Bill's Notes

A thought to add to the post below: The generation that committed this abomination against God, nature and aesthetics sang this song when they were young.

They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
and a swinging hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
And they charged all the people
A dollar and a half to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And they put up a parking lot

Hey farmer farmer
Put away that D.D.T. now
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees
Please!
Dont it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Late last night
I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi
Took away my old man
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

.

Talk about too little too late. This New York Times article covers the strip mall-ization of New Jersey.

N.J. Gov. Jim McGreevey vowed to take on "those who profit from the strip malls and McMansions."

At least 15 years too late for this one, big guy. The time to take on Toll Brothers and the other big developers who raped put up a strip mall every 15 feet in New Jersey was about 1985.

As a reporter for a N.J. daily newspaper in the 80s, I recall covering a New Jersey Builders' Association conference. Every lot in New Jersey was already accounted for — either to be set aside or built upon.

I grew up in New Jersey, and have lived in every section of it but the Northwest. There are essentially seven areas:

1. Northwest mountains.
2. New York suburbs.
3. The Shore(s) [including Delaware Bay].
4. Philadelphia suburbs.
5. Pine Barrens.
6. Southern farmlands.
7. Princeton corridor.

Only 17 years ago, six of these areas were beautiful. You could drive around and see beautiful coastal plains, farmlands, small towns, beaches, or mountains. And the seventh, the N.Y. suburbs, had its advantages. Only 30 years ago you could drive to apple orchards in Bergen County. But by 20 years ago all that was gone.

By the late 1980s, the Shore, the Philly suburbs, and especially the Princeton corridor were exploding with growth. By the end of the 1990s, these areas were choked off with overbuilding and traffic.

Now, the Pine Barrens and the Southern farmlands are still pretty empty. I don't know about the Northwest.

Anyway, to talk now about stopping strip malls and McMansions is silly. It is complete denial. It's like an alcoholic who has lost his wife, his kids and his job saying, "You know, I need to cut back on the booze before it affects my relationships with other people."

Dude, you lost your family. And New Jersey, you lose your state. It's now the closest thing to hell I've seen this side of Manila.

Not only that, virtually everything built in that 20-year period is ugly. New Jersey still has its merits, but unless you like to sit at traffic lights behind 800 other people just to get a pack of smokes at a local 7-11, you're probably not going to like it.

Now, New Jersey isn't unique. But it is small. Thus, it filled up fast and shows us what our future will be if we don't do something. This kinds of explosive, cheap growth is breaking out all over. The worse I've seen, outside of northern New Jersey, is the D.C. area where there has been choking growth. Florida has experienced a hell of a lot of Jerseyification, too. But it's happening all over.

The countryside is being torn to pieces. Another reason I'm heading for the Poconos. My hope is that it's got at least 20 or 30 years before it's ruined. My guess is that the growth will continue south and west. I'll brave a cold winter to have a little space. (Of course, talk to me in the Fall.)

Doctor Horsefeathers has a couple of good takes here and here on the Championship series.

They take a light hand with the interfering Cubs fan, whereas I was initially very harsh and have lightened up some. Here's my current position, which I posted over at Horsefeathers.

My own take is that the Cubs fan shifted the momentum and did indeed cost them the game. While he is upset and did make a manly apology as you said, he still made an unbelievable mental error in not thinking first and foremost about the game. I doubt that you would've seen the same interference in NY or Boston.

But there's also a larger truth in your postings here — the Cubs are not a championship caliber team. That's why a stroke of bad luck caused them to become unglued.

A championship team isn't in a position where a bad bounce or fan interference changes the outcome of the game. They're in more control of the game. In boxing, they call it ring generalship. In basketball, during a close game, watch for the first team to look at the clock — they're probably going to lose.

Baseball has the same idea. You could see that the Cubs wanted the game to be over in the eighth inning. That's not how you win. You play hard and concentrate as long as you're on the field and you should even be a little surprised when the game is over. That's how you win.

Let me add this thought:

1. The Cubs fan should be treated charitably. Chicago wants to build up some grace, as opposed to curse? Treat Steve Bartman graciously. Exactly as I didn't in my initial posts, one of which has been partially deleted.

Jen and I took a trip up to the new place in Parryville. On the way we went through a field and I said, "This is downtown."

Hey, it's the best I can come up with. I should've hired a New York writer to write my material. Oh well.

