The Bastard Children of Ma Bell

With many grudges, the brittle shell of fury endures long after heart of the matter has evaporated. I don't remember exactly why I was so angry at Ameritech back in 1998; I have a vague idea that it had something to do with a screwed up bill and some unwanted call waiting that would not go away, but I know I was full of righteous indignation when I switched our local service to AT&T. (I know, way to stick it to The Man by becoming a customer of the even bigger The Man. It balances out. Our long distance is, honest to God, through the Illinois Farm Bureau. Eventually you get used to climbing the pole.)

Since then, my only opinion about phone service, besides Never Charter, as I can't imagine trusting my 911 service to the freaking cable company, has been Never Ameritech, which eventually meant Never SBC, as one swallowed the other a few years back. When we moved into this house, I kept AT&T on general principle and never gave it another thought. Until I received an automated message from AT&T the other day assuring me that my "new" phone number--the same number I've had for four years-- was now fully operational.

"That," I thought, "can't be good."

I assumed this non-solicited, non-change change had something to do with the latest turn of the merger carousel: Ameritech cum SBC is now the "new AT&T", meaning that by doing nothing at all I've been switched from AT&T to AT&T, except that the latter AT&T is really my old nemesis with new letterhead.

Letterhead which I got a copy of in the mail today, filling me in on my "new" order, and giving me the URL of my new billing and account information system. Curious as to what information I might find connected to an account I'd never requested, I tried to log in. Alas, it's a system which I cannot access, as despite the fact that that my "new" four-year-old number number is "fully operational," the rest of the system apparently doesn't know that I or my number exist. The virtually-but-not-exactly-identical-system that knows I exist tells me I'm no longer a customer of (that) AT&T.

Could Charter be that bad?

Then again, it would violate another personal principle to give Charter one more dime, so I'll give the old Ameritech/new AT&T one more chance. My phone still works, and I expect they'll figure out how to charge me for it soon enough. In fact, according to today's mail, the new total looks to be $11 less than the old. I can probably be bought for that, at least for a while. Besides, when they screw it up, I've got my old grudge right here ready to go.

Fine by me

Well, my fine (non-feathered) friends, this is a fine how do you do. The official word is that I'm not entirely fine and dandy. Fine! I admit it. Sort of. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is not news. Going face-first into the breakfast table was not my finest hour. When I consider, though, that it took a fine-toothed comb to prove that I'm not exactly in fine fettle, fine doesn't seem such a poor choice in adjective. It's not as if I've been claiming to be fabulous. Besides, if this has indeed been my chronic, life-long state, I'll never get any closer to fine, anyway, on this or any other fine day. The fine print in the drug brochure says I might, but if I ever really get to be in a fine mess, I've no doubt it will all be that medicine's fault. There may be a fine line between taking and giving, but do you really think I'd quote the Bee Gees, even if this line made sense? Not a chance. My brain waves may sometimes be erratic, but my musical taste remains fine.

Happy Birthday, Dave

Birds Do It. Bees Do It. People Seek the Keys to It

By Maureen Dowd

The mind reels at the mind.

The Times’s science section devoted itself yesterday to the topic of Desire, the myriad ways in which the human mind causes the body to get turned on.

It now seems that instead of desire leading to arousal, as researchers once believed, arousal may lead to desire.

The brain, as D. H. Lawrence once wrote, is a most important sexual organ, and men and women have extremely varied responses to sexual stimuli.

As Natalie Angier, The Times’s biology expert, noted, research has shown that women differed from men “in the importance they accorded a man’s physical appearance, with many expressing a comparatively greater likelihood of being aroused by evidence of talent or intelligence — say, while watching a man deliver a great speech.”

This could explain why many Republican women are so frustrated. They have been deprived of the bristly excitement of hearing their men on the stump delivering great speeches for quite some time now.

The Daddy Party, sick with desire for a daddy, is like a lost child. John McCain, handcuffed to the Surge, announced yesterday he has the support of Henry Kissinger. Why not just drink poison? As the Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi slyly said, “Leave it to Mitt Romney to shoot himself in the foot with a gun he doesn’t own.”

