Chris Bohjalian's Blog, page 46

The Boss: Part Satan, Part "Big Stein"

The first column I wrote was about George Steinbrenner, the Yankee owner and baseball icon who died Tuesday of a heart attack. It was 1985, and I was living in Brooklyn. Steinbrenner had just fired Yogi Berra as Yankee skipper after the team had sputtered in April, losing 10 of its first 16 games. I was not long out of college and working in advertising, and I sent roughly 600 vitriolic words to The New York Post. The sports editor liked it, but they had more than enough sportswriters to...

"Mockingbird" turns 50 with grace

This summer is the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee's poignant, powerful Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird." Today is, in fact, the 50-year anniversary. The book was published July 11, 1960.

I own a first edition hardcover, which might be worth serious money if it still had the dust jacket. It doesn't because in 1966 or 1967, I took my crayons and added colorful birds to the muted leaves on the tree that adorns the cover. They weren't very good because I was talentless as a...

Bombs bursting in air? Mailboxes beware.

Today is the day when we celebrate the way Adams, Jefferson, and Washington managed to proclaim U.S. independence in 1776 without blowing up a single mailbox -- some thing that hasn't occurred on any Fourth of July in America since. I asked readers for their favorite memories of this impor tant holiday, and here is a small sampling of their stories.

• Carole Goldberg, Hartford, Conn.: When I was a kid in the early 1950s, we had fireworks at the Connecticut beach where we rented a cottage. Our...

Life in the very fast lane

The main north-south highway in Italy is called an autostrada, a word that translates roughly to "American drivers better be wearing diapers when they're on it. Otherwise they'll have a lot of explaining to do when they return their rental cars." It is also called the A1, although I'm pretty sure it was not named after the American steak sauce.

I was in Italy this month and drove long stretches of the autostrada. It is sort of like Interstate 89 here in northwest Vermont, except all the rest...

Leo was more pussycat than lion

When I was a child, my grandfather, Leo Bohjalian, would sit me on his lap, grab the massive throw pillow that was my stomach, and bounce me on his knee cooing, "Big belly, big belly, big belly." This was meant as an affectionate, grandfatherly gesture, not his subtle way of suggesting that if I didn't lose weight, I was going to wind up a Jenny Craig testimonial. Just for the record, there is also a chance that when I was being bounced on his lap, I was wearing a white turtleneck and red...

No school like old school

Last month when I was visiting my father in Ft. Lauderdale, we had lunch with Jan and Saul and Marv and Linda and my dad's girlfriend, Julie. I am in my 40s and they are all roughly my father's age - which meant they were all born when either Calvin Coolidge or Herbert Hoover was President. Yup, Coolidge. And Hoover. This also meant that mostly we talked about golf and tennis and walkers and oxygen tanks. We also talked about flatulence, but never in the context of walkers and oxygen tanks...

66 years ago, they earned it

Sometimes when my brother and I talk about our late UncleWarren, we find ourselves joking about the way he seemed to get married anddivorced at least once a decade, or the way he hid name brand sodas from usbecause he didn't want to share them. But just when our derision is growing alittle raucous, he will pause and remind me, "Of course, he was also a warhero. He was, I'm pretty sure, the...

Cures for sword wounds - now on sale!

Sydney Minnerly, 8, is sitting at a
picnic table near the river that runs behind the Lincoln Community School,
carefully spelling out the words St.-John's-wort on wooden Popsicle sticks. The
sticks will label the seedlings that her second grade class is growing.

Finding the right stuff in the deep end

Here's an old
joke: I'm not afraid of flying. It's crashing that worries me.

Last month I
climbed into a flight suit, got strapped inside a Modular Egress Training
Simulator (METS, for short), and lowered into a 100,000-gallon tank of water.
Then I was rolled 180 degrees so I was upside-down.

The point
this, other than determining if my flight suit should have a diaper, was to
a taste of what it's like to exit a plane that has just crashed in water. I
spending the day at Survival...

The girls of summer are back

David Arndt is very proud of his 8-year-old daughter, Jnana. "The other day she had the shortest recorded hit in baseball history: One inch," he tells me, as we stand behind the backstop at the Little League field here in Lincoln.

Jnana (Sanskrit for wisdom) is one of the 13 players on this year's Lincoln minor league girls' softball team. The ballplayers are all between the ages of 8 and 10. Five have never played baseball or T-ball be fore.

But their coach, David Wood, remains optimistic. Wood, who is also the pastor of the United Church of Lincoln, has been coaching girl's softball since his niece, Emily, started playing when she was 7.

That was nine seasons ago. "This is a great bunch," he says, standing a few feet in front of the pitcher's mound, tossing batting practice to his team. "And some of them are pretty good. They can field a ground ball and they have the slightest idea where to throw it."

And while five of the players are rookies, they also have some serious veterans.

There is catcher Carlyle Grundon, who has purple hair and a matching purple dress and purple sneakers. There is pitcher Cori Pike, who is also a pretty serious slugger, demanding a 28-inch bat when a lot of her teammates are content with a 27-inch model or a paint stirrer from the hardware store. And there is in fielder Alexis Marnellos, who has been around long enough to know that some times it takes work to find the right batting helmet. ("It smells like armpit in here!" she exclaims after donning the first helmet she finds.) One of the reasons Wood likes teaching the girls is that they have a lot of team spirit. "In some ways, the girls arrive as more of a team than the boys. They're more social," he explains. "Of course, the boys don't scream when the ball is hit to them, so it's a tradeoff."

But the girls do arrive ready to cheer on their teammates. Indeed, I have only been watching practice a few minutes when Dana Norton, Lizzy Nault and Fiona Oldham want to teach me a cheer: "Let's go, Cori, let's go! Hit it all the way to Idaho!" When I have mastered the chant, Dana patiently explains to me, "You see, the good thing about this one is that you can use any name in the middle. It doesn't have to be just Cori."

By the end of the season, I imagine the girls will have learned a lot of cheers. And they will know a lot more about softball.

At one point I was standing in the first base coach's box watching Fiona learn to play first base. Her dad, Phil Oldham, was standing about 15 feet away, tutoring her.

The following is their verbatim exchange:

Fiona: It's sort of scary being at first base because they're always throwing the ball to you.

Dad: When there is a ground ball, you go right to the bag.

Fiona: Why do they call it a bag?

Dad: The base.

Fiona: Not the bag?

In Wood's opinion, the game at this level is all about growth and self-esteem.

After practice he told me, "It's great to watch them develop some skills. When Lizzy fielded that ground ball perfectly and tagged out the runner, she felt such satisfaction. They won't all play varsity softball when they're older, but I hope they'll play recreational softball."

And the coach always keeps things in perspective and never loses sight of the real priorities: "I like the fact that we begin our season with an away game: It means we get to have creemees on the way home."

Yup. You know Memorial Day is nearing when the girls of summer are back and the creemee stand is open. Play ball!

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on May 16, 2010.)