Newspaper sectionism

As newspapers shrink their staffs, all of the sections of the papers are becoming more and more interchangeable. The Washington Post recently discontinued its separate business and Sunday book review sections, and merged them into News and Outlook respectively. This is coming at a time when I often find myself reading a story and going back to first page of the section of the paper to check on what section I am reading. In USA Today terms, Life becomes Sport, or Money or News, and vice versa.

While the particular section of the paper does not really matter much, it is a commentary on today's life that items and sectors of our life are often interchangeable. Sports items are often found in the entertainment, business or news sections--sports are more and more a business or entertainment in its most commercial form. Entertainment is more and more a business if not a sport, and entertainment figures are often in the news. Recent business news often seems like the news of a sport with the chaotic rise and fall and hopefully rise again of the stock market. Life is complex but simpler in some ways.

Change you can believe in...

The economic challenges we are facing are having a sad but sometimes interesting effect on our society and daily lives. While the daily newspapers we wake up to through the major label-run music industry that entertained us at night are being threatened with extinction (and some papers and labels have already passed away), many other institutions and industries that affect our daily lives are facing similar problems and restructuring (some of it overdue).

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education analogized the problems of the newspaper industry with the issues faced by institutions of higher education (it is on the web at the following address: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i30/30a02101.htm). The pay scale of corporate officers in every industry, the work of bankers and the financial industry, and the need for staff in every field are also being rethought and revolutionized. Perhaps most prominently, the auto industry and the views on the need to save the environment are also being rethought. The world is being reshaped at a pace that we could not have anticipated just a year or so ago.

The National Pastime--Just For the Fun Of It

The World Baseball Classic is baseball at its most enjoyable if not at its best. It is baseball played by those who enjoy playing it and playing it for their country, rather than being played for the money--which is what Major League Baseball (MLB) is. The sense of fun and loyalty evident in the Classic is in stark contrast to the brand of ball that is played in the MLB, in which there is no team loyalty, the players are available for the highest bidder, and they do not seem to be having as much fun.

William Rhoden covered it well in the Times on Saturday, in discussing the team's shortage of first basemen, because of the demands of the MLB team owners. He quoted Derek Jeter, who also played in the 2006 Classic, who talked Friday about the honor of playing in the tournament. "Asked why he decided to play again — was it to avoid spring training? — Jeter mentioned national pride and honor.

'That’s the reason I’m here this time, not to get out of spring training for two or three weeks,' he said. 'It’s to come out here and represent our country and win a championship here. Guys obviously have their reasons for not being able to participate, but I think more players wanted to play than not.'

A consistent undertone of the Classic has been who chooses to play and who declines. The decisions underline the tension between a player’s love of the game and his profound understanding of who butters his bread.

None of the players who stayed away doubt that the Classic is fun; it’s just that fun gives way to self-interest — the teams’ and the players’.

The Classic pits the business of Major League Baseball against the intrinsic joy of playing baseball."

It is great when the "intrinsic joy of playing baseball" wins out. It should win out more, but it doesn't win out often in the MLB.

Passing Scene Photo Shoot

The Passing Scene

The world seemed to have gotten a little smaller with the demise of the Rocky Mountain News and several other news dailies, and the passing of Johnny (Red) Kerr. While not a reader of the Rocky Mountain News, the pictures and articles about the paper, made it seem like the reader of the News lost a lively part of their lives and an outlet for fine writing and exposes.

The NY Times began its article about the demise with the words "DENVER — This was a wild city once, a frontier of the Western imagination full of brawling, dueling, nakedly self-interested fortune-seekers and empire-builders — and The Rocky Mountain News carried their torch." The picture of hugging and emotion confirmed the deepness of the loss.

The editor of the surviving Denver Post, which once a fierce competitor and more recently a partner in sharing business costs with The Rocky said of its passing, "[t]he first day I wake up not reading The Rocky will be a sad day for me.” Think of waking up without our local papers, the NY Times or the Washington Post, and that would truly be a sad day.

Then there is the sadness with the passing of basketball great, Johnny Kerr, who will be remembered for the beautiful hook shot of the Nats mid-50s when an upstart team from a relatively small city in frigid upstate New York. He had beautiful form with his perfect hook shot, but he may be known for his selflessness as a great center passer, Former teammate, Chet Walker, described this "Johnny, in my opinion, was probably the greatest passing center in the history of the game. I'm serious. Johnny Kerr would throw the ball through his legs and behind his back and always find the open man."

