Welcome to a World of Spiritual Harmony

Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal and the Greatest Match Ever Played, by L. Jon Werthein, was my reading matter of choice while at the tennis tournament. It’s broken into the Introduction, Centre Court, and a chapter for each of the 5 sets that were played in the Wimbledon final on July 6, 2008. I bought one for me and one for my friend Diane when it was published in May - and saved mine for the hotel, after long days of watching Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal and all the other terrific players.

Didn’t finish it while out there, though. Only got through the first 2-1/2 sets at the tournament, and just savored the last chapters a few days ago.

Jon is such an excellent writer - I even read him when he writes about other sports and other topics. The layout of the book is itself fascinating. He manages to weave in each players’ history and background, record and experiences to date, the history of Wimbledon, the records of other stellar players over the last hundred + years, the background and history of the sport itself, the ambiance of Centre Court. Jon creates the world of professional tennis in such a way that it lives and breathes for the reader.

He himself clearly loves tennis, and makes it accessible to us. He also clearly loves, understands and has empathy for Roger and Rafa, while still seeing them with his clear eye.

If you need a gift for someone who even remotely connects with tennis - this is it!

So here’s a book I should have read years ago, obviously. I went through one of my first phases of reading utopias in the 70s, another in the late 80s, then I read serious books on utopian communities in the 90s, and now I’m reading utopias again.

This one, which I found at Grailville’s bookstore at Earth Spirit Rising, is a novel called Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach, published in January, 1975. I’m amazed I missed it. He evidently also wrote a follow-up / sequel sometime later. I’ll need to find that as well.

It’s got a clever hook on which to hang its author’s beliefs - seems that 20 years ago, the Pacific Northwest - northern California, Oregon and Washington State - seceded from America and set up their own country, based on environmental principles. They stopped an American invasion by stating that they had nuclear weapons buried in major American cities. The newspaper Times-Post is now sending its top reporter, William Weston, for a 6 week visit, the first American to visit Ecotopia since travel and communications were cut off. This was arranged at the highest diplomatic levels.

It’s a good story, a good read, done as a series of newspaper columns and personal journal entries. It explores the personal, the social, the cultural, the environmental. There are a few instances where time has overtaken the story - for instance, in the author’s trust in the supremacy of newspapers as the ongoing communication medium. But in general he gets it right, and is pretty prescient on environmental issues - we are just now trying some of the successful innovations in Ecotopia, like mini-cities, multiple forms of communication, living among forests.

Callendar / Ecotopia invents Ritual War Games as a device to manage male testosterone and aggression - I found that regrettable. And Callendar struggles with imagining the equal and open relationships between men and women that he clearly would like to see. I like his risk-taking in even tackling these difficult issues. We are all more embedded in our own times than we believe, and even when we’re thinking outside the box, we’re often not questioning our most basic assumptions.

If you’re a cultural observer, and like to think about the various dysfunctions that are so evident in our own culture, this will be a fun book for you. Well worth reading for its ideas - and it’s very entertaining, to boot.

Aaaahhhhh! The garden is at the height of its summer beauty right now! My garden elf and helper Kateri and I have managed to get rid of the weeds growing between the bricks of the patio - using white vinegar. The weeds have been pulled from all the gardens. Kateri watered while I was at tennis. Watering is what I do first thing in the morning - I have three different places where I set up the sprinkler, and let it go for a bit over an hour. And then all the pots have to be watered, and the bird bath needs to be refreshed.

I love wandering around and taking care of all the different parts of the different gardens. It’s amazing the mini-climates that exist - weeds that grow in one part of the veggie garden and not in another, for instance.

The impatiens gardens are all mounded up and gorgeous. The raised bed is full of green zinnias this year, each trying to grow taller than the next. The peppermint is ready to harvest again. The tomatoes are busy turning red - and pulling over their little cages.

And the potatoes! Kateri and I have been googling and getting differing advice on how to harvest what will be a bumper crop. And if you like collard greens - I have plenty.

I love looking at all the gardens from all different angles. This is one time of year when it’s easy to get me to sit down and just enjoy.

So there we are - with our usual terrific luck. We have tickets for the PNC Bank’s Hospitality Suite - which means courtside seats, food, uncrowded bathrooms, simpatico folk, special parking - and it’s the best line up of the entire tournament! We had given our series tickets and parking to Diane’s nephew, soon to leave for college.

Actually, the best line up I’ve ever seen at this tournament. The top 5 players in the world in matches one right after the other, from 11 a m until 9 or 10 p m. Lots of other good singles and doubles play, too. My guy, Roger Federer, will play at 1, and Diane’s guy, Rafael Nadal will play near the end of the day session - maybe 5 p m. Actually there was rain just for a few minutes a couple of times - so the day session folk ran into the evening session folk. Gridlock everywhere - parking lot, food court, seats to watch matches, just trying to walk around. The day session ended about 7:30, the night session started about an hour later - should have begun at 7.

The Novak Djokovic match against Ivan Ljubicic (we had watched Ivan practice with Roger the day before) showed clearly that the Djoker was ready to win the tournament. He was not as much of a hot shot as last year, but showed better shot choices and more focus on tennis and not testosterone. Good play.

Then Roger, with a match where a couple of times he was clearly practicing - drop shots, overheads - just to see how they would work out when the tournament got tougher, and to see how the court was playing. Very fast, they all said later. Next up, Andy Murray against Nicholas Almagro - Andy had improved everything by leaps and bounds since last year - there were clearly good reasons why he’s number two in the world.

