Amelia Louise Corcoran
Born at 6:10 pm on May 26
6 lbs, 11.8 oz, 19 1/2 inches long
She rocks, as does her mom, both of whom are doing great.
I’ll be a bit preoccupied in the short term, but I’ll do my best to continue to pull my weight around these parts while adjusting to my new lifestyle. If I come up a bit short, at least you know I’ve got a good excuse.
Wise cracks. Dumb laffs.
There was an interesting article in the Times magazine last weekend about the benefits of working with your hands:
A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions. Further, there is wide use of drugs to medicate boys, especially, against their natural tendency toward action, the better to “keep things on track.” I taught briefly in a public high school and would have loved to have set up a Ritalin fogger in my classroom. It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work.
The trades suffer from low prestige, and I believe this is based on a simple mistake. Because the work is dirty, many people assume it is also stupid. This is not my experience. I have a small business as a motorcycle mechanic in Richmond, Va., which I started in 2002. I work on Japanese and European motorcycles, mostly older bikes with some “vintage” cachet that makes people willing to spend money on them. I have found the satisfactions of the work to be very much bound up with the intellectual challenges it presents. And yet my decision to go into this line of work is a choice that seems to perplex many people.
My mother’s father was a mechanic (His wife did not approve; she thought it was beneath her to be married to a man who got his hands dirty for a living).
I have never had any interest in taking things apart and figuring out how how they work. If something breaks I pay someone to fix it. For the longest time I thought I was less of a man because I wasn’t inclined to fix, construct or build things. In many ways, I didn’t have much in common with my grandfather but I always admired him, the breadth of his knowledge, his casual confidence. He was a true artisan.
This article made me think of my grandfather. It made me stop and appreciate his calling.
Today’s news is powered by a couple of gals out-doing that famous scene from “Big”:
New York Yankees catcher Jorge Posada may be able to rejoin the team for a weekend series in Cleveland after missing more than three weeks because of a strained right hamstring.
“It’s possible as early as Friday, yeah,” New York manager Joe Girardi said before Wednesday night’s game at Texas. “He’s a big bat we’ve been missing. He’s another big bat to add to the middle of that order. We’ll wait to see how he feels and go from there. If he feels fine, there’s a good chance we’ll activate him Friday.”
Posada caught for five innings in an extended spring training intrasquad game on Wednesday. . . .
Posada ran from first to third on a single and threw out a runner trying to steal second base in the intrasquad game.
New York Yankees center fielder Melky Cabrera missed Wednesday night’s game against the Texas Rangers with a strained right shoulder, and could be out through the weekend.
Cabrera exited Tuesday night’s game against Texas after running into the wall while trying to make a catch in the first inning. . . .
Cabrera had an MRI exam Wednesday that was negative. Girardi said Cabrera wouldn’t be in Wednesday night’s lineup, with Gardner starting in center.
Girardi said Cabrera could be out until Monday night’s series finale against the Indians.
“We’re going to call it day to day. but it’s probably going to be more than a day or two,” Girardi said. “I don’t necessarily think it will be a DL thing — getting to the end of the weekend in Cleveland or Monday, that would be really good.”
Still in the unfamiliar role of a long reliever, Wang said Tuesday that manager Joe Girardi told him there are still no plans to insert him into the rotation and that he will continue with the Yankees as a reliever for now.
“He talked to me yesterday and said he doesn’t know when,” Wang said.. . .
. . . Wang has spoken in a team-first manner, but the two-time 19-game winner would clearly prefer to be starting.
As of this moment, though, there are no clear-cut opportunities with which to give him that chance. Girardi said that Hughes will make his next scheduled start on Sunday against the Indians in Cleveland, which leaves Wang as a reliever for now.
“I think he’s somewhat frustrated by it,” Girardi said. “It’s the way you’d expect anyone to be if you’d been through what he’s been through the last couple of months. I believe he understands that he’s here to help us, and we feel really strongly that he can be a big part of this club. We need to get him back to where he needs to be.”
The Yanks beat-up the Rangers last night to the tune of 9-2. Godzilla Matsui hit two home runs–and took what seemed like an eternity to round the bases; he looked like a tired farm animal who’d been pullling the plow for too many years–Derek Jeter added three hits, and Mark Teixeira and Robinson Cano also homered. AJ Burnett pitched okay and clearly got plenty of help from his hitters. He threw close to 120 pitches in six innings, didn’t allow a run and gave up just three hits but also walked four. He also finished the game with seven strike outs.
“There were no mistakes,” Burnett told the New York Times. “Everything was where I wanted it to go, for the most part. Fewer walks and you can go deeper in the game, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”
Perhaps the best news of the night was watching Chien-Ming Wang look sharp in two innings of relief. If he can return to his former self, then, man that gives the Yanks some decent pitching…Muh-hu-ha-ha.
The win, combined with a Boston loss, pulls the Yanks into a tie with the Sox for first place.
