Writing #5 - Sunday, November 24, 13

I just watched a 48-minute video of Bill Moyers interviewing Henry Giroux. Mr. Giroux is an academic, born in the United States, but teaches at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He was a very persuasive and articulate. Basically he talked about how America is no longer a democratic country but a country that has been taken completely over by moneyed interests, especially the 1% and giant corporations. They alone run America. They are particularly aligned against the poor and giving everyone in the United States a good, solid education.

These people have been ably supported by the Republican Party and, although Giroux did not mention it, the media, especially the Villagers that inhabit Washington, DC and are beautifully labeled ‘Tiger Beat on the Potomac’ by the incomparable Charlie Pierce. These two entities the GOP and the media have done their absolute utmost to make sure that the rich get richer at the cost of all other Americans.

I realize I read liberal blogs, but there is a certain gravitas, a certain verisimilitude to their commentary that makes it compelling cogent and truthful. As noted comedian, Stephen Colbert once opined, ‘the truth has a liberal bias.’ The conservatives in America, much like their conservative brethren in Canada tend to be, how shall I put this diplomatically, not too bright. They certainly are not nearly as articulate or urbane as their liberal counterparts. This is simply a fact that bears itself out every single day whenever a Republican or a Democrat opens his or her mouth.

I think a major reason for this is the simple fact that conservatives on both sides of the border have no real connection with their constituents. These politicians pay heed only to their rich masters. They pay homage to the people who pour millions into their campaign coffers and thus do whatever their betters insist they do. One thing they never do is pay any attention to all the people who voted for them, especially if they are poor. They do virtually no governing, if they are in power, but spend most of their time looking for more money to finance their next run for government.

So why are these low intelligence, easily influenced mooks successful at getting elected. I’m not sure in Canada how they do it, but in America it is relatively easy to hoodwink the electorate: first they are for the most part low-information voters who get their so-called information from 24-7 hate radio talking heads; their video fixes from FOX news – the propaganda arm of the Republican Party or is the Republican Party the little boy toy of Rubert Murdoch? Who knows? Who cares? The point is that the American people, in general, are among the dumbest fucking people on earth. This is the only reason the Republican Party as it presently is constituted still exists.

It also makes them formidable because they have stacked the Supreme Court with right wing ideologues who toe the ultra conservative line. What is the ultra conservative line? It is do everything in your power to make sure the rich get richer and the not so rich are not allowed to in any way to be provided with any largesse from the government. To a Republican the government’s sole role is to cut taxes on the rich, punish the poor and less fortunate, and ensure there is a strong and thoroughly corrupt and greedy military. How do you like those apples?

Then there is health care; Congressmen Allan said it best: the Republican answer to health care in the United States of America is simple: if you get sick, die quickly.  There you have it. Can you imagine that these people have children and grandchildren? What will the spawn of these monsters turn out to be like? I’ve often thought about starting a blog addressed to the children and grandchildren of Republican politicians whether they be nationwide Senators, state senators, Congressmen, even city aldermen. I would ask these young people, many of them would be in their 30s or older what it’s like to live in a conservative household. Are your parents as religious as they espouse to be? Are your parents strict with you regarding dating? Are your parents keenly interested in what happens at school? Do they fly off  the handle when you come home and hear them talking about things their teachers have said that is in direct contradiction with what Rush Limbaugh, everyone at FOX news, and the Koch brothers have told your parents to say.

What do you children think of the tea party crowd? Have you ever met one of them? What was your impression? Please give me a detailed account of this meeting. Did you find them to be sincere, intelligent, and believable? Please explain carefully.

