The Rocket

My baseball friends may laugh at this, but I think Roger Clemens will win thirty games this year. With last night's victory, he's 7-0. His team, the Houston Astros, is flying high with a 21-11 record. At this pace, Clemens will win 35.4 games (okay, thirty-five). Why is thirty victories achievable? First, Clemens plays for a team with a superb offense, so he'll get lots of run support. Second, he's rarely hurt. He'll start every fifth day all season. Third, he's gritty. What do you expect? Like Nolan Ryan and Lance Armstrong, he's a Texan. This state produces men, not wimps. William H. Gass on Bibliophilia In the ideal logotopia, every person would possess his own library and add at least weekly if not daily to it. The walls of each home would seem made of books; wherever one looked one would only see spines; because every real book (as opposed to dictionaries, almanacs, and other compilations) is a mind, an imagination, a consciousness. Together they compose a civilization, or even several. (William H. Gass, “In Defense of the Book: On the Enduring Pleasures of Paper, Type, Page, and Ink,” Harper’s Magazine 299 [November 1999]: 45-51, at 47) Wimps and Barbarians I’m speechless. This essay by Terrence O. Moore gets to the heart of our difficulties. It may be the best thing I’ve ever read, and believe me, I’ve read some good stuff.