HERE'S ONE YOU SHOULDN'T SIGN!

Michele Bachman is still an outspoken
opponent of Obamacare.

        Republicans are asking people to sign a petition calling for the defunding of Obamacare. Why would anyone in his or her right mind sign such a petition?
        They wouldn’t if they knew the facts. Over a hundred million Americans have already benefited from the new law. On October 1, just two months from now, millions more Americans who are not now covered by health insurance will be able to buy affordable health care insurance, and they cannot be turned down because of previous health issues.
        Republicans in the House of Representatives keep trying without success to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It's the congressional version of the Chinese water torture. The right-wingers are even threatening to shut down the government over the issue.
        Instead they should be working with the Democrats and the Administration to try to fix

MORE ABOUT COOPERSTOWN

        Over the past several months I have posted articles about and mentioned Cooperstown. New York, on a number of occasions. To substantiate further my high regard for that picturesque and surprisingly cosmopolitan village on the south shore of beautiful Lake Otsego, I am attaching a link to a series of brief articles written by Jim Caple for ESPN.com.
        The link was sent me by my grandson Ryan Kanarek, who shares my love for baseball and for Cooperstown. The articles cover many aspects of life in the village of Cooperstown and are worth reading by anyone who has ever visited the town or has contemplated visiting there some day.
        For a fascinating look at life in what I have argued is the most interesting town of its size in America, click here, and don't stop reading after the first article. Keep scrolling down the page for lots more really interesting reading.      

WELCOME ABOARD, HUGO!

        I am delighted to welcome my friend and Princeton Windrows neighbor Professor Hugo Walter as the newest member of our MINDING WHAT MATTERS team. Dr. Walter has taught at Drew University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Rhodes College, and Yale. He has published three important monographs and several volumes of poetry. Since 1999 he has been serving on the Faculty of Berkeley College as a professor of English and Humanities. For more information of his impressive background click here.
        As a Special Contributor to MINDING WHAT MATTERS Dr. Walter's first offering is his very latest poem, which will touch your heart, especially if you have ever bathed in the beauty and breathed in the history of Stony Brook Bridge. As a long-time resident of Princeton, I have crossed the bridge countless times, but I'll have a new appreciation for it, after reading the way Hugo has captured the spirit of that beautiful setting.
        We are honored to present to our readers for the first time in print . . .

THE SPIRIT OF STONY BROOK BRIDGE

by Hugo Walter, Special Contributor

Glistening in russet-saffron dawns
Of emerald-gray stones
Hovers over me gently
In a fine mist of jade-lavender whispers
Wondering if his stones are as old
As the stones of Monte Cassino, Chorin Cloister,
Westminster Abbey, Notre Dame, the Alhambra,
Or the bridge over the Delaware;
The Spirit of Stony Brook bridge
Flowing in amber-lambent reflections
And twilight arpeggios of crescent-ochre spells
Flowing in perpetual silences of ancient evenings
Flowing in autumnal tremors of odyssey-divine tears
And purple-ancestral waves of cherry-trancing blossoms,
Wondering if his stones are as old
As the sun, wondering if his stream is
As old as time.

WHAT ABOUT WILLIAMSBURG?

        In response to my claim that Cooperstown, New York, has more to see and do than any other town its size in America (see my post MY FAVORITE SMALL TOWN), a friend said to me, “What about Williamsburg, Virginia?”

Colonial Williamsburg

        I love Williamsburg! My wife Margie was born in Williamsburg. We celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary with our entire family in Williamsburg. We’ve always enjoyed our visits there, and there is certainly much to see and do in Williamsburg. Colonial Williamsburg has always been one of our
favorites places to visit at any time of the year.
        There is also the well-known and very exciting amusement park Busch Gardens, which is lots of fun for people of all ages. Margie loves strolling the beautiful campus of William and Mary, where her father spent two years as a

Princeton's Historic Nassau Hall

professor of political science, before joining the faculty of Bucknell University. and finally Princeton University. He spent most of his teaching career at Princeton, New Jersey,which is another town with much to see and do.
        On one of our visits to Williamsburg during the turbulent early 1970's we were amused to see the college coeds wearing T-shirts labeled “Mary and William”! Well, why not?
        There is lots of history in and around Williamsburg, as there is in Princeton and Cooperstown, so none of the three towns has an edge over the others in that respect. Williamsburg and Princeton are both college towns, and that’s a big plus over Cooperstown, although there are two colleges in nearby Oneonta, New York.