Rudy Giuliani, already haunted by the specters of Bernard Kerik’s corruption and Judy Nathan’s conjugal confusion, yesterday made things worse. He did the same thing John McCain did in South Carolina in 2000, a sickening pander the Arizona senator told “60 Minutes” Sunday that he did “for all the wrong reasons.” As Marc Santora reports from Montgomery, Rudy said he would leave the decision about whether to fly the Confederate flag over the Alabama State Capitol to the people of Alabama.

Even cable news showed little interest in President Bush’s big speech on Iraq yesterday, as he continued to excoriate Democrats for hurting the troops by trying to get an exit strategy, a day after Moktada al-Sadr’s spokesman denounced the Liberator as “the father of evil, Bush” while Sadr thugs burned and shredded American flags and shouted, “Leave, leave occupier.”

Four years ago, the conservative commentator Kate O’Beirne thrilled at the sight of President Bush strutting in his flight suit and mocked Bill Clinton’s doughy thighs, noting, “Women don’t want a guy to feel their pain, they want a guy to clean the gutters.” But on “Meet the Press” Sunday, she sorrowfully admitted that Republicans had lost their national security swagger because of Iraq, and now have “a real brand name problem” and “a competency problem.”

“It used to be people thought they might not much like big government, but they can run it,” she said of her party’s leaders. “Now they seem to like it fine, but not be able to run it at all.” A point underscored by this week’s Time cover: “Why Our Army Is at the Breaking Point.”

As Adam Nagourney and John Broder report in today’s Times, Republican leaders are despondent and jittery as they watch their major candidates strain in sycophantic ways to prove their ideological credentials even as they see W.’s administration and war turning into an ever-tighter noose. Watching the Democrats’ fund-raising advantage with alarm and astonishment, they concede it will be tough to hold the White House.

Mr. Nagourney and Mr. Broder quote Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma who now lectures at Princeton, saying that the party does not have any candidates who are compelling. “I just don’t know,” he adds, “how they can run hard enough or fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of the Bush administration.”

Except for Larry Birkhead, all the “Who’s your daddy?” brio this week belongs to Senator Barack Obama, who told David Letterman he would not be Hillary’s second on a ticket, and who remarkably managed to beat her on primary fund-raising with a more democratic and recyclable pool of donors.

That feat of strength led to the hilarious spectacle of Terry McAuliffe, who had been using the Bush-Cheney line of you’re-with-us-or-agin’-us to try to bully Democratic fat cats into giving solely to Hillary, telling ABC’s Jake Tapper: “Ultimately, forget the money. You’ve got to get the votes. And right now, Hillary wins in that category.”

Like the panic in the Daddy Party, the crazed sputtering in the once-dominant Mommy Camp is something to behold.

Hillary has been wielding Bill as a bludgeon on support and money. If you were ever behind him, you’d better fall into line behind her. But doesn’t that undermine her presentation of herself as a self-reliant feminist aiming to be the first Madame President? If you can only win by leaning so heavily on your man for your muscle, isn’t that a benign form of paternalism?

Careful what you Google for

During the weeks that I've been caught in a web of referrals to one specialist and then another--despite the fact that I'm fine--I've done my share of medical Googling. It's a risky proposition, given the number of hypochondriac agoraphobes who have internet access these days, but I'm a Knowledge is Power kind of gal. Weeding hysterical message board postings out of search results is just the price I pay for a little manufactured peace of mind.

Sometimes, of course, there's no peace of mind to be found. Nothing good, I can assure you, comes from typing urology exam "what to expect" into the search box. Memo to Google: Greying out that "I'm feeling lucky" button for certain queries would be a lot kinder, don't you think? While I am glad to lack the parts that urologists seem especially interested in, I'm afraid I may have clicked myself into at least one catheter-themed nightmare.

At least I did stumble onto something distracting to read while I cross my legs and cringe: The Whiteley Index: A Self-Test for Hypochondria. It's a test I'm guaranteed to fail--I'm fine!--but, for some reason it's the funniest thing I've read all day. (Question 4: If you feel ill and someone tells you that you are looking better, do you become annoyed?) If I had as little to do with my life as the anonymous Iowan, I'd spam that survey all over those aforementioned message boards, but, happily, that's not remotely the case. Instead, I'll keep myself busy, and not think about Thursday, and not Google anything that ends in -ology!

