Autumn bounty.

Brooklyn Heights Greenmarket, October 2, 2008.

The Rays win the pennant! The Rays win the pennant! The Rays win the pennant!

Price, the kid from Vandy, comes through with the crucial outs.

One of the best league championship series for a while. Sorry, Twiffer, and dearest wife.

Death Rays? Dead Sox?

Don't bet on it. Four times a team has been down 3-1 in a seven game post-season series and come back to win. Three times, that team was the Red Sox.

10/17 Update: Didn't I tell you? Down 7-0 in the middle of the 7th, the Sox come back to get four runs in the bottom of that inning (three of them thanks to Papi's bat), tie it in the 8th, and win in the 9th. I couldn't see them getting swept at Fenway. So, we go back to Florida, where the Rays will, I hope, prevail.

The Amygdaloids: neuroscience and rock 'n' roll.

Back in my idyllic childhood days, I liked to imagine odd combinations of people and things. One of my daydreams about my own future had me climbing out of the cockpit of a hypersonic jet fighter after a joyride in the sky, walking into a building next to the tarmac, and there, after doffing my helmet but still wearing my g-suit, sitting at a grand piano and playing a Chopin étude (I did later learn to fly a plane--a decidedly non-hypersonic Cessna--but never learned to play piano). Another of my fantasies was a record album titled Scientists Sing Rock 'n' Roll, which would have cuts like J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, doing "Don't Be Cruel". The latter has come true, in a sense, with the advent of the Amygdaloids. The clip below, made at New York City's 92nd Street Y on April 3 of this year, begins with a talk about human brain anatomy and its implications for how thought and emotion relate (or fail to relate) by Joseph LeDoux, Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University's Center for Neural Science, and a guitarist/vocalist for the Amygdaloids, then follows with the group doing "Memory Pill":



The other members of the group are Nina Galbraith Curley (bass and vocals; PhD candidate in neural science at NYU), Daniela Schiller (drums and vocals; postdoctoral fellow in neural science at NYU), and Tyler Volk (guitar and vocals, with lead vocal on "Memory Pill"; associate professor of biology and science director of the NYU environmental studies program).

Atonement

Yom Kippur ended at sundown yesterday. I'm not Jewish, but I like the idea of a "day of atonement" in which, among other things, you're supposed to make amends to anyone you've wronged in the previous twelve or thirteen (such are the vagaries of the Jewish calendar) months. So I'm trying some atonement here for things I've posted on this blog.

First, Ben Stein. I really came down hard on you. It's largely because I was so disposed to like you. I enjoyed your show, Win Ben Stein's Money. More to the point, we had a friend in common; someone whose judgment I respected and who once did one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. To see you trashing evolution came, to say the least, as an unexpected blow below the belt. Your falling for the canard that Darwin's theory gives support to Nazi racism and the Holocaust had me shaking my head in despair. Nevertheless, I'm willing to allow that, in this matter, you were acting the fool not the knave.

Next, Leon Kass. I made sport of your fuddy-duddy-uncle-ish objections to outdoor eating in general, and ice cream cones in particular. I disagree with you about embryonic stem cell research (I've never cottoned to slippery-slope arguments, so long as reasonable people like me get to decide where the lines get drawn) and some other issues for similar reasons. Nevertheless, I'll confess, I find you fascinating, because you seem to have something I don't (which, my having lived over sixty two years, may be evidence of naivete or even imbecility): what Miguel de Unamuno called the "tragic sense of life". It's something you seem to share with the British philosopher John Gray and my former Fray colleague and fellow blogger IOZ, not that either of them would necessarily want to be put in the same category with you, or with each other, or with Unamuno, for that matter.

Last (and certainly least), Sarah Palin. I was a bit snarky, but I'll give you credit for a couple of things you said during your Katie Couric interview: "Well, I am all for contraception", and "Oh, I think it [evolution] should be taught as an accepted principle." Good for you, though you still don't get my vote.

Last night's debate.

I was going to post something about it, my friends, but I just can't top what's on my favorite sports blog. Yes, that one.

Addendum: Looking at the reader comments on MSNBC's "First Read" (for example, those on this post by Domenico Montanaro), I'm finding them running at least 20-1 pro-Obama. Also, the few pro-McCain comments tend to be poorly written, lacking in coherent argument, or just plain loony (e.g. OBAMA IS THE ANTI-CHRIST! STOP HIM!!!!). I find it hard to believe that MSNBC's readership is, on the whole, that heavily weighted with Democrats or "liberals" (OK, it ain't Fox, but nevertheless...). What this does make me think is that the McCain-Palin campaign has simply flummoxed intelligent conservatives (not a null set), so, like Cubs and Mets fans, they've had to resign themselves to pondering future prospects.

