Plenty of Nothing

Pony Girl

If you had ancestors in the western Roman Empire who had anything to do with horses, they may well have venerated the horse goddess Epona.  She was a Gaulish deity who made the step up to Roman cult figure, probably because everyone loves horses and the Italians hadn't thought up a horse divinity of their own.  European culture is sprinkled with little Celtic survivals: throwing coins into fountains, counting in twenties (e.g. quatre vingt deux), carving human heads into cathedrals.  Chances are good we call small horses ponies on account of her.

Here's a whole Epona site.

Oakland Seals, Part Two

Big Al sends this Oakland table hockey player.

I've been reading up on the NHL's 1967 expansion, the one that doubled the league's size from six to twelve teams and brought Oakland into the fold. I'd grown up thinking of it as a sort of 1960s megaproject, like Expo 67 or one of Henri Bourassa's hydro dams, a grand gesture of modernity.  In fact it was a countermove against the Western Hockey League, which was threatening to graduate to major league status and claim the whole west coast as its turf.   The WHL featured a team called the San Francisco Seals and another called the Vancouver Canucks.  (It would be interesting to see how much continuity there was between the WHL and NHL ownerships.)  Driven out of its Bay Area, LA and, later, Vancouver markets, the WHL moved into new areas, but when the Denver Spurs and Phoenix Roadrunners absconded to the World Hockey Association the writing was on the wall and the league folded.  The NHL has always made a point of requiring other leagues to do their player development for them and, it would seem, to develop new markets for them as well.  But the NHL's growth (especially under Campbell) has usually been a reactive measure.  If the NHL is ever to have a European division it appears somebody else will have to try it and succeed at it first.

Three Fillums

Seems a body never stops having to catch up on popular culture.  Today I sat in front of the TV and watched three movies I should have seen years ago: Hud, Little Big Man, and The Producers.  Some random observations:

As Heather pointed out once or twice, Paul Newman is a very handsome guy.  I spent a while puzzling over why his character Hud seemed so familiar.  Then I got it--he's Sawyer from Lost.  Or rather Sawyer is Hud.  It reminds me of when I realized Alan Alda was playing Groucho Marx in M*A*S*H.

I saw The Outlaw Josey Wales a few weeks ago and am now prepared to declare that Chief Dan George belongs on the $20 bill.  What a lovely face he had, radiating humour and wisdom.  That sequence where Old Lodge Skins believes he's invisible is gold.  Little Big Man is one of the great Westerns, if a little too dependent on coincidence, and was pretty obviously the model for Dances With Wolves.  Dustin Hoffman is good too.

The Producers is pretty good, but confirms my belief that Young Frankenstein is Mel Brooks' masterpiece.  Still, "Springtime for Hitler" helped make South Park possible.

Douglas

Fun With Swedish Hockey

This is what I get for not reading Swedish.  I've just figured out that the Elitserien will play 55 games per team this year, not 50 as in past years.  So it looks as if Skellefteå will have to balance on the playoff bubble a while longer than I expected.  55 is a sensible number: every team plays every other team five times.  Though 66 would be an even more sensible number, if a bit of a grind by Swedish standards.  When the Elitserien took that name in 1975-76 the season was 36 games, an arrangement that held for twelve years.  Nine seasons of 40 followed through the late '80s and early '90s.  The league moved to 50 games in '96-'97, to 46 the next year, then back up to 50 the next, and now 55.  If that seems a little up and down just remember that the NHL altered the length of its schedule from 84 games to 48 then back up to 82 over the course of three seasons in the mid-'90s.

Some Canadians in Sweden.  Steve (brother of Paul) Kariya plays for Frölunda.  Eric Beaudoin and Ryan Jardine are with Mora.  Henry Acres is on Arboga of the Allsvanskan, Seattle Thunderbirds' Michael Siklenka on Leksand, Chris Dingman and Steve Potvin on Södertälje, and Paul Cabana on Växjö Lakers.  Leksand and Södertälje stand a good chance of promotion at the end of the season.  Down in Division I (a pretty grand name for the third tier) we find Taylor Farris of the Bramalea Blues playing for Botkyrka, Matthew Bahen of the Aurora Tigers with Hudiksvall, Moncton Wildcat Kory Baker and Toronto St. Mike's George Nistas with Troja-Ljungby, and ex-Hab Gordie Dwyer with Örebro.  Both Troja-Ljungby and Örebro are looking to move up to the Allsvenskan.

