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| Play Ball! |
Last week, a young college professor that I know, wrote a blog post about how people don't ride horses any more. Now, true, this U Mass teacher does live in Boston and while Paul Revere may have ridden his horse to Concord yelling, "The British Are Coming", in Ft. Worth, they were getting ready for the month long Ft. Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. I missed the Western Parade because of the cold. An email from one of my editors wanted to know if I would cover the show for them and I had to decline. It was the second offer from them that I had to say no. But that didn't dampen my spirits. I have a file folder of people I've come across that ride horses here in Dallas. Being somewhat of a joker that I am, I sent Pat the file of images. It wasn't long before I got a reply saying that, "well, I guess people still do ride horses after all." Pat is a link in a growing number of Anthropologist that I have known, currently know and read regularly and joke with in bantering phrases.
Repartee.Wordplay.Good-humored.Jesting. But most of all, it ties me to an old college professor of mine who was pure English and was then and now in death is noted for his translations of Percy Bysshe Shelley. While teaching in the landmark Hallmarks of English education before coming to the states ever few years, Neville, would go back to London to his flat in the summer. He would continue to write to me filled with his banter and to this day, those days in his classes and the group discussions held in his apartment on the weekends, were spent listening to jazz recordings that he found so delightful as he sipped on imported Spanish Cognac or Sherry, talking in detail about The Humanities. Neville was employed in our English Department and the course that I paid to be in was his, The Humanities. Never in my wildest dream would I ever think that such a course would be so profound on my life. It all played out to Mother Nature's plan and I am most grateful and thankful to have had that experience to banter with a man who was so English, so common, so expert in his field. A lot of reading for a course for sure, but when one stops to think that the great leaders of the world all had that same experience, it wraps me in that cloak of knowledge that others do not have. Strongly influenced by Shelley's poems were people like Karl Marx, no less, Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi.
Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience was greatly influenced from Shelley's stand on non-violence and to have in political protest to violence, no violence. Knowing that Shelley died young in 1822, his popularity is greater now that at the time of his death. Then, I look at the news headlines and I wonder where the Shelley's of today are. All I see is haters everywhere.
