Heath Care Link

I was planning on writing some sort of grand defense of the recently signed health care reform law, while simultaneously decrying the craziness surrounding the rhetorical opposition. But, it looks like Frank Rich, over at the New York Times, figured out how to do it for me. Fantastic piece, I agree with it wholeheartedly.

Target Field Open House

Folks, myself and a few friends had an opportunity to go inside Target Field, the new home of the Twins today. All the hyperbole I huffed out in my previous post, is fully justified. I was, in a word, awestruck. The above photo is the view from our season ticket seats, way way up in the 10th row of section 323, above the third base line. If these are the "nosebleed' seats, you can only imagine what the nice seats are like. The view of the Minneapolis skyline is absolutely stunning.

For a full photographic extravaganza tour through parts of the ballpark, please check out the photo album here.

This place is the antithesis of the Metrodome. Whereas the Dome was cold and sterile, Target Field is warm and inviting, strewn all about with the history of Minnesota Twins baseball. It is, undoubtedly, the most fantastic ballpark I've ever been it. Objectively, it is just fantastic, with great sightlines, huge concourses, and tons of art and other pleasing things to the eye. But really, what makes it great is the fact that it is ours.

Yes, it may be cold and wet and times, maybe even snowy. Fortunately for us, the canopy looks like it will very nearly fully cover our seats from the elements. Regardless of nature's foibles, this structure lives up to all manner of hype. The only thing I can think wrong of it is the somewhat tacky signs above the concession areas. Other than that though, it's absolutely gorgeous. I can't think of a better place to spend a summer's day, or night.




In other Twins news, this, was not so hot. This, however, is.

Sláinte

I'm sure there's more to St. Patrick's Day than Guinness and silly green hats, but at the moment, they elude me. Happy St. Patrick's Day, from all of us 1/8 Irishmen to the other!

Anticipation

Anticipation, my friends, can be a dangerous thing. When you anticipate something, I feel there's a tendency to build up unrealistic expectations; ones that cannot possibly be met. Now, some of you may know that I'm a bit of a baseball fan, and consequently, I have been eagerly anticipating this season's opening of Target Field. For someone who has grown up watching my favourite team play in a concrete bunker with a garbage bag for an outfield fence, the prospect of afternoons and evenings spent under the summer Minnesota sky is superlatively tantalizing.

Anyways, the weather has been unseasonably gorgeous here in the Twin Cities as of late. No need for a coat!

With the aforementioned beautiful weather, I couldn't resist but to leave my clerkship at the federal courthouse today just a titch early, and take a stroll across downtown to examine the new ballpark. Just last week, the pedestrian plaza which connects the ballpark to the rest of downtown was opened, so you can now walk right up to the gates and peer inside at the field. Also, the ticket offices are open, and the team store.


I've been lucky enough to see a few other major league ballparks, other than the dearly departed H.H.H. Metrodome. Safeco Field in Seattle probably tops my list, followed by Miller Park in Milwaukee, and then U.S. Cellular in Chicago. I can only vaguely remember the place where the Florida Marlins play, but it changes names every other week anyways. But folks, believe me when I say this, even with my bias and my rudimentary inspection, Target Field in Minneapolis is truly a baseball cathedral of the highest circle. I daresay, the highest circle.

What I think is best about the new park, at least from outward appearances, is it recognizes the fact that Minnesotans are an incredibly nativist people, and seizes upon it with force. Admittedly, most of us are convinced of our own superiority, from our ability to survive the harshest of winters to the number of theatre seats per capita; the quiet self-confidence of our Scandinavian heritage to our lake dabbled northwoods.

So it only makes sense that the Twins, who arguably are the state's most beloved sports team, would seek to sheathe their new home in limestone quarried from Mankato, and have native fir trees in the batter's eye. The handles on the gates are shaped in the outline of the state, and giant "TC" emblems are fixated above them. One of the restaurants is named after Bloomington's own Kent Hrbek, and apparently, inside the bowels of the upper levels, there is an immense wooden mural of Kirby Puckett. I'm sure that inside, there have to be countless odes to our current heroic figure, that being a certain Joseph Patrick Mauer. And even to capture the inherent pretentious side of our state, there is this absolutely stunning piece of public art, that takes up an entire side of a parking garage on the plaza. It's a "wind veil," and it's comprised of thousands of little hinged pieces of metal, which shimmer and sway (with utter silence) whenever the wind hits them. It was absolutely transfixing.

