I’m sitting in sunlight. The gargantuan snow pack and massive ice bergs that surrounded my country home have receded, and although piles of thoroughly objectionable quasi-processed animal digestive mementos randomly float in pockets of thin snow melt, the skies are blue. I hear bird song in the morning, and even the tempestuous ranting of the manic klepto-king is muted in this sloppy overture signaling earth’s reawakening.

I’ve got plans to sort out, finally, postponed trips to plan, places to visit, people to see, all very exciting and reminiscent of our lives in California and Oregon, treasured days of wonder, and friendship, and meaning. I do love the daily rituals in this quiet life, particularly those that remind me that my family (and our dogs) are clever, kind, and a great comfort as I fumble for words and forget what nachos are. I start to miss them even before I’ve agreed to travel. Speaking of nachos, this planning stuff is tricky enough as airports have become hellscapes and my memories of the recession of ‘78 surface unbidden. Cost of gas? Savings melting?

Yeah, there is plenty to worry about in packing up for a visit with college pals in Michigan or heading into New Hampshire with my superannuated acapella group for the annual Grill ‘N Chill in Henniker. I’ll be spending the night with people I quite like, but people who live entirely ordinary human lives. Getting back to nachos (I’ve looked them up, and they are the foodstuff I mean to reference), I don’t eat them. I don’t eat mammals. I don’t eat burgers. I don’t eat steak, or lamb chops, or ham. I don’t eat fish. I don’t eat seafood. Other people do, frequently, and frequently when welcoming visitors. 

Putting up with me is more than challenging enough without having to put up with my finicky, oddly specific dietary limitations. Without going into an even more exhaustive account of things I don’t/won/t eat (mayonnaise, salad dressing, cilantro), I’m a pill. Some of my discomfort is attached to sensory discomfort around texture or aroma, but the biggest menu kill for me is in my conviction that mammals (such as I) have a soul. I’m convinced that I am not my body, and I’m pretty sure every dog on his/her worst day is as rich in spirit as I am on my best. Remember Koko the gorilla meeting Fred Rogers? Spirit all over the place. Both of ‘em. 

“Namaste, Koko”. “Namaste, Fred”. That which is of the essential and eternal in me sees and honors that which is of the essential and eternal in you. Both of you. 

So, I’m somewhere on the non deistic pagan, druidic, eclectic animistic, spirit of the universe non-mammal-eating continuum and a pain in the butt houseguest. 

Where was I?

Oh, yes, planning for a trip to New Hampshire.

So, I pack protein bars, fruit, veggie snacks, and corn chips. 

I worry that I will be a drag and a drip at the dinner table, and I will be tempted to amp up my chat and chatter, to unearth the last moderately amusing anecdotes I’ve packed with my energy bars, to try to sparkle and impress. On a good day, however, and increasingly, I ask questions instead. I ask questions that allow me to see my friends as they have become. I ask questions about every aspect of their lives and find myself intrigued with how they’ve become the person they are.

It’s better than bacon, and worth the embarrassment of admitting how quirky I myself have become. 

Let’s see, three nights in New Hampshire? That’s six energy bars, a bag of tangerines, six apples, pretzels, and pray for pizza.

I’ve written several guides to American colleges and universities, all of which were intended to bring attention to excellent liberal arts colleges  unappreciated outside of their region. My own experience as a geographically challenged 18 year old in arriving at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, roughly an hour north of Columbus, Ohio in 1964 informed that enterprise, as I found myself in a Gothic paradise, not entirely by accident, but certainly without any intelligent preparation. My parents were hardly more tuned in, as they booked me a flight to Cleveland, yes, also in Ohio, but roughly 110 miles from Gambier. It took me four hours to hitch rides to my college home.

