In the Wake of our Curse; Curse No More

We thought we were bad luck. Every time we have come to Arlington, we have scene Wakefield pitch. Every time, the Sox have lost. In fact, it was our Wakefield woes that convinced us that we needed to come to a whole series instead of just one game. Our luck has changed.

Before the game, we took a tour of the park. We got to go into the Rangers' dugout and ride the bench and stand on the top step. Then the Allen's came to have dinner with us and watch the game.

Wakefield pitched seven innings, allowing four tuns on four hits. He struck out four while walking only one. The fifth inning was a little scary, as it looked like Wake was going to let us down again but Sox hitters supported him with a huge sixth inning which saw five runs on four hits. Two pitchers had to pitch to ELEVEN Red Sox batters to get the three outs in the sixth.

Manny seems to be coming out of his slump. He was four for four and lacked only a home run to bat the cycle.

Sox win 7-4 and climb to 11.5 ahead of the Yankees, who are now in fourth place in the east! We are trying to decide whether or not to bring brooms to tomorrow's game in preparation for a sweep.

Dispatch from the 16th Floor

I write to you now from the sixteenth floor of the Arlington Wyndham Hotel where we are staying in a Suite after getting a free upgrade. We have a kitchenette and a living area with a sofa; all so we can relax between baseball games.

We walked to the park extremely early today so that we could go to the Legends museum. The picture above is of a jersey and a bat that belonged to Ted Williams. Unfortunately, his head is still in a freezer. That's what I'd really like to see. So, to the game.

The game didn't begin until 9:00 due to a rain delay. By that time, we'd been at the park almost six hours. The good part of all this time is that Charissa was able to get an autograph from Sox reliever Kyle Snyder (who would pitch an entire two thirds of an inning: .2 1 0 0 0 1). Rangers starter Brandon McCarthy went only two innings allowing four runs on only one hit with four walks. Matsuzaka cruised for the first three innings but then he began feeling nauseous and allowed five runs in the fourth inning (he had allowed five runs in his last three starts...combined). He left after a strong fifth, just long enough to get the win after the Sox scored two more in the fifth. The Sox then t-ed off on Frank Francisco who allowed four more runs on four hits in one third of an inning. Sox win 10-6, incidentally, the same score that the Yankees lost to the Angels with which moves the Sox to 10.5 ahead of the second place Yankees in the AL East.

By the way, I gave Sammy Sosa an error in the second allowing Lugo to reach. Sosa then through Pedroia out who had remained close to first so that he could tag. The home town score keeper saw it differently and spared Sosa the error, calling the play a fielder's choice. It remains an error on my score card and I refuse to change it.

All Set

We leave for four days in Dallas tomorrow to see a full series of the Red Sox at the Rangers. Here's how it looks:

Friday:
Matsuzaka (6-2, 4.06) vs. McCarthy (4-4, 5.82)

Saturday:
Wakefield (4-5, 3.14) vs. Padilla (2-5, 5.52)

Sunday:
Tavarez (3-4, 5.27) vs. Loe (1-4, 6.38)

The matchups promise a good series. With Tavarez pitching on Sunday, I have chosen that as the day I will wear a Rangers hat, especially since I like Kameron Loe. I will give dispatches from D-Town and pictures when I return.

GO SOX!

Beat Picture of the Week

A Picture from my beat:
In case you cannot tell what this is, this is a glass door at a "church" which awaits the overthrow of white people. This door lists the 12 tribes of Israel with their modern descendants.

1) Judah: The Negroes
2) Benjamin: West Indians
3) Levi [the Priestly tribe, I'd like to point out]: Haitians
4) Simeon: Dominicans
5) Zebulun: Guatemala to Panama
6) Ephriam: Puerto Ricans
7) Manasseh: Cubans
8) Gad: Amer. Indians
9) Rueben: Seminole Indians [which are apparently different than American Indians]
10) Nephtali: Argentine to Chile
11) Asher: Colombia to Uruguay
12) Issachar: Mexicans

Still Going Strong

My grades for Spring:

Writing the Short Story A
Restoration and 18th Century A
American Lit 1800-1865 A

It Would Bee My Luck

I woke up this afternoon and went outside to see several bees hanging around the front of the house. I though, "yikes. The bees like my house. I might have to get some poison." Charissa came home and we went out to eat with her parents, which kept us away from the house for about an hour and a half. When we returned, the several bees had turned into a bee hive full of thousands of bees hanging below the overhang between out first and second floor, about six feet from our front door. Now we have to use the back door and I'm desperately afraid that the bees will find a way into the house. I guy from a bee farm is supposed to come in the morning "about seven or maybe a couple hours later." Please, please, be there at 7:00. In the meantime, Charissa has gone to stay with the Landrums, just in case, and I have gone home a couple times just to check out the situation.

Update:
The bee farm guy is hindered from coming by the torrential downpour outside. Apparently, they can do nothing in the rain so he can't come out until it stops. Plus, there's no way to get around town without coming across roads closed by water. After a three year drought. Mother Nature is attacking me.

Congrats to My Old Man

Lat night I got to watch my dad accept a Medal for Meritorious Service for his work in solving two cold case homicides in smaller jurisdictions at the request of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations. Congratulations to my daddy on an award that he has deserved for a long time. My old man is truly one of the best officers on our police department.