Writing 4 - Sunday, November 17, 13 Once more into the breech, oh captain, my captain, we again take out the old keyboard and begin dancing our fingers ever so gently yet persuasively upon its flat surface and watch the resultant words and punctuation appear magically upon the large 27” screen. Thus is the lot of an incipient writer, trying oh so desperately to string together a gem of an essay at least 800 marvelous words in length to be shared, whether the world wants them or not, my thoughts on just about anything anywhere. So let us begin by picking a topic for this week’s lollapalooza. How about we talk this week about the demise of the Detroit Red Wings. It is a once proud organization that can no longer win hockey games, even against less than stellar opposition. The team is old, small, and slow. What else can I even talk about that isn’t encapsulated in those three deadly adjectives? I understand that Coach Babcock has to look always on the bright side, but after awhile it gets stale and unproductive. Does he not see what a problem player Johann Franzen has been in almost every game this year? Why has the mule not been a healthy scratch on most of the nights he was god-awful? Is it because they are paying him too much money for him to be sitting even though he most deservedly should sit? How does the fact that such a big man plays so small on a small team sit with his teammates as they watch from the bench or if they are on the ice with him and see him coast shift after shift? The most disappointing player thus far though has been Niklas Kronwall; he really has had a subpar year, especially in his own end. He has made many unforced errors with the puck and in his man coverage. These are things he never used to do. In Saturday night’s game against the Islanders, he left John Tavares completely alone in front of the net to pursue the forward who skating away from the net, near the boards. He had to have seen Tavares lurking near the front of the net, yet he ignored the obvious danger in the situation. It was a microcosm of the Wings season thus far. And yet all this moaning and dripping by me still sees the team in the middle of the playoff picture, which is rather unusual to say the least. How can a team with a mere 9 wins in 20 games still be in the middle of the pack for the eight teams that make the playoffs in the East? However, if they don’t start winning on a regular basis; that is beginning tonight at home against Nashville, then all bets are off; the Red Wings will be, what I’ve long suspected, a team that just isn’t good enough to make the playoffs. Surprise, surprise we lost 2-0 to Nashville last night. We were completely underwhelming in a very boring game filled with very few scoring chances between either team. We looked lethargic and not in any seemingly way interested in winning. Franzen was absolutely god-awful in his unique style of skating up and down without making much effort to induce the opposition into considering him a threat in any way. Babcock rewarded this indifferent and casual play by putting the slug on the penalty kill. I don’t know how the coaching staff, or his teammates for that matter don’t take the mule aside and throttle him. He is a coaster in a league all his own. Well, I just got home from visiting my father-in-law in the hospital and my Wings were up 1-0 against the Carolina Hurricanes. In fact, that is how the first period ended. Anyway they brought up Gustav Nyquist from the minors, what took so long? He only scored 17 seconds into the game. Meanwhile Franzen continues to coast like the figure skater he is. When Babcock make him a healthy scratch, it will not only send a clear message to the Mule but also let the team know that slack play will not be tolerated on this team. We’ll see. I have to call Harry Carson for the beautiful Red Wings cap he brought back from the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit last week. I think I’ll call him after the Wings win a game; I hope I don’t have to wait until Christmas. But I digress. This essay is about the 2013-14 Wings and their many, many shortcomings. As I write that sentence the Wings score their second goal of the game by the best third line centre in the NHL, Darren Helm. Shortly after the Hurricanes score on a pretty set up that made us look bad in our own end. Here we go again; we just cannot run away with a game. We have to always court disaster.

