Romney and Sports, The English Patient, Comma Noting

Speaking of Republican candidates for president, this note seen at tpm:

For my money, the real time bomb for Mitt may be his comment last night about seeing "the Patriots win the World Series." Heck, they haven't won a Series since Yastrzemski was quarterback.

--Josh Marshall

Oh oh. Not good for the Romney man though I can understand getting a few details mixed up here and there. Anyway, he has lots bigger things to think about than sports figures and teams in a crazy-with-success sports metropolis.

Word of the day: Sapper (long answer). Kept coming across it in The English Patient and finally looked it up in the dictionary (short answer). Do you know 'sapper'?

Almost mid way through The English Patient and it has finally grabbed my attention. Funny the way it happened: Hana, the female character in the book, a twenty something nurse staying with and treating a badly burned pilot in an Italian monastery, is reading from a Kipling book, and at one point kind of runs through a paragraph. The pilot, the English patient, stops her and tells her how to read Kipling, slowly, with patience, noting every comma, thinking about him sitting there at his desk and looking up and watching the birds and then returning to his writing, writing done with ink and pen, slowly, deliberately. So, being one who pays attention to not so subtle suggestions from authors, I slowed my own reading down and paid attention to the words and the commas.

It's turned out to be a nice change in pace and maybe not such a bad suggestion for expansion outside the realm of reading. For instance, while playing golf or walking with a grandchild, or watching the antics of hungry birds of a morning. I can hear Rex and Jack encouraging me to get on with it as I stand on the tee box and remember one more thing I want to share with them, or even Diane hinting just a little that I could go just a little faster. Come to think of it, guess I have lived my life with that 'not-so-fast-johnny' attitude. Doesn't mean I can't slow down a little more, does it? Will have to remember to take the time to smell the flowers along the way; that's what they said back in the '70's. Or, as Michael Ondaatje would have it, pay attention to the commas. (What are the 'commas' in life? in your life? Commas: little marks that help establish rhythm and meaning?)

So it goes on a misty Friday morning in Loogootee, Indiana.