Safe Haven

 It sure seems like Caitlin Clark enjoys playing for her coach (White) and the others on the Fever. There are “family” vibes around all of them. I see the superstars supporting the role players, and vice versa. Stephanie White is now 55-28 overall, since taking over going into the 2025 season. They were 1 (!) win from the WNBA Finals, without Clark and 5 other key players. Understand what this means: Caitlin Clark is a cross between Michael Jordan, and John Stockton. She’s shooting only about 25 percent from 3 point range. If she shot it at 40 percent, she’d score 40 points a game, AND lead the league in assists. Like it or not, she’s the face of the league, even when she isn’t playing particularly well. Some of the fanboys and fangirls need to relax. She can’t play every minute, even if she wanted to. She’s an elite scorer, but she doesn’t have to be. She’s surrounded by players who can score. That’s why she’s the assist leader! Kelsey Mitchell is a top 5 scorer in the league, and...

 My head is swimming with a lot today. I started the commentary on St. Mark’s Gospel today. It’s also my sister Alyse’s (June 11, 1989-April 5, 2023) birthday. It’s the first day of the FIFA World Cup. I’ve got my all-time Spotify playlist playing as I compose this. Taylor Swift’s “betty” is playing right now. I hope she had fun at the Knicks game last night. I’m rooting for the Spurs, but credit to the Knicks for that epic comeback. Did I speak profanity whilst observing ESPN’s GameCast on my phone? Yes. There are no lies on the blog; I speak Swear better than I would like. I had Roger Federer on my mind, because I love him, at least as much as I can love a stranger whose odd sporting skill and character I appreciate. Back in 2015, ESPN created a title screen/highlight package with a dance-pop song called “Something New” by the duo Axwell + Ingrosso. Every time I hear it, I think of Roger, doing Roger things. It made my Spotify playlist, too. I’ll still never be able to express to...

 The reverse statement is of course pithy Calvinism, and it’s pithy nonsense. Maybe going soft on human sexuality is just easier; you can consign anyone you don’t like to Hell anyway. You can’t really appeal to an unavoidable moral law, irrespective of religion, or any flavor of virtue ethics, in this scenario. The erstwhile interlocutors love it, because they can consign any position they don’t like as coming from religion, properly speaking, and appeal to liberty or something similar. The progressives are still Puritans, sans Jesus. The problem was never religion; it’s fanaticism untempered by Divine Love or truth.

 Now, Steven Deacon Greydanus is going backwards, from mistreating people he disagrees with politically, to publishing pro-homosexuality propaganda. Then again, everything is political now. It’s not enough to disapprove of Donald Trump’s personal conduct; we apparently have to disapprove of Supreme Court decisions that left-wingers don’t like. More to the point, the alleged mistreatment of sexual minorities is either fabricated, or exaggerated. We don’t have to join in various celebrations just to affirm our commitment to nonviolence and basic human respect, because well-adjusted people can respect others without necessarily agreeing with them. Maladjusted people need endless affirmation, because the voice of conscience is so loud. It’s funny that so many worry about what “conservatives” will do with government power, but they don’t seem like they are as afraid of words, debate, and disagreement. Hmmm. Coercion is the last refuge of cowards. Speaking of cowards, that’s what I call ...

 The people with the tough, hard exterior are just scared. Scared to love, and scared to be loved. I can see right through them. Kids are like this, too. Growing into adolescence, you can’t show fear, or vulnerability, or need. Especially boys. The only trouble is, if you do enough bad things pretending to be hard, you become that. If you don’t break out of that, you’ll hurt yourself and others—maybe badly—and wonder how it all went so wrong. I taught a kid like this once. He probably should have graduated the other day. We’ll call him “Matt.” I should say, I attempted to teach him. No fooling, he tormented me. When you’re young, testing boundaries is part of the deal. But in strong families, with luck, you get to test your own boundaries while you grow up. If not, they test them on the green and profoundly disabled teacher. This sad story wasn’t my fault, objectively. I know that. But I still think about that kid. I question everything I said and did. On the other hand, the next t...

 I’m up way too late tonight, because I started adding pop culture stuff to my Facebook profile. Among my ten favorite films are two starring this man: Hook (1991) and What Dreams May Come (1998). I didn’t even add Dead Poets Society (1989) or his Oscar-winning performance in Good Will Hunting (1997) and I don’t much like the two leads who wrote the script: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Robin kept that movie from being youthful self-congratulatory nonsense. Will sucks, and Affleck’s character is pointless. If I didn’t resonate with the trauma and the love story, I might have hated it. Robin has absolutely iconic films that I haven’t seen. But anyone who thinks he’s just a comedic actor isn’t paying attention. Dude is one of the best actors, period. And he gave us himself without playing himself. It’s cliche and mainstream to love him, and his death saw an outpouring of emotion that felt weird, even for an admirer like me. But really, he was deeply human in the best way. I hope the Ju...

 My opposition to voluntary pregnancy termination (commonly known as abortion) goes like this: All human beings—irrespective of their ability or inability to defend themselves—have an inviolable dignity. It is morally unacceptable to murder a living human being. (Indeed, it’s reprehensible to desecrate the body of a human being who has died.) Murder is the unjust taking of a human life. Voluntary pregnancy termination is the taking of a human life at an early stage of development. Murder is always wrong. Some argue that a living human being is only a person when they are older, such as when they can speak and think. One argument mistakenly claims that an embryo or fetus cannot feel pain, and thus, it is claimed that killing them would be morally acceptable. But to accept this would violate the first premise. Taking the life of a human being at any early stage of development, such as the zygotic or embryonic stage, is particularly unacceptable because they are defenseless. Aggressio...

 I can actually imagine the kind of person who worries that that America’s putative conservative political party will usher in some crazy religious nutters. The avowed Christians around Donald Trump are not like your Grandma. I might have said they haven’t had a normal day since Halloween, 1985, but they probably don’t celebrate Halloween. We can imagine those people; they are depicted on TV a lot, fairly and not. I saw a clip of the stand-up comedian Danny Jolles talking about “bros” the other day. [Bros? Oh. Like, not the guys who call everything “sportsball” to seem cool to their wussy academic friends. Gotcha.—ed.] He said a funny thing, insulting maybe, meant for that “wussy” audience: “Bros are like the dogs of people.” Loudly announcing themselves, potentially annoying, but really just want to make friends. After mentioning that genuinely evil, dangerous bros exist, he noted that a “good bro” refers to Roe v. Wade approvingly. And maybe Danny Jolles is the kind of liberal co...

 The infamous Juror #3 was played by Lee J. Cobb, and of course his intransigence was driven by his distance from his son. He saw his son in the defendant. He got called a sadist by Henry Fonda’s Juror #8, and he did a fair amount of yelling. But in the end, I’m pretty sympathetic. The real bigot is Juror #10. He goes on a big rant, and gets shunned by all the others. Ed Begley. He had to be a heck of an actor. The anger ranges from subtle to explosive. I think the lesson is that anyone can seem normal when they aren’t pressed.