Writing 3 - Sunday, November 10, 13 And so begins week three in our renewed attempt to find the writer within. It hasn’t been particularly enlightening or gratifying, but it is, nevertheless, a start. So we will take that as a positive. What I’ve written so far is dreck – pure and simple. I’m hoping that the muse will visit me like it did when I was teaching at St. Pat’s and put out a lovely, I thought, missive every week for the Monday Memo. I thoroughly enjoyed that and I think the people I worked with enjoyed it too. Alas, I no longer work full time anywhere and I therefore do not know the staff at the Faculty of Education at Lakehead University well enough to make a little fun with them. But I do need to find a niche I can feel comfortable in and produce some solid, useful work that will have a broad appeal. Then, and only then, I can watch the big money roll in. But, as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself. I have to produce something of exquisite beauty in order to build upon my early works and produce a body of work that is worthy of publishing and some sort of remuneration. Ah, remuneration, how will that happen: many blogs right now, at least the larger ones, are asking for their writers to write for nothing – can you imagine that? Working your butt off for no pay – hello Arianna Huffington. Is this what 40 years of ultra conservative policy has wrought? Apparently so, I’m afraid. It is a struggle for everyone just starting out especially in a world that is becoming progressively more hostile to the working person. The execrable 1% rules everyone’s world it would seem. Ah, the 1%, who are they in Canada? Are they as obnoxious and greedy as the greedheads in the U.S. of A.? My blog mates would suggest that the American billionaire is about as greedy and heartless as they come, whether it be to pay scientists to say that there is no such thing as global warming, or to do their damndest to insure that the Affordable Care Act under President Obama will not work. Some states, in fact, have refused to take money from the federal government thereby making sure their most vulnerable citizens will continue to go without health care and/or insurance – how awful is that? Ah, again, but I could go on forever talking about the absolute mess the American political scene is in at this moment in history. And, it can all be attributed to the absolutely crazy, unconscionable behaviour of the Republican Party of the United States. They are beyond the pale in every metric you might choose to use in trying to explain, to understand what makes these truly sick, demented people function. I could write an 800-word commentary every day of the year for decades that would show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Republican Party is beyond redemption and yet it remains viable as a political party because of the immense amount of wealth that is behind them in their never ending quest to destroy everything in their path to ensure that only the wealthiest Americans will benefit from the largesse of the American people. What other political party sees the Democratic Party as the enemy of America. They are ably supported in this rush to disaster by Fox News and right wing hate radio that fills the minds and hearts of millions and millions of low-information Americans. And what has this wrought – right wing Supreme Court justices who are ensuring that all of the above will always be in play for many years to come. Well done, America. Today Obama walked back his Affordable Care Act by telling the American people that they can now have another year to keep their present insurance-backed health care. He even had the unmitigated stupidity to mention how he hoped to work with Republicans in making this move smoothly. Perhaps someone should remind the President that it has been the Republicans since day one of his presidency that have fought him every step of the way in every way imaginable to ensure that he is successful at nothing. The Republicans have no interest in the American people; they would rather see America go to hell in a hand basket as long as they are able to state it is entirely Obama’s fault. What part of any of this does Obama not understand? He should call out the insane party for every time they make it impossible for him to get anything done to help the American people. The nut jobs that are now the Republican Party would rather see America sink into the sea than allow Obama do accomplish anything, anything at all.

Writing 2 - Sunday, November 3, 13 And so begins week two in our renewed adventure in writing, today’s topic will be a personal favourite: the Toronto Maple Leafs and their legions and legions of long suffering, deservedly so I might add, fans. I watched most of last night’s game between the Leafs, leaders in the Eastern Conference and the Vancouver Canucks, near the top in the Western Conference. It was a game that clearly demonstrated, I think, that showed the problem that the Leafs continue to not address – a decided disinterest in playing defensive hockey of any kind. I really thought that their new coach, Randy Carlyle, was really going to turn this team around, a team that has a long and painful history of thinking that hockey, Leaf style, involves offence only. There was beaucoup evidence last night that some habits die hard. Did anyone even notice Nazem Kadri out there? What an absolute waste of talent. Obviously this young man thinks, as do too many Leafs, that the game is played only when your team has the puck. Are you listening, Phil Kessel? Toronto was so inept last night that there were times, especially during the latter stages, that the Leafs were a man short all the time; actually they were a man short 11 times; three of those penalties were for boarding – how butch is that? That the Leafs actually quit halfway through the third period was painfully obvious. Carlyle will have to address that attitude too. Alas when the Leafs return home all will be forgiven because, you know, they’re the Leafs. And thus will continue that special relationship this team has with its many fiercely faithful and blindly loyal fan base. Beating the hapless New Jersey Devils this Friday will make all thing bright and shiny again for all leaflets everywhere. To be a Leaf fan means having a very short and faulty memory. I can count on one hand the number of Leaf fans of my personal acquaintance who actually note this rather important chink in the Maple Leaf armour – their complete indifference to the other side of the puck; the side where you don’t have the puck and you have to try your damndest to get it back. Until Carlyle instills this basic tenet into the minds and hearts of his charges there will be another early exit from the playoffs in the spring. Ah, the spring, when the NHL second season, the one that counts, begins. Perhaps by this time, Toronto’s latest heart throb – David Clarkson – will, can prove that he is worth all that money showered on a third line centre who to date has done next to nothing except for his 10-game suspension for leaving the bench during a brawl in the pre-season. Mind you he is quite the chirping and posturing yahoo during scrums after the whistle – every team needs one of these guys, amirite? Let’s look at a Leaf positive thus far – goaltending. I’m especially impressed by James Reimer who tended to get lit up quite often last year, especially by long shots that could/should be stopped. He was actually brilliant in Vancouver. Apparently the new goalie has also been excellent and this, yet again, brings us back to a certain reliance that virtually all Leaf teams since the Doug Gilmour days have been wholly dependent on – superb, fantastic really, goaltending. Felix Potvin, Curtis Joseph, especially Curtis Joseph, and finally Ed Balfour did nothing but yeoman service for the hapless and hopeless Leaf attempts at defensive play. It could be said, I think, that if the Leafs did not have these three stellar goaltenders, they never would have made the playoffs in any of the years they did in the nineties. How many years did the Leafs have the magnificent Mats Sundin and stellar goaltending and absolutely nothing else? I’m certain that Randy Carlyle was well aware of what he was inheriting from the execrable Ron Wilson, perhaps the worst coach the Leafs ever had. And there has been some very important improvements in the Leafs play since Carlyle took over, but the game against Vancouver on Saturday really showed how thin the veneer the Leafs’ commitment to defensive play really is. When the Leafs collapse they do so in spectacular fashion – see last year’s debacle in the playoffs against the Bruins for further evidence of how the complete and utter breakdown of your defensive posture invites disaster. In conclusion, for the Leafs to really buy into the Randy Carlyle regime, Phil Kessel, Nazem Kadri, and a few other offensive wonders have to demonstrate now that they can be counted on to make themselves useful in their own end. They can begin by learning how to fore check with enthusiasm and panache. There, I’ve completed my Leaf column for the first part of the year. Perhaps I’ll write a column on their first meeting with Detroit sometime in December.

