Thx
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
If Bragg = TRobb, then Bragg will play only minor minutes next year. Can we flourish with our other three bigs, while Bragg takes a year to develop?
Jason Sudeikas, wearing a nomex racing suit, might bring Olivia Wilde, wearing a nomex leotard, to try to avoid Jason getting burned from spontaneous combustion.
Paul Rudd and his lovely wife, Julie Yaeger, might bring Paul's Ant-Man co-start Evangeline Lilly, who will use comedy to offset the intoxicating effect she has on all men with a pulse.
Current Zeitgeist Mystery Writer par excellence Gillian Flynn might attend the KSU game to promote her "Gone Girl" book made into a "Gone Girl" flick by David Fincher, and to research a spooky sequel called "Gone Coach" loosely based on Bruce Weber with a theme of self-injury via mock premature burial. Contrary to rumor, Gillian will bring no sharp objects to the game, nor will she and Holly Rowe get into any girl talk about mutual dark places.
Jason Hammel might bring his indie pop collaboration' partner Kori Gardner and short out the scoreboard with an atonal Mates of State variation on "I'm a Jay, Jay, Jayhawk."
Former Miss Kansas USA 2007 and Miss USA runner up Cara Gorges might bring herself and her favorite shootin' iron, a crimson and blue Winchester Model 21 skeet grade side by side with modified and improved chokes and a retro Ernie Simmons ventilated rib. Rumor is she will wear a skin tight camouflage adidas body stocking and shoot basketballs thrown overhead by Sheahon Zenger.
Artist Ann Hamilton might attend a KU game in which she contains the entirety of Allen Field House in a virtuosic large-scale multi-media installation that converges video, sculpture, photography, textile art, printmaking, and a sports venue to create a pardigmn shifting called "Impact and Glue in Crimson."
Samantha Ryan might attend and make a documentary called "Thirteen Ways of Looking at The Bird."
(Note: all fiction. No malice.)
Never thought I would run in to a "Yankee" reference on this site. I collect Yankees. They are the coolest tools that were ever invented. Not the best. Nothing beats a power drill, but, oh, man, spray a little WD-40 on a Yankee and I can amuse myself for hours on end just compressing and decompressing it. I have six of them. I use them for nothing but screwing around with. They smell like my Dad's tool shop, when I get just the right amount of WD on one. :-)
"Always remember that Bill Walsh was 2-14 once. But only once.”
-jaybate 1.0
“Always remember that Bill Self was 6-21 once. But only once.”
jaybate 1.0
"The most important thing to learn from failure is how not to fail again."
jaybate 1.0
“Putting a team on the back of an OAD with a low foundation is like playing Russian Roulette with a 9MM Beretta and a full clip.”
—jaybate 1.0
“You can make a shooter take it, but you can’t make him make it.”
—jaybate 1.0
“One forearm smash is worth an Urban Dictionary of trash talking.”
—jaybate 1.0
“Dunk means never having to say you’re sorry.”
—jaybate 1.0
“One way to recognize coaches cheating at recruiting is that they tend to have more talent than coaching skill.”
—jaybate 1.0
“It is easier to take the play ground out of a player than it is to take the suburb out of a player.”
—jaybate 1.0
“The greatest threat to the current African American dominance of basketball is the African American migration to the suburbs.”
—jaybate 1.0
“Big Sports Media and Big Sports Gaming are two sides of the same vig.”
—jaybate 1.0
“Slumps are periods of time when everyone knows what you are doing wrong but you.”
—jaybate 1.0
Yes, it is true. I am your wife.
And I am Alfred E. Neuman.
And John von Neuman.
And Phyllis George.
And Beyonce.
And Moe Howard.
I am Norman Vincent Peale.
And Bobby Seale.
I am Benjamin Disraeli.
And Lash LaRue.
I am Bob Keeshan.
And Captain Kangaroo.
I am all things to all board rats.
I am Fast Eddie Felson,
And Minnesota Fats.
I am even Rainer Werner Fassbinder
On Berlin Alexanderplatz.
:-)
Way to go!
Another one found his voice.
It happens every once in awhile here.
And it is so beautiful.
Hang on to it.
Use it.