I return to Kenyon as often as I can and consider myself ridiculously lucky to have had the opportunity to live on that campus. It was in the hope of helping others find their way that I became a college counselor in addition to teaching and coaching. I was happily working with great kids at University Liggett School in Michigan when four sophomores brought me a set of challenges I had not anticipated. Susie Mascarin and Aaron Krickstein were missing a ton of classes as they played in junior tennis tournaments throughout the year, handing in assignments as they headed to Dallas or Minneapolis. Equally academically stressed, Costa Papista played for the Sudbury Wolves, in the Ontario Hockey League, and Jimmy Carson played for the Verdun Junior Canadiens. Both were on the road every weekend and even farther from home during playoffs.

I met with each of the kids as they began planning for the junior year, ready to help them prepare for the process of working with Division I athletic programs. I began with an enthusiastic description of what their careers as college athletes might look like, then moved to the academic issues that might pop up as they tried to balance competitive athletics with a rigorous college curriculum.

After the pregnant silence that followed, each of the kids patiently explained that college might be peachy, but they were going pro immediately following graduation. I suggested that there were no guarantees in leaving school, that many athletes never found professional success. I had to bring up the possibility that injury or illness could end a career before it began. Surely, I thought, even a few years at the college level could only enhance their chances of reaching the highest level of competition in their sport.

Thanks, Mr. Arango, you’re a swell guy. We’ll take our chances.

My memory is that Costa Papista played for one more season with the Wolves, was injured, wasn’t drafted by the NHL, and ended up playing for the University of New Brunswick. Not a terrible outcome.

Susie Mascarin won the US Open Girls Singles Championship, played in the Australian Open, the French Open, the Wimbledon Championship, and reached the 4th round of the US Open.

Jimmy Carson played for ten seasons in the NHL and while playing for the LA Kings became the second teenager to score 50 goals in a season, scoring 55 goals in his second season, the NHL record for the most goals scored by a United States-born player.

Aaron Krickstein won five consecutive junior championships and became the youngest player to win a singles title on the ATP tour, finishing with nine titles in his ATP career. Along the way, he defeated Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker, Stefan Edberg, Pete Sampras, Matts Wilander, and Andre Agassi, but he is best known for a five set battle vs Jimmy Connors in the 1991 US Open, a match that lasted more than four hours and ended in a 5th set tie breaker.

The Connors-Krickstein knock-down, drag-out marathon often comes up at this time of year, as the US Open nears the quarter-finals. I haven’t run into Aaron since leaving Michigan, but I’ve come closer to Connors than I might have expected.

Near the end of my exceedingly fortunate teaching career at Cate School in Carpinteria, California, I was awarded a sabbatical leave in which I managed to write two novels and America’s Best Kept College Secrets, the sort of guide I mentioned earlier. I hiked in the mountains to clear my head, and  played golf mostly to get outdoors and walk in pretty places. I was/am terrible, but every once in a while I’d treat myself and drive into the Santa Ynez Hills to play or practice on the Rancho San Marcos course where the pros play. I’d spring for a round once or twice a year, but for 15 bucks I could spend the morning on the practice facilities and feel pretty spiffy.

I got out to practice early and the guy in the office told me the course was closed as two golfers had rented it for the day. Apparently they were high stakes gamblers and had thousands of dollars riding on each hole, so needed to keep the hoi polloi at bay. I could use the practice tees, pitching greens, and sand traps, but had to stay away from the course. 

No problem. I just wanted to hit some balls. Try to hit some balls. Let me be clear – When I hit a tee shot it makes a muffled “thunk”. On a great day, I might hear a medium “thwack”.

I was at the end of the practice tee thwacking and thunking  when I  heard sounds I will not be able to fully describe. 

Canons? Howitzers? 

Two guys at the other end of the tees were launching moon shots. There are many unspoken articles of etiquette (or at least, there were) about practice tee behavior; it was considered impolite to gawk or mock anyone’s drives.  But, rocket fire, c’mon.

So I gawked.