Writing 1 Monday, October 28, 13 Wow, it’s been a while, a long while, indeed. If I’m going to be a writer, I have to write – every day in every way. It might as well begin now. I’ve gotten my latest inspiration from Maria Popova of “Brain Pickings” a blog that is 7 years old this week, but one I’ve just come to this past week. I hope her many inspirational and thoughtful comments will guide me on my own personal journey as a writer. You would think anyone who is 68 years old would not have any problem talking about who he is, but there you have it. Here I am still trying to put my life together so that I can more closely follow Annie Dillard’s dictum: ‘how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.’ So, let us begin the journey anew and somewhat refreshed too. Let us once again attempt to put on a screen our thoughts as humble and disorganized and disjointed as they may be. It is really a never-ending quest for personal enlightenment and fulfillment. God, I’m having trouble believing all this bullshit. However, we shall move forward and hopefully upward in our search for inner soul. Ah, the inner soul – what is that exactly? Is it something we are constantly cognizant of? Is it something I’m aware of in my own life? Is this what prompts my feelings, my thoughts, my aspirations? I don’t know. I really don’t. This is about as far as I’ve ever gone into looking at myself. I don’t particularly like it to tell you the truth. I’m not comfortable talking about myself; I much prefer talking about anything or anybody but myself. As someone famously said a journey must start with the first step. This will constitute my first step I suppose. Alas, I’ve started many first steps before and the hope is always there that this will be the beginning of something special and lasting, but we will have to wait and see. The important thing always is to begin and persevere in the writing process. Perhaps this will be a good start to my process writing class that begins in January. The important thing is, of course, that I begin writing again, writing with a vengeance. Once I get into a routine I would like to put my stuff on my blog and invite my students to comment and/or share their writing as well. I would like to get this started some time in the New Year, especially with my writing class to start and my J/I class as well. It will be strictly voluntary for all involved. But to do this I have to continue to write every week. I’ve given myself an hour every evening, except for Fridays, to write at least 200 words on one particular topic. This, as you may easily see, is my first of many attempts over the years to get back into writing again. Where it will go, I’m not sure, but I do know I have to give it a good, solid chance. This means writing, writing, and writing. It will be the only way for me to really find out if I really am capable of stringing 800 words together that will, first of all, make sense and then, perhaps, actually engage the readers in some kind of response to what they have just read. The key, as always, is to have something to say and then say it with panache and in my own unique way. And this, my friends, can be done only by writing, writing, and writing. And so, we continue writing as the days move ever forward toward Halloween tomorrow night. I’m afraid I don’t have any ghoulish stories or comments to make about this night. It certainly isn’t a time that I particularly enjoy, although I did when I was a kid. But this is certainly not germane to this week’s writing. Let’s call it essaying rather than writing, shall we? One thing this frequent writing will have to help is my ability to complete 800 words per week. That really isn’t too difficult, I think. But the proof, they say, is in the putting. We shall see about that. I went to Janzen’s Westfort Village Pharmacy this afternoon to get medicine for my cold and my laceration on the back of my right hand. It wasn’t nearly as busy as I thought it would be. I was the fourth one in line not bad considering I was there 20 minutes before the walk-in clinic opened. It was interesting that there was man there with an impressive beard, mostly white, with no moustache, whose job it was, as near as I could tell, called out our names and opened the door for the doctor, an east Indian woman, who was very efficient.