Killer "Bs".

It's good to know that Christina Long of The Brooklyn Paper shares my "B" alliteration fetish.

Rays, Red Sox to ALCS.

There will be tension in your correspondent's household starting next Friday evening, when the Rays host the Red Sox at Tropicana Field for the opening game of the American League (yes, for now, I'll call them by their real name, not the Short-Attention-Span League) Championship Series. My wife, Bay State born and bred, and schooled but a few blocks from Fenway, will have to bear this old Tampa hand's cheering for the Rays in their maiden trip to the post-season; indeed, capping their first-ever winning season. Shades, dare I say, of the '69 Mets?

And, whoever wins the ALCS, I will root for in the World Series.

10/9 update: Tim Marchman, who was one of my reasons for mourning the loss of the New York Sun, has a piece in Slate that makes me feel even better about backing the Rays.

California wildlife.

Seals, sea lions, and cormorants; Monterey Bay.

Pelicans, Monterey Bay.

Sea otter, Montery Bay.

Whale spout, Fort Funston.

Whale (humpback?) breaking surface, Fort Funston.

Black-tailed deer, Point Reyes.

South Florida falls to Pitt.

Just as I wrote last week that I feared, my South Florida Bulls were eviscerated by the Pittsburgh Panthers. The Bulls, as I've written before, have enough Gator DNA that there always comes a time, fairly early in the season, when they succumb to cockiness and get blindsided by a team they're supposed to beat.

Kaddish for the New York Sun.

As someone born on the leading edge of the baby boom, I've found myself having to say farewell to many of the people I admired in my childhood, youth, and even younger adulthood, of late. This year, to give several examples, I've mourned the passing of Bo Diddley, Erik Darling, John Stewart, Paul Newman, and my friend Cicely Nichols. Today, though, I'm grieving for a newspaper. The New York Sun existed for just over six years, and I've been a subscriber only for the last year and a half. The Sun was intended to fill a niche in New York journalism that has remained empty since the demise of the World Journal Tribune, that of an upscale, broadsheet "conservative" paper. I put "conservative" in quotation marks because, as I've written here before, in the footnote (below the addenda) to this post, it is a term that no longer has a clear meaning (as is also true of "liberal"). Indeed, the conservatism of the Sun was of a different cloth than that of the old WJT. Moreover, unlike the WJT and the Times, it made no pretense that its news articles were "objective", as opposed to its editorial and opinion columns. "Fair and balanced" it was not, nor did it aspire to be.

I disagreed, sometimes vehemently, with much of what I read in the Sun. Nevertheless, I was always happy to see it at my doorstep. (Was it just my imagination that the delivery person usually put it down to the right of my copy of the Times?) I liked to read it because it challenged my thinking on some issues, and inspired me to hone my arguments. I'll always be grateful to Amity Shlaes for adding Pigovian tax to my vocabulary, and in John McWhorter I found someone I could agree with more often than not, and who brought to issues like the "war on drugs" perspectives that were new to me. I'll also miss the trenchant baseball analysis of Tim Marchman, and coverage of the arts that was, in my view, second to none. Among the last, I was especially fond of the essays on art and architectural history by fellow Brooklynite Francis Morrone. I hope all of these writers quickly find other venues for their work, and thank Seth Lipsky and his team for a fine run.

Mets: it's over.

Goodbye, Mets. Goodbye, Shea.

Memo to Jeff W., cc Omar M.: keep Jerry.

10/4 update: Jerry gets a two year contract.

Things are looking very bad for the Mets.

The bullpen has just give up back-to-back homers, putting the Marlins ahead 4-2 in the eighth. Meanwhile, the Brewers have just gone ahead of the Cubs 3-1, also in the eighth. There were four possible outcomes today: Mets win, Brewers lose, so Mets win wild card; Mets and Brewers both win, in which case they have a one-game playoff; Mets and Brewers both lose, ditto; Mets lose, Brewers win, so brewers get wild card and Mets are done. Three possibilities out of four have the Mets staying alive. Right now, the one possibility that kills them looks almost certain.

Update: Brewers win their game; Delgado just flied out with two on, two out, to end the eighth.

Second update: It's still 4-2, going to the bottom of the ninth. Wright is up, then Chavez, then Easley.

Third update: It's down to Easley.

Fourth update: Easley walks! It's up to Church.

Final update: Church flies out.

College football: it's crazy upset weekend.

