Vermont Mountaineers

 While my history of Lake Monsters games stretches back twenty-five years, I had never, until last night, been to a Vermont Mountaineers game. Their history doesn't stretch back as far, but I still should have made it before then. I think they were founded after we moved from Barre up to Burlington, so there's that lame excuse. However, I have been living in the cabin for three years now, so I should have made it earlier. This trip is mainly Janet's doing, as she's been in a baseball mood lately (Lake Monsters game, three Toronto Blue Jays games on MLB TV, and now a Mountaineers game).I had fun, and will definitely go back for more games in the future. The field isn't as nice as Centennial Field, where the Lake Monsters play, but that's mainly a reflection of the Monsters long minor league history, and the fact that Burlington is simply a much bigger city than Montpelier. The quality of baseball seems fairly equivalent, with both teams playing in parallel summer college leagues (the leadoff hitters for the Mountaineers plays for the University of Cincinnati, where I went to grad school). 

Like Centennial Field, the Montpelier Recreation Field has its own unique history, and you have to love the fact that it was constructed during FDR's New Deal by the Works Projects Administration (back before the GOP decided that government was evil [or maybe not, the Republicans hated the New Deal even back then] and thus the government did things to make the lives of people better.

The view from right behind home plate. I think we'll sit higher up next time. Still, not a bad view for $7 (all the tickets are $7). That's definitely a beautiful view.

The Governor's Cup, which the Mountaineers had won earlier in the season in a series against the Upper Valley Nighthawks (the other team in Vermont). To be fair, the Nighthawks pummeled the Mountaineers last night.

The mascot, Skip the Woodchuck - I have no idea why. 

And, of course, the best part of the game was this crazy girl.

2025 Readings 61

 Rose Macauley's They Went to Portugal is exactly what the title would imply, a collection of stories about people who went to Portugal, although the "They" is restricted to English/British visitors. Macauley moved to Portugal early during World War II, and quickly became fascinated by earlier English folks who had made a similar journey. I picked it up at the Livraria Bertrand de Chiado (as is well documented by now, the world's oldest bookstore) on my trip to Portugal last month. Generally, I guess, I picked it up because of my love of Portugal, but, specifically, I bought it because I was thinking of my visit to Henry Fielding's grave at the English Cemetery the year before. I was pleasantly surprised by chapters on Thomas Stuckley and James Fitzmaurice, two adventurers who pop up in my dissertation. Some of the most arresting narratives relate, nor surprisingly, to English visitors to Lisbon during the 1755 earthquake. It won't change your life, but it's interesting, and it's definitely one of the books that will eventually make its way to Europe with us.

Mr Noodles

 I know that sounds like a villain from Dick Tracy, but it was my lunch on two separate Porter Air flights. I had never flown on Porter Air before, but Kevin and I thought we'd try it for the flight to Edmonton. It was fine, although it was strange to be on a flight as long as Toronto to Edmonton without movies, but, happily, I had brought a novel to read, so I was sorted. It reminded me of international flight back in the day. We missed a connector in Toronto on the way back, but that was our fault for choosing a flight with a short connection (we thought the gates might be close to each other, but we had to get from one to the other via Yellowknife; I was pleased that my legs, although unhappy with me, did manage to carry me on a forced march from one end of the Toronto airport to the other). As with most budget airlines, we had to buy our own food.  I went for a Mr. Noodles, mainly for amusement's sake.

It reminded me of the cup of noodles that I paid for on Wow Air (now, I believe, sadly deceased) on my flight to Iceland with my son. I sent him this picture, and he immediately responded with the appropriate line from The Young Ones, as I knew he would.

Honestly Average

 On last month's trip to Portugal I wandered down to the busy city center, partly to catch the sites and partially to track down some paella. I stopped at one place and asked the young waiter, "How's your paella?" He paused, then replied, smiling, "Honestly, pretty average." That was a good enough answer to inspire me to sit down and order, if for no other reason than his honesty made me laugh. If nothing else, it's, as you might expect, more than a bit of a challenge to track down squid ink paella in Vermont.