Great Questions

I came across this a few days ago on Eric Alterman's Blog. It is good, really good.


Telegraphing the Pitch
Earlier this week, the Republican National Committee unveiled a new primary debate plan that would give the RNC substantially more power to schedule candidate forums and choose conservative moderators from outside the realm of traditional media to host those events. Conservative talker Hugh Hewitt, in a grandly pretentious Washington Examiner op-ed from this past Sunday that really has to be read to be believed, portentously hailed the plan’s “promise of serious discussion of issues of deep importance to the conservative electorate tired to death of the agenda journalism of the Obama-loving MSM.” Predicting that such a plan “could yield a renaissance in campaign coverage,” Hewitt went so far as to draw up what amounts to a right-winger’s dream team of alternative panel members and potential debate topics:
“Imagine one or two debates on foreign affairs, moderated by a senior statesman and featuring questions from public intellectuals like Charles Krauthammer, Victor Davis Hanson and Liz Cheney."
"A debate moderated by the Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot and featuring economic historian Amity Shlaes and other writers and reporters knowledgeable about the history of markets and regulatory policy would be valuable."
"Or perhaps a forum on the Constitution, courts and judges moderated by Robert Bork and featuring former federal appellate judges Michael McConnell and Michael Luttig? The possibilities for great and informative debates are many and long overdue.”
Let’s be really honest here, what kind of serious, fact-based policy discussions can the American public expect from the Republican primary candidates if each debate is dominated by a collection of demagogues, intellectual poseurs (courtesy of our old friend LTC Bob Bateman) and duplicitous, power-hungry officials the likes of which are listed above. Indeed, for each debate, the RNC might as well go ahead and follow the lead of a certain New York baseball team and let the moderators use hand signals to telegraph to the candidates just which canned talking points to use next. In fact, I finally let my curiosity get the better of me and decided that I would try to humbly come up with a potential list of “serious” questions that might match the tenor of Hewitt’s “smart questioners” at just such a GOP presidential primary debate. Feel free to submit your own as well...
Round Robin section:
– Just how awesome was Ronald Reagan? (For brevity’s sake, please avoid using the terms “amnesty,” “Beirut” or “signed a tax increase” in your answer.)
– Gitmo: What can we do to make it less humane for those terrorists lucky enough to be coddled there indefinitely?
– (Special for Newt Gingrich) What does the Obamas’ successful marriage say about how secular progressives are flagrantly undermining the vital role that mistresses, infidelity and divorce play in shaping American exceptionalism?
– Critics say the fact that millionaires and multinational corporations often pay nothing at all in incomes taxes here in our country is a travesty. Detail how your administration would go about lowering this unfair tax burden even further.
– What is your stance regarding teaching evolution in our schools? (Trick question: If somebody really cared about their child, they would already be home schooling them!)
– After having repealed Obamacare as your first legislative act as president, what would you charge Congress with doing next to solve our nation’s daunting health care problems: Repeal Medicare or repeal Medicaid?
– Hypothetical situation: You, a Federal Reserve Governor, a unionized public school teacher, and a pregnant illegal immigrant starting to go into labor are all stranded inside an oddly unfurnished Detroit mosque during a climate-change-refuting blizzard and you only have a single bullet left in your legal, concealed-carry handgun, who do you pray will get “called” to heaven first?–How would your administration go about discerning the voting preferences of unborn fetuses every Election Day and isn’t it safe to assume that their choice would cancel out that of the mother, especially if she wasn’t married and/or wore pants?
–Please address a fellow candidate at the forum and, in discussing his or her inability to stay true to conservative principles, explain how their failings pale in comparison to the lingering questions about Obama’s true birthplace.
–Describe in one-minute the process by which all Americans will be able to shop nationwide for cheap, J.D. Power-ranked organ transplants thanks to the completely privatized health care marketplace your administration would set up. Thirty-second follow-up: Quickly summarize your campaign’s innovative pilot project whereby the chosen dollar amount of one’s annual health insurance deductible would directly correlate to one’s standard income tax deduction.
Lightning Round:
– Bomb Iran: Yes or Now?
– On a scale of one to ten with ten being the absolute highest, how much weaker and more feckless is Obama’s leadership style than Neville Chamberlain’s?
– Show of hands, which of you supports a 9-month waiting period before any abortion could be performed?
– On a scale of one to ten with ten being the absolute highest, how much more domineering and tyrannical is Obama’s leadership style than Genghis Khan’s?
– OK, who here supports a five-year waiting period before a child would be eligible for Head Start?
– If you could repeal just nine amendments from the Bill of Rights, which one would you leave intact—the 2nd or the 10th?
– Who would support eliminating Head Start and replacing it with a dollar-for-dollar tax credit off of the first $50,000 each citizen earns in capital gains each year?
– Name an influential or perspective-changing book you’ve made it a point to never read.
– More important: making Social Security less social or less secure?
– Bigger threat to our democracy: high voter turnout or collective bargaining?
Final Question:
–Some on the left (wait for boos to die down) say that the Tea Party merely represents a clever repackaging of the same-old, politically aggrieved social conservatives that have always existed at the right-most fringe of the Republican Party and that by increasingly kowtowing to this rump minority of the American public the GOP is endangering both the party’s future as well as that our of nation. So, I ask you, just how awesome was Reagan again?

