Kudos to the Tokyo Olympics

It did not turn out to be the super-spreader event that we all feared it might be.

Today, CNN reported that the Olympic Village reported 358 positive corona cases. While not insignificant, when considering the thousands who congregated in Olympic Village, this is an achievement. Kudos to host Japan!

For two weeks, self watched in awe as athletes battled their personal demons and PUT ON A SHOW.

Will never forget:

• Stanford’s Katie Ledecky, slaying all
• the courage of the entire US women’s gymnastics team: Suni Lee, Simone Biles, Mykayla Skinner, Jade Carey, Grace McCallum, and Jordan Chiles
• Bobby Finke’s amazing races
• Hidilyn Diaz delivering the Philippines’ first Olympic medal ever, and it was GOLD
• German swimmer Florian Wellbrock losing twice, in the 800 and 1500, then coming back to win the 10k
• Ukrainian swimmer Mykhailo Romanchuk, losing to Finke in the 1500, still having a sense of humor (photo-bombing Finke during his interview with Michelle Tafoya)
• Neeraj Chopra delivering India’s first Olympic gold in track, in the javelin

and so many, many other stories, impossible to list all here.

Hidilyn Diaz, Filipina weightlifting champion

AND they even got a Belarussian sprinter her freedom.

Can’t wait for Paris 2024.

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

WSJ: Saturday/Sunday, Feb. 3 – 4, 2018

Top Headline: Memo Fuels Fight on Russia Probe

Graph: Markets Shudder on Inflation Signs

Other Page 1:

• Fed Orders Wells Fargo to Change Board
• Ice Dancing Has a Problem: There Aren’t Enough Men
• Nigeria Brought Back Its Girls; Now Comes the Hard Part

Such a moment we are all living in.

Stay tuned.

Olympics Coverage: Monday, 8 August 2016

Forget Gisele. What everyone watching the Olympics Opening Ceremony wants to know is: Who was the Tongan guy?

Did you see the US Swim team take the gold in the Relay?

Who was the Tongan guy? What was that on his body making his skin shine? Some extra-special high-gloss coconut oil?

Who was the Tongan guy? Close-ups, please!

He’s competing in Tae-kwon-do. When’s that event? Are they going to televise it? What time?

Who was the Tongan guy?

All over the morning news shows, dear blog readers.

LOL LOL LOL

Stay tuned.

These Mentions (A Post Inspired by This Week’s WordPress Daily Post But Containing NO Photography)

What is the history of the term ‘Manila Envelope’?

Why is it always about Imelda’s shoes?

Who was that fiction writer who had a character think (in a novel):  At least no one expects me to wake up and be Corazon Aquino today!

What was that novel about

Final Selfies (Probably): WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge

First Olympic Headline of the Day:

LAST-PLACE SPEED SKATER WINS GOLD MEDAL AFTER EVERYONE ELSE FALLS DOWN

Self happened to catch figure skater Michael Christian Martinez, 17, the lone athlete from the Philippines, in the men’s free skate.  It was early, not even 8 a.m.

He had a fabulous costume, sort of “Disney Prince,” and very thick hair.  He did well.  According to commentator Tara Lipinski, he learned figure skating by watching TV.  Only recently was he able to get himself some professional training.

He closed his eyes briefly as he was waiting for the signal to start.  Oh man, self could hardly watch, she was so tense.

But he completed!  And did well enough!  YAY!!!

Reading the Sochi Olympics I: Bode Miller

Yesterday, self read an interesting article about Bode Miller in the Los Angeles Times.  Seems he came up medal-short (8th place) in the men’s downhill.  He’d done spectacularly in the training runs, but there was a 15-minute delay while he was up in the slot, due to a malfunctioning gondola.  And this 15-minute difference, the Times seemed to imply, was enough to melt the hard snow a little more, and make it less than optimum for Miller’s type of skiing.

In addition, the Times article was the first self had heard of Rosa Khutor, the name of the particular mountain on which the downhills were run.

Today, self is reading the on-line magazine Grantland.  She isn’t quite sure yet what it is.  It seems to have articles on movies, sports, and everything in between.  So it’s like the Village Voice?  Or The Brooklyn Rail?  Anyhoo, self bookmarked the site last week.  This is only the third time she’s perused it.

