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(Not) Marcus Aurelius (on reasons for goodness)

Posted by :James Howden On : September 28, 2013
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Category: He Said/She Said

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“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

Marcus Aurelius, 2nd century Stoic philosopher and, for twenty years, Emperor of Rome. I love this statement of the sovereignty of goodness above hairsplitting and vain imaginings. It comes from the Meditations of Aurelius. Actually, I don’t know where it comes from. I’m no classics scholar, and I was nearly fooled. It sounded so good to be quoting a famous but under-read (including by me!) philosopher.

According to WikiQuote, there is no record of such a statement before 2010.

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The Rock: Good Medicine?

Posted by :James Howden On : September 27, 2013
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Category: At First Glance

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There I was, though I wasn’t sure why, mostly minding my business, loitering in a new place but with enough quasi-official approval that, even though I didn’t know anyone well, they sort of knew me and blandly accepted that I was fiddling around in some vaguely useful way behind that desk. That’s one thing.

I don’t know why they ran a film, but they’d have probably argued for some linguistic or educational purpose behind the CGI, though I think they were just as bored as I was and equally content to be that way. So there we were. This happened:

I couldn’t stop looking, either. Mysterious!

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They Came, They Saw, They Silvered

Posted by :James Howden On : September 23, 2013
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Category: All About Sports

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26 Sept. 2013: a different version of this piece (and the previous one) runs today at http://www.niubball.com/, a fine English-language site for all things to do with Chinese basketball. The name roughly means “hoops is cool”. Check it out.

JH.com waxed excited and nostalgic about tiny Lithuania and its out-sized basketball history here. The Green (and gold) Giants powered and shot their way to a chance to win their fourth European championship last night (3 am China time), and their shot at a first title in ten years. We were not quite so Kleiza-obsessed, though he was a Toronto Raptor for awhile, as to chance the frustrations of live-streaming in Dalian in the middle of the night, but we were up at the crack of nine to find out what happened.

The opponent was France, and Tony Parker happened. He only scored 12 in the final, but was the MVP of the competition as France won its first-ever European championship with an 80-66 win over the Little Country That Could. (And apparently still Can.)

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John Steinbeck (On Fear, Self-Doubt and Creativity)

Posted by :James Howden On : September 21, 2013
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Category: He Said/She Said

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[In writing Of Mice and Men] “the biggest problem is a resolution of the will. The rewards of work are so sickening to me that I do more with the greatest reluctance….It is strange how this goes on. The struggle to get started. Terrible. It always happens….I am afraid. Among other things I feel that I have put some things over. That the little success of mine is cheating. I don’t seem to feel that any of it is any good. All cheating.”

John Steinbeck (1902-1968) had, by this time (1936) broken through as a writer, and the monumental The Grapes of Wrath was also in progress. As I take another tour through Of Mice and Men, it is oddly heartening to hear a Nobel Prize-winner lament his lack of will, and his conviction that his stuff jus’ ain’t what it oughta be. And yet, though he mutters in his journal that he finds it “sickening”, on he plods. This quote comes from the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition by the Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw.

Zhong Qiu Kuai Le

Posted by :James Howden On : September 19, 2013
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Category: At First Glance

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It’s the evening of Mid-Autumn Festival day in Dalian, China. It has been a lazy but pretty day. Zhong qiu kuai le literally means “middle autumn happy”, the standard holiday greeting. We wandered through the nearby university on the way to the first restaurant we entered in this city, in September 2009. Then, an American veteran of the Dalian scene noticed us dazedly looking around, and came out of Fengxin Jiujia (literally “harvest money alcohol home”), a homey little restaurant/tavern with a menu in English. It’s been a mainstay since.

We’ve eaten a little bit of “mooncake” (yue bing), which is a little like what Christmas cake used to be in Canada — everyone gives them or serves them during the season, but many don’t actually like them. We smile, imagining the furious cross-country scurrying of couriers delivering elaborate and requisite mooncake gifts to people who then have a disposal problem. Some people love ’em, though, and there are decadent and non-traditional ones that my sweet tooth would likely savour. (This is a short greeting, so don’t be afraid to continue!)

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The Lithuanians Are Coming! The Lithuanians Are Coming!

Posted by :James Howden On : September 19, 2013
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Category: All About Sports

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26 Sept. 2013: a different version of this piece (and its sequel) runs today at http://www.niubball.com/, a fine English-language site for all things to do with Chinese basketball. The name roughly means “hoops is cool”. Check it out.

Ignas Vycas isn’t somebody you should know, particularly. He’s a son of Lithuania, that tiny Baltic state, a former ward of the Soviet Union that is geo-politically insignificant but fascinating in one respect. Though a struggling nation of fewer than three million, sending migrant labourers all over Europe,

A hoops hotbed. I’d like to know why; many blame Sabonis.

it has one resource that is a prized export: astounding levels and amounts of basketball talent. Ignas isn’t a pro-level talent, but he is young and Lithuanian and left-handed and a major upgrade in my middle-aged hoops adventures. He’s too young for the job, but he’s my new best friend and temptor.

