More Pulitzer Fallout + Eagleton Refinds Literature + MLB Baseball 2012

Ann Patchett (www.annpatchett.com)

The fallout from the Pulitzer Foundation's failure to award a fiction prize continues. The New York Times features three articles on it, the first a Media Decoder blog post (whose title is stronger than anything said in it--who's "fuming"?), Julie Bosman's straight news report, the third an Op-Ed by belauded author Ann Patchett (Bel Canto, State of Wonder--which I suggested should have been a Pulitzer fiction consideree). The Daily Beast weighs in with more gossipy Sturm, if not Drang. Reggie H. directed me first to the Publishers Weekly Publishers' Launch site, and then to Laura Miller's Salon piece. Much speculation, none of the three judges are happy, nor are most publishers (or authors, it seems). It appears the board, which does include one truly amazing creative writer (and professor), Junot Díaz, couldn't agree on a choice. It got me thinking, on another note, that a sizable swath of the better-known and most original American fiction writers of the 20th and 21st centuries, have not received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for their best works, or at all. This list would include William Faulkner, John dos Passos, Scott Fitzgerald, the major early novels of Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, all the Beats (Jack Kerouac in particular), Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Vladimir Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., William Gaddis, James Baldwin, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, E. L. Doctorow, Ishmael Reed, Grace Paley, Samuel R. Delany, Donald Barthelme, Ursula LeGuin, Raymond Carver, Joy Williams, Leslie Marmon Silko, Tim O'Brien, Sandra Cisneros, Bobbie Ann Mason,  Gayl Jones, John Edgar Wideman, Jayne Anne Phillips, Julia Álvarez, Lois Ann Yamanaka, Charles Baxter, T. C. Boyle, Mary Gaitskill, Sherman Alexie, David Foster Wallace, or George Saunders, just to name a few.  An august list, by any measure, though many of these folks are still with us and still writing, so....

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Today after the Poetry and Poetics Colloquium event featuring Russian prose writer Andrei Levkin (about which I'll blog tomorrow or so), I was chatting with a senior colleague and noting how humorous I found it that Terry Eagleton (1943-), the leading British Marxist literary and cultural critic who loomed over many discussions when I was an undergraduate in the late mid-1980s and who spent a great deal of his early career attempting, with some success (and help from others), to dispel the idea of literary value or literariness itself, has now decided that, in fact, there is such a thing as literary value and literariness and "literature," and that he, Terry Eagleton, is determined to describe and define it. This is not his first volta face; there was After Theory, almost a dozen years ago (2003).  Not that I'm mocking Eagleton, of course; his advocacy of theory, and many of his insights about the relationship between the literary and the aesthetic, interpretation and reading, and capitalist hegemony and empire, the primacy of social construction and the political, and so forth, are still quite valid. We forget them at our peril. Also: No text is completely transparent: this idea blazes as clear as a torch to this reader as day. But it has also always struck me that he and others might have gone too far, as he too has noted, and in The Event of Literature (Yale University Press, 2012), which sounds like he might be toking a good deal of Alain Badiou but isn't, he has taken up the idea, long ago cast away, that there is something called the "literary," or that there is something common to what we might call "literature," that he can subject to an Eagletonian taxonomy. I think many of us could have told him this. Baby, bathwater. According to this Stuart Kelly Guardian piece, Eagleton gets there via a more traditional (and to me reassuring, since I cite this person not infrequently, to bemusement, since I don't think he's considered so valid anymore) route: Ludwig Wittgenstein. The Wittgenstein of the later works, The Philosophical Investigations, Lectures on Aesthetics, Brown and Blue Books, that Wittgenstein, not the one who thought everything could be contained within a logical treatise.  According to Kelly, Eagleton essentially returns to a "common sense" (or pragmatic view) of what literature is, creating five categories--fictional, moral, linguistic, non-pragmatic, and normative--which those things we call "literary" possess at least some combination or all of. I haven't read the book, so I can't assess the argument, but it sounds very interesting, and I think Wittgenstein's concepts of familial resemblances and particular kinds of language games are a way back into a means of linking disparate texts. Kelly's critique is generous and fair. He finds Eagleton's argument "elegant" but "fuzzy," witty and sometimes felicitous in his aphoristic skill, but also thinks facts belie certain his assertions, particularly in the "moral" and "linguistic" categories. Kelly concludes with: "When, as a critic, I call something literature, I mean that it expands the field of what literature can be. David Foster Wallace is literature. Jonathan Franzen just tried to write a literary novel." I'm no great fan of Franzen, but The Corrections certain is literature, and I find a good deal of Wallace--I do like some of his work, let me be clear--trying too hard (and his fans, legion though they be, trying very hard to convince others). I guess this means I'll be reading this book at some point, once it's published (officially, May 12, 2012), as I have many of Eagleton's others, with a trained and skeptical eye...