Happy Zach Johnson Day

With my apologies to Bob Feller for the unintended omission, I give you this AP story on the Iowa angle of Zach Johnson's Masters victory. One missing detail: it's Zach Johnson Day in Cedar Rapids by declaration of the mayor. Much as this town loves a parade, gravy packets will not be distributed.

Asked to describe himself shortly after his Masters victory Sunday, Zach Johnson said, "I'm from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. That's about it. I'm a normal guy."

That helped steal the heart of the state.

Iowans were beaming like proud parents on Monday.

"He's like an Iowa kid. Kind of naive, very humble, and just a cool guy," said Ryan Hartman, Johnson's former teammate at Drake University in Des Moines and one of his closest friends. "My wife, who is a big city girl, said it best. She said that he is the nicest, most genuine person she's ever met."

What makes Johnson's victory all the more remarkable to those who know him best is that he hardly looked like Masters material growing up in eastern Iowa. Johnson was so small as a youngster that he joined the junior program at his parents' golf club, Elmcrest Country Club in Cedar Rapids, four years after many of the boys had started playing.

After a strong but hardly remarkable stint at Cedar Rapids Regis High, Johnson showed up at Drake in 1994 as a 128-pound freshman who couldn't drive the ball worth a lick.

But he could putt, and as Johnson's slight frame grew, so did his overall game. He eventually became one of the better college golfers in the Midwest, but his former coach at Drake, Jamie Bermel, said he never saw anything to indicate that Johnson could one day top the world's best at Augusta National.

"He wasn't a very big kid," said Bermel, currently the coach at Colorado State. "Real tough competitor. Just a solid player who got a little bigger - and kept getting better and better and better."

Johnson joined the Prairie Golf Tour in 1998, and made a slow but steady progression through the minor league circuit. He earned his PGA Tour card after winning Nationwide Tour player of the year in 2003, and broke through with a win at the BellSouth Classic in 2004.

Mike Cigelman, Drake's associate athletic director, said Johnson's personality never changed as his paychecks grew. That was evident to him during a lunch Johnson had with the Drake golf team last year at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, site of the Nissan Open.

"He was the same guy a year ago that he was 10 years ago. He has an outstanding work ethic, yet he keeps things in perspective," Cigelman said. "Everyone at Drake is incredibly excited and proud of him. His achievements are the talk of the day for every faculty and staff member I've encountered."

Johnson is perhaps the unlikeliest Masters champion since Larry Mize in 1987, and joins baseball Hall of Famer Bob Feller and former NFL MVP Kurt Warner atop a small list of Iowans who have excelled on pro sports' biggest stages.

"It means a lot. Iowans take a lot of pride from fellow Iowans," Johnson told ESPN on Monday. "I love going back. That's where everything started. ... I live in Florida now but going back to Iowa just feels great. I look forward to going back there with the green jacket."

Hartman, echoing the sentiments of Johnson and many Iowans, said that in a state without a major pro sports team, Johnson's win at the Masters is something all of Iowa can rally behind. It was true at Elmcrest, where members packed the lounge on Easter Sunday to watch TV, and for Hartman, whose phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from friends and former teammates.

Hartman sent a text message to his now-famous buddy late last night.

"I said, 'Your life will never be the same. Great playing, and I'm still crying,"' Hartman said. "He sent me something back this morning that said, 'Luv ya. I'll buy you some Kleenex."'

Lesson Plan

It happens every year. Awakened by the spring thaw, history teachers everywhere realize they have a matter of weeks to do the trans-continental hustle from the Treaty of Versailles to the fall of Saigon (let alone the thirty years that followed). It's no wonder that history repeats itself; consider how relatively few people know what happened the first time, even among those who thought they were paying attention. There's never time, and there's not always content.

The most recent decades aren't reduced to CNN Headline News in every classroom, of course, but they aren't often taught with the detail accorded the supposedly more glorious past. More recent events are harder to burnish to a pro-American glow, and that means fewer textbook pages, despite the fact that a straight knowledge of the 60s, for example, would help anyone interpret the present. (Read, for example, this RFK speech on Vietnam posted by his son.)

