what i experience

On my walk to and from the BART station where I live, I experience amazing things.

Such as:

Lake Merritt, as I think I’ve mentioned before, is a bird sanctuary. So I’ve witnessed snowy egrets, straight lined and angular, staring intently at prey as they stand in the shallows. I’ve also seen gulls pull mussels from the lake and drop them on the asphalt walk until the shell opens and they’re able to retrieve the fleshy interior.

There are the runners of course. But also the couples who walk every morning. One day, I saw an older Asian woman who walked oh so deliberately, punching the air as she went, for exercise, completely un-selfconscious. I envied her.

Each weekday morning, just outside the 19th Street BART station, there is the man in the straw hat who sings show tunes, completely off-key, and very loudly. He’s not seeking money, as far as I can tell. And, actually, he sings A show tune: Maria, from West Side Story.

There’s also the man who sells religious books from a duffel bag, as though he were selling crack or meth. He wears a dark hoodie and he whispers to you as you pass: “Twenny-fi cents. Twenny-fi cents.”

But what I like most is the view of the lake itself. At 5:30, in the gloaming, sunset glinting off downtown towers, the necklace of lights that ring the lake beginning their shift.

Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, “There is no there there.”

Clearly, she never had the chance to walk the lake to and from work. Because the there is there.

the amazin’s

I’ve been to only one World Series game. It was in 1986, the year that Bill Bucker let the grounder roll between his legs in a game in which the Red Sox were just one strike from ending their World Series drought, from ending the misery of long-suffering Red Sox fans everywhere.

Who inflicted that unbearable pain? Why, my New York Mets.

I was working for the Daily Hampshire Gazette at the time, a small daily newspaper in Northampton, MA. As a Bay State paper, we were given passes to the games at Fenway Park. The sports reporters each took a turn attending a game and I was asked if I wanted to go. The caveat was that if the series ended while I was at Fenway, I’d have to work: get quotes and write a color piece to go in the next day’s paper.

Of course I said yes.

I brought along my friend Doug Cho, who grew up in Maine and was a Sox fan. Luckily for us, the series sat at 2-1 in favor of the Red Sox. Meaning I wouldn’t have to work, since there was no chance for either team to take the Series that night. I could simply enjoy the atmosphere.

Doug and I sat pretty far down the first base line. Fenway looked the way it always does. Intimate and quirky, visually dominated by the Green Monster in left.

Ron Darling, who actually pitched in an exhibition against my small division III college while I was there and he was at Yale, was on the mound for the Mets. Al Nipper, a journeyman, was given the ball for the Red Sox.

The Mets shelled Nipper – Lenny Dykstra, the Mets diminutive centerfielder, hit a home run to right that bounced out of Dwight Evans glove and over the fence, and Mets catcher Gary Carter clubbed two homers. While Darling pitched shutout ball for 6 innings.

The final score was 6-2. It was not a great game by most standards – the Mets seemed to have the game under control by the fourth inning. Still, to see my beloved Mets in the World Series was a thrill.

Later, of course, Buckner made his error that is seared into the memories of the Red Sox faithful. I watched that game with friends on the lower East Side of Manhattan, saw the ball dribble through Buckner’s legs, watched as Ray Knight raced home with the winning run. Afterward, after that miraculous game 6 when the Mets came back from the dead, my friends and I wandered out onto the street.

We were all – and in New York City, “all” is a lot of people – deliriously happy. Random screams. Honking horns. Singing-In-The-Rain-style dances around lampposts. We walked into a bar and free drinks were being served. Free drinks? In New York City?

It was like it was New Year’s Eve. Or Armistice Day.

In that one moment, our belief that anything is possible was confirmed.

Those Amazin’ Mets.

bridges, bay and brooklyn

This past week, the Bay Bridge finally reopened after a piece of metal came away from a section of the bridge that had been repaired Labor Day weekend.

The Bay Bridge when I choose to think about – and I try not to as often as possible – is scary. Personally, I think falling metal is the least of what’s worrisome. The bridge is so long, it takes what feels like an eternity to cross. Not a good feeling in earthquake country.

