Beardyman and Flutebox
I didn't know a guy playing the flute could be cool:
More News
More News
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Somebody Stole the Liberty Bell Today
Somebody stole the Liberty Bell today
By Bob Ford
Inquirer Sports Columnist
Somebody stole the Liberty Bell yesterday, unhooked it from its case, and carted it off when no one was looking. We won't see the Liberty Bell ever again, and a part of us all, of what makes our city special, is lost.
They sawed William Penn from the peak of City Hall yesterday, too, right about midday, right about the same time. The planter's hat and the flowing coat, the beneficent smile bestowed upon his little green town. We won't look up and see Billy again, and the skyline will never look right.
A bulldozer rumbled down the parkway during the lunch traffic and it took out the steps at the Art Museum. Putting in elevators or some such refinement. No more running up the steps, no more lounging on the steps. No more steps at the Art Museum, and we always intended to take one more jog to the top and turn and see the city.
They filled in the Schuylkill and razed the boathouses, closed the pretzel factories, and turned off the cheesesteak grills. They closed Forbidden Drive, paved Fairmount Park, and made people stop parking in the middle of Broad Street.
It all happened yesterday.
The day Harry Kalas died at the ballpark.
"We lost Harry," team president Dave Montgomery said. "We lost our voice."
We lost Harry on the road, which is very nearly home to the baseball lifers like Kalas. We lost Harry as he was preparing for another game, this one in Washington. He would have had his scorebook and his notes in the booth with him, and the statistical numbers and columns that supply the canvas of a game for which artists like Kalas can add the brushstrokes.
He didn't get to see this game, but, probably, he had seen it before. He had seen them all.
The Phillies will do their best to honor him, but there is no statue that can be erected more impressive or lasting than the indelible body of Kalas' work. He was a comfort in time of need - and Phils' fans know all about that - and a friend in the darkness of a drive through the night. He was the narrator of a city's soundtrack, the background conversation at countless events in millions of lives.
People asked Harry to put his voice on their answering machines. They handed him telephones and asked him to wish their wives a happy birthday. They spun the radio dials, caught just a word, perhaps just a name - WAAAH-rin Cro-MAAAHR-tee - and knew where they were. They were at the corner of Kalas and Baseball, and there was no finer intersection at which to spend time.
Harry's voice wasn't gravel, but it had an edge. It knew things and knew that you knew them, too. It wasn't a Philadelphian's voice, by any stretch. He kept the round Midwestern pronunciations he grew up hearing in Naperville, Ill. But Kalas liked to play with the words, to put them together and turn them into dramatic recitations that were his alone.
A simple baseball call like "Swing and a miss, struck him out" became a magical victory of good over evil, the emphasis punching through just as the ball had punched through the batter. That very phrasing was the final play-by-play from Kalas that most Phillies fans will remember, as Brad Lidge ended the 2008 season, and Kalas declared the team world champions.
We will hear it only in retrospect now, that wonderful instrument he possessed. Just as nature blesses pitchers with great arms and batters with great hand-to-eye coordination, something was given to Kalas at birth that he couldn't really take credit for, but he could certainly put to good use.
A couple of years ago, I was in line at the Wawa, getting some coffee, on the way to the airport and an Eagles road game. A dozen others shuffled around the store, look for their own coffee, getting through another gray morning. And then the voice boomed out, seemingly from the heavens.
"Aren't you sup-POSED to be in In-DEE-ah-NAP-olis by now?"
People almost dropped their coffee, and their eyes darted to the ceiling and all around. Of course, it was just Harry, three back in the line, holding his coffee, having some fun. And everyone had a story to tell when they finally got to the office.
"Hneh, hneh, hneh," Harry snickered.
He could laugh, but that snicker was more what he was about. It was the expression of an insider, someone who got the joke more than even the teller might realize.
Harry got it all. He got baseball, and he got life on the road. He got how lucky he was to have that voice that everyone knew and that manner that made everyone his friend. He got Philadelphia, got it so well that he became part of the civic landscape. He got us, and that's not easy.
The birds stopped singing in Rittenhouse Square yesterday. The tugboats on the Delaware couldn't sound their horns. When the carriage horses took their customers past Independence Hall, there was no clop-clopping on the cobblestones. The factory whistle wouldn't let anyone leave work. Kids burst from their school rooms and didn't utter a peep.
Philadelphia went quiet yesterday afternoon. Harry Kalas died at the ballpark, and the city lost its voice.