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C. C. Sabathia (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

It's baseball season, and I admit to not following so closely, because I have too many other things to fixate on right now. But I am still saddened that Albert Pujols now wears the uniform of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (the most unfelicitous team name in history), and will not man first base for the World Series champion Saint Louis Cardinals. He went out in style, though, and now has a 10-year mega-contract to ensure that no matter what happens, his family will be set for life. The Cardinals are relying much more on pitching this year, a mix of veterans (Rafael Furcal, Javier Molina, Matt Holliday) and newbies (Matt Carpenter, free agent Carlos Beltrán), and the return of David Freese's bat. So far they've ascended to the top of the NL Central Division's heap, with an 8-3 record. Can they keep it up? I hope so.

The other currently top 2 NL beyond the Cardinals are the Washington Senators (I'm not joking), and the formerly financially shaky Los Angeles Dodgers. The Senators have some of the league's better young players and pitching sensation Stephen Strasburg, who is back from arm surgery and up through today has struck out 19 batters in 19 innings. He's only one of a very sharp pitching staff. The Dodgers have some of the league's best field players, including almost-MVP and Rihanna ex, coverboy Matt Kemp, as well as André Ethier, and Juan Rivera, and superb pitching, including 2011 Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw, who went 21-5 last year with a 2.28 ERA. Other teams that look good so far: the New York Mets and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The rest of the league, at least thus far? Meh.

This season's major distraction has been Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen's impromptu praise of Fidel Castro, which led to profuse apologies and a 5-game suspension. He probably could have gotten away with what he said anywhere else, including New York, but he'll be apologizing till the end of the season given the team he's managing, unless the Marlins manage to end up scaling their division. That team has pulled out miracles in the past, but this season, I'm not so sure.

In the AL, last year's World Series runners up, the Texas Rangers, are again setting the pace at 9-2. They have the cast and the tools to go all the way this year. Whether they can achieve their aims is another question. They definitely are playoff caliber. The Detroit Tigers lead the AL Central Division, and have been one of the better teams in this league for the last decade. They possess a reliable, solid fielding core, led by outfield Miguel Cabrera, as well as hefty slugger Prince Fielder, and they have the league's best pitcher in Justin Verlander, who won last year's Cy Young Award.

In the AL East, the New York Yankees are middling at 6-5; it is only April, and pitching star C. C. Sabathia just won his first game tonight. But the team in general looks long in the tooth; a number of its veteran players--Derek Jeter, Alex Rodríguez, Raul Ibanez, are approaching the end of their careers and only Jeter isn't playing as if this is the case--and the youngsters--Mark Teixeira, Robinson Cañó, Nick Swisher--haven't yet hit their stride this season. Senescent or not, they're never a team to count out.

The other AL East teams are keeping pace with the Yankees. The Baltimore Orioles, a team accustomed to bottom-dwelling these last few years, leads the division. Reviewing their stats leaders and lineup, I hardly recognize even a single name, save Wilson Betemit. Maybe they have the chops for a run. We'll see. What we can see now is that the Boston Red Sox are in last place, a bit of a surprise after their amazing run in the early 2000s. Stepping to the plate every day for them are David "Big Papi" Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, and Adrian González, and their always strong corps of hurlers. The Yankees and everyone else are surely keeping an eye on them. Sleeping serpents. Let's hope they keep slumbering, as opposed to lumbering in the bat department, all the way through October.

In the AL West the Angels have posted more losses, 7, than wins, 4. It's only April, though. Albert Pujols is batting only .268, with no homers. I wish him the best, and hope he resumes his Hall of Famer pace. The Angels have good pitching (Jered Weaver, C. J. Wilson, Danny Haren) and a host of veterans alongside Pujols, so they should return to form soon enough. It's going to take everything to catch those Rangers. They really look great, again.  Rangers and Cardinals? I'm not betting on it, at least not yet, it the rematch would be sweet.

Cardinals Win World Series!

World Series MVP David Freese

The Saint Louis Cardinals, Major League Baseball's most improbable post-season team, has won the 2011 World Series! This is the Cardinals' 11th Series win, second only to the New York Yankees' 22, and their second in the last 5 years, when they defeated Detroit in 4 games in 2006. As I previously wrote, the Cardinals listed through most of the regular season, until righting themselves in the final two months to come back from a 10 1/2 deficit and pass Atlanta's collapsing squad to slip into the playoffs with 90-72 record. The Cardinals then defeated the National League's most successful regular-season team, the 102-60 Philadelphia Phillies, winning 3 games to 2, before vanquishing their division rivals, the Milwaukee Brewers (96-66), in 6 games (4-2), to win the National League Championship and face the American League champions, the Texas Rangers.
While the Cardinals were still battling the Brewers, a good friend and far more knowledgeable sports commentator suggested that the Rangers were the team to beat, as they'd rolled over their first-round opponents, Cardinalian Tampa Bay Rays, also last-day-of-the season entry after the media favorite Boston Red Sox suffered their own disintegration, and then the very talented Detroit Tigers team, which had gone 95-67 and featured the likely American League Cy Young Award winner, Justin Verlander (24-5, 2.40 ERA). Texas walloped Tampa Bay 3-1, following this with a 4-2 victory over the Tigers. I suggested to my friend that no one should count either the Cardinals or the Brewers, had they made it to the Series, out; not only did the National League teams have home-field advantage because their all stars won the All Star Game (a great shift that gives that contest a new layer of seriousness), but each team had a true ace (for the Cardinals the aging but still sharp Chris Carpenter, whose shutout on the regular season's final day sealed their victory), but also several weapons, including the Cardinals' certain Hall of Famer, Albert Pujols, and for a the Brewers, a rising star, the keg-barrel of a slugger, Prince Fielder.

