Walking along North Lake Shore Drive last weekend, and seeing the stuff that had been ruined during the July 22 flood stacked at the curbs in front of the multi-million dollar houses, I was reminded that stuff is stuff. In one neighborhood, the stuff in one’s basement might be worth $25 or $250. In another, it might be worth $2,500 or $25,000, but it’s still stuff. And should any of it — whether it’s $25 stuff or $2,500 stuff — get bathed in rain water and/or sewage, its dollar value no longer matters, does it?
Speaking of stuff, if you’ve read my earlier postings, you know that I thought the Brewers’ attempts to encourage fans to recycle cans and bottles were half-hearted, at best. Now, I have no doubt. During recent games, there was no mention of the program or the Waste Management recycling containers as there had been earlier in the season, and there is still as much stuff adorning fences and fields near the ballpark as there was at the start of the season. Having seen that and the “stuff” some members of the pitching staff have — or don’t have, it’s hard to determine whether you’ll see better stuff inside or outside Miller Park.
Price of fame: Reuters reported July 29 that nuns from the Abbaye de Notre-Dame de l’Annonciation, a cloister near Avignon, France, had received online death threats following the posting of a clip of their Gregorian chants — chants that put them ahead of 70 other women’s religious communities in earning a recording deal with Universal Music, a part of Decca Records. The person or people making the threats must have come through the same pipe as the aforementioned sewage.
Sports as religion: The real Ordinary Time begins tomorrow, the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, as Packer training camp opens. And if my hopes and those of thousands of other people are realized, January will be Extraordinary Time in Packerland.
On the subject of time and timeliness, I plan to update this on a regular basis, e.g., a posting every Friday. However, I still subscribe to the Mr. Ed philosophy: I don’t talk unless I have something to say.
Talk to you next month.
