Keep your lamps trimmed and burnin'

Diamond Notes (1) -- season summary

Due to the overwhelming interest (expressed by the thousands of readers of this blog) in my fastpitch softball playing exploits, I have decided to add a regular feature here called "diamond notes."

Let's see.  I play shortstop and lead off most of the time, though on occasion this season I have played some centerfield.  I'm hitting .385 with a pitiful 1 homerun after twelve games.  My team, "Smalltown Fastpitch" is 6-6 on the season.  Our next game is Tuesday night in Benton Harbor.  Ya, I drive 50 miles each way to play softball, since there's basically no men's fastpitch to speak of in Indiana anymore. 

On a wierd note, I have hit three foul ball homeruns this season.  That might double the number of foul ball homeruns I've hit in my career.  I've no idea what to make of that.

Last night we won our game 10-1 and I went 2-4 with a triple. I played centerfield and we had three high school baseball players in the infield.  Perhaps there is hope for the future of men's fastpitch afterall.   

Interesting weather observation: it was 75 degrees at my house when I left for the game.  It was 58 at Plangger Park in Benton Harbor when I arrived an hour later.  Lake breeze, I guess.  That just a day after the high temperature was 98 in Benton Harbor.

all the way down

"...depression demands that we reject simplistic answers, both "religious" and "scientific," and learn to embrace mystery, something our culture resists. Mystery surrounds every deep experience of the human heart: the deeper we go into the heart's darkness or its light, the closer we get to the ultimate mystery of God. But our culture wants to turn mysteries into puzzles to be explained or problems to be solved, because maintaining the illusion that we can "straighten things out" makes us feel powerful. Yet mysteries never yield to solutions or fixes--and when we pretend they do, life becomes not only more banal but also more hopeless, because the fixes never work."

[. . .]

"One of the hardest things we must do sometimes is to be present to another person's pain without trying to "fix" it, to simply stand respectfully at the edge of that person's mystery and misery. Standing there, we feel useless and powerless, which is exactly how a depressed person feels--and our unconscious need as Job's comforters is to reassure ourselves that we are not like the sad soul before us."

- Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

"and butterflies are free to fly..."

"I'm strangled by your haunted social scene
Just a pawn out-played by a dominating Queen"

Somebody's Crying--anthem of unrequited love

From "High Fidelity"--opening monologue.

Come and Get It (35)

Best song I heard on Pandora this morning, hands down.




p.s. I still need a nickname. How cool is "Paperboy" as a nickname?

Reading Group Book #3

We will be discussing Tim O'Brien's groundbreaking post-modernist novel at our next meeting.

Sunday, June 26 @ 7:00 p.m.

"No waving and no cigarette lighters, please" (34)

As the days fly past will we lose our grasp or fuse it in the sun? (33)

Today's song--just because I love Neil Young more than anyone probably should.

Will I see you give
more than I can take?
Will I only harvest some?
As the days fly past
will we lose our grasp
Or fuse it in the sun?

"I kiss you in my dreams" (32)

How do you get a name like "Lead Belly"?

Comment with nickname suggestions for me. I'm in need of one.

Until then, enjoy a classic.