Happy Canada Day!

Today is Canada Day. It celebrates the anniversary of Canada being granted dominionship (we hope that is a word) within the British Empire on July 1, 1867. Called Dominion Day until 1982 when Canada earned full independence, it is essentially Canada's Independence Day.

It is one of those subtle ironies of history that such great friends as Canadians and Americans celebrate their anniversaries so closely together. Particularly in border cities such as here in Detroit, where we are able to enjoy the relatively free interchange of people, ideas, and goods with our northern allies, we ought to be somewhat awestruck by the kinship between our nations. There are few nations who truly have the sort of bond which we have, and we in Michigan are able to partake of that friendship every day in almost every way.

Though technically a newer nation than the United States, Canada is in many ways older and more distinct, more nuanced than we are. It gives Canada a depth which the US lacks in certain areas, as it allows her a better connection to the Old World (such a quaint yet endearing term nowadays!) than ourselves while living fully in the New.

Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, true sister cities bound by proximity and shared interests, keenly aware and appreciative of one another even though in separate countries, share many events during these days. There are of course the massive fireworks, while each city supports various other events: the Windsor Summer Days in Ontario and Detroit River Days. It is something of a shame that they are no longer called the International Freedom Festival, as they were until 2007. It seems to break the unity of the celebrations. Still, their common history marks the anniversaries of each nation's independence similarly and faithfully. The parties remind us of our bond.

We should count ourselves fortunate indeed to have such tremendous associates, such stouthearted and true friends so nearby. It gives us a perspective the rest of the United States may not have, and shows us profoundly what true friendship must mean.

Happy Canada Day, Canada!

Take me out to the Ball Game

Today's baseball game was a tonic. The Tigers won 10-3, and Miggy hit one of those home runs which you knew was gone off the bat. All you have to do is just sit back and enjoy such magnificent feats. Jarrod Saltalamacchhia had three hits to cross the Mendoza line, one a home run of his own, and Daniel Norris got the win despite not being at his best. Even Anibal Sanchez had an easy Ninth, despite his troubles with the gopher ball the last two seasons. The homeboys were in control all the way.

Yet more than that. I was with good friends who appreciate baseball (and are good friends otherwise), and met a new friend along the way (his rum luck). We jived each other, and we talked baseball even though there were no balks. That last part is an in-joke which I do not choose to explain at this time by the way. But it was the kind of day which, at the very high risk of hyperbole I must admit, made me appreciate life.

Baseball does that. I won't say that other sports cannot do that, but I do believe that other games are hard pressed to the task. Baseball is not so fast that it can't be followed, not so complicated that it can't be readily understood, not so brutal that you risk life altering injuries playing it. It is the game of summer. And summer is of course the high point of the year.

On this day, I needed that tonic. Explain it as you might: dame fortune, good luck, the planets aligned; Providence. But I needed today. And I was not failed.

Yes indeed I'm walking

I've known for years that I need to be better about my health. So for about the last two months I've been regularly getting out the door and walking for an hour. It's reached the point where I wake up looking forward to it.

What's wrong with me?

I never expected to actually like exercise. When I've made myself exercise before, at times for several months at a stretch before running out of steam, it was a chore. I had to make myself do it each and every day. Even with activities I like such as curling, it isn't the physical part of the game I like. I never looked forward to a hard sweep. But then this morning when I popped awake at 4:12, I was immediately disappointed that it was too early, too dark yet, to take my walk. Huh?

In fact I'm actually reached the point of challenging my body, of pushing myself further, and wanting to do it. When I began I was walking about 3 1/2 miles in roughly an hour. Then I made up my mind I would ramp it up to 4 miles per hour. Now I'm approaching 5 MPH, just walking at a brisk pace. This morning I hit 4.6 miles in 61 minutes.

While I'm impressed with my efforts I'm also perplexed. Who in the world other than sadists truly like exercise? Here I had been been looking forward to second childhood. Now I'm walking 2 days out of 3 and wanting to. What is happening to me?

Is history truer are time goes by?

In my most recent blog post before this one, I spoke of how new scholarship has shone a better light on Detroit Tigers great Ty Cobb. Yet this is not the first instance I've come across of history taking a different view of someone, especially years after they're gone.

Cobb died in July 1961. That's enough time, isn't it, that we ought to be getting a clearer view of who he was and what he did. This phenomenon first came to my attention when I was working on a major term paper on second President and major Independence mover and shaker John Adams. The earliest primary source which I read, published in 1801 (regretfully I can't recall what that was, as I wrote the paper 35 years ago and can't easily find it) and right on the heels of his Presidency thought him little but scum. But as the books and articles about him accumulated over time, it seemed that by around 1900 people were admitting that he wasn't all that bad. By the 1970s, Adams was actually rising into the camp of a 'better than average' President in the eyes of the majority of historians.