It was very early on a mountain morning, dew was on the grass, wisps of fog hugged the ground, and in the dim light I saw …  Michael Jordan and Jimmy Connors demolishing golf balls and muttering when their drives fall short of the 300 yard marker.

I messed around as long as they stayed on the driving range, then carefully left the course without intruding on their vibe.

I’ve been watching sports for a long time and knew that premier athletes are not like mere mortals,  but that lesson was very forcibly brought home to me that morning.

I still play at golf. Carrying my bag and walking alone on nice (cheap) courses. Our local municipal course is beautiful and I can walk nine holes for 24 bucks. I don’t keep score, and I’m still thunking and thwacking.

I think about that post-career Connors, still ferocious, terrifyingly strong, and Aaron Krickstein, a high school sophomore, sitting in my office, smiling, assuring me that he was determined to play against the very best in the world, no matter what. 

The final assessment of Covid’s lingering brain-walloping will come long after my sincerely walloped brain has ceased its cluttered sputter. I’ve been hit twice, fewer than most, maybe, more than those in my cohort. The second round was a gift from a friend. It happens. No hard feelings.

I took the palliative dose of Paxlovid, felt relatively little physical distress, wandered off into isolation, and went slightly off-kilter,I think, although I suspect that it isn’t really possible for a brain to assess its own dysfunction. My memory is that the mental acuity base line kept jogging all over the place at the best of times.  I would guess that we all have moments of dislocation or bouts of gauze befouled memory. Frustrating. Perhaps a bit more frequent as the decades roll along, but, if not predictable, at the very least manageable. 

Names began to slide away from me about six years ago. For longer than I deserved, I was the go-to guy on names, pretty quick to remember even the least incandescent of acquaintances. I could still bring up quasi-intact snippets of literature and significant dates in history. In the last two years, I’ve been increasingly less sure of my memory and acutely aware that names had become more than slippery. I had begun to organize my conversations so that I had time and opportunity to fish for names a bit before it became absolutely necessary to actually bring one to voice. The good news is that I have no more than two or three conversations outside my immediate family in any given week, so the circumlocution necessary to bring the right name to voice became part of the fun in watching Dad invent ways to finish a sentence without finishing a thought.

Looking back on my muddling before retreating to my bedroom for a week, I feel great fondness for the brain that eventually got where it wanted to go, eventually found the words it needed to find. That brain may not have been razor sharp, but it was capable of middle-of-the-road, adequate conversation with most people in most settings. That brain had been active enough to pull together six chapters in a new novel, active enough to slog through books and articles that were moderately challenging. That brain allowed me to watch films all the way to the end. I recall that I had the ability to sign and send messages I had composed. Pretty heady stuff.

During the week I spent in my room, I watched schlock on my computer and hoped I’d fall asleep. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I’d go for almost twenty hours as episodes rolled by. I don’t even know the names of shows or films I summoned. I lost taste and smell, though both are returning. I lost ten pounds.

This is the first post I’ve written in more than three months. It’s one thing to be an impractical cogitator and quite another to be incapable of cogitation. I’ll gladly try to scramble back to impracticality, and give myself some credit for sticking with the 44 hour audio biography of Mark Twain, written by Ron Chernow and read by Jason Culp, a masterful evocation of the puzzle that was Twain by Chernow and an extraordinary performance by Culp. I followed up with Ken Burns’ documentary on Twain, and have plans to visit the Mark Twain house, about 30 minutes south of here, next week. I’ve got Mansfield Park and Anne Patchett’s Essays waiting at the library, and I intend to write in celebration of Ichiro Suzuki’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. 

Inch-by-bleeping-inch.

So, as most of us do, I awoke this morning from a dream about the NCAA Mid-Majors, the teams outside the Power Five Conferences (Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Big 12, and Big East). In the dream I was writing about the odd and often uncertain trajectory of Mid Major teams, like the University of Dayton.