More News
By Bob Ford
Inquirer Sports Columnist
Somebody stole the Liberty Bell yesterday, unhooked it from its case, and carted it off when no one was looking. We won't see the Liberty Bell ever again, and a part of us all, of what makes our city special, is lost.
They sawed William Penn from the peak of City Hall yesterday, too, right about midday, right about the same time. The planter's hat and the flowing coat, the beneficent smile bestowed upon his little green town. We won't look up and see Billy again, and the skyline will never look right.
A bulldozer rumbled down the parkway during the lunch traffic and it took out the steps at the Art Museum. Putting in elevators or some such refinement. No more running up the steps, no more lounging on the steps. No more steps at the Art Museum, and we always intended to take one more jog to the top and turn and see the city.
They filled in the Schuylkill and razed the boathouses, closed the pretzel factories, and turned off the cheesesteak grills. They closed Forbidden Drive, paved Fairmount Park, and made people stop parking in the middle of Broad Street.
It all happened yesterday.
The day Harry Kalas died at the ballpark.
"We lost Harry," team president Dave Montgomery said. "We lost our voice."
We lost Harry on the road, which is very nearly home to the baseball lifers like Kalas. We lost Harry as he was preparing for another game, this one in Washington. He would have had his scorebook and his notes in the booth with him, and the statistical numbers and columns that supply the canvas of a game for which artists like Kalas can add the brushstrokes.
He didn't get to see this game, but, probably, he had seen it before. He had seen them all.
The Phillies will do their best to honor him, but there is no statue that can be erected more impressive or lasting than the indelible body of Kalas' work. He was a comfort in time of need - and Phils' fans know all about that - and a friend in the darkness of a drive through the night. He was the narrator of a city's soundtrack, the background conversation at countless events in millions of lives.
People asked Harry to put his voice on their answering machines. They handed him telephones and asked him to wish their wives a happy birthday. They spun the radio dials, caught just a word, perhaps just a name - WAAAH-rin Cro-MAAAHR-tee - and knew where they were. They were at the corner of Kalas and Baseball, and there was no finer intersection at which to spend time.
Harry's voice wasn't gravel, but it had an edge. It knew things and knew that you knew them, too. It wasn't a Philadelphian's voice, by any stretch. He kept the round Midwestern pronunciations he grew up hearing in Naperville, Ill. But Kalas liked to play with the words, to put them together and turn them into dramatic recitations that were his alone.
A simple baseball call like "Swing and a miss, struck him out" became a magical victory of good over evil, the emphasis punching through just as the ball had punched through the batter. That very phrasing was the final play-by-play from Kalas that most Phillies fans will remember, as Brad Lidge ended the 2008 season, and Kalas declared the team world champions.
We will hear it only in retrospect now, that wonderful instrument he possessed. Just as nature blesses pitchers with great arms and batters with great hand-to-eye coordination, something was given to Kalas at birth that he couldn't really take credit for, but he could certainly put to good use.
A couple of years ago, I was in line at the Wawa, getting some coffee, on the way to the airport and an Eagles road game. A dozen others shuffled around the store, look for their own coffee, getting through another gray morning. And then the voice boomed out, seemingly from the heavens.
"Aren't you sup-POSED to be in In-DEE-ah-NAP-olis by now?"
People almost dropped their coffee, and their eyes darted to the ceiling and all around. Of course, it was just Harry, three back in the line, holding his coffee, having some fun. And everyone had a story to tell when they finally got to the office.
"Hneh, hneh, hneh," Harry snickered.
He could laugh, but that snicker was more what he was about. It was the expression of an insider, someone who got the joke more than even the teller might realize.
Harry got it all. He got baseball, and he got life on the road. He got how lucky he was to have that voice that everyone knew and that manner that made everyone his friend. He got Philadelphia, got it so well that he became part of the civic landscape. He got us, and that's not easy.
The birds stopped singing in Rittenhouse Square yesterday. The tugboats on the Delaware couldn't sound their horns. When the carriage horses took their customers past Independence Hall, there was no clop-clopping on the cobblestones. The factory whistle wouldn't let anyone leave work. Kids burst from their school rooms and didn't utter a peep.
Philadelphia went quiet yesterday afternoon. Harry Kalas died at the ballpark, and the city lost its voice.
More News
Monday, April 13, 2009
End of an Era
A sad day for baseball and the city of Philadelphia. I used to lay on my grandparents floor as a child and fall asleep listening to his voice. A Phillies game will never be the same.
Harry Kalas dead at 73.
More News
Harry Kalas dead at 73.
