the president must have had a distorted vision

BALTIMORE, April 27, 2013 - At the conclusion of his speech at the Planned Parenthood "Gala," obama said to the assembled, "God bless you."  
       Were I he, I wouldn't hold my breath while waiting for the Good Lord to make that move.

the nightmare that is obamacare and the hound dogs responsible for it

BALTIMORE, APRIL 27, 2013 - Word is spreading at a rapid rate about the "secret" Capitol Hill talks aimed at exempting members of Congress and their staffs from the ghoulish muck of obamamess; i.e. obamacare.  The Dingemeister himself, Sleezy Harry Reid, along with "getalong john beiner" and unnamed members of the obama administration are said to be trying to work out some kind of understanding that gets Senators and Congressmen out of obamacare.  As for the rest of us, all that can be said is 'God help us."  God knows obama didn't.

Orioles surge

BALTIMORE, April 27, 2013 - Said Jim Palmer, the Hall-of-Famer turned broadcaster: "trying to sneak a fastball by Steve Pearce is like trying to sneak dawn by a rooster."  And the Oakland Athletics did not have a rooster on the mound Friday night.  Pearce, who started out terribly for the Orioles, has suddenly caught fire.  In a scoreless pitchers' duel, he had a long double that didn't result in a run in the fifth, but a clutch two-out single in the seventh to score J.J. Hardy and propel the Birds to a 3-0 win.  The real story was Wei-Yin Chen, who spun eight shutout innings, surrendering only two hits.  He improved to 2-2, but has pitched so much better than that.  Jim Johnson came on in the ninth to earn his ninth save.  The Orioles scored two essential insurance runs in the ninth.  The first scored on Nate McLouth's ground ball that A's second baseman Jed Lowry booted.  That error also put pinch runner Chris Dickerson at third base, where he scored on Nick Markakis' sacrifice fly.
       The Orioles, who beat Oakland 10-2 on Thursday night after taking two out of three earlier in the week from Toronto, are back at it today at 1 pm when Chris Tillman takes the mound.  The Friday win improved the Orioles record to 14-9 and kept them in second place, two games behind Boston and one-half game ahead of the Yankees.  The Birds are a solid 7-4 on the road.

Ravens Make Defense a Priority in Draft

BALTIMORE, April 26, 2013 - The Ravens used their first round pick (32nd overall) to begin to rebuild their defense after it was decimated by salary cap-forced defections.  Having lost both starting safeties, the Ravens selected Florida's Matt Elam, a six-foot, 206-pound tackling fool who wowed Raven GM Ozzie Newsome and was said to be a consensus pick among the Ravens' brass.  Raven coach John Harbaugh said Elam has a chance to team with free agent acquisition Michael Huff as the starting safeties for the defending NFL champions.  Hopefully, Elam's career will mirror the departed Ed Reed in personal achievements but not team results.  While Reed had become a consensus Hall-of-Famer during the years he played for the Ravens, he had never played in a Superbowl until the game the Ravens won this past February.  Reed was drafted by the Ravens right after they won their previous Superbowl in 2001.

In the second round Baltimore selected inside linebacker Arthur Brown, a 6', 241 pounder from Kansas State.  Like the safety position, the Ravens linebacking corps was also annihilated after the Superbowl. Ray Lewis retired, and Paul Kreuger and Jameel McClain signed with other teams. With Brown, the rebuilding there begins.

The defense was also addressed in the third round when Baltimore selected big Brandon Williams, a 336-pound defensive lineman from Missouri Southern State.  Williams has been named to the small college All-American teams an astonishing three times.

The poor bereft bomber

BALTIMORE, APRIL 24, 2013 - On CNN they talk of the "kid" who has had such a tough life.  Tooling around Boston in his Porsche and BMW is tough for anyone.  And even though all of the networks have pictures of the surviving suspect taken within the past year, they continue to use one of him that was taken when he really was a kid.  It's five years old.  So the folks on the far left are trying to create an anti-hero for this new age, one with the "courage" to act against the evil capitalists. Or something like that.  Back in dear old Chechnya, mother bomber blamed America for ruining her sons.  dad bomber said his sons were innocent and had been framed.  left unsaid or unexplained is how the two darlings managed to afford expensive cars and other luxuries, and how the now-dead older bomber financed a trip back to Chechnya last year, during which he spent six months doing what?  So many questions.  Here in the USA, the obama media continues its campaign to paint the two as unconnected "lone wolves" who are not in any way connected to islamic terrorists around the rest of the world.  Such things as the trip home, the ten warnings from Russia about the older bomber, and the expensive cars don't fit well with this narrative and are left, for the most part, unspoken.  It is totally true that if you want to flesh out this sordid tale you might have to do it yourself.  Start by avoiding such venues as the New York Times, which front-paged the Lone Wolf nonsense just yesterday.  If I were you, I'd start with Drudge and Powerline and go from there.