Future Hall of Fame manager Tony LaRussa

Still it did not look like a good matchup on paper. I don't know what the now dominant Sabremetric crowd had to say about it, either, but I felt from the beginning that whichever National League team made it would win it all. The Cardinals also had a solid lineup, which included talented veterans like Lance Berkman and Rafael Furcal, their excellent catcher, Yadier Molina, and a number of skilled younger players, including Saint Louisan David Freese, who ended up being the Series hero. They also had that very gifted relief corps to fill in for the shaky non-Carpenter starters, and, perhaps as importantly, their manager, Tony LaRussa, who, as any Cardinals fan knows, can swing between the most appallingly dismal strategizing and Gary Kasparovesque moves that would leave the opposing team in a daze.

Freese after his Game 6-winning home run

LaRussa did not disappoint. In a debacle that will surely be forgotten because of the Cardinals' final victory, LaRussa twice in Game 5 called the bullpen to order up the regular closer, Jason Motte, only to have his bullpen coach mishear him twice, instead sending Lance Lynn, the game 3 winner, into the game; Texas scored two runs at home in Arlington Stadium and won 4-2. Yet the next night, in what will certainly go down as one of the most thrilling and sloppily played World Series games in decades, the 6th game featured LaRussa at his best, and the Cardinals embodying what they had shown all throughout September. Two times, in the 9th and 10th innings the Rangers were one strike away from the World Series crown, and both times, the Cardinals came back to tie up the game, with LaRussa using starter Jason Lohse to bunt to advance runners and starter Kyle Westbrook to pitch a scoreless 1lth, until Freese came to the plate and hit a walk-off home run to give the Cardinals the 10-9 victory.  It was an astonishing comeback and win.

At Busch III Stadium

That was all the Cardinals needed. Ace Chris Carpenter returned to pitch his third game of the series, on 3 days rest (because of the initial rain-out of Game 6 in St. Louis), and after surrendering 2 runs in the first inning, he and the relief pitchers Arthur Rhodes, Octavio Dotel, Lynn, and Motte, pitched beautifully, allowing no more runs, and giving Saint Louis the victory. It was a fitting tribute to determination and using every shred of talent and luck the comes your way.  Sometimes the underdog, even in a sport heavily overdetermined by teams' wealth and skill at using statistics these days, does triumph. It also was a fitting valediction for Albert Pujols, who became only the third player ever to hit 3 home runs in a World Series game, and Chris Carpenter in case the Cardinals do not resign them, and for manager Tony LaRussa if he doesn't resign with them either. He has now moved into third place on the all-time win list with 2728 wins vs. 2365 losses, and in 33 years of managing, he won 6 pennants, 3 in the American League and 3 in the National League, and led his team to 3 World Series victories, 1 in the AL with Oakland A's in 1989, and 2 with the Cardinals in 2006 and 2011.

Future Hall of Famer (& ex-Cardinal?) Albert Pujols

Texas will return next year with almost the entire core of its team intact, including its masterful manager Ron Washington. Last year the Rangers went to Series and lost to the San Francisco Giants, and this year they went down against the Cardinals. Although the Yankees, the Tigers, Tampa Bay, the California Angels, and the Red Sox will all be in the hunt next year, Washington has the personnel to make three times a charm. I don't think he'll be facing the Cardinals next year, or the Brewers if they lose Fielder. Could it be Philadelphia? Pittsburgh? Arizona? The Mets? Come back next spring and we'll resume the conversation!

The Saint Louis Rally Squirrel!

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE TEAM THAT SHOWED IT COULD, DESPITE THE ODDS, THE 2011 SAINT LOUIS CARDINALS!!!

Cardinals Advance + Rugby World Cup Update

 Chris Carpenter #29 of the St. Louis Cardinals
after final out (Rob Carr/Getty Images)

They did it again! The St. Louis Cardinals, behind last night's extraordinary 3-hit, 9-inning shutout by ace Chris Carpenter, defeated the Major League Baseball best-record holding Philadelphia Phillies, who'd won 102 games, to advance to the National League Championship Series! The Cardinals managed just six total hits and one run, in the first inning, on center-fielder Skip Schumaker's double that scored shortstop Rafael Furcal, who had tripled off the Phillies' leading pitcher, Roy Halladay, but that was enough. As he had on the regular season's final day, Carpenter returned to the form that won him a Cy Young Award back in 2005, striking out 3 and walking none. His final line was 9.0 innings, 3 hits, 0 runs, 0 runs batted in, 3 strikeouts, and 0 home runs. Halladay was nearly as good, allowing 6 hits in 8 innings while striking out 7. He finished the series at 1 win and 1 loss. Reliever Ross Madson did not allow a hit or run, and struck out 2.