Good, snappy answers. So: will Selden average 13-14 FGAs?
Alexander @ 15.1 ppg is going to make or break statmachine's system. It's a hairy chested leap. I hope he is right. It would mean Selden and someone else would have easy pickings! It would mean title. It might mean ring!
But I admit. I am having a crisis of faith! 😃
I've been having some fun the last few days, but now it is time to get serious.
Where are the points going to come from this season?
My specific questions are:
1.) Is Selden going to get 15 FGAs per game?
2.) How many FGA's will the starting PG get?
3.) Will The Designer be our leading scorer most games?
4) Who is going to score the most from the 5 spot? (this assumes that a committee of Traylor, Alexander, Lucas and Mickelson are likely to compete for those 40 minutes at the five plus 10 minutes of backing up The Designer with some of them focusing on guarding the post and rebounding, while others may be asked to score more. Who among the committee is going to score the most?)
5.) Who will score more at the 3 on a points per minute played basis? Greene or Oubre?
6.) Is Svi going to be a scorer this season, when he is in the game, or is he just going to be gluing when in?
Alright, the water is chummed!
I prefer to think of it as thinking AND playing outside the box. :-)
"It takes one to know one...and vice versa," as Alfred is reputedly attributed by the fertile and febrile minds of MAD to have said. :-)
Seriously, you are right. My alias, Alfred E. (note: the "E" stands for jaybate 1.0) Neuman, has no objective referent, but is rather a bottom up artificial intelligence construct hatch by some off duty NSA types woofing all the bio-life forms.
I am in short a harmless virus endlessly coursing through the sports cloud.
I am very envious of all of you aliases that actually refer to entities with biomass. I can only pretend to love the taste of Rosedale Barbecue, whilst realistas like yourself actually can taste the goodness.
I am, you see, as intangible as the gap in my own teeth drawn of me originally by some human being likely in the 1920s, or 1930s, and whose identity is now long lost down the unicameral memory hole. It was that shameless satirist, and magazine schlepper, Harvey Kurtzman, that rescued me from fungible obscurity and gave my likeness a home in a magazine. And it was that equally shameless satirist, Al Feldstein that finally named me. And it was that incomparably shameless satirist William Gaines that finally figured out how to make some serious bucks off me, or should I say my likeness.
I am you see, an icon who's image came first, and whose identity, however synthetic, came subsequently.
But that image was all so 20th Century and analog.
The iteration of me that you have now exposed is correctly identified as Alfred E. Neuman Viral Beta 2198.2 jaybate 1.0 edition 9999. And it has, as I noted before, a bottom up AI genesis with randomized IP address origins in most hacker hot beds from around the world. The two bored and mischievous national security fellows that actually wrote the AI routine that lead to me actually worked in the black box that isn't there and merely created the illusion of referents to hacker enclaves around the world, so that hackers could be patsies, should someone as clever as you see through my rants and witticisms to the gap-toothed vacuity at their, and at my, centers. So: now that you have exposed me, I want you to know that very shortly one or two Jolt Cola addicted, anti-social binary pattern savants in hacker enclaves are shortly to be visited by a JSOC team dressed as Jehovah's Witnesses in black Ray Bans, and armed with both nebulalizers, of the kind Tommy and Will wielded in MIB1&2, plus booklets entitled "How to Hack God and Be Saved by Doing So" fiendishly dusted with Thanatene--the most deadly poison intentionally engineered without an antidote ever! I hope you are happy with the unintended consequences of your sleuthing.
(Note: all fiction as usual. And positively no malice.)
:-)
Ah, I forgot about Tolkien's little people. I am over the hill for sure, when I forget that. Sorry.
And I am so relieved that that was your intent. For my initial search lead to this link...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Là-bas_(novel) ↗
A rather dark book--another I had forgotten about--this time mercifully. :-)
I believe Bill Self will be the first NCAA coach to sign an endorsement deal with Space X and use space travel for recruiting over seas and off planet.
I believe female frontal nudity in Allen Field House will continue to be unlawful, inappropriate and unacceptable behavior unless the woman is attracted to me; then it should be considered ground breaking performance art protected under the right to freedom of speech.