On a day when obama honored President Bush

BALTIMORE, April 25, 2013 - The Presidential Library honoring President George W. Bush was dedicated yesterday in Dallas and those in charge followed protocol and invited the sitting president, even though he has done everything imaginable to ridicule and trivialize his predecessor.  When obama spoke at the ceremony, he took the occasion to seek support for his immigration legislation currently winding its way through Congress.  The crowd, which had been enthusiastic up to that point, suddenly grew less so.  Many think obama doesn't even want his bill to pass.  Instead, he wants it to be approved by the Democratically controlled Senate but voted down in the GOP-controlled House.  Then, obama would use it as a campaign issue next year as he seeks to return total control of Congress to his party.  That would give him two years of far-left mayhem to top off his eight miserable years.  Talk about Armageddon!

Credible and Incisive in Statement of Future Goals

BALTIMORE, 23 APRIL 2013 - Beginning today there will be posts at least daily in this space with additional supplements on Twitter.    There will continue to be posts on politics, news and sports. There will also be more posts on art and music and on history and science.  
       Today is eight days after the Boston Marathon bombings and in the interim federal authorities apparently broke up a plot to derail a passenger train en route to New York City from Canada.  Common sense dictates that there has been no cessation in terrorist plots.  If you take comfort from the fact that the plots of 2013 are not as advanced and technical as were the nine-eleven horrors, so be it.  But turn your back and let down your guard and you will pay dearly.  

Why obama lies

For me, it is the incessant lying that infuriates more than anything else about obama.  

There was a police commissioner in Baltimore a few years back who had the very same moral disease (I'm not talking about the one who is a morning DJ these days).  The one I'm talking about would look you in the eye and say something that both he and you knew wasn't even slightly true, but he'd say it anyway.  obama is that way. he gets up before a crowd and looks into the TelePrompTer and lies.  One bald faced doozie after another.  He never bats an eye.  The economy is coming back.  Unemployment is on the decline.  It's Bush's fault.  

He has such a pitifully low regard for the one half of the country that swallows his garbage that he'll say anything that makes him feel good about himself, anything at all, even when he knows full well that it is a lie.  Then the press either goes along with the charade or explains away the error as excusable and not at all important.  This week he said he had cut the federal deficit by trillions of dollars.  Not even a moron or the typical "low information" voter should believe this.  But some, apparently, do. obama has caused the federal deficit to skyrocket by billions upon billions of dollars. I suppose it was Bush's fault that the deficit was so low when he left office.  And I suppose it was Bush's fault that unemployment was so low when he left office.  obama, with a straight face, insists it was Bush's fault that we now have this gargantuan federal debt and soaring unemployment rate.  And it is Bush's fault that millions have given up finding work and left the work force, at least officially.  Anyway, obama, again this week,  told a crowd of people that he had cut the deficit by trillions of dollars.  He also said that if you listened to talk radio or watched cable news you would think that political leaders in the USA just couldn't get along.  He blamed the republicans.  This is the man who caused his opponent - a devout Mormon - to be called a murderer, a thief, and a liar.  This is a man who is trying to force the Catholic Church to provide birth control at educational and medical institutions it runs on a non-profit charitable basis, in spite of the fact that doing so is in direct violation of its religious beliefs, and the exact same products are available for free right around the corner.  This is a man who, along with his backers, is constantly scheming to pull the plug forever on Fox News and Mr. Limbaugh.  But he wants to get along.  And it is not his fault, he says, that we can't get along.  So I suppose the answer is that if we all completely capitulate to this budding tyrant we will get along just like he "gets along."  

Davis

Chris Davis has, what, 16 RBI in the first four games of 2013.  You might recall that he was red hot at the end of the regular season last year, as the Orioles blasted into the American League Playoffs.  If you string together his last eleven games, he has eleven home runs.  Just staggering.

poem no. 1

        

on a cold spring night
as when daffodils bloom in waves 
delighting the starry moonlight,
while limbs of the giant tulip poplars, still bare, still stoic, roiled in the stiff jagged wind, wait still, just a bit longer;
now, when spring toads warble in pockets of promise
and brave song birds muster, and join their voices to hasten slumbering dawn,
now, when the grip of the long and frigid gloaming
loosens against the cheerful surge;
See the leader who's to meet them scurry to and fro,
befit with such utter importance,
yet succeeding only in illustrating the venal limitations
of those left to lean on slippery and vapid dogma
unable to stop the sureness of the march.
                         
