Monthly Archives: June 2014

15-21 June 2014 – “Les Roberts”

Les Roberts

There once was a team of rowers known as the Bears. Now these weren’t your average sort of rowers whose mascot was a bear, but actual big, furry, growling with fangs and big pointy teeth bears. Like the kind that steal your peanut butter on camping holidays. They trained long and hard on the waters of the Charles, until at last they found themselves ready to take on the big prize: their first entry into a proper rowing competition.

 The bears got their boat atop their van, strapping it down tightly for the road. Then with much anticipation, they let the van roar into life, sailing on its way down the road out of Boston towards the Hudson. The journey was long and fun, filled with excitement and lots of growling. At long last they arrived on the banks of the Hudson at Albany. Their excitement was unmeasurable, unsurmountable for any average meter of measuring surmountability.

They roared out of their van, grabbing their boat by its bottom, and running with it towards the river bank where the other teams were warming up for the race to come. However, at the sight of five bears running with a rowing boat hoisted above their heads running down the bank towards the gathering teams, the competition panicked and fled onto the water. The bears figured that this must have meant that the race had begun, and they picked up the pace, growling heartily at the competition to “Wait! Let us get on the line too!” However their cries seemed to make no real mark of calm upon the ears of the rowing teams.

At the water’s edge, they hurled the boat out in front of them, jumping into it in turn, until all five bears sat in their boat, the oars thrusting strongly into the water, back and forth, propelling their boat forward beyond that of all of the competition. But something seemed off, as they found men with guns standing on a bridge over the river. “Tranquilisers!” the bears shouted, ducking to dodge the darts that shot from above.

At the finish the bears found themselves cornered by a hundred armed men and women. The sorry team at last realised what was going on, that in fact all these people were terrified for their lives. The lead bear took his oar, using the handled end he drew in the sand of the bank, “Nous sommes les Roberts!”

And that is why there were some concerns in the Hudson Valley last week about an invasion from Northern Quebec. Whether the bears ever worried again is unknown, as they kept rowing onwards, south towards the sea.

F1 Midweek – Schumacher update and looking ahead to Austria

Kansas City – If you haven’t heard, on Monday seven-time Formula 1 world champion Michael Schumacher at long last came out of his coma that had been caused by a skiing accident on 29 December at the French resort of Meribel. That being said, after having been in a state of comatose for that long, it will undoubtedly take quite a while for the German to fully recover, which in itself is unlikely.

News bulletins flew around the world on Monday from the Grenoble University Hospital, announcing that Schumacher had been taken out of France to University Hospital Lausanne in neighbouring Switzerland. Despite this, The Independent reports that Schumacher still is unable to talk. According to a 16 June article by John Lichfield of The Independent, Schumacher has a “one in ten chance of making a full recovery.”

That being said, at least the poor man is out of his coma at long last. I can’t imagine what his family has been going through during all of this. No doubt the F1 world will continue to have “Schumi” in their thoughts as they descend on a circuit which was last won by the seven time world champion, the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria this weekend for the resurrection of the Austrian Grand Prix, which was last run in 2003.

Formerly known as the Österreichring from 1969-1995, and the A1-Ring from 1996-2004, the circuit has since been bought by the energy drink company Red Bull, who have since become famous within motorsport for their ownership of two of the current eleven Formula 1 teams, Infiniti Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso respectively. I have little doubt that the pressure will be on the two Red Bull drivers to win their team’s home grand prix.

At the same time, as we have seen throughout this season no one has been able to compete with Mercedes AMG Petronas as long as the silver arrows make it through the race damage free. We saw two weeks ago in Canada one of the weaker points of the Mercedes cars, namely brake failures, which resulted in Lewis Hamilton retiring and Nico Rosberg finishing in second behind Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo. At the same time, knowing the Mercedes team I have little doubt that the will have fixed that problem by now in preparation for Austria.

The Red Bull Ring track runs clockwise, with ten corners. It runs 4.326 km (2.688 mi) in length. To date, the fastest lap record stands with Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher, who finished Lap 41 during the 2003 Austrian Grand Prix at 1:08.337. Only three of the current Formula 1 drivers, Kimi Räikkönen, Jenson Button, and Fernando Alonso have driven in the Austrian Grand Prix before, Button having competed in the 2000-2003 Austrian Grands Prix, whilst Räikkönen and Alonso have only competed in the 2001-2003 Austrian Grands Prix.

