A note from the semi-nearby town of Livermore, which has a brand-new ceramic mural celebrating literary, cultural, and historic figures at the entrance to its brand-new library. Just one thing: many of the names of the past luminaries — 11 out of 175 — are misspelled. The one example I’ve seen repeatedly is “Eistein.” Now the library, which shelled out $40,000 for the work in the first place, is paying the artist another six grand plus expenses to come back out here from her home in Florida to fix the spellings. The artist says the locals are disrespecting her piece and missing the whole point: “The importance of this work is that it is supposed to unite people.” Yes, even bad spellers have a place in the human family. She continued: “They are denigrating my work and the purpose of this work.” Nevertheless, she’s going to take the money and fix the thing.
Hey, Why Don’t You Pay ME to Do This?
Wired News is starting a two-week series of reports on a trip down the Mississippi River by one of its writers. Having just driven a relatively short section of the river with my dad, and having had a blast doing it and writing a little about it, I’m envious.
Luke vs. The Emperor
Saw just a little bit of the Edwards-Cheney joint appearance. The last half hour or so. Actually, Cheney wasn’t as Emperor-like as I expected. And Edwards was somewhat annoying — flagrantly ignoring the questions posed, offering generalities where specifics were probably available and would have been welcome (for instance, on a question regarding the government’s proper role in combatting the relatively rapid spread of AIDS among black women in the United States, Edwards started by talking about AIDS in Africa, apparently because that was what Cheney did). Without waiting for the quick poll numbers, I’ll predict Cheney is viewed as the “winner” because he didn’t hem and haw and stammer and grimace and flinch the way W did against Kerry; and because Edwards, whom the Republicans spun as the masterful trial lawyer and therefore intimidating foe, didn’t destroy Cheney.
Candy-Coated, and Butt Ugly, Too!
For SpaceShipOne’s second X Prize launch on Monday, someone gave me a VIP pass that allowed me to go pretty mucn anywhere I wanted around the event site (except to the restroom in the building where the press conference was held afterward, but that’s another story). Since I was getting the VIP treatment, I also got a bag that was about half chock full of what’s commonly referred to as swag. My swag included an X Prize hat and a bag of commemorative X Prize M&M’s (the Mars Co. came in as a sponsor after the SpaceShipOne astronaut, Mike Melvill, let go a handful of M&M’s in the cabin during the weightless portion of his flight in June). These aren’t like the M&Ms you can buy in the store. These are special-edition M&M’s: an assortment of odd colors (a sort of aqua blue, white, and gray, with green-ish printing; I’m not getting the color scheme) and they’re imprinted with a little image of a spaceship on one side and the official slogan of the event (“Go.”) on the other. They’re nifty. And if I was half as industrious as I should be, I’d have posted them for sale on eBay already (nope — nobody’s gotten to that yet, although bidding is up to $182 or something on an autographed X Prize press kit). But they are also, well, ugly. It’s the color. Red and brown and yellow and green and the rest of the traditional M&M palette I can buy. Gray, looks like you’re eating something out of an ashtray.
X Prize: They Made It
OK. It’s done. The launch went flawlessly. I filed my stories and think I got it right the first time through (rereading the first breaking story I filed, I actually kind of liked the way it read. It was direct and not too jazzy but still reflected the excitement I felt as the stuff was happening).
So now I’ll get ready to go back home. Maybe back up I-5, or maybe a less direct route up the east side of the Sierra or something.
But, the difficulties of breaking away from my old desk habits and actually going into the field aside, this has been a wonderful story to get to cover. My only regret is not having gotten closer to some of the key players; it’s painfully obvious out here how hard it is to get on the inside of what’s going on. Of course, Rutan is known to want to keep reporters at arm’s length; also, by the time I was working on the story, the project had drawn a lot of attention, the Discovery Channel filmmakers had gotten the real inside track, and I was just one among hundreds of people to descend on the scene of the action. Lesson: Get in early. Now I have to think of the story I need to get in early on.
X Prize: Won
A few minutes ago, SpaceShipOne made it to 368,000 feet. Think that breaks the X-15 record for highest aircraft flight. Also, its team just won $10 million. Wow.
X Prize: Takeoff
Not that anyone is reading this live, but I’m able to post this morning from the side of the runway here at Mojave thanks to a company called WanderPort that has set up a prototype mobile WiFi unit they’re calling the WanderPod. So, I’m sitting on an equipment case next to the pod, writing a post, squinting as the sun rises higher and becomes more insistent about blinding me and making the display hard to read.