More News
Friday, April 10, 2009
5th Wedding Anniversary
Today is our 5th Wedding Anniversary. We are going to go out and have a nice dinner alone to celebrate but right now I am sitting at the Honda dealer waiting for our civic to have the front-end aligned for the second time. (The first time just made it worse so we had to bring it back in.) So, since there is a computer here and I have the time to kill I figured I would make a post I have meant to write for some time now.
Almost a month ago, a friend from work had stopped over to visit before he and his wife went to AC for the evening. They had tickets to see Bret Michaels' (former front-man of the hair band Poison) Rock of Love tour.
We were down in the basement with Jack when Tom said, in reference to the concert, "I bet there will be a lot of S-L-U-Ts there tonight" and Jack, without missing a beat said from across the room, "sluts?". Tom's jaw dropped open as he looked at me wide-eyed. I said, "Tom you can't spell things around him, he can read." Tom said that I had to be kidding...that he had to have known that word, to which I replied, "Yeah, I say 'sluts' to my 3 year old all the time...Jack, what is B-I-M-B-O?" To which Jack answered emphatically, "bimbos!" Tom spent the rest of his visit a little dazzled.
That's our boy Jack, who was made possible by this day, 5 years ago. Happy Anniversary Carisa. I love you!
More News
Almost a month ago, a friend from work had stopped over to visit before he and his wife went to AC for the evening. They had tickets to see Bret Michaels' (former front-man of the hair band Poison) Rock of Love tour.
We were down in the basement with Jack when Tom said, in reference to the concert, "I bet there will be a lot of S-L-U-Ts there tonight" and Jack, without missing a beat said from across the room, "sluts?". Tom's jaw dropped open as he looked at me wide-eyed. I said, "Tom you can't spell things around him, he can read." Tom said that I had to be kidding...that he had to have known that word, to which I replied, "Yeah, I say 'sluts' to my 3 year old all the time...Jack, what is B-I-M-B-O?" To which Jack answered emphatically, "bimbos!" Tom spent the rest of his visit a little dazzled.
That's our boy Jack, who was made possible by this day, 5 years ago. Happy Anniversary Carisa. I love you!
More News
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
SNL
Carisa and I have started watching Saturday Night Live again recently and I think it is starting to get funny again.
The Rock Obama:
Ray LaMontagne:
More News
The Rock Obama:
Ray LaMontagne:
More News
Friday, March 06, 2009
Monday, March 02, 2009
Adventures in Parenthood and Weather
Never a dull moment.
Yesterday we were home for my grandfather's 85th birthday party...Happy Birthday Pop-Pop!!! At the same time I had dropped my car off at my dad's so he could fix a broken engine mount while we were at my mom's house for the party...so we were traveling with two cars. While I was home I was also re-formatting my mom's laptop...busy day. All day we were listening to the news about the big storm coming from the coast. We knew we needed to get on the road but the weather, where we were (2 hours from the coast in PA), didn't look bad and I figured if it started to look bad we would just stay at my dad's house (we had to go there first and pick up the Taurus).
We finally left my mom's around 7 PM. When we got to my dad's there were just a few innocent looking flakes starting to occaisionally fall from the cold sky. Dad had fixed the engine mount, replaced the windshield wipers, filled the washer fluid and changed the oil. Thanks Dad!!!! We decided that we wanted to just get home and sleep in our own beds so we hit the road.
When we got to Philly, it was snowing but not laying...the roads were just wet. We continued on heading right into the storm with Carisa in the Honda with the kids following behind me as I drove the Taurus.
As we crossed the Walt Whitman Bridge heading toward Atlantic City it was coming down fast and beginning to lay. At this point, we could still see the lines on the road but as we continued to travel, a drive that normally takes two hours, the snow began coming faster and faster until we could no longer see the lines on the road and the cars out there became fewer and fewer. Eventually we were on the Atlantic City Expressway going 35 mph, traveling deeper into the storm, only able to guess where the road was by judging where the middle was by the Pinelands on either side. Each of us had our blinkers on to help us keep track of the other.
White knuckling the steering wheel, Carisa and I had the occasional cell phone conversation verging on panic and talked down with calm words that we were "almost there" and "would make it by taking our time". The snow was falling so hard that as you watched it continuously blowing sideways in the beams of the headlights it would begin to mess with your vision until it felt as if you couldn't see anymore and you would have to find something to look away to in order to break the spell.
With the 2 hour drive now pushing 3 hours we were crawling along at 25 mph on the expressway; getting closer to our exit nerve wracking mile after mile. Once we arrived and I thought it was over I found that the exit had not yet been plowed and I went from memory that the actual exit normally comes before the exit sign? Making a guess as to where the exit was (the smooth white snow between the tree?) we continued on; trying not to stop for fear that we would not get started again. Traveling on the last road home felt like traveling through a snow tunnel with visibility extending only a car length out in front.
