Eric Timar's Blog, page 3

Clement weather! (Just in time for the long weekend)

There is a terrific word used today by Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post: clement.  We hear about inclement weather all the time, but nice weather can indeed be termed clement (I looked it up).

“The approximately 150-foot-tall seasonal inflatable structure would be inflated during clement months for special events . . . “

The article is about a temporary dome that might be added to the Hirshhorn Museum.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/hirshhorn-would-go-back-to-square-one-if-smithsonian-bursts-the-bubble/2013/05/23/a22427b0-c3dc-11e2-914f-a7aba60512a7_story.html?hpid=z1

On a related note, please do not add any nocuous comments to this post.

I’m still waiting for a description of someone who grew with moderate challenges in a somewhat well-off town to be described as having a medium-scrabble upbringing.

 

 

Puzzle: What do these words have in common: mate, peck . . .

. . . and big?

I’ve been collecting these for years.  I have a few more, also. My children tell me bot is in the group, also, and I guess that’s okay, although bot seems awful newfangled to me.

(N.B. the palm tree photo has nothing to do with it.  I just like palm trees.)

What do these words have in common: mate, peck . . .

. . . and big?

I’ve been collecting these for years.  I have a few more, also. My children tell me bot is in the group, also, and I guess that’s okay, although bot seems awful newfangled to me.

(N.B. the palm tree photo has nothing to do with it.  I just like palm trees.)

Once again overtaken by Walter the Farting Dog

Another chapter in my glorious march to publishing success: If an Amazon customer searches books for “peace story for children,” my book about Queen Isabel of Portugal comes up (this morning anyway) at #35, three spaces behind . . . Walter the Farting Dog, by William Kotzwinkle.

Walter has long been a nemesis of mine — well, at least since December, when I published. For some time his book came up in such a “peace story” search well ahead of mine; then Isabel dashed in front for awhile; now she has fallen behind again.

A Map and a Mule is a peace story because Isabel nipped at least one war and one battle in their buds, through diplomacy (which I don’t bore the kids with, don’t worry) and also by riding a mule onto a battlefield. And Walter the dog is an equally distinguished peacemaker, apparently.

You might ask: Does anyone really search “peace story for children”?  Yes, they do, judging by traffic to my other blog, my peace blog. Just ask Walter.

Special offer for Chinese military hackers

Hey comrades, thanks for hitting my blog — whether you’ve just pulled it up normally or are watching along via remote as I type this. (It’s probably the latter . . . I shouldn’t have opened that email from Jurgen Klinsmann with the “Eric I need your help with our formation vs. Honduras” subject line.)

Having a good morning so far? How was the air on the way to work today — was the meter up in the “Do Not Breathe” category, or higher again?

I know you’re anxious to read my books, and I’m sure you can get them online for free by using “the Party discount” (wink) somehow, but let me point you to the paperback versions, which are beautiful and come with that new-book smell. The cover of Pearl Lagoon is a genuine map of Nicaragua — a nation vitally important to the security of the U.S., which is why we’ve had to help shoot so many people there over the years — which is stored at the Library of Congress, to give you an idea of its importance. Plus, inside you’ll find references to Chinese influence in Bluefields dating back to the beginning of the last century. Well, reference singular, anyway.

(Bonus intelligence: When I lived there I went to a dinner party once, to which guests were to bring a dish and talk about it; and one of these Chinese-Nicaraguan gentlemen brought a dessert and said it was “sweet, like Nicaragua.” The other guests loved it. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, guys, I’m telling you.)

Also in Pearl Lagoon you will find vital information about reforms that have been made to the foreign service of the U.S. as recently as ninety or so years ago (the Rogers Act). You cannot buy information this good, my friends. Actually, you can — contact me by sending a text to my microwave time display, or whatever, and I’ll give you a 6.5% discount, or 7.8% for orders of 100,000 or more.

Sports metaphors, I wish I could quit you

I know some people strongly dislike sports metaphors used in business writing, and anywhere else. Too male-centric; often confusing for people not raised here; and so on.

 But I’ve noticed it’s difficult to avoid some metaphors because I often can’t think of a non-sports equivalent that works as well; example, moving the goalposts. If one party in a negotiation suddenly comes up with a different starting point, what is a better way to say that? “Party A has revised their original position”? “Party A has been given an inch, and now wants to take a mile”? (That gets the idea across, but it’s much wordier.)

 Or knock it out of the park.  What is better than “This is something she should knock out of the park”:

 ”This is something she should really excel with?”

“This is something right up her alley?”  (Yawn)

Maybe move the goalposts is not such a bad expression, since it’s not something that ever actually happens in a game . . . of course, non-sports fans may assume it does, and that it’s just one more thing unfamiliar to them . . . 

 

Soccer tournament of my search nations

Sometimes it strikes me that the nations of the searches that bring readers to my blog, as reported to me by WordPress, would make up a pretty good international soccer tournament.

Take this list from Thursday.  Eight countries, so two divisions of four. Each team will play the other three; top two in each then play each other — first finisher of each against second of the other division — to get to the final.

So with these eight nations, we would split Spain and the UK so they’re not in the same division, since, of these eight, they’re the two highest-ranked (although we’re assuming we’re doing it Olympic-style and having the UK play as the UK and not as England) (and it’s England, of course, and not the UK, which is ranked 6th in the world by FIFA right now).  Singapore and India would also be in different divisions, as the two weakest teams.  So we could have:

Group A: Spain, USA, Jamaica, Singapore

Group B: UK, Japan, Canada, India

You’d have to assume it would Spain/USA and 1 and 2 in their group, although you never know when the USA could slip up and allow Jamaica through.

Likewise in Group B, UK and Japan should finish 1-2, but Canada could have a good showing and get through.