I think bridges in general are an amazng engineering feat. Suspension bridges in particular seem to be the most incredible – a roadway deck held up by steel cable attached to two long cables that are essentially being pulled by anchors on either end of the bridge. That’s the concept. I’m shocked more suspension bridges don’t collapse like the one in the video above – the Tacoma Narrows Bridge which was clearly not designed right. (Understatement.)

Photo by Simone Roda

As scary as I find bridges, I also am fascinated by them. When I taught second grade in New York, I used to take my kids on a trip by foot across the Brooklyn Bridge. The walkway is wide and gracious and wooden, and floats above the traffic. We would stop at the halfway point, break out crayons and paper, and draw what we saw – the East River and the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges, pretty in their own right; lower Manhattan with its impossibly tall skyscrapers, beautiful Brooklyn Heights and its promenade.

As a foolish painter plunges his eye,
sharp and loving, into a museum madonna
so I, from the near skies bestrewn with stars,
gaze at New York through the Brooklyn Bridge

Brooklyn Bridge, Vladimir Mayakovsky

teachers teaching teachers

I was involved with a terrific webcast of teachers engaged in a far-ranging conversation about their new media classroom work and new literacy learning generally. The webcast is in advance of the National Writing Project’s Annual Meeting in Philadelphia next week.

The program was started by Paul Allison, a high school teacher in New York City (Flushing, in fact, where I was born) and a member of the New York City Writing Project. (Eventually, the webcast will be available online at the Teachers Teaching Teachers website.) Paul acts as host – the Charlie Rose, if you will.

I love the program because like most things constructed by resourceful teachers, the webcast is put together in McGyver-like fashion, seemingly with two twigs and some chewing gum, and yet it runs and functions beautifully. TTT, as it’s affectionately known, uses Skype and an educator-centered online space and the wits and talents of Paul and teacher Susan Ettenheim.

I’ve known Paul for many many years and have seen him do some pretty far-out stuff – my favorite, authoring videocasts while going for long runs. You had to have seen them, believe me. He’s an amazing thinker and a true believer in a democratic classroom. Paul wants kids to push the boundaries and to make school interesting and relevant for them again. His latest project – to have his students call in book reviews from their cellphones to a number that will aggregate their work.

I’m enamored of Paul and his work, though, not because it is experimental, though I do appreciate the courage it takes to experiment in this day and age. Rather, it’s because he can provide sound pedagogical reasons for  why he does what he does. And because he thinks very deeply about the art and craft of teaching with and in new media and is always apt to say something that makes you rethink your assumptions.

It was exciting to hear the work presented by the teachers on the broadcast – two elementary and one middle school, all from different states. Despite the pressures exerted on them to prepare their students for standardized tests, these educators – Robert River-Amezola in Philadelphia, Joe Conroy in New Jersey, and Chuck Jurich in Arizona – find the time to give their students the opportunity to become engaged, digital citizens.

So inspiring, really.

dolphins v. jellyfish

I recently heard a report on NPR that said dolphins like to use their flippers in an effort to propel jellyfish through the air in what seemed to be an act of play. Soccer, except with jellyfish as the ball.

 

Unfortunately, jellyfish don’t generally survive the humiliation.

Researchers in Wales discovered this surprising, never-before seen behavior.

The story made me wonder a few things. First off, is Wales its own country? Second, are there other animals that engage in what we as humans might think of as sport? And, finally, don’t jellyfish stings hurt dolphins?

Here’s what I found out:

• Yes, Wales is its own country. In fact, after reading about its history in Wikipedia, I began to suspect that Wales may have been Tolkien’s inspiration for the setting of Lord of the Rings. At least the historical names sound suspiciously Elvish.
• When I googled “are there animals that play sports,” the results were either about animal sports movies (one person’s Amazon list on the topic featured Soccer Dog: The Movie and Soccer Dog: European Cup numbers one and two, respectively) or animals capable of playing human sports. I’ll keep researching this one.
• I could not find an answer to my third question. Though I did come upon this passage at the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources website:

Stings usually paralyze or kill only small creatures (fish, small crustaceans), but some jellyfish are harmful to humans. Although jellyfish do not “attack” humans, swimmers and beachcombers can be stung when they come into contact with the jellyfish tentacles with functional nematocysts. The severity of the sting depends on the species of jellyfish, the penetrating power of the nematocyst, the thickness of exposed skin of the victim and the sensitivity of the victim to the venom. The majority of stings from jellyfish occur in tropical and warm temperate waters. Most species off the southeastern coast are capable of inflicting only mild stings that result in minor discomfort.