When I got home I planned on hugging my wife and kissing the carpet, but as I was getting Jack out of the car he woke up into a coughing fit, the kind that has occaisionally overcome him before where he coughs so much he vomits, and cannot breath. He was hysterically crying and wheezing for his breath, arms trembling out in front of him as I rushed him into the house directly to the bathroom. While shutting the door and throwing the shower on high heat to generate some steam I tried to convince him that he needed to stop being so upset; tried to rationalize to my 3-year old that if he just calmed down, he would be able to breath again. Carisa started a nebulizer (steroids) treatment we had from one of his previous episodes when he had been hospitalized. When that was done Carisa wrapped him in a blanket and took him into the cold air outside, but the blowing snow soon drove them back in.
Did he have to go to the emergency room? Did I have to take the car back out into the storm?
As Carisa and I pretended to be calm so that he would become calm, we called the Children's Hospital (CHOP) and I spoke with a nurse who sounded almost as anxious as I was pretending not to be. She told us that it sounded like the croup and not an asthma attack and that the 5-10 minutes we had him in the steam was not enough and we needed to do 20. If he was still having trouble breathing after that, we would discuss different options.
Thankfully, after spending 20 minutes in steam so thick that all was dripping, we brought him to our bed and turned on the TV. His breathing seemed better. At least he was in better spirits and talking to us as if nothing was wrong between breaths slightly tainted with wheeze. We watched TV with him until midnight at which point we turned off the light to go to bed; to spent the rest of the night restlessly tossing and turning, listening to his breathing in fear that it wasn't over.
Jack slept through the night (Lili was of course a different story) and we awoke to a bright snowy blizzard still ongoing. From the double stress of the night I had a knot in my back that made it hurt to breath. Besides from being exhausted, everyone had made it and we were home. Now it's just another day.
Never a dull moment.
More News
Yesterday we were home for my grandfather's 85th birthday party...Happy Birthday Pop-Pop!!! At the same time I had dropped my car off at my dad's so he could fix a broken engine mount while we were at my mom's house for the party...so we were traveling with two cars. While I was home I was also re-formatting my mom's laptop...busy day. All day we were listening to the news about the big storm coming from the coast. We knew we needed to get on the road but the weather, where we were (2 hours from the coast in PA), didn't look bad and I figured if it started to look bad we would just stay at my dad's house (we had to go there first and pick up the Taurus).
We finally left my mom's around 7 PM. When we got to my dad's there were just a few innocent looking flakes starting to occaisionally fall from the cold sky. Dad had fixed the engine mount, replaced the windshield wipers, filled the washer fluid and changed the oil. Thanks Dad!!!! We decided that we wanted to just get home and sleep in our own beds so we hit the road.
When we got to Philly, it was snowing but not laying...the roads were just wet. We continued on heading right into the storm with Carisa in the Honda with the kids following behind me as I drove the Taurus.
As we crossed the Walt Whitman Bridge heading toward Atlantic City it was coming down fast and beginning to lay. At this point, we could still see the lines on the road but as we continued to travel, a drive that normally takes two hours, the snow began coming faster and faster until we could no longer see the lines on the road and the cars out there became fewer and fewer. Eventually we were on the Atlantic City Expressway going 35 mph, traveling deeper into the storm, only able to guess where the road was by judging where the middle was by the Pinelands on either side. Each of us had our blinkers on to help us keep track of the other.
White knuckling the steering wheel, Carisa and I had the occasional cell phone conversation verging on panic and talked down with calm words that we were "almost there" and "would make it by taking our time". The snow was falling so hard that as you watched it continuously blowing sideways in the beams of the headlights it would begin to mess with your vision until it felt as if you couldn't see anymore and you would have to find something to look away to in order to break the spell.
With the 2 hour drive now pushing 3 hours we were crawling along at 25 mph on the expressway; getting closer to our exit nerve wracking mile after mile. Once we arrived and I thought it was over I found that the exit had not yet been plowed and I went from memory that the actual exit normally comes before the exit sign? Making a guess as to where the exit was (the smooth white snow between the tree?) we continued on; trying not to stop for fear that we would not get started again. Traveling on the last road home felt like traveling through a snow tunnel with visibility extending only a car length out in front.
