The Eve of Spring Training

Barak Obama is selling change. We Twins fans are having change -- on a fairly large scale -- forced upon us. And in a fairly short time.

Consider: The following players are featured in the Twins official 2008 calendar. We got one in November (less than three months ago) as part of a plea for us to renew our partial season-ticket package.

October 2007 Torii Hunter Gone. He's a highly paid member of the Angels Who Play in the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. I think he'll flourish on the coast.

November 2007 Carlos Silva Gone.

December 2007 Jason Kubel At least KOOOOOBS! is still with us. His outfield play reminds me of Brian Buchanan. Good thing Koobs is better at the plate.

January 2008 Boof Bonser The slimmed-down BOOOOF! has to prove himself as a starter or he'll spend lots of time playing flippy cup in the bullpen.

February 2008 Jason Bartlett Gone. I will not miss this guy.

March 2008 Michael Cuddyer Solid fielder, good hitter, articulate, got that gentlemanly southern twang. AL outfield assist leader in 2008.

April 2008 Joe Nathan Twitchy McXanax!

May 2008 Johan Santana Gone. Bright lights, big city, absurd salary. He'll feast on NL hitters.

June 2008 Mike Redmond Red Dog! The quintessential backup catcher and clubhouse zany.

July 2008 Justin Morneau Our new seats are out in right field. I think we'll get a few long foul balls our way when Morneau gets in front of a curve ball. I hope many more will be bouncing off the football pressbox.

August 2008 Pat Neshek With today's acquisition of Livan Hernandez, Neshek will have a tough time breaking into the starting rotation. I like him as a middle-to-late reliever.

September 2008 Joe Mauer He seemed distracted or tired last year. Prediction: he will eat up central division pitching in 2008 and maybe add some power.

October 2008 Scott Baker The pitcher with the greatest anagrammed name of all: Rocket Bats! [credit to the clever fellows at Pulling a Blyleven] Somehow, he is is expected to anchor the rotation. Yikes!

November 2008 Francisco Liriano Returning from elbow surgery. Huge question mark.

December 2008 Matt Guerrier Ummmm...I confess I had to look him up to know whether he's even still with the team. He is. He has pitched 248 big league innings in four seasons (the equivalent of 27.5 games) and has only 11 decisions (3W, 8L) and 3 saves. Is this guy a middle reliever or what?

So. That's fifteen players chosen by the club to be on the official calendar. Of those, four aren't with the club. I guess that's not a huge change, except when you realize that three of those four were pretty important to this club.

It should be fun. Hell, baseball is always fun! And part of the fun is that rosters always change. Here's to change.

Equatorial Thoughts #2: Sao Tome & Principe

This is is one of 13 countries around the globe through which the equator passes, which makes it a fit subject for those of us endurinng yet another blast of arctic air.

It's kind of a remarkable story. A tiny African nation – in fact, the smallest – with a colonial past like many others. The Portuguese ruled here for centuries, creating cocao and coffee plantations overseen by Portuguese masters and worked by slaves snared on the African mainland. Missionaries converted them to Christianity. A long sordid chapter, the effects of which are still felt throughout Africa.

The population of Sao Tome and Principe (about 157,000*) includes descendants of all these groups – slaves, slave-owners, missionaries, merchants, revolutionaries. Even on these tiny volcanic islands off the coast of Gabon, there are no fewer than eight political parties.

Independence from Portugal was achieved in 1975 and self-rule has been evolving since, including a failed attempt at Marxist government. The current constitution was adopted in 1990. A couple of coup attempts have been mounted, but bloodshed and violence were avoided through international mediation. Imagine that.

With all those strains of a difficult history and a youthful and sometimes fragile democracy, the Sao Tomeans have managed to remain at peace with each other, which is more than can be said for many of its neighbors.

Before the latest elections in July 2006, the country even had its own version of Carol Molnau.** Maria Silveira was head of the country’s central bank and held the positions of Prime Minister and Finance Minister all at the same time! That’s efficient! So far as I can tell, she’s still head of the central bank of Sao Tome and Principe (has been since 1999).

You can fly from Lisbon to Sao Tome for 750 Euros and stay at the Miramar Hotel (which appears to be the sole hotel on either island) for between 112 and 150 Euros a night. The hotel bar is the Graziano (probably not named for the famed prize fighter).