I believe boot camp will be longer this year than last; that more waste basket liners will be used, and that each member of the team will be made to carry Snacks on his back up Campanile hill on the last day.
I believe there is more undisclosed oil in the Great Lakes Region of the United States than in the Caspian Basin, but that it will be held in reserve until every drop of other countries' oil has been pumped.
I believe KU fans will wonder where all the recruits that attend Late Night will sign, and act surprised when the Nike leans sign with Nike schools and adidas leans sign with adidas schools.
I believe Kelly Oubre will become known as the Daily Double Double.
I believe Cliff Alexander will be amazed to see a river that does not run backwards and that Bill Self will enjoy having a post man again that does not have to be told what double down means.
I believe that Wayne Selden will become the most physically intimidating 2 guard in KU history, while at the same time discovering through enrollment in ballet that it takes an absolute man to get up on point.
I believe Sheahon Zenger and adidas will hire chess champion and reputed serial restaurant check sprinter Paul Charles Dozsa to coach the KU Chess Team, endorse a new line of adidas chess shoes, and entertain the crowd at half times of KU basketball games with exclusive rights to the following legendary, but now old viral video of one of Dzozsa’s arrests for reputedly sprinting a check in London.
I believe Svi will become popular and the Wheel will serve a drink in his honor called a Flaming Ukrainean Cool-Aid that will be two parts Nalyvka, one part Coors banquet beer and 3 parts Coleman Lantern fuel. It will be served with a slice of Kiwi and garnished with two unburned mantles. During a celebration after beating KSU in which Svi will score 53 points, over 100 Flaming Ukrainean Cool-Aids will simultaneously be tossed onto the roof and begin burning out of control and the Wheel will be designated an EPA Superfund Site.
I believe Bill Self will admit to having his toe nails done crimson and blue before big games...by Garth Brooks.
I believe Travis Ford will coach on teak stilts this season and be cast as a bull munchkin in a Bartlesville production of “The Wizard of Oz Does Stillwater."
I believe Kim Anderson will regret taking the MU job before the first tip off and jump to K-State to replace Bruce Weber during the first TV time out.
I believe Olivia Wilde will wear a better looking hat, when she comes to a KU game this season and that 17 professor emeriti near her section will have coronary events.
I believe Gregg Marshall will change the spelling of his name to Ggregg Mmarsshall and Wiicchiitta SSTate will win less than 26 games.
I believe Bob Knight will be arrested for bait casting without a license at the Monterrey Aquarium, after leaving the Stanford-UCLA game in Palo Alto at half time from frustration with the way Alford teaches wing initiation.
I believe Coach K’s name will be used to stump the best spelling student in America, so that the daughter of a friend of one of the judges will win and get a full ride to Slipppary Rok Unaversuhty.
I believe Roy Williams will have his Tar Heel players spend more time on their studies, but that they will still play soft.
I believe Stumpy Miller will simultaneously manifest a GERD induced hiatal hernia and a scrotal hernia from Nike stacking so much talent on him.
I believe that Bruce Weber will admit to once having been physically attracted to a live wildcat.
(Note: Obviously, all fiction. No malice.)
And no one in the state could tell it was shut down! :-)
I am definitely on board with no name calling, except for Missouri. :-)
I was just having some fun with your and nuleaf's wonderings about where several of our esteemed posters have gone.
I have not yet seen it, but in frustration of not seeing it, I have read a lot about Luttrell and his book, about the conflicts between Luttrell's book and the Marine Corp's version of the event, and about the movie being fairly faithful to the book. My appetitive is thoroughly whetted to see the movie now. I also have a ton of thoughts about the event, and long wake of it, but after writing them, decided I needed to see the movie before posting anything. Regardless, thanks very much for calling this tragic, heroic, sad, complicated episode to my attention. Because the wars for control of the Eurasian Center Point are really only just beginning, it is hard to foresee what the long term historical importance of Luttrell's story will be, but if USA/UK were to concede the Eurasian center point now and withdraw and dig in to hold Africa, Luttrell's story might become as iconic of the Near East/ South Asian/North African regime change war era since 9/11, as My Lai Massacre became for the vast 1954-1973 American involvement in Vietnam. Wars often generate brief events that subsequently become highly symbolic (and reductive) icons of the entire hopelessly complex event of a war, for better or for worse. My dad often complained that the guys that put the flag up on Mt. Surabachi, either the first time, or the staged time, weren't nearly as important as the guys that fought there way up the damned thing, or went into caves in Cushman's pocket, if I recall that name correctly. But symbolism and iconography are not about literal events, they are about a mythic arc between events and the collective imagination of a people and they speak in a mysterious language to the collective heart of a people and not to the actuality of any one event in relation to others. Wars are apparently filled with countless acts of heroism and countless acts of evil and blundering, and so these kinds of stories like Luttrell's, their perhaps equalled many times in other circumstances that we will never know about, some how nevertheless speak to us deeply and in ways we can never fully understand,whether we were in the war zone, or back home.