A Life Lived

Reflections on a Life

I would imagine it might be a good time to look back on my 65 years on this planet and try and explain, confront, understand what has transpired and how it all has shaped me as a person. I really don’t have a very clear view of what I was like as a toddler, unlike my younger sister (by two years) who seems to be able to recall with ease everything that happened in our large family as soon or soon after she exited the womb. For instance, I do not remember getting my right hand caught in the motorized belt that drove the ringer washer. It did quite a bit of damage to the first two fingers and thumb of my right hand. All I know is that I was crawling and not yet walking. I’m sure I screamed though; including when our family doctor, Dr. Aitkins, stitched me up on the kitchen table with blood flying everywhere; so my mother told me.
Alas, that’s about it for childhood trauma. What followed is a pretty normal, active, although not necessarily eventful youth. My older sister (by two years) had to walk six blocks to catch the streetcar that took her to the elementary school a mile and a half from our home. She was six. I had to be fitted with a harness and tied to the front steps because I tried to follow her to school. I too started school at six (there was no kindergarten then) at the brand new elementary school a mere four blocks distant.
I really enjoyed school, despite the fact my grandparents, on my mother’s side, decided to buy me a brown outfit for my first day. It included a jacket and shorts, yes shorts. I was so embarrassed that I spent my recesses sitting on the north side steps of the school rather than play with the other kids. Teachers thought I was an English kid who was used to wearing a ‘uniform.’ Thankfully my parents realized that I hated my little brown outfit and allowed me to wear regular clothes to school. I quickly and easily left the steps and joined in the play that was so much a part of my education and personal development.
I had a nun in grade one; she was young and we all liked her, but I don’t remember her name. In grade 2 and 3 I had Miss Stewart; we did not get along, but I still liked school anyway. It wasn’t until grade 6 that I had my first male teacher, Mr. Morrison. By this time I was becoming a bit of a pain in the classroom; I think I saw myself as a wise guy, I suppose. Anyway it may also may have been because I had discovered girls, sigh. It amazing what an influence these lovely young ladies have on an eleven-year old kid who was wearing braces. Yes, braces! I was the only kid to have braces in my elementary school. That would appear very strange today where so many kids are wearing the ‘railroad tracks,’ as they were called back in the day.
By high school the braces were gone, but a rather cocky, skinny kid entered PACI, a venerable old building a mile and a half from home. Surprisingly I was really shy, especially around girls, but what I found was my passion – sports! I tried out for all teams in grade nine, except for football – I weighed maybe 130 pounds. Soon enough football would be my downfall as my three shoulder operations and innumerable separations and dislocations were to prove. But that didn’t start until grade 10 when I was probably a robust 140 pounds.
Those 140 pounds spent the next two years either being hurt, in the hospital (I visited every emergency room in the three city hospitals), recovering on the bench from said injuries, or simply trying to contribute to the team effort. I found that my body was much better suited to basketball, a game that I had a lot of success at, even though my shoulder injuries did not go away. At least I didn’t spend too much time away from the game because of these injuries.