Fame

 I guess I can go ahead and retire, as my fame will never reach a greater extent than this moment: one of my pictures was celebrated on the Adamant Co-op weekly email.

It was a nice career.

Calgary Stampeders Game

 And now the second half of the June CFL Trip of Excellence to Alberta. In an earlier posting I mentioned that Kevin and I were somewhat worried about the Thursday night, 19 June, game in Edmonton (as Edmonton is the most northern major city in the America, as they are proud of reminding everyone), but in the end the weather for that game was glorious. It didn't occur to us that the Saturday afternoon, 21 June, game in Calgary, three hours farther south, would be an issue. As it turns out, the game was played in the midst of something like a mini-hurricane, featuring temperatures in the low-40s, wind gusts over 40 miles an hour, and a consistent cold rain. Seriously, it was the coldest that I've ever been at a game, which is partially explainable by the fact that a game in Cincinnati in December insured that you were prepared for that much cold. I didn't take more pictures, or for that matter clap more, because it would have required digging my hands out of the layers of clothes I was buried under.

When we walked out of the car we were almost blown over, and after taking refuge in a Dairy Queen for an hour, we headed to the stadium. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I tell you that we were almost blown off the bridge.

The Stampeders rain slickers were a life saver.

The picture can't do justice to how miserable it was.

This would probably give you a better idea. The official photographer grabbed a picture of us at the same spot, which was later shown during halftime on the jumbotron. Sadly, my hands were too cold, and buried, for me to get my phone out in time to snap a picture of it.

Still, you have to hand it to the few devoted Calgary fans who showed up.

In between this game and Edmonton, you would have thought that not only did no one in Canada like the CFL, they also apparently didn't know that it existed. At least there was a legitimate excuse in this instance as the weather made staying home and watching the game on the couch to be a much better option.

The Stampeders lost to the woeful REDBLACKS, mainly because they clearly didn't want to be there, and the Ottawa squad was much more desperate for a win. Doing my CFL playoff calculations, I think this abysmal non-effort cost them a home playoff game.

Still, a good time was had by the Vermont contingent. That's now six of the nine stadiums visited, although following up with the Blue Bombers, Roughriders, and BC Lions is going to be a challenge from a home base in Sicily. Maybe I can knock off one or two next June before we move.

The Champ After All

 The other day, with one week left in the CFL fantasy season, I snapped a picture of my dear friend Cyndi standing next to the penultimate standings of our league. Some utter bastard (could be anyone) had run off a copy of the standings and taped it to the door, mainly because, after leading the lead for weeks and weeks on end, my friend Jack had caught her with one week to go. Heroically, Cyndi rallied and slipped back into first place at the end. Someone (could be anyone), then, being a gentleman/gentlewoman/gentlebeing (because it could be anyone), did make up for the original sign by running off a new copy of the now final standings and taking a picture of the champ.

Sadly, the picture doesn't extend far enough down to include Mike Kelly's team, which finished dead last. Now, the challenge begins, finding the appropriate trophies. I think I know what Cyndi's championship trophy will be, but I'm still working on the last place trophy, which will obviously be called The Mikey (it's harder to find a stuffy version of the Merman than you would think).

2025 Readings 97

 Yesterday I finished a long-delayed rereading of Martin Amis's London Fields, which I read way back shortly after its publication in 1989. It's definitely a novel that you either love or hate. My memory, which may be apocryphal, is that after its publication it was up for a major literary prize and one half of the committee threatened to quit if it didn't win and the other half threatened to quit if it did win. Again, that may be a false memory, but I could also clearly see it to be true. Truthfully, I think I had both hate and love responses during my reread, but in the end I came down on the side of liking the novel quite a bit. It's inspired me to dig into a few other Amis novel that I haven't read it a long time or simply haven't gotten around to tackling yet. Although it was published ten years before the Millennium, I will always associate it with that general millennial madness of the age. 

Edmonton Elks Game

 Yesterday I bought four tickets for next Saturday's CFL Crossover game, where the Montreal Alouettes will host the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. It made me think of several things: 1) G3, Ali, and I saw the same two teams play last year when the game was decided by the inexplicable hurricane wind that blew in from Winnipeg to knock down an Alouettes punt and hand the game to the Blue Bombers; weird to think that I'll be watching the two teams play once again in almost exactly the same time of years; 2) this will be my fourth CFL game of the season, and first ever playoff game, so the enormity of this summer's move to Sicily must be really hitting me - both because I'm maxing out my CFL time, but also creating even more opportunities to spend time with my friends (who I will miss terribly); and 3) that I still have things to post about my June trip to Alberta with Kevin. On Thursday, 19 June we saw an Edmonton Elks home game, when they hosted, of all teams, the Montreal Alouettes. We thought the weather might be sketchy, but it was wonderful (unlike the freezer bowl in Calgary two days later, but more on that later). Our Airbnb was pretty craptacular, but it was also within easy walking distance of the stadium. As soon as we walked out the door we could hear the pre-game music blasting.