The Nats won the NBA championship in Kerr's rookie season. It was the only title he would be around until Jordan's run began in 1991. What also began in Kerr's rookie season was his then-record consecutive-games streak, which reached 844 through Syracuse, the team's relocation to Philadelphia and a trade to the Baltimore Bullets. He then went on to coach the expansion Chicago Bulls and Phoenix Suns.

'Johnny has always been what Chicago is all about,'' said longtime NBA soulmate Jerry Sloan, who played for and coached the Bulls and now coaches the Utah Jazz. ''Tough, hard-nosed, from the streets and playgrounds. He took that first Bulls team to the playoffs, and no expansion team ever did that before or since. I hope they never forget that in Chicago.''

Always a pioneer and ready to face challenges, Kerr, was the rough and gentle de facto voice of Chicago Bulls basketball for 30 years and more, and was a steady and self-effacing voice, and now that reassuring voice is not being heard. Two voices of the rough and tumble of Chicago and Denver are no out there--the passing scene.

Rabbit Stopped Running

Those simple words made me sigh as I heard the news that a long lasting friend, John Updike, had passed away. The words just took a moment--"acclaimed American author, John Updike died today at 76." But he was not a simple or momentary author; sometimes his sentences looped and swirled like the fancy Palmer Penmanship exercises we used to do in the early grades of school--but no more, replaced by the steady common font of computer life. Occasionally his sentences were duds like a bad Beach Boys song, but mostly they were beautiful evocations of life in its simplest or more complex forms—he seemed in harmony with life. Updike was proficient at the simplest or the more complex and obscure. For his elegance, it did not matter. He could be elegant with the mundane and usual as well as the grandiose and unusual.

He was an old pal; he has been with me for many years, as I read most of his yearly output. He was one that did not seem bound by time, until suddenly it had run out on him. He seemed close to me, although I only had the pleasure of seeing him read in person twice. He read beautifully each time, and the audience nervously laughed at his swirling sentences. Laughter was a funny sentiment to express at his words. It was almost a nervous but playful excretion or tic that the audience could not hold back.

To meet him afterwards was pleasurable, but you did not know what to expect. One time, he took the book I asked him to autograph, "The Music School" and excitedly told me how the publisher messed up and he proceeded to find the many typos in this edition, marking them and then signing the book. He felt like they had spoiled or soiled some of his best words. But he did not in the end seem to mind or take himself or his words too seriously.

He understood life as we may not have known it; he was its constant chronicler. His friend and student on the Lehrer NewsHour, Nicholas Delblanco, said that Updike experienced life at a faster ratio than the rest of us--his mind was mostly speeding ahead. Delblanco noted that "I always felt in John's presence that he was simply thinking faster and noticing more." His words along with a fine interview with John Updike are at the following web addresses:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/module.html?mod=0&pkg=27012009&seg=5
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/remember/jan-june09/updike_01-27.html

John Updike got it. He got life. He took what it offered and rode or ran with it through its many “fairs,” "villages," and "couples," and he was in on the joke, as one of my real friends of many years would say. Updike tried many things and conquered some. And he let us in on it as a constant explorer and companion of life, whether it be through longer fiction, shorter stories, poems or essays--he shared it mightily with us. When he needed to create a new writer from his own writing, he became "Bech A Book." He tried many new things and new places and new personas, and many old things and old places, like his exploration of the mind of a terrorist located in my aging, gritty home town city of Paterson.

He winked at me through his words and pages--I, his friend of the typos--as he journeyed through many generations of life in my home town in an earlier book of his, "In the Beauty of the Lillies," and journeyed with me and for me. He was an old friend of close to fifty years, since my first book with him, "Poorhouse Fair" of 1959, and he helped me see the beauty and the uncommon pleasure of the simpler and more routine things in life, wrapped in the elegance of his writing. Yes, it was a long and deep sigh when I heard the news. "Oh no," I said out loud as I could not hold back the simple statement of an inelegant emotion for a now departed friend.

It's a New Year, and "what's nu" is old in "Major General" by Franz Nicolay, the keyboardist from The Hold Steady (the one who is interestingly mustachioed) and accordion/piano player for The World/Inferno Friendship Society. The tracks from the opening track, “Jeff Penalty,” to the end play on many influences from the Who's "Tommy" to "Rent" to klezmer to Billy Joel to Queen to Kurt Weill and back to the work of his own Hold Steady. It is an interesting mix. This punk-cabaret, rock-opera is diverse and eclectic (if not always electric), drifting in and out of times, scenes, and motifs. It's fun....