We will have to wait until this Sunday to see how the teams compete at the Red Bull Ring in Formula 1’s triumphant return to Austria after 11 years away. Hopefully Schumacher will be well enough to see at least a couple of the races this season.

18 June 2014 – Humidity

I don’t know what I would have done

in decades past prior to the invention

the fantastic invention of air conditioning.

As it turns out, I probably would have

most undoubtedly sweated to death

in these unreasonably humid

Kansas City summers.

There is something quite pleasant

that comes to mind when one steps

out of the a/c and into the heat,

after all, it means that there is always

the a/c to go back to if one wishes.

So, as I offer my thanks to God

and the inventor of air conditioning

whichever of the millions of saints that may be

I react fondly to the fogging up of my specs

each and every time I step out of my car

and back into the summer heat.

17 June 2014 – A Musical World

There is music in the world

it flows in the winds

it flowers on the trees.

There is music in the world

which blossoms with each new life

and is releas’d into the cosmos

with each passing death.

There is music in the world

that makes us all happy

that makes us cry.

All this can be done by music

the rhythm of life

the melodious voice of nature

the source of beauty and strength.

16 June 2014 – Late Winter Journeys

I dreamt last night

that some friends and I met

in a café in Chicago.

There we chatted, laughed, and told stories

until unbeknownst to me the time came

for my friends to take up and leave.

“Where are you going?” I asked them,

“You’ll see, just wait there,” they replied smiling.

I sat on the plump red sofa in that café

for a few minutes more, when from the crowd

came my two friends once more.

They returned with three tickets,

and joined me at the seat,

whose arms protruded from its back

and buckled us in all quite neat.

Then out of the café did we fly

Without even the bat of an eye

for that flight was without motion

as we disolv’d without commotion

and soon I awoke as if from a slumber

conduced by jet lag, on an expressway

riding in a small bus, further from the city where I belong’d.

Then suddenly we came to our exit, and rounded a bend

going down a road lined with hedges

that seem’d to go on for no end.

Then at their conclusion, we did find,

what appear’d to be a train station

situated atop a hill, the tracks cover’d by fog

“Welcome to Glenview,” said the driver,

yet this was not the Glenview that I knew.

Heaven forbid it! I looked at my watch

and recall’d my calendar

that in the city I had to be

in less than an hour.

In a sort of panic I awoke,

to find myself confounded

haunt’d by what was but a dream.

The Fantastic Growth of American Soccer

Kansas City – If I were to tell my 13 year old self who didn’t care at all about the 2006 World Cup in Germany that I spent the entirety of this afternoon and evening watching the 2014 World Cup from Brazil, my younger self would probably be shocked. For me, like many of my fellow Americans, soccer is a very new phenomenon. We knew it existed back in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, but it simply has not made good roots here in the United States until very recently.

In the Summer of 2006, as the football/soccer world converged upon Germany, I was far more focused upon the old classic summer sport here in the States and Canada: baseball. I did not really care all that much that France and Italy made the final, though I knew they did, and remember my parents watching it while I played MLB At Bat in another room on my PlayStation 2. That being said, within two years I would have caught the soccer bug.

You’ll notice that throughout this article, I am referring to the sport known commonly the world over as football by its name here in the US and Canada: soccer. This is simply because we already have a sport called football, American Football, which frankly I’ve never really understood or cared for. The first soccer match that I ever watched in full was a repeat broadcast of the 2008 FA Cup Final on Fox Soccer. I chose to support Southampton over Cardiff City because of Southampton’s association with my own family, as my great-granddad Thomas Kane spent some time in Southampton with the American Expeditionary Force on his way to the trenches of France during the First World War. I know, it’s not the best of reasons, but it worked at the time.

At about the same time, the domestic first tier league here in the US and Canada, Major League Soccer, was just past its tenth anniversary, and beginning its expansion and meteoric rise to prominence that we are still in the process of witnessing. It would be another year until my parents and I made it to a MLS match, when during the summer of 2009 we went to see our local club, the Kansas City Wizards, take on Chivas USA at the Wizards’ then home CommunityAmerica Ballpark, the proper home of the Kansas City T-Bones Baseball Club. What an experience it was!