That’s the story of the laptop. The story of SpaceShipOne is this: It took off all of 25 minutes ago, attached to the belly of the White Knight carrier plane. Now they’re circling high above the airport on their way up to 48,000 feet and launch.
X Prize: Back to Mojave
About to leave to go back to the desert to see tomorow’s X Prize launch attempt. It’s about 340 miles from our house in Berkeley to Mojave. The way the traffic moves on Interstate 5, though, the trip takes as little as 4 and a half hours. That’s an average of 75 mph, which explains why it’s less than a relaxing trip.
More when I get down there.
The Doleful Season
The sun’s rising later and setting earlier. The weather’s changing. and leaves are beginning to turn color and fall. Autumn poignancy abounds. And the season is over for the two baseball teams I follow the most closely and care about, when I allow myself to care about baseball (which is less and less often; I recently found myself describing my “shriveled, bitter baseball soul” in a note to a friend, and while I like the turn of phrase, I’m disturbed to find it’s an accurate description).
The Cubs lost in Chicago, and the A’s lost in Oakland. The teams are quite different in most ways: The Cubs have a big payroll and feature a collection of guys in their lineup who have put up big offensive numbers over their careers, even if they aren’t great defensively; the A’s are well known as smart bargain shoppers who are carrying a couple big contracts but mostly have had to let their big stars move on to richer pastures.
But the teams are similar in one regard: Both had very good starting pitching and very poor (or at least worse than average, not having actually looked at numbers closely) bullpens. Saturday, when both teams were knocked out of the running for the also-ran (AKA “wild card:) playoff spots in their leagues, the bullpens were up to their usual tricks: manufacturing a come-from-behind victory for the other side.
Well, it’s doleful, but not tragic. The Cubs were not in a postseason game during my lifetime until I was 30 years old. Now I’m 50, and it seems like they’re just hanging all over the playoffs. Let’s see: 1984 (lost to Padres in disastrous series); 1989 (lost to the Giants, who were a better team); 1998 (Braves swept them after they beat the Giants for the also-ran spot — sweet!); and 2003 (lost in second round to the Marlins thanks to lousy clutch play and a fan who decided to show the world how clueless Cubs rooters really are).
And here in the East Bay, the A’s have been phenomenally successful despite lukewarm fan support and the fact they’re compelled to play in a soulless concrete sinkhole after it was remodeled at the whim of an NFL war criminal). But the success has gone only so far: As everyone who follows the sport knows, they’ve managed to lose first-round series four years in a row (not a problem this time around). Twice that was because they couldn’t close the deal after getting a better team on the ropes (the Yankees) and twice because they couldn’t close the deal after getting inferior teams on the ropes (the Twins two years ago, the Red Sox last year).
So, not tragic. But still doleful. As others have observed many times, either in print or at the end of an evening at the bar, the thing that makes a fruitless baseball season at least a little heart-rending is what it takes to get through the season: The teams, and the people who should know better who follow them, endure a marathon, 162 games, months and months and months. You go through all that, and it didn’t get you anywhere, really, except maybe to give you a few more statistics to chew on or to wise you up once and for all that, you know, you shouldn’t let these guys fool you into thinking they can make you happy, as a human being or even as a fan. Next year, you’ll remember.
The best expression I’ve seen of the real poignancy of the End of the Season was in a Cubs souvenir booklet put out after 1984. It featured a beautiful double-truck portrait of Wrigley Field’s sweeping brick wall in deep autumn, after the vines had shed most of their leaves, and lit by a late-afternoon, low-slanting sun. As a caption, it included a passage from a San Francisco Chronicle reporter immediately after the Cubs had gone up 2-0 in their series against the Padres. I can’t quote it verbatim, but he talked about the joy and frenzy of the fans in the ballpark, who knew the Cubs needed just one more win on their trip to the West Coast to get to the World Series.
Boy, sometimes that one win can be a long time in coming.
Bush in Berkeley
Interesting post by a friend who watched the debate on TV at the Berkeley campus last night. Gales of laughter greeted the most powerful man in the world:
“It was actually hard at times to hear the President’s replies to questions because the audience was laughing so hard. I don’t believe the President intended to be a comedian. But from the perspective of this audience, albeit a liberal leaning one, George Bush did not come across as presidential, nor did he succeed in sounding even as if he had serious answers to many of the questions asked.”
Of course, we laugh at this guy at our peril. He’s been laughed all the way into the White house. Hope everyone who was yukking it up is registered and will get out to vote.