Anyway, she seemed bored out of her skull tired so we went over to the General Store on 209. There were no fewer than 400,000 people there for a Halloween festival of some sort. Wow. Didn't know there were that many people up there.

Haven't seen any injuns yet. But we've been staying close to the roads.

Patrick the cocker spaniel continues to be upbeat. This is despite some bad news. His tumor has returned, which means the cancer is very aggressive. It was just about a month ago he was operated on to remove a tumor. And now it's back. He's also having spasms in both legs. It is very sad.

Still, he still wags and wiggles a lot. Jumps up on the furniture — though with more care. And he still jumps down occasionally. He pulls a lot on walks, but tires more easily. And he tends to plunk down and stop whatever he's doing periodically. The good thing is there is no obvious pain ... but dogs hold that in well. In fact, I don't know if he's in pain and that's what worries me most.

We've already gotten more time out of him than we expected. He may make it until December or so ... at least he's made the move well and seems upbeat in his new home. So that's good news. And he seems authentically happy by all the love he's been getting (which is a lot).

My heart's really been ripped out by the Cubs, Red Sox, and Anglican Church's great wimp-out. Patrick's courage is a positive sign. We'll continue to make him comfortable during his last days.

Disappointing losses for Cubs and Red Sox fans in the past 24 hours. Worse, both Games 7 seemed fated to go against the snake-bit franchises. Almost makes one believe not only in predestination, but in a fixed universe with no real choices, just apparent ones.

But that's nonsense. It's a trick competition plays on our minds. I've seen it in gambling — wins and losses add up in counterintuitive ways, and can make things that are random seem somehow fixed. It's a mind trick. You just know the Cubs are gonna blow it. You just know bad things will happen to the Red Sox. And when it happens, the whole thing seems fated.

Is it fated or a self-fulfilling prophecy? The latter, I think. And here's how it works. It seems to me, there are five keys to competing successfully:

1. Capacity: You have to able to compete. If you don't have the abilities and talents, you can't play.
2. Preparation. Preparation includes getting the right tools, training, coming up with a strategy (based on experience and research) in order to be ready to compete at your best.
3. Attitude. This is the complex part. During the game, you have to be in a frame of mind conducive to winning. There are many elements of attitude, but I'll only mention the most important here — willingness. You have to be willing to win.
4. Execution. You have to make plays. In baseball, for instance, it's not enough to have a team that hits well, or fields well. You need players who hit during the game and field during the game when the pressure's on.
5. Chance. Overrated by far, lady luck tends to side with the team that's best prepared. Or as they say, fortune favors the brave. What's often most important is the reaction to luck. The breaks even out in the long run, but they tend to bunch up one way or the other during games.

What happens with organizations with a history of terrible things happening is they run into a consistent problem at(3) and sometimes (5). And vice versa. Teams that win a lot expect to win a lot. They get boosts at (3) and sometimes(5).

Now, here's the tautology about the whole thing. A winning attitude is created by winning. You become accustomed to winning and that develops tremendous momentum.

For a team in the opposite problem, they need to squarely address the issue of being accustomed to losing. You have to have better capacities and better preparation than a team accustomed to winning, and then you'll have to win in a way that attitude doesn't start to interfere with execution. And maybe even luck will start going your way, too.

That's why I suggested earlier on this blog that the Cubs, even up three games to one, really needed to win Game 5. The reason was the momentum was their way at the time and finishing off the Marlins would be easiest in a Game 5. But the longer the series went, the more chance the losing attitude would creep up and bite the team.

Same goes with the Red Sox. With their history, the Red Sox needed to beat someone like the Yankees in five or six games. Game 7, particularly in extra innings, was never gonna happen. Too much attitude stuff to interfere.

So Cubs and Red Sox fans, here's your plan for winning.

1. Plan to choke. Yes. Exactly. Prepare for choking. That means you have twice as much manpower as you think you need. As a friend of mine used to say, if 100,000 rounds will do, but you'd like 200,000 rounds, ask for 300,000 rounds. The Yankees pitched Clemens, Mussina, Wells and Rivera today. That's more pitching talent than on any other playoff roster. To overcome the inertia of losing, both teams need to go overboard in what they think they need in resources. Later, with a winning attitude, they can conserve resources.

