These are role models?

The behavior of two American speed skaters over the past week really has me angry. Chad Hedrick of Houston was hoping to tie Eric Heiden's record of 5 gold medals. Shani Davis was at his first Olympics, and figuring heavy in the human drama story since he is from an inner-city background where basketball is king and speed skating is unheard of.

To hear them talk about one another is despicable. I guess the whole thing started when Hedrick asked Davis to help out his teammates in a new group event, and Davis pretty much ignored his request. Hedrick apparently blames Davis for the US team's loss. Maybe Davis was wrong in refusing to help out his teammates in the group effort, but he claims he was afraid it would take his attention away from his best race, and that speed skating has always been an individual event up to this point.

So instead of blowing off any hard feelings in the true nature of Olympic sportsmanship, these two have been taking potshots at each other ever since. Davis barely speaks when the NBC sideline reporter tries to talk to him after races. Hedrick managed to say that Davis "skated really fast" when he won a gold medal. Come on, guys. This is the Olympics. Not a Little League game coached by Walter Matthau. Take the high road! Wish each other good luck before and congratulate each other on a great race afterwards. Think of how many inner-city kids could look up to Davis as a true role model, if only he would act like one. And even if Hedrick hasn't won the number of gold medals he came into these Olympics wanting, his attitude has already proved he is no Eric Heiden.

My vote for a true Olympian is Joey Cheek, a teammate of these two who has donated all the prize money from his silver and bronze medals to charity. Win or lose, that's my idea of a role model.

I've got Olympic Fever

And it feels good. I turn on the TV when I get home from work, and it stays on until coverage ends for local news at 10:30, or I fall asleep, whichever comes first. I LOVE the Olympics. So far this year I haven't found a sport that's annoying to me, except for snowboarding tricks in "the pipe". I'm having a little trouble with the X-Games stuff, so I guess I'm officially old. I saw previews for the Snowboard Cross (like Motorcross but on snowboards) that airs tonight, which I'm curious about, but seems too much like a Nascar race to be too terribly interesting.

I like the more traditional stuff - downhill skiing, long track speed skating, luge. I even got into a curling match yesterday. What the heck is that all about? I think it's like shuffleboard, but with ice and geekier players. The thing I can't believe is how much I'm getting into the figure skating this year. I stopped watching it about a decade ago, thinking it wasn't a real sport. But this year I'm feeding into all the human interest stories like crazy.

Fascinating TV - much better than a random night of normal TV.

NEXT DAY: OK, I loved the Snowboard Cross. It's not like Nascar-there's no loud, polluting cars involved. Just a person on a snowboard going faster than all get out trying to get in front of everyone else to avoid crashes. I'd like to try it someday, although this is a lofty goal considering the only time I've ever been skiing I never made it off the bunny slope.

Me, agree with an Evangelist?

As shocking as it may seem, you're darn right on this topic. Well, at least with some of them. I heard this story on NPR a few mornings ago. I'm glad that some of our country's religious-right leaders are trying to urge the Bush administration to take a stance against global warming, even though according to the article it's none of the really powerful ones. But it's a start.

The paragraph that really sparked my interest was the quote from the letter that James Dobson and other powerful swayers of White House opinion wrote in response, saying, "Human beings come first in God's created order ... and that primacy must be given to human beings and for human betterment."

I don't get this statement at all. Don't get me wrong - I value human life, and how incredibly precious it is. But I don't think that our species is any more important in the big scope of our planet than others. What I do think is that more should be expected from human beings than from other species, that we should be held to a higher standard of caring. You would think that humans, having the most brainpower and the biggest capacity for love, (supposedly), would care more about taking care of Mother Earth and all the plants and animals who enjoy her miraculous climate and geographic beauty. But yet "human betterment", which to me translates to owning a car, and driving to and from your job without carpooling or investigating public transportation, and trying to have a bigger car or truck or SUV than your neighbor, and trying to have a bigger home than your neighbor, and trying to have so much more stuff than your neighbor that you wrecklessly throw out your old stuff without any thought of recycling ... this mentality has contributed more to the deterioration of Mother Earth than anything else. And now billions of people in India and China are beginning to crave this "human betterment".

I really can't believe that more people aren't concerned with this issue. How many species do we have to lose before it becomes important enough to fight for? How much diversification must be lost as we humans continue to try to make ourselves bigger, faster and richer, no matter what the cost to our planet? I don't care what your political, religious, ethnic or economic persuasion is - if you come around to my way of thinking and see the urgency of the situation, I'm glad to have you aboard.

Silence! The Great and Powerful Oz has Conducted!

Is it just me or does Arturo Toscanini look like the Wizard of Oz on the the cover of this CD? I found this reissue of 1950 recordings of Toscanini leading the NBC orchestra after attending the Fort Worth Symphony's production of Brahms Symphony Number 4. I think what we have here is a clear case of someone who thought they were a might bit more important than they actually were.