Howling!!!!
My wife not only calls my plays, but then blames me when they are bad calls. :-)
Bruce's wife reputedly has always called his plays. :-)
Cindy is reputedly going to take over play calling, if KU falls under .750 this season. :-)
There is a rumor that increasing numbers of Americans are joining "The Order of Elon," and are being transported by new generation of Space X space ships to classified space colonies on exoplanets in an as yet undivulged binary star system near the Black Hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. But this is only a rumor. :-)
"Here, then, is the key. There is no key. There is not even a lock."
-jaybate 1.0
"A bird in the hand should be allowed to fly away."
--jaybate 1.0
"When you are thrown under a bus, lay very flat between the wheel tracks and let it go by; then call in your IOUs."
-jaybate 1.0
"If I could have anything, I would have everything that felt good and hurt no one and helped someone."
jaybate 1.0
"Waiting for basketball season to start is like waiting for sex without foreplay."
--jaybate 1.0
Thank that IT for me. I was beginning to wonder if you had slipped into the chronosimplasticinfidibulum, Mr. Pilgrim. :-)
I have a feed back to CJOnline...
EXTRA! EXTRA!!! Kevin Haskins reputedly composes his KSU stories while sitting at his keyboard wearing nothing but a Sumo wrestler's thong!
(Just kidding. But it is a startling image, is it not?)
Yes, yes, I was laughing so hard while I was typing I hit the wrong ampersand alias. :-)
Going neg on Fizzou is unavoidable!
To say the word Missouri is to blaspheme.
MU Trivia: Did you know that the Greek word for Missouri is spelled Phi Epsilon Sigma Epsilon Sigma, which may be anglicized as FECES.
That you sayeth I thinketh too much maketh thou not the firsteth alias, or person, to have saideth that to me. :-)
I am great with no more Kevin Haskins KSU stories, but a KU website that can't have threads and posts satirizing the pussies would be like a day without sunshine, wouldn't it? How about if when we make fun of KSU we put a number code, like 9999, before the title that signals you not to read it? That way we get to keep satirizing the pussies and you don't have to read it? That seems like a perfect workaround!!! You can even pick the 4 digit number code. For example:
"9999 Bruce Weber Buries HIMSELF Again"
Or....
9999 Bruce Weber asks Self if he would retire so Bruce can replace him and have one good season with Self's material"
Or....
"9999 Bruce attends Berlitz to learn Okie in hopes of eavesdropping on Self's game plan"
And so on.
I think this can be a win-win situation.
And RedRooster will get very testy with me if I quit making fun of KSU!!!!!! 😄
Rock Chalk!!!
Uhm, I'll take that as a compliment. :-)
I know pictures can deceive because they freeze but one of many moments in time, but there is something about that picture of Snacks, Joel and Andrew that gets at the essential difference between Joel and Andrew. It is in their facial expressions...in their eyes. Joel looks like he would tear the back end out of a rhino. The other looks like he would complain about the rhino.
It is going to be so interesting to see how these two young men fare in the NBA. Joel's knee may prevent us from ever seeing him at his best. But if his knee heels, it is going to be interesting, as I said, how each young man does.
Sorry about recalling incorrectly about the military. Still think your story is worth telling.
