What you learn from losing a ballgame I sat up high over third base watching my pitcher get pounded by the New York Yankees a few nights ago, looking out on what used to be the printing and warehouse district of Minneapolis, which is now the condo/espresso/IT district. Where ink-stained gents used to trundle giant rolls of paper into the big presses, now you find highly caffeinated people staring at screens and conceptualizing. I know few people who work with their hands, just their fingers. I know a few gardeners but the leash laws now keep dogs indoors so the city is overrun with raccoons and rabbits who scarf up the tomatoes and corn and peas. Men I know don’t work on their cars anymore: too complicated, like everything else. The lack of physical labor has led to a boom in personal trainers, an occupation nonexistent back in the day. My dad got his exercise hoeing and hammering nails into two-by-fours to frame up a wall. The women did squats and stretches, vacuuming and scrubbing and checking on pies in the oven. That was the Depression generation. My generation, the Seekers of Self-Knowledge, aspired to be intellectuals and we produced teachers, managers, office workers, engineers (the ones at drafting tables, not locomotives). We hire handymen and buy pies at the bakery. The chance to think large thoughts: this is the beauty of an inning in which New Yorkers are making us Minnesotans feel like ignorant farmers — but hold on — Bad Metaphor. Farmers know about soil, animal husbandry, machines, weather, carpentry, gardening, and more, whereas New Yorkers need to live in an apartment building with an on-site super — in other words, Assisted Living. Read the rest of the column >>> | 