Put on Tom T. Hall’s greatest hits. Been way too long. Ol' Jeff Culbreath introduced me to Tom T. Nice to re-acquaint with the slower rhythms and quench my thirst for beer. Beer is one of those things that is better to consume in a bunch rather than spread out. Even though I'm moderate about everything except moderation (doh! blogging excepted!), there is something about God and beer that invite a lack thereof. God wants it all, of course, and so moderation is necessarily incompatible with Him. And with beer, you feel like you’re misusing it if you have one or two thrice a week. I’m sure real runners think the same of my running schedule (2 miles, 4 or 5 times a week). They’d say I always stop short of runner’s high that accrues after 25-35 minutes of running and thus have missed the whole point. That I'm using running as a utilitarian means to the end of fitness when it could be so much more. Likewise beer, correctly used, is taken in six-pack increments. That's why they come packaged that way you know. I will try to be less moderate in the future with God and beer. Saturday:
Game-day. Michigan game-day. Spent the morning jacking up my IQ before the Buckeye game that would, necessarily, be a relief from IQ. Read part of “How to Read and Why” by Harold Bloom and excerpts of the letters of Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Learned that Flannery O’Connor’s favorite modern novels were Nathaniel West’s “The Lonelyhearts” and Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying”. Who knew? I don’t recall that in O’Connor’s “Habit of Being”. Melville told Hawthorne that the mass of people have trouble with God because they think he’s all Head (like a watch) and not Heart. Bloom said the opposite concerning Americans: that great majority of Americans are convinced not only of the existence of God but of a personal, loving one with whom they have a personal relationship. Says that the most un-American sentiment imaginable is Spinoza’s assertion that humans should love God whether or not He loves them. (I suppose Bloom's point is that most Americans consider God’s love for them axiomatic and their love for God optional.)
Ham o’ Bone provided a welcome bridge to the game. What would it bring? I predicted it would be decided by seven points. (The final was 14-3 Buckeyes.) At the party fellow in-law Jack Perry mentioned the obvious in saying that he’s never met any family who so notices the balls, sacks, and reproductive organs of animals as this one does. “You all look at that first!” he says. I seconded his point about this odd characteristic, adding that he failed to mention the animal’s “taint” as one of the oft mentioned unmentionables. And funny but no one 'cept my wife knew what “taint” was! It's a family blog, so I won't go into what taint is, but it taint this and it taint that, it's the no man's land in between.
Joe Nuxhall died Thursday night in a Fairfield hospital. I’m surprised and yet I’m not since I knew he was hurting and that had dodged so many bullets in the past that you wondered if he could continue to beat the odds. He seemed about the most authentic a “celebrity” as any. To the extent you can be well-known and not let that effect you, he did. Which, in this time, is about a remarkable a thing as being the youngest ever to play in the major leagues as was also his claim. I think ol' Joe should be famous primarily for not letting celebrity go to his head.
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