College Basketball Officiation--a Downward Spiral?

source

Every year it seems to me that the mayhem permitted on the college basketball court is more vicious and flagrant. The officials seem to ignore the most flagrant fouls and call the little touch fouls. The 2009 NCAA tournament reminded me of nothing so much as the inept officiation the last soccer World Cup tournament.

Get in control of the game and bring back skill--leave the combat to the gridiron! One man's opinion!

Mom, me, and the unknown hangman?

THE HANGMAN (circa 1959)


By Maurice Ogden

Into our town the hangman came,
smelling of gold and blood and flame.
He paced our bricks with a different air,
and built his frame on the courthouse square.

The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
only as wide as the door was wide
with a frame as tall, or a little more,
than the capping sill of the courthouse door.

And we wondered whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal? What the crime?
The hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.

And innocent though we were with dread,
we passed those eyes of buckshot lead.
Till one cried, "Hangman, who is he,
for whom you raised the gallows-tree?"

Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye
and he gave a riddle instead of reply.
"He who serves me best," said he
"Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree."

And he stepped down and laid his hand
on a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
at the hangman's hand, was our relief.

And the gallows frame on the courthouse lawn
by tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way and no one spoke
out of respect for his hangman's cloak.

The next day's sun looked mildly down
on roof and street in our quiet town;
and stark and black in the morning air
the gallows-tree on the courthouse square.

And the hangman stood at his usual stand
with the yellow hemp in his busy hand.
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike,
and his air so knowing and business-like.

And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done,
yesterday with the alien one?"
Then we fell silent and stood amazed.
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."

He laughed a laugh as he looked at us,
"Do you think I've gone to all this fuss,
To hang one man? That's the thing I do.
To stretch the rope when the rope is new."

Above our silence a voice cried "Shame!"
and into our midst the hangman came;
to that man's place, "Do you hold," said he,
"With him that was meat for the gallows-tree?"

He laid his hand on that one's arm
and we shrank back in quick alarm.
We gave him way, and no one spoke,
out of fear of the hangman's cloak.

That night we saw with dread surprise
the hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
the gallows-tree had taken root.

Now as wide, or a little more
than the steps that led to the courthouse door.
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
half way up on the courthouse wall.

The third he took, we had all heard tell,
was a usurer..., an infidel.
And "What" said the hangman, "Have you to do
with the gallows-bound..., and he a Jew?"

And we cried out, "Is this one he
who has served you well and faithfully?"
The hangman smiled, "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows beam."

The fourth man's dark accusing song
had scratched our comfort hard and long.
"And what concern," he gave us back,
"Have you ... for the doomed and black?"

The fifth, the sixth, and we cried again,
"Hangman, hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick", said he, "that we hangman know
for easing the trap when the trap springs slow."

And so we ceased and asked now more
as the hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night
the gallows grew to monstrous height.

The wings of the scaffold opened wide
until they covered the square from side to side.
And the monster cross beam looking down,
cast its shadow across the town.

Then through the town the hangman came
and called through the empy streets...my name.
I looked at the gallows soaring tall
and thought ... there's no one left at all

for hanging ... and so he called to me
to help take down the gallows-tree.
And I went out with right good hope
to the hangman's tree and the hangman's rope.

He smiled at me as I came down
to the courthouse square...through the silent town.
Supple and stretched in his busy hand,
was the yellow twist of hempen strand.

He whistled his tune as he tried the trap
and it sprang down with a ready snap.
Then with a smile of awful command,
He laid his hand upon my hand.

"You tricked me Hangman." I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men,
and I'm no henchman of yours." I cried.
"You lied to me Hangman, foully lied."

Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye,
"Lied to you...tricked you?" He said "Not I...
for I answered straight and told you true.
The scaffold was raised for none but you."

"For who has served more faithfully?
With your coward's hope." said He,
"And where are the others that might have stood
side by your side, in the common good?"

"Dead!" I answered, and amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me.
"First the alien ... then the Jew.
I did no more than you let me do."

Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
none before stood so alone as I.
The Hangman then strapped me...with no voice there
to cry "Stay!" ... for me in the empty square.

THE BOTTOM LINE: "...I did no more than you let me do."

Dr. Otto Loewi & Me--Woods Hole, 1955

Where's the Important Job for this Man??

Disclosure: My ninth cousin, once-removed


Our Duty

Yet what were Love if man remains unfree,
And woman's sunshine sordid merchandise:
If children's Hope is blasted ere they see
Its shoots of youth from out the branchlets rise:
If thought is chained, and gagged is Speech,
and Lies Enthroned as Law befoul posterity,
And haggard Sin's ubiquitous disguise
Insults the face of God where'er men be?
Ay, what were Love, my love, did we not love
Our stricken brothers so, as to resign
For Its own sake, the foison of Its dower:
That, so, we two may help them mount above
These layers of charnel air in which they pine,
To seek with us the Presence and the Power?

