“Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

Dante Alleghieri

Seven hundred years ago today, Dante Alleghieri died in exile, having long before been banned from Florence, a living purgatory that ironically gifted generations with his Divine Comedy, consisting of the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradisio, written during his exile and completed a year before his death.

The work begins with Dante’s descent and travels through the nine layers of Hell, guided by the poet Virgil. Throughout his Inferno, Dante exacts revenge upon his critics, by reciting their tortures as he meets them in Hell, poetic justice in its truest form. This name dropping, no doubt entertained readers in his times, but this book and the remainder of his masterpiece are still enjoyed today. Apart from the breadth of his imagination, his work broke new ground by being written in the Tuscan Italian of the time, and not Latin, which was then read by the educated classes. This choice helped cement and broadened the use of the language, much as the King James Bible did with English.

Dante also used a new poetic form, iambic terza rima using three rhyming stanzas (aba bcb cdc, etc.), later used by Boccaccio and Petrarch, the other two most beloved of Italian poets.

I can’t say which of his three destinations Dante entered seven hundred years ago, but somehow I suspect that Virgil was there to greet him.

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Some weeks after 9/11, I went to New York for business and made my way down to the wreckage of the World Trade Center, which was still in embers. I had a poignant experience at a church two blocks away that it seems appropriate to share today.

May your remembrance bring you closer to those you love today.

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When I wake tomorrow, it will be to another bright and clear, early-Fall morning, as it is apt to be in New York Washington and Pennsylvania, just as it was on September 11 in 2001. I was at work in Atlanta that morning and happened by a crowded, but mute, conference room watching images from the twin World Trade Center towers as they burned and then crumbled. Much of my work in that era dealt with disaster contingency planning, but we had never imagined a day like that.

Needing something to do other than to watch endless repeats of the second plane implode, I went home to be with my children, knowing they would see these images and would need what comfort and understanding I could offer. As I sat with them, I thought that that day would change everything for them and our country, and that perhaps the new Millennium might have actually begun that day.

I expected that the attacks of the day would galvanize and unite what was even then a badly fractured nation, as Pearl Harbor had once done. As we all now know, our reaction was turned from targeted response to what we seem to do best, making massive attacks and invasions at targets with too little relation to the attacks. The chance to forge national unity seemed squandered, at least to me.

As the years have passed, the less-than-half truth of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction devolved into out-and-out lies in the news and social media, accepted by too many because they wanted, or perhaps needed, something to believe in. It seemed, and does now more than ever, that the more outrageous a claim the more it is deemed by some an article of faith and shared identity among those who have fallen behind in changing times, an irrational desire to tear it all down, rather than accept truth and work together for a better future. Instead a vocal minority have tried to stop the constitutional process and put themselves and others at grave risk by refusing vaccines. Such steps beg the question, “Did Bin Laden in some perverse way actually win?” The question is, of course, rhetorical but worth some introspective thought. As for me, the answer is a resounding “NO,” and I hope you agree.

In times like now in which billionaires compete to be the first in space, rather than build libraries like Andrew Carnegie, I find myself jaded even me more than a bit, and yet, even after all the failures of this Millennium, I have to believe that Lincoln’s call to the “better angels of our nature” can still ring true. We embrace dissent, but we are too great a people to be brought down by wrong ideas, even when acted on by the misguided.

Much has been written and more will be tomorrow about September 11 and the ensuing two decades, and should be, as we share our journey and seek answers. When all is said and done, I hope we still see those two towers of light and all we can still be.

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Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak from 1941 stands still today, 80 years later, and is certainly sure to stand this season, what with the game’s overall batting average around 240, a 50-year low. Pete Rose reached 44 games in 1978, but fell to Atlanta’s Phil Niekro and Gene Garber, who Rose said pitched like it was game seven of the World Series, despite the Red’s 16-4 lead. In the Modern Era of baseball, no one has come close.

In what qualifies as old news to perhaps every fan but me, The New York Times published an article today about MLB’s now 20-year old game, Beat the Streak:

The contest (with a 5.6 Million Dollar prize), let’s you pick any two hitters each day, but no one has beaten DiMaggio’s streak, though three have reached 51. Of course, DiMaggio was hitting 408 at the time, an average no one has come close to in those 20 years, so….

DiMaggio’s streak ended on July 17 against Cleveland. His last at bat that day came with the bases loaded. Cleveland’s shortstop, Lou Boudreau, fielded a short hop and turned a double play to end The Streak.

