Nationals: 9, Pirates: 8

Down to DC for the weekend, the highlight a trip to the new Nationals Park. The stadium is new, clean and modern, but fails to stand out. There are no moments of astonishment, and my inability to identify its best featuer speaks volumes. PNC Park in Pittsburgh is the best ballpark I've visited, in large part because of the wide gap in left-center field that reveals the river below and skyscrapers beyond.
Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia incorporates the concourses into the game, with fans able to stroll above the bullpens, gather above the brick wall in centerfield. That Nationals Park takes all the basic design elements of these parks — wide concourses and better people-moving systems — but fails to add anything remarkable disappoints.
The highlight of every Nationals game is the Presidents Race. Because the Pirates were in town, the Pierogi Racers joined the race, their tastiness too much temptation for Teddy Roosevelt who chased them aimlessly while George and Abe battled to the end with Washington taking the win:

i'm gone

Two weeks in Europe, a week home and it's back to Philadelphia. There, with fewer dinner parties and concerts perhaps I'll finally review trans-Atlantic travels, or just blog more than twice a month. Or perhaps I'll just occasionally check in with a post admonishing myself for my failure to blog.

sprouts

Last fall's optimism appears to have been well-placed, as upon my return from Holland and its myriad tulips, greeting me were sprouts from the bulbs I planted. In a week, perhaps two, these sprouting leaves still fighting their way through the dirt will bloom, bringing color and life to my garden, if only briefly.

Whether I'll be in Minneapolis to enjoy the bloom remains an open question. Content from the trip forthcoming.

europe

Amsterdam behind us, it's a chilly day in Paris, overcast and gloomy. Tomorrow, we head for Tours, and hopefully warmer weather.

Blogging will be sparse until I return, having left the cord for my laptop at home, probably the most important non-travel document I could have forgotten. Utter failure.

ready to fly

Having just settled home after two months on the road, it has quickly again become time for another jarring shock to my body's clock and my sense of place.

Tonight, as the sun falls over Minneapolis, I board a plane to head east. Stopping to greet the sun in Iceland, I'll continue to arrive in Amsterdam Saturday afternoon. From there a two week jaunt across four countries ensues. Tales forthcoming.

hard hitting journalism

Today the National Archives released Sen. Clinton's schedules while she was first lady. More than 17,000 pages will have journalists combing through the files for days, but it's good to know that major news organizations have their priorities straight, as the first story emerges from the data dump:

Hillary Was in White House on 'Stained Blue Dress' Day:

Hillary Clinton spent the night in the White House on the day her husband had oral sex with Monica Lewinsky, and may have actually been there when it happened, according to records of her schedule released today by the National Archives.

The day after Sen. Obama gives the best political speech of my lifetime, and the media quickly returns to the frivolity of an affair ten years in the past. Pathetic.

pool > soccer

The Champions League is the premier club football tournament in Europe, pitting the best teams from leagues throughout the continent against each other. Several years ago, ESPN bought the rights to air Champions League broadcasts in the U.S. Soccer fans hoped this would improve access to the matches, even if on tape delay, and grow the sport here in the U.S.

Instead, ESPN relegates CL matches to ESPN Classic. Fine. They certainly aren’t helping grow the sport, but that isn’t ESPN’s job (apparently that is to ruin all sports and all sports highlights by backing them with Nickleback songs and editing them such that I pass out disoriented before the conclusion of the segment).
Asking the bartender if she could switch to ESPN Classic, she failed, but offered ESPN 2 as an alternative. Unfortunately with sporting events, you are either watching the match or not. CSI: Miami may be a close substitute for CSI: Darfur (those guys have their hands full), but speed billiards are in no way an acceptable substitute for the highest level of European club football.

Clearly, my folly for an interest in the most popular sport in the world.

painting dc blue

A brief weekend in DC involved painting my sister's kitchen with her friends. Zack, above, struggled keeping paint out of his hair.

Absent long from my house my dreams and projects lie fallow. To help someone else move theirs along is a strong substitute, and the end result was terrific.

tased and confused

Months before the event, before there is any indication of the scope or nature of protests at the Repbulican National Convention in St. Paul, the police are escalating the conflicts to come:

ST. PAUL -- St. Paul police are about to issue Tasers to all 370 officers on the force. Police say they are a safe way to stop a potential threat, but some people say Tasers are dangerous and sometimes deadly....

Shortly after the new shipment of Tasers arrives in St. Paul, the Republican National Convention will come to town, and with it, protestors who may or may not get violent.

Claims that tasers are safe, non-lethal options for crowd control are false. Between 2001 and 2004, more than 70 people were killed by Tasers. Since, studies have shown that the weapons are not as safe as the manufacturers claim, and long-term effects of tasing have not been well examined.

However more troubling than the lethality of the weapons is the decision to deploy them. Providing police with what they perceive to be a safe, simple option for controlling a non-compliant citizen and they are sure to use it. But don't we want violence by law enforcement — and to be clear, tasers are violent — to be the last resort and not the first?

Offering a supposed non-lethal weapon as an alternative to a gun makes some sense if tasers were used exclusively in situations where officers would otherwise be using a gun. But there are countless anecdotes of police using tasers to subdue subjects to don't comply with an officer but are not violent, examples like the now-famous "don't tase me bro" student.

In a loud, chaotic protest, where the line between passionate expression and dangerous activity may seem blurred, arming police with a more dangerous, deadly tool to control the crowd is ill-advised and could prove catastrophic.

an afternoon in the forest

The trees shoot skyward, thin and straight, seemingly defying physics to tower above. Their canopy darkens vast forest, making it intimate, private. Along the banks of the winding rivers the canopy clears, deepening the valley and offering smaller trees a change to tangle themselves into the moss and ferns and dirt.

The water winds its way through the forest, slowly until it finds a drop. Then cascading down it rushes into pools below, coating everything in a damp mist. Moss covers the nearby trees, their branches wrenched in crooked green tendrils.

Trails throughout lead us by several falls, each impressive. Some twist perilously close to a cliff's edge, others bend beneath a ceiling of rock and we stoop to pass.

At the end we brave ever increasing mist to stand underneath and behind the waterfall. The sound of a wall of water rushing by quiets everything, the air is warn and wet and my ears fill with an immense roar. It cascades from above in a torrent, trapping me within as it speeds perilously by.