One bizarre twist in the game came after the final at bat, when the Phillies lost slugger (and native St. Louisan) Ryan Howard to what appears to be an achilles heel injury. After hiting a weak grounder, he pulled up just feet from home plate, and had to be helped off the field.  The Cardinals will now face the Milwaukee Brewers, their midwestern rivals, whom they defeated in the 1982 World Series when the Brewers still were in the American League.  Matching up in that league's championship series are the Detroit Tigers, who have the best starter in either league, Justin Verlander, and whom the Cardinals faced and vanquished in the 2006 World Series (after having lost to them in the 1968 matchup), and the Texas Rangers, who have never won a World Series. I am hoping it will be the Cardinals vs. Detroit. (And please, DeWitt family, re-sign Albert Pujols!)

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The 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand is drawing to a close.  In the first round of match play, the top teams emerging were host New Zealand (4-0-0, W-T-L) and France (2-0-2), which edged Tonga (2-0-2) in Pool A; England (4-0-0) and Argentina (3-0-1) in Pool B; Ireland (4-0-0) and Australia (3-0-1) in Pool C; and South Africa (4-0-0) and Wales (3-0-1) in Pool D. The United States did not finish last in its pool, C, but in the penultimate position, winning 1 match and losing 3.  Some of the play has  resulted in players being banned for a game or two: England's Delon Armitage suffered this penalty because of his tackle in the match against France.

Now at the quarterfinal stage, Wales today defeated Ireland 22-10, and France topped England 22-19, with two more pairings set for tomorrow, South Africa against Australia, and New Zealand against Argentina. The semifinals will pit Wales against France on October 15, and the winner of the second two matches on October 16, with the 3rd place match to occur on October 21, and the championship on October 23.  I tip New Zealand's All Blacks to win it all, but South Africa and Australia are also very strong contenders. Here a few more photos from more recent matches. Enjoy!

France's Dmitri Yachvili tackles England's Manu Tuilagi

Wales' Dan Lydiate attempts to lay out Ireland's Stephen Ferris

Ireland's squad huddle before their match with Wales

South Africa's coach Peter de Villiers at practice

Wallabies stretching during practice

Ma'a Nonu meeting with schoolchildren

Prop Juan Figalio and Argentinian teammates in scrum

Wales' Bradley Davies latches onto Fiji
fullback Iliesa Lomani Rakuka Keresoni

Fiji's team performs the Cibi in front of Wales before their match

New Zealand's Sonny Bill Williams slips past Canadians

Georgia's Georgi Chkaidze grapples with Argentina's Felipe Contepomi

Siaule Piutau passes the ball as France's Morgan Parra tackles him

Baseball Update (Cards, Rays in Playoffs!)

Albert Pujols, at potentially his
final game at Busch Stadium
in St. Louis, September 25, 2011
(Ed Szczepanski/Getty)

I'll keep this simple, but let me first note that although I'm not a superstitious person (yet grew up around quite a few such folks), I did fear that if I blogged at all about the amazing late-season comeback of the St. Louis Cardinals, who'd some St. Louis-area media and fans by early August had considered failures, I would somehow jinx their surge. I know, it's utterly ridiculous, but I decided not to post until things had sorted themselves out, and now, here we are, on the final day of the regular season and what a remarkable turn of events has occurred. Yesterday the Cardinals, had made up the 10.5-game deficit they had on August 26 to tie Atlanta, the National League Wild Card slot leaders, and today St. Louis defeated the Astros today 8-0 behind a complete game shutout by former Cy Young Award-winner Chris Carpenter, while Atlanta lost in 13 innings to the Philadelphia Phillies, the NL East Division winners, to fall out of contention. The Cardinals will now face the Phillies starting on Saturday in a best-of-five series to see who heads to the NL League championship series. In the other NL playoff game, the Milwaukee Brewers, the surprise NL Central Division leaders, will face the NL West Division leaders, the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Pujols with Philly and former Cardinal
Plácido Polanco at Citizens Bank
Park, Philadelphia, September 25, 2011
(Jim Redkoles/Getty)

As astonishing was the American League's parallel, in which the Tampa Bay Rays experienced a late-season surge and ended up tying the Boston Red Sox for the AL Wild Card slot. Today would determine either a winner or a playoff for the slot, and as Tampa Bay was poised to lose to the New York Yankees after being down 7-0, the Rays came back and won it in the 12-inning, defeating the Yankees 8-7. The Red Sox, a mainstream media favorite, had a 9-game lead over Tampa Bay on September 4, but thereafter stumbled, yet still had a chance at least to vie for a one-game playoff to make it into the post-season, yet their star reliever, Jonathan Papelbon, could not hold a 3-2 lead against the Baltimore Orioles, and lost the game 4-3. The Rays now face the AL West-leading Texas Rangers, a team rarely seen in the post-season, while the other matchup will pit the perennial champion New York Yankees, the AL East Division leaders, against the Detroit Tigers, who won the AL Central Division.

