Armando Galarraga
Sports Saturday
Even as we stand on the precipice of the World Cup—tragically I will be traveling cross country today when the U.S. is playing England—something has been happening in the world of baseball that invites comment. Perfect games are breaking out all over.
A pitcher pitches a perfect game if no runner reaches base. 27 batters [...]
Also posted in 20th Century, Narrative poem, Novel, Sports | Tagged "Luxury Boxes", Baseball, Bruce Cohen, Great American Novel, Perfection, Philip Roth, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sports |
I’ve been grading student essays for so long that I’ve barely noticed the succession of gorgeous days that have been washing over us. My seniors graduated Saturday, however, and yesterday I turned in the grades for the rest of my students, so I can finally acknowledge that “sumer is ycomen in.” To remind myself and anyone [...]
Like many, I have been appalled at the non-stop stories of abuse coming out of the Catholic Church and depressed by the Church’s response. The latest egregious example of the latter is the pope’s personal preacher comparing newspaper accusations of the pope to the persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust.
Calling Geoffrey Chaucer, to come [...]
Snow is pounding us for the third time in two weeks and classes once again have been canceled. Significantly enough, I have been forced once again to postpone Midsummer Night’s Dream. “Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?” queries Keats (although he’s asking from the vantage point of autumn, not that of [...]
Just as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight supported me as I grieved for my son, so is it supporting me now as I interact with a close friend, a philosophy professor, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Alan’s tumors began in his neck and eyelid and have now migrated down to his lungs. A [...]
The German philosopher Heidegger argues that, by refusing to face up to the fact that we are going to die, we human beings cut ourselves off from life as well. Essentially, by seeing death as a horrible thing, we deny that we are natural beings in a natural world. In so doing, Heidegger goes on [...]
I am devoting this week to a work that came to my aid when I was dealing with the death of my oldest son nine years ago. I will introduce you to Justin and then describe how a medieval romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, helped give me images and a framework for the [...]
