Baseball, but really, time and nostalgia, and really, baseball

Time does strange somersaults when I start thinking about math and dates. For example, there's an age gap between my husband and me. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it doesn't feel like there's any time between us at all. But it's a wide enough gap that when we start talking about, say, graduation years or how old we were during certain historical events, it brings that time into sharp relief.

My husband and I are both baseball fans--Steve moreso than I am, but as with so many pop culture things that stick with a person from youth, he connected with one World Series team in particular at an important time in his life. When he talks about those players and that team, he is sharing with me the histories and traditions of his people. It's beautiful and emotional because he has that connection with those memories.

And while Steve was still very much a Cleveland baseball fan during the mid-nineties, in the hey-day of Cleveland ball, those '95-'97 teams were the ones that I connected with (even though, sadly, they never actually won a World Series at the time). I remember the first time I shocked him with a baseball nugget of trivia when I told him that I would always believe there's an alternate universe somewhere that the strike-shortened season of 1994 actually ended with Cleveland winning the World Series. That was my team--Kenny Lofton, Albert Belle, Carlos "by land, by sea" Ba-er-ga!

But what brought those '90s baseball seasons into even sharper relief was my dad showing me how momentous those times were.

My dad wasn't born in the US, but as a kid growing up here, he started following Cleveland baseball "about '63 or '64". In over 30 years of being a fan, he'd barely seen a team with a winning record, much less a playoff contender. When my brother and I were small, my parents would pack us up in the car with a cooler filled with hotdogs, and we would have a picnic at old Municipal Stadium with 50 other folks spread out over 80,000 seats, and maybe somewhere in there a ballgame would break out. People would flip the wooden seats in the cavernous upper deck to spell out words like "Go Tribe". Our family and any friends with us would take up a whole row or two just for ourselves, because no one else was sitting nearby. When John Adams beat the drum, it ECHOED, and everyone would grab the seat of the nearest empty chair and slam it up and down with the drumming.

And maaaaan, giveaways back then. Not these bobbleheads that sorta-maybe look like the player if you squint enough. We went to one afternoon game where they gave away bats--real, regulation, full-sized, Louisville Slugger, wooden baseball bats. They were painted bright red, and had the team logo and sponsorships painted on them in white, and you can bet we played with them in the backyard for years. I think my dad still may have them in the garage somewhere, relics of the before-times, when winning baseball in Cleveland was still a dream.

In '95, the first time the team made it to the playoffs in a generation, my dad saved the newspapers, recorded the clinch celebrations on VHS, bought "Central Division Champion" t-shirts and treated them like Sunday best. It wasn't just a winning team. It was the first winning team in a generation.

The World Series in '95 was tough. The World Series in '97 was tougher. And since then, we've had a number of winning, even good, almost magical teams. '07 nearly broke my dad, when Cleveland lost to the Red Sox and he swore, "I'm never watching sports again!" Of course, he did.

Then we had 2016 and the rain delay game seven heartbreak. Then 2017 and The Streak, but it wasn't enough to get us through.

Now it's October 2024, and I'm getting ready to watch (or more likely not watch) a World Series that remained out of reach from the Guardians again. When I do that somersault math, I realize that I'm the same age my dad was for those mid-nineties teams. I feel a tiny bit of that cynicism creeping in, the cynicism where my dad seems to be permanently planted now whenever we talk baseball. But despite all his lifetime of watching losing teams, or watching winning teams that couldn't quite win that last game, I can still hear the hope there. It's a hope that didn't want to fully admit that all of us thought this was the year we could win the big trophy, a hope that good things can still happen, and that we'll get to see them happen soon.

Maybe I'm only talking about baseball now. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I want to see the Guardians win for me, but maybe I also want them to win, just a little bit more, for my dad. Maybe I want us all to believe that there's still hope, there's always hope. Not just for baseball.

A word on pronouns

 First, I use them. You use them. We all use them.

What people really mean when they say they won't use "pronouns" is that they refuse to self-identify their pronouns.

But pronoun identification is not a burden, or something that will only serve one small segment of the population. It's a curb cut.

