Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

Traveling out to the West Coast today. I flew out of Providence and happened to see a number of people decked out in Indianapolis Colts shirts and jerseys. My first impulse was to blurt out, “You suck!” but after careful introspection I realized that in my life I have witnessed 3 Super Bowl victories by the Patriots, 3 NBA championships by the Celtics, a World Series win by the Red Sox plus UMass winning the 1-AA NCAA championship in football and Harvard, Boston University and Boston College all winning national championships in hockey. The folks from Indiana have only one or two Indiana basketball championships to warm their memories. That’s all. It would be small of me to begrudge them this victory (then again I’m a big believer in always trusting you first impulse)… Color me naïve but as I finish the fine book Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt on the life and times of Shakespeare I was surprised to learn that the sonnet lines starting with “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” were not written about a woman but about an 18-year old guy. I heartily recommend the book by the way. I’m fond of history and have been surprised at almost every turn by the scholarship of Greenblatt… My left Achilles heel is sore and I don’t know why. It is so sore that on more than one occasion I have been tempted to corrupt the line from Jim Morrison “I eat more chicken any man ever seen” by shouting out “I eat more Ibuprophen any man ever seen”…