2. Build a team you think will sweep the playoffs. Both the Red Sox and the Cubs have a tendency to play above their heads, believe it or not. That's why they get their hearts broken. Because they probably didn't believe that far in the playoffs in the first place, and they regressed to the mean at the worst possible moment. For example, the Cubs had a worse record this year against the Marlins.

3. Recognize attitude problems/inertia for the serious issues they are. People think that it's just in your head and thus you can just shake it off. No. Losing attitudes are huge problems to overcome. Don't blow it off or think that you can talk your way to a better attitude. You can't. You can only behave your way to a winning attitude, and you do that by increasing your capacities and preparation, and then developing habits of executing. And then the wins come, and then watch the attitudes change. In the end, if you do this right, it will look like the breaks always go your way.

I'll example you with thievery:
The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears; the earth's a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen
From general excrement: each thing's a thief.

From Timon of Athens.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

From MacBeth.

Piss on old time hockey. Piss on Eddie Shore.

From Slapshot

It was all predicted here.

Sorry, I'm kind of on to baseball's script writers. Very clever way to have the exact same ending. Kind of like watching Gilligan's Island, though baseball's writing is a little better. A little.

Good for you Yankee fans. Steinbrenner just bought you another pennant.

For the Red Sox part, they played tough. But you have to beat the home team in nine innings.

I know, as a baseball purist, that I should watch tonight's classic match-up of Martinez versus Clemens.

But I won't. I have too much emotion invested in wanting the Yankees to lose to be reasonable.

After this season, I may seek therapy for my Yankee hatred. It's a bit of problem.

My heart is broken over this. Absolutely broken.

A friend of mine who left the Episcopal Church eight years ago says that not only is the Episcopal culture "gone", but that current American culture is shot. He may be right.

The Anglican primates have agreed to do nothing. They released a mealey-mouthed statement indicating they will "study" the problem.

I had hoped that the Primates would stand up for the Gospel of Christ. Instead, they politicked. Pray for the orthodox Episcopalians, who have just been thrown to the wolves of the apostate bishops.

As one priest I know put, they've shown that "to a man, they are hypocrites, frauds and cowards." It was said in the heat of the moment. But there's something to it.

The statement contains a small hope, but it's the same small hope the Cubs had yesterday to win Game 7. It wasn't going to happen. The loss hadn't happened yet. But it was coming.

Well, I needed to find a new church anyway.

Thanks to Chris at Midwestern Conservative Journal for blogging so effectively on this issue.

Bad news for Steve Bartman: You cost the Cubs the pennant. Yes, you.

The good news: You probably could get drinks free in Florida for the rest of your life.

Suggestion: Move to Florida. Like, now. Look on the bright side — you'll have one less Chicago winter to face.

Seriously, Cubs had a hell of a run, but blew it. They had some bad luck and they choked and then the Marlins were able to capitalize on mistakes. And by the way, when you give a major league team six outs in an inning, they can usually put together half a dozen or so runs.

Fightin' Fish win the pennant. For the second time in seven years. (The Marlins-Indians series was seven years ago — yikes! Seems like just yesterday that my friend Pete and I were in New York New York casino in Las Vegas watching Game 7.) Who'd have thunk?

Oh, that's right. I predicted Marlins-Yankees from the beginning. Prepare for the Red Sox heartbreak tomorrow. That's life. It's intentionally cruel, in addition to being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Others have been kind to the Cubs fan. But I think he's a moron. I think if today's baseball fans are so stupid as to do anything other than let the home team try to make a play, they are unworthy to be called baseball fans.

Update: I have changed my mind entirely on this post and thus removed a lot of it. The fan is not to blame. I am not going to give up liking baseball.

OK, maybe not. But I closed on a piece of land today. Very exciting.

It's one and a half acres overlooking the Mahoning Valley just off the MV Turnpike exit. The property is one of four wooded lots on the edge of a farm

The trees are virtually all hardwoods from the last 20 years. A lot are saplings and there's not a lot of brush. Shouldn't be that hard to clear out, but I'll probably still need to remove 20 or 30 trees before I put in a house and driveway. I'm going to try to keep tree removal to an absolute minimum.

The property is on a hillside, for starters, and don't want to risk a lot of soil erosion. And the woods protect some of the extremes in weather, such as wind that comes up the hill in winter. Today was blustery enough — and after seeing the wind whipping the tree line, I was concerned that during the winter the house would be too exposed on that hillside without the protection of the forest.

Looking at placing the house, I have really three keys.