A few years ago, I wrote a poem of sorts upon the death of Joe DiMaggio. It seems fitting to share today:

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As the second act of the pandemic takes the stage and the debate rages on over denial versus ever-unfolding science, it may seem there is nothing we can agree on anymore. Last evening though offered a moment of wonder and joy that surely we all shared.

As the sun set on a diamond carved out of an Iowa cornfield, the White Sox and Yankees walked out of the stalks in centerfield wearing uniforms from 100 years ago to play a game before a small but fortunate crowd of appreciative fans.

Sure, it was not the Field of Dreams film set, but another cut to the dimensions of Comiskey Field and separated from it by a corn maze, and yet it was real baseball played at its best by teams that seemed to appreciate the setting and who rose to the occasion. If you believe in the “church of baseball,” as Susan Sarandon soliloquized in Bull Durham, that space last night was holy ground.

There are game highlights all over Youtube that share the experience and New York Times piece that describes the real life Hollywood ending, a walkoff homer by Tim Anderson to lift the White Sox to victory and perhaps a long overdue moment of redemption. If you still are hungry for more, watch the movie again and marvel. It was made for under $15 million and opened in just four theaters. Its magic drew crowds and soon it was not just a hit, but a beloved classic.

Money and metrics may weigh the game down, but there is still magic there to be found.

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The 28th Modern Olympic Games begins this week, having been delayed a year by the pandemic. For the athletes it has been a long wait, but the IOC and Tokyo’s decision to go forward could prove troublesome, given the limited vaccination rate to date in Japan and through much of the world.

I had the good fortune to have an inside view of the Barcelona and Atlanta Games, at least as to the Yachting (now Sailing) events. The athletes and volunteer officials that I knew appreciated their chance to be a part of the pinnacle of their sport and seemed to embody the “Faster, Higher, Stronger” motto of the Games. Many may have been the best in their country, but were far from the sport’s elite. Despite that difference, the best and the rest competed equally and respectfully from all I could see.

In the 25 years since the Atlanta Games, the IOC and related sports federations have suffered from the growing need for, and the corrupting effects of, the enormous amount of money it takes to put on more than 400 events in an ever-increasing number of sports. Many have suggested solutions which the New York Times reviewed today.

One thing television gets right with the Games is its focus on athletes and the competition. What isn’t shown is how much of Olympic attention and funding goes toward pleasing sports and other dignitaries as well as the media. Athletes’ facilities paled in comparison to theirs in my time, and I’m sure the same is sadly still true today.

The Atlanta Games were marred by the park bombing on July 27. The next morning my first task at the Savannah Yachting venue was to make sure every athlete’s and official’s boat was checked for any such risk. Like others at each venue, I did my job to assure the safety of the athletes who had dedicated so much of their lives to compete there.

Forty-five years ago today, a 14 year-old Nadia Comaneci scored the first perfect 10 in Women’s Gymnastics, to the thrill of all who watched. It as a magical moment. Certainly the Olympics needs to reform. Still, we can hope for more magic in the coming days.

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I wanted to note this morning that the steeple on London’s Cathedral of St. Paul’s burned on this day in 1561 after being struck by lightning. It was never rebuilt, which struck me (sorry) as a particularly appropriate decision. After all, if God preferred his house without a belfry, the truly devout would surely take his demonstrative hint.

But then I found an incongruous bit of history that intrigued me more. On June 4, 1411, King Charles VI granted a monopoly to the town of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon for the ripening of Roquefort cheese. The history of their cheese making by ripening in caves dates from time immemorial, so what King Charles thought he was bestowing seems presumptive in the extreme. I suppose his grant precluded others from claiming to make that unique flavor of sheep’s milk cheese, which interestingly is still limited under trademark law to this particular area, even though the demand long ago exceeded what could actually be processed in caves.

The Greeks deemed the art of cheesemaking to be a gift of Aristaeus, the god of shepherding, though it found its way into cultures throughout the world. At some point, I ran across a somewhat silly quote on the subject of cheese, which cultured in its own way into a little poem, which I thought I’d share:

Ode to Cheese

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese 

Gilbert K. Chesterton 

So much of what mankind has come to cherish 

we first found when things turned bad  

grapes into wine – malt beer – old bananas to bread 

and perhaps even the eternal fruitcake

But above all these we must praise the creation of cheese

the gift of Aristaeus whose alchemy turned soured curds

into aromatic edibles enjoyed wherever creatures yield milk

with each land’s method duly prized as best above all

Cheddar – Gruyere – Danish blue – Greece’s feta

Stilton – Camembert and even Stinking Bishop

the names roll on the tongue as easily as their tastes

all essences as diverse and divine as its tasters

All cheeses aged to essence to form the perfect

appetizer hors d’oeuvre lasagna or dessert

What would we make of chips without queso

Norway without fondue or macaroni without its Velveeta?

