The Winning Streak

After last night's victory over Dallas, we're up to five wins. Five wins with the bun!

Devils Juju

This is funny. Have you heard how some athletes and sports fans get superstitious about winning? Like, when their team is doing well, they don't change their underwear?

Well... the NJ Devils' television announcer is a bright attractive woman named Rachel Herzog. Rachel understands hockey better than most fans and is delightful to listen to for sports insight.

Recently, bucking convention, Rachel started wearing her hair up in a bun while announcing. That's a controversial look in the sports world. Since that time the Devils have won four straight games. Rachel (and I) attribute the winning streak to her hair-style. Neither of us believe she should change it until the streak ends. 🤣

Sands Point Preserve (Long Island, NY)

New photos from a blind guy.

I'm back in the saddle, swinging an old piece of plastic in every direction. The machinery was cheap when birthed 55 years ago and, unlike me, has gotten no better with age. No electronics, electricity or other modern aid, just chemicals and creativity.

Words

The English language is quirky. There are rules but often exceptions. That can be confusing.

Here's an example. Usually the prefix "un-" indicates a word means the opposite of the same word without the prefix. Common/uncommon; usual/unusual. But that isn't always the case.

There are words we see frequently but don't really know their meaning. "Uncanny" is a good example. If you don't know what uncanny means and guess at it from context, you're likely wrong. Also, "uncanny" does not mean the opposite of "canny". Their meanings are wholly unrelated. Do you know what the two words mean?

"Uncanny" describes something strange or mysterious, often extraordinary or supernatural. "Canny" refers to a person who's smart or shrewd and profits from the trait.

Now you know. 👻

Wonder

"Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons." 

  - Alan Watts (1966)

Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard, who died last month (81), was a well-known American writer. In a dozen books she explored nature and its mystical meanings. Her most famous book, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. It is often taught in literature classes.

Rather than describe Annie's writing, let me share some of her masterpiece's most trenchant passages:

- If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. 

- I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell.

- It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.

- It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.

- Somewhere, and I can’t find where, I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to Hell?” “No” said the priest, “not if you did not know.” “Then why” asked the Eskimo earnestly “did you tell me?”

Hermès

Anyone here have experience with Hermès? 

I dove down a rabbit hole recently after reading a fascinating article in The New Yorker on this French company. I like that the company is two centuries old, still family-owned and cares deeply about quality. They honor their founding focus on horses with contemporary leather goods (the coveted Birkin bag, obviously) and show equestrian influence on fashion by, for example, incorporating leather harnesses into women's clothing. The company expanded into menswear in 1984 and has a hip new designer for that growing department. Who doesn't want to look French?

Have you ever seen Hermès scarves? Handbags? (Check out this article.)

Oh, and if you want to sound cool, pronounce Hermès the correct way: "air-mess".