All posts tagged: Random DJB Thoughts

2011 in review

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it. In 2011, there were 35 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 365 posts. There were 109 pictures uploaded. That’s about 2 pictures per week. The busiest day of the year was June 11th with 130 views. The most popular post that day was Celebrating Andrew. Thanks for continuing to read this blog. More to come (in 2012)… DJB

Every Three Seconds

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Every Three Seconds. Three seconds may be  the amount of time it takes to bite into one of those juicy pears you received from Harry & David this holiday season.  The amount of time to pour a glass of wine. However, every three seconds someone in the world dies from factors related to extreme poverty. Perhaps three seconds could be the amount of time to decide to make a difference. Every Three Seconds is the name of a documentary film project by award-winning film director Daniel Karslake.  Candice and I met Dan at the home of our friends Tim Boggs and James Schwartz.  There we learned about his new film which… …profiles a number of individuals of different generations whose quest to feed their own hunger for fulfillment has inspired them to help meet the fundamental needs of others. Each has come to recognize that by giving, their hunger is satisfied in a way no amount of material reward could. Karslake is a gifted story-teller.  We were introduced to his work through the award-winning documentary …

Merry Christmas 2011

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For a holiday filled with so many traditions, each year’s celebration of Christmas is different.  Some years the celebration revolves around visits with family.  In fact, so much of what I remember about Christmas from my childhood involves “visiting Mamaw and Papaw’s house” with a passel full of cousins and the accompanying aunts and uncles. But there are also years where other considerations over-shadow the holiday.  In 1997, mom was one week away from dying (she passed away on New Year’s day in 1998), while Candice’s father passed away on December 26, 2008.  In both instances we were able to be with our parents over the holiday season, but the focus was understandably elsewhere. This has been a quiet Christmas.  And that’s been fine. The quiet holiday can have its own special joys.  Some of the things I’ll recall from Christmas 2011 include: The joy of early gifts.  About 10 days ago, we visited the neurologist for a four-month check-up after Candice’s fall and the resulting seizures and severe concussion in late August.  To hear …

Best Month of Baseball – Ever!

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The period from September 28 – October 28, 2011 is already being proclaimed the  best month of baseball in the history of the game. But like the Greeks, who add two months that don’t exist to the calendar so they can pay workers higher wages and claim to stay within monthly pay limits, I want to add a few days and take the personal view that September 25th – October 28th is the best month of baseball – ever! I go back to the 25th of September, because that’s when our Washington Nationals wrapped up their own surprising September and closed out the home season with a thoroughly satisfying win over the Atlanta Braves.  On that day the Nats – rather than playing out the string – took the rubber game of a three game series from the Braves and did their part to help the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals even make it into the playoffs. Then of course, there was the ridiculous night of September 28th when within minutes of each other the …

Lowering the ole’ blood pressure

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We’ve had a great deal of focus on doctors and health in our family over the past two months.  I’ll spare you the details.  But in recent weeks, I’ve taken to wondering if I should ask the doctors taking care of my wife to give me a blood pressure test while they’re handy. The knowledge that Candice was the focus of these visits kept me from going that far, but I have taken to sticking my arm into the testing machine at the local pharmacy, just to keep tabs. Blood pressure isn’t something I’ve had to worry about very much.  When I go in for physicals, the nurse will generally take my blood pressure, look at me, and say something like, “You’ve got terrific blood pressure.”  While not the picture of health, I’ve always been pleased I could rely on that number to turn out right where it should be. Candice, however, has begun to worry about my stress levels…adding to my worries that she’s now worrying.  And when I took a test at Rite …

World Series Game - October 25, 2019

Church of baseball: Part three

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This post…to follow-on the last two and last evening’s crazy night of baseball…will be even shorter. Joe Posnanski wrote one of the best columns about last evening’s games, baseball and life, that I’ve read in a long time.  Do yourself a favor — pull up a chair and read it.* It begins with this thought: “Baseball, like life, revolves around anticlimax. That, in many ways, is the beauty of it. I realize that’s a hard thing to explain to someone who doesn’t love baseball. No, more than hard, it’s an impossible thing to explain, because many people want sports to be more than life. They follow sports to jolt them out of the steady rhythms of the shriek of alarm clocks, the monotony of morning meetings, the rush to get the kids to soccer practice by 4 p.m. They want sports to be bigger than life. What’s the point, otherwise? There is nothing in baseball as jarring as a blind-side hit, as jaw-dropping as a perfect alley-oop, as tense and heart-pounding as a breakaway. And …

Church of Baseball – Part Two

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The River Styx and one chance in 278 million.  Baseball writers are amazing, but they go to a whole ‘nother level when you have nights like last evening. The baseball gods must have loved my last post, because we were all rewarded with the most improbable and dramatic final day of the season.  It was so incredible even Bud Selig couldn’t screw it up.  Three of the four games critical to the wild card races in each league were on our local cable system – conveniently located on channels 41, 42, and 43.  The only one we couldn’t watch was the least dramatic:  the Cards drubbing of the Astros.  But for five delicious hours, Candice and I sat by the television, switching between games almost on a pitch-by-pitch basis in the last two hours, to watch the monumental collapse of not one, but two proud franchises (Boston and Atlanta), and the incredible comeback of the Tampa Bay Rays from too many near-death experiences to count. Baseball writers will opine about this evening for some time …

The Church of Baseball

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“I believe in the Church of Baseball.” So begins Annie Savoy’s opening monologue in the movie Bull Durham.  And after going through all the religions she has tried, comparing baseball to sex, and talking about bad trades (“Who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas for God’s sake”) she ends up with: It’s a long season and you gotta trust. I’ve tried ’em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball. Today I needed the Church of Baseball, and it didn’t fail me.  Oh, I did get up and go to the 8 a.m. service at my other church…especially since we were meeting our new rector after an interminable period of transition.  But I’ll freely admit that I went to the cathedral at Nationals Park today to feed the soul. The Nationals have been on a tear.  Heading in to the home finale, they had won 11 of 14, including sweeps on the road of the Mets and the Phillies.  Tom …

So How Did Your Summer Go?

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Shortly after Memorial Day I wrote a post entitled Got Plans for the Summer? where I outlined ten things I hoped to accomplish during the Summer of 2011.  Well, Labor Day is here – and we’ve reached the moment of reckoning. While I was not a perfect ten-for-ten, I can explain. 1.  Play more music with friends – It is bad when you come up short right out of the box, but this was one item where I failed miserably.  We had a very busy summer, and this one just got away from me.  Luckily, playing music with friends isn’t bound by season…so I’ll try and schedule some fall play dates. 2.  Summer in New England – Technically, this was completed.  I did spend two days in Portland, Maine in early June and I’ve just spent 8 days in New England…but it wasn’t the vacation we planned.  To cut to the chase, Candice fell when we came here to Providence to drop Andrew off at school and she’s been in the hospital this week dealing …