The Elks have been pretty dreadful the last few years, but it wasn't that long ago that they were still winning Grey Cups.

The stadium featured pretty good food, unlike the nightmare that is an Alouettes home game.

It's a really nice stadium, although it was all but empty, which was a discouraging thing to witness on the opening night of the season. Again, they've been terrible lately, and the general mood in Edmonton was pretty down (it probably didn't help that the Oilers have played for two straight NHL championships (although, sadly, having lost both).

The stadium holds something like 60,000, but the announced attendance was only around 14,000 (although Kevin and I both agree that it felt closer to something like 8000). To have the Elks run out onto the field to an empty stadium was sad. We sat next to a really nice couple from Montreal, who now live in Edmonton, who were there to root on the Alouettes. He said they used to have Elks season tickets, but they've been so terrible lately that they gave them up. The guy told me that they really needed a smaller stadium, which is an interesting approach to take.

Still, an excellent time was had by the Vermont contingent, and a guy stopped me on the way out to tell me how much he liked my Warren Moon jersey (granted, I had it custom made, because he played for the Eskimos and not the re-named Elks, but it was a popular choice nonetheless.

The game was not as close as the 38-28 score indicates, as the Elks scored a goodly amount of points in garbage time. Actually, they got a lot better as the season progressed, mainly because they made a change at quarterback, and they almost snuck into the playoffs. My son says I can no longer root for four CFL teams and that I have to make a decision, and since Edmonton was my original favorite team (although under misguided circumstances), I really should just settled on them.

2025 Readings 96

 Recently I've decided to add a third book to my Images of Fascism class for the spring, Anne Applebaum's Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. I had ordered it a couple months back, and finally knocked it off in a couple days this week. She certainly makes many of the same points that Sarah Kendzior makes in her books, and I consider them both to be impeccable sources. To me, it's almost impossible to read books like this, written by serious scholars, (and not the hacks who produce Russian-friendly propaganda on the right), and not understand the the horrible situation that we are in. I'm amazed when talking heads wring their hands and talk about the very real possibility that we will slide into autocracy, when we have already slipped into autocracy. There were so many passages in Applebaum's book that spoke to me, so it's hard to pick one, but here's one that's spot-on. 

But many of the propagandists of Autocracy, Inc., have learned from the mistakes of the twentieth century. They don't offer their fellow citizens a vision of utopia, and they don't inspire them to build a better world. Instead, they teach people to be cynical and passive, cause there is no better world to build. Their goal is to persuade people to mind their own business, stay out of politics, and never hope for a democratic alternative: Our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too. You may not like our leader, but the others are worse. You may not like our society, but at least we are strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying.

Applebaum is talking about Russia and China and Iran, etc., but she's also clearly talking about the US under Trump as well. I just kept thinking about the forty percent who don't vote, for many of the reasons they have been programmed to believe that she references above. Sometimes at the Food Shelf we would run drives to help our visitors sign up to vote. Many of them would say, in various ways, that there's no point because both options are bad. You would try to avoid thinking, "yes, and this is another in a series of bad decisions which left you queued up at the Food Shelf this morning," because, truthfully, many of them were simply victims of a cruelly unfair system that crushed far too large a percentage of the population into poverty. However, that answer, that both options are bad, is exactly the answer that those in power want people to give. I'm hardly happy with the modern Democratic party, but, especially if you are poor, there are profound differences between the two parties, and the one party is only offering you surface-level patriotism and freedom, and there is a true difference. If you can convince forty percent of the population not to vote, then you can rely upon a fanatical thirty percent who will always vote (and vote how they are told), and you simply need to grab a couple swing states (no doubt, sometimes by cheating) and you will be in power forever.

Obviously, Applebaum's book is not only highly recommended, it is essential.

The Chicken Bowl Payoff

 Sadly, the Springfield Buffalo are not fated to win a fifth title in the illustrious Twin Peaks Football League (such are the cruel vagaries of fantasy football), but at least I'm doing OK in my rivalry games. After dispatching Andy in the Cryptid Bowl (and collecting that sweet Bobblehead Bigfoot) I defeated Cyndi in the Fried Chicken Bowl. Being a good soul, she followed up and took me out for a chicken dinner (technically, the loser is supposed to cook a friend dinner for the winner, but we've always been flexible on that front). Next up, the Key Lime Pie Bowl with Katheryn.

WE had never eaten at the Onion City Chicken & Oyster restaurant in Winooski, but I would happily go back (how to pull this off in Sicily will be more of a challenge).

It was a delicious sandwich that failed as a sandwich, but would have succeeded magnificently as a final senior project in pursuit of a graduate degree in engineering.