Ummagumma

In Canada there is no sport like ice hockey. The intensity of the Canadian sports fan for ice hockey surpasses what we know in American culture regarding football or baseball. So, when the Canadians men's team lost an important preliminary round earlier this week Canadians watched their defeat unfold in greater numbers than ever before. They lost to Team USA . Before the game, it was apparently well known among ice hockey fans that the woman's final round was more competitive and rivalry-filled than the men's competition. You don't find that to be true of many sports. Maybe tennis. So, when the Canadian woman's team beat the US team to win the gold medal it was an even bigger deal. It was golden to be sure but it also vindicated the country against the men's loss. The Canadian women's ice hockey team is filled with my kind of athletes. Not only are they attractive, competitive, butt-kicking type of folk, but they know how to party as well. Nothing quite

Enlarge to see a flock of several hundred large geese headed north yesterday. Taken off my front porch. I'm not sure how far away they are. Maybe a thousand feet, more or less. It was almost completely quiet here. The sun felt nice, high in the low 60's. The sky was clear. Best kind of lazy Saturday you're going to get in February. I could hear just a few of the geese, probably the leaders, calling as they flew. It sounded like a strange, wooden percussion crackling in the air.

David Brooks made an interesting insight last night on the PBS News Hour during a regular Friday segment of the show. Jim Lehrer was guiding him to reveal opinions about he CPAC this week. Watch the whole thing here but this is a transcript of a snippet of the segment he does with Mark Shields . It would seem CPAC has traditionally been a rather fringe group. JIM LEHRER: David, what is your reading of the importance of this -- the Conservative Political Action Committee having its meeting the last couple of days, that more -- more people have come than ever before, 10,000, the biggest group? And they have had -- they have heard from anybody. DAVID BROOKS: Right. JIM LEHRER: What is going on? DAVID BROOKS: Well, it's in some ways -- in some ways emblematic of what is happening. On the one hand -- I have gone over the years. I didn't go this year. But they -- they were the fringe, to be honest. They were the fringe of the conservative movement. And when Reagan was in office, I

Note: This is the second in what will be a monthly series this year on great symphonies. See my January 2, 2010 post for Great Firsts. When considering Second symphonies, I once again give the nod to Gustav Mahler as the greatest of them all. Mahler composed his number two over six years and it was his most famous work during his lifetime. It was the only one of his symphonies that he himself published with an official title. He envisioned the work as an extension of his First Symphony and gave it the name “ Resurrection .” The symphony is much more ambitious than Mahler’s First, being some 25 minutes longer. It begins with a long first movement that lasts over 20 minutes. Heavy basses and cellos supported by tense, constant violins and violas. A sense of weightiness not present in his first symphony is at the core of the movement’s development. An issue is being wrestled with, seemingly overcome only to appear again. Almost six minutes in a passage of exquisite delicacy gives way to

Charlie moving quickly through the snow. Photo by my daughter. It snowed yesterday afternoon over two inches here. Biggest snow in a long time. Much more than that fell south of us. I left work an hour early. This morning the roads were very slick in places until near noon. A little tricky getting around areas that had not been treated and were shaded by today's bright, clear sun. The snow fell heavy for a few hours, the sky was burdened with grey. Still, everyone here was excited. Two inches of snow turns us all into a bunch of silly kids. My backyard facing southeast. Behind my house looking almost directly west. The view is open to the west, which is where our house faces. This morning, same view. We are fortunate to have about 150 acres directly across from us and it only contains one house. The rest is small fields, woods, and pasture. View off my front porch facing northwest. My reading bench in our woods. Front porch view. Only our neighbor's barn shows up over about

Eventually, despite our best intentions and near superhuman tolerance for increasingly persistent and numerous digestive problems and troublingly frequent, sometimes passive-aggressive, displays of incontinence, it is time to say “enough.” Jennifer had had enough. Parks had been sick lately. He was throwing-up and defecating everywhere. Even leaving him outside more was little reprise. He threw-up on his bed outside. It had to be cleaned. The dog wasn’t really suffering much, but Jennifer was suffering beyond compassion. I always have been a champion to let Parks live. He is fortunately unaware of the numerous near-death conversations we have had about him. But, each time the bottom line was that he was not suffering, had some measure of contentment in his doggie life, and my wife would feel guilty if we put him down. But this time it was different. I could see my wife’s sad suffering and smoldering anger at the dog. It was time to finally put him down. Only that didn’t happen. We got

David Halberstam's wonderful book The Coldest Winter is about the Korean War , but it not a history of the war itself. It is, rather, an excellent analysis of the geopolitical climate in which the war took place, but in the United States and Korea and, of particular importance, in China. But there is also plenty of analysis of specific battles. Several chapters are devoted to the troops in the trenches so to speak. For that reason, this is truly history as it should be written - a mix of the strategic, operational, and tactical considerations of the war. Critics have noted that the work is not really about the war so much as it is about the strategic thinking (and failings) of General Douglas MacArthur and the aspects of the war dealing with China. This criticism is correct but really misses the mark. The book doesn't pretend to be more than a summary of most of the war. Its primary focus is on the US (under the guise of the United Nations) battling a surprise, massive Chine

After being threatened by something as trivial as the State of the Union address the only prime time TV show I watch religiously returns tonight for its sixth and final season . Jennifer, my daughter and I got all caught up and finished watching the rest of season five on DVD over the weekend. We’re psyched. As long-time readers know, I believe Lost is a unique television series. No TV program has ever given us so much character depth on such a large array of primary characters . New major characters have been added as the story has unfolded and they, too, have been given terrific treatment by the writers. This is all woven into an increasingly complex plot that has by now been transformed to the very edge of comprehensibility. No show is more challenging to figure out than Lost . The first two seasons were heavily weighted toward character development with just enough action sequences, plot twists, and mysteries established to hook millions of viewers. As the seasons have progresse