April 6, 2020
The Long Haul
Day 18
Hopes and Dreams!
Some are delayed. Some simply postponed. Some placed in suspended animation. Others are gone forever.
Everyone has them, we are all dreamers. Old and young and rich and poor! The successful among us dream big. Losers dream even bigger. The downtrodden may have lost hope but they still have dreams.
Olympians have pushed their hopes and dreams forward a year. Training schedules are being adjusted, dream horizons recalibrated. Roger Federer and Serena Williams, arguably the two best to ever swing a tennis racquet, both still hope for one more grand slam title. They are in their late 30s, ancient for a singles’ tennis player. Their dreams may elude them forever.
All professional sports except soccer in Belarus have been put on hold. You can read about the Belarus games on the US sports pages. That says a lot about the insatiable, indiscriminate appetite of sports fans; remember fan is short for fanatic.
Wait, not all sports have been cancelled! The Red Sox played in Toronto against the Blue Jays last week. I know, this is breaking news. More about the game later in this blog post.
You do not have to be a professional athlete to have big dreams, for your dreams to matter; for your dreams to be delayed, or postponed, frozen or even crushed by the coronavirus.
For starters we are not all created equal. Success is almost always determined by what I call the big three formula: where you were born, how much money you have and who you know. These are largely static notions. Resolve, grit, determination, hard work, luck and a half dozen other mostly controllable components of the human condition are used to “bootstrap” others toward success, to make their hopes and dreams come true.
This is the American dream. That expression is a very parochial. It is also the German dream, the Brazilian dream, the Irish dream, South African dream and the Thai dream.
The coronavirus adds a damnable and daunting new variable to the mix. Here is an example of how it is affecting our family.
My daughter-in-law in Boston is from Thailand. Her dreams so far have been realized. She comes from a hard working family in Issan, a poor MeKong River region in northeast Thailand. She moved to a Buddhist temple-based children’s center at a young age and the monks and other workers there helped guide her through high school and college. She earned an advanced degree at Brandeis in Waltham, Massachusetts. Before that she spent 18 months as an au-pair in Vermont, refining her English and convincing American universities she could do the work required for a graduate degree, in English.
In other words, she “bootstrapped” her way to success and we are really proud of her. It took mostly hard work, resolve, grit and determination but also a little luck and a couple of influential friends to make her dream come true.
Now she has an important job in Boston. And like immigrants throughout all American history, she sends money back home to Thailand every month to support her extended family; her parents, her siblings, nieces and nephew. She sends a little bit more back home now.
There is no comprehensive safely net in rural Thailand. There are no stimulus check for all workers; no comprehensive loan/grant programs to keep businesses open and workers at their jobs throughout this crisis. The country has not been locked down but there is a mandatory nightly curfew, people have been encouraged to stay home and social distancing is recommended. Work is scarce. And people are dying from the coronavirus. The remittance from America is more important now than ever.
My daughter-in-law is not just the family financier. She is like a Thai ‘tiger mother” to her teenage nieces, advising, cajoling and encouraging them to work hard and chase their hopes and dreams. Her 17-year-old niece Muai Lin is the family quarterback, conductor, director, manager and has been for years.
When I first met Muai Lin, she was 13-years-old, a wisp of a girl with a bright smile and devilish, dancing eyes. Even then she was the family traffic cop. She was the taxi driver, at 13 shuttling her sister and cousin to school everyday, three on a tiny, aging motorbike navigating the clogged Thai streets. Before taking them and herself to school, she would deliver her grandmother to the market to shop or set up a stall to sell some homemade wares. After school, the process was repeated. Her role expanded as she grew older.
Muai Lin has dreams of a different future. She finished high school last month. She hopes to go to college; she has taken the entrance exams; if she is admitted, she plans to leave home and study the Korean language starting this summer. But her life is on hold. Her dreams are on hold. There are too many unknowns now. Will there be a college to attend? Will she be able to leave her family? Will she have to forego school and look for a job, any job to help with the family finances?
She is looking for a temporary work now to help out in the interim, perhaps in one of the market stalls that are ubiquitous in larger Thai department stores. It is summer in Thailand, the rainy season is coming. A bumper rice harvest will help rural Thai’s better deal with the virus, a drought will make it tougher.
For now Muai Lin’s life falls into the “suspended animation” category cited above. Her hopes and dreams are there but so it the virus, swirling all around, threatening everyone’s future. It is a classic battle between good and evil. To me, Muai Lin must prevail, she is everything that is good in this world.
Baseball!
Really, the Red Sox played this week? My son Sam, locked down in Brooklyn and his old college pal Joel, hibernating in Illinois, have a regular sports podcast called “Dump on the Ump.” It is witty and fun and informed by only their sometimes flawed and always prejudicial observances of all things sports past and present. They wear their fandom on their sleeves. Baseball teams with the word Sox in their names are good, Cubs and Yankees, not so good. To deal with the drought of current sports to dissect that the coronavirus has wrought, they are imagining the present as it might be and the future as they see it.
In other words they are producing box scores for MLB games that were scheduled to begin last week. In their world, the Red Sox beat the Blue Jays 6-1 in Toronto last week behind the big bats at the top of the lineup: Andrew Benintendi, Raphael Devers and JD Martinez. Eduardo Rodriguez threw 96 pitches over seven and two thirds innings to get the win.
Remember what I said earlier.
Fan means fanatic. Look for more box scores soon at their podcast at dumpontheup.wordpress.com
Be safe!