Anyways, point being, I walked around the whole damn thing, standing on my tippy toes at every window, trying to stick my head inside every gate, and otherwise doing nearly everything I could to catch glimpses of the field, short of committing a misdemeanor. I stood outside of the right field gate, and I even pinpointed the location of my season ticket seats, way, way up in the upper deck along the third baseline. The field, just recently cleared of snow, is a glorious, vibrant, shocking hue of green. The permanency of the whole structure is what took the most adjustment. At the Metrodome, since it was shared by so many teams and groups, everything was artificial. All the decorations and banners were temporary, so they could be moved. Now, everything is opposite. There are Twins logos etched in stone, there are metal banners commemorating every season of the team's history, and apparently, in the near future, there are going to be bronze statues of the team's greatest players. All in all, there's a much more regal element to the whole experience, like something important and institutional is afoot.






I'm going to get to go inside said ballpark this coming Sunday. I'll try to get some good shots.

2010 Minneapolis Trombone Choir

Music lovers, loyal blog readers, and other interested persons, the time is nigh! My (nearly) weekly features on select trombonists are finally coming to a head, at the 2010 Minneapolis Trombone Choir concert! This year's concert is being held at Judson Memorial Baptist Church, and is TONIGHT, Sunday, March 14th at 7:00 PM.

What this means to you, readers of innocent ears, is twofold.

1 - Your entire quota of trombone ensemble music for the year
2 - The most unlikely collaboration of people since that Robert Plant album with Alison Krauss

So yes, fortify your brains for the mind-blowingness that is sure to await you, and pop on by to south Minneapolis for the most fun you'll ever have with 40 socially inept people holding trombones, tubas, and euphoniums.

All joking aside (wait, we really are socially inept), this is going to be a great, fun concert, with a fantastic variety of music. I'm quite excited for this rendition of excerpts from "Parsifal," and we also have a few nice jazz charts, as well as... wait for it.... James Bond!

See, look at the good times you can have with a trombone! Guaranteed fun for all!*






*as with any event involving trombones, you should probably bring your own beer

This Is Why You Check Your Mail

Trombone Player of the Week: Overalls

This week's trombone player needs little summation. He's a grown man, who literally wears denim overalls every single week. Need I say more?

On the Air

Folks, yesterday evening, a most glorious sound came across the radio for the first time this year. Yes, of course, I'm referring to John Gordon's silky voice, announcing that Twins baseball is back on the air. Couldn't come at a better time!

Well, it's fantastic, absolutely fantastic. Only seems appropriate, with the gorgeous weather we've been having in the Twin Cities, that the boys of summer should make their arrival. After all, there's business to take care of.

Anyways, listening to baseball on the radio is one of life's simplest pleasures, perhaps only topped by watching baseball outside. Fortunately, that is soon to occur.



Indeed, even Garrison Keillor is excited.

When there is nothing left to say

I made an unplanned visit to a hospital today. Not for myself, but for someone else. A relative was riding his scooter on Saturday, when it was so nice here, with his wife. Something happened, they slipped on some ice and crashed. The relative is fine. His wife is not. Both were wearing helmets.

After I got done with the U.S. Attorney, I walked a few blocks over to the Hennepin County Medical Center, to what I believe is the severe intensive care unit. They took her to HCMC, because it is renowned for its trauma center, as well as it's neuroscience/brain injury department. I don't know specifics, I don't know much of anything, but I saw a woman lying in a hospital bed. She is in a drug induced coma, with a ring of staples encircling her head where the doctors removed part of her skull. Her brain needs room to swell, so it had to go away for a while. All manner of tubes snaked in and around her every extremity, the mechanical sound of a ventilator quietly wheezed away.

Now, I've seen people in hospitals before. Last year, I had the unfortunate distinction of seeing both of my grandmas in hospitals, neither in a particularly good way. But you know, I have never, ever seen something like I saw today. It was, for lack of a better term, absolutely shocking. I had no idea what to say; I don't think I could have said anything. All I could do was just look, and try and comprehend.

Her husband, who by some unknowable twist of fate left the scooter accident unscathed, has been at the hospital constantly. He had a look in his face, no, his entire demeanor; a look I won't soon forget. A look of grief, and guilt, of an unimaginable magnitude, it could not even be described. All he did was just hold her hand and look at her, so utterly vulnerable. All I could do was just stand there.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the "real" issues of life; of love and living, of pain and of hope, of those things that you think will never happen to you because they seem so melodramatic. Apparently though, such melodrama isn't reserved for the movies. I wish there were intelligent, rational ways to approach these things. But you know, I think you eventually come to a point where there is nothing rational to fall back on. You think you can steer the ship, you want to, but in the end, you find yourself adrift in a raft, not knowing what is going on. Eventually, the waves of life just take you away, and you simply don't know what to do. Both in periods of pain and of joy, you just have absolutely no idea what to do.

I've spent some time now in this raft, a position that became realistically and suddenly apparent the second I walked into that hospital room today. Completely different situations, but both in that category of being all too real and all too immediate. I don't even know how to react, I don't know if I should hope, cry, move on, try and stay strong, or any other of the thousands of responses possible. Sometimes, you just don't know what to do.