Curb cuts are the small ramps cut into sidewalks at crosswalks. They were mandated by law through the ADA to assist those with physical disabilities and mobility difficulties. Yes, they help people who use wheelchairs, walkers, or other mobility assistance. But curb cuts also help people pushing strollers, pulling wagons, making deliveries, pulling wheeled luggage, riding scooters, etc. Anyone who's had to push, pull, or ride something across the street from sidewalk to sidewalk has had their life made easier by a curb cut. (If you're interested in this idea, check out the work of Angela Glover Blackwell who has written more on the Curb Cut Effect.)

Regularly self-identifying pronouns is also a curb cut. Because yes, it will help those in the LGBTQ+ community. 

But do you know who else will benefit from pronoun identification? People named "Alex." Or "Jamie." Or "Adrian." Or those with any other first names that society considers to be gender neutral. 

Anyone with a name that does not have gender connotation commonly recognized by mainstream American society will be helped. This includes people of color, immigrants, people with very modern names, people with very traditional names, and many people I've neglected to mention here (because I know I have my own gaps).

I'll give you one big example of how pronoun identification would help me in my own day job. Part of my job involves calling or sending a letter to people who have submitted an application for a service. If the person's first name is one that I'm not familiar with as gendered, I have occasionally found myself embarrassed by misgendering, or awkwardly using "they" to avoid misgendering, the person I am trying to reach. Selfishly, I want to be saved from embarrassment. But also, I want to save the person I'm addressing the embarrassment and awkwardness of being misgendered--because that also brings an entire additional dynamic to the conversation. They are now in the uncomfortable position of needing to decide whether or not they correct me, and regardless of their choice, an additional level of discomfort been added to the interaction.

If everyone used pronoun identification reflexively, it would smooth those interactions. Rote business interactions would continue to be just that: rote. If I have to call my bank or the doctor's office or whatever it happens to be, I want it to be as quick and easy as possible and limited to the scope of the reason I called. I don't need additional levels of discomfort and frustration built into those interactions--and neither does anyone else.

So let's make everyday interactions easier, smoother, and more comfortable for everyone--regardless of how they identify themselves. It's such a small and simple thing to make one tiny part of someone's day a little easier.

Words are hard.....

 This year, I told myself I was going to dive back into writing. It had been gnawing at me, various ideas percolating, bubbling, screaming to be let out of my head and onto the page.

So of course, as I decide I'm going to write, all words leave my brain. I've felt foggy, sticky in the mind. It's even been hard to simply sit down with a book and make it past the same page my bookmark has been on for more than a month. Several different varieties of chaos may be to blame. Or maybe not.

My mind hasn't been in a words-kind-of mode right now. It's an unnatural state for me. Even when I wasn't writing productively in recent years, I'd post several hundred word rants about anything and everything on social media. Words are one of my most natural states of expression.

It's uncomfortable that I am not even a little motivated to write right now. Even this little snippet here feels taxing and clunky.

And yet, I want to make stuff, work on design, getting ideas for patterns, videos, how to implement different ideas. Colors and fibers I want to use. I'm even thinking about ideas to modify and customize my shoes. I'm on my phone researching how to stitch things onto shoes. The words aren't there, but the "make stuff" side of my brain is in overdrive.

I heard once that the healthiest artists were always sculptors. I don't know the truth of that or if there's data to back it up. But I bet I could name at least a dozen writers who suffered from addiction, depression, and other mental illness in less than a minute. Plenty of painters suffered similarly. So maybe there is something to working with your hands, making things, physical objects rather than transitory words or two-dimensional images, that keeps a mind healthy. Maybe not.

Maybe my brain pushing me into the physical end of creativity is the same way that my body craves a diet of fresh greens after a holiday sugar binge--inherently, my body knows that I need a specific kind of nourishment and tells me to seek it out to balance some of the more unhealthy choices or circumstances of late. Rather than fight it and try to do something I'm not in a frame of mind to attack at this moment, maybe the best course of action is to dig in where it feels healthiest at the moment. Set the story and poem ideas aside for a bit--not forgotten or thrown out, just saved and stored for a more opportune moment. And trust that everything will come around again when I'm in a better place to receive the inspiration for it.

Find your magic

Maybe magic exists in all of us.