Actually, I think he was downplaying the paella, because I think it was at least 5% or 10% percent above average (actually, it was fine). I tipped him as if it were better, which clearly made him happy.

Metaphor

 Another picture of G and Ali's road trip west, I'm assuming somewhere in West Virginia (it's certainly not Indiana).

One of the many advantages of having such an excellent daughter-in-law is I actually have someone to send me pictures of my son.

Cruel But Fair

 It's time for the preparation to begin for the 13th season of the Twin Peaks Fantasy Football League. In fantasy football you don't normally draft in the inverse order of last year's records (like the NFL does, another example of how socialism only applies to the rich), but instead each league comes up with some odd way of sorting it out. We've settled on Sylvie Maple, Andy and Heidi's daughter, pulling the names out of a hat. It wasn't that long ago that she was a baby who they had to keep focused on pulling out random slips of paper, but now she's old enough to play a roll in creating the artwork and taking pleasure in the misfortune of league members.

Sylvie Maple, the league's Assistant Commissioner, getting too much joy out of Mike Lange's team ending up with the 14th and last draft pick of round one. It's the wretched slot I had last year.

SM's artwork gets more elaborate every year. Hopefully, she will not ever outgrow this chore. I imagine her pulling the names out of a hat from her college dorm room.

Clearly my attempt at a pre-draft cryptid bribe didn't work, as I'm picking 12th.

2025 Readings 60

 This morning I finished Fine Grabol's What Kingdom, which I picked up Saturday at the Bear Pond bookstore in downtown Montpelier. Something about the cover seemed familiar, and I recognized the time of the translator, Martin Aitken, who had translated The Employees (which I finished a few days ago, and loved). Maybe it's a new collection of Danish fiction that I stumbled across, and, if so, this is a wonderful discovery. It reads very much like The Employees, that is, a series of very brief and disconnected paragraphs (and sometimes merely sentences), that is more than the sum of its parts. It's set in a sort of halfway house for folks dealing with various mental illnesses, which is both a commentary on the illnesses but also the mental health industry - and I would argue, also what constitutes community. Let me include an example, in this case the first isolated from the third and final section, "Secrets":

We go in and out of each other's rooms all the time, open a door and lie down on a sofa bed, watch TV or sit with a jigsaw puzzle; we water the plants and bake bread, lean against the walls is if to make a physical contact apparent; we open a packet of cigarettes with the same restless ease, we look at each other's bloated stomachs and wink secretively. We increase our medications, decrease our medications, discontinue our medications and start all over again; we take Oxapax and laugh at the psychiatrists; we try to die in different ways, while life and the section and the system keep us here; we seldom cry; we drink beer on the patio on Fridays; we hear the favorite music of the infirm old people on the ground floor. We say hello to Ahmed the cleaning assistant we try to understand our medication plans; we draw up schedules detailing our entire lives; a meal plan, a week plan, a breakdown of our challenging behavior; we write things down when we suffer anxiety attacks, what happens before and what happened after; we prepare budgets and tear them up in sheer fright when the job center phones; we're on the sick and incapacitated; we swap clothes and borrow each other's shoes; we plan our summer holidays in the section's caravan and never see if through; we open the fridge and close it again. We take up boxing and we start a band; we sew a cushion cover and attend a yoga session; we participate in group therapy, in cognitive therapy, in psychotherapy, in dialectic behavioral therapy; we go for a psychoeducation appointment and suffer an anxiety attack on the sidewalk outside; we have no other option but trust; we bury our hands in the soft folds of our face and will never be the same; we eat thin cookies at night in each other's rooms, smoke another cigarette, and our mouths become dry.

It's sort of the product of an intermarriage between Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet and Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. Highly recommended.