Regardless, American History is necessarily a survey, each day's new headlines being full of potential Terms to Know whether anyone gets to that chapter or not. If integration, for example, is reduced to Brown v. Board of Education and nine Arkansas teenagers, that might just have to do. There's room for little more on the final exam. Luckily, education is not limited to credit-bearing classes; think of all we wouldn't know if it were. Sometimes it's found in the pages of Sports Illustrated.

Gary Smith's story about the football team of Little Rock's Central High is compelling reading, and it also describes an aspect of the integration story that I had either never known or forgotten: that Governor Faubus closed the Little Rock high schools completely for the 1958-59 school year. The Governor. Closed. The schools! While I'll never comprehend the depth of hate and fear generated by the notion of black and white kids in the same classroom, I thought I at least knew the major details of the turmoil that surrounded it. But the fact that a governor shuttered a city's high schools for a year rather than continue integration left me, as an English friend says, gobsmacked.

Part of my shock is the distance between today's prevailing attitudes and those held in certain 1950s minds. As a teacher of minority kids, I have no illusions about the state of public education or race relations, but at least we've come far enough that the notion of a modern day Governor Faubus getting away with educational murder is laughable. (Today, it's the feds that will kill the schools, but that's a different story). Another part of my shock, however, is that I didn't know, and I really should have. I realize that I never gave too much thought to the consequences of integration on the majority of students, and the fact that some of those initially involved kids had no school to go to just makes the depth of that impact all the more clear.

Fifty years is fifty years: before my time, on the one hand, but right smack in my time, all of our times, in the other hand. We're still living out the rest of that history, whether we realize it or not. Awareness trumps ignorance, surely. And so I have to think: what else don't I know?

Top 10 Things Mirna & Schmirna Have in Common with Dick & Dubya

Because sometimes no apparent reason is the best reason of all:

10. One is the size of a ventriloquist dummy, one behaves like a ventriloquist dummy
9. Anti-American sentiment grows everywhere they go.
8. They're the most sanctimonious group of characters on reality TV.
7. Two of them were born in Syria, three of them can find Syria on a map.
6. More mute buttons are hit when they're on screen than any other time.
5. The only reason Charla hasn't shot Mirna in the face is that they haven't come to the quail hunting roadblock yet
4. None of them belong to the reality based community.
3. They have all spent time in undisclosed locations.
2. Three of them speak some kind of maddening pidgin English. (The other one just lies. )
1. The longer they're around, the more unpopular they get.

Charla and Mirna, you're team number two

On the utterly contemptible scale, tonight's Amazing Race runners-up still trail America's most contemptible couple, Georgie boy and Dick. Read this, anonymous boy, and tell me I don't understand what's happening.

Move over Kurt Warner

There's a new sports hero from Cedar Rapids and his name is Zach Johnson, 2007 Master's champion. You can get the inside scoop here from the best journalist I've ever considered a friend. And if you get tired of the Master's hysteria -- though we're completely entitled -- you might put Mike Hlas on your must-read radar. Like Zach Johnson, Kurt Warner and Ashton Kutcher before him, he's better than Cedar Rapids. Lucky for us locals that Mike stayed home.

Who says there's no Easter bunny?

Fifteen stuffed animals in the chair next to me say different. That's our take thus far this weekend from the children's version of slots -- drop in two quarters and try to hook a stuffed toy with a claw-like device. We haven't been perfect by any means, but we're averaging better than any slot machine I ever experienced.

By some twisted kind of continued spring fever induced logic, we checked into a local hotel for the holiday weekend. Even if it's still freezing outside, we can at least pretend its warm in and around the indoor pool and hot tub.

It's been nice to get away, even less than five miles from home. We've eaten like kings, enjoyed showers with water pressure you can only find at a hotel, slept in and napped too, and took a little family time. Bonus that we also found a most-generous vending machine/arcade type device.

Let's see Tavin top that!

Happy Easter.

"All the shit we been through, you really think I'd kill ya?"

There's surely something inappropriate to be said about the resurrection of the character of Tony Soprano, the final season of The Sopranos finally premiering on Easter Sunday and all. But I'll leave that to someone else. I just hope it's good. I no longer expect great, or even for the season to be worth the wait, these last episodes having been strung out for so long that I barely recognize my phone's ringtone as the show's theme song anymore.

