I won't watch this Super Bowl, too

"The bag is not even full, and the total is almost 35 dollars?" I remarked with a laugh after the clerk rang up my groceries.

"Yes, eating is an expensive habit" she joined in.

My groceries were nothing compared to another guy's basket.  His was a more expensive amount.  But, it was not because he was loading up with food as if end times were around the corner.  Nope.  His high bill came from the beer and wine and party food--it is time for Super Bowl Sunday.

As the only regular reader (hehe!) knows well, I don't care a damn about the Super Bowl.  I cannot even recall the last time I watched the game.  Even in the years that I did, I was way more interested in the singing of the national anthem--all because of the phenomenal job that Whitney Houston did way back in my early years in this country.

Despite all the news reports on concussions and the taxpayer subsidies, the sport continues to have maniacal supporters.  Not only those who voted for this POTUS.  A great number of the ultra-left too are rabid sportswatchers.  I have always wondered how these lefties deal with the cognitive dissonance--their own ideological views on the political economy, versus the anti-competitive mega-rich owners of the teams sucking on taxpayer teats!  I tell ya, it is such unholy combinations that makes politics bizarre, and why truth has no place in politics.

The defense of taxpayer subsidy for sports, especially the stadiums (stadia?), is beyond truth!

Federal subsidies are justified for infrastructure projects that provide a public good across states, but local sports stadiums clearly do not meet this criterion.
Indeed, there is little evidence that stadiums provide even local economic benefits. Decades of academic studies consistently find no discernible positive relationship between sports facilities and local economic development, income growth, or job creation. And local benefits aside, there is clearly no economic justification for federal subsidies for sports stadiums. Residents of, say, Wyoming, Maine, or Alaska have nothing to gain from the Washington-area football team’s decision to locate in Virginia, Maryland, or the District of Columbia.

Now that we are fully in a post-truth America, who cares, right?  A listing--like here--on how all that taxpayer waste can be put to use will appeal only to a few truth-seekers!

I have often commented that sports in America is a wonderful proxy measure for many aspects of the country.  American football is highly correlated with jingoism and a militaristic attitude.  And more, like these two NY Times reports show:

It is a mad, mad, mad world! :(

I, too, was young once ... not too long ago

Re-posting this from two years ago
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"Did you watch the game, Dr. Khé?" asked a student when the class met on Monday.  A warm-up of a different kind before we got into discussing the learning materials. It was, of course, the joshing small-talk time.  So, nothing about what I did during the Super Bowl.

(If students were to read my blog, perhaps they will wonder why I am being so not revealing anything about myself in the classroom when I do that in a lot more public manner here in the blog. If they do, I bet they have also figured out why.)

During the conversation with the two women, when I asked the older woman about her growing up years, they remarked about how they, too, were young once.

That was a profound comment, I thought. As Ken Robinson noted in his hilarious, and thought-provoking, talk, we don't imagine Shakespeare as having been a kid once and giving his parents and teachers quite some grief, especially with his English!  When we see, meet with, people who are "old," we so easily think of of them as nothing but old. A grandma is a grandma is a grandma to us.  But, that grandma, too, was once a young girl, who ran and played and cried like any of us.

Over the winter break, when talking with my mother's aunt, I asked her about her childhood. It was back in the old ancestral village, in a traditional and orthodox Brahmin household. After she "came of age," the norms then precluded her from playing outside with other kids--even girls. She wasn't even allowed to sit on the steps outside and watch others play. It was a house-arrest of sorts!  That is a small piece about her childhood. But, it says a lot, doesn't it? About her life then. That she longed to play with other kids and she could not.

Every once in a while, in the obituary pages of our local newspaper, the photo of the "old" person who died is accompanied by a photo of that same person much earlier in their life. I have no idea what message they wish to convey, but to me the message is always the same: it is not merely the old person who died. That young person they once were also died. The kid that they once were also died. It is, after all, the kid who became a teenager, who grew into an adult, became old, and died.

Young we might be today, but we too will be nothing but old in the future--if we live that long.  Imagine if you were seen by others as nothing but an old man or an old woman, as if your lively and energetic childhood and youth and middle age never existed at all!

As this wonderful song from Romeo and Juliet put it,

A rose will bloom;
it then will fade
so does a youth;
so does the fairest maid

Nothing new, yes. As Yeats wrote, "That is no country for old men."

Hey, it is Super Bowl!

(Am re-posting this from two years ago)
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"Do you want me to move my car, sir?"

I was unloading stuff from the U-Haul truck on a drizzly Oregon morning.  We were the latest in the long line of Californians moving to Oregon.  The apartment would be home until we found a permanent place of our own.

I looked towards the sound. It was from the kitchen window of the apartment next door. I walked over and introduced myself.  That is how I met her a decade and a year ago.

She had moved in there not much earlier, after the death of her husband. They had been married for a very long time--about fifty years, I think.  Yet, she yelled out a "sir" to me when I was so much younger than her?

Over the months, she was often emotional when talking about her husband and her life.  She talked about her family, her church, and the different places in the US and around the world that she and her husband had been to.

She introduced us to her church friends, who later became the neighbors that I still am lucky to have. She gave us a big potted plant for the new home that we moved into.  She came over once in a while for food or coffee. 

Once when she and the neighbors were home for dinner, I played a CD of Hank Williams hits.  Yes, the old style country music. She was excited, especially when the neighbor danced with her.

Life happens.  She moved to another apartment complex. I visited with her there, too. She was the perfect old-style host that she always was.  With coffee and cookies came her stories of her grandchildren. Her old photos, in which one could see the stunning beauty that she was as a young woman.

She knew I couldn't care for church and god, in which she was a firm believer.  She never, ever figured out how to say my name and I never, ever cared to correct her either. What's in a name, after all, when she cared so much for a stranger that I was.

A couple of weeks ago, my neighbors had an update for me about her. Cancer, with perhaps not much time left to live.

I requested my neighbor to go with me to visit with her.  "Sunday afternoon should be a good time to visit. She is very happy to see you" was her reply.

Game time!

ps: she died a few months after ...