Sunset, Tuesday, 13 October 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

I couldn’t quite figure out how to say this without sounding like a retro reactionary nostalgia-mongering reprobate anarchist out to sabotage the U.S. economy and undercut the moral fiber of our youth, not to mention our elderly, and ... everybody else. Oh well.

I also know that the core of this idea is already popular with a certain small retro reactionary (etc.) minority of sports fans, but I may have added something to it that makes it even better ... or worse.

For the temperate zones of the northern hemisphere, it should be evident that October baseball was meant to be played in the daytime. This means the World Series, of course, and, by extension into modern times, the playoffs that lead up to it. Of course I’m influenced by warm gauzy memories of Indian summer afternoons when people stopped what they were doing at work or school to follow the game. I’m well aware of the economic imperatives of prime time television revenues that drove these games into the dark ... and into perfect football weather. I also believe that we are generally much, much more driven in our busy daytime lives than we used to be – how many would dare to stop and watch baseball at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday?

My wicked solution: Go whole hog. Make the Fall Classic into a variable series of national quasi-holidays, feast days, or picnic days if you will, to celebrate America. What is more American? (Lacrosse, the fastest sport on foot, but we’ll let that go ... for now. Oh, and basketball, but ... where was I?) So, O.K., what could feel more classically American? Not only that, these are festive days we would share, increasingly, with friends in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Panama, China, Japan, Korea, all the places where baseball has taken hold. It would be great for baseball, and would mean more money, overall, not less. It would be good for the nation and our impoverished workaday obsessions. It would be good for the soul.

And I was very happy when it dawned on me, so to speak, that this little composition isn’t really a random digression but has everything to do with the sun going down on a warm autumn day like the one we’ve just had here.

Sunset’s for someone very close who’s having a tough week. For Rev. Sister S., cheers and love from this side of the Hully Gully.

Sunset, Wednesday, 1 July 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

It was a perfect summer day, then storms chilled everything down. The sky behind me, where the storms went, was half Creamsicle orange, half some deranged hydrangea blue – and if that sounds like a queasy mixed metaphor, it should. I might have taken a shot at it except not one but two cats were sleeping on (and wrinkling) the rolled-up cut linen I could have used for a second painting.

The most important thing I could possibly ever say about July 1st – with all respect to the great and (around these united states) highly underrated nation of Canada – is that it’s the wedding anniversary of Steve & Sandy Van Doren – 37 years today. Congratulations to the best people in the world, or at least my world.

I had some concern that people might take the following the wrong way and assume that the porcine reference could somehow be about them. I’ve taken an informal but devastatingly accurate poll ... and determined that my readers know better than that.

So, let’s ...

PLAY BALL!

I came to the ballpark
And discovered I was pitching
In a lightweight purple uniform
Before stands of black obsidian
I threw pearls across the plate
And every time the swine struck out
The million-dollar Mitsubishi scoreboard
Lit up with a picture of a roast pig with an apple in its mouth.