On the Legality of the Iraq War

There has been a murmuring among Bush critics (of whom I am occasionally a part)
that the Iraq was must end because it is an illegal war. I have been having to look at the bumper stickers saying "impeach Bush" and "Bush is a war criminal" so long and so often that I could gag. Their line of reasoning is that Congress has never declared war on Iraq (not withstandign the 2002 Resolution authorizing the use of Military force) and therefore Bush has no legal authority to remain there. Not one to trust the media who makes things up or party pundits who spin for their own agenda, I decided to do the unthinkable among the hoi polloi: I actually looked the laws up myself!

The real question is: is the formal declaration of war an antiquated concept? Legally, it would seem so. Congress's "vote of confidence" in the form of it's 2002 Joint Resolution for the Use of Military force in Iraq" is legal authority enough under the War Powers Act of 1973. Don't believe me? Here is a portion if the text:

Section 5: (b) Within sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is
required to be submitted pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is earlier, the
President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to
which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the
Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization [italics mine]for such use of United States Armed Forces

It goes on to say:

Notwithstanding subsection (b), at any time that United States Armed Forces are
engaged in hostilities outside the territory of the United States, its
possessions and territories without [italics mine] a
declaration of war or specific statutory authorization, such forces shall be
removed by the President if the Congress so directs by concurrent resolution.

The "without" is the important word, as Congess did in fact give the President authorization to go to war. Furthermore, The law gives congress no authority to revoke its authorization once it has given it. The preseident is therefore not obligated to remove troops at the behest of the whims of a majority changing Congress. Please, look it up for yourself. The truth is, whether you like it or not, the President is the Constitutionally authorized and he may commit troops wherever in the world he wants to. Take it up with the Founding Fathers. That being said, whether you agree with the war or not, Bush is not a war criminal so put up the bumper stickers, unless you like driving around advertising your failure to research the topic you pretend to care about.

Proud Owner

I like to collect old books in the areas of my interests. I already own a couple really good ones including: The Study of Aesthetics published in 1856 and A History of English Dramatic Literature, published in 1899. I tried to get a first edition British copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin from 1851 but, alas, it went for almost $300 while I was at a ball game. I did manage to pick up Abraham Lincoln: His Life and Public Service by Mrs. P.A. Hanaford, the author of Our Martyred President. The "record of his stainless life and martyr's death" is inscribed to "The Loyal Men and Women, North and South, East and West; the the Union Army and Navy; and especially to the Long-Oppressed Race for whom President Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation" I can't wait to read and digest this account from just after his death from an obviously sympathetic New England writer!

Another Graduate Bibliography

The first version was annotated!

Works Cited:
Aristotle. “Poetics.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Ed.
David Richter. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 1998. 42-64.
Brown, Charles Brockden. Wieland, or the Transformation. New York: Prometheus
Books, 1997.
---. “Wieland, or the Transformation. An American Tale.” The American
Review and Literary Journal 1 (1801): 333-37.
Davidson, Cathy N. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New
York: Oxford UP, 1986.
DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.
Goddu, Teresa A. Approaches to Teaching Gothis Fiction: the British and American
Traditions. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003.
Harris, Jennifer. “At One with the Land: The Domestic Remove-Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland and Matters of National Belonging.” Canadian Review of
American Studies 33.3 (2003): 189-210.
Kramnick, Isaac, ed. The Portable Enlightenment Reader. New York: Penguin Books,
1995.
Kutchen, Larry. “The ‘Vulgar Thread of Canvass’ Revoluction and the Picturesque in
Ann Eliza Bleeker, Crevecoeur, and Charles Brockden Brown.” Early American Literature 63.3 (2001): 395-425.
Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Government. Ed. Thomas P Pearson. New York:
The Liberal Arts Press, 1952.
---. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Vol I. Ed. Alexander Cambell Fraser.
New York: Dover Publications, 1959.
Schneck, Peter. “Wieland’s Testimony; Charles Brockden Brown and the Rhetoric of
Evidence.” The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 18 (2002): 167-213.
Sutherland, Helen. “Varieties of Protestant Experience: Religion and the Doppelganger in Hogg, Brown, and Hawthorne.” Studies in Hogg and His World 16 (2005): 71-85
Tomkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction 1790-1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. 40-61.

Works Consulted:
Amfreville, Marc. “Charles Brockden Brown’s Cultural Paradox.” Letterature d’America
24 (2004): 5-21.
Basu, Biman. “Reading the Techno-Ethnic Other in DeLillo’s White Noise.” Arizona Quarterly 61.2 (2005): 87-111
Bradshaw, Charles C. “New England Illuminati: Conspiracy and Causality in Charles
Brockden Brown’s Wieland.” The New England Quarterly 76 (Sept 2003): 356- 77.
Dill, Elizabeth. “The Republican Stepmother: Revolution and Sensibility in Charles
Brockden Brown’s Wieland.” The Eighteenth Century Novel 2 (2002): 273-303.

Grabo, Norman. The Coincidental Art of Charles Brockden Brown. Chapel Hill, NC: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1981. 3-29.
Hsu, Hsuan L. “Democratic Expansionism is ‘Memoirs of Carwin’.” Early American
Literature 35 (2000):137-156.
Norwood, Lisa West. “‘I may be a Stranger to the Ground of Your Belief’ Constructing
Sense of Place in Wieland.” Early American Literature 38.1 (2003): 89-122.
Williams, Daniel E. “Writing under the Influence: An Examination of Wieland’s ‘Well
Authenticated Facts’ and the Depiction of Murderous Fathers in Post- Revolutionary Print Culture.” Eighteenth Century Fiction 15 (2003): 643-68