History and Basketball

History, and especially American History, is not a good choice for my reading list. The outcome is not the story, but the flesh on another skeleton in our Nation's closet of horrors. I usually spend the last 2/3rds rooting on my good guys, who usually lose.

An exception are books about Little Big Horn, or the battle of Greasy Grass Creek (the "Creek" is dropped in discussions of a new Custer book - one expects so much better from the New York Times), where one can treasure every moment of Custer's denouement, in spite of the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of soldiers. The downside is too, too much information about this pompous, vain, arrogant, stupid peacock, he of the grandiose dreams and the rim-rider talent.

I am reading a new book about the Comanche, one-time rulers of the Southern and Midwestern Plains ("Empire of the Summer Moon", S. C. Gwynne, available at Amazon for $16.08). Despite being marginally well-written, the story is mesmerizing, except you know the end, and an "End" it is.

A very startling book is "The Mountain Meadows Massacre" by Juanita Parker. There have always been hints afloat about the dark doings of the Latter Day Saints: this darkness comes from the far side of the moon. Read this book ($13.57 at Amazon) and you'll keep a ballbat behind the door for the next visit from Mormon proselytizers.

A bit ahead of me, a female red tail left a wire and soared up to the north, banking, spotlighted by the sun. All I've seen the last few months are solo boys, and she looked enormous, and she was, and beautiful in the light.

A certain basketball blabbermouth has reduced a most singular and descriptive term

to comicbook status, and I fear the harm is irreparable, but the sight of this gorgeous beauty floating in the high bright sky was surely awesome.

Like a two-handed dunk, which scores exactly the same number of points as two converted free throws.

On a more urgent note: Dickie - shut the fuck up.

One of the Williams brothers won the Women's title at Wimbledon, and somebody is going to win soccer's World Cup, probably after a 0 - 0 tie and a shootout.

It seems to me that the "shootout" has shaved off the last peel of urgency in the game, and there is no incentive left in what was already a largely listless endeavor.

There is a market for soccer in America yet to be exploited. Promote sales of game tapes as insomnia cures. Complete with drool bibs. Instant riches.

A bird flew high and fast over the road at Pearson's Mill SRA, and the orange flashes could only have come from a Baltimore Oriole. Drink a toast.

And a blinding white patch on a black bird in flight that was surely a red-headed woodpecker. Beautiful. Drink a toast.

Okay, sot, that's three wonderful birds I have seen through my windshield in the last 24 hours.

What's stopping you? Lay off the juice for a bit, get out and take a look.

It's a wonderland out there.