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The Essence of Sport

  Melt the ice, toss the sticks in a bin, hang the skates in the basement, wash and store the pads, put away the helmets and tape and cups until next fall, hockey season is over. The end came for us, the Blues, this past weekend with a stirring run to the semi-finals of our […]

The Death of Baseball

    A slightly exaggerated conversation with my son, Zane, age 9.   Travis: Well, son, hockey season is almost over.  Travel tryouts and the Friendship tourney to go. Zane: (while using his teeth to separate Lego pieces) Yup. Travis: It’s been a long season.  A good season. Zane: Yup. Travis: On to baseball! Zane: […]

Fear and the Mountain

Growing up in Texas I missed out on a lot of winter sports, notably ice skating and skiing.  These skills I did not acquire until much later in life and while learning to skate and play hockey has been mostly a thrill, learning to ski was a most painful experience that nearly ended in divorce. […]

Gotta Go to Gunns

There used to be a hardware store in downtown Orono where I could go to get a replacement sink, a bag of nails, a bucket, some seeds and a screwgun. I could wander the small isles, talk to neighbors and get advice on deck sealer but it sold off it’s overstock of pink paint and […]

Snow Day, Horray!

Snow Day, Yeah! Like leap year or a bigfoot sighting, a rare thing occurred today. No Youth Hockey! No basketball either or indoor soccer or gymnastics or ballet or karate. Organized sports is taking a day off due to bad weather and overblown media hype. What, oh what to do! Get outside!       […]

A Special Goal

    Saturday Afternoon — It was a play typical of youth hockey and not atypical of any other level of the sport. The puck was in the corner as were nine 9-10 year old players, their sticks clattering away, their bodies bouncing and banging against each other.  Forwards were in there, defensemen were in […]

The Night before X-mas

Playing with the Kids Christmas Eve can be an evening of absolute torture when the kids are bouncing off the walls with anticipation, fighting the conflicting urges of wanting to wait up to capture Santa in the act and wanting to go to sleep so the morning will come all the sooner. Meanwhile, the adults […]