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The Collab
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(address is not clickable)9/1/5
Summer 2005 Notes (Nobody Asked Me, But...)
When the Kenyan Cape buffalo get old, the younger males kick them out. Thereafter, these old creatures roam alone, ill-tempered and nasty. "They will charge anything," our guide tells us. The same thing happens to people whose ideas get old. That's why it's best to stay curious and humble rather to rail at the young upstarts.
The crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium cheered for Andre Agassi today in his match against a 6'10" Croatian kid named Karlovi. I was cheering for Karlovic, just because I like to see somebody with great natural endowment put his powers to full use without shame, like the Incredibles. I felt a little sorry for him, too, since his home country is completely unloved and since there didn't seem to be much of a Croatian contingent to cheer him, and there he was at the U.S. Open, facing one of the greatest tennis players who ever lived. It was like a clash between a young samurai and the old master. In the first set, Karlovic's typical first serve was 138 mph. Agassi couldn't return them. He was as helpless as a young girl picking up the racquet for the first time. One game consisted of four straight Karlovic aces. But Karlovic's backhand wasn't up to his serve. So the games went like steps; Karlovic would win his serve, then Agassi would by cleverness and skill win his serve. Agassi played well and waited for the kid to make errors. First-set tiebreaker went to Agassi by a point. In the second set, the pace of Karlovic's first serve slowed to 134 mph and Agassi started to return more of them, and even put a serve right in the far backhand spot where Karlovic had been tormenting him. Second-set tiebreaker went to Agassi by two points. Third-set tiebreaker he won by three points. It could have gone against Agassi so easily, and yet it didn't. That's what makes a great player.
The most fascinating place in Barcelona is not Gaudi's Sagrada Familia cathedral or Guell Park with its Masonic symbolism, but the maritime museum on the waterfront. The museum is located in the old medieval shipyards. You can learn all about the history of the shipbuilding industry's greatness in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries there, and you can see beautiful old fishing boats of solid oak. Some of these boats used to go out with lights to lure the fish (the market parallel would be the analyst's report). Perhaps best of all, there is a full-scale copy of the flagship galley that Spain sent to the Battle of Lepanto in 1543, where a coalition of Spain, the Papal States and Venice chased the piratical Turks out of Cyprus and turned the tide in the battle for Europe. The kings of Castile who took over in the 16th century favored the shipyards of Valencia and Malaga over Barcelona for military shipbuilding; and they made it illegal for large craft to be used for commercial purposes. When coal power and iron came into use, the numerous small businesses of Barcelona's shipbuilding industry could not come up with the large capital investment necessary to compete. So the yards declined. The most remarkable aspect of Barcelona today appears to be its tennis players; our hotel abutted the Polo Club, which had no less than 40 courts; and the Polo is just one of three similar big clubs in the area.