The excellent Travel Memoir Review celebrates books old and new. I recently wrote about Etchings in an Hourglass, the concluding memoir in a trilogy by Kate Simon, one of America’s great unsung writers. https://travelmemoir.review/2026/01/22/etchings-in-an-hourglass-book-review/
That said, it was a helluva game: close to the very end, a defensive struggle for most of four quarters with some moments of running brilliance – including a heroic touchdown dash by the Heisman quarterback – a blocked punt and a game-ending interception. And the outcome salvaged Indiana's Cinderella story while doing nothing to deny the game's other narrative: the return of UM football.
This is why it’s so hard not to watch.
I had been torn over who to root for in tonight’s collage championship game. I generally go for the underdog – which is why every NFL team I was pulling for over the weekend lost – plus, I tend to support all Florida teams. Though I have a hard time with UM football, remembering their history of scandals and arrogance.
Then yesterday I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about the new economics of college football. “Miami has turned into one of the nation’s most aggressive aboveboard spenders,” the reporters wrote. “The Hurricanes have a payroll of about $30 million, a person familiar with the matter said, which is among the highest in the sport. That includes the $4 million spent last year to lure their star quarterback, Carson Beck…”
That not only turned me against the Hurricanes, it soured me on the whole enterprise. Indiana surely has its own, albeit smaller, payroll. Lots of things in America have gotten out of control, but few as obscenely as college sports.
Enjoy the game.
The Jan. 12th issue of The New Yorker contains an article about Pope Leo XIV that includes a short section on his time at Villanova University. I read this with interest – I was a senior there when the future pope was a freshman – and was surprised to find, in one long paragraph, two small errors. Both have to do with sports, specifically basketball, so could be seen as insignificant, but they did cause me to wonder about the magazine’s vaunted fact-checking department.
The author, Paul Elie, states that Villanova played its home games at “the Palestra” on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The team played some of its games at The Palestra – as did St. Joseph’s, La Salle, Temple and of course Penn – as part of Philadelphia’s celebrated Big Five. But its home games were played at the more prosaically named Field House on the school’s campus.
Elie uses this misinformation to suggest that the school’s success as a “men’s-basketball powerhouse” is a recent phenomenon. (He notes that three recent graduates now play for the Knicks; as always with New York publications, it's all about New York.) Yet in 1971, Villanova played for the national championship, losing to UCLA by six points. Hundreds of students welcomed the team home in the Field House, where forward Clarence Smith gave an emotional reading of Kipling’s If.
I sent a letter to The New Yorker, which I suspect will not be published.
I read recently that the ratio of words written by Kafka versus the words written about Kafka is approximately 1 to 10,000,000. It seems a good indication of a great writer when more words are written about than by.
For years, Hania and I have been going to Ann’s Florist and Coffee Bar and for years I have thought it would be a wonderful place to play chess. People linger over laptops and lattes, why not a chessboard? The game would give an added touch of class to the establishment.
Unfortunately, my one friend here who plays chess was still employed. But last week I attended Mark’s retirement party, and yesterday morning we arrived at Ann’s, chessboard in tow. David, the waiter, greeted us outside.
“I didn’t recognize you at first with the new haircut,” I told him.
"I didn’t recognize you,” he said, “without your wife.”
Mark beat me handily though not, as I had feared, swiftly. Evenings he plays people online around the world; I last played regularly during martial law in Poland. I was a little disappointed that no one came over to observe our moves – as they do with players on Calle Ocho – but perhaps the sight of two men playing chess on Las Olas Boulevard was too much of a novelty. We need to make it a habit.