I’m guessing that they do sting dolphins, and that the stings must hurt. But, clearly, these bottlenose dolphins off the coast of Wales are too in the game to care.

all-star game, 1977

As long as the World Series lingers (thank you, Phillies), I’ll continue to give myself permission to post about baseball.

In 1977, the All-Star game was played at Yankee Stadium. My brother Sam and I, along with my friend Kurt Nunez, decided to get bleacher tickets. So we hiked up to the Bronx in the middle of the night to be one of the first people on line. To make sure we got seats for what felt like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience.

The plan worked.

I don’t remember much of the game (though I do remember those long droopy mustaches, like the pitcher is sporting in the poster to the right). But I do recall batting practice. We got to the stadium early enough to watch the players hit moon shots into the stands.

I remember in particular Fred Lynn, the often-injured but perennial all-star center fielder for the hated Boston Red Sox. During his batting practice hacks, Lynn lofted a ball that seemed to be coming right at me. It landed a few rows in front of where I was sitting, close enough for me to rush to the spot, close enough to spot the ball on the cement floor, close enough to see someone’s hands wrap around the ball, then hold it aloft like a trophy.

Lynn was a defensive standout and had an amazing rookie year in 1975 for the Red Sox, winning both the Most Valuable Player award and Rookie of the Year. What I remember most about Lynn, though, is not his grace or his power, but the formidable outfield he was part of, an outfield that included Jim Rice, one of the great and consistent power hitters of our generation.

They were an interesting combination, Lynn and Rice – who both came up in 1975 as rookies. One white (Lynn), the other black (Rice). In Boston, players have said, being black was not always conducive to kind treatment. Boston, after all, was the last team to integrate, and that came about in 1959, a full 12 years after Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

That was the narrative I knew as a kid – that Lynn somehow received favorable treatment compared to Rice because he was white.

Rice later claimed none of this was true. So maybe the New York media got it wrong, played a racism angle to stoke our hatred of Boston, which Mayor Ed Koch once derided as “that town.”

All that was forgotten, though, in the moment that Fred Lynn’s ball arced into the sky and then grew larger as it – much to my amazement – headed right towards me.

yankees v. phillies, korean war edition

I called my dad today. He started our conversation, as he always does, by telling me we had a bad connection. When in reality, my dad needs hearing aids but refuses to get them. My dad’s auditory denial drives my brother Sam crazy. Me? I feel like when you’ve lived 80+ years, you’ve earned the right to do pretty much anything you want to do, include force your children to talk very loudly into the phone on occasion.

I call just as Game 4 of the World Series is beginning.

“Yankees Phillies,” my dad says.

He read in the paper, he tells me, that the last time the Yankees and Phillies met in the World Series, the year was 1950. My dad remembers that World Series. Not because he was a Yankees fan, or a Phillies fan, or even a baseball fan.

He remembers that series because he was working as a translator for American G.I.s during the Korean War. There was baseball news in Stars and Stripes and broadcasts of the games on shortwave radio. My dad had heard of the Yankees – and New York City, of course – but had no idea what baseball was or that there was a place called Philadelphia. He could translate words, but he didn’t know the culture.

My dad remembers that one American soldier referenced Nelson Rockefeller, the oil-family scion and soon-to-be governor of New York State. Rockefeller, the G.I. said, had enough money to buy Korea. My dad tells me he didn’t doubt that was true, given that Korea, months into a war that raged up and down the peninsula, was a bombed-out shell of its former self.

North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25th, 1950. The day before, the Phillies, affectionately known as the Whiz Kids, pulled a game behind the Brooklyn Dodgers in the race for the National League Pennant. They would eventually overtake the Dodgers and clinch on the last day of the season.