Cooperstown, New York

        My original assertion about Cooperstown, however, does not need to be withdrawn or modified, because both Williamsburg, with a population of more than 15,000, and Princeton approaching 30,000, are much larger communities. All three towns are beautiful, but with respect to natural scenery Cooperstown has the decided edge, nestled in the foothills of the Adirondacks on the shore of Lake Otsego.
        Now, there could well be another town of 2,000 or less that someone would like to nominate as the best small town in America. But until some advocate steps up and makes the case, I shall continue to lift up Cooperstown as my pick for the top town of its size in the USA. Everybody I've spoken to so far, who has been there, agrees with me.
        What about you?
                 

HOORAY FOR HUSTLERS!

        I’m talking about ball players not con artists.
        If I were managing a baseball team, any player who didn’t hustle to first base on a fair ball, no matter where it went, but especially on a ground ball to an infielder, would be gone in a hurry!
        It bugs me the way so many Major  League players don’t hustle down to first base on a grounder,  when first base in unoccupied. Oh, they’ll try hard enough to prevent a double play most of the time. But when they assume the fielder is going to make the play, they slow down noticeably.
       Really fast left-handed batters can make it from home to first in less than four seconds. They are a couple of steps closer to first than right-handed batters, a decided advantage, especially when bunting for a base hit. On a routine ground ball the infielder has to field the ball cleanly and make an accurate throw to first to get the batter out. Most of the time they do that in the Majors.
        But not always.  Think of all the things that can go wrong on any given ground ball. The ball can

THE 2013 WINDROWS WONDERS

        Here we are ---the 2013 Windrows Wonders:

        Our group is composed of residents and staff members of Princeton Windrows, a community for  independent seniors just outside of Princeton, New Jersey.
        A few of our team did not arrive in time for our photo and some didn't arrive at all, because they over slept.
        But those who did show up had a great time, and so far we have raised $6,370 for the Eden Autism Services Foundation. I say "so far" because we're still hoping some other caring folks will want to add to our total contribution to the fight against autism.

HELPING IN THE FIGHT AGAINST AUTISM

        My wife Margie and I live in Princeton Windrows, a community for independent seniors located on the outskirts of Princeton, New Jersey. For the past several years some of our residents and members of our staff have participated in the annual one-mile Eden Fun Run for the benefit of Eden Autism Services.
        Last year 114 of our residents and 31 members of our staff took part in the event either as actual participants in the Fun Run or as donor-sponsors. With some of our residents in their eighties and nineties, we call ourselves the Windrows Wonders, and at the start of the "race," as we are announced over the P.A. system, we are always loudly cheered and applauded by the onlookers.
        Last year we raised a total of $7,317 toward Eden's wonderful work with autistic children and adults and their families. A few of our staff members and one of two of our residents have competed in the 5-K race immediately following the Fun Run.
        Every year we have our "team" picture taken before the race. Not all of the 51 persons who did the Fun Run last year got there in time to pose with our group, but here's a picture of those who did:

(I'm kneeling in the front row, second from left, and wearing a Baltimore Orioles cap.)
        The annual event will take place again this Sunday, July 14. The starting gun for the Fun Run goes off at 8:30 a.m. The 5-k starts at 9:00 a.m. The starting line for both races is on Main Street in Forrestal Village, just north of Princeton. If you live in the area and would like to participate in either the one-mile Fun Run or the 5-K race, you can sign up on line (click here). There is also a registration table, where you can sign in on the day of the race. Hold on to your ticket stub, as there is a drawing for some wonderful prizes following the race. If you don't win the race, you may a prize! All runners receive a nice T-shirt and a "goodie bag" of surprises.
        If you can't do the run but would like to support the cause, you can make an on-line donation at the same site. In filling out the registration/donation form, please indicate that you are part of the    
Windrows Wonders team. You gift will be gratefully acknowledged and is, of course, tax deductible.

