Posted by RIP Tom Seaver on Fri, 04 Sep 2020 18:39 | #

RIP Tom Seaver

Posted by Chicago People of Color Sox on Sun, 06 Sep 2020 13:17 | #

can’t believe this story is for real, but cursory Googling yields two stories so far…

The Babylon Bee 17 July 2020:

Chicago White Sox To Drop Offensive ‘White’ From Name

CHICAGO, IL—Amid mounting pressure from a coordinated campaign of 12 mentally ill Twitter users, Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf has confirmed the franchise will finally be dropping the offensive word “white” from their name.

“Being a mascot is an honor,” Jerry said. “Unless, of course, your mascot is a Native American. Then it’s a shame. I’m still not sure how all this works. Anyway, we have realized it’s inappropriate to give a place of honor to whiteness in our team’s name. The word ‘white’ really has no place in modern society, so we have removed it.”

Chicago White Sox announce name change, to be known as ‘Chicago Sox’

Ponderings from Pluto 10 April 2013

Chicago White Sox announce name change, to be known as ‘Chicago Sox’
Saying they have decided to shed an archaic name and move forward into the future, the Chicago White Sox announced they have successfully petitioned Major League Baseball for a name change.

Effective in the 2014 MLB season, the Chicago White Sox will drop the “White” and will become known as the Chicago Sox.

The current Chicago White Sox logo. As you can tell, it has very little “white” in it.

“For us, ‘White Sox’ is an outdated nickname since we no longer wear white socks,” said team owner Jerry Reinsdorf. “It has been many decades since we last wore white stirrups, and we feel it’s time for a name that is more indicative of who we are now.”

Players today generally wear their pants down to their shoes with no socks showing. The White Sox’ uniform is designed where the socks underneath are black.

The White Sox’ current team colors are black, silver and white. In the past they have worn different shades of blue along with red. Their current logo, which adorns their caps and their home jerseys, is the word Sox in diagonal Old English script. They last wore white socks back in the 1970s when they wore throwback uniforms designed to emulate late 19th century/early 20th century baseball.

This was the White Sox logo back in the days of Eddie Cicotte and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.

The team has long had the “Sox” logo in various forms. In 1919, for example, it was the letter S with an “O” on the top loop and an “X” in the bottom loop. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, it was the a horizontal SOX log on their cap and then on their jerseys.

Most Chicago White Sox fans say that as long as they defeat north side rival Chicago Cubs, they will be happy with the name change.

Posted by Nolan Ryan at age 44 on Thu, 17 Sep 2020 13:18 | #

Posted by 666 on Thu, 17 Sep 2020 16:30 | #

Healing that confusion, the lack of wherewithal that comes from a family with crazy and hostile communicative patterns has a price which one is not particularly aware of when still in the midst or recovering from its throes….

As one heals, regains their natural emergent form, the poise of its perspective, one is suddenly confronted with the myriad of one’s own culpability in not negotiating these family and friend circumstances better; one is somewhat braced for the fact in that one is now essentially healed, but the memories of one’s own interactive failings, i.e., to negotiate relations better for one’s own sake and to make one’s way better with them are on constant offer to the consciousness, really too many examples and presenting from any given day that one might reflect upon.

One thematizes, taking examples, and tries to empathize with oneself as having done the best they could in the circumstance and remember that the person that you view failure with can bear some joint responsibility.

I’m thinking of my father, specifically.

Confusing, could not communicate, and questions about his confusing statements were treated like an affront, volcanic temper like you can’t believe, otherwise largely catatonic TV watcher - infuriating the way he’d smile along with it…. but might turn away momentarily to literally paraphrase his WWII generation mantras - “you can’t fight city hall” and the liberal, “anything goes when the whistle blows”... he would say this with a smile on his face, like you were supposed to relate.

His worst characteristic was his penchant to attack vulnerability. This did-in my mother’s psyche; and having to deal with her broken psyche is another can of worms that we don’t need to talk about. Psychologically, intellectually, bad situation all around.

Materially, I’d be a jerk to complain. Weren’t rich, but had what we needed and a bit more…and that does, indeed, spill over into some opportunity to heal the psychological and intellectual deficit.

But as harrowing as my father could be and the fights that he had with my mother were, I eventually gained enough perspective to see how I might have done better as well.

