Red Sox Win It All Again!

Sunday night the Red Sox clinched their second World Series Championship in four seasons. This represents a really interesting change for long-time Sox fans. This team, we were told was never going to win the championship, they were cursed, chokers, losers, perpetually in the shadow of the New York Yankees . . .

Now they've won it all for the second time in four seasons and the reality of this event still leaves me slightly befuddled. The win in 2004 was jubilant; a euphoric and completely improbable expiation of 86 years of misery. Finally, the organization and the city had dropped its negative mantle.

This year's victory has a different ring to it, is more mellow than the 2004 win but is as every bit as gratifying as the first. This year's win validates the '04 win and makes it seem not so improbable -- both teams rallied from deep holes in the ALCS and demonstrated that this organization is one of heart and grit. Despite the fact that the payroll of this team is $143 million per annum, these players are fierce competitors who actually subscribe to an old fashioned notion of teamwork. The ownership is dedicated to winning. The front office is definitely following a plan. The manager is proving to be a fine skipper who understands the modern athlete. Each of the factors combine to produce another championship team.

As a long-time fan I never expected to witness one World Series Championship in my life and now I've witnessed two in four years. I keep telling Child One that the Sox have won as many championships in her life as they have in mine and that's pretty amazing. In 1986 when that grounder got through Buckner's legs my father stormed out of the family room, said some naughty things and then looked at me and said:

They did it to my grandfather. They did it to my father. They've done it to me, and they'll do it to you too!

They had broken generations of hearts and everybody expected that to continue in perpetuity. No more. The Sox are champions again, it's amazing and something I'm still getting used to.

Staff of Life

Mazzolas Bakery Carroll Gardens Brooklyn

Sunday Morning

First Apt.

We owned top flr.

Bridges

New MOMA

New MOMA opened after we left NYC. New moma experience is more exploratory and you see more of collection. very cool.

This was a mobile blog post that I made from the galleries of the MOMA -- it went to a mobile blog post (my text message address was not registered with Blogger) and hasn't migrated over to Quarter Acre so I'm moving it manually -- it's all a part of my mobile blog posts from my NYC weekend.

Tanyth Berkeley

Monumental photo portraits. Passing couple. Woman says creepy. I laugh in agreement.

This was a mobile blog post that I made from the galleries of the MOMA -- it went to a mobile blog post (my text message address was not registered with Blogger) and hasn't migrated over to Quarter Acre so I'm moving it manually -- it's all a part of my mobile blog posts from my NYC weekend.

Some Great Writing/Reporting

Dan Henninger has a terrific column in Today's WSJ (I think that I start a lot of my posts with that phrase). He quotes, at length, the speech that LTG (Ret.) Ricardo Sanchez delivered last week to the Press Corps. The MSM quoted from this speech and trumpeted how courageous Sanchez was to criticize his former boss.

MSM accounts all quoted "incompetence," "nightmare . . . no end in sight . . . " What they neglected to report was that Sanchez savaged the Media for the first half of the speech. When I first heard that he was going after Bush I thought what's his axe? I learned quickly when reports mentioned that Sanchez was the general in charge of the theater when the over-hyped Abu Graib pictures broke. There was his axe, and I must admit that I largely ignored it -- it seemed one more negative, MSM-hyped-Bush-is-stupid-and-Iraq-is-a-failure-kerfuffle.

Then I cam across Michael Yon's dispatch . . . . he published LTG Sanchez's remarks in full. The full story, in context, emerged. LTG Sanchez is critical and rightly so -- he commanded men and women in combat whose lives were endangered by the (treasonous) reporting of the media and the (treasonous) machinations of the incompetents in our congress and the poor PR efforts of the office of the president. It is unsurprising that the media would not report on their own savaging, they have their own narrative to fill out and must help to ensure the defeat of this country -- never let the full story get in the way of that.

Blogless, Webless

I've been very quiet on the blog-front during October -- this is my first written, Quarter Acre post of the month. From late September until early October I was very busy at work. Last week I took four vacation days and built a patio behind my house. I'll do a post on that project this week, with photos of the progress etc.

As I tackle my mountain of silly work-related-emails I am reflecting that I spent last week, outside, working like a dog, in some nasty weather loving every minute of it. I didn't check my email, this blog or even use the web once after October 7 when I logged on to turn on my Out of Office Auto Responder -- and I didn't miss it at all. I was distinctly Ludditic during my vacation. My tools were shovels, spades, grub hoes and a wheel barrow. I didn't miss the web. I didn't miss blogging. I certainly didn't miss my gig. I thought about things to write on this blog, and that was good. I should have some fun posts over the next few weeks as I dump some of the things I pondered while digging, scraping and shoveling earth behind my house.

6W