The Blaisdell Blog

This is my year to study, understand and become conversant in football.   Perhaps a bit of background is in order.   There were no sports played, discussed or promoted in my house.   My father did watch the Wednesday and Friday night fights and I, being the Tom-boy in the family, watched with him.   I was probably the only nine year old girl in Denver who knew what a 10 point must scoring system was.   But boxing has long ago lost its charm. That leaves me with trying to catch up to football.   It will be a stretch.   I once commented that when it came to football, I was lucky to know there were ten men on a side—only to find out there are eleven.   Whoops!   But I am intelligent and know how to dissect complex things.   The theory of relatively makes sense to me, how challenging can football be?   Right? [Pride goeth before the destruction; and a haughty spirit before the fall.   Proverbs 16-18] In a sensible, ...

Everyone has a favorite holiday.   Mine has always— always —been Thanksgiving.   As a child it meant the best food, unremitting talk, games and play.   As an adult it means ever so much more.             In my years of making Thanksgiving dinner I have come to believe that Thanksgiving is a feminine holiday.   I don’t mean that it isn’t enjoyed equally by both men and women.   I certainly don’t mean that the deeper meaning of Thanksgiving isn’t appreciated and revered equally by both men and women.   I just mean that the essence of the holiday is feminine.   It is a day centered on two things, the meal and the meaning.   These are feminine strengths.               Men are great cooks, but they aren’t likely to plan a meal for a week, get the baking done the day before, set the table with matching candlesticks and get up at 4:...

I am strongly in favor of affirmative action programs.   Of course there are sensible limits to all of this.   Should a woman my age be playing professional football?   The money is good.   We make up 4% of the population so why shouldn’t 4 percent of all professional football players be 69 year olds?   Oh, you think something other than demographics should be involved?   You think there should be some level of skill, training or talent involved?   Equality does not mean that five year olds get to drive a car; a vagrant does not get to perform surgery; an addict does not get to drive the school bus; the flight attendant does not get to fly the plane.   Of course every one of these people get to aspire to whatever they want.   A flight attendant can learn how to fly a plane; an addict can get clean; five year olds grow up; All of this can happen and Americans encourage this kind of upward mobility.   Some of it requires affirma...

Today is the 152 nd anniversary of the delivery of the Gettysburg Address.   There are five copies that still exist in Abraham Lincoln’s own handwriting.   Each one is a bit different, as he painstakingly crafted the message he wanted to deliver.   The Battle of Gettysburg!   In three days of battle 45,000 men were killed, injured, captured, permanently maimed or simply disappeared.     In historian Bruce Catton’s book The Gathering Storm (the first in his multi-volume history of the Civil War) he spoke about the events leading to secession as “…putting the touch of fire to a sleepy little market town called Gettysburg.”     Catton had an historian’s knack for putting the poetic touch to a wasteland of human misery.   Gettysburg was the single bloodiest battle of the Civil War.   Lincoln was a troubled genius who kept his personal demons at a disciplined distance through tremendous force of will while he conducted the busin...