In fact, the San Antonio Spurs preferred to play the Mavericks to any other possible rival. Why? Maybe, because Spurs coach, Gregg Popovich, was settling a score over the firing of his friend, Avery Johnson, a while back; or maybe, because he senses fear and self-doubt in the Mavericks.

Of course, you don’t have to be a seasoned professional to see that the Dallas Mavericks are psychologically damaged. It all stems from their collapse to the Miami Heat and the NBA officials in game three of the NBA Finals a few seasons back. The Mavericks dominated the Heat for two games and the first half of game three. It looked like they could sweep Miami.

Then, during the third period Dwayne Wade turned up his intensity and the officials assisted him by ignoring an obvious over-and-back violation and calling fouls on the Mavericks against Wade that subsequent replays proved never occurred. The Mavericks collapsed while Avery Johnson did nothing to help his team.

The following season only compounded the psychological trauma. The Mavericks won more games, 60 I think, than any other Dallas team in history and were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. They have yet to recover.

Now, again Dallas can’t get past the first round and the Spurs are not a great team this year. The Spurs are in danger of being knocked out in the second round by the Phoenix Suns.

How do you fix the Dallas Mavericks? Will Dirk Nowitzki sign with another team or will he return for the $21 million left on his contract? Should he leave?

I don’t know the answers to those questions and I’m not sure the Mavericks front office does either.

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A reporter’s hand
reaches for a thesaurus;
screams die in my throat

He got me to thinking of the last Haiku I wrote:

Annie is sad now
Her beloved birds have all died
Unexpected freeze

It’s not very good and it got me to thinking of the first time I read some of Baudelaire’s poetry. I came across a poem that I thought was not very good. In fact, I thought there must be some backstory explaining how such morbid imagery could slip into the love poem of a great poet. I thought, ‘even great poets have bad days.’

I crawl across your body like a horde
Of worms across a corpse

On my second reading of The Nightly Heavens Are Not More Beautiful, I realized that the poet had simply gone where I would have never imagined a love poem could go.

That brings me to Fernando Perez: I write from Caracas, the murder capital of the world, where I’ve been employed by the Leones to score runs and prevent balls from falling in the outfield.

He continues:

Like poetry, baseball is a kind of counter culture. The (optional) isolation from the outside world (which I often opt for); the idleness about which — and out of which — so many poems are written or sung: I see this state of mind as a blessing. Sometimes, in fact, when I haven’t turned on a television or touched a newspaper for months, freed from the corporate bombast, poetry is the only dialect I recognize. — Poetry, September 2009 p. 442

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Bjørn Lomborg is an ardent environmentalist who believes that Al Gore’s approach to global warming will not solve the problem, in fact it will make matters worse. Mr. Lomborg believes that global warming is real and manmade, as does Mr. Gore. However, he presents solid economic data, combined with powerful and sensible arguments, to demonstrate a wiser and humane approach to solving enormous high-priority problems while researching alternative energy in a way that, he says, would lead to a high-wealth low-CO₂ future. Mr. Gore’s approach of greatly increasing the cost of fossil fuels, he argues, would have the opposite effect.

The debate over the environment is contentious and politically charged. Pundits, both the left and the right, place their political agenda ahead of science. Scientists are not immune from the pressure that their political benefactors may place on them. Sincerity and accuracy are rare among high-profile environmentalists. (Pardon my skepticism.) The right may be protecting their industrial supporters, but a for-profit environmental complex has arisen on the left. Nobody is giving away solar cells or Prius automobiles.

Mr. Gore and his teammates argue that vast cuts in CO₂ emissions would (1) stem global warming and (2) help a vast array of other problems indirectly. Mr. Lomborg argues that Mr. Gore’s plan would reduce global warming by only 0.3 degrees over the next ninety years at a cost of $800 billion and that the other problems facing humanity are better addressed directly at a vastly reduced cost.

Mr. Lomborg, a sincere environmentalist, is also a humanitarian. He along with the Copenhagen Consensus have applied sound economics to prioritize the major problems facing mankind today and he believes that we should expect, yes encourage poor countries to develop higher standards of living through the temporary increase of fossil fuel consumption. He sites the work of Nobel prize-winning economist, Simon Kuznets, who theorized that when poor countries pursue policies to raise their citizens living standards, very little priority is given to environmental concerns and thus pollution rises. But once a country achieves that higher standard of living, providing education and health care to most, their focus begins to shift toward the environment, and pollution starts to fall. Bjørn Lomborg emphasizes that one of the pivotal things we can do to help the environment is to help poor countries get richer.