The Long Haul
Day 18
Hopes and Dreams!
Some are delayed. Some simply postponed. Some placed in suspended animation. Others are gone forever.
Everyone has them, we are all dreamers. Old and young and rich and poor! The successful among us dream big. Losers dream even bigger. The downtrodden may have lost hope but they still have dreams.
Olympians have pushed their hopes and dreams forward a year. Training schedules are being adjusted, dream horizons recalibrated. Roger Federer and Serena Williams, arguably the two best to ever swing a tennis racquet, both still hope for one more grand slam title. They are in their late 30s, ancient for a singles’ tennis player. Their dreams may elude them forever.
All professional sports except soccer in Belarus have been put on hold. You can read about the Belarus games on the US sports pages. That says a lot about the insatiable, indiscriminate appetite of sports fans; remember fan is short for fanatic.
Wait, not all sports have been cancelled! The Red Sox played in Toronto against the Blue Jays last week. I know, this is breaking news. More about the game later in this blog post.
You do not have to be a professional athlete to have big dreams, for your dreams to matter; for your dreams to be delayed, or postponed, frozen or even crushed by the coronavirus.
For starters we are not all created equal. Success is almost always determined by what I call the big three formula: where you were born, how much money you have and who you know. These are largely static notions. Resolve, grit, determination, hard work, luck and a half dozen other mostly controllable components of the human condition are used to “bootstrap” others toward success, to make their hopes and dreams come true.
This is the American dream. That expression is a very parochial. It is also the German dream, the Brazilian dream, the Irish dream, South African dream and the Thai dream.
The coronavirus adds a damnable and daunting new variable to the mix. Here is an example of how it is affecting our family.
My daughter-in-law in Boston is from Thailand. Her dreams so far have been realized. She comes from a hard working family in Issan, a poor MeKong River region in northeast Thailand. She moved to a Buddhist temple-based children’s center at a young age and the monks and other workers there helped guide her through high school and college. She earned an advanced degree at Brandeis in Waltham, Massachusetts. Before that she spent 18 months as an au-pair in Vermont, refining her English and convincing American universities she could do the work required for a graduate degree, in English.
In other words, she “bootstrapped” her way to success and we are really proud of her. It took mostly hard work, resolve, grit and determination but also a little luck and a couple of influential friends to make her dream come true.
Now she has an important job in Boston. And like immigrants throughout all American history, she sends money back home to Thailand every month to support her extended family; her parents, her siblings, nieces and nephew. She sends a little bit more back home now.
There is no comprehensive safely net in rural Thailand. There are no stimulus check for all workers; no comprehensive loan/grant programs to keep businesses open and workers at their jobs throughout this crisis. The country has not been locked down but there is a mandatory nightly curfew, people have been encouraged to stay home and social distancing is recommended. Work is scarce. And people are dying from the coronavirus. The remittance from America is more important now than ever.
My daughter-in-law is not just the family financier. She is like a Thai ‘tiger mother” to her teenage nieces, advising, cajoling and encouraging them to work hard and chase their hopes and dreams. Her 17-year-old niece Muai Lin is the family quarterback, conductor, director, manager and has been for years.
When I first met Muai Lin, she was 13-years-old, a wisp of a girl with a bright smile and devilish, dancing eyes. Even then she was the family traffic cop. She was the taxi driver, at 13 shuttling her sister and cousin to school everyday, three on a tiny, aging motorbike navigating the clogged Thai streets. Before taking them and herself to school, she would deliver her grandmother to the market to shop or set up a stall to sell some homemade wares. After school, the process was repeated. Her role expanded as she grew older.
Muai Lin has dreams of a different future. She finished high school last month. She hopes to go to college; she has taken the entrance exams; if she is admitted, she plans to leave home and study the Korean language starting this summer. But her life is on hold. Her dreams are on hold. There are too many unknowns now. Will there be a college to attend? Will she be able to leave her family? Will she have to forego school and look for a job, any job to help with the family finances?
She is looking for a temporary work now to help out in the interim, perhaps in one of the market stalls that are ubiquitous in larger Thai department stores. It is summer in Thailand, the rainy season is coming. A bumper rice harvest will help rural Thai’s better deal with the virus, a drought will make it tougher.
For now Muai Lin’s life falls into the “suspended animation” category cited above. Her hopes and dreams are there but so it the virus, swirling all around, threatening everyone’s future. It is a classic battle between good and evil. To me, Muai Lin must prevail, she is everything that is good in this world.
Baseball!
Really, the Red Sox played this week? My son Sam, locked down in Brooklyn and his old college pal Joel, hibernating in Illinois, have a regular sports podcast called “Dump on the Ump.” It is witty and fun and informed by only their sometimes flawed and always prejudicial observances of all things sports past and present. They wear their fandom on their sleeves. Baseball teams with the word Sox in their names are good, Cubs and Yankees, not so good. To deal with the drought of current sports to dissect that the coronavirus has wrought, they are imagining the present as it might be and the future as they see it.
In other words they are producing box scores for MLB games that were scheduled to begin last week. In their world, the Red Sox beat the Blue Jays 6-1 in Toronto last week behind the big bats at the top of the lineup: Andrew Benintendi, Raphael Devers and JD Martinez. Eduardo Rodriguez threw 96 pitches over seven and two thirds innings to get the win.
Remember what I said earlier.
Fan means fanatic. Look for more box scores soon at their podcast at dumpontheup.wordpress.com
Be safe!
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