The Arrow's Path

"In baseball there are generalists, who keep their eye on the ball and see the big picture; football is full of special-duty characters who are very limited in terms of their range but have depth. Baseball represents America before the frontier ended, when there was plenty of space and plenty of time, and philosophic anarchists roamed around on verdant fields "doing their thing" with a free and reckless abandon. The game is relaxing and not particularly taxing on the players, who play many times each week. Football is tremendously difficult on the players and is so tiring that sixty minutes of clock time—which amounts to several hours of real time—exhausts them. Baseball developed when we thought nature was a limitless reservoir and we would always live in abundance. Football reflects a different world view; everything has to be fought for, resources are precious, hostile people (guards, monster men) are everywhere and in such a world you have to grab what you can."...

I just returned from vacation, hence the somewhat longer hiatus. One of the highlights for me was visiting the President Andrew Johnson museum in Greeneville, TN . I was endeavoring to give my wife a taste of real East Tennessee, and not the Dollywood/Gatlinburg fake East Tennessee. I have been to several Presidential libraries/museums (Johnson lived before the "Presidential Library" per se ) and this is one of my favorites. I always thought Andrew Johnson was a very interesting character. Johnson was Lincoln's Vice President for his second term and became president after Lincoln's assassination. Johnson had the ignominious duty of trying to piece the Union back together after the War between the States. He was not trusted by Northerners because he was from the South, and Southerners did not trust him because he was staunchly pro-Union his entire career. He was also a Democrat at a time when both Lincoln and the vast majority of Congress after the Civil War were ...

Taylor Marshall has a great defense of using the older term here.  I never used the older term much, but I like his contrariness.