Hartog’s Den

There is always something nice and safe about viewing the world as a child, and we keep a small kernel of this in later years through our memories of our childhood. The last paragraph of George Moore’s “Homesickness” is by far one of my favorite passages that we have read in my Modern Irish Identity class:

Well, he would like to be buried in the village where he was born. There is an unchanging, silent life within every man that none knows but himself, and his unchanging silent life was his memory of Margaret Dirken. The barroom was forgotten and all that concerned it, and the things he saw most clearly were the green hillside, and the bog lake and the rushes about it, and the greater lake in the distance, and behind it the blue line of the wandering hills.

While we may deny the internal quiet and peace that we subconsciously feel when seeing the place where we grew up, it will find us in the end, and ultimately, this nostalgia is what our being prefers to any other standard of life that we have chosen, made, or been victim to through the years. Despite desolation or squalor, no matter any tensions in the house or sorrows in the neighborhood streets, home is home; the rougher parts of home are romanticized away and idealized, making ideal fodder for later poems and memoirs, or writing the great American novel. The better times are lionized and told as funny or heroic tales to the grandchildren.

High school was fun, but I remember being so eager to leave Boise and get out into a bigger city in a different state, to be an individual, to see and fix the entire world because that’s just the kind of idealistic teenager I was. Today I’m a senior in college, and dammit, I miss home right now. It’s not really that far away, just a two hour flight, and it’s not as if I haven’t been home in years like some characters I read about in books or on the news; I’ve just been waiting to see home lately. It takes a few years away to begin to form that secret inner life that Moore speaks of, and reading that passage made me realize that I’ve finally formed mine.

Maybe it’s the onset of fall, with the cooler temperatures and occasional falling leaf to remind me of Octobers in the northwest, with colorful leaves blanketing the ground and the mountains brown and musky green with the coming of winter. There is a crisp edge to a real October day, a chill that cuts into your nose yet still leaves you with the lingering scent of pies and the faint smoky aroma of burning pine wood and leaf-piles.

I think the dropping thermometers also trigger my Idaho-bred “MUST SKI NOW” hormone…

Maybe I’m romanticizing, but it’s a nice feeling. And I sure can’t wait to fly home for Thanksgiving.

N.

With a unexpected (but wholly appreciated) lull in workload this last weekend and the weather being so fabulous and all, the roomie and I decided to blow the dust off the ol’ shin guards and kick the soccer ball around for the first time in… well, months. After ages without any physical activity more strenuous than say, walking, the realization that I was atrociously out of shape was painful indeed, but still, just having some fun and getting the blood moving was a good time anyway.

It also got me thinking about the amazing growth of soccer in this country. I remember when I first started playing soccer, in sixth grade or somewhere around there, soccer existed pretty much only as a one-day event in junior-high Physical Education classes. Today, my hometown of Boise has a huge network of soccer clubs, centered around a 20-field, 161-acre complex donated by J.R. Simplot to local soccer organizations.

And its not just Boise… just this last month the U.S. MNT scored a 2-0 victory against archrival Mexico in a completely sold out Columbus Arena, pushing our national team to a ranking of 6th in the world. Sure, Columbus Arena with its 35,000 or so seats is no Estadio Azteca, reigning over Mexico City’s soccer world with games attended by upwards of 114,000 of the faithful; but a sold out national arena for an American soccer game hasn’t been seen since the days of The Pele (and yes, he gets the definite article in front of his name).

Young Americans are swelling the ranks of youth soccer clubs all around the U.S., and the so-called “soccer mom” has a become common enough to establish itself as an American archetype. True, there are many who still say soccer is a sissy game beneath the manliness of American sport, and ESPN *did* drop the Ireland-Cyprus game for something called “baseball,” and I have to admit that football will never be unseated from the lion’s share of media broadcasting (because it stops every fifteen seconds to allow networks to make another hundred million off of commercials), but nay-sayers will have to face a growing truth within the decade: there’s a new American sport in the making, and as the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to be free come to America, the beautiful game’s world following will ultimately ensure its popular victory.

Soccer next weekend anyone?

Well… they’re more like actual… guidelines. Firstly, this is not a personal blog or a journal, think more like you’re writing for a magazine, except that your editor doesn’t care when you turn anything in and you can write on anything you want. Well… almost anything. Controversial things are great when they spur intelligent debate, but let’s keep the fiery political posts to your own personal blogs. Things like reviews, commentaries on life, sudden epiphanies, poetry, cocktail recipes, humorous anecdotes, and so forth are perfectly fine.

Swear and talk about sex, politics, and religion if you want, but please do so tastefully and respectfully.

NO EDITING OR DELETING ANYONE ELSE’S POSTS, please just email whoever it was that offended you. If your fellow columnists are complaining about a post of yours, kindly consider editing or removing it in the interest of this community of writers and readers; no one is going to make you do it, but I’m sure people will like you better if you did.

Each post should be an article or column, not a comment or conversation. Comment on a post as if it were a discussion board thread, just not on the main blog itself.

Host your own damn images.

HAVE FUN. No hard feelings or bitterness allowed, though sarcastic cynicism is fully legit. And when in doubt, just remember: What Would Den Hartog Do? Right now, this is a sudden idea, and I have no idea where it will end up; I hope this turns into something really cool we all can share.

Enjoy,
N.

Hartog’s Den started out as a creative and intellectual outlet for a small group of engineering students blogging out of the western U.S.A. on anything that come to mind. Our medium? The almighty internet. Our subject? Anything we damn well please. Our schedule? Whenever we damn well feel like it.

Now we are more spread out, but the Den lives on… sort of. We are currently in the midst of a (second) revival after a (second) long dry spell. We encourage you to participate in our project… please add your comments and discussion to the blog.

Peruse, oh digital traveller, and revel in the many profound insights to be found in Hartog’s Den, (updated sometimes).

Nalin.

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Last update 3/26/09