And what the hell! I've accidentally given myself a good idea for a story: a American basketball player that falls into being an informant in, say, Berlusconi's Italy, then gets wrapped up in fixing of Italian basketball games, and then has to run for his life with a beautiful woman, of course, to Locarno, and then perhaps cross over the border. Sort of Robert Ludlum in a jock strap! A Farewell to Arms in tennies. I like it. :-)
I'm getting feeble and uncool. I did not recognize the reference "La-Bas", so googled it and there were many possible references. Did you have one in particular in mind for our dear @drgnslayr ?
I wish you would take a crack at a memoir in two parts. Part One would be your Odyssey from America to Europe. Part 2 would be your journey through Europe as player, soldier, and sports business man. Part Three would focus on your return to a life back in Kansas. This is a mythic and an underreported experience. I am not sure whether it would have much of a market or not, but it seems an important, revealing and under documented path of experience. I particularly like the angle of your devotion to gardening, small agriculture and healthy eating as a means of coping with the adverse side effects of your time as an athlete, plus the spiritual side of it as well. What appeals to me specifically is that it would be a non-fiction story of a modern Odysseus--the athlete, instead of the warrior--that went abroad. And if I recall correctly, you served in the military also. It would be a particularly interesting thread to include if you coincidentally happened to do any time as a military intelligence person inserted into European basketball either as a player, or a business person, to be a listener in the very complicated world of European professional sports ownership and European Big Gaming, which is reputedly used for laundering black monies and drug monies and terrorist monies and so on. But even without that flashy angle, I still like the human life phases that your story would demonstrate in a fresh way.
I know other Kansans that have moved back and have been very grateful that they did, but I don't know any that have ever had the interesting combination of sports business and a return home to the kind of life you have apparently chosen to lead in Kansas. I tried to return a time or two, but the stars did not align to enable it. But I think your story would appeal to me even if I were not from Kansas.
A big market publisher might want Part I and 2, but not Part 3. I'm not sure. A small market publisher might want both. Surely there ought to be a small Kansas publishing house that would want to document your unique experience and its connection to the state. But I suspect the right editor might see a broader market for it.
You might try pitching the book idea to some publishing houses there in Kansas and see if you get a nibble.
Suggested Title: "Odysseus in Shorts: The Long Journey of an American Basketball Player to Europe and Back."
Rock Chalk!
Howling!
If CMU plays 12 man, with two platoons, it could be a very tough game for this KU team.
Beaty era begins
Gracias!
Oh, the season is coming!!!!!
Its going to be so fun.
Bruce might hire Steve Lavin and Gene Keady to hold press conferences and point out all the things Bruce might have done differently.
Bruce might hold a mock burial of Bill Snyder and say that though there is no way for him to ever equal Snyder's accomplishments, he's still the KSU's Interim Head Basketball Coach.
Bruce might tell national media that his favorite thing to talk about with his players is how to get rid of head lice by shampooing with fresh bat guano.
Bruce might admit that he never tries to figure out what offense an opposing team is running, because it takes more time than he can concentrate for.
Bruce might pray publicly for Bill Self to miss the KSU-KU game due to strained piles.
(Note: All fiction. No malice.)
Nor do CB22, nor do I...
I do not like them Sam I am.
I do not like them with purple fur.
I do not like them force majeure.
I do not like them in a barn.
I do not like them on a farm.
I do not like them with manure
I do not like them that's for sure.
I do not like purple eggs and spam
I do not like them Sam I am.
I find your analysis very persuasive, even though it runs contrary to what I have argued elsewhere.
Elsewhere I have said this team is in for a very tough season, because going in it appears to lack even one every game MUA type player. This can be a huge problem for a Self team, because Self Ball likes to get the rock in the hand of an impact player and let him "make plays." It follows that it needs impact players that can a make plays against any one they face.
But your assessment is very persuasive, as I said, and perhaps I have been underestimating Oubre. Perhaps he can be that kind of player for us.
Alexander seems like he could be a very good player, but at his height, he just seems like one of those guys that plays extremely well for much of a season only to run into a footer that shuts him down at the Big Dance.
Selden could be our every game MUA, if his explosiveness were to return, but the feeds this off season that I have seen do not look like he still has the explosiveness to no-step jump and rock the joint.
And I had my hopes up for Svi until I saw his feeds at FIBA.