Maybe the magic isn't only for a chosen few, but it is an essential part of being living, breathing, human, physical, and spiritual beings. We misunderstand that it only exists for a small handful of superstars and creative geniuses, when in truth it exists inside of all of us.

Maybe the magic is actually a poison when it is inside a person. Maybe that magic was never really meant to be inside our bodies, flowing through our veins, permeating muscles and organs, infiltrating every cell of our beings.

Maybe the only way to live a fully healthy human existence is to get the magic out from inside of our bodies and put it out into the world.

Some people exorcise their magic by playing sports or engaging in other physical feats.

Some people paint or draw. 

Some people invent new technologies. 

Some people teach. 

Some people heal and take care of others. 

Some people write. 

Some people play music. 

Some people sing. 

Some people have the unbelievable ability to love every human being they come into contact with. 

Some people cook. 

Some people build. 

Some people fix and repair. 

Some people plant and garden and farm. 

Some people care for animals. 

Some people care for the earth. 

Some people stitch. Some people wire circuits. Some people create curriculum. Some people minister. Some people pray. Some people carve and sculpt. Some people clean and tend. Some people organize and simplify. Some people connect people with other people, or connect people with the things and services they need. Some people innovate.

And everyone has something--and probably multiple somethings--to let the magic out.

Because when we hold it inside, when we never let it out, it fouls our blood, it turns into illness and stress  and meanness, a hardness to the world.

When it is stored inside of us, it turns rotten. But when we release it through any one of the hundreds and thousands of actions that people are placed on this planet to do, it becomes not only inert, but it transforms from a poison into an actively positive force in the world, bringing joy to others and inspiring them to find ways to release their own magic.

Stop Feeding the AI

I remember reading an article maybe a decade or so ago about the impending automation revolution, describing self-driving cars and other technologies that seemed (to me) impossible at the time, but are very real now in 2023.

One of the things mentioned in the article was how the automation of those kinds of tasks (jobs) would free up humans to do other things. At the time, I thought, “What ‘other things’ are you expected to do if that was how you made a living?”

Now I understand the idea was that people would be freed from monotonous or even physically harmful tasks in order to pursue endeavors that truly mattered to them. The leap from point A to point B is maybe not as smooth as that old article made it seem, especially when we’re talking about the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people that would be outsourced to ‘employees’ that can work tirelessly 24/7 without break, salary, or benefits. But who wouldn’t love to have a robot scrub the bathtub for you, wash and fold your clothes, or clean your windows? How many people already have robots in their houses (still imperfect though they may be) that will mop and vacuum their floors?

The implication is that when we would be freed from these tasks that consume so much of our time, humanity would enter this new age of enlightenment, a digital era renaissance, in which we would have the time to write symphonies, paint masterpieces, and finally write that great American novel. Freed from drudgery, we could dream and create. After all, it is a true tragedy to imagine how many Beethovens or Picassos were lost to factories, fields, and plantations over the history of humanity, and how much richer would our lives would have been if they’d had the resources for their genius to shine.

Those creating these automation technologies–I have to believe–are doing so with that intent in mind, the intent to free humanity for true greatness

Enter the AI bots.

Over the last few months, my social media feeds have been bombarded with AI generated images that are vibrant and amazing with their apparent “creativity”. Their advent was swiftly followed by a chorus of voices telling us that this new technology is harming them, many artists who know for a fact that their works were stolen and used without their permission to train AI bots, bots that were now generating art based on the labor and creativity of real humans. If you haven’t seen or heard anything about this controversy, just google “AI steals art” and you’ll find almost 5 million search results. At the very least, AI art is harmful, unethical, and quite possibly prosecutably illegal.

While I understand the potential good of robots that perform physical tasks for humans, thinking about these “robots” designed to perform the mental and creative labor of humans seems like nothing but heartbreak to me.

If robots that sweep the floor or save a factory worker from injurious repetitive motions are supposed to be able to give us the time to engage in meaningful work, I would love to know how in the world a bot that can generate an image in minutes for free–an image that takes a human hours of dreaming, labor, and planning–is helping humanity?

The AI bots are not only stealing the work of the artists it uses to “learn”. They’re stealing the joy of creation, which many of us would say is the purpose of being on this plane of existence in the first place.