Pujols breaks his bat
against Chicago Cubs at
Busch Stadium, St. Louis
September 25, 2011
(Ed Szczepanski/Getty)

A few other notes: the Cardinals have unfortunately not yet signed one of the greatest players ever to grace one of their uniforms, Albert Pujols, a sure Hall of Famer, but he has again made a case for them to find the money to keep him. Pujols struggled early on and broke his non-catching hand mid-season, but returned to form by late July, and was trying to continue his career-long streak of at least 30 home runs, a .300 batting average, and 100 runs batted in. He finished the season, his 11th in the major leagues, with 37 home runs, a .299 average, and 99 runs batted in, just points below his empyrean standard. Thus far he has amassed a .329 lifetime batting average and a .617 slugging average, 445 home runs, 1329 runs batted in, and 975 walks. He is only 31. Since he joined the team in 2001 he has played a key role in every Cardinals post-season, including their World Series victory in 2006. They--the Cardinals, the wealthy DeWitt family that owns the team, their partners--must sign him if they want to remain competitive. Without him they'll be hard-pressed to keep up even with the middling teams in their division, let alone better teams across the league.

NY Mets shortstop José Reyes (r)
escorted back onto the Citi Field
lawn by teammate Willie Harris
Flushing, New York,
September 28, 2011 (Jim McIsaac/Getty)

A pitching rarity seems set to occur. Both the American League and the National League will have pitchers who will qualify for the pitching Triple Crown, which  comprising posting the highest win total, most strikeouts, and lowest earned run average. In the AL, Detroit's Justin Verlander posted 1970s-style numbers, going 24-5, the first pitcher to win so many games in decades, while striking out 250 (in 251 innings) and posting a 2.40 ERA. He allowed 0.92 walks and hits per inning pitched. Opposing batters hit only .091 against him. The next closest AL pitcher in wins was the Yankees' C. C. Sabathia, with 19. In the NL, the Los Angeles Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw, only 4 years in the majors, went 21-5, tying Arizona Diamondbacks starter Ian Kennedy (21-4) for the highest win total, yet bested him by striking out 248 batters in 233.1 innings, with a 2.28 ERA. Kershaw allowed only 0.98 walks and hits per innings pitched, and opposing batters only hit .207 off him. Seldom to pitchers in either league achieve the Triple Crown; the last NL pitcher to achieve it was Jake Peavy, when he pitched for the San Diego Padres in 2007, while the last AL pitcher to do so was Johan Santana when he pitched for the Minnesota Twins in 2006. The last time pitchers in both leagues achieved this pinnacle in the same year was 1924 (!), when Walter Johnson did so for the old Washington Senators in AL, while Dazzy Vance did so for the Brooklyn Robins (Dodgers) in the NL. (The only pitcher to win it more than twice remains Sandy Koufax, who led the NL in all three categories during three of his final four seasons as a Dodger, in 1963, 1965, and 1966.)

Met José Reyes bunts a single in his only at bat against
the Cincinnati Reds at Citi Field, Flushing, NY,
September 28, 2011 (Jim McIsaac/Getty)

Lastly, another player who may leave his longtime hometeam, José Reyes of the New York Mets, won the NL batting title for the first time in his career. The 27-year-old shortstop posted some of the best numbers of his career, hitting .336, scoring 101 runs, and stealing 39 bases. He edged the Minnesota Twin's Ryan Braun, who finished the day 0 for 4, leaving him with a .332 batting average.  Like Pujols Reyes hasn't been signed, and may leave the Mets for more lucrative environs. What a loss his departure would be for his team. In the AL, Detroit's Miguel Cabrera, a regular sparkplug from his days with the Florida Marlins, finished the season at .344, putting him ahead of Boston's Adrian González and Texas's Michael Young, who both finished at .338. In both cases both leagues had new batting title winners for the second straight season. The AL home run king was Toronto Blue Jays outfield José Bautista, who hit 43 this year and had won last year, while the NL saw a new star emerge in the Dodgers' Matt Kemp, who hit 39 and also was vying for the batting Triple Crown. He finished with a .324 average, but also led the league in RBIs, with 126.

Finally, hits marvel Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners ended his streak of 10 consecutive 200-hit seasons this year, posting only 184. In 2004 Suzuki broke the single-season record when he gained 262 hits; his final batting average that year was .372. This year he managed only a .272 average, the lowest of his stellar career. His team managed only a 64-95 record, putting them 4th and last in their division, and second-worst in the AL. Only the Twins had a worse record (63-99).

Now let the playoffs begin! GO CARDINALS! GO YANKEES!