Maybe I'm just imagining it: I haven't looked back at what happened in previous seasons, but I have this feeling that around the fifth week, sometime on the cusp of September/October, there's this weekend when lots of highly ranked teams get their comeuppance. Here's who got theirs this weekend:

Number one, USC, falling to unranked Oregon State 27-21 on Thursday night, as previously reported here.

Number three, Georgia, losing to number eight, Alabama, 41-30.

Number four, Florida, embarassed by unranked Ole Miss, 31-30. I kind of expected this after the Gators' romp over Tennessee last week. This seems to be the time every season at which their heads swell so much they can barely fit in their helmets.

Number nine, Wisconsin, edged by unranked Michigan, 27-25.

Number sixteen, Wake Forest, upended by unranked Navy, 24-16. Deacons coach Jim Grobe had the following enlightening observation about his team's loss: "I think the ability to not throw the football without turning the ball over was what hurt us today."

Number twenty, Clemson, bested by unranked Maryland, 20-17. The Terps established themselves as giant killers a couple of weeks ago by upsetting California.

Number 24, East Carolina, trounced by unranked Houston, 41-24. Pirates sunk twice in a row, so goodbye to top 25 and a Cinderella season.

Non-upset of the day: my South Florida Bulls crushed North Carolina State, 41-10. Perpetual fusspot that I am, I worry about Pitt next week.

9/29 update: AP and USA Today polls both have South Florida ranked tenth. All the more reason to worry about Pitt next Saturday. Then, again, they got all the way to number two last year before losing to Rutgers. Speaking of the Big East, Connecticut has just cracked the top 25, on the strength of victories over Hofstra, Temple, Virginia, Baylor, and Louisville.

Have I managed to get this far into the season without mentioning the Nittany Lions? They're 5-0 and ranked sixth. Hope I didn't curse them by mentioning this.

Goodbye, Paul Newman.

My favorite memory (as, I'm sure, for many others) is Cool Hand Luke, from which I posted the "failure to communicate" clip above.

Cubs find two ways to be Met killers.

Monday and Wednesday it was by winning. Tonight it was by losing.

9/27 update: But the Mets are proving harder to kill than Rasputin. Now, if only the Cubs can switch out of Mets killer mode (so far, so good, but this may change).

9/27 second update: Phillies clinch the division title, but the Cubs come through against the Brew-ha-has, putting the Mets into a tie for the wild card.

Beavers contain Trojans; pundits proved wrong again.

Once again, the pundits have to eat crow for declaring Southern Cal a presumptive national champ early in the season. Last year it was the Stanford Cardinal who pulled off the big upset. This time it was Oregon State, by a score of 27-21. There's cacophony in Corvallis tonight.

Update: My Sitemeter tells me that someone in Seattle hit on this post by doing a Google search for "Beavers contain Trojans". By coincidence, one of my favorite perhaps unintentionally raunchy headlines came from the Seattle area. This was told to me at the bar of the Lion's Head by a friend who had worked as a journalist in Seattle before moving to New York. It concerned the outcome of a congressional race between incumbent Democrat Norm Dicks and a Republican named Beaver in a mostly suburban district south of the city. The morning after the election, the paper proclaimed: "Dicks Drills Beaver in Bedroom Community Race."

And, while we're on that subject, Mike McLaughlin of The Brooklyn Paper recently came up with this. Considering his present state of mind, I don't think it was unintentional.

Some hopeful news from a "red" state.

Yes, it's Bill's and Hill's old stomping grounds, but Arkansas is generally reckoned safe for the Republicans in this election, as it was in the last two. However, Archaeopteryx offers anecdotal, but bracing, evidence of substantial support for Obama there, among white as well as black folks.

The Descendents: "Kids on Coffee"

If this doesn't jump start your week, you're close to asystolic. .

College football: Bulls escape knife, Pirates walk plank, Commodores cruise.

Last Monday I predicted that my South Florida Bulls would beat Florida International, but that it would be closer than expected. Indeed. If I'd had the courage to put my money where my keyboard was and bet FIU as four touchdown underdogs, I could have done nicely. Then, again, I might have blown it betting Tennessee to cover the spread against Florida.

East Carolina's glory run was ended by in-state rivals N.C. State, in a thriller that went to OT. The Pirates have impressed the pundits enough, however, to stay in the top 25 in the latest AP poll. Newbies to the poll elite are the Vanderbilt Commodores, on the strength of victories over Miami of Ohio, South Carolina, Rice, and Ole Miss. There's a red sky at morning, though, with Auburn, smarting from a close loss to LSU, as their next opponent.

MLB playoff picture shapes up.

