ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter


QUOTATIONS

  • Literary Coffee & Fishing

    He started a fire with some chunks of pine he got with the ax from a stump.   Over the fire he stuck a wire grill, pushing the tour legs down into the ground with his boot. Nick put the frying pan and a can of spaghetti on the grill over the flames. He was hungrier. The… Read more

  • Another Sunday Sermon

    For a brief period early in my life, I preached a Sunday sermon. When I left that vocation behind, I could not imagine ever wanting to write a “sermon” again. The current times have changed all that. In the face of Post-Truth, Donald Trump, FoxNews, and the intentional de-semination of un-Truth, the best defense we have to redeem ourselves… Read more

  • No dew; no dewy cobwebs. The sky looks mist-like, not clear blue. An aurora fading into a general saffron color. At length the redness travels over, partly from east to west, before sunrise, and there is little color in the east. There is no name for the evening red corresponding to aurora. It is the… Read more

  • HE WAS SITTING ON HIS HEELS IN THE COLD LIGHT of the dawn, drawing pale flames through a handful of twigs and dry crushed grass. Beside him was his source of fuel: a degenerate juniper tree, shriveled and twisted, cringing over its bed of lava rock and sand. An under-privileged juniper tree, living not on… Read more

  • A Sunday Sermon

    For a brief period early in my life, I preached a Sunday sermon. When I left that vocation behind, I could not imagine ever wanting to write a “sermon” again. The current times have changed all that. In the face of Post-Truth, Donald Trump, FoxNews, and the intentional de-semination of un-Truth, the best defense we have to redeem ourselves… Read more

  • It is discouraging to talk with men who will recognize no principles. How little use is made of reason in this world! You argue with a man for an hour, he agrees with you step by step, you are approaching a triumphant conclusion, you think that you have converted him; but ah, no, he has… Read more

  • Willie McCovey

    On July 30th, 1959, future Hall-of-Famer Willie McCovey had four hits in four at-bats in his Major League debut with the San Francisco Giants. He had two triples in a 7-2 win over Philadelphia. When I think of Willie McCovey, I always think of my father. When I was a kid and I would say something… Read more

  • Smoky Burgess

    On July 29th, 1955, Smoky Burgess of the Cincinnati Reds hit three home runs and drove in nine runs in a 16-5 rout of the Pittsburgh Pirates at Crosley Field. “Smoky Burgess did not possess the physique of a Greek god, nor even that of the average major leaguer. Standing in at a pudgy 5’8”, Burgess… Read more

  • In the joint at the corner I had coffee and eggs and looked at the papers. One of them was the tabloid I had telephoned the day before. When I picked it up, I felt a sudden, lunging fear. But there was no banner headline. I got brave and turned to the inside. (cf. Dewey,… Read more

  • “Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” ― Henry James Read more