The name of the hotel reminded me of the following poem by Ed Dorn (from "Hello La Jolla"):

Suppertime Down South

The ceaseless jets of Miramar

Make their planar way to the Islands

They scatter the bones of the pygmy mammoth

It is some remote substitute for blood they seek

They are a niusance of zipping mosquitoes.

They are on their exhuberant bombing runs

That is their work, a craft long disused

And they are under the gladsome,

Old-fashioned control of their pilots

Who, it is related, get very high and crazy

On the shocking hits of acceleration

And then return to the ground somewhere

Around suppertime, shout a lot,

And lift drinks to it in the officers' club.

------

Dorn's Miramar is aMarine Corps Air Station near San Diego, and I believe his Islands are a few small ones off the southern California coast which at one time were in fact used for target practice. Quite a contrast to the peaceful islands of Sao Tome and Principe.

* About the same as the metropolitan statistical area surrounding Waterloo and Cedar Falls, Iowa.

** For those not from Minnesota, Carol Molnau is our Lt. Governor and also serves as the Commissioner of Transportation. Initially, I thought it was a good move on the Governor's part. Lt. Govs usually don't do much, Ms. Molnau had served for years on legislative committees focused on transporatation, and it would save a little money. Well, Ms. Molnau has had a rocky tenure, punctuated rather emphatically by the collapse of the I-35 bridge last summer.

Boredom

Rob Hardy, writer of beautiful and compelling essays, said a couple days ago that he was bored with convalescence. Judging from his latest Rough Draft blog post, he's getting past the boredom. But it reminded me -- as do so many things -- of a Brautigan poem.

This is for you, Rob, from the collection "June 30th, June 30th" (1977, 1978 Dell Publishing):

Things to Do on a Boring Tokyo Night in a Hotel

1. Have dinner by yourself.
That’s always a lot of fun.

2. Wander aimlessly around the hotel.
This is a huge hotel, so there’s lots of space
to wander aimlessly around.

3. Go up and down the elevator for no reason
at all.
The people going up are going to their rooms.
I’m not.
The people going down are going out.
I’m not.

4. I seriously think about the house phone
and calling my room 3003 and letting it ring
for a very long time. Then wondering where
I’m at and when I will return. Should I leave
a message at the desk saying that when I return
I should call myself?

Please note that the format of this poem is not exacly faithful to the original, which I think is important. I have fooeld around with various Word file formats, some html mumbo-jumbo, many unsavory imprecations directed at Blogger. Still can't get it right, for which I apologize.

Bing bored in a hotel in a far-off land is better than being bored in a hospital. If one has to be bored, I guess being bored at home is the best option.

Weekend miscellany

Atonement (Ian McEwan): I just finished the book, which I thought confounding at first -- because the narrative jumped decades in a couple of spots and seemed to avoid the promised confrontations or resolutions, with the reader left to fill in the missing events. But on reflection, I liked that technique because it hooked the reader into seriously considering what the characters most likely did. I haven't seen the movie and am not sure I want to. I'm almost always disappointed in the movie if I've read the book.

My assignment: I was asked by my daughter, a junior history major at Occidental, to help in her search for paid summer internships. She asked me to look up opportunities at some large PR/marketing firms. That was a revealing exercise. Most of these multi-national PR "consultancies" I'd never heard of, but their client list is impressive -- outfits like the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the World Bank, and just about every Fortune 500 company. Karin is a talented writer and sound thinker, but I'm not sure she could use those skills in the service of some company or product she didn't believe in. If you know anyone in the PR/communications/marketing business who could use a sharp PAID summer intern, let me know!

The presidential campaign: Senator Obama did extremely well in the Minnesota caucuses. My daughter is firmly in the Obama camp, mostly because of his charisma, but also because he spent his first two undergraduate years at Occidental and they still claim him as their own. I like Obama, but it's as much an anti-Clinton feeling on my part. George Will is salivating at the prospect of a Clinton nomination because he believes she is beatable. (And Mr. Will doesn't much like John McCain, either.)

Return to Richard

This blog started life in the middle of 2007 with the idea that the writing of Richard Brautigan should be shared and could be the jumping-off point for a variety of musings and idle speculation and reflection and some other nonsense.

It's been a while since Brautigan's work has shown up here. That's a shame. Here's one from "The Pill Versus the Spring Hill Mine Disaster:"

Kafka's Hat

With the rain falling

surgically against the roof,

I ate a dish of ice cream

that looked like Kafka's hat.

