Bring your own

When I played Little League baseball for a few disastrous years, my least favorite part was going up to bat, because you had to wear one of these ratty old batting helmets supplied by the local rec department. None of them fit right, and they all smelled like a hundred sweaty 10-year-olds had worn them before you, because a hundred sweaty 10-year-olds had worn them before you. And so every at-bat carried not only the risk of striking out, but also the risk of contracting head lice.

A few kids, the serious ones, brought their own helmets—custom fitted, tastefully decorated with decals, and presumably containing zero lice. These kids ran the bases like little princes. Any errant pitches bounced harmlessly off their heads, leaving their perfect skulls un-dented. The outfielders would perk up whenever a kid with a bespoke helmet stepped up to the plate, all of them thinking to themselves, this kid might actually hit the ball.

I say all this because incentives are like batting helmets: if you don’t bring your own, you’ll have to use the crappy ones that are provided for you.

            Adam Mastroianni, experimentalhistory@substack.com 

One or the other

If you can’t manage courtesy, try silence.

             Jim Butcher, White Night

 

 

 

 

 

 

The changing but unchangeable sky

I can truthfully say that nothing during my life
has impressed me so much as the sky.
It is my religion and my philosophy.
It is my cathedral,
and I believe it to be a source of inspiration
to anyone who wants to look upward.
It is the only part of this world
that Man will not change, because he cannot.

        Eric Sloane, Eric Sloane’s Weather Book

 

 

 

 

 

Do unto others

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

Toni Morrison, Barnard College commencement address 1979

 

 

 

Defining robotics

The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot
as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man.
The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun to Be With."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division
of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks
who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."

            Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide

 

 

 

 

 

Keep your wits about you

Trust that it is worth scratching on the wall
that God is love and life because,
all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding,
it may just be true.
Trust that if God is anywhere, God is here,
which means there is no telling
where God may turn up next --
around what sudden bend of the path
if you happen to have your eyes and ears open,
your wits about you,
in what odd small moments,
almost too foolish to tell.

        Frederick Buechner, New York Times, 2000

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: In September

September's Baccalaureate
A combination is
Of crickets, crows and retrospects,
And a dissembling breeze

That hints without assuming,
An innuendo sere,
That makes the heart put up its fun,
And turn philosopher.

                Emily Dickinson