ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “First Dream” by Billy Collins

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on June 28th, 2011. Billy Collins’ popularity and financial success make him one of those poets it is hard to ignore. The quality of his poetry makes him impossible to forget. Collins’ poem “The First Dream” is… Read more

  • Two Lead-Off Homers

    On this day in 1993, Rickey Henderson of the OAKLAND Athletics opened both games of a doubleheader with a homer, the first player to accomplish the feat in 60 years. In his Hall-of-Fame career, Rickey Henderson led off a game with a homer 81 times. That is the MLB career record. The active player with the most career… Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT FRIDAY: Bix Beiderbecke on Jazz

    “One thing I like about jazz, kid, is that I don’t know what’s going to happen next.” — Bix Beiderbecke Read more

  • Midsummer

    Midsummer has arrived, and I have written little about baseball yet this season. But even more, I have written little of anything at all, period. This writing dry spell is the longest of my adult life. For those counting, that is 45 years of “adulthood.” But I am beginning to see a light at the… Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT FRIDAY: John Mayer on Music

    “You can never say you don’t like a kind of music. Best you can say is that you don’t like it yet.”  – John Mayer Read more

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT FRIDAY: Bill Evans on the Importance of the Bass

    “A chord is not a chord until the bass player decides which note to play.”  ~Bill Evans Read more

  • On Baseball, Fly Fishing, & Jazz

    Already mid-June and I find that I have only managed to get to one baseball game in person so far this year. That was this past Sunday at Target Field when the Twins beat the Cardinals 5-4. Normally by this time of year, I would already have been to a number of games—Major League, Minor… Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Miles Davis on Creativity

    “Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there.” – Miles Davis Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: BooK Review

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on October 26, 2013. … there is no more consistently perfect body of recorded work in jazz than that produced by Lester Young between 1936 and 1941 – with Count Basie’s orchestra, with Billie Holiday and with… Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Ahmad Jamal on Being a Scholar

    “I would like to be a scholar in whatever I do, a scholar is never finished, he is always seeking and I am always seeking.” ~ Ahmad Jamal Read more