Indeed we can extrapolate this point further when referring to even newer biographies of Adams. David McCullough points out that a quote about Adams, used in the musical 1776 as a citation against the Massachusetts lawyer as 'obnoxious and disliked', can be found only in a self-description of attitudes toward him in a letter I believe to his wife Abigail. McCullough finds Adams spoken of that way by no one else. Judgment of Adams by history continues to tick upwards.

When I was still teaching, I rarely went past World War II in my lectures and assignments. My justification was that things which have happened too recently aren't history yet; we're too close to the events to think about them objectively. True, there are those history will likely never treat kindly. I can't imagine Hitler, Stalin, or Mao becoming saints over the coming decades. But it does appear that history looks kinder upon the more mainstream people and ideas as time marches on.

I do wonder if it would be fair to argue that it's not history if we've lived it. Or at least, not a full and true history.

Ty Cobb, a Tiger redeemed

I hate biographies. The guy always dies at the end. Yet a biography I just finished, which I stayed up far beyond my normal bedtime to finish, my normal bedtime being around 6:30 these days, and as my computer tells me that it's 1:28 AM just now and well beyond that parameter, tells a story about me. Books snowball as I read them; the deeper I read into those tomes which enthrall me the more I simply must finish them as soon as possible. So I have been so entranced with Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, a book my daughter and son-in-law gave me for Father's Day this year. I've read the last 150 or so pages since around 7PM yesterday, staying up very late to do so, because I reached the point where I just had to finish the book.

All right, I took an hour to watch the Classic Star Trek episode Friday's Child from 9 to 10 PM on MeTV. Yet so my obsessive compulsive disorder goes.

It is a fascinating book in that it redeems a hero of mine. That is nowhere near a complete vindication of his life: Cobb's life in baseball and without is still full of holes, errors which I now suspect even he regretted. Perhaps that is where his tale is most human. He knew he was flawed.

The rest of the world? It seemed ready to accept the common narrative that he was a monster, using the word author Charles Leerhsen employed as he approached his study of the Georgia Peach. He thought he would only reaffirm what the world already knew: that Cobb was a terrible human being.

But he only found that Cobb was a human being. Relatively easy research (in his own words, roughly paraphrased here) showed that Cobb was not the Supreme Evil. It showed that he was flawed and, again, and perhaps more importantly,knew he was flawed. Beyond the fact that many of Cobb's actions were reprehensible, Cobb himself knew, on reflection, that they were reprehensible. He knew he had failed his standards, standards of actual right and wrong. The standards of what is right and proper.

It is a good book. It is especially good if you want to know about regular people just wanting to do what they ought to do. You know, people just like you. And me.

What are the hidden costs of recycling?

My wife and daughter are very into recycling, and that's okay. There's certainly nothing wrong with it, and they do it all themselves, so it doesn't even really affect me.

Still, our son while on leave from the Army commented on it in a way I had never considered. Watching his mother prepare tuna cans and milk jugs for recycling he remarked, as she was rinsing the items out and even putting the cans through the dishwater, "So we have to wash our trash?"

Which leads me to my point. Do we really need to recycle things for which there is no demand? Steel, aluminum, copper; these things all get paid for by people who have a real use for them. They're worth money, therefore they get recycled. Paper, plastic, even tin cans aren't worth anything and therefore do not get recycled so readily.

Unless the government encourages or demands it. Many recycling projects are underwritten by government or commanded by it through things such as curbside pickup. In short, they wouldn't exist without coercion. Things worth doing get done without any hint of force.

Think of that when you're washing your tuna cans, using extra water, or burning extra gas to take things to a recycling center. Are we really doing anything worth such effort?

Rudeness at the gas station

I've opined before that I'm intent on becoming a curmudgeon; indeed, that I welcome it. Something which I saw this morning only solidifies that desire. I witnessed something which just plain infuriates me.

Actually, this same thing has happened several times over the years. It's just kind of coming to a head lately.

As I pulled into the neighborhood gas station, not for gas but for a coffee and a paper, I dutifully and rightfully pulled into a parking space over to the side. As I walked to the door, this inconsiderate boor, also not buying gas, parked right in front of the door, to run in a grab a pack of cigarettes. This action effectively blocked access to half the gas pumps, as well as semi-blocking the station door.

Again, this has happened often over the last several years. The more I see it the more it rankles me. It's. Just. Rude. The world ain't all about you, dude. Be considerate of people; park to the side where you're supposed to if you aren't buying gas.

This missive surely doesn't fully express my ire. But if I'd had a walking cane, I sure would have been waving it at him malevolently.