As David Chase stretched his once untouchable story arc into seven seasons, the glory days receded into the past: Paulie and Christopher have been out of the Pine Barrens for six years. A show's momentum is rarely sustained for a decade, even when it doesn't disappear from the screen for years at a time, even when the lead character doesn't lapse into a coma. Over its run, the TV landscape has also changed. Four seasons of The Wire mean that my favorite fictional sociopaths are now Baltimore drug dealers, not New Jersey mobsters. HBO is no longer the sole cable home to DVD-worthy TV; I can't wait to catch up with the second season of Weeds.

But the end of The Sopranos is end of The Sopranos, so I'll probably even do it the DVR-era honor of watching it in real time this week, or nearly. Here's hoping it's worth the trouble for the next nine.

He's no hermaphrodite, but--

Chris Machian for The New York Times

Continuing the fine copy-and-paste tradition we've worked hard to develop, here's a story about a Creighton University athlete who's a decent pitcher--with both arms. The obsession with lefty/righty match-ups kind of drives me nuts, but that's pretty cool.

The Stanley Cup in St. Louis (for real!)

How long can I write baseball posts that have nothing to do with an actual game? As long as it takes the Cardinals to remember they're paid to hit and catch and throw, even in April, even when it's cold, and even when they're the only game in town.

The Blues' home schedule fizzled out last week, but it turns out the Stanley Cup was at Busch Stadium Tuesday night. I'm not sure why the greatest trophy in all of sports (oh yes, it is) was in St. Louis, unless it was a part of a cities-whose-teams-will-not-win-it-in-this-lifetime tour, but its mere presence does illustrate one thing that makes the Cup great: it travels.

While other trophies pass the years in hermetically sealed glass cases, the Cup gets out there and goes. Not only does each player on the NHL's championship team get his name engraved on one of the Cup's silver rings, but he also gets to spend 24 hours with hockey's holy grail, doing, well, whatever. That players drink from it goes without saying, but the Stanley Cup has also been on roller coasters, jet skis, and motorcycles, and in a sauna, an igloo, and Red Square. Players have eaten from it, slept with it, and used it as a baptismal font. Doug Weight even brought it back to St. Louis last year after winning with Carolina, and it sounds as if he had a great day. Say what you will about hockey, but that, sports fans, is a trophy worth winning.

A few years back, when the Blues made the Western Conference Finals, the Cup even visited a local shopping mall as part of a promotional campaign. We stood in line and had our photo taken with it, but I'm chagrined to say that too many years of "look, don't touch" brainwashing kicked in and I didn't put a finger on the most touchable trophy there is. When I realized what I'd not done, it was too late; given the current state of the franchise and my poor prospects as a hockey professional, I'm not sure I'll have another chance. I did, however, feel a little less like a dork when I read that Chris Carpenter, a one-time hockey player, declined to lay his hands on the Stanley Cup when Brett Hull and Kelly Chase brought it by the Cardinals' clubhouse last night.

Meanwhile, the Redbird faithful just hope his failure to reach out and touch it really is about sporting respect and not about the sore elbow he later disclosed. If Carpenter can't pitch, April really will be the cruelest month, no matter what hardware comes to town.

Hoosier Hawkeye

I have to be honest. My first reaction to news that Todd Lickliter was hired as the new Iowa men's basketball coach was, "not another Hoosier." You see, like his failed predecessor Steve Alford, Lickliter grew up in Indiana, played high school ball for his father and college ball in Indiana. Lickliter even returned to coach his alma mater, an honor that has thus far eluded Stevie Wonder.

Then I got to checking into the new head Hawk, and started to think AD Gary Barta did quite well in his first major hire. While coaching vacancies have been filling up left and right, Iowa is the only one I know that landed a current NCAA Coach of the Year. And while Alford led Southern Missouri to the sweet 16 before his Iowa arrival, Lickliter has had Butler there two years running. They gave eventual champion Florida all that it wanted, while Iowa gathered for the NIT selection show only to be denied.

Meanwhile, the rights to firestevealford.com are available on E-bay. Hawkeye State claims to have already purchased firetoddlickliter.com, saving Iowa the trouble.