On the Road to Vegetarianism Pt. 2 + An Afternoon at Wrigley Field

A while back I posted about switching over to a mostly vegetarian diet, and now I'm nearing the 6-month mark (June 4, to be exact). I have, to my amazement, kept it up.  For some of these months, I've gone weeks without eating any meat, though I still do have some from time to time (this past week I don't think I had any). I also have almost completely given up all processed, prepared foods, unless I'm getting them at a cafe or restaurant (where I have little choice, though I've been trying to patronize restaurants, when I can afford to, that prepare whole foods on the premises). Since January perhaps the only processed, prepared foods I've bought would be oatmeal (and I do also buy the organic rolled oats from a nearby food coop), orange juice, and a few other items like wine.  I haven't bought any frozen dinners or anything else frozen and processed, though I do still sometimes pick up frozen fruits and vegetables, and fish. Other than chocolate, I've stopped buying any candy, and haven't bought any sorts of chips except tortilla chips from restaurants, or an occasional bag made locally. One of the most difficult things to maintain, particularly over the last month, during which I was involved in several very stressful committee assignments (similar versions of which over the past few years led to my having stopped cooking and ordering out food when I felt most under duress), has been the cooking, breadmaking, baking, and so on, but I'm glad to say that I've kept it up.  I note this not for a pat on the back, but just to acknowledge that it amazes me that I've been able to keep this going.

My diet now consists mostly of those hated carbs, and yet, as I noted before, almost as soon as started eating this way I immediately began losing weight (20 lbs, now close to 24 lbs--I've gone from 220 lbs. to about 196 or so, give or take the day) , and I've kept it off.  I had sworn off potatoes after C passed on an article about how bad they are for you (think heavily starchy root vegetable growing in toxic soils!), but I love potatoes, so I've started to reincorporate them into various dishes, where applicable. I have not, however, had French fries more than 1-2 times over the last 6 months. I eat a lot of bread, as any reader of this blog knows. Since the food coop I often shop at in Chicago has had a regular supply of organic sundried tomatoes, I've been regularly baking whole wheat sundried tomato bread, with a few detours, especially during the colder months, to rye bread (I will probably make a pumpernickel loaf again this summer, just because it was so good) or to French bread (which is one of the easiest breads you can make).

I can say that I eat a lot more squash (especially zucchini and yellow squash, which I loathed as a child), eggplant, and beets (which I also wasn't fond of, though I don't know why). I also regularly devour carrots, one of my favorite foods, as well as broccoli, brussel sprouts, and turnips. I eat grains, including couscous and quinoa, and legumes, like lentils and black beans, that I didn't used to eat so much. I don't, however, eat much salad, which I always associated in my mind with 1) healthier eating; 2) weight loss; and 3) vegetarianism. Occasionally I will have salads, and I'll probably eat more once the summer rolls around, but in general, they're not part of the mix. Another bonus of this approach has been that I spend far less money on a weekly basis on food. The coop's prices are decent, but I always end up paying less than I do at the supermarket, and the food usually comes from local (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, etc.) farms (or organic farms in California, Florida, etc.). Interestingly enough, the fruits often seem to last longer that supermarket fruits, which makes me wonder how long they've been sitting on trucks. When I add up how much I will spend at the coop and, say, at Trader Joe's, it's usually far less than I was spending when I primarily hit the supermarket. (Can anyone tell me how Trader Joe's keeps its food prices so low?)  Even when I factor in an occasional visit to Whole Foods, which I was boycotting for a while, my food expenses are still lower than before; and because the food I cook lasts, I spend far less (often nothing) on a daily basis buying lunch, etc., as I once did. (I also avoid the bleached, excess-gluten bread that's overtaken the US market, making many people sick. I often wonder, if more of us baked our own bread, how widespread would the gluten-related problems be that plague us?)

Unemployment Benefits Cut + Baseball's Back + Poems: Shin Yu Pai

I hate to start on a down note, but today 400,000 Americans will lose their unemployment insurance, because members of the Senate GOP--first Kentucky's former baseball player Jim Bunning (see below), and now Oklahoma's gift to the country, Tom Coburn, MD, who reportedly committed Medicaid fraud and also reportedly performed a tubal ligation on a woman against her will--see fit to play games with their lives. Their hobbyhorse, never once raised during the votes for the unfunded Bush tax cuts, which destroyed the surplus President Bill Clinton left and added over $1 trillion to the deficit, or the rush to send troops to raze and occupy Iraq, or blow money on Medicare Advantage, a multibillion-dollar boondoggle, is that any spending must be "paid for."

As anyone who has ever been unemployed and relies on unemployment insurance knows, this little bit of money can be the only thing keeping a roof over your head, food in your stomach, and your lights on. But to Tom Coburn, Jim Bunning, and others in the GOP, the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people, including their children and elderly relatives, who'll also suffer, doesn't matter.

Won't you join me and urge others in calling Tom Coburn to let him know that he is playing games with people's lives, and you don't like it?

Phones:
Washington: Main: 202-224-5754
Tulsa: 918-581-7651
Oklahoma City: 405-231-4941

And if you have a Democratic Senator or two, why not call them and tell them to stop whining and take drastic action to stop the suffering of fellow Americans. They can give tax cuts to the richest people at the drop of a hat, but can only cry and rend their garments and complain about the the terrible GOP when people really need help--and the money that's due them. And you can always call GOP Senators, if they represent you, to urge them to put pressure on Coburn to stop his dangerous, cruel games.

