I admit this freely because I suspect I'll be the only one to read this: Well, I have another...another blog. Yes, it's true. It's called Who's In? There I blather on about sports and fitness and training related matters. Like the movie =http://www.murderballmovie.co... target=_newMurderball.

I’m hardly qualified to review a movie, having seen only two others so far this year, but I won’t let that stop me. Except, it’s hard to know where to begin. . . to do justice to the athletes in this movie. Part of the deal is that they’re quadriplegics, which isn’t a condition that has a lot of bright side to it. You’d think. But the U.S. quad rugby team, a bunch of guys with some impairment or other in every limb and gnarly postapocalyptic-looking wheelchairs, don’t focus on that much. On the contrary, they are so focused on their goal, athletic you even forget about their condition sometimes too.

The team tries to continue its long winning streak through the http://www.athens2004.com/en/... target=_new2004 Paralympic Games in Athens. There’s the plot, with conflict: A former team member has gone to coach the arch-rival Canadian team.

So there’s drama as well as the usual documentary features of interviews, old photos, related footage, and. . . Telestrator illustrations. The latter show how quad rugby (“murderball”) is played or how spinal cord injuries work. <.p>

I had a coach once who said that he thought all successful athletes, all great performers were motivated by anger. I took issue with that at the time. I didn’t feel angry and I’d had some success. But maybe he was onto something. Certainly there’s anger in murderball, the game, as the name implies. And it feels right. It may look a lot like the usual macho hollering anger you often see among football players, for example, and at which you might think, Forgodsake, lighten up, it’s a game. But it comes across differently, subtly, in Murderball, and you’d be happy if they’d yell some more.

Unexpectedly, there’s happiness in this movie, and even hilarity. The Boston Globe’s Ty Burr called it “a triumph of the competitive spirit” in his =http://www.boston.com/ae/movi... target=_newreview, which is a good description. But if you just read that soundbite, it might put you off by its very nobility. These guys are funny, profane, comradely practical jokers. There are some outright belly laughs. It’s true, they’re matched by throat-clenching pathos, but as affecting as the story about how one guy came to be paralyzed is the look on him after he fumbles the potentially winning play of the game.

I read a book about animal training called Adam’s Task by Vickie Hearne. Her training of horses and dogs was much like athletic training, and as I was training maniacally at the time for the U.S. rowing team, I thoroughly related. All these years later the only thing I really remember from the book , but which I think of often, is a remark she made that the horses like the training, the work: It distracts them from the knowledge of their mortality, she said. Whether you want to credit horses with that level of self-awareness is up to you, but I think she captured a deep true reason any of us train, or pursue silly goals like rowing boats fast or putting balls into holes. Quad rugby players have already tasted a slice of mortality in their physical losses—almost all of them coming near death through the disease or accident that left them damaged. Their work, the training, the competition may distract them from the mortality to come as well as that which has left its mark on them.

Blog has a certain quickness to it, doesn't it? If you post but once a year, it's more like blong. My blog now like a tree with one growth ring per year.... I won't apologize, it's no skin off anybody's nose, but still. I have some manners and it just feels rude to go off without a word. Frankly, I'm amazed my files are still here, occupying their bits somewhere. I got back here because I'm thinking of a new and different blog. Somewhat less pretentious, and more focused. That can't be bad, huh? I'll link to it someday, if it ever happens.

Does anyone know, can one have two blogs under one account via this host? Yes, of course, I will ask them myself. Looking at other services, and my overambitious goals, I think it really is time to learn this whole cascading style sheet whooha. Is there a good tutorial somewhere? One that can penetrate the barrier my brain likes to set up to absorbing that kind of thing?

Ciao for now.

But all of them, even the people who mentioned the WWII comparison, never mentioned any sacrifice beyond the ultimate sacrifice. I mean, we�re eye-brimmingly hurt yet brave about letting several score youngsters die in a not-war we are waging. But drive smaller cars? Good god. Consume less in general? Develop renewable resources? Admit to global warming? Adjust our Middle East policy? (That could cost votes at home!)

No, talking about �root causes� for why some people hate Americans is too painful a sacrifice. Not a very emotionally rich opportunity for flag-waving. That is not the sacrifice we want. We want to remember Saving Private Ryan, not saving ration coupons.

Those in power see the idea of repairing �root causes� as code for succumbing to extortion by terrorists. They can�t make us bend! Go shopping today!

I am not belittling the loss of those connected to the dead. And I am no better than anyone else. What did I sacrifice today? Nothing. But the kind of sacrifice needed for fighting a war on terror is not in hundreds of families grieving, but in hundreds of thousands of families enduring small, dull, ongoing, and slightly irritating sacrifices that put all together may slightly change the nature of what it is to be a (hated) American.


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Actually, a short while after thinking all that, I read a column by Paul Krugman in [url=www.nytimes.com]The New York Times [/url] on the topic of sacrifice. He's brilliant. If you don't aleady, check out [url=www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorial sandoped/oped/columnists/ paulkrugman/index.html]his columns[/url] sometime. You can read the most recent two for free; there's a fee for archived ones. I think you must register (no cost) to access the Times.