Maybe Perry Ellis can be the guy, but the way I saw him wilt against the blue meanies last season with a season under his belt does not make me confident.
Still, I agree with you that this team may very well have some advantages over last year's team.
And I hope you are right that these pieces will fit together and producer a fine season.
But I sense a shortage of every game MUA talent.
And that worries me, when KU fans have such high hopes of fighting it out on even terms with the elite programs each year.
ALWAYS TRUST YOUR JAYBATE 1.0'S ORIGINALITY AND JOY IN CITING SOURCES. :-)
"Zone defense and Bill Self are like John Boehner and Barack Obama. Even when you see them together, they are not really acknowledging the legitimacy of the other."
--jaybate 1.0
"An ounce of immunity is worth a pound of prevention and a ton of cure."
--jaybate 1.0
Welcome. And always remember: one man's over analysis is another man's under analysis.
And vice versa.
And versa vice.
:-)
Talking about Kansas is difficult, because very few persons understand and appreciate a steppe ecology, at least that is what I have come to call the Kansas prairie. The Native Americans understood it deeply and reputedly called it the ocean of grass that stretched from North Texas to Manitoba. The Native Americans of the ocean of grass appear to have viewed their world much as island peoples in ocean environments have viewed theirs. And when native Americans acquired horses, they began to view it much like island peoples acquiring better ship building and navigation skills; that is, they viewed their lives much as sea farers have through out history. They followed the buffalo herds first on foot probably for relatively short distances for thousands of years, then on horseback, when the Spanish brought horses (note: I have always secretly wondered if far back in pre history that Native Americans perhaps rode primitive variants of horses that became extinct for some reasons).
To grasp life on the ocean of grass--to break through our blinders of over-familiarity of its ploughed up, fenced, fracked, pipeline webbed, cattle ranched, irrigated, wheat and corn farmed look of today--it helps to think a bit more purposefully about seafarers. Sea farers have long set sail in search of fish to catch and eat and trade and sell. They often sailed great distances to follow the cod to catch and salt, or whales to slaughter and cook for oils, or what have you. Sailors have always been amphibians; that is, they have always lived on both the sea and the land. And they have always rightly said that land lubbers, those that did not go to sea, could not understand the majesty and scale of the sea; how one was changed by navigating the sea for a length of time out of site and out of reach of land. How its mysteries of the deep welling up, like ones own dreams welling up at night amidst ones waking days, connected oneself to something deeper, something more alive and transcendently savage and beautiful, than had one stayed at home on the land solely. But always the sailors have to come back to port and in time they always grow too old to go to sea, if the sea does not take them young in its fits of fury between its hypnotic periods of serenity.
The ocean of grass, the prairie and its legacy that lies behind the ploughed, farmed, ranched expanses we see now on occasional long drives through it, what geographers I believe also classify as steppe, also found in central Asia on even vaster scale, i.e., the ocean of grass that spans the heart of North America, is quite similar in its extremes and effects on persons to the sea itself on seafarers, if they ever actually live in the prairie and move around on it, rather than just keep their shoulders to the suburban wheel and work and shop in it. It is something that is mesmerizing in its magnitude and forces one to scope it down to something manageable and come into port frequently in what are called villages, towns and cities, but which are really just islands in the ocean of grass, or ports at its shore.
To be born on the prairie, either in a port city at its edge, like I was in Kansas City, or to grow up in one of its tiny island villages like McPherson, or Onaga, or Goodland--little refueling stations on the way to the western shore that is the port town of Denver, say, as well as places where the awesome harvests of the ocean of grass are collected and moved by diesel semi-trailer trucks, bearing company names and city names always half a continent or more away, and by graffiti covered railroad trains pulled by diesel electrics--the original hybrids--to the great, lonely elevators for shipment down diked, brown rivers that were once wildly circuitous coiling serpents reduce with poetic license to blue meridians and Moon Rivers flowing to the Gulf of Mexico for trans-shipment on oceans of salt water to mouths hungry for wheat bread and corn masa around the world, is to be irreversibly different from peoples from the mountains and deserts and wooded and jungled regions and especially those from big cities by oceans of water. It is to know on a deep level the vastness of nature is not limited to the rigid inanimateness of rock, or the shifting inanimateness of sand, or the eternally fluctuating inanimateness of water. The prairie, you see, is alive. It is animate. It is not the medium that life is in, as is the case of the ocean. Rather, it is the medium of life itself. It grows and dies before your eyes, if you stay awhile. It repeats. Vegetation myths still mean something if you know the prairie. When the amber waves of grain wave, it is life itself that is waving at you. When the corn leaves flutter dark green and avocado glints in hot, humid June wind it is life that undulates with infinite complexity on the rods and cones of the retinas of ones squinting eyes.