SOME THOUGHTS FOR INDEPENDENCE DAY

        In preparing this Fourth of July article I did some on-line research on the history of our use of the words “In God we trust” on our money and stamps. The original motto of the United States was secular: "E Pluribus Unum,” which literally translated is “out of many one," pointing to the fact that we are one country formed from many states.
        In 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote what eventually became our national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. The final stanza reads:
               "And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'                                  
                And the Star Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
                o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave."
        In 1864 by an act of Congress the words "In God We Trust" were applied to a newly designed two-cent coin. The motto has been in continuous use on the one-cent coin since 1909, and on the ten-cent coin since 1916. It also has appeared on all gold coins and silver dollar coins, half-dollar coins, and quarter-dollar coins struck since 1908.
        President Theodore Roosevelt disapproved of using the motto on coins or stamps.  He thought that cheapened the motto.  In 1956 at the height of the cold war, and in declaring its opposition to

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS ONE?

       If you haven't, it's worth watching. If you have, it's worth watching again. Click here to see Bob Hope (52) and James Cagney (56) tap dancing at the famous Friars Club in New York City in 1955. It's great fun ---and for me nostalgic--- to watch these two old pros doing their routines. Turn up the volume, enlarge your screen, and enjoy the show!  

THE COURT TAKETH AWAY AND THE COURT GIVETH

       On Tuesday the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote declared Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, thus paving the away for red states to pass laws restricting the voting rights of African Americans and other minorities. The court taketh away.
       The next day the Court, again by a 5-4 vote, declared the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional, which decision in effect guarantees same sex couples the same rights under the law that heterosexual couples enjoy. The court giveth.
       In refusing for procedural reasons to rule on an appeal against California's Proposition 8, which banned same sex marriage, the Supreme Court Court, once again by a 5-4 vote but with a different alignment of justices, in effect paved the way for California to become the thirteenth state to allow same sex marriage. The court giveth a little more.
        So now we await the impact of these decisions. Will Congress act to pass new legislation to restore the Federal government's role in protecting the rights of all citizens to vote? Will more states
pass laws to legalize same sex marriages?
        We'll see.





     

A BIG WIN FOR VOTER SUPPRESSION, A BIG LOSS FOR AMERICA!

        How can any fair-minded person not be concerned if not outraged by this morning's action of the Supreme Court in throwing out the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965?  By a vote of 5 to 4 the conservative justices on the court, despite their rhetoric, showed their total insensitivity to and lack of concern for the African Ameraicns and other minorities who will be adversely affected by their action.
        I hope the justices are listening to the reactions of those for whom their ruling is a serious set-back to the equal voting rights they struggled so long to attain.  The fact that voting rights activists are so outspokenly opposed to their ruling should tell them something!
        It is one more glaring example of the fact that racism is still alive and well in America. That Justice Scalia should defend the decision to eliminate Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act by referring to it as "the perpetuation of a racial entitlement" is utterly astonishing.  
        We who were infuriated by the egregious voter suppression efforts of so many Republican-controlled state legislatures in the last election have every right to be terribly concerned about the next election, when those states will have free reign to pass any legislation they have a mind to. State voting laws will still be subject to review by the Justice Department, but only after the fact, when the damage has already been done.
        Given the experience of recent elections, the constitutional rights of millions of Americans will be violated, unless we the people do something about it. We must let our voices be heard. One way to do that is to sign the petition that is already being circulated by Credo. Click here to read about it and to become a citizen sponsor of a constitutional amendment to restore the protective provisions of Sec. 4. 
        To read more about today's Supreme Court action, click on the following links: NY Times; Daily Beast; Huffington Post.

