October 3, 2013 archive

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2013 Senior League Division Series: Pirates @ Cardinals Game 1

Baseball will always break your heart.  This Series pits the Pirates (Argh) against the Cards (Squirrels!, Squirrels!) and I sure hope the eventual League Champion emerges from this bracket instead of the Dodgers (traitors), Braves (evil opponents of my Mets) one.

The Cardinals clinched their Division with 2 to go in the season and rode a 6 game winning streak to the end.  As you can tell by the seeding they’re considered the best on the Senior circuit.

Adam Wainwright (19-9, 2.94 ERA R), tonight’s starter, is generally considered the best pitcher left playing, though both team have outstanding staffs.  He was 1 – 0 with a 3.00 ERA in three starts against Pittsburgh this season.  He’ll be available on full rest for a deciding Game 5 if necessary.

The Pirates won the season series 10 – 9, but were swept at home by the Cards in early September.

They’ll start A.J. Burnett (10-11, 3.30 ERA R), late of the Yankees.  He’s 3-1 with a 3.67 ERA in his career against the Cardinals, but the last time they faced each other he was chased after 5 runs in 3 innings.

Pirates fans should not be discouraged, these teams are very evenly matched and pitching ought keep the games very close.

Cartnoon

On This Day In History October 3

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

October 3 is the 276th day of the year (277th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 89 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1967, Woody Guthrie, godfather of the 1950s folk revival movement, dies.

In 1963, Bob Dylan was asked by the authors of a forthcoming book on Woody Guthrie to contribute a 25-word comment summarizing his thoughts on the man who had probably been his greatest formative influence. Dylan responded instead with a 194-line poem called “Thoughts on Woody Guthrie,” which took as its theme the eternal human search for hope. “And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin’?” Dylan asks in the poem, before proceeding to a kind of answer:

You can either go to the church of your choice

Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital

You’ll find God in the church of your choice

You’ll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital

Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children’s songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is “This Land Is Your Land”, which is regularly sung in American schools. Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton have acknowledged their debt to Guthrie as an influence.

Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California and learned traditional folk and blues songs. Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, earning him the nickname the “Dust Bowl Troubadour”. Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States communist groups, though he was never an actual member of any.

Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children, including American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. He is the grandfather of musician Sarah Lee Guthrie. Guthrie died from complications of Huntington’s disease, a progressive genetic neurological disorder. During his later years, in spite of his illness, Guthrie served as a figurehead in the folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians, including mentor relationships with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan.

Folk revival and Guthrie’s death

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of young people were inspired by folk singers including Guthrie. These “folk revivalists” became more politically aware in their music than those of the previous generation. The American Folk Revival was beginning to take place, focused on the issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and free speech movement. Pockets of folk singers were forming around the country in places such as Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. One of Guthrie’s visitors at Greystone Park was the 19-year-old Bob Dylan, who idolized Guthrie. Dylan wrote of Guthrie’s repertoire: “The songs themselves were really beyond category. They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them.” After learning of Guthrie’s whereabouts, Bob Dylan regularly visited him. Guthrie died of complications of Huntington’s disease on October 3, 1967. By the time of his death, his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to them in part through Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, his ex-wife Marjorie and other new members of the folk revival, and his son Arlo.

Huntington’s Disease Society of America

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The Chase

Late Night Karaoke

The Five Minute Rule

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Over at Esquire’s Politics Blog, resident curmudgeon, Charles Pierce reminds us of his “five minute rule” with this little snippet:

If you listen to Crazy Uncle Liberty (!), Senator Aqua Buddha, or their disciples for five minutes, you find yourself nodding in agreement with almost everything they say. At precisely the 5:01 mark, however, the person to whom you’re listening will say something that detaches the entire conversation from the plane of physical reality and sends it sailing off into the ether.

As an example of the stupid that abounds, he presented a link to this video at a Rand Paul supporter’s web site.

I suppose those who signed the petition didn’t see the tee shirt. Sheesh.

The Affordable Care Act is a very flawed bill that lines the pockets of insurance companies by forcing people to purchase junk insurance that even if the premiums are low, the high out of pocket deductibles and co-pays make care unaffordable. Nor are the insured guaranteed access the treatment and medications they may need, since the bean counters can deny permission and referrals. These are facts that the government and media aren’t telling you

The only reason the right wing is trying to defund/repeal this law, which they can’t, is because they have nothing left to draw attention to themselves and try to scare people into believing that President Barack Obama is a socialist, even though has given the right wing and corporations nearly everything they’ve wanted, including the ACA. The war on the 99% continues from both sides of the aisle.

Let the Debate Continue

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The Work of a Generation

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s words were entered as testimony at the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee in Brussels on Monday.

Jesselyn Radack of the US Government Accountability Project (GAP) and a former whistleblower and ethics adviser to the US Department of Justice, read Snowden’s statement into the record.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Transcript can be read here.

2013 Junior League Wild Card Sudden Death: Tampa Bay @ Cleveland

Well, happy endings like that only happen in Madam Chao’s Massage Parlor and Hollywood, though Cleveland manager Terry Francona is looking forward to a rematch against the Red Sox, at team he only helped break an 86 year World Championship drought.  Can he have a sequel with the Indians?  After all it’s been a mere 65 years for them.

The fact that they’re forced to scramble for a Wild Card Sudden Death win after finishing up with a 10 game win streak (errorless fielding too) and going 15 – 2 down the stretch tells you everything you need to know about how badly they played in the beginning of the season.  They’ll be starting rookie Danny Salazar (2-3, 3.12 ERA R).

Tampa won four of the six games against Cleveland this season, but the teams haven’t met since early June so that tells you not much.

Alex Cobb (11 – 3, 2.76 ERA R) missed 50 games with a concussion, but he’s been a different pitcher since the injury, going 5 – 1 with a 2.41 ERA in nine starts.

The Rays have gone from inoffensive against Team W (for steroids) to obstacles in the way of the sentimental favorites.  Not that I’m ungrateful, just that in playoff Baseball your loyalties change depending on the opponent.

Game start @ 8 pm ET on TBS.