Throughout the summer, the North Korean army pushed south, all the way to Pusan, which sits at the tip of the peninsula. The U.S. then pushed back. By October 1st, 1950 – three days before the start of the World Series – the North Korean Army was forced back over the 38th parallel (which is today still the dividing line between the two countries).

On Oct. 7, the Yankees completed their four-game sweep of the Whiz Kids.

The next day China entered the war.

For the next three years, the Korean War continued – a stalemate, essentially – with massive casualties on both sides. Afterward, my family immigrated to the U.S., largely because my dad received a sponsorship to study here – the result of his work as a translator and befriending an American soldier.

He never expected to stay, always assumed he’d return to Korea once he finished school.

But here he is, following the Yankees and Phillies in another World Series. This unlikely arc makes my Dad laugh. Eventually, we say good bye. And he goes back to watching the game.

yankees in 7

I grew up a Mets fan, but as any of my friends will tell you, I bleed New York. So I’ll root for the Yankees over basically anyone but the Mets.

This is surprising to many, as loyalties come out during the World Series. The current accepted narrative is that the Yankees are The Man and represent the team money can buy, with the highest payroll in baseball while everyone else is the Underdog.

Let me tell you, baseball has almost always been about money, for just about everyone involved. Just watch Eight Men Out if you don’t believe me. The Phillies as little guy? Please.

The only people not in it for the money are the fans, it seems to me. Their loyalty can run deep. I have tremendous respect, in fact, for geographic loyalty.

Your team is your team – win or lose – because that’s who you grew up with. It’s a concept that seems to be eroding in the era of globalization. Evidenced by all the Red Sox logos I see in the Bay Area (there can’t be THAT many transplanted Bostonians, can there?).

Here’s a mathematical illustration to recap how, as a New Yorker, I see the World (and by extension, the World Series):

Mets>Yankees>Everyone Else>Red Sox

in defense of plodders

“It’s a joke to run a marathon by walking every other mile or by finishing in six, seven, eight hours,” said Adrienne Wald, 54, the women’s cross-country coach at the College of New Rochelle, who ran her first marathon in 1984. “It used to be that running a marathon was worth something — there used to be a pride saying that you ran a marathon, but not anymore. Now it’s, ‘How low is the bar?’ ”

This from a New York Times article last week titled “Plodders Have a Place, But Is It a Marathon?“

Of course there are a number of articles about running shoes/running barefoot/distance running being published in the Times right now because the New York City Marathon is right around the corner.

But this piece in particular annoyed me. The notion that completing a marathon is worthless is incredibly elitist and dismissive of the hard work that thousands and thousands of non-elite runners put in to accomplish a physical feat that may be the most challenging of their lives.

I’ve run the New York City Marathon twice. Each time I finished in what was about the median time – a little over 4 hours. Besides being an accomplishment that I may never achieve again, this is what I recall of my marathon experience:

A child handing me orange slices from an aluminum tray filled with rainwater with wedges of orange sloshing about.

Seeing my friends and family on First Avenue cheering me on.

Crossing into the Bronx where there were almost no spectators and feeling eerily alone, despite the runners near me. Knowing that there were still over six miles to go and willing my body not to fade.

Joining a line of men peeing from the Verazzano Narrows Bridge at the start of the race because we all drank so much fluid beforehand.

Finishing the race, feeling exhilarated. Then being queued into an endless line, shuffling along in agony, hearing only the sound of the teflon blankets draped around our shoulders rustling as we moved.

In other words, the memories seared into my brain are not about how fast or how slow I ran. They are about the experience of running with 30,000 other people, being cheered on and attended to by many thousands of others, yet being solitary and focused in the midst of all that humanity. They are not about winning and losing, the traditional measure of a race. To think of a marathon in that way – in terms of winning and losing – is to not understand the mindset of what I would guess is just about everyone except the very fastest.

Why not include everyone in the marathon party? I think it’s quite possible that the world would be a better place if more people were training to complete a 26.2 mile race. Less time for war-mongering for instance, I’m guessing.

the wire: season five, part two

If you’re at all interested in considering the future of journalism, listen to this roundtable conversation of very smart people hosted by California’s Commonwealth Club.