In the Real Baseball League (a.k.a. the Senior Circuit), the Cubs (who haven't won a Series since 1908) and the Dodgers are in. The other two will come from these three: Mets, Phillies, Brewers. Until recently, the Brew-ha-has (as Milwaukee native and Kettle of Fish owner Patrick calls them) looked like a lock for the wild card, but they've had a near end of season collapse that rivals the one that doomed my Mets last year. Meanwhile, the Mets, despite serious injury hits to their starting rotation, bullpen, and outfield, are still in the thick of things. If they can make the post-season and last beyond round one, Manuel should not only be stripped of his "interim" designation; he should be NL manager of the year.

The Designated Hitter League (a.k.a. the league for people with short attention spans) playoffs definitely include Los Angeles de Anaheim and the Tampa Bay Rays. Conventional wisdom has it that the Rays, having no playoff experience, have no hope of going the distance (just like the 1997 Marlins and the 1969 Mets). The Red Sox look to be a lock, either as Eastern Division champs if they can overtake the Rays and relegate them to the wild card, or, more likely, as the wild card. (My wife is happy.) The final spot will be taken by the Central division champs, either the White Sox (opening the possibility of a first-ever "El Series") or the Twins.

I see four possible final outcomes that would make me happy, in order of preference: (1) Mets (but, given the conventional wisdom that pitching is everything in the playoffs, they seem a long shot); (2) Rays (old hometown loyalty, as well as a liking for Cinderellas, and I think Joe Maddon is a really cool guy); (3) Cubs (for reasons explained here); and (4) Red Sox (spousal loyalty).

Sue Foley, "Queen Bee".

Here's the Canadian blues singer (part of a proud tradition going back at least forty years, to Ian Tyson doing "Flies in the Bottle") Sue Foley doing "Queen Bee", her version of Slim Harpo's "King Bee", which was also covered by Pink Floyd and the Stones.

Thanks to shadowknowz for the clip.

Update: On the subject of Pink Floyd, I've just learned of the death two days ago of founding member and keyboardist Richard Wright. R.I.P. (Scroll down the linked page to find a video clip of Wright and former Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour doing a chilling version of "Comfortably Numb".)

Pandora Radio: DIY programming.

Thanks to Kei Andersen, I've discovered Pandora Radio, a site that lets you set up your own music programs to play on your computer, based on your preferences for certain artists or styles. So far, I have set up "stations" that play music by (or similar to that by) Gram Parsons, Fairport Convention, Miles Davis, Koko Taylor, and Kronos Quartet. It's easy to do, and it's free.

College football: Bulls, Pirates survive; Trojans romp, not much else of note happens.

Contrary to my earlier trepidations (see "Update"), my South Florida Bulls were able to knock off the Kansas Jayhawks (since USF beat the Tennessee-Martin Skyhawks in their opener, the season record is now ungulates-2, raptors-0), as a result of which the Bulls rose to twelfth in the AP poll (one better than the rank previously held by Kansas), while the Jayhawks fell to nineteenth, the former position of USF. The Bulls are now cruisin' for a bruisin', but I'll be bold and say it probably won't come next week at the hands of Florida International, even though the game's in Miami. It'll be closer than expected, though.

This year's big surprise team, the East Carolina Pirates, despite having major upsets over Virginia Tech and West Virginia, was nearly capsized by Tulane's Green Wave, but managed to right itself. The Georgia Bulldogs, ranked second going into the game, survived a tough challenge from Steve Spurrier's unranked South Carolina Gamecocks. The Bulldogs were thereby demoted to third, behind USC and Oklahoma. The Florida Gators, idle this week, held at number four.

Southern Cal obliterated Ohio State, leading the New York Times' Pete Thamel to declare them this season's presumptive champion. However, NBC pundit Joey Johnston thinks an SEC team could unhorse the Trojans. Not so fast, says Johnston's NBC colleague John Walters, the Big 12 is really tops this year.

So, there's reason to keep watching.

Californians enjoying the outdoors.

Surfer, near Cliff House, San Francisco.

Hang glider at Fort Funston.

Closer view of hang glider.

On the beach, Fort Funston.

Another Fort Funston beach scene. Note the container ship (inbound, decks stacked with containers, probably loaded with Asian-made goods) and tanker (outbound, in ballast, probably headed to Alaska to load crude for East Bay refineries) passing in the background.

It's all San Andreas' Fault

On a visit to the Point Reyes National Seashore, we began by walking the Earthquake Trail. The displacement between the sections of fence in the photo above (lower to the left, upper to the right) shows the extent to which the land was shifted by the great 1906 earthquake that devastated San Francisco.

