For some delightful reason, I have been asked to give a brief sporting flavor to the seven-hour retirement ceremony of sculptor Maurizio Cattelan at the Guggenheim Museum on Jan. 21. Cattelan is officially hanging ‘em up by suspending much of his artwork from the ceiling of the Guggenheim. That should be a trip.
As I imagined the farewell for a sculptor, I could not help but think about two sporting ceremonies I attended – both, bizarrely, on Sept. 28. The one on Sept. 28, 1947 was my first time in Yankee Stadium. I was 8, and it was the last game of the season, and the Yankees were honoring Babe Ruth, who was dying of throat cancer. (The Babe, in his outsize way, had three farewells – one that summer, the other next spring, before he died on Aug. 16, 1948. This was the middle one.) I can remember his camel hair coat and his damaged voice echoing around the Stadium’s rudimentary speaker system. The Stadium’s autumnal shadows enforced the gloomy tone, first set for Lou Gehrig in 1939, of dozens, nay, hundreds, of Yankee ceremonies, many of them honoring pinstriped heroes who often seem to die young. Those spectral sounds still seem to echo in the newest version of the Stadium – even though it’s across the street. A more upbeat ceremony took place on Sept. 28, 1982, at the farewell game for Carlos Alberto, a stylish defender from Brazil, who had finished his career with the Cosmos. They brought up his old team, Flamengo from Rio, in its red and black uniforms, and he played a half for each team, the way soccer farewells are done. I was new to the sport in 1982, but could not miss the love and respect the players had for Carlos Alberto, and for the game itself. As Carlos Alberto took a long tour around Giants Stadium, waving and shaking hands with the fans, the new-age speakers played Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better.” Every time I hear that song, I think of smooth old Carlos Alberto. Now, the rankest outsider in that world, I will witness the addio to Maurizio Cattelan. With his diverse works dangling from the beams, the farewell at the Guggenheim is not likely to be anything like the one for the Babe or Carlos Alberto. I’ll furnish a report. hi George. Wonderful article in Wash Post I just caught up with. Wrote to Times today asking about possible palace intrigue. Sulzberger in K.C. And "Nocturnalist" Mir in the Mo boonies writing about exotic animals there rather than in NYC. Said you got out just in time, Missoula beckoned. Ciao. 1/29/2013 01:02:55 am
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I really enjoyed reading this article, I like the way you tell stories. And I also found out a lot of new things. Thanks a lot! I am waiting for more articles like this one. 4/1/2013 02:10:35 am
Well, you are right. I've always thought that this is the most interesting way to `leave the stage`. These are the most known people after all because the human being is inclined to take a special interest in the sad special cases. Comments are closed.
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Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
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