It was late and rainy / windy when Rafa came out to play Andreas Seppi. There were no straps below his knees, he was bouncing around kicking up his heels as usual. But his energy and shot choices were just not quite as good. An easy win, nonetheless. The evening match featured favorite American Andy Roddick against up and coming American Sam Querry - pretty much one of those tree people, who moves a bit better than most. Andy has dropped weight, added a coach and improved his fitness. He’s one of my favorites - with his brash energy and willingness to say what he thinks. Andy’s experience was the key - he knew what to go for and when.

An excellent and incredible day. Ahhhhhh.

Actually, of course, it’s not all about Roger - just mostly about Roger! : > But blog-wise, it seems like fun to review each of his five matches.

Which leaves out Monday and Tuesday, which, for the first time in my history with the tournament, were pretty total losses - no big names and just a few exciting matches. Not one of the big guys played until Wednesday - though we were quick enough to get to watch Rafa, Roger, Tsonga, Lubicic and lots of others practice on Monday. Later in the week, we got to see Brad Gilbert, famed player, coach and commentator, play with one of his kids.

Monday morning we managed to get early entry into our hotel, unpacked and dashed to the tennis center. I had already looked at the schedule and knew there were only a few matches that were going to be exciting. We got to see Ivo Karlovic beat Gael Monfils - Gael learned a lot in the match. Karlovic is to uni-dimensional to be particularly interesting. Then the evening match was two wild cards, both, sad to say, pretty much head cases - Marat Safin and Robby Ginepri. It would have been better not to give them wild cards.

Not an exciting day - and it felt like the hottest day I’ve ever spent there - which temperature wise was not true, but it sure was draining.

Tuesday was another not exciting day - except for watching scrappy Leyton Hewitt beat Robin Soderling, who had beaten Rafa Nadal at Wimbledon. When we found out the evening match (courts are busy all day, just one or two featured matches in the evening) was John Isner (another of the tree people - very tall and moves like one) and Tommy Haas, who is wonderful, but not having the greatest year - we bagged it and went to the movies.

So for us, the tournament really began on Wednesday.

Mythic. Riveting colors. Suspenseful. Powerful characters. Sea loving. Incredible ocean creatures. Fierce and scary. Tenderness. Best anime film ever.

Ponyo is the daughter of a used to be human and the Great Goddess Herself. Ponyo is a fish - until she is not. Pronounced Pon as in pond, yo as in Yo! Her fish sisters are her best advocates and supporters. The movie is also about small town realities and relationships and about taking care of one another. Most of all, it is a love song to the sea.

Just be there on the journey. That’s quite enough. Thinking can come later.

p. s. Japan is clearly, in this film, a country of the sea as much as a country of the land. How, then, can they allow the murder of whales? and the atrocities to dolphins in the Cove? How can the Great Goddess allow such a thing?

So there was one evening - Tuesday - when none of our guys were playing tennis, and those playing were not intriguing enough to keep us in our seats. So we went to the movies! Turned out to be the right day, ’cause tix are only $6 on Tuesdays at Kings Island.

I’ve seen reviews of Julie & Julia, praising Meryl Streep, and ignoring the other half of the story. I thought it was all good. The love and sex story of Julia and her husband, and the story of the cookbook. Plus the story of the young writer whose partner encourages her to blog (their sex life is featured as well), her commitment to creating every one of Julia’s recipes in one year, and her reinvention of her life thereby.

The intersections between the two lives were interesting, details were fun and rich. And the love life of the 2 couples (plus Julia’s sister and her husband) was good and solid and beautiful. Nice to see normal love lives of folk over 25 portrayed, with all the passion and comfort in view.

An excellent and very satisfying film. Way better than the reviews.

Just back from a week of tennis at the Western & Southern Masters - one of the biggest tournaments in the world, right here in Cincinnati! About half the folk attending are from around here - there rest come from all over the country to see the biggest and the best, in an up close and personal setting.

I’ll be blogging about outstanding moments, special happenings, great sightings. And the impossibly great weather - a short term benefit of climate change.

For now, suffice it to say - this was one of the best! Could not believe today was already Sunday, and now I’m home and it’s over!

With the best possible outcome - the incredible and awesome Roger Federer was sublime today, in defeating Novak Djokovic, 6-1 first set, 7-5 second and final set. Wow!

Have gotten a couple of emails about the Ecology and Sustainability: Food and Agriculture series at Xavier for 2009-10. And just found in the old mail a flyer about it. Looks terrific!

September 27 is Michael Pollan, best selling author, talking about “The Omnivore’s Solution.” Vandana Shiva, physicist, author and environmental activist from India, is up on October 28 on “Soil, Not Oil: Food Security in Times of Climate Change.” “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations”, with David Montgomery, is March 14.

The series finishes with a bang: on April 11, Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson and Gene Logsdon hold “An Informal Conversation”, followed the next day by Wes Jackson discussing “The Necessity and Possibility of an Agriculture Where Nature Is the Measure”.

For more info, check out www.xavier.edu/ers or email frickman@xavier.edu. You’ll see me there for sure!

So at last year’s last opera, I stood up fast after the performance, to applaud and stomp and shout - and my excellent and fairly small binoculars flew off my lap onto the floor. On an edge. The right side continued to be fine, but the left side made broken kaleidoscope noises.

I got on the Bushnell website a couple of months ago and there was an address in Kansas City to mail them to - not much more info. So I called - same advice, very nicely given. Just send them in and we’ll get back to you in a few weeks and let you know.

I got a postcard when they received them, with an id number to check on them. So a week or so later, I did. There was a cost of $10 written on the report, no button or instructions about how one might pay the $10. Just before the last opera this year (that’s what I get for procrastinating - up until now), they returned a brand new pair at no charge!

Mine were expensive, and these were even better. I am astonished and delighted. Thanks, Bushnell!