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Bunning's mention, acrid though it is, provokes another, more pleasant thought: baseball's back. Yes, the national and now an international pastime began last night with the Boston Red Sox--of all teams--defeating the defending World Series Champion New York Yankees 9-7.  Ugh!  I won't read the Red Sox victory as a (bad) omen, especially for the Yankees, who stayed right in the thick of the game, but rather as the stats suggest, as a breakdown by middle-reliever and former starter Chan Ho Park. 161 more games to go, guys, it can only get better.

NY Philharmonic Opening Night + Sports Roundup

A couple weeks ago I did something I haven't done in a while: I watched a live classical music concert on TV. The occasion was the PBS Live from Lincoln Center's broadcast of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra's season opener, which marked the début of its new Music Director, 42-year-old Alan Gilbert. I'd even made a mental note of the broadcast primarily because I saw that it would include Renee Fleming singing songs not by Schubert, or Strauss, or Faure, all likely opening-night and maestro-début and audience friendly choices, but...Olivier Messiaen.

I almost didn't believe my eyes or ears when I heard and saw this after an episode of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, but then Gilbert, the son of two NY Philharmonic musicians, has from his earliest appearances with the orchestra shown an adventurousness that marks a change from the musty perspectives of his immediate predecessors, both consummate musicians, Kurt Masur and placeholder Lorin Maazel. Gilbert not only chose Messiaen's Poèmes pour Mi (1934), a serious of deeply religious, dramatic connubial songs written by the composer for his first wife, whose nickname was Mi, but also opened with a newly commissioned composition, EXPO, a continuously developing orchestral piece in a tonal idiom by the Philharmonic's composer in residence, Magnus Lindberg, and, after a break, concluded with...not Mozart, not Beethoven, not Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, or Schumann, but...Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.

The Lindberg piece, with its echoes of Sibelius and Americana riffs, was pleasant enough to listen to, and Gilbert and the orchestra played it with assurance and verve, as if they were enjoying themselves. This was also the first time in over 45 years that the Philharmonic had included a newly commissioned piece on its opening night program. I'm sorry but that's pretty pathetic, so even more props go to Gilbert. But the Messaien riveted me. Not only did Fleming convey the otherwordliness of the nine song's scores, capturing both their highest and lowest registers and the churning colors between, but Gilbert pushed the orchestra to fully evoke all of Messaien's shadings without ever overshadowing the singer. Perhaps the most striking moment came when Fleming sang the grim "Éprouvante," a wrenching vision of hell that the music did not stint in reflecting. It was also exhilarating to hear work by Messaien, a highly regarded canonical composer whose music nevertheless remains on the other side of the symphonic mainstream, on TV, in prime time. This bodes well, I hope, for future NYPO and other orchestral concert broadcasts, though sometimes tells me they'll still be dominated by the late baroque-to-late Romantic German standards.

As Fleming sang, I intermittently wondered what subscribers and critics thought of Gilbert's choices. As a sign of a new vision, they left no doubt. To people used to a mostly late baroque-to-late Romantic German repertoire with a few outliers (19th century French and Russian, early 20th century European late-Romantic and tonal modernist, a few American composers, and commissioned pieces, never to be played again), was probably upsetting. To end with Berlioz's vast, forward-looking 1830 symphony must have felt like a shockwave. Gilbert and the orchestra showed that they knew the score and in most of its sections, went below the surface to portray the richness of the moods Berlioz was aiming for. I'm no expert on Berlioz's work nor an authority on how other orchestras have played it, but I could hear both Gilbert's and the players' skill and precision, but also passion. It was never mechanical, as Maazel's performances often were.

Anthony Tommasini raved about Gilbert in his New York Times review of the concert the following day. He praised the Lindberg for not writing a "gnarly, intimidating modern piece"--Mr. Tommasini, it's 2009, and there are so many contemporary composers who do not write "intimidating modern" or "post-modern" or "post-post-modern" or whatever pieces that also are not treacly, neo-Romantic, ersatz movie music outtakes--and rained down kudos for Gilbert's choice of the Messiaen and Berlioz, though he was less fulsome when he described Gilbert's conducting of the latter work, saying that some listeners probably liked to hear it conducted with more of a"sumptuous feeling for color or more fantastical freedom" than on display in this concert. He nevertheless lauded Gilbert's assured and effective conducting, which not only brought the symphony to life but worked well with the two prior pieces, both in French idioms, broadly construed. The article's comment section, however, reflected more displeasure than happiness: lots of complaints not about Gilbert's music-making, which seems unimpeachable, but about his program choices.

