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One of the things I’ve learned in life is this: clichéd sayings are just that for a reason and people can repeat them to you forever, but you have to teach yourself about them.
Like the one about stopping to smell the flowers:
No one is going to make you understand that. You have to get it for yourself.
At a baseball game tonight the home crowd heckled the visiting third baseman. Turns out it was his birthday, too and for his trouble he got a custom-signed baseball. That’s not bad:
Though it has no joke, this April Fool’s post does have a critical observation.
I’m no city planner, electrician, urban designer, drainage specialist, engineer or architect, but I know enough to know that someone deserves some blame here:
Good job, Auburn. Design flaw de résistance.
Tonight’s fortune cookies:
As you know, I like it when you can somewhat link multiple fortunes together. It almost instills a sense of fake credibility to the cookies’ gimmick. And so I’ll take these seriously.
For me, this means a bit of exercise. I’ve got six miles of running and 10 miles of riding and today’s 1,000 meters in the pool for the week. But some of that is about to change. I’m finally healthy and have a tiny bit of time for myself. So maybe this month will have some sort of accomplishment, or even a pleasant surprise.
Auburn and Alabama play one game of baseball in the state capital each spring. It is a non-conference thing, meant to allow people that don’t normally see the two teams face off on the diamond. Auburn has won all but one of these, and they won this year, 10-1.
This is the ticket:
And that same gaudy graphic is adorning the walls at Riverwalk Stadium (home of the Montgomery Biscuits). It is worth keeping around, I think.
The game was fun, the ribs before it were good, as ever. But the highlight, and the point of all of this, is the people. Here’s the @AUSection111 Glee and Chess Club and Live Bait Shop, class of 2016:
(Daniel, C.J., Beck, Emily, Josh, Thomas, Chandler, Clint and Autumn.)
I heard a speech one time years ago where the speaker said, “Look around. Take a moment and look around this room. This is the last time we’ll all be here together.” And I think about that often. These are good folks. It is a shame we won’t all be together again, very often if at all.
Well, the people and the fireworks. The fireworks are the other point. And if it is possible to say such a thing seriously, these fireworks lacked nuance:
There are two days left to see “Assassins,” a Stephen Sondheim musical, at Telfair Peet.
It is powerful show, which goes some good way toward humanizing the people who have attempted, and succeeded, in killing American presidents. The entire production is students and they did a GREAT job. It is dark and comical and thoughtful and full of characters who are inept and darkly successful.
The primary players are: John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, and his accomplice David Herold; Charles Guiteau, who killed President James Garfield; Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President William McKinley; Giuseppe Zangara who tried to kill President-elect Franklin Roosevelt. There’s also Lee Harvey Oswald, Samuel Byck who targeted President Richard Nixon, John Hinckley who shot President Ronald Reagan and both Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, who attacked President Gerald Ford.
(Also, Ford did a walk-on spot and tripped on the stage. The few of us olds in the theater got it. No one under 30 understood the bit.)
The Broadway version of the play won five Tonys Awards. I wonder if anyone ever told Hinckley, who is still taking family furloughs from his institutional psychiatric care (but may soon be released). Fromme was paroled in 2009 and apparently lives in the Mohawk Valley region of New York. Moore was released in 2007. You figure they have to know there is a play featuring them as primary characters.
A friend of ours is the director of the show. I can’t wait to sit down with him soon and hear more about it. Mostly I just like to brag on the players and crew. They always do such a great job, as full time students no less, of bringing together incredibly productions.
I’m pretty lucky. I had the chance to see something cooler today than most people will see all week.
Become a lifelong fan, have a lot of big birthdays, eventually, your team might celebrate one of them with you.
Update: Here’s a nice little profile on Ms. Christmas. She’s 103 years young.
