  

Reasons to be Cheerful is not a chimerical enterprise. It doesn’t shy away from the issues we face, or the divisions we all perceive. It just seeks to make sure that we know there is more to the story. We are not going to get that from the media, social or otherwise, unless it’s shoehorned in between narratives of violence and chicanery. It’s a balance that we badly need just to maintain our sanity in an insane world.  

Some of the recent Reasons posts include a report on an Oregon county using human waste to generate renewable green energy, restaurants in Kentucky forming a co-op to avoid delivery service mark-ups, and the institution of “Umuganda” in Rwanda (yes, that Rwanda), whereby on the last Saturday of every month thousands of Rwandans undertake community improvement projects. None of these, or the other stories Reasons publishes, are earth shattering, but they help to dispel the notion that the world is irredeemably rotten.  

Allowing the positive to filter through does not mean that we should ignore the depth of the world’s problems, or the impediments to meaningful change. But a failure to acknowledge that people and institutions are looking for solutions, even if they are local and limited, or taking into account the feelings of others, as Coach Holloway did, avoids the despair which a steady diet of mainstream media can engender. There still is hope in this world, if we are willing to recognize it.        

*Barry Hannah (full quote “Bursts of Kindness in improbable times; the warm in dire straits”)  

I just finished The Library Book, by Susan Orlean. The author uses the devastating 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Central Library (400,000 books destroyed, 700,000 damaged) as a jumping off point to create an homage to libraries generally. Orlean is a breezy, straight-forward writer, and a pleasure to read. Since I am a library geek myself, this book resonated with me.  

I have four libraries within 10 minutes of my house. Although these libraries are not stately tributes to books, like the Los Angeles Central Library or the Philadelphia Free Library, they all have that hushed buzz that makes me want to linger in the stacks, even if I know what I want to check out. If my local libraries don’t have a copy of the book I am looking for, I can get it sent from one of the other 17 libraries in the County system. It is exceedingly rare that I cannot borrow a book that I want to read. How lucky can one man get?  

Two recent news stories highlight the importance libraries play in our communities. There has been significant coverage about the decision by a School Board in McMinn County Tennessee to remove the Holocaust graphic novel “Maus” from its school’s libraries. According to the School Board, this was not because of the book’s Holocaust theme, but because of “concerns about profanity and an image of female nudity in its depiction of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust”. Many are skeptical of this explanation.  

The Maus decision is part of a larger effort nationwide to cull books from schools that parents find objectionable. The American Library Association has documented a “dramatic uptick” in challenges to books in libraries’ collections. The Association goes on to say that the most frequently targeted books deal, not surprisingly, with race, gender and/or sexuality. 

While these efforts have focused on school libraries, this movement will inevitably spillover to public libraries. Those looking to to limit access to books they find offensive will seek appointment to Library Boards in order to influence those collections as well. Politicians will jump on this bandwagon, since politicos like nothing better than to feign misplaced outrage.    

Like seemingly every controversy we confront today, this one is more nuanced than media reports make it out. It is legitimate to question what books should be held in school libraries. I would be uncomfortable if my kid’s school stocked “The Turner Diaries” by William Pierce, leader of the Neo-Nazi National Alliance or “QAnon: An Invitation to the Great Awakening”. Librarians have to make judgments on which books are properly geared to youth, and which are not. 

The trouble, of course, is that a judgment call is always evaluated from the eye of the beholder. Parents defending the current bans will argue that a school should not be promoting alternative views of sexuality by carrying books that embrace those views, just as I would argue than schools should not promote extremist political perspectives. I pity the poor librarian caught in that crossfire.       

One thing is clear. The standard for library contents cannot be, as one Texas Legislator suggested, the banning of books that “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any form of psychological distress because of their race or sex”. Not only is such a standard pathetically vague, discomfort is part of the learning process. Students need to be challenged by new ideas to determine their own beliefs.  

This ridiculous standard also ignores the many children who need to explore issues of race, gender and sexuality. A library is one of the few resource centers that lets kids look into what concerns them without judgment. The ability to connect with the world on a broader basis is essential to kids, as is the knowledge that their concerns are not theirs alone.   

It is why, ultimately, we need to leave it to trained librarians to evaluate books and find the right balance between the challenging and the offensive. Librarians are not perfect, and many will have their own agendas, but they are best positioned to know the needs of the patrons they serve. It is far better than leaving those decisions to the parents that can scream the loudest.  

On a more positive note, NPR has reported that libraries in the Ukraine have been incredibly busy during the Russian atrocity. Embracing the broad role that libraries play in communities, Ukranian libraries serve as bomb shelters, refugee reception points, and even as a place to weave camouflage netting. Books are being sent to neighboring countries that receive Ukrainian refugees and psychologists are hosted to provide counseling.  

Ukranian librarians also issued a notice “postponing” an international library conference scheduled for early March. According to NPR, the notice concluded by saying that “We will reschedule just as soon as we have finished vanquishing our invaders.” Needless to say, this announcement engendered broad international praise.  

The way in which Ukranian librarians have stepped up should wipe out any notion that librarians are weak spinsters (see It’s a Wonderful Life), or that libraries are outdated book depositories. Librarians have embraced modern technology, and reconceived libraries as community centers offering a wide range of resources. They are as important now, as modern life gets more complex, as they ever have been.   

Unfortunately, many libraries in the Ukraine have already been destroyed in this war, and undoubtedly many more will as the Russians continue to advance. You can also bet that if Putin takes control of the country, one of the first things he will do is make sure that the remaining libraries cull books that contradict the skewed version of history he has been promulgating. But not to worry. I am sure he just wants to make sure that no one encounters books that make them feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any form of psychological distress”.   

 *Desiderius Erasmus