First is the view, which looks out the back of the property. It's a terrific view of what looks like a Swiss hillside. You can see a mountain, a couple of ridges in the distance, and a couple of rolling hills and a valley of farms.

Second is sunlight. Because the lot is on the west northwest side of the mountain, and has a 15 percent grade (that means for every hundred feet, it drops 15 feet), getting plenty of sunlight is something that will have to be designed for, not a given. The highway is on the east side of the property, and at the highest point on the property. It is also the farthest point from the view, which is on the west part of the lot. I'd like to try to place the house to maximize sunlight exposure.

Third is using the woods for privacy and protection from the elements.

These three keys conflict a bit. If I want the view, I'm better off in the back of the property, requiring 200 feet of driveway and exposure to more severe weather at the treeline. If I want sunlight and protection, I may have to go further into the woods and lose some of the view.

I dunno. I'll probably be fiddling around half the winter with placement.

Say what you want about Yankee fans, but no Yankee fan would be so stupid as to interfere with a ball that could be caught. I just couldn't imagine it. Same goes for just about any other fan. But the Cubs apparently attract the kind of person who would interfere with a ball in play of their own team at a critical moment in a playoff series.

What. A. Friggin. Idiot. There are no words to describe the mind-boggling idiocy of this fan. Now, if it turns out the kid has Down's Syndrome or mentally retarded, then I think we can all understand that whoever took him to the game and let him sit near the field should be drawn and quartered. But if his IQ is above 80, then Cubs fans should tie him to a stake near Wacker and Michigan for a week.

Remember: Five runs scored after two outs. And if Gonzalez had only had to get one out, he probably wouldn't have hurried and made the error. That is, Gonzalez would've known to just catch and throw to second, instead of hurry for a double play. So Cubs would've won 3-1.

Sports fans. Don't intefere with balls in play.

And, no, I don't believe for a second that the Cubs will win tomorrow. I predict a big Marlins blowout.

It's gonna be a Yankees-Marlins series. And it'll have the lowest ratings ever. Next season, baseball will be back to a second-tier sport. The only interest now is because the Yankees didn't win the last two years.

F^&*()&()&(&). I really like baseball, but they really need to do something about parity to make it more competitive. But Bud Selig is too much the wimpy bureaucrat.

Cubs, five outs from pennant...

A fan touches a foul ball that should've been out two. It all went to hell from there. Shortstop Gonzalez made an error on a double-play ball and got none.

Meaning pitcher Mark Prior had already gotten four outs in the inning, except was screwed out of three. By the time it was over, eight runs had gone by.

Biggest. Choke. Ever.

Worse than the 1986 Game Six choke by Boston. Worse than Game Six last year by the Giants. Biggest. Choke. Ever.

The fan who interfered — his name should be on the front page of the Chicago Tribune tomorrow. I imagine he'll have to leave town for his own safety, his children if any will have to be relocated in a witness protection program and his name will be a trivia question forever.

Baseball is a game of rhythms. His interference distracted the Cubs, ruined the second out in the inning, and helped set up the mess that followed.

Can you imagine what he's going to say when he gets home? I imagine he'll be knifed in his own driveway by his own family. Just my guess. If I were he (which I wouldn't, because even I'm not that stupid), I'd leave town immediately and never go back to Chicago.

FWIW.

Daniel Drezner describes the connection between one's selection of a baseball team and politics. I would argue that one makes that selection far too young, and then sticks with it no matter what. That's the way it is.

Here's the comment I left at his site:

I'm with those who say there is no correlation between sports and politics. How else can you explain the conservative Cincinnati Reds organization's popularity and success during the Cold War?

I'm a lifelong Reds fan who briefly began to root for the Yankees in the mid-70s until I witnessed the orgy of self-congratulation Yankees fans bestowed upon themselves following the 1977 World Series. (I was 14 at the times and I had never seen the Yankees be any good before — little did I know how obnoxious the fans were.)

After all, there was not this kind of cheering when they were the 1972-74 Oakland A's, was there? That's when I realized Yankees and Yankee fans are black-hearted, mercenary frauds who ruin God's blessed game with their meretricious antics punctuated only by outright cheating. Do the names Arnold Johnson and Jeffrey Maier ring any bells?

Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the Babylonians in the Bible. The angle is less political (left v. right) than existential (evil v. good).

Not that I'm tendentious about the issue.