American Broadside

Bug Food

I think we Americans must think that life is some sort of cosmic sporting event. Our language is fecund with sporting terms that we use for almost every thing: he hit it out of the park, that's par for the course, hat trick, whose you're daddy? Okay, may be not the last one.

Many of our sports are team endeavors that require military-like tactics: defense and offence. The one odd ball, there I go again, is baseball which turns everything upside down.

In baseball the defending team controls the ball and has to throw it, giving up control. The offensive team is in a weird spot because while they are trying to score, they too are in a defensive position, protecting the home plate: three strikes and your out. Everyone plays as a well trained team, but each player is offered ample opportunity to show individual excellence. Baseball really is the American game.

Tonight, I was involved in another of America's great passions: politics. I went door knocking with Frank Hornstein, the Representative for our district in the Minnesota Legislature. I was operating on the old saying, "If it really matters, you've got to put some skin in the game." You were probably wondering where I was going with all that sports talk.

it was a perfect night to go knock on doors in my neighborhood. Frank told me that we need to be out from 7:00 until 8:00 pm. Earlier and we would be bothering folks at dinner and latter, we'd be bothering people as they settled in for the evening. Frank was a community organizer before going into politics, so he has a great deal of practical experience in meeting with people and finding out what is on their minds.

Since it was a beautiful evening, many people weren't at home. The few that were pleasant and talkative.

However, just after 8:00 p.m. while we still had a block or so to do, the bugs came out. And that is when I got some skin into the game.

One of the few sports related memories that I cherish is that of playing baseball on a late summer afternoon/evening. Not being particularly quick on my feet when it came to ball handling, I was always stationed in the outfield. Since I am by nature inclined to take the long view of things, the outfield worked just fine. The smell of the cut grass, the color of the sky as the sun lowers in the west, that strange screeching sound that the night-hawks make when they are diving for insects: it all is as fresh today as then.

And of course, the bugs.

So there I was knocking on doors, doing my part in the great American game of politics, the smell of fresh cut grass, the sun setting, and being eaten alive by bugs. I was in heaven.

You think I exaggerate about the bugs? Did you ever see the science fiction movie Starship Troopers? It was like that.

By the way, I highly recommend the movie. It is not great cinema, but there are some very startling scenes that fore-shadow our world today. It was released in 1997.

Les

posted by Les @ 7:10 PM