I've been wondering about this as I've followed Greg Sandow's blog on classical music for several years. Sandow is a composer and professor at Juillard, and is writing a book about the present state of the US classical music world. One persistent element in his blog commenters' responses is a denial that the US classical music world is any trouble; another is that its audience is aging; a third is that the standard repertoire is just fine. Keeping these frequent threads in mind, I wondered to myself how much outrage there would have been had Gilbert gone farther, and in addition to the Lindberg, programmed all new music to launch his tenure. What if instead of Messiaen (whose career spanned the early to late 20th century) and the 19th century Berlioz, he had played two contemporary, living American composers, like John Corigliano and Ellen Taaffe Zwillich? Or two contemporary non-US composers, like Toru Takemitsu and Thomas Adès? Or two 20th century American composers who weren't exactly mainstream any more, like Roy Harris and William Schuman? Or truly avant-garde 20th century, post-Second Viennese school American composers, like Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, and John Cage? Or a composition in a jazz or rock-inflected idiom by the likes of Elvis Costello, or Wynton Marsalis? Would people have walked out of and lustily booed the concert as occurred at the Metropolitan Opera's premiere last week of the warhorse Tosca, based on Luc Bondy's new staging and direction?

Perhaps a better question is, would it ever happen, even under someone as open to the new as Gilbert? (When the extraordinary conductor James Levine, who heads the Met Opera's orchestra, took over the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which long been moribund under his predecessor, he jumpstarted its formerly progressive repertoire under Fritz Reiner by performing a slew of "difficult" 20th century works. I don't think, however, that he touched the likes of Daugherty, say, or Todd Machover, or Tania León.) It remains to be seen. I should note that Gilbert's second concert as Musical Director was conducting Mahler's Third Symphony, about as standard as things can get. This week he conducted Brahms's Violin Concerto, another standard piece, but paired it with Arnold Schoenberg's less frequently heard Pelleas und Melisande, which Tommasini described in his Friday review, typically, as "formidable" and "demanding," despite it's having been superseded by far more formidable and demanding Schoenberg scores (Chamber Symphony? Fantasie? Violin Concerto?), as well as innumerable more complicated soundworlds including many in rock, jazz, ambient, etc. I take the slotting in of even a fairly old-style (for) Schoenberg piece as a good sign, though. And he spoke to the audience about it! Looking through the upcoming concerts--and Gilbert will be taking the Philharmonic on the road to Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Singapore for a chunk of October--through December, it appears as though there will be lots of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, unsurprisingly, but throughout the 2009-2010 season Gilbert has slated a range of post-Romantic fare into the main concerts, including performances of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre (semi-staged), Ives's Second Symphony, Anton von Zemlinsky's Lyric Suite, and, as part of the end of 2009 concerts, Webern's Symphony. Additionally, such very up-to-date works as Christopher Rouse's new commission, Zhizn ("life" in Russian), H.K. Gruber's Aerea, and pieces by Nico Muhly, Matthias Pintscher, Lindberg, and others, will be in both the main and Contact: The New Music series concerts.

To me, this programming in Gilbert's first year is a clear sign that the NYPO is moving into both the present and future, much as Baltimore's symphony has done under Marin Alsop, and Los Angeles's will under Gustavo Dudamel. Since I spend a chunk of each year in Chicago, I'm curious to know which directions new Musical Director Riccardo Muti will take the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the five years of his contract. He is known as a strong conductor of Giuseppi Verdi, late baroque and early Romantic music, and of the standard repertoire, in a lean, recording-friendly idiom, and not so much of anything that new. At least since Mahler's time.

(I am skipping the Lyric Opera of Chicago's offerings this year; they aren't staging a single opera written since 1921--Leos Janacek's Kát'a Kabanová--while the Metropolitan Opera's tiny steps outside its narrow conventional doors are Alban Berg's Lulu, Dmitri Shostakovich's The Nose, and Janacek's From the House of the Dead. The unparalleled season Gérard Mortier had planned for the New York City Opera is now nothing but a phantom, like that opera company itself.)

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The Saint Louis Cardinals are now officially in the playoffs, after defeating the Colorado Rockies 6-3 last night. They joined the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have also made the playoffs and currently have the best record in the NL. In the AL, the Yankees are now in the playoffs, having defeated their arch-nemeses, the Boston Red Sox tonight at the new Yankee Stadium 4-2. The Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim both seem bound for the playoffs with dwindling magic numbers and the Red Sox are well ahead in the AL Wild Card Race, but the AL Central-leading Detroit Tigers are hanging on for all their lives, and the NL Wild Card race is increasingly a toss up, as Atlanta surges and Colorado falters. I'm just glad the Cardinals and Yankees are in. Now they have to keep winning.

EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ - SEPTEMBER 27: Mark Sanchez #6 of The New York Jets runs upfield after catching a pass against The Tennessee Titans during their game on September 27, 2009 at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

As of tonight, the New York Jets are 3-0; rookie QB Mark Sanchez's 3 straight wins are a league first, and the defense allowed more than 10 points for the first time this season in today's 24-17 victory over the Tennessee Titans. The Saint Louis Rams, however, are 0-3 after another uninspired, sloppy loss, this time to the Green Bay Packers. With the Detroit Lions' victory over the Washington Snyders, the Rams have the longest losing streak, at 13 games dating back to last season. They look awful enough to make it 29 if they maintain this abysmal level of play. But they're in good--or bad--company so far: Miami, Cleveland, Kansas City, Tennessee, and Tampa Bay have also lost 3 games without a win and Carolina has 2 losses without having won one. Which of this sorry group will turn things around first? I say Tennessee or Tampa Bay, but don't hold me to that.