When the Wizards announced they would be building a soccer-specific stadium a few blocks east of the T-Bones ballpark, which was just a few miles east of my family’s farm, we knew we had to get season tickets. The 2010 World Cup was truly when the sport became prominent here in Kansas City, when our official watch party at the Power and Light District was featured a number of times on ESPN’s broadcasts of the USMNT matches in South Africa. Later that year, in December, the Wizards ownership group announced the rebranding of the team as Sporting Kansas City, and from there on out this city was on its way.

Since the start of the 2011 season, I have attended a good majority of all Sporting KC home matches, and have quickly found a great appreciation for the sport itself. It’s funny how things work, how a sport can change one’s life. When I first started watching soccer in 2008, I found other European based sports like rugby and cricket to be odd and confusing. Now I watch more rugby than American football, and follow cricket just as much as I do baseball. At about the same time that I was introduced to soccer, I was also introduced to my family’s current favourite sport, Formula 1.

Nationally, soccer has grown exponentially over the past few years. One major announcement that came earlier this year in the favour of the new sport was that it was just as popular among 19-24 year olds as the national pastime, baseball. As noted in an article on Al Jazeera America by David Keyes, a former editor of XI Quarterly, soccer is “now second only to basketball (above baseball and football) in youth participation numbers.” The youth of this country are becoming enthralled with the beautiful game. With the additions of New York City FC and Orlando City SC in 2015 and Atlanta in 2017, soccer is truly becoming a major sport in the United States. The world will know how far this country has come when our men’s national team wins the World Cup.

One added benefit to the growth of American soccer is the timing of the regular season here. Rather than play in the winter like the majority of the world’s leagues, which would be nearly impossible in much of the north, including my hometown of Chicago, our league plays from March to December. This ends up working out well on a global scale for viewers around the world, or at the very least for those of us Stateside, as when the MLS is off the European, and Mexican leagues among others are on. On the other hand, if you are like my family, my Chicagoland readership, expats included, or I you’ll spend the MLS offseason watching the Blackhawks.

That’s the beauty of the sporting scene here in the US and Canada, we are already used to having multiple sports going on at once. Just look at your average November or December Sunday: the NHL, NFL, and NBA will all be at play, often with franchises from the same city playing at the same time. Adding another sport to our springs, summers, and autumns is nothing new. I am more than happy to be following the Blackhawks, Sporting KC, the Bulls, and my two favourite baseball teams (the Cubs and Royals) all at once. Multitasking is something of a speciality for a triple major like me.

So, looking at this year’s World Cup being played out in Brazil, I find myself gleefully watching every moment I can. This played itself out to the extent today that I ended up watching three of today’s four matches in full. Come Monday though, it will be all for the USMNT.

14 June 2014 – “In the forest he played his flute” from the play “Orpheus and Eurydice”

The following comes from my 2011 play “Orpheus and Eurydice”. Copyright Seán Kane, 2011.

In the forest he played his flute

For all the trees to hear and dance to,

Amongst the trees he was resolute

In his proclamation of God’s love anew.

For here he was most at ease

Amongst the arbours,

Amongst the trees

For here in the woodland he seeks.

O Orpheus, a wife he wants

A beautiful maid to wed,

Come, loving poet sing odes

To the nymphs of the wood.

Come, beautiful voice,

It is your choice.

13 June 2014 – Football

There is something to be said

that trumps any negativity held

by those doubters of the world

about the sport known as football.

To be clear, I refer to that

which in the States is called soccer.

But that aside, what football can do

to unite the world is splendid!

Football is a common language

a common love, a common passion.

It is belov’d by many, despis’d by few

and in so it draws the many together in joy.

Let the World Cup be a testament

to humanity’s virtuous passion for friendship.

Despite playing under different flags

or wearing different jerseys, we are all human.

We share a common love for football.

So when the Sun sets in a month

when the World Cup leaves Brazil,

what will be remember’d?

The riots, the protests, or the games and the fun?

