Just another New Year's Day in Manzanita

Do they know how to have fun in Manzanita on New Year's Day, or what?

These people are as wild and crazy as Republicans vying for the White House.

They (the ones in Manzanita) call themselves the "Polar Bears." The Republican ones are calling themselves liars, hypocrites and closet liberals (gasp!).













Back to the beach in Manzanita...I'll let them tell their own story in photos.

It begins with a big fire on the beach and a whole lot of would-be bears and their extended bear friends and families huddling around them.

Then there's this mad dash to the Pacific.













Hitting the surf.














And being greeted after a full immersion.


A cold, wet and Happy New Year!

By the way, if you think this is insane, don't miss the Fourth of July here.

When winning produces losers

Recently, The Oregonian ran a front-page story about how the grades of male university students in Eugene declined as the fortunes of the Ducks’ football team improved.

Of the male students, one of the researchers said: “They drink more when the team wins, they party more when the team wins, and they study less when the team wins.”

You can tell where this might lead. Note that the study was done by economists. The obvious question is whether the same phenomenon might be at work in the economy. Could the findings about students be applied to sports-crazed Duck alumni?

“They drink more when the team wins, they party more when the team wins, and they WORK less when the team wins.”

The study also raises questions about professional sports. Consider Green Bay, Wisconsin, whose Packers are on a tear. How’s the economy in Green Bay and its surroundings? Could "Cheeseheadedness" explain Wisconsin's political problems?

And more generally, could there be a feminist interpretation to all this. The researchers found that women at the University of Oregon were unaffected by the fortunes of the Duck football team. Generally females do better in school at all levels than males do. Could this have something to do with the male obsession with/addiction to all things sports?

Finally, if winning on the field produces losers in the classroom, do losing athletic teams produce academic winners?

And, getting back to the economy and civic life, could Chicago's grit have something to do with its hapless Cubs?

Two 'Truths' about Christmas

One Christmas season I sent out a card titled “The Truth about Christmas.” Its main message was that Christmas is sheer contrivance. The record, including the Bible, doesn’t say when Jesus was born — not the year, not the month, not the day.

Sorry.

Indeed, recounts the card, “in the first two centuries of Christianity, church leaders derided the observation of saints’ and martyrs’ birthdays as pagan.”

There’s more. The screed goes on for three pages in small type. It took until 320 AD for a pope (Julius I) to nail down the date of December 25. Even then, the rituals largely came from pagan observances of the winter solstice.

And then there’s the “commercial juggernaut” of consumption. It’s a relatively new creation from the mid-Nineteenth Century. It began with the exchanging of Christmas Cards. I’m certain that none bore the title “The Truth about Christmas.”

Make of Christmas what you will.

Some, marking the birth of the ‘Prince of Peace,’ will rededicate themselves to peace. It could use it. Therein resides Joy.

Others will use the time to be with family and to celebrate birth, children and rebirth (yes, the days are getting longer...)

Still others will celebrate the message that Jesus brought to the world. Christmas includes reading of the Beatitudes:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven....”

For fun, and for another “truth” about Christmas, I always pull out my slender, well-thumbed copy of Dylan Thomas’ lyrical “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” In his romp through Christmases recalled, the closest Thomas comes to the sacred is on the very last page.

He describes himself as a child, stuffed on Christmas feasting, visions and laughter. And then, it is time for bed.

“Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness and then I slept.”

Softly, then, to sleeping children everywhere, an Alleluia lullaby and a Christmas Amen...