Rhosa Khutor, says the Grantland writer (Louisa Thomas), “is a hungry God.  Ten of the 55 skiers who participated in the final training run on Saturday didn’t complete the course.  One of them, Rok Perko of Slovenia, smashed his face and left blood on the snow.  ‘If you’re not paying attention,’ said Bode Miller, ‘this course will kill you.’ ”

On training runs, Miller was superb:  he clocked first on two of the three training runs.  He was supposed to medal, dammit!

In other words, if you want to see the best performance ever by a man described by Thomas as “the best American skier of his generation,” you’d have to view Miller’s training runs.  Which don’t count for anything.

Ah, but note how Miller did not have a clean sweep of the training runs.  One of the three runs was won by a 23-year-old named Matthias Mayer, and this was the man who eventually won the gold.

Oh, the Olympics.  So much fun to watch, so many stories to tell.

Self could go on and on about how writers are similar to athletes, how writers have to write every day, how dailiness is as essential to the writer’s craft as training runs are to downhill skiers.  Etc.  But she will not inflict such thoughts on dear blog readers today, not when she herself is so bleary-eyed and hasn’t written much of anything (yet) today.

Stay tuned.

HOW SELF KNOWS SHE IS HERE (AND NOT THERE)

Self is very cognizant of the fact that she is in a weird place called California.

She is very cognizant of this fact because:

1. It is HOT.  As in HAWWTTT!  As in, melt-your-

Still More World Poems on the London Underground

Here are two more from World Poems on the Underground, a free publication distributed to coincide with the London 2012 Summer Festival, which takes place during the Olympics.  The poems have all been displayed on the London Underground.

Immigrant

by Fleur Adcock (New Zealand)

November ’63, eight months in London.
I pause on the low bridge to watch the

pelicans:

they float swanlike, arching their white

necks

over only slightly ruffled bundles of wings,
burying awkward beaks in the lake’s water.

I clench cold fists in my Marks and

Spencer’s jacket

and secretly test my accent once again:
St. James Park; St. James Park; St. James Park.

*     *     *     *

Should You Die First

by Annabelle Despard (Norway)

Let me at least collect your smells
as specimens: your armpits, woollen

sweater,

fingers yellow from smoke. I’d need
to take an imprint of your foot
and make recordings of your laugh.

These archives I shall carry into exile;
my body a St. Helena where ships no

longer dock,

a rock in the ocean, an outpost where the

wind howls

And polar bears beat down the door.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

More World Poems on the London Underground

The London cabbies self talked to were generally glum about the Olympics.  Self gleaned that they were rather morose about the traffic and how much more time it would take to negotiate the streets (“One fare might take up half a day,” remarked one cabbie).  Self gathered that athletes were already starting to arrive when she left.  Good luck, oh London cabbies!  Hope the Olympics aren’t too stressful for you!  And hope you all make lots and lots of money!

(There you go again, self, losing yourself in digression.  Wasn’t this post supposed to be about those poems festooning the London Underground in honor of the Olympics???)

Here’s a poem from Kurdistan, written by Choman Hardi (in English):

My Children

I can hear them talking, my children
fluent English and broken Kurdish.

And whenever I disagree with them
they will comfort each other by saying:
Don’t worry about mum, she’s Kurdish.

Will I be the foreigner in my own
home?

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

Poems From the London Underground

Because of the upcoming London Olympics, there is a veritable extravaganza of art and cultural events happening all over the United Kingdom this summer.

Because this is Britain, a lot of the activities revolve around literary themes.  Such as the collection, World Poems on the Underground, free copies of which are everywhere:  libraries, bookstores, what-have-you.

The poems are written by poets from “forty-four different countries,” many of whom “settled in London, drawn by its long tradition of welcoming the wider diaspora from every country of the world.”  The poems “have all been displayed on the London Underground.”  (Wow, can you imagine such a thing happening in New York???  That would be sooo fab!)

Here’s a poem, “Almost without Noticing,” written by the Finnish poet Eira Stenberg and translated by Herbert Lomas:

Almost without Noticing

Almost without noticing,
without thinking, it seems,
you’ve arrived where you see far.
Thirty years back, more, the path vanishes,
thirty years ahead, more, the path vanishes:
you’re forced to sit down in the shade
and think.
Memory,
mother of truth and myth,
tell how the terrain divided the stream.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.