First of all, a working class family without advanced education and four kids.

I could not have done better than my parents ...oh maybe a little better in some ways, but overall, probably worse.

My mother did make efforts to improve our relations, but I want to first talk about the fact that so did my father.

In the end, I rebuffed them both; if nothing else, this was a tactical error, and I could be a lot richer now if I had played it better ..but then, who knew, my mother’s own abuse and literal blockage of metacommunication and my father’s penchant to attack vulnerability cornered me into an inability to trust - so, out the window went their olive branches and offers of cooperative relations. It was a mistrust not altogether unjustified, but nevertheless…. there was a flaw on my part going back to early childhood that stood in the way: pride/high self esteem.

All I needed was what to me was my parents dumb assessment of the social situation - there were black riots back then too, burning my grandmother’s city of Newark…

Newark riots 67 (they happened again in 68).

Lingering on TV, even after his assassination by fellow nation of Islam members, Malcolm X saying his things “the black man will rule”, etc….

...there were enough incidents of black violence in our town of Montclair as well (where we moved “for the better schools” only to find they’d be a third black, where I didn’t get bused to one that was two thirds black) and what not.

I’m not going into the many instances where I found this paternal guardian of my EGI to be horrifyingly inept, but to give you a few instances of what might happen if I let my guard down for him to become friend and comrade, settle down before the TV with him….

Father (this was when I was about 10, when I got bused):“If you ever get into a fight with a black, make sure to hit them in the stomach; that’s their weak point from all the shit that they eat. ... purple soda and potato chips.”

Me: I didn’t have to be an expert in his Lamarkian fallacy to know that I would have gotten clobbered if I took his advice.

Father (in front of the television sometime in late 80s): “This Italian woman who married Hershel Walker, I don’t blame her.”

Me: She’s not Italian dad, she’s Jewish.

Who knows what kind of stupid things like this he might say that would keep me on guard, not trusting him, even when he was really trying to be a friendly dad, taking long walks with me to Grunnings for a chocolate malt in the evenings…

I’ve related these incidents before but its relevant:

Father: (around 1987): Go to see Naomi (I now know Jewish “therapist” that my mother found for me), she wants to help you.”

Me: I could use some calm and steadying while I prepare for the Series 7, its a dramatic change of direction into a brokerage career, so, ok, I’ll try it.

Naomi crashes (“intervenes with”) the (first instantiation of a) final grammar that would have enabled me to participate in America’s liberal society, as this “grammar” would have allowed me to rationalize and participate in society with the kind of denial that my parents and older siblings had.

Me (Final Grammar): I don’t want a woman who has dated a black. I didn’t say you can’t, I said I don’t want. For me, this was really too big a sacrifice on my part, but a minimal concession from a liberal society if I was going to be able to participate on its “normal” level.

Naomi: Tries to subvert this final grammar, “even if it was a long time ago?”

I could give many more examples of her interventions and manipulations but needless to say, the brokerage career didn’t work out, with me utterly flustered and determined to go back to school more directly (brokerage was to pay for “studying science”) to defend White men against anti-racism and feminism; i.e., experiencing the need for a new liberal Final Grammar, “We don’t want.”

Then there was that experience, culminating in the subversion of my second final grammar in class.

My second final grammar: “We don’t want” (not you can’t ,but we don’t want).

The subversion,

Professor: “Of course, nobody believes in racism anymore.”

Melt down, need to get out of America and back to my home nations.

Before I flee, my father is entrusted to take me on a trip to Italy and tell boastful stories about how he was put before the Supreme Court to say that he “just wanted the same rights as anyone.” ...my father added, “You weren’t raised that way”... “I’ve talked to everyone and nobody thinks like you (racially)”

I know my father, and he was told to say that.

Over the phone, while I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth at UMass -

My father: “I want a black baby!” (grandchild) ... this was his way of expressing big, good natured humor, liberalism to grease the way in the American enterprise.

I did not feel comfortable with him, about him. To have witnessed blacks in the day to day and to hear him say things like that.

I could always go back to the horrifying instances when I’d be “working” with him in the basement, whether at 34 Harvard Street (where he’d have fantastic temper tantrums if I brought him the wrong screw driver, always clear to display hatred for me) or at my grandmother’s in Newark, where I remember a particularly horrible moment….

I was probably 4 years old, me an him alone in grandma’s basement, and there he was, gritting his teeth, shaking in rage, cursing to the skies and he gave me a look of such intense and sustained hatred that it just went into the center of my brain and part of my psyche retreated there.

When I got into my teens and started fighting back, my older brother Tom gave some advice which, unfortunately, I did not take soon enough. “You know what I do when dad treats me like that? I treat it like he’s trying to help me.”

In retrospect if I could have taken that angle it would have been much better; not that there weren’t other things to be taken into consideration….but… my pride.

Very recently, I don’t know which of the Youtubers were talking about it (I think it was somebody Luke Ford was reading on his show), but the researchers were saying that all the attention has been on how parenting effects children, but recent research is showing that a child’s nature can effect parenting.

I think of me, age 3 in a rocking chair, saying over and over again, “mommy is stupid, stupid mommy, mommy is stupid, stupid mommy” .... then a chorus of “I want a Tootsie Roll, I want a Tootsie Roll (repeat 1,000 times).... and ...

My father’s wanting to put the fear of Archangelo into me is a bit more understandable, as is my mother’s lack of patience and blockage of metacommunication…

I don’t want to get too carried away with self criticism (that was all I did in my early teens, I thought that it made me “good and innocent”), but my point is, that as I finally have healed from harrowing family circumstances, I am able to see my fault in this, how things could have gone better - my pride from an early age that countenanced my own deep distrust ...ok, the society and what was happening to our EGI was a big argument on my side for not going into denial with them, but wasn’t it grandiose to not look after myself more on ordinary participatory levels, to place myself aloof, to where I would say to my father when asked, “how are we suppose to be to each other?”

I said that we are supposed to be friends.

He said, “Lets be friends then”

I said, “I don’t want to.”

That was stupid, and I’d be a lot richer today if I could have overcome my pride and mistrust.

He said to another counselor whom I sought out to recover from Naomi, “I want my son back!”

I should have been more moved and there were other instances where he tried and I reacted with some kind of semi hostile snobbery. I can make excuses but these were mistakes.

Nevertheless, there are more than a few lessons that I can take from him and I can still potentially reward him with another grand-kid (maybe. I plan to).

Anyway, when he broke a sunny side egg, he did observe that “better days are coming.” ..and, he would always say, “do the best that you can do, it’s all you can do.”

It’s a big lead-up to what is for me one of the most redeeming stories about my father.

A story which reflects the personality conflict between us turned salutary.

Oh, lets say its my mid teens and I’m discovering pornography and that the lived world is somewhat nastier than the stories told…not easy to reconcile, and not feeling a common moral order…

It’s true that I’ve taken acid a few time and a few were really bad trips, like hell on earth, world smells like burning plastic, trees are like robots making underwater nautical noises, the devil is trying to say that you are a queer even though you know that you are not, you think that you are going to hell forever and there is (Robert Johnson’s) Crossroads…

No deal.

I read my bible. Book of Revelation.

Now this is days, probably weeks from L.S.D. experimentation, so its not that.

I get to the verse

“Here is wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666”

“A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand”

I look at the back of my hand and dark as magic marker are three sixes moving around. I say, “oh, no!” (for all its damning implications).

I wake up in the morning (it’s June 6th) to go to work with my brother laying the bricks on a house. I throw on a jacket (it’s a Phillips 66 jacket, but I can see the other 6).

We get to this house that we are working on and every smudge of dirt on the house or around it forms 666.

I carry wet cement and it spills onto the ground continuously in formations of 666.

All day long the radio station we’re tuned into is playing music from from 1966 (really).

The New Jersey Lottery that day: 666.

I’m desperate. When I get home, I tell my father this story. I’m doomed. What does he say?

“You should have told me! I would have played that number!”

For that alone my father is redeemed in my eyes.

And no, I could not have done better than him. Maybe in someways, but not likely in the overall with 4 kids, under the circumstance.

Posted by DanielS on Thu, 17 Sep 2020 22:35 | #

For whom it may concern, I fixed some of the grammatical oversights in this story, for example, “a price which one is not particularly aware of when still in the amidst midst or recovering from its throes”.... while some ambiguities in the phrasing of the story are cleared up as well..