OLYMPIAN MEDITATIONS

One of the oddities of the American presidential cycle is that it coincides with the cycle of modern Olympic Games.  As a consequence, every four years, political junkies like myself, who have by this point all but od-ed on polls and feverish speculation, are compelled to take a break for several weeks and watch superbly conditioned young men and women do manifestly impossible things.  This year, the Games also coincide with my post-operative regime, which consists of giving myself three different kinds of eye drops at five minute intervals four times a day.  I relieve the tedium of the eye drops by lying on my bed and watching snatches of the Olympics through drop-blurred, but now glasses-free eyes.

Herewith, some idle reflections prompted by the endless broadcasts of the London Games.

First of all, even though I am seventy-eight and a reasonably attentive spectator of the passing scene, there always turn out to be events whose existence I was not even aware of.  It reminds me of a letter I wrote home from college in 1950 as a first semester Freshman.  I told my father, excitedly, that I had just learned of something called Sociology, which I had never known existed.  [My father replied indignantly that he had most certainly informed me of the existence of Sociology.  He may have been right.]   This cycle, it is synchronized diving.  I had no idea that there was a sport called "synchronized diving."  Watching two young Chinese women do a complicated manoeuvre off the thirty meter board in perfect synchronization reminds me of other extraordinary things people can learn to do with enough practice [I have that same sense of wonder when I watch Alfred Brendel play a Beethoven sonata.]

The system employed for keeping track of the number of medals won by each country is clearly defective, although as I quite well know from my study of Utility Theory, there is really nothing to be done about it.  I mean, anyone can see that two Golds, four Silvers, and four Bronzes is not as good as eight Golds and two silvers, but both count as ten medals, making the countries with those scores tied in the overall tally. 

I think it was unfair to boot eight women badminton players from the Games for deliberately throwing games.  They were acting strategically, attempting to avoid being eliminated by the Chinese team before getting to the medal rounds.  Why is this not the equivalent of sacrificing a piece in chess, or laying down a sacrifice bunt to move a runner into scoring position?

Generally speaking, I am not Anglophiliac by inclination, but I really had to rethink my position after seeing the Opening Ceremony tribute to the National Health Service.

The US basketball team should have to play with only four men on the court at a time.  I mean, give everyone else a chance!

Beach Volleyball is not a competitive sport.  Correctly understood, it is a pre-coital mating ritual.  Bringing in sand to London to play volleyball is as absurd as bringing in grass to Dubai to play golf.

POP PHENOMENOLOGY

Whenever you have some sort of medical condition or procedure, no matter how rare it may be, people pop out of the woodwork and say, "Oh yeah, I had that."  Cataract surgery is in fact a rather common procedure, and now that I have had it, it seems to me that everyone I know over the age of thirty has already undergone it.  The point of the procedure is of course to enable you to see the rest of the world more clearly, but one of the unanticipated side effects of the surgery has been an insight into myself, which, as I shall now explain, is a curiously appropriate consequence.

The surgery is designed to eliminate a clouding of the lens of the eye [that is what cataracts are] by removing the clouded lens and replacing it with an artificial lens [all in about seven to nine minutes of actual surgery time, believe it or not.]  But the new artificial lens can be fashioned so as to give one 20-20 vision.  Thus it is that for the first time since I was a teenager, I can now walk around and function quite nicely without glasses.  I will still need glasses for reading or using a computer [or inserting an earring for my wife if she cannot do it herself], but not for driving or going to the movies or watching television.

A number of people have told me even after having cataract surgery, they have chosen to continue wearing glasses, even if that means getting bifocals that have plate glass for the distance part and corrective lens for the reading part.  When I ask why on earth they would do that, they say, like as not, "I would feel naked and exposed without my glasses.  I am accustomed to hiding behind my glasses."

But I am delighted not to have to wear glasses.  I even allow myself the fatuous fantasy that it makes me look, dare I say it, more handsome [or at least less plain.]  Why am I so different?  Because, I now realize, all my life, whenever I wanted to withdraw from the world and become invisible, I accomplished this by taking my glasses off.  I felt that if I could not see other people, who without my glasses were simply blurs, they in turn would not be able to see me.  So it is that at a cocktail party or public gathering, when I felt oppressed by the loud voices and endless faces, I would quietly slip off my glasses and retreat into myself.  It even seemed to me that the sounds diminished when I could no longer see anything at all clearly.

By having cataract surgery, I have forfeited this means of escape.  Somehow, I have the feeling that putting on my reading glasses will not have quite the same effect.

POST-OP

I had the second round of cataract surgery this morning, so in a couple of days I should be in great shape.  At the moment, I cannot read anything smaller than a billboard, but I will overcome that soon, I trust.  Bear with me

CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL

My conscience will not let me alone until I confess. After a run of a little over a hundred wins in FreeCell, which took me over the 97% mark, I made a stupid blunder, and used one undo, which I ordinarily do not permit myself, to recoup, after which I went on to win, and have now racked up another fifteen wins. I am afraid any records I set will have to be accompanied by an asterisk.

THE OLYMPICS

Yesterday evening, Susie and I went to a neighbor's apartment to welcome the launching of the London Olympics.  Regaled by several kinds of cheshire cheese, ale, mead [no kidding], clotted cream, Scotch Eggs, and Nutella, we watched what must be the weirdest opening ceremonies ever.  Did I see the Queen of England escorted in by James Bond?

Thus far, today, I have seen ping pong, duelling, beach volleyball, and badminton.  There has to be something better than that happening, right?  At the next Olympic Games, a new sport is going to be introduced:  Free Style Men's Making a Fool of Oneself.  Mitt Romney is already the odds on favorite to take gold.

CORRECTION

Tony Flood appends a brief comment to a segment of my autobiography, suggesting that I could not possibly have commented on Isaac Deutscher's keynote address to the Socialist scholars Conference in 1970 because Deutscher died in 1967!  Needless to say, he is correct.  I did some Googling, and it would appear that the conference, at the old Commodore Hotel, actually took place in 1966, a year before Deutscher died.  My apologies for the mistake.  I know I am not hallucinating, because in my file drawer is a folder with my written-out comment, labeled "Comment on Deutscher Address at Socialist Scholars Conference."  As the UNCF likes to observe, a mind is a terrible thing to lose.

FIRST STEPS

Earlier today, I received word that the Spencer Foundation has approved my request for a $25,000 grant to fund the research component of the program I shall be running at Bennett College.  Dania Francis will be conducting the research.  This is a small but essential first step in what I hope will be a series of grants to underwrite the Bennett project.  The distinguished sociologist Christopher Jencks was instrumental in making contact for me with the Spencer Foundation.  "Lifting as we climb."