Something to be proud of

For a high school teacher, I'm not such a fan of high school. I didn't hate it; honestly, I'm hard pressed to come up with many bad high school memories, though I can't completely vouch for the veracity of the internal highlight reel that I've been editing for twenty years. Regardless, four years was plenty; coming back to high school every day is a minimum condition of my employment, not a perk--and I just work in a high school, not my high school; teaching in the high school from which one graduated is not a phenomenon I can comprehend, let alone explain.

At any rate, it suits me to operate on the fringes, to be more in the high school than of the high school. Between living a considerable distance from the campus and having a group of students far more likely to be at work than at a practice or in club meeting after the school day ends, my list of faculty extracurriculars would make for a sketchy yearbook listing. Last night, however, I broke my pattern in a big way, showing up at school at night when I hadn't even been there during the day to make sure I attended a special event, and I'm so glad I did.

Our school has an awards night that basically allows any teacher to honor any student for any kind achievement. That always seemed a little bogus to me, an opportunity for "participant" to be elevated to "outstanding" as if in some politically correct science fair, but in reality many of the Seniors who receive Warrior Pride awards are the same kids who receive every other honor the school hands out. My nominee wasn't in that supposedly select group, but he wasn't out of place, either. Far from it.

His grades won't put him at the top of his class, but they're more than respectable, especially considering that four years ago he spoke no English at all. His work ethic and determination put me to shame, but what I admire most is his attitude. He knows the world is a difficult place, that others have advantages he can't dream of and he has barriers they can't even conceive, but he faces that reality with a shrug and a smile. "Oh, well," he says. "This is my life. What else am I going to do?"

I was as pleased as anything to be able to recognize him in public, to say to the crowd, and to him, in so many words, "Look at what he's done! Look at what he'll do!" I was only a fraction as pleased and proud as my student was, though, and that's the best part. Not only did he get a medal and a nice night out, but, from his expressions of appreciation and the look in his eyes, he also got a boost that will carry him through the end of the semester and out into the world. And, right there, I got my reward--and another high school memory of my own.

Opening Day

I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. . . .It's a long season and you gotta trust. I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.

--Annie Savoy, Bull Durham.

As a baseball Annie, Susan Sarandon's character had, shall we say, her own way of demonstrating her devotion, but that's a great movie and a great quote. And really, I'm not sure there's any other way to describe Opening Day at Busch Stadium than as a worship service: today, no foolin', is Opening Day.

Nothing should be easier than making fun of an event that features 50,000 red-clad people cheering for a beer wagon, but given how annoyed I am that my brother chose to gouge a coworker instead of his own flesh and highly-pressured blood when he sold his tickets for tonight's game, it's clear I don't have it in me. Given the opportunity, I'd have been clapping along to the Budweiser jingle, too.


If the rest of the game looks like the first four innings, there won't be much else to clap for, but that's really not the point. The best part of tonight happened long before Carpenter's first pitch (which was, for the record, a ball). There's something about a parade of convertibles and a gathering of old ballplayers and a lot of talk about tradition that's really just so much hooey that makes me smile despite myself. What can I say? I've drunk the Kool-Aid, and it is Cardinal Red.

I do draw the line somewhere, but it's not straight. The music that was played when the championship banner was hoisted above the stadium was so reverential as to be ridiculous, but except for the "we're afraid you won't live through the season" subtext, those same strains almost seemed fitting when they accompanied Stan Musial's motorized entrance onto the field. After all, if a church has gathered in that stadium tonight, he's certainly the pope. I'm not sure how many of the current players quite appreciate who "baseball's perfect warrior" is, but at least they knew--or followed directions well-- enough to shake his too-frail hand as they entered the field. Kiss his ring, boys; maybe something will rub off.

And that's the heart of the Cardinal Nation appeal. Musial is an icon, and for good reason. He's as respected off the field as he was on, and he's been off the field for forty-three years, longer than even Lonnie has been alive. Seeing him, along with Schoendienst and Gibson , Herzog and Andujar interact with today's team is the main reason I wish I were there. Somehow the representatives of '42, and '67, and '82 make '07 seem to be, for a moment, more than overpaid athletes, if champion overpaid athletes at that. It's a trick of time and memory, of course. None of those aging men were ever more than ballplayers, but each has been made larger than life by the fun-house mirror of a generation's adulation. Out on the field, they're more symbols than individuals, sport-jacketed repositories of millions of memories.

