Three Beautiful Things 06/18/08: Perfect Look, Broomstick, Tiger Surgery

1. I didn't know Leah had a station at Perfect Look, so I was surprised when I walked in for a haircut and Leah was at the counter. We had a nice talk about things, including how WR 123/Working Class Lit. has been going since Leah took the course four years ago.

2. I've almost recovered. It's startling how much my body feels beaten up when I finish a school year. Well, I'm almost finished. But, all the same, I slept in today, went back to bed, and when I got up and walked around my shoulders and back felt like I'd absorbed blows from a broomstick.

3. Tiger Woods is out for the season with his need for reconstructive knee surgery and the double stress fracture of his tibia. The question all day on the radio has been whether people will watch golf without him on tour. Nothing in my habits of following, watching, or listening to golf on the radio will change: I enjoyed consuming professional golf long before Tiger Woods came along and I'll enjoy it without him there, too.

Three Beautiful Things 06/16/08: Golf Drama, Yard Debris, Early Deke

1. I love watching golf on television. We don't have a television equipped for tv channel viewing, so I was very happy today when usopen.com broadcast the playoff between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate online. It was a superb match, with great drama both in the contest and in Tiger Woods' seriously injured knee and leg.

2. We had our yard cleaned up today and it somehow relieved a source of tension in me.

3. The Deke drove home earlier than planned from Seattle this evening for a job interview tomorrow afternoon.

Three Beautiful Things 06/15/08: Playoff, Elegance, Eloquence

1. Round 4 of the U.S. Open golf championship. XM Radio again. I kept thinking that Tiger Woods was going to figure out a way to win or tie the tournament. I know he's playing on fewer than two legs with his bum knee and I know he's never sure where his shots are going to land, but no one plays better when in trouble on a golf course than Tiger Woods. Sure enough. Tiger flopped around the whole course: he was in trees, ice plant, rough, and bunkers. But, on the 18th hole, after driving into a bunker, hitting a pretty lousy shank out of the bunker into the right rough, he managed to put spin on his third shot, lofted it to ten feet from the hole, birdied, and we'll see what happens tomorrow.

2. Karly enrolled in my WR 121 class fresh out of high school. She then took my WR 122 course in the winter. Now she's twenty-one and not a kid anymore and as I read her World Lit final exam today and admired her original thinking and her elegant prose, I took a minute and felt the pleasure of having a sense of how much she's grown as a person, thinker, and writer.

3. Marla is a few years older than I am and is getting serious about earning a B.A. degree. In my fall quarter WR 121 course she was an insecure nervous wreck about writing and the course helped settle her nerves and gain some confidence. Today I read her A+ final exam in World Literature. She's slowly but surely letting go of her anxiety and letting her intelligence occupy her mind and spirit instead of her fear. When this happens for a writer, the writing really takes off and Marla succeeded in writing a beautiful final. Her insights were unique and she wrote them with clarity and eloquence.

Three Beautiful Things 06/14/08: Tiger on XM, French Colonialism, Tigers Charging?

1. My exclusive source for taking in sporting events is XM Radio. Today I listened to the third round of the U.S. Open golf championship and listened to the hobbled Tiger Woods eagle the 13th, birdie the 17th, and eagle the 18th brought me to my feet. Michael Collins, the reporter following Woods, came unglued for each of these stupendous moments and they played out beautifully in the golf theater of my mind. If Tiger Woods wins this tournament today with his knee sore and often buckling, it will rate close to Ken Venturi's victory in 1964 as he nearly crawled the course, severely dehydrated from the 100 degree heat. What makes Venturi's feat arguably the most courageous of all time is the fact that, at that time, the final day of the U.S. Open was a thirty-six hole grind.

2. God's Bits of Wood, a novel published in 1961 by Ousmane Sembène of Senegal, turned out to be the perfect way to finish my World Literature course. I read my students' papers, focused on how the Sudanese and Senegalese portrayed in this book had, in various ways, mentally and emotionally internalized the French who had colonized and occupied their country. It's what happens, no matter the effort to resist a occupier: people begin to become the very people they want to leave their country.

3. I'm cautiously optimistic: the Detroit Tigers won their fifth straight game today. They are six games under .500, seven games out of first place; no one in the AL Central is playing dominating baseball. Maybe the Tigers can overcome their dismal April and May and charge back into this race over June, July, August, and September. As they say, there's still a lot of ball to be played.

Three Beautiful Things 06/13/08: Harlan Joy, Paul Pierce Respect, Tiger Woods Awe

1. I read my WR 122 students' papers on Harlan County, USA. When I planned this course, this was the one "text" I had the most doubt about. I absolutely love this movie, but I didn't know how it would play for my students. I need never worry again. Not only were my students' insights thoughtful and illuminating, many expressed being blown away by the movie. Reading their words of enthusiasm filled me with joy.

2. I went back to Linda's work area in our division office and we broke down Game 4 of the NBA finals and marveled together that the Celtics came back from a 24 point deficit and won that game. For me, the highlight of our post-game analysis was our agreement that Paul Pierce has played with the strongest resolve we've seen in a player for a long time. He's just plain tough.

3. Linda and I also broke down the US Open. We didn't know, as we talked, that Tiger Woods had charged up the leaderboard with a 30 on his back nine and catapulted himself into second place. We talked about Woods, though. We agreed that we have loved every moment of watching him play. Linda and I know golf. We know the difficulties of the game. We are in awe of Tiger Woods' skill and mental strength and of his charismatic presence on the golf course.