The three posts marking a line going toward the fence in the background show the approximate alignment of the San Andreas Fault. The Fault roughly marks the boundary between the North American and Pacific tectonic plates. So, I can say that, when I took this photo, I was standing on the Pacific Plate, to the west of the Fault, looking at the North American Plate, to the east (and right) of the line extending through the posts.

Fortunately for me, the earth did not move during my visit to this very excitable spot. I'm told that Northern California experienced a small earthquake a few days after we left.

Goodbye to a neighbor.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Monte Ghertler, though he lived but a few blocks from me, in the St. George Tower. I have known his daughter, Louise Crawford, for just over a year and a half. Along with producing Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn and being The Brooklyn Paper's "Smartmom", Louise conceived and organized the Brooklyn Blogfest. As I've noted before, she has been generous with help and encouragement to me and to this blog.

My heartfelt condolences to Louise, her mother, her husband and children, her sister, Caroline, whom I met in the Clark Street subway elevator when I mistook her for Louise, and all others who knew and loved Monte. Having read Louise's sweet farewell, I only wish I could have known him.

On the trail of the Continental Army, cont'd.

In a previous post, I described a tour, guided by Brenda Becker, in which we viewed sites in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, at which the first events of the Battle of Brooklyn (also called the Battle of Long Island) unfolded. The initial skirmishes took place on the hilly terrain where the park is now located, and where British troops, under General William Howe, advancing northward from their landing at Gravesend Bay first encountered elements of the Continental Army, under the command of George Washington, which had been deployed on Long Island to protect New York City from an attack from the east. The battle, as it developed, was a series of holding actions by American units that allowed the majority of Continental troops to escape to the westward. The fiercest of these actions took place in and around the Old Stone House, where a Maryland unit suffered 256 lost covering the retreat.

The Continental Army, having largely escaped Howe's initial thrust, encamped at Brooklyn Heights. Indeed, the building in which I now sit writing this probably occupies ground on which troops endured a soaking rain. The bad weather was actually a break for the Americans, as it forced Howe to halt his advance and gave Washington and his subordinate commanders time to plan a retreat. The American position on the Heights was untenable, as Howe's troops surrounded them on the land side to the east, and on the other side was the East River, where a shift in wind direction--which so far had favored the Americans--would allow the British Fleet, under the command of Howe's brother, Richard, to attack them and prevent any further escape to the west.

The historical marker in the foreground of the photo above notes that the area in front of it, now a small cove off the East River in the area between the Brooklyn (seen in the photo) and Manhattan bridges now called "DUMBO", but probably a very different looking place in 1776, before extensive shoreline filling was done, is roughly the site from which Washington's Army made its escape from Long Island. This was done under cover of night, and later morning fog which also was a blessing for the Americans. The crossing was made in boats crewed by seamen from Marblehead, Massachusetts, under the command of Colonel John Glover.

Once the wind shifted and allowed the British fleet to sail into New York Harbor, the Continental Army was unable to defend New York City, and retreated first to upper Manhattan, then to Westchester County, fighting delaying actions in both places. They then crossed the Hudson and retreated through New Jersey to eastern Pennsylvania, where they endured their winter encampment at Valley Forge. The same Marblehead boatmen who facilitated the escape from Long Island would, a few months later, be involved in Washington's crossing of the Delaware, leading to his victories at Trenton and Princeton.

Are the Rays the Mets of '08?

It's beginning to look that way. At least it's the Red Sox, not the Yanks, who are likely to benefit from this collapse.

Of course, it's still possible that the Mets could be the Mets of '08.

College football weekly: Bulls behave normally while Gators don't; Pirates pillage and burn.

Predictably, my South Florida Bulls came off an easy opener romp over Tennessee-Martin by falling flat in the second half of their joust with the Central Florida Knights, the closest thing these schools have to an Ur-rivalry, and just escaping with a win in OT. Next week they play Kansas. My gut says they get upset, but my head says they'll wait until mid-season to get knocked off by some mediocre Big East team.

Unpredictably, the Florida Gators did not go flat after their opener rout of Hawaii, and swamped the Miami Hurricanes, a team that's had their number for years, 26-3. They get a week's rest before facing Tennessee.

The East Carolina Pirates look to maybe be this year's Boise State, after edging Virginia Tech in their opener and crushing eighth ranked West Virginia 24-3 yesterday.

Things might stay interesting, in a good way, for a while.

Update: In mentioning the upcoming USF/Kansas game, I wrote that Kansas winning would be an upset. However, a glance at the AP rankings in this morning's New York Times shows the New! Improved! Jayhawks ranked thirteenth, while the Bulls have dropped from seventeenth to nineteenth because of their inexcusable failure to run up the score on Central Florida. So, it's an upset that I'm hoping for, but my hopes aren't too high.