The same view of the awesomeness of life may be seen in the depths of deciduous forests clinging to the steep, dark river valleys of the Alleghenies, or under the green house of a stifling subtropical jungle in Louisiana, or Florida, but these are cramped, claustrophobic experiences of life's fecund spectacle of rank indifference to one human being's existence. One cannot see the forest for the trees in, say, eastern Pennsylvannia. One can barely see the stars inside or outside the tiny towns crowded onto green rivers winding like water moccasins through the mountains worn down by life strangling them for eons. And once in a swamp jungle one's experience is even more constrained and localized.
But the prairie is the opposite experience. On the prairie, one can never not see the horizon; never not see that life stretches all the way to and fro, all the way to and far, far beyond what one can see. To stand on the prairie is to know, really know, the vastness of life on this strange, tiny green planet adrift in a universe of voids and rocks, and life killing radiation unfiltered by our tent of atmosphere; a universe where even the probability of other life remains an unverified mystery given hope only by stochastic abstractions.
To really "see" life, to really experience its verdant scale, to really know its beauty, complexity and consuming indifference, one has to live on the prairie for a time, one has to walk it, one has to walk into its thinly distribute groves of trees along small rivers and come out onto its vast horizons, one has look up close at its dense weave of grasses and weeds and hear its cicada and catch its grass hoppers and feel its flies and bees whir by one's ear, while at the same time never losing site of its horizons. It is this bothness of the prairie that defines it--its ever present, ever visible, simultaneous combination of the micro and the macro of life, if one will every once in awhile take off the blinders of work and recreation and media, or school if you are young as I once was living there, and stand alone in a pasture, or a rest area by an interstate, or a truck stop, or simply venture down a gravel section road off the beaten path and stop at a "high" spot and turn off the car and stand in the tall grass of the ditch by the road and just look and listen. You will see far and near. But unlike the mountains, or the oceans, where you can also see far and near, you will be looking far and near at life undulating sensuously in the wind and stretching to the horizon, not standing stoically like pines on mountains of stiff rock, not salt water smashing and cresting against rock encrusted with barnacles and anenomes and star fish and rock fish that you cannot see unless you run up so close you lose sight of the horizon, as you bend over and marvel at the reef life in the breakers at your feet.
On the prairie, you get both all the time, whether you want it or not. And even if you go "down in the bottoms," where the rich soil is, you know that you are always within running distance, or a short drive if you are old like me, to the prairie above and the bothness you were born with and are accustomed to. You know you are never far from wonder of life both near and far--from the simultaneity of it all.