Here’s the thing, I will not be writing about the Mid Majors, although there is a story there to be told, many stories to be told. The introduction of the transfer portal has meant that teams outside the Power Five lose their best players to transfer at the end of a season, essentially becoming the equivalent of the NCAA’s “G” League. These Mid-Majors were the universities we loved emerging from the dogpile as “Cinderella” teams in the midst of March Madness, the surprises victors: Richmond, Coppin State, Hampton, Florida Gulf Coast, Middle Tennessee State, Oral Roberts, St. Peter’s, Princeton, Fairleigh Dickinson, University of Maryland Baltimore County.

So, Cinderella’s pumpkins now leave town before the ball begins.

No, I will not be writing the definitive or even the cursory account of a subject that came to me uninvited as I hacked into my CPAP. I would not be writing even had I been stewing about the plight of Mid-Majors for the past decade. John Feinstein would have written a masterful and insightful book, had he lived to see the current NCAA basketball season end. He wrote about sitting on the bench with Bobby Knight in A Season on the Brink and in Caddy for Life, wrote about Bruce Edrwards, Tom Watson’s caddy who fought ALS. He loved sports and had the tenacity to research and write generously.

And then, there’s McPhee. 

John McPhee wrote A Sense of Where You Are, a profile of Bill Bradley as he finished his career at Princeton. The book came out in 1965 as I continued to slide happily past all formal attempts to educate me at Kenyon. McPhee’s book was an education. It is one of the two or three books that remains my touchstone as a reader and as a writer. I slept through classes but read everything by McPhee that I could get my hands on. I read The Headmaster, his book about Frank Boyden, legendary Headmaster at Deerfield. I read Oranges, which is, not surprisingly, about oranges. Later, I offered my sophomores Oranges, a short read, as a model of close observation in writing descriptively. I’ve read McPhee on bark canoes, settlers in Alaska, a hybrid airship, tennis, nuclear institutions, and the Army Corps of Engineers’ efforts to control the Mississippi.

McPhee comes to mind because I just put down Rough Sleepers, Tracy Kidder’s recent account of the life and work of Jim O’Connell, the physician whose life work has been with the unhoused in Boston. It’s a remarkable book; O’Connell is a remarkable man, as was Dr. Paul Farmer, the medical anthropologist profiled in Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains. Kidder’s work is meticulous and animated, and he credits McPhee as his literary mentor, describing him as the most elegant journalist.

I will also praise two other writers: Roger Angell and George Will. 

Angell was the chief fiction editor at The New Yorker whose writing about baseball is evocative, elegant, elegiac. His Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion is a stunning account of one of baseball’s most dramatic half-decades and a particular favorite in that it features vivid accounts of Angell’s encounters with vociferous Tiger fans in Detroit.

Will is the Pulitzer Prize winning political columnist for The Washington Post, a notable voice in political journalism and a die hard, life-long fan of the Chicago Cubs. His columns on baseball are among the most engaging and insightful I’ve read, and his book, Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball has a prominent place on the bookshelf in my bedroom. His description of the skills that Tony Gwynn, Tony LaRussa, Orel Herschiser, Cal Ripken Jr., and Jim Gott brought to the sport equals McPhee’s account of Bradley’s squaring up to take a shot, recognizing immediately with a sense of where he was, that a basketball hoop was placed less than an inch too low.

I confessed to my daughter that I lack the grit to take on the Mid-Major story; I don’t remember if I called myself lazy and feckless, but I might have. She’s both insightful and kind, asking me to think about my statement slightly differently. I have done three editions of a book about more than a hundred American colleges and universities, America’s Best Kept College Secrets, a book that remains one of America’s Best Kept Secret Resources on Choosing a College. I had the juice to research and write that book more than once.

The Mid-Majors will have to fend for themselves. The world is upside down this week again; the Man-Who-Would-Be-King is trampling the economy and human rights. Our dogs just ate another carpet. I’m starting to be able to sing along with the tv ads for Jardiance.

Let’s see what shows up in my dreams tonight.