It's as if winning only once every twenty-plus years was precisely calculated to snag one generation and then the next, making each feel a part of something bigger while magnifying the importance of a handful of players. If it were a marketing strategy, it'd be genius. Everyone in the stands has someone to claim as her own, but there aren't so many revered players that their names won't fit on a banner or plaque or outfield wall. Explicating why anybody really cares would require more psychoanalysis than I can muster, but today I'm content to take the value of this enterprise on faith. I'll save my doubts and complaints for another time; today is Opening Day.

Another reason to love Google

On a day like today, there's nothing a company that's rolling in IPO cash can't do:

New! Introducing Gmail Paper

Everyone loves Gmail. But not everyone loves e-mail, or the digital era. What ever happened to stamps, filing cabinets, and the mailman? Well, you asked for it, and it’s here. We’re bringing it back.

A New Button
Now in Gmail, you can request a physical copy of any message with the click of a button, and we'll send it to you in the mail.

Simplicity Squared
Google will print all messages instantly and prepare them for delivery. Allow 2-4 business days for a parcel to arrive via post.

Total Control
A stack of Gmail Paper arrives in a box at your doorstep, and it’s yours to keep forever. You can read it, sort it, search it, touch it. Or even move it to the trash—the real trash. (Recycling is encouraged.)

Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe
Google takes privacy very seriously. But once your email is physically in your hands, it's as secure as you want to make it.

Learn more about Gmail Paper

Spring Break '07: Beam me up, Scottie

I had the best intentions of blogging about my Spring Break adventure in the Ozarks, but modern technology arrives last in the wilderness. Injun Joe's had all of life's conveniences to offer and miniature golf too. The Lake of the Ozarks State Park didn't measure up by these standards, but blows Joe's out of the water in terms of a camping experience.

We left Hannibal for Lake of the Ozarks on Thursday morning, Lisa in her maiden voyage at Hope’s wheel. I bided my time catching up on recent newspapers and checking e-mail. We arrived in the Ozarks at 1 p.m. and stopped for lunch at the Happy Fisherman – at least I hope he was happier than his waitresses.

We continued to our reserved campsite at Lake of the Ozarks State Park. Though apparently not yet quite open for the season, it’s hard to complain about the peace and solitude of a state park in the middle of the last week in March. I do have a bit of a beef with people who lock up campsites and don't use them, but that's another post. Thunder and heavy raindrops sent us scurrying to erect our canopy and we huddled briefly in the air-conditioned confines of our camper until the mugginess wore off.

That blew over quickly and we enjoyed an afternoon of warmth, nature and ladderball. We were awoke about 4 a.m. by a heavy storm, but merely had to close the vents to keep the water out and laid snug as a bug in our four-wheeled vacation home. Eventually the rain stopped and I cooked a heavy breakfast before Zach and I ventured out on the bicycles we had gone to great expense and effort to bring along.

I quickly discovered it's a lot hillier in Missouri than Iowa. I must put the three full months remaining before RAGBRAI to good use.

We spent the afternoon and early evening doing the typical Ozark tourists stuff -- roaming through souvenir shops, getting an old fashioned family photo taken, racing go-carts (I went from last to first despite having Karissa as a passenger), and playing miniature golf (I won again).

After loading up on firewood at the grocery store, since the park wasn't yet providing such service and the advice I got from the nearest convenience store was anything but convenient, we headed back to camp for a bonfire and brats. Karissa and I teamed up against Zach and Lisa for a game of Sequence (we won one and lost one). After burning all the firewood, we headed inside to watch "RV" again, but I don't even recall seeing the opening scene.

We had agreed previously that, as charming as Injun Joe's was, we would leave the Ozarks by 3 p.m. and endeavor to complete the entire 325-mile journey home. That way Zach could sleep in his own bed before his little league season-opener today.

We left shortly after 2 and arrived home shortly before 11. Hope made it, the bikes made it and we made it -- all a little worse for the wear, but refreshed by the experience. I love traveling, except for the travel part.

It's neat that you can now ride down the highway and e-mail messages around the world. It'd be better if you transport yourself around the world just as easily.