When I got home I planned on hugging my wife and kissing the carpet, but as I was getting Jack out of the car he woke up into a coughing fit, the kind that has occaisionally overcome him before where he coughs so much he vomits, and cannot breath. He was hysterically crying and wheezing for his breath, arms trembling out in front of him as I rushed him into the house directly to the bathroom. While shutting the door and throwing the shower on high heat to generate some steam I tried to convince him that he needed to stop being so upset; tried to rationalize to my 3-year old that if he just calmed down, he would be able to breath again. Carisa started a nebulizer (steroids) treatment we had from one of his previous episodes when he had been hospitalized. When that was done Carisa wrapped him in a blanket and took him into the cold air outside, but the blowing snow soon drove them back in.
Did he have to go to the emergency room? Did I have to take the car back out into the storm?
As Carisa and I pretended to be calm so that he would become calm, we called the Children's Hospital (CHOP) and I spoke with a nurse who sounded almost as anxious as I was pretending not to be. She told us that it sounded like the croup and not an asthma attack and that the 5-10 minutes we had him in the steam was not enough and we needed to do 20. If he was still having trouble breathing after that, we would discuss different options.
Thankfully, after spending 20 minutes in steam so thick that all was dripping, we brought him to our bed and turned on the TV. His breathing seemed better. At least he was in better spirits and talking to us as if nothing was wrong between breaths slightly tainted with wheeze. We watched TV with him until midnight at which point we turned off the light to go to bed; to spent the rest of the night restlessly tossing and turning, listening to his breathing in fear that it wasn't over.
Jack slept through the night (Lili was of course a different story) and we awoke to a bright snowy blizzard still ongoing. From the double stress of the night I had a knot in my back that made it hurt to breath. Besides from being exhausted, everyone had made it and we were home. Now it's just another day.
Never a dull moment.
More News
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Long Weekend
I had this past Monday off for President's Day. It was generally a nice weekend. Carisa and I spent a good part of Sunday and Monday cleaning up our backyard which has been a mess ever since we moved in. We filled close to 20 fifty-gallon trash bags with leaves and debris, dug up 4 tree stumps, and stacked about 50 bricks. The yard looks pretty good...unfortunately I forgot to take a before picture. We still have some more work to do before throwing down grass seed in the spring but we are well on our way.
Besides that Lili came down with a 103 degree fever due to vaccinations she received last week. Monday night she did not sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time so I took a personal day on Tuesday to recuperate.
That's about it...been busy. Reading the news about the Republicans and how they just keep proving more and more every day that they always put party before country. President Obama reached out his hand so that the country could find a solution to our economic crisis together...and the Republicans turned their back on him...some of them even stating that they want it to fail. Thanks Repugnicans! Thanks a lot! Oh yeah, and thanks for getting us into this mess. Great job.
It times like this that I think back to the handful of Republican friends that I actually lost because I tried to discuss issues like this with them...healthy debate between educated adults. Well, they couldn't have that because the facts don't generally go the way of Republicans and those debates actually killed the friendships. I couldn't believe it. I think back to them now and wonder how that debate would go now because guess what...your party sucks! Sorry to be so blunt, but the politicians that are out there in charge of the Republican party right now are despicable and I hope they go the way of the Whig party. Our country would be better for it. Sorry to get so crass here, but they make me sick. Lincoln must have rolled around so many times in his grave by now that he has probably drilled himself more than half-way to China by now.
More News
Besides that Lili came down with a 103 degree fever due to vaccinations she received last week. Monday night she did not sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time so I took a personal day on Tuesday to recuperate.
That's about it...been busy. Reading the news about the Republicans and how they just keep proving more and more every day that they always put party before country. President Obama reached out his hand so that the country could find a solution to our economic crisis together...and the Republicans turned their back on him...some of them even stating that they want it to fail. Thanks Repugnicans! Thanks a lot! Oh yeah, and thanks for getting us into this mess. Great job.
It times like this that I think back to the handful of Republican friends that I actually lost because I tried to discuss issues like this with them...healthy debate between educated adults. Well, they couldn't have that because the facts don't generally go the way of Republicans and those debates actually killed the friendships. I couldn't believe it. I think back to them now and wonder how that debate would go now because guess what...your party sucks! Sorry to be so blunt, but the politicians that are out there in charge of the Republican party right now are despicable and I hope they go the way of the Whig party. Our country would be better for it. Sorry to get so crass here, but they make me sick. Lincoln must have rolled around so many times in his grave by now that he has probably drilled himself more than half-way to China by now.
More News
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Monday, February 09, 2009
Happy Birthday Neena!
Happy Birthday mom! You don't look a day over 45! Love from all. Have a great day.
More News
More News