Bernard O'Dowd (1866 - 1952)

Eight Years at Sea with Cap'n Bush

The Wreck of the Hesperus


It was the schooner Hesperus,

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughter,

To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,

Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,

That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,

His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow

The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailòr,

Had sailed to the Spanish Main,

‘I pray thee, put into yonder port,

For I fear a hurricane.

‘Last night, the moon had a golden ring,

And to-night no moon we see!’

The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,

And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,

A gale from the Northeast,

The snow fell hissing in the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain

The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,

Then leaped her cable’s length.

‘Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr,

And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale

That ever wind did blow.’

He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat

Against the stinging blast;

He cut a rope from a broken spar,

And bound her to the mast.

‘O father! I hear the church-bells ring,

Oh say, what may it be?’

‘’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!’—

And he steered for the open sea.

‘O father! I hear the sound of guns,

Oh say, what may it be?’

‘Some ship in distress, that cannot live

In such an angry sea!’

‘O father. I see a gleaming light,

Oh say, what may it be?’

But the father answered never a word,

A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,

With his face turned to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow

On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed

That savèd she might be;

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,

On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,

Through the whistling sleet and snow,

Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept

Tow’rds the reef of Norman’s Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between

A sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf

On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,

She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew

Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves

Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side

Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,

With the masts went by the board;

Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,

Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,

A fisherman stood aghast,

To see the form of a maiden fair,

Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,

The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed,

On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

In the midnight and the snow!

Christ save us all from a death like this,

On the reef of Norman’s Woe!


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)

DAR Turned Marian Anderson Away on Easter Sunday 1939

Growing up in the US in the 1940's, I often heard the DAR spoken of reverentially and knew that membership was regarded as one ticket punch for entry into the social register. I did not know then that my mother, a Langdon, was descended from John Langdon (my 5G grandfather) of Hempstead, L.I., who served two tours in the Revolution, one as a sergeant and one as a lieutenant despite being a practicing Quaker. Unfortunately, I did not find this out until a few years after my mother died. I'm sure she would have gotten a kick out of the idea.

I have found, similarly, that my wife, through her father's mother's line, Bement's, also has an ancestor who fought in the Revolution and her family didn't know it until I tracked down their family tree.

After my son was married and I worked on our daughter-in-law's family tree, which had already been well researched by her grandfather, I found an ancestor of theirs who had been involved in the Revolution although they were unaware that they also had such an ancestor .

Of course, some of the bloom has gone off the DAR/SAR rose for me as I've learned of some of the less savoury aspects of the DAR. For example, I was a bit shocked to find out that in 1932 the DAR had excluded black artists from Constitution Hall in DC after protests about "mixed seating"!

This exclusion policy came to a head as Easter Sunday, 1939, approached when the DAR refused to allow the great opera singer, Marian Anderson, to perform at Constitution Hall because of her race. I am proud, however, that a distant cousin of mine, Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned her membership and helped to arrange for Anderson's concert to be held at the Lincoln Memorial.

The concert was attended by a crowd estimated to be over 75,000. The concert was a one small victory on the path to overcoming prejudice and hate--a long, bumpy road.

What? Is Paulson Nuts?

According to Bloomberg there currently is over $356.3 billion in credit card debt, $256.3 billion in student loan debt, and $199 billion in auto loan debt. Paulson wants to increase funds to push more debt out into the system which is hideously overextended!

More debt is not what the economy needs. It needs more income at the lower and intermediate levels to spur spending and service current debt such as mortgages.

Put people to work in government-sponsored public service projects, infrastructure maintenance and improvement, schools, police forces, and government-sponsored green industries. The system needs money at the bottom to have trickle UP. Trickle DOWN does NOT work!

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Langston Hughes

Nondairy Creamer?

As the melamine-in-milk-products scandal in China snowballs, the New York Times reported today:

"The F.D.A. said the King Car Food Industrial Company of Taiwan had called back seven products sold under the Mr. Brown label, mostly sold in stores specializing in Asian foods. The company’s tests in Taiwan had determined that its nondairy creamer, which was made in China, was contaminated by melamine, the F.D.A. said. No contaminated products have actually been found on American shelves.

"The F.D.A. also said that it had itself extensively tested milk-based products imported from China into the United States in recent weeks. It said it had found no contamination so far."

Questions: How did 'nondairy creamer' come to be contaminated with milk-based products?

Fleisch dich? Oder, Milch dich? Oder?

Doc's Electoral College Breakdown Prediction

Click here