I suppose it is true that poets have been strangely silent

on the subject of cheese in all its creamy flavors

but that is because they have been too busy savoring it and in fact

I hear the faint cry of ham and rye calling for some Swiss even now

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Joan of Arc was burned at the stake on this day in 1431. The proximate cause of her sentence was refusal to wear women’s clothes, though the underlying reason was that she was deemed a threat to reigning political and religious authority. Most of what is known about her comes from the record of her interrogation for the crime of heresy, but this post is meant to be less about her and more about the human, or inhuman, nature of people who would kill for little to no reason, as with her. Joan of Arc’s accusers conspired against her, perhaps because they felt threatened by her popularity, resented her zeal or just because she was different – which certainly was true. For that they took her life.

Tomorrow marks one hundred years since the Tulsa riots that killed hundreds of African-Americans and burned their area of town known as Black Wall Street. Much has finally been said about this inexplicably evil mass murder of people with darker skin whose only crime was finding a way to succeed in a world dominated by others, but no one seems able to explain how people could sink to such baseness.

But then if we think ourselves now above such things, we need only look back to January 6th and the riot that sought to put aside an election and overturn the Constitution. Tulsa was purposefully forgotten for generations, as we now recognize. January 6 was shown on live television and filmed by countless phones, and yet a minority in Congress just this past week forestalled an official investigation into the insurrection out of fear that it would implicate its own members and weaken them politically.

I’ve tried to find something uplifting, or at least hopeful, to say about the confluence of these dates, but the best that comes to mind is that a few do remember and regret. Perhaps that candle in the darkness serves to mark and to recognize that we can be better.

And, of course, tomorrow is Memorial Day, a deserving day of remembrance.

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On this day in 1881, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross. She lived a long and independent life and prevailed over hindrances and conventions that limited women of her era and that still do today. She first learned to care for the ailing early on when she tended to her brother for two years after a fall. She attended college, taught students, and formed a free public school. She was the first female U.S. Patent Office clerk, but left during the Civil War to nurse the wounded, risking her own life repeatedly. After the war she formed the Friends of the Missing Men, to search for MIA Union soldiers. She knew and was probably inspired by people like Frederick Douglas and Susan B. Anthony to pursue even higher social goals.

In the 1870s during a lecture tour, she became involved with the beginnings of the International Red Cross, based in Switzerland, forming the American Red Cross, as noted, in 1881. Frederick Douglas signed its original incorporation papers. She served in its relief efforts, but seemed to fall short in managing its business and fund raising needs.

During her time, the American Red Cross provided relief after the Johnstown Flood, in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and after the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the year Congress granted a charter for the organization. She left its leadership in 1904, but its service continues today, thanks to one woman’s service and vision. Like all human institutions and perhaps Clara Barton as well, it occasionally falls short in our times, but its red cross symbol remains the first welcome sign of relief one sees after disaster strikes.

We are saturated today with words and opinions from all sides on issues of import and too many that are not. Clara Barton serves still today to remind us that actions do indeed speak louder than mere utterances.

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Three and a half years ago I posted a few comments on the anniversary of the day Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of All Saint’s Church in Wittenberg. Five hundred years ago today, Martin Luther stood to defend himself before the Diet of Worms (a regrettably memorable name) against charges of heresy stemming from that early form of Twitter post. He had asked for and received the prior day to consider the charges, prepare a defense and possibly to discuss options with mediators. History records that he answered the charges by saying, “Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me. Amen.” With that, if not three years earlier, the Reformation was born.

Most now acknowledge that the Catholic Church in those times was corrupt, even selling indulgences for sins in advance of their commission in order to finance construction projects in Rome to the detriment of local church funding needs, a practice not fully abandoned until the 20th Century. Luther, for his part, was stridently uncompromising in his reliance on an individual’s faith, which sparked one of Christianity’s largest schisms.

In reading Karen Armstrong’s, The Lost Art of Scripture, she remarks that many, if not most, religions begin with a focus on the poor and downtrodden. In time they tend to be coopted by and for a ruling class. She notes that Judaism began as a faith in the God of a tribal people, only to eventually embrace a priestly caste and even a king like neighboring empires.

One can argue that the Catholic Church of five hundred years ago had followed such a path, prompting Luther’s reformation-minded focus on the individual. Looking around today at wealthy churches that maintain only a nominal budget item for “charity,” leads me to wonder if we as a people have lost sight of something as well. It’s not my place to preach, but perhaps it is fair to ask.

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