A teacher of special needs children in Coral Springs has a letter to the editor in today’s Herald. She writes that when students do well, or perform an act of kindness, they are rewarded with tickets to sporting events. The Florida Panthers, she says, have given two lower-section tickets to any home game. The Miami Marlins have refused to donate any tickets.
The teacher rightly adds that the Marlins have the worst attendance in baseball.
Hania and I were the only ones in the gym Saturday morning, so we turned on the TV to watch “Lucky Dog.” Halfway through the show a large, middle-aged man walked in and, without a word, picked up the remote and changed the channel.
I guessed – because I sometimes find it when turning on the TV, and by the man’s obliviousness to the people around him – that he would choose FOX News.
And he did.
Photos of people going to see Hamilton far outnumber those of people reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton.
When he eventually leaves office, as he must – “Everything passes,” say the Poles, who know something about misfortune, “even the longest snake.” – his departure could set off celebrations around the country, perhaps the world, like those seen at the ends of wars and centuries.
I have read numerous stories about smartphone addiction but only Mary Wakefield – in The Spectator – wrote of plopping on the sofa with the device and assuming the “otter iPhone pose.”
The best books of blah, blah, blah. Surely, many of them are very good books. But most of them have big publicity machines churning behind them. There is so much fine writing that doesn’t get that push and goes unheralded. I just picked up again Howard Norman’s I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place (2013) and, turning to the next to last chapter, read of a summer in Vermont – fevers, owls, a new well, calls from a wayward brother, viewings of Ken Burns’ Civil War – and was riveted. No fireworks, no hype, just an intelligent man (who appreciates the absurd) trying to make sense of this life through the everyday.