Yes, I hear you screaming that YOU as an artist/writer/painter/designer/musician will continue joyfully to plug away in your own chosen medium regardless of what the robots do.

I’m not suggesting we can’t still create art. But think about how much of what we consume every day is art. Clothing, shoes, tv shows, movies, music, video games, furniture, not to mention books, visual art, even company logos. Until now, those were all designed and created by people. How long before CEOs decide they no longer need to pay a marketing team if they can buy an AI program to do the work? How long before newspapers and magazines no longer pay journalists to write their content? How long before every bit of entertainment we see and hear is being generated by something that was told over and over what we like until it finally spit out the Oscar-winning movie of the year. How long before the majority of art that feeds into our everyday experiences bears absolutely no trace of human creativity?

The bots aren't creating anything especially good. They are learning how to recombine images that already exist in ways that we think are interesting and will make us click “like”. It isn’t actually generating any new ideas. It isn’t creating new art. When new ideas are no longer put out into the world, I worry for the next generations and the possibility of people learning to think for themselves.

The purpose of art–all art, as I understand it–is communication. And when it ceases being about communication and shared experience, it’s dead, it’s no longer art. While I acknowledge that the AI bots are here to stay, and will likely continue getting “better” at what they are doing, they will still never have what human-to-human created art has: shared experience. It's my hope that eventually we will come full circle, back to recognizing that this robot-generated art is not the shiny new toy we thought it was, but is dead, void of any human experience behind it. And when people begin to see the soul behind art created by humans, we will circle back around to truly valuing the work, physically, mentally, and emotionally, of our fellow people, our fellow creators on this planet.

Not quite a poem

10 Things War Can Cure

1. Longevity.

2. Peace.

3. Education.

4. Abundance.

5. Home.

6. Family.

7. Lagging gun sales.

8. Quiet.

9. Sovereignty.

10. Writer's block.

A Question

Am I even a poet anymore?

One thing people don't talk much about with a breakthrough case of COVID, especially if during your illness, you're trying to isolate from the rest of your household, is the depression. Fortunately, after the end of the prescribed quarantine, most of those dark thoughts dissipated for me. But one lingered: am I even a poet anymore?

I've heard many poets over the years say they NEED to write, that they write because it is as necessary as breathing to keeping them alive, that they will write regardless of whether or not anyone is reading or listening. 

I believe there are some people who sincerely feel that. I'm not one of them.

I write because it is fun, or because I need a vehicle to share my words and ideas and thoughts. I write poetry to communicate in a way I normally wouldn't, with people who normally wouldn't  hear what I have to communicate.

But it's been a while since I've felt that I had much to communicate, that was not already being said elsewhere, more eloquently, and with more urgency. Over the past year, or two...or ...three? I've written a few poems, but most of them were an assignment of one kind or another. I've done very little recent writing that wasn't to submit on a specific topic, or to any other call to which I felt obligated--even if that obligation was only to myself. I haven't written just because I had something to write. And so this pervasive, "Am I even a poet anymore?" has been bothering me. Can I be a poet who doesn't poem?

I know a lot of people have strange reservations and feelings about self-labeling as a poet. I once encountered someone at an open mic reading who told me he couldn't call himself a "poet" unless he was doing it to make a living. Some people worry that the word "poet" is too precious, that calling yourself a poet is hubris, that calling yourself a poet is an act of holier-than-thou.

None of that baggage around the "poet" label ever bothered me. A poet is someone who writes poems. But can I still be a poet if I haven't been writing poems?

Then about a week ago, I found myself giving two readings within a few days of each other. The first was part of the Poetic Inventory of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which is a beautiful project seeking to collect poems for every plant, animal, and insect species native to the CVNP. I felt relieved to be reading with other poets again, hearing this inspiring collection of voices. I encourage everyone to check out this project. 

Then I had the joy of reading virtually for Jonie McIntire's Uncloistered Poetry out of Toledo. It felt so good to be putting my words into the world again. 

And after all of that, I'm starting to feel, that, yes, I am a poet. Again. Maybe.

I still haven't felt pushed to return to the page, just yet. But I did feel an impetus to return here to this space. That is a start. And I will accept it as a little gift from the muse.

Thank you, friends. Life, love, and light. - TGB