After Atalanta

I know everyone is posting about this, but I would be remiss not to at least post a link . The concept that her diagnosis is not going to affect her, though, as some quoted in certain articles seems to suggest, is a little optimistic. Even if she can temper the disease medically, I am sure it will significantly affect her ability to recruit. Because it is uncertain how long she will be able to continue, I would imagine recruits and their families would be hesitant to commit. Of course, when and if she leaves, there will be a long line of excellent prospects waiting for that position.

Women's intercollegiate basketball is not that far away, my friends. And given my current status as a resident of western Massachusetts, I hear about the progress of the UMass-Amherst Minutewomen all the time. And I cringe every time. Because what exactly is a Minutewoman?? Looks like I am not alone in my questioning of the name, its history, and its effects.

August Peonies Lallygagging on bent stems, late this year because of the snow in May, their rag-tag magenta cluster-heads freshen the still heat like a rush of wind in the leaves or the cool brush of deep sea crinolines as the ripple kiss of a breeze opens their bunched petals just enough to let them breathe before they ease back into light repose, poised at the edge of time-lapse attention, like us, who lose momentum in the heavy air rich with the scent of ripening wheat that drifts in from the fields over the slow-moving river as the afternoon nods and lengthens into shade, into thoughtfulness, and the sky deploys an argosy of softly tinted clouds, fresh blooms without stems that sail where we cannot go, all the way to the edge of everything where daylight looks back, once, then disappears. George Amabile

...there must be some sexism in the atmosphere. I think I perhaps knew something about scantily clad young women (note that they are always referred to as girls) on ice skates who come out during NHL games for various reasons. But I don't watch much professional hockey anymore opting to engage in slightly less cognitive dissonance by watching intercollegiate hockey. So I guess I chose not to think about how hockey--like so many other sports these days--is bringing out the babes to arouse the crowd--and shovel some ice chips. This article with accompanying video--which is mandatory viewing because the article so doesn't tell the whole story--is about the tryouts the Penguins held recently for the 2011-12 Ice Crew. Tell me--what do you envision when someone says ice crew in the context of professional hockey. I think mostly men--college age dudes and/or older guys with bellies--shuffling out on the ice in their black sneakers, khakis, and nylon team jackets during the period brea...

...with this poem from Matthew Zapruder's 2010 collection Come All Your Ghosts. 5 Come on all you ghosts. Bring me your lucky numbers that failed you, bring me your boots made of the skin of placid animals who stood for a while in the snow. Bring me your books made of blue sky stitched together with thread made of the memory of how warm even the most terrible among us has felt the skin of his or her beloved in the morning to be. Come on all you ghosts, try to make me forget one summer lost in a reservoir and another I keep in my chest. Come on all you ghosts, try to make me repeat the most terrible thing I said to someone and I will if the mind of that someone could ever be eased. Come on let’s vote for no one in the election of who is next to die. Come on all you ghosts, I know you can hear me, I know you are here, I have heard you cough and sigh when I pretend I do not believe I have to say something important. Probably no one will die of anything I say. Probably no one will live...

While I certainly do not support the concept and execution of the Lingerie Football League, I see why it exists. It plays on a variety of sexual fetishes and, of course, makes these female athletes far less threatening because of the sexualization and because what they are doing doesn't look like "real" football. Again, not a fan. Wish it would go away. Will write letters or engage in other methods of discouragement to get that to happen. What did genuinely surprise (ever so cynical) me is the news that there is now a Lingerie Basketball League. I found out about it on some mom blog . Said mom does not seem too upset, after her initial questioning, that the league exists because, once you get past the uniforms, you can see (there's a video) that they are skilled. Yes. They are skilled. But there are a lot of women who are skilled basketball players. They play at all levels: high school, college, professionally, recreationally, in the pick-up games at my gym. They don...

...Dr. Mary Jo Kane has a piece in The Nation about the yes-we're-still-talking-about-this debate over whether sex sells women's sports. The answer, as I've noted before, using Kane's research, is no. Kane opens with a quote from an article by Wendy Parker. While the quote--about a female soccer player who seems non-plussed by her status as Playboy's third sexiest soccer player--is apt, do we really need to support Wendy Parker in her ongoing recovery from feminism and paradoxical support of women's sports?