Even if you don’t follow basketball much, you may remember the Lithuania national side playing in the 1992 Olympics. Four of their stars, including the magnificent Arvydas Sabonis, had played for the Soviet Union when they won gold in ’88 in Seoul, the last straw for the American habit of winning with a college all-star team. The U.S.A. “Dream Team” of NBA pros dominated in ’92 in Barcelona, winning their preliminary games by an average of over 40 points. The Dreamers were a huge story (and marketing campaign), but even occasional basketball fans fell in love with Lithuania that summer.

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Happy 500th Birth(day)!

Posted by :James Howden On : September 17, 2013
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Category: At First Glance

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Got some cake? Know where the ice cream is hidden? We won’t bother with the five hundred candles, thanks, but I welcome you to eat your favourite birthy-day-ish things.

I’m trying to quit, so do the festive eating for me.  bekicookscakesblog.blogspot.com is the site from which I nabbed this low-cal number. Mmm.

 What are we celebrating? I nearly missed it myself, but my recent posting of a quote from the great Paulo Freire, down there on the right in “He Said/She Said”, was the

500th post on JH.com!!

Some were short blurts, or quotes from others, but most — as some of you know only too well — were pretty full-bodied pieces that most often run between 800-1400 words. Especially to those of you who’ve digested a pile of ’em, thanks for reading. Thanks for raising a long-stemmed glass of Cherry Garcia, or German Chocolate Cake, or even Redcoat Rations (!) in a toast:

to reading!

to writing!

to everything that goes with it!

 

* Ice cream counts as part of “everything”, even if I could only manage a McD’s sundae today. But then so do peace, justice, education and clean water. (And basketball.)

Paulo Freire (on political “neutrality”)

Posted by :James Howden On : September 15, 2013
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Category: He Said/She Said

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“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

Paulo Freire (1921-1997), from his classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He was a Brazilian educator, philosopher and community activist, and this quote skewers any possibility of sincere people maintaining an “oh, well, nothing I can do about…” attitude — about wealth and poverty, about “developed” and developing nations, about racial or class or religious prejudices — and thinking that this is somehow an even-handed approach. It favours the privileged, those established at the top of the hill, which seems rather obvious when we think about it. Most of us don’t. Look at me — I’ve been quoting Freire and thinking around the edges of commentaries about this highly influential work, and yet have never actually read the book. For shame! jeered the crowd.

Roger and Rafa, Legacy and Kitsch

Posted by :James Howden On : September 12, 2013
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Category: All About Sports

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NEWS FLASH! Rafael Nadal, a short-ish lefthander from Spain, of all places, just won the United States Open tennis championship! It was a stunning, unforeseen victory that left him flat on his back, overwhelmed by exhausted emotion, utterly shocked by this incredible result in one of tennis’s greatest venues, and one of its most important tournaments of the year.

Well, no. Not really. Although he did lie prone on the court, absorbing the admiring roars of 22,000 at the Arthur Ashe court, attracting millions of viewers and hundreds of millions of GIFs and dramatic stills, it was hardly a shock. Nadal is the king of contemporary tennis. This was his 13th major championship, and a 2ndvictory in New York. Pardon me for probing the sincerity of his reaction – from all I’ve read and seen, Rafa is an astonishingly fierce competitor on court, a dedicated trainer and a fine gentleman off it – but haven’t these amazed post-match collapses become a little clichéd?

This was Grantland.com’s photo of Nadal in victorious distress. Way in the background, Djokovic waits to be acknowledged.

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Richard Sherman (on athletic stereotyping)

Posted by :James Howden On : September 10, 2013
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Category: He Said/She Said

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“I felt like somebody took me from somewhere else and dropped me down into this place [Compton, a rough section of Los Angeles]. I was strange because I went to class, did the work, read the books and was still pretty good at sports….I know the jock stereotype – cool guy, walking around with your friends, not caring about school, not caring about anything. I hate that stereotype. I want to destroy it.”

Richard Sherman, DB, Seattle Seahawks (NFL), in a Sports Illustrated cover story, 29 July 2013. Speaking of stereotypes, Sherman is black, wears long dreadlocks, graduated a frustratingly close second in his high school class, and chose (and graduated on time from) Stanford University instead of the more highly ranked football factories that recruited him. Though he talks more trash than would appear humble, he is a small treasure to this coach and writer and long-time catcher and flinger of balls: Sherman is a talking, walking stereotype-buster, a jock with brains and no intention of hiding them. His story made an interesting companion to Steve Rushin’s piece on humility in the same issue, as Sherman is not shy about bringing attention to himself.