Sunday, November 09, 2008
Sports, "Hunt's Grunts"

Movin’ On Up

The chore of moving one’s belongings from one abode to another must be abhorred by all

By Hunt Archbold

Ugh. The chore of moving one’s belongings from one abode to another must be abhorred by all. The breaking down, packing, loading, hauling, unloading, setting back up, etc., etc. We all know it blows, and after struggling through it yet again the past few weeks, this spine o’ mine be entwined in, um, pain. Still, as with the Raiders and DeAngelo Hall last week, the casting off of useless items no longer deemed desirable does bring with it a sense of cleansing, of opportunities to be seized. It’s a good thing, and as a certain group of recent inductees into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame might say, “Travelin’ light is the only way to fly.”

Move forward to a brighter future—that's what more than 64 million Americans emphatically did last week with their votes to send Barack Obama to the White House. Election Day was a great day to be an American, and the joyous celebration of Obama’s supporters in Chicago was something special to behold, no matter who you voted for. And while change holds great promise, it’s rarely ever easy. 

Just ask the Thrashers, who once again are off to another sub-par start and are now defending against Russian news media reports that Ilya Kovalchuk is trade bait. Surely, as the organization’s consistently inconsistent play continues, the Thrashers will cave, sooner or later, and send a quietly disgruntled Kovy elsewhere.

Which begs the question: Which will take longer, the Thrashers becoming a thriving Stanley Cup contender, or the decades it’s going to take Obama and his successors in the Oval Office to help solve the mounting problems we find ourselves punching and stressing and kicking and praying our way through? Even money has it at about the same time, but all bets are off the day the Thrashers pack up and move on out of town, just as the Flames flickered out before them.

Speaking of burning, John McCain’s approach as the curmudgeonly, