Mornin', and a fine one it is, although we'll have classic, hot and almost intolerably humid U.S. Open weather by mid-week if the last forecast I heard is reliable. Sorry about all the Typepad heartaches, everyone. It figures they would monkey around with their blogging task bar right before the start of this blog's most active period! All seems good now, though. Those help tickets were flying for a while. Many thanks to the Mod Squad for being so on top of this issue with updates.
I enjoy the Sunday before the start of the U.S. Open; it's radio silence all around, although there's plenty of palavering going on if you care to find it. The build up to the tourament is now so massive—it's a masterstroke of marketing, really—that the radio silence of today is slightly eerie, welcome, and perfectly placed. I can hear the clicking of buckles and the clanging of shields and swords as players (and their fans at TW) all get into their battle armor for tomorrow.
Reviving an old TW tradition, I'm going to reprint that wonderful Man in the Arena passage from a speech once given by the late U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt (father of, among other things, our U.S National Parks system. But that's another subject).
It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
I'll see you all tomorrow. That picture above is of New Haven champ Caroline Wozniacki, with the Yale football team, who generally are less triumphant than the girl whom they surround. (For more on Wozniacki, go to American Express' Next Contenders page.)
-- Pete