Letters to the Editor
Eric Samuelsen
Published Letters: 32 Editor's Choice: 6
-
Terryl Givens has us pegged
[Read the article: The Mormons are coming]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First rate review and article. As a practicing Mormon, an academic, a playwright, and a liberal Democrat who also happens to live in Provo Utah, I know first-hand the paradoxes Givens and O'Hehir describes. For anyone else interested in our culture, I would suggest a few other sources.
O'Hehir calls Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History "unsurpassed" among Joseph Smith biographies. I believe that it actually has been surpassed recently by Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling. Bushman is an historian of impeccable credentials--he's Gouverneur Morris Professor of History emeritus at Columbia University--and I find his account more even-handed than Brodie's, whose psychoanalyzing of her subject gets tiresome.
O'Hehir mentions novelists Levi Peterson and Orson Scott Card, and filmmaker Richard Dutcher as particularly important Mormon artists. I love Dutcher's film States of Grace, and would be interested in O'Hehir's reaction to it. I would add playwright Tim Slover, and novelist Margaret Young. Young has particularly distinguished herself with a series of novels exploring Mormonism's troubled racial legacy.
Finally, I think many of Salon's readers would probably lump Mormons in with evangelical Christians as a kind of undifferentiated Christian Right political monolith. O'Hehir nails Mitt Romney's campaign appeal to evangelical voters: "I'm one of you, sort of." It's actually quite insane. Evangelicals HATE Mormons. Walk into most Christian bookstores in the country and see the shelves of viciously anti-Mormon propoganda. Romney does enjoy a lot of support from Mormons, but as a Mormon liberal, I know I'm not alone when I say that a Mitt Romney presidency would be a disaster for our country.
-
The pleasures of watching a great baseball game
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1) Early in the game, Josh Fogg threw a terrific breaking ball that erstwhile Padres left fielder, Scott Hairston, got a piece of. And Fogg grinned! I remember thinking, 'man he's loose. Josh Fogg is on today. The story of this game will be how a relaxed journeyman defeated wound-too-tight Padres ace, Jake Peavy.' And then came the third, and Adrian Gonzalez hit his grand slam, and Fogg's grin disappeared, and . . . baseball beat up on yet another facile insight.
2)Plus, you just knew the Padres were in trouble when Scott Hairston was announced as their left fielder. You need a left fielder with power, a left fielder who can break up a 13th innning tie with a towering, definitive home run. Not Scott freaking Hairston . . . uh oh.
3) Todd Helton grinned the whole game, but then he always grins. I think he wanted to enjoy his one playoff game.
4) Didn't look like Holliday got the plate. But then blocking the plate's illegal, so call it square.
5) Man is Tulowitzski a great young shortstop. No highlight reel plays, just a succession of difficult chances handled with consummate skill and poise. Plus, if he'd homered in the 13th, he'd have hit for the cycle. Instead, he only managed another clutch double. Piker.
6) Matt Herges, journeyman middle reliever, pitched three terrific innings, and should have gotten the win. Constantly in trouble, and then consistently he'd make a pitch to get out of it. But you could tell how much trouble the Rockies were in when they had to go to Jorge Julio and Ramon Ortiz in the 13th. Julio was awful, though Ortiz, to his credit, did his job.
7) A lot of chatter about the guts of Mike Cameron. On the other hand, he showed a lot of guts.
8) People say about Trevor Hoffman, 'boy, he's a great pitcher for a guy with a hittable mid-80's fastball.' But when the Rockies laid off his change (or when he couldn't get it over), Hoffman was revealed as . . . a guy with a hittable mid-80's fastball.
9) Did an inordinate amount of the game seem to revolve around Brian Giles?
-
Plague of insects, anyone?
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Further fuel for the David vs. Goliath thesis--apparently God's getting involved. How else to understand the plague of gnats or midges or flying ants that discombobulated Joba Chamberlain in the 8th inning of Game 2 of Yankees/Indians? One of the things I love about baseball is that you frequently see things you've never seen before. Those close-ups on Joba's neck with like thirty of these miserable little creatures apparently dracula-ing away was certainly something new.
A few other observations from a well-spent weekend:
1) Melky Cabrera's had a great defensive series, and he's hit a little too. That means, of course, that he's not long for the Bronx--you know Steinbrenner's pining for Andruw Jones for next year.
2) Love the utter Snidely Whiplash loathesomeness of Steinbrenner's 'win or I push Joe off a cliff' motivational ploy.
3) Newest wrinkle--find an over-the-hill CFer, put him in left, and live with regular season mediocrity, because come playoff time, he'll go nuts. Lofton and Damon are the stories of the series.
4) The Red Sox pitching was as good as advertized. The real revelation has been the Rockies' bullpen. Fuentes and Corpas have been lights out. And Troy Tulowitzski--wow, nothing flashy, just difficult chance after difficult chance handled with poise and confidence. Plus he can hit.
5) No way the Yankees are out of this. That offense is scary, tough out after tough out. And Jeter hasn't even started hitting. The Indians, though ahead 2-1, are still sort of the underdogs. Still, go Indians. Non PC nickname notwithstanding, it would sure be nice to see the baseball world revolve around some other axis than boring old Sparta/Athens.