It was a dish of ice cream
tasting like an operating table
with the patient staring
up at the ceiling.


This is one of many in which it appears Mr. Brautigan is just reaching a little far. Seriously, what would an operating table taste like? Sometimes his poems feel like a sculpture made of random junk welded together: a rusted car bumper, an ice auger, an old tractor seat, and clock gears.

Ice cream, Kafka, operating room, rain.

It's like one of those scenes in a Marx brothers film in which the brothers engage in some peice of physical funny-business that has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot (thin as it is). Still funny, though, and in their quirky way these Brautigan constructions are still fun to read.

Another in that same vien, this from "Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt:"

Propelled by Portals Whose Only Shame

Propelled by portals whose only shame
is a zeppelin's shadow crossing a field
of burning bathtubs,
I ask myself: There must be more to life
than this?

It's like an imrov comedy troupe drawing random words and phrases from a hat and building a funny sketch incorporating them. Sometimes it works, sometimes its just silliness. You decide.

Equatorial Thoughts #1: Kiribati

Earth's equator, that imaginary line around the planet's midriff, passes through 13 countries (or 14 depending on whether you count Sao Tome and Principe as one or two). Given how cold it's been where I live, I've been fantasizing about the kinds of places that are consistently, predictably warm. Those countries through which the equator passes are a good place to start.

Here they are, with 2008 population projections:

1. Ecuador [13,835,076]


2. Colombia [44,459,803]


3. Brazil [192,047,523]


4. Sao Tome & Principe [157,847]


5. Gabon [1,725,105]


6. Republic of the Congo [3,702,311]


7. Democratic Republic of the Congo [64,105,984]


8. Uganda [29,395,836]


9. Kenya [35,112,181]


10. Somalia [12,692,376]


11. Maldives [308,797]


12. Indonesia [227,070,492]


13. Kiribati [97,031]

So 624,710,262 people can visit the equator without having to go to another country. That seems like a lot of folks, although it is a miniscule percentage of the 6.6 billion humans who call Earth home.

What can we extract from this simple list? Are there interesting, amazing, astonishing, quirky, revealing facts to be gleaned? Are there nuggets here which could be battered or crafted into trenchant or dazzling commentary on the state of the world or the long reach of history? Well, let's hope so -- otherwise why am I bothering to write or you to read?

Onward!

Kiribati: The only country on this entire planet which straddles both the equator and the international date line! To be honest, I had never heard of Kiribati. It's composed of three chains of islands and atolls north of Samoa -- the Gilbert Islands, the Line Islands, and the Phoenix Islands. Remarkably, both my father and father-in-law have been there, but it wasn't known as Kiribati then. Their visits were during WWII, when both were stationed in the Pacific and Christmas Island was a staging area used by US troops. Christmas Island is now known as Kiritimati Island.

Oh, Kiribati! (pronounced kee-ree-bosh). Split asunder in so many ways: hemispherically, temporally, linguistically (the native language is I-Kiribati -- a.k.a. Gilbertese -- but the official language is English) and physically (there are 33 separate atolls, though only a dozen or so are inhabited). Yet since achieving independence from the UK in 1979, they have managed to construct a peaceful republic, unlike so many of the countries on the equatorial list.

I wonder if any Kiribatians commute to work across the international date line? "Hey, boss, can I have Thursday off?" "Sorry, pal, it IS Thursday."

I also assume that line dancing originated in the Line Islands.

Bloggy News, February Edition

1: Albedo - This sounds like a guy who may have played shortstop for the old Brooklyn Dodgers or like something related to one's libido. But it has to do with earth's ability to absorb or reflect the sun's energy. I learned about it from an eclectic new blog written by a student at Occidental College. She writes well about all sorts of stuff, so please check out the new link on the right sidebar called "K. Haas Does the Interweb."

2: Predicting the Future - Because I will be confined to my home for a few weeks and because I can't pursue my usual hobby of collecting and preserving discarded plastic soda bottles and caps that have been run over by cars*, I will be free to inflict upon you far more frequent blog entries. Hooray. Among other things, Im working on a profile of countries through which the equator runs. Might even dig up a few more Brautigan** poems to enliven things.

You have been warned...


* And you thought I did pottery!
** Remember him?