Larry Thornberry is a writer in Tampa.
Don’t ever bet that higher education can’t go any lower. You’re bound to lose. Two recent and sorry examples prove the point. With a nod to Mae West, one foreign and one domestic. One Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of California’s community college system, wants to eliminate the algebra requirement for graduation because too many Californians […]
Tampa In line with other jumpy elected officials in jurisdictions below the Mason and Dixon, county commissioners in Hillsborough County, Florida voted 4-2 Wednesday to remove the monument to Confederate soldiers that have stood in front of the Hillsborough County Courthouse in Tampa for more than a century, doing no discernible harm to anyone. Jim […]
I see the lineup card for the meeting between Don Jr. and Svetlana Russki has gotten longer yet again. By the end of the month I feel certain we will have learned that the Koch Brothers, Vladimir Putin, and Butch Cassidy were also there. By Labor Day the Hollywood Bowl probably won’t be large enough to […]
In Monday’s NYT there is yet another article about the supposedly new discovery, complete with new, abstract, and techie-sounding words, of a very old baseball concept. All the current chatter about launch angles and exit velocity further convinces the old boys with the spit cups, who actually know the difference between a hit-and-run and the straight […]
MLB Network’s Prime 9, the baseball network’s program that rates the best of baseball in just about every conceivable category, chose Casey Stengel as “baseball’s greatest character” in 2009. It was a good choice, though there was tough competition for the honor, and one of the beauties of baseball is it can produce endless talk (I hesitate to say arguments) about who the greatest (or worst) this or that is or was. In this case, what about Babe Ruth, Satchel Paige, Jimmy Piersall, Bob Uecker, Rocky Bridges?
Speaking of the All-Star break, it’s time for that annual interruption of the everydayness of real baseball for an exhibition game where 50 or so talented and criminally overpaid jocks try for nine innings not to get injured in a pointless exercise. I always thought that the best thing in From Here to Eternity was […]
Just when you thought Colin Kaepernick couldn’t get more over-the-top in dissing the country that has made him a wealthy and privileged man… Kaepernick is looking for a football job. This should come as no surprise when you consider he was 1-11 as a starting quarterback last year and shows no sign of being able […]
“When we lost Saipan, hell was upon us,” Fleet Admiral Osami Nagano, supreme naval adviser to the Emperor, said. Vice Admiral Shigeyosh Miwa, commander of the Japanese submarine force that attacked Pearl Harbor, was even more precise after the war: “Our war was lost with the loss of Saipan. It meant that the United States could cut off our shipping and attack our homeland.”
Full disclosure up front: I don’t understand British politics. I don’t think many Americans do. Understanding our own is elusive enough. This said, I believe I’ve spotted a problem the Tories have that should be obvious on both sides of the Atlantic. Heck, folks watching BBC News in Papua New Guinea have probably picked up […]
In fairness to potential buyers of Language of the Spirit, Jan Swafford does not reveal why classical music is, or at least can be for those open to it, the language of our spirit. In fairness to Swafford, it’s doubtful that anyone could, so mysterious yet accessible is our greatest music. Instrumental music is, after all, a non-verbal art. The sounds can suggest things. But they can’t say them. Even so, those who’ve heard and loved the music from this tradition have no trouble understanding why it is indeed the language of our spirit.
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