                              by John William Trotz

About Cellists, Volume I

As an adult I somehow and for some reason became interested in the cello.  I believe I read a book about the history of stringed instruments.  I was intrigued by the fact that the quality of the sound emanating from instruments made in Italy in the 1600's had a higher quality than the sound emanating from any instrument made today by the very best luthiers.  How could this be?  Scientists speculated that it was the wood those ancient luthiers obtained from the Italian Alps, or was it the finish applied to the instruments?  Stradivarius was said to be so secretive about his particular concoction that he didn't even tell his sons, who were in business with him.  This particular book of violin history listed quite a few luthiers here in Baltimore, from whence I write, and, anyway, I was soon hooked.  From there it was a quick leap to learning to play an instrument, which meant, first, owning one.  Information I came across listed two sellers in Baltimore.  I first went to the one said to be on South Roland Avenue in Hampden, an urban neighborhood in the throes of revitalization about a mile north of downtown.  Alas, the shop was not long for this Earth.  A dusty sign said entrance by appointment only and it didn't look like many appointments were being made.  The other one - and finding it - fueled my interest.  It was said to be on the fourth floor of an old downtown building.  The downtown building was so old that it had an elevator with a full-time human operator.  Imagine that!  On the fourth floor is Perrin and Associates and it is just what you would imagine such a shop to be:  lined (or littered) with handsome instruments, bows, parts, and loose strings.  Besides fixing instruments for those professional and amateur players in Baltimore - the shop is less than one mile from the home of the Baltimore Symphony and the Peabody Conservatory - Mr. Perrin sells new violins.  
       In particular, he carries some made by an outstanding luthier who lives and works in Brattleboro, Vermont.  His name is Douglas Cox.  My son and I made a point of visiting Mr. Cox during a hiking trip to points further north and further elevated (more about this in other posts).  The thing about Doug Cox is his determination to use New England native wood.  So many other luthiers stick to European wood because it is thought to be more like the wood the genius of the trade, Antonio Stradivarius, used.  The Cox instruments are superb and many famous classical musicians use them.  His web site is www.coxviolins.com.  He invites visitors and was more than cordial to Eddie and I even though he didn't know us from Adam.  
       Anyway, when Mr. Perrin is in, he can regale you with information about old Baltimore and the musicians and luthiers who lived and worked here.  I asked him about the old luthiers listed in the historic violin book I read.  He knew and was familiar with many of them, describing one as hopelessly self-centered and self-absorbed, always complaining of his fate: making great instruments in a "hick" town like Baltimore. Mr. Perrin said the man did, indeed, make great instruments, but if he didn't like Baltimore, nothing was making him stay, the affable Mr. Perrin told me.  I bought a cello from Mr. Perrin.  Until the last minute, I was going to go with a violin, but I thought at my age I was sure to develop neck problems trying to hold the instrument correctly.  I wanted a Cox cello, but there was no way I could afford one.  Today, a Cox cello sells for $42,000.00.  Instead, I purchased a gorgeous beginners cello for the tidy sum of $1,000.00, including bow and case.  

A terrible day

Sunday, March 17, 2013 is a bad day.  In the big scheme of things, the thing that made it bad isn't catastrophic.  After all, we are charged with keeping things in perspective.  It was a day when one of my cats was found dead.  I'm not a cat nut.  But our family always had a cat as I grew up and I admired their independence and ability to "get on."  As i grew older and became the one taking care of the cat or cats, I liked them even  more.  I learned that they liked you back if you didn't curtail their movements, tease them cruelly, and fed them when they were hungry, all really easy things to do.  

We have, or had, three cats.  Two are alley cats who have the run of the neighborhood and usually only check in for their meals.  When the weather is really bad, they'll also stay inside  to sleep.  Red, on the otherhand, was, for whatever reason, a house cat.  Red came to us, via my oldest daughter, who discovered him at a WaWa she frequented for coffee.  Store employees told her Red was the last of a litter of kittens dumped there by some hound dog.  The others had been adopted.  Red was said to have been fed scraps by employees.  Jennifer scooped him up and brought him "with her" and planned to take him, she said, to her house when she left for the day.  But Jenny has several cats and feeds many others who live in the alley where she lives.  When Jenny went home, Red stayed with us, which I believe was her plan all along.  My wife didn't want another cat, but Red won her over.  He was 'cat red', meaning rust orange, with a white chest, one white paw and some white on his face.  He was outgoing, friendly to the point of being gregarious, and hopelessly inquisitive.  No bag, box or bag escaped Red's thorough investigation, meaning he would pull, push or pry until he got it open.  He took quickly to following me around, except when our fixed female, Bob, was around.  Red was hopelessly smitten with Bob and followed her everywhere.  Bob hated it and growled incessantly.  I had developed a talent for opening an outside door just enough for Bob to slip out but pulling it closed quick enough to keep Red in and without catching either of them in the door.  But beyond shadowing or stalking Bob, Red was harmless. He was a cat that you just had to love because he was always at your feet or on your lap or up on the nearest perch looking you in the eye.  If he saw one of the other cats getting into something, he joined them whether they wanted him to or not.  He had this look on his expressive mug that said, plain as day, "I know you won't hurt me."  Now, something has.  I will miss him terribly. 

Isn't it Apparrent?

If you thought you were viewing a replay Sunday when viewing the Duke-Louisville game (minus the hellacious injury to the Cardinals' Andrea Ware), it's because the game was played like and turned out almost exactly like the Maryland-Duke game in the ACC tournament.  Critics thought Maryland didn't belong in the national tournament and instead they were dumped into the NIT.  After Louisville played and beat the same Duke team the same way as Maryland - overwhelming the Blue Devils inside and shutting down Seth Curry - it has become pretty obvious that the decision to take Boise State over Maryland in the National Tournament was a boneheaded decision if ever there was one.  The Terps (25-12), incidentally, are one of four teams left in the NIT and they play Iowa (24-12) tonight for a berth in the final.