I doubt the former and choose the latter.

12 June 2014 – A Night Rain

My sleep is disturb’d

by an unruly hound

who on normal nights slumbers

softly beneath my feet.

Yet tonight is different

as oranges differ from tomatoes.

That hound slumbers not

but wails, howls, tears at his kennel door!

He is not a friend of the wind

Nor do the soft rains offer him solace.

The poor hound finds terror in thunder

As if the world were crashing down upon him.

Yet still it rains,

steadily pouring down upon our heads

like a shower worthy of Tatiana’s court,

of which the bard so beautifully wrote.

To sleep once more,

that the immortal world might do its work

as the old stories tell,

whilst we mortals slumber away.

F1 Midweek – Safety First

Kansas City – The whirlwind that was last Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix certainly has made an impact on the season. I say this for many reasons, chief amongst them being the fact that now we will not be seeing a Mercedes season sweep. Though it would be too much to say that Hamilton’s brake failure destroyed what momentum the team had, it certainly made a major impact upon that force of nature that has been Mercedes AMG Petronas. On the other hand, Nico Rosberg was able to stay in the race to the end, despite finishing in 2nd, his resilience and sheer luck may be what keeps Mercedes at the top.

This past weekend also saw the reawakening of the Red Bulls, with Australian Daniel Ricciardo securing the team’s first win since the final race of 2013 last November in Brazil. From all the reports that I have read and heard, Ricciardo appears to be one of the nicest guys in Formula 1 right now. For that reason alone, I was happy for his win on Sunday.

Red Bull’s momentum could very well keep up with the next few races, as the circus returns to Austria on the weekend of the 22nd for the first time since 2003. The race will be held at Red Bull’s home circuit, the aptly named Red Bull Ring. It will be good to see the sport return to such a beautiful country.

On the flip side from the jubilation of the Red Bulls, Sunday saw quite a few mishaps and crashes. Starting on Lap 1 with Max Chilton crashing his Marussia into the car of his French teammate Jules Bianchi. Chilton has been given a three-place grid penalty in Austria as punishment for his actions in Canada. At the far end of the race from the elimination of the Marussias, Force India’s Sergio Pérez and Williams’ Felipe Massa made contact at Turn 1 on Lap 70, sending both drivers hurtling with the force of 27 Gs into the barriers. Thankfully both the Mexican and Brazilian were released from hospital soon there after without any reports of major injuries.

The questions arose soon there after as to whom was to blame for the crash. From the initial Formula 1 television feed it appeared that Massa had made contact with Pérez, thus making Massa the guilty party. However, according to an FIA analysis, Pérez left his line at the last moment, crossing into Massa’s path, which then resulted in their elimination from the race and close encounter of an unwanted kind with the Turn 1 barriers. Naturally, Force India has denied that Pérez caused the crash.

In a press release that appeared on the Force India Facebook page on Monday the 9th, Pérez said, “I was following the same line and braking patterns as in the previous laps and I just got hit from behind by Massa.” He continued later saying, “I watched several replays of the incident and I can’t help but notice how Felipe turns right just before he hits me.”

Pérez's statements on the crash. / Sahara Force India Formula One Team Facebook

Pérez’s statements on the crash. / Sahara Force India Formula One Team Facebook

On the Williams team website, the race recap told a slightly different, if not more simple, version of what happened, with their main comment on the crash being, “Felipe was attacking Perez for fourth on the final lap when Perez crashed into him.”

One thing we can say for certain is that the sport’s safety has greatly improved in the last 20 years. Thankfully, as I already said, both drivers were able to walk away from their cars after a fashion. Because of the force of the crash, when Lap 70 finished, my family was far more muted in our celebrations of Ricciardo’s first grand prix win than we would have been otherwise.

After this past weekend’s race in Canada, I am unsure what to expect in Austria. True, it is very likely that the 2014 Austrian Grand Prix will be won by either a Mercedes or a Red Bull, but with the issues that plagued the teams last weekend, one can never be too sure of what will come next. Who knows, perhaps the lads at McLaren will finish on the podium following a Mercedes-Red Bull blow out similar to what happened to Pérez and Massa or even to what happened to the two Marussias on Lap 1.