Semifinal 1 would likely be Spain-Japan; 2, UK-USA; with a final of Spain-UK. The tournament could be played in South Africa, since they have the stadia still in place, and no team would have a home advantage — no team would even be from that continent (hey, don’t blame me – there’s nothing in this blog that should be keeping away folks from Africa).

 

 

The Haka! Beaches! Sunsets! My book cover!

The cover for my book A Map and a Mule was done by Miki de Goodaboom, an extremely prolific [redundant?] painter who is from F rance and now lives in Spain.  She has an English-language blog, with frequent updates; the current post is about a painting of New Zealand rugby players performing the haka. Other recent posts features landscapes, and also the story behind my book cover.

Her blog is worth a visit:

http://www.mikidegoodaboom.com/diary/

The post about my book cover explains how she removed some antennas from the original version of the painting, at my request; she had painted that town of Serpa, Portugal, just a couple years ago, whereas my book needed to show it as it would have looked in 1297.  That’s right — the Thirteenth-Century Portuguese were wireless before wireless w as cool.

I find it striking that Serpa in 1297 might otherwise might have looked just as it does today.

 

Nice review for Pearl Lagoon

A positive new review:

“Pearl Lagoon will appeal to historical fictions fans and those fond of adventure travel as well anyone who loves a murder mystery.”

http://scottskipper.blogspot.com/2012/12/review-of-pearl-lagoon-by-eric-timar.html

Amazon link:

We need green youth travel soccer leagues

Another scary map below!

On Sunday, November 4, two neighboring U13 girls travel teams in the Washington Area Girls Soccer League (WAGS) traveled far from home to win games. Both teams are based close enough to the Maryland Soccerplex (near Germantown) to play home games there, but on that Sunday one team traveled approximately 50 miles—to Severna Park, Maryland—to win a game 6-0, and the other traveled approximately 70 miles—to Fredericksburg, Virginia—to win 3-1.

Again, both have home games at Maryland Soccerplex:

Sun, October 14, 2012


GAME#
 
Time
Home
 
Away
Location


14423
 
1:30 pm
W9993 MSC Thunder
1-0
W9975 MD RUSH 99G Nike
Maryland SoccerPlex #17
 



14425
 
1:30 pm
W9978 BETH Academy White
0-1
W9939 CRFT A3 Ponies
Maryland SoccerPlex #4

And their trips Nov. 4:

Sun, November 4, 2012


GAME#
 
Time
Home
 
Away
Location


14436
 
10:30 am
W9970 SEVP Extreme
0-6
W9993 MSC Thunder
Severna Park High School Bermuda 1
 



 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 


14439
 
3:00 pm
W9966 FASA PREMIERE IMPACT ’99
1-3
W9978 BETH Academy White
Patriot Park (Fredericksburg) #3

It would have made more sense for the environment, for traffic, and for the sanity of the drivers had these teams just played each other, that day.

Rosters for these teams can go up to 18 players. Let’s say they have 16 who made the trips, and let’s say they went in 12 cars (which is more carpooling than I see with my own daughter’s travel team). Let’s say that those cars get 25 mpg, on average (which is probably very optimistic). That means the families of just those two teams burned 115 gallons of gas for the total round trip distance of 2880 miles. If we assume that all the players of the home teams rode bikes to the two games, that’s still about 2,185 pounds of carbon dioxide released into the air by the drives for this game.

And these two teams are from just one ten-team division of seven divisions of U13 girls in WAGS; where I live, in Northern Virginia, there are several other travel leagues, and of course the leagues have many age divisions. My daughter plays in WAGS; meanwhile, in the Virginia Club Champions League (VCCL), teams from Frederick, Maryland are playing against teams from Prince William County (approximately 70 miles away), and teams from Washington, DC travel to Loudoun County (approximately 40 miles).

Then there is the Old Dominion Soccer League (ODSL), which has teams from Spotsylvania, Virginia playing teams from Arlington, approximately 60 miles away. Boys do not play in the WAGS league, of course, but there is an all-boys travel league in the area as well: the National Capital Soccer League (NCSL), with teams in one sample division hailing from Stafford, Virginia and Laurel, Maryland.

This is insane. We should be smarter than this. The vast, vast majority of these kids can find competitive soccer games without traveling 80, 120, or 200 miles round trip. (See previous post for a team traveling 100 miles one-way for a game.) U13 girls teams from Loudoun County play in all three girls’ divisions of the ODSL, and in at least three divisions of WAGS, and in the VCCL; that’s at least seven neighboring teams that drive all over the metro area to get games. Do you mean to tell me that the skills of 12-year-old soccer players are so well differentiated (and measured) that we would be stunting them by just having them play each other? We really need at least seven different travel divisions for them? (And keep in mind that these are all travel teams, whose skills are already advanced [we hope] beyond recreational leagues.)

So my solution is that like-minded parents start a Green League with limited travel. Now, I understand that the term “Green League” may not appeal to everyone, so we could come up with something better; for example, the three Major League Soccer franchises from the Pacific Northwest—the Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers, and Vancouver Whitecaps—track their matches each season to determine the winner of the Cascadia Cup. We could name our local league the Falls Church Cup, or perhaps the Fairfax Classic. For those of you soccer fans who are more Eurocentric, you will know that the rivalry between Celtic and Rangers in Scotland is known as the Old Firm; we could call our league the New Firm. How cool would that be? “What league does your daughter’s travel club play in?” “She plays in the New Firm,” would be the answer, with no further information necessary.

By the way, those two U13 girls teams mentioned in the opening paragraph did indeed play each other, last season; they drew, 1-1, on September 15, at their blessedly-nearby Maryland Soccerplex. All the more reason to have had a rematch on November 4.