Thailand and Updike

Firstly, Liz, Rachel, and I will be leaving for Thailand on Friday and will come back a couple weeks later. No idea if I'll have internet access, or the inclination to write anything while staying in what is reputedly the most beautiful country in the world. Pictures and stories will abound upon our safe return.

Finally, John Updike passed away yesterday. I was never a huge Updike fan; nothing against the man and his work, but I just haven't gotten around to reading him yet. However, his October 1960 New Yorker essay "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu" - which covers Ted Williams' final game at Fenway Park and, in a roundabout way, Williams' career - left a lasting impression on me after I first read it some 10 years ago. The opening paragraph gives the quintessential and oft-repeated portrait of Fenway Park; the terse, perfect, and famous line, "Gods do not answer letters," could serve as a subheader on a Williams biography; but perhaps my favorite section, one that I considered during the that magical 2004 postseason run, is obviously about something much more than baseball:

...there will always lurk, around a corner in a pocket of our knowledge of the odds, an indefensible hope, and this was one of the times, which you now and then find in sports, when a density of expectation hangs in the air and plucks an event out of the future.