The problem I have with Al Gore and many others who make appearances on behalf of the environment is their hypocrisy. Mr. Gore flies around in a private jet. That is a lot of Co₂ for one man to be spewing. He claims that he buys carbon offsets, an elitist program to excuse the richest among us from sharing the sacrifices with regular folks. The rich class puts on a pretense of caring about the environment while lobbying elected officials to enact policies that will drastically drive up the cost of living, widening the gap between themselves and the working class.

If they cared about the environment and believed that CO₂ had to be cut — if they believed that these cuts were so urgently needed that the negative economic impact was inconsequential — wouldn’t they park their private jets and fly commercial. Consider: If you were in the hospital with severe respiratory disease and one of your children smoked during visits. He explains that he has offset the damage to your health by placing a plant on your nightstand. Wouldn’t you doubt his love or think he didn’t believe the diagnosis.

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“There’s a story I like to tell about a story Umberto Eco tells that tells us everything we need to know about story.”

Thus begins Anna Menendez in her excellent essay, The Future of Narrative, published in the May/June 2009 Poets & Writers. She begins by relating the gist of the Umberto Eco story mentioned above which involves the U.S. Department of Energy and forty thousand tons of nuclear waste. Assuming they were able to bury it somewhere, how would they communicate the danger of that hot garbage to future generations?

Linguist Thomas A. Sebeok was hired to solve that problem. For reasons that Ms. Menendez details, Sebeok suggested an Atomic Priesthood who would keep the warning of the deadly waste alive and understandable through the generations by means of fables. The legends would evolve with the language and culture.

What a great premise upon which to get across the importance of story!

Ms. Menendez will reference Socrates, Martin Luther, Nicholas Carr, Shakespeare and Homer as she instructs her readers on the silly concerns expressed by some as innovations appeared. The negative effects, real or imagined, were easily seen but the positives required the perspective of time to recognize.

Today, people are bemoaning the internet and the perceived (or real) probability that we will all become shallower readers. However, Anna Menendez believes that story will survive and then takes her readers to what she feels may be the next generation of raconteur. You may be one of them. You’ll have to read her essay to find out.

I wonder if some of these reality TV stars participants might fit that description. I don’t watch that John and Kate show but I’ve heard reports on TMZ and Access Hollywood that they are experiencing marital troubles. One wonders if they are staging this whole infidelity scenario in order to increase their audience.

Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag may also be living out some fictional tale to get people to tune in to their current project. They may be continuing the tradition of storytelling that is as old as language. They’re not Shakespeare, of course, but no one said it is good storytelling.

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On that Clapton album were several cuts from Derek and the Dominos, including a nine minute 40 second version of Key to the Highway. I couldn’t understand all of the lyrics. For the longest time I thought Clapton sang, I got the key to the highway way down in my soul. Years later I heard him sing an acoustic version and then understood the lyric to be: I’ve got the key to the highway. I’m billed out and bound to go.

I loved the amazing guitar work in the song; it was like a jam session. I don’t know if it included Duane Allman, but someone was jamming with Clapton. The guitarists played off of each other. The vocals were passionate, raw. Also, the character portrayed in the song was determined to leave his lover. She had been unfaithful or otherwise impossible to get along with—the singer doesn’t fill us in on the details. One thing is clear; he simply must leave.

Another thing about the character that meant a lot to me when I first heard Key to the Highway was that he had a healthy sense of his own worth. Unquestionably, he deserved better treatment than he received from his former lover. He was going to move on and it was her loss. The highway didn’t scare him. Something better awaited him down the road.

Years would pass before I would learn of the composer of what had become my favorite blues song. Big Bill Broonzy was one of the old time blues men. He didn’t just play the blues, he lived them. His career spanned the 1920’s through the 1950’s. He died in 1958 at about 60 years of age. Bill Broonzy wrote Key to the Highway. I have seen some sources give Pete Seager partial credit for the song.

One of my favorite Bill Broonzy pleasures is a video of Big Bill playing in a very dark club in Belgium. He perfoms four songs. A white woman is enthralled by him—something that would have caused him a lot of trouble in the United States at the time. The year was 1956, just two years before he died.

Enjoy the video: Big Bill Broonzy – ‘Low Light & Blue Smoke’ (1956)

Another great way to get my Bill Broonzy fix is the album, The Bill Broonzy Story. This album contains 67 cuts divided between dialogue and solo performances. Big Bill talks to the interviewer and then launches into a song. He is picking on his guitar even as he is talking. He is telling stories about how things used to be, a little about his family, about other old blues men and much more.

In addition to Key to the Highway, he performs an amazing solo version of Glory of Love that shows off his guitar skills. He also performs This Train, Trouble in Mind and Old Folks at Home. I enjoy this album frequently and have never regretted buying it. I recommend The Bill Broonzy Story to everyone who loves the blues. Also, check out the album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos. On it you’ll find the version of Key to the Highway that I first fell in love with so many years ago.

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