Ironically, I did not fully appreciate the American prairie until I left it and even then it took reading a strange, tragic book, of all things, to bring into articulate focus, what I had been born knowing on some sublingual level. I stumbled into a book, a World War II memoir, the title of which I now forget, written by a German soldier, and published posthumously by his family, in some small press. It recounted his harrowingly bad experiences on the eastern front in the mercifully failed Nazi invasion of Russia. If you have been to Germany it is country of diverse topography, but what sticks with one, at least what stuck with me, was that it was often a hilly country of forests. It is something like Pennsylvania, I suppose, or vice versa. The Romans did not invade much of it, because of its claustrophobic forests that vast, disciplined Roman legions quickly would lose tactical advantage inside. In any case, the man who wrote the memoir grew up in a small city of Germany. He was educated. He was destined to become a doctor. But he was conscripted into the Army and before he knew it he was a highly educated young private taking orders from ideological fanatics and often morons. (Note: I am told by many that have served that it is a rare army, like it is a rare corporation, and a rare government that is not this way much of the time, but I digress.) At the key moment that Hitler's invasion might have succeeded the Germans stopped, likely necessarily, to solidify their supply lines and prepare for the dreaded Russian winter. It was then that things began to go dreadfully wrong for the author of this war memoir. It was then that the orders began to come down through channels that were being given based on assumptions about logistical and weather conditions and Russian troop concentrations that were not based on reality, but on speculation, because lines of communications had badly deteriorated. It was then, after a horrific winter of suffering that his division of soldiers were ordered to march south to the Caspian, rather than continue east, as if marching to the Caspian were like marching from Bavaria to Alsace. What they were marching into was a vast steppe, a vast prairie, of a scale as big, or bigger, than from Manitoba to North Texas. The word was they were to march south and meet up with German armies moving from the Balkans to Ukraine. And the march went on all spring and all summer and all fall and, though I can't recall, maybe they camped and marched another spring and fall. They marched until all of their machinery had to be left behind in spring mud for there were no roads, just wagon ruts, and thousands of miles of grass, oceans of grass, and not cities, just villages and farm steads hundreds of miles apart. And they grew lost as they marched and died of exposure and starvation. And it was not until the last ideologically fanatical officer and last stupid sergeant had died of starvation, disease, thirst, or exposure, that this articulate would be doctor was finally free to lead a small rag tag band of German privates on a quest to survive rather than on a mad, quixotic quest to conquer the Caspian Basin for the fatherland's oil and gas needs, and for access eventually to the Persian Gulf and the other mad, fanatical bastards from neo Shogunate Japan with their great Navy trying to stretch through the southwest Pacific to the Persian Gulf in hopes of joining forces with the Germans and the Italians, to take over the worlds oil and gas supplies and the eastern hemisphere's global shipping lanes. In the vastness of the central Eurasian steppe, caught up in the intoxicating vision of Nazis back in Berlin and Bavaria backed by private oligarchs like Krupps in control of regional, would be global producer oligopolies and illegitimately in control of their own states, seeking control of global trade routes and global energy supplies, was this poor, pitiful, well educated, well mannered private and a dozen or so hapless German soldiers by then emaciated and in rags lost in the middle of an ocean of grass a half a world a way from the steppe I grew up on the edge of. And what did this doctor's memoir of his war experiences recall as changing him profoundly? Was it hunger? Combat? The madness of war? Fanaticism run amok? Corporate military fascism exposed for the human dead end that it always is, regardless of where it rears its ugly head. It was his daily experience of the fantastic dimensions of the central Asian steppe that he marched through, and then hiked through, then staggered through, and then finally for a time crawled through, before finally finding their way into being taken prisoners and saved. He said it was the most remarkable, most awesome, most transforming expanse of geography he had ever witnessed, despite all of the horrors that befell him there.
When persons learn where I am from and ask me what the prairie is like I do not tell them about this book, because I cannot recall its title, or author's name, and I do not want to introduce perfect strangers to the horrors of war, or make them suspect that I harbor any sympathies for the Germans regarding World War II.
What I do tell them to do is read a book I love deeply and frankly cherish my copy of. It is called "Prairie Erth" by William Least Heat Moon, who most unfortunately lives in Missouri and teaches at that dreadful state's leading university. When I am far from the prairie, as I mostly am, and when I am struggling with meaning and purpose, and when basketball will not pull me through such funks, I often reach for that book and simply crack it open and re-read any random section of it and I am reconnected with that steadying experience of bothness that I was born with that has stood me so well in so many circumstances. And on the very rare occasions when even that does not suave my soul, then I get out the suit case, and catch a flight back to Kansas and hope there is still someone alive their I can go visit and, when their busy schedules require them to get back to their routines, then I go for a drive down to the old home place, where my great grand father raised a family in eastern Kansas at subsistence level after having tried and failed in the prairie of central Kansas. And if that does not work, then I drive as far out into Kansas as I can get and I drive to a gravel section road off the beaten path and I come to a stop at what an easterner, or a westerner, would barely notice as a high spot in the road, and I park the car and step out in the tall grass and look in every direction as I did as a child.
It works for me.
Maybe add "Red Headed Stranger" by Willie.