Our Sunday Paper Edition: Football, TV review, an odd bug and Lance Wang on 'Hope'
Our Sunday Paper Edition: Football, TV review, an odd bug and Lance Wang on 'Hope'
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Witches Cast Spell on Tigers
Let’s start our Sunday Paper Edition with sports.
The big matchup between Battenkill powers took place last night, but ended up being a one-sided affair.
The Greenwich Witches (7-0) upended the Cambridge-Salem Tigers (5-2) last night in Greenwich.
Quarterback Ryan Ingber led the way with three rushing touchdowns and two passing touchdowns. He had 213 yards on the ground.
Jack Saunders celebrated his TD in the endzone.
Calvin Curtis looking for yards after the reception.
Greenwich flew past Cambridge 44-6 setting up a battle of the unbeatens Friday at 7 p.m. against Warrensburg/Lake George/Bolton (7-0) at Jordy Jackson field.
The winner will likely end up regional Class D champ.
—DAN PEMRICK PHOTOS
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TV Review: ‘The Penguin’
By Darren Johnson
Journal & Press
This new series is on Max, formerly HBO, which brought us “The Sopranos” — and that’s what “The Penguin” aspires to be. Great acting, a great look, very writerly — about a mafioso — but, in the end, it’s about the freakin’ Penguin.
It’s bound to turn into this:
Superhero/bad guy origin stories are always a turd polish, based on old comic books that were at one time haphazardly written by flippant chain smokers — and now big money producers are trying to class up these stories in retrospect.
“The Penguin” would be so much better if it just were a mafia story. Make it the new “Sopranos.” No Batman or Robin needed. No supernatural elements.
Because without the DC Comics aspect, this could be a good thing.
It could be “Sopranos,” or at least “Ozark.”
(See the latest “Joker” movie as proof that these concepts can’t be maintained.)
Otherwise, it’s a waste of money and talent. I can’t invest anymore in it, knowing I will eventually be disappointed.
Sightings
By Bob Henke
Journal & Press
When Fall comes and the dew becomes heavy, we suddenly begin to see spider webs everywhere, outlined with dew droplets and backlit by a low angle sun. It gives the impression of a huge increase in spiders but they have been there right along. The fun part of this time of year is seeing the huge array of web types. The large delicate spirals are the work of orb weaver spiders. Every species builds a somewhat different pattern. This pretty lady is a shamrock orbweaver photographed by Dave O’Brien in Hampton.
Hope
By Lance Allen Wang
Journal & Press
I’ve been thinking a lot about hope. Hope occupies an interesting place in my mind. For me, it exists in that nether region between concrete, iron-clad rational thought, and the equally important place where my faith resides. Now, some might think of “hope” as a touchy-feely place where child-like simplicity can steer us towards a cover-all answer that says “everything is going to be all right” – and that wouldn’t be entirely wrong.
But I don’t think of hope that way. I think of it as a perspective, a lens. Hope is that which keeps me getting up in the morning with an optimistic outlook. It is what has helped me get through the worst times in my life, knowing that something better was coming – eventually.
United States Navy Admiral James Stockdale was held prisoner in the “Hanoi Hilton” after being shot down over North Vietnam. He said it was the optimists that died first – after all, they were expecting the best, and repeatedly got the worst. The heartbreak eventually drained all the hope they could muster. It was the “realistic optimists” who survived, he said. They thought, “I am going to get out of here. It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but I will.” Hope is about playing the long game.
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King had a saying which captures the sense of hope. “The arc of the moral universe is long,” he wrote, “But it bends towards justice.” Much like the prisoners in Hanoi, he knew it may not be today or tomorrow that freedom was coming. But he took that as inspiration to redouble his efforts rather than abandon them. He said, “... I’ve been to the mountaintop … I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land” in perhaps one of the most rhetorically beautiful expressions of hope ever uttered in America.
Sometimes that hope is not borne out, as in the case of diarist and Dutch Jew, Anne Frank. In hiding from the occupying Germans from 1942-1944, she, along with her family were eventually betrayed and deported to the concentration camp at Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen where she died. My personal epitaph for her is something she wrote in her famous diary - “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.” I cannot imagine that, considering her circumstances, this was a conclusion that she reached lightly. She showed a willingness to look beyond the tortuous present which surrounded her and defied it with her view of mankind. She was not prepared to make a rash generalization that what surrounded her in Nazi-occupied Holland was normal or the general human condition. She’s not the aberration - the Germans are. There is a better place. There is Rev. King’s mountaintop. That is a fundamental basis for hope, and in the end, it drives my personal worldview.
Hope is intangible. Signs of it are quite tangible. I see it every time I talk to my Godkids. I am impressed by their minds, but even more by their empathetic hearts which seem to know that while not everyone is “good,” people should be given the benefit of the doubt as their starting point.
So why bring all of this up? Why am I musing about all of this? Simple. We have an election coming and people are tense. As for seemingly every election since the turn of the 21st Century – this is the “most important one ever.” Yes, it is an important one. But as the rhetoric heats up, we want to ensure that we do not become small and afraid.
The things I’ve heard the GOP say Democrats are does not reflect most of the Democrats I know. And there seem to be a whole bunch of Republicans who do not fit into the MAGA mold and are more or less ignored by their current candidate. So rash bumper-sticker generalizations defining people by their political party tend not contribute to the lens through which I view the world. Rather my hope is built on actual experience with people who are neighbors, not just political “isms.”
Think about the last time you went into the Stewarts. That person who went in right before you, and stopped and held the door open? You know, as you sped up a little bit so they didn’t have to hold the door for another second or two waiting for you? And then you said “Thanks,” and they went on their way, and you went yours?
You went through that entire interaction, and never once did you consider whether they were a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist, Black, white, gay, straight, trans, or any other subcategory. They may be a neighbor. Maybe not. But they were just doing what a decent human being would do. You didn’t notice, of course, because you don’t think about it – because we go through that drill several times every day.
But maybe it’s time to be a bit more mindful and give people a little more credit for the fact of having done us this simple decency and kindness. And perhaps like oil poured upon a cloth, that kindness can spread. May not be fast. May not be far. But it’s a start.
And that is a basis for hope. And maybe that’s a perspective we should try on for size as we face forward into another new dawn.
Lance Allen Wang is an Iraq Veteran and retired Army Infantry officer who lives in Eagle Bridge, NY, with his wife Hatti.
And Now for the Comics
Broom Hilda by Russell Myers
Political Cartoon by Joel Pett
The Middletons by Dana Summers
9 to 5 by Harley Schwadron
And that’s it for today. Have a nice Sunday! More tomorrow to start your week!