When this writer first heard of the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ he winced. Sounded ignominious, humiliating, undignified, embarrassing, pleading, definitely not noble, not appropriate to repeated murdering of innocent folks and children and other inhuman behavior.
Watching the memorial service to Muhammad Ali on Friday was at times, as you’d expect, very poignant. But it was more than that: this was Muhammad Ali’s planned, final statement to the world. A man – once so eloquent, verbose and decisive, but who had been slowly robbed of his ability to speak over the […]
Today the world will say its final goodbye to one of the greatest cultural figures – and probably the most charismatic – of the 20th century. And also the greatest sports star probably of all time. So it is perhaps also an appropriate moment to travel back in time to a steaming hot night, October […]
Much has been made in the days since the death of Muhammad Ali about the ‘whitewashing’ of his life and legacy. There’s no real question that Ali was, at least at one time, a radical; and that aspect of his story has been largely glossed over in much of the coverage. This has been motivated […]
They are young, high school, seniors, boys and girls, running hard, 8 am, along Salmon Creek, a place where I burn the body in a course of hard bicycling waiting for a bald eagle to baptize my day. Great blue herons, red-tailed hawks, egrets, meadowlarks, red winged black birds, and dozens of other species capturing the soul before facing off the empire.
While no one is likely to dispute Muhammad Ali’s claim to the title of Greatest Sports Star of All-Time, it was his potency and relevance as an inimitable cultural and social icon that many more people beyond the realm of sport will always remember him for. There has been no one else in the world […]