SHOPPING ITALIAN STYLE

       I enjoy watching flash mobs. Have you seen this one? Click here, turn up the volume, and enlarge your screen.

AN EERIE EVENING OF LOST JERSEY ICONS

By Bob Golon

Special Contributor

        My life-long affection for baseball history began long ago on Sunday afternoons. My father would pack my mother and me into the car at our Kearny home. Our firs stop would be at his favorite Kearny Avenue deli to pick up a barbecued chicken (made with Lawry’s seasoning salt, a recipe that I use to this day) and, along with a container of my mom’s homemade iced tea, we’d head to a parking lot adjacent to Newark Airport. There I was allowed to engage in one of my favorite pastimes – watching the big planes taking off and landing at the airport, at very close range.

Ruppert Stadium, Newark, NJ

        Many times on the way home my Dad would stop at an abandoned baseball stadium with huge light towers in Newark’s Ironbound section, the old Ruppert Stadium. After parking the car, he would tell me stories about the Newark Bears baseball club of his youth in the 1930s – of Tommy Henrich, Charlie Keller, Joe Gordon, Marius Russo, and other stars, and of those magical times when the AAA affiliate of the New York Yankees was one of the dominate teams in minor league baseball. From those days on forward, I always wished for a rekindling of baseball in the city of my birth, Newark, New Jersey.

Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium, Newark, NJ

        In 1999 the “Bears” finally did return to Newark and a brand new, 35-million-dollar Riverfront Stadium, financed by Essex County. The stadium was the dream of ex-Yankee and Newark native Rick Cerone, who also sought to rekindle his father’s memories of the Bears.

        It has not gone well, however. Low attendance has plagued the Newark Bears from the very beginning. Playing in the high-level, independent Atlantic League, the Bears struggled to attain a thousand fans per game, while the nearby Somerset Patriots, also in the Atlantic League, were drawing five thousand or more every night.

        Forced to leave the Atlantic League, the Bears became members of the Can-Am League, another independent league whose quality of play is a grade below that of the Atlantic League. But in the minor leagues the level of play should not matter so much. The “affordable family entertainment” factor does, however, and even though the current Bears ownership and staff have done a good job of sprucing up the stadium and providing a bona fide minor league experience, the plain and simple fact is the community does not support the team.

James Gandolfini

        Last night, I sat, with 313 other dedicated souls at Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium, watching the Newark Bears lose a doubleheader to the New Jersey Jackals. Around 8:30 PM they announced over the public address system the death of James Gandolfini, star of the “Sopranos” television series. As they proceeded to play the Sopranos theme, I looked at the Stickel Bridge towers beyond left field, the backdrop of so many Sopranos Essex County based scenes. I was immediately overwhelmed by the empty seats, and the eerie feeling of the loss of some of my personal New Jersey icons – the Bears, James Gandolfini, and my Dad’s memories.

        But, I’ll keep going back. 

BASEBALL AS A ROAD TO GOD?

        Baseball as a road to God? I can buy that.                                                      
        I haven't yet read John Sexton's book, but my friend George Betz sent me John Timpane's review of it in the June 9, 2013, Philadelphia Inquirer. You might want to check it out. If the book is as good as the review, it ought to be worth reading. 
        My Dad taught me to throw and catch a ball when I was two years old, and I have loved baseball ever since. I thought it would be my life-long career, but God had other plans.
        In my own book, A Sense of Being Called, I have recounted the story of how I got from professional baseball into the ministry. It's not exactly an illustration of what John Sexton has written about, but it explains why I am intrigued by his title and look forward to reading his book.  

NO TALKING TO PASSENGERS?

      A few days ago the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety released the results of a recent study indicating that using voice-activated hands-free wireless technologies like Blue Tooth and Siri while driving may be even more dangerous than using a hand-held iPhone. It’s easy to understand why texting with a cell phone while driving can be terribly dangerous, but to hear that using hands-free technology is equally if not more dangerous is quite surprising.
        I haven’t read the report, but the news item made me wonder if that means we shouldn’t talk with passengers while driving. Why is talking on Bluetooth any more dangerous than talking to someone sitting next to you in the front seat?
        In either case, it is certainly true that while driving you must keep focused on what you’re doing. Distractions can be hazardous, but ordinary conversation doesn’t have to be a distraction.
People have been talking while driving since they first started using automobiles.

A FATHER’S DAY MESSAGE

”When I was a boy of 14,” wrote Mark Twain, “my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.  But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much (he) had learned in seven years.”  (Quoted from an old “ Reader's Digest”)
Tomorrow we honor the fathers of our nation, though Father’s Day has become another   commercial promotion. Millions of greeting cards are still being mailed or hand-delivered, despite the huge increase in the use of on-line greetings and e-cards. It’s the fourth largest card-sending occasion, according to the Greeting Card Association that represents the greeting card industry.
Despite the commercialism, it is appropriate and good for us to honor our fathers and to celebrate the estate of fatherhood. To the best of my knowledge the United States was the first nation in the world to do that. The precise origin of Father's Day in our country is not certain, as the idea of honoring fathers on a special day was actually begun independently in several places, each locality thinking it was starting something new. Certainly one of the first and foremost promoters of the day was Sonora Smart Dodd, of Spokane, Washington, who, not surprisingly, came up with the idea while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909.
She wanted to honor her own father, a courageous, selfless, and loving man, so she

MY FAVORITE SMALL TOWN

        

        I told my Facebook friends that in response to my post on America the Beautiful someone  asked me what's my favorite place to visit. I said that there are many, but if I had to name one it would be Cooperstown, NY. I think there are more things to do and see in that beautiful little town than any other small town in America.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

        Let me justify that statement by describing some of the highlights, starting with the most obvious one, the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The Museum is simply amazing, with constantly changing exhibitions that are a marvelous history not only of baseball but of America. Equally impressive and of even more interest to baseball historians and researchers is the Hall of Fame Library, which is a matchless source of information.

        But the Baseball Hall of Fame is not the only attraction that Cooperstown has to offer. There is also the Farmers' Museum and Village, where a visitor could easily spend a half a day experiencing a rural America village on land that has been a working farm since 1813, originally owned by James Fenimore Cooper.

Glimmerglass Opera complex

        Diagonally across the road from the Farmer's Village is the impressive Fenimore Art Museum,  where one can view the works of Howard Pyle and the entire Wyeth family, and many other art treasures.

        Journey a few miles further on the same road and you come to the spacious grounds of the hugely popular Glimmerglass Festival (formerly the Glimmerglass Opera), with performances of operas and musicals featuring renowned vocalists like Nathan Gunn, who is starring in Camelot this summer. In the nearby Glimmerglass State Park you can visit the Hyde Hall State Historic Site, the handsome estate built by George Clarke (1768-1835). It is said to be the largest privately owned mansion built in the United States between the Revolutionary and the Civil Wars.  

       On the opposite edge of town from Glimmerglass are two quite different sites well worth visiting. One is the Ommegang Brewery, which you don't have to be a beer lover to enjoy. You can have a great lunch there, and then take a guided tour of the property. During the season thousands of contemporary music lovers gather on the spacious property to attend outdoor concerts featuring top bands and vocalists from New York and elsewhere. 

        Returning to town you can, for a complete contrast, stop by the lovely Carefree Gardens Nursery, where you can get a healthy meal of home grown organic foods at the Origins Cafe and hear about the wonderful work the two enterprising young female owners are doing to educate the broader community about healthier eating and living.   

Fly Creek Cider Mill

       Just north of town is the village of Fly Creek, which you must visit before leaving Cooperstown, to see the Fly Creek Cider Mill, whose products are shipped all over North America, It is a great place to shop for gifts and to have a snack. Their homemade caramel apple pie a la mode is out of this world! We've made a lot of people happy with the things we've given them from Fly Creek!

Dreams Park

        Here is something that will stagger your imagination: from the time school is out until it begins again in the fall, every week a new horde of eleven hundred twelve-year-old-and-under baseball players with their coaches and parents descend upon Cooperstown's Dreams Park to compete in a week-long tournament. Believe or not, there are twenty-two fenced in baseball fields on the huge property, with ample parking for cars and buses, lodging and restaurants for the participants and their accompanying adults. It is a mammoth operation, and of course they all want to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. That helps to explain the Hall's 350,000 visitors every year! 

High rope course at the Clark Center

       Another impressive complex is the Clark Center, a very large sports, fitness, and recreational center, with a swim meet size indoor pool, a fine gymnasium with an indoor running track, bowling alleys, squash courts, a table tennis room, a sizeable and well-equipped fitness room, expansive athletic fields, and many other facilities.

        Just to drive in and around Cooperstown is a delight. The tree-lined streets, the lovely houses, the stately churches, the restful parks and picnic areas, and the surrounding wooded hills and meadows, would be enough of an attraction in themselves. To top it all off, the town is situated at the southeastern end of beautiful Lake Otsego, and during the summer season any visit there should include a boat ride on the lake. It takes only about an hour, during which the passengers are given a very informative and most interesting narration over the P.A.system. It's just a short walk from the boat dock to a picturesque little park, where you can view the source of the Susquehanna River.  

Doubleday Field, Cooperstown, NY

        There are plenty of motels, elegant inns, charming bed and breakfast homes, and attractive restaurants. It's fun to stroll up and down Main Street and window shop or patronize the many souvenir shops and other quaint stores. Just off Main Street is Doubleday Field, where the Hall of Fame Classic is played. It's also the home field of the Cooperstown Hawkeyes of the 10-team PGCB League. There's a farmers' market near the center of town, where two days a week you can purchase the fresh produce of local farmers.

        Another treasure up the hill from Main Street is The Smithy. Built in 1786 by Judge William Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown, it is the town's oldest building, having survived the great fire of 1860. It is now a multi-arts center, with a gallery displaying the works of contemporary and traditional artists, and a courtyard for concerts, theatrical productions, and other events.  

The back porch of the Otesaga Hotel

        Not far from the center of town and overlooking Lake Otsego is the majestic Otesaga Hotel, a luxurious resort hotel, where my wife Margie and I have sat in rocking chairs on the huge back porch on summer evenings to listen to band and orchestra concerts by very talented local musicians, and where we love to eat in the delightful Hawkeye Grill. The food is delicious and surprisingly reasonable, especially in the off-season. Golfers love the Hotel's beautifully manicured eighteen-hole course. 

        Cooperstown is a very cosmopolitan community with year-round programs of various cultural interests. Most of its citizens are well educated and are socially and environmentally conscious. There are active service clubs, a fine public library, an excellent public school system, a large fire department, and the 180-bed Bassett Medical Center, a regional hospital, which is one of the top forty health care centers in the United States.

        All this in a town of fewer than 2000 permanent residents! There are, of course, many people from surrounding communities who are employed in Cooperstown, and with the constant flow of tourists, especially from Memorial Day to Labor Day, one gets the feeling of being in a much larger community.

        I should mention that Margie and I love the scenic drive through part of the Catskills and the Adirondacks to Cooperstown.  It's not a place you drive through en route to somewhere else. It's a destination! There are any number of ways to go, via so many country roads through the mountains; or you can go most of the way on Interstate Highways, with only the last 20 miles or so on a two-lane road.                                                                                                                                           

First Presbyterian Church

        Do you wonder why I think it is the most unique small town in America and my favorite place to visit? There are other interesting places to visit in the area, but I hope I have listed enough of them to justify my choice. And I haven't even mentioned the fact that my daughter, the Rev. Elsie Armstrong Rhodes, is pastor the First Presbyterian Church of Cooperstown. It was she who introduced us to many of the places I've mentioned in this post as well as others I haven't mentioned, although we had visited Cooperstown more than once before she was called there.

         If you haven't been there, why don't you plan a visit? If you do, by all means visit the Baseball Hall of Fame, but be sure to stay long enough to take in as many of the other attractions as you can.

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

        For two decades I participated every summer in the national conferences of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. In the first fifteen of those years that always included the conferences at the YMCA of the Rockies near Estes Park, Colorado, on the edge of the Rocky Mountain National Park. Within a few years additional conference sites around the country were added to accommodate the rapidly growing program, including Ashland, Oregon, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and Henderson Harbor, New York. Today there are scores of campus and conferences served by a staff of more than four thousand instructors, and the FCA is the largest sports program in the world.
       Although I am a Trustee Emeritus of the National Board, I'm not as actively involved in the FCA as I was for many years on both the national and the local level, having helped found four local chapters, and having served in just about every role in the summer conferences, from huddle leader to song leader, from platform speaker to devotional leader, from editor of the camp newsletter to Conference Dean. In my book A Sense of Being Called I have related the story of how I came to be involved in the FCA at the very beginning of the program.
        But that's not what I want to talk about in this article. Rather I want to talk about our country, about America the Beautiful. This is not about politics, or sports, or music, or any of the other topics I'm usually writing about. The reason I mentioned the FCA and my participation in the national summer conferences was to explain how it came about that my family and I in the course of the first ten of those fifteen years were in every one of our contiguous forty-eight states.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO LOVE TWO AT THE SAME TIME?

By Bob Golon

Special Contributor

Baseball teams, that is, lest anyone get the wrong idea!

Back in 1960, I was a baseball-obsessed eight-year old, fully devoted  to the likes of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and of course, the inimitable Casey Stengel. I took my second trip to Yankee Stadium that year, and arrived early enough to gasp, as ball after ball flew into the stands during batting practice. Nothing could be so good!

I suffered my first broken heart in October, 1960, when Bill Mazeroski’s home run went flying over the Forbes Field fence, denying the Yankees the World Series. That disastrous (from  my point of view)  loss was  followed immediately by the firing of Stengel. But along came Ralph Houk to replace him. Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961, and Whitey Ford won 25 games while losing only 4 that year. My heart mended quickly.

In late 1961 it was announced that this new team in New York being planned for 1962, the Mets, were hiring my beloved Casey Stengel to be their first manager. Hmmmm, pause for thought. As the 1962 season began, I now realized that I often had two games to watch on TV, which was especially convenient when one of them was rained out or was being played late at night on the West Coast.

The 1962 Mets, even though a dreadful club, simply provided me with more baseball! It was a chance to see National League stars like Willie Mays and Stan Musial, and besides, they never played the Yankees. Where was the conflict? There was none, in my young mind.

I lived and died with these two clubs as a young man. The hollow feeling of the Yankees' futility, which began in 1965, was soon replaced by the utter euphoria of witnessing the Mets’ World Series “miracle” trouncing of the thought-to-be-invincible Baltimore Orioles in 1969. Thurman Munson, Tom Seaver, Bobby Murcer and Jerry Koosman were equals in my mind and heart.

So, it was no surprise that last night, as I was driving home from the Trenton Thunder game, I tuned in the “subway series” finale on the radio. I was immediately appalled that the Yankees could not touch Dillon Gee for more than one run. When  Joba Chamberlain bounced a pitch that set up the Mets insurance run in the eighth inning, I cursed under my breath. Yet, just two seconds later, I felt happy for the upstart Mets. They remind me of the 1967 Mets: one very good young pitcher (Matt Harvey) among a not so talented young team.  Yet those ’67 kids accomplished great things within two years.

Maybe these kids will, too.

They say you can’t root for two teams, but I am living proof that you can. Tonight, I can go back to being “myself” again. Go Yanks! Go Mets! The TV remote will be where it always is, squarely in my hand, switching between my two loves

THIS IS THE MOMENT!

        I love this arrangement, and I think you will, too. It is sung by one of my favorite choruses, the Masters of Harmony, then under the direction of Jeff Oxley, who also sings the solo. It was their acceptance song, after winning the 1999 International Barbershop Chorus Championship. Click here, then turn up the volume, enlarge your screen, and sit back and enjoy an inspiring rendition of "This Is the Moment!"