I've been fooling with some of the Swedish hockey websites listed in the right-hand column.  Elite Prospects is a good player site and provides answers to such questions as:  Which Elitserien team has the most guys named Johansson?  Färjestad, with four: Mathias, Andreas, Martin and Mikael.  Is there a Swedish player named Johan Johansson?  Yes, three of them: Johan, Johan and Johan.  Are there any Hungarians playing in Sweden?  Yes, Huddinge has two.  How about Estonians?  AIK Härnösand has a couple.  And who did Börje Salming play for when he wasn't a Maple Leaf?  He started out with Brynäs, and ended his career with AIK Solna.

Oakland Seals

If only the Oakland Seals were still around.  They'd probably be good by now.  They'd have a great rivalry going with the San Jose Sharks.  The Battle of the Bay Area.  Teal versus Teal.  The Seals had an owner named Mel Swig and a player named Len Frig, and a cartoon mascot drawn by Charles Schulz. Here [dead link] is Brad Kurtzberg's site devoted to the Seals, and to his book about 'em.

Beasts of No Nation

I picked up Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation last week nudged by a memory of the positive press the book got in late 2005.

“Astonishing,” “staggering,” “harrowing,” “startling,” and “stunning” ring through the mostly positive reviews. Maslin’s unfortunately titled review praises the book while pointing to its lack of subtlety. The subject matter—child soldiers in Africa—is dire and the prose distinctive. Unlike other readers, though, I found Iweala’s avoidance of the past and future tenses annoying: there’s only so much present and past progressive I can take. And in the end, I don’t think the stylistic choice solved the difficulty of representing an African child’s war history.

This interview touches on one of the women whose war history inspired the story; and this longer one explores the novel’s language . And here’s an NPR interview which like much of the other coverage focuses as much on the child soldier problem rather than on the writing.

Skellefteå Stripes

A picture of the squad in 1957, impressing the hell out of those small boys.

The team has moved back into the eighth playoff position.  On January 13 they defeated Malmö 4 to 1.  Three days later they beat Linköping 3 to 1.  But then another shutout loss.  MODO beat them 5 to 0 on January 18.  Most recently, on January 20, they slipped by Luleå 3 to 2.

Lance Ward of HV71 leads the Elitserien in penalty minutes.  The former Red Deer Rebel was the tenth pick in the 1996 entry draft and played about 200 NHL games in Florida and Anaheim.  He was tough guy for the Binghampton Senators last year.  Other Canadians in the Swedish league this year include ex-Leaf Paul Healey, playing for Linköping, former Sabres defenseman Jason Woolley, playing for the soon-to-be demoted Malmö, and HV71 back-up goalie Scott Langkow, a one-time (literally) Winnipeg Jet.  American Justin Morrison plays for MODO.

Winter

 

Winter rolled in with a will this week.  So after all that whining, bitching and complaining about global warming we can now return to what we normally do in January: whine, bitch and complain about the cold.

 

What Do People With No Lives Do On a Friday Night?

Bird sound wars. My site beats his--more variety.

Annie Buller (1895-1973)

It's odd where reading will take you.

I started with Bock's A Communist's Daughter and then dissatisfied with its portrait of Jean Ewen, I moved on to Ewen's autobiography, China Nurse. From there, I went to her communist father Tom McEwen's autobiography, The Forge Glows Red. And from there I ended up reading an uneven biography of Annie Buller.

Buller died thirty-four years ago today. Most of the photos I've seen of her are, like this one, very unflattering. (Photo source)

A founding member of the Canadian Communist Party, she was an union organizer who seems to have moved between Ontario and Manitoba in order to organize the needle trades. Like many of labour activists of the period, she spent time in jail. She did two stints--for a year after the Estevan Coal Miners Strike and for two years during the early WWII crackdown on the CPC party. (Her husband was interned at the same time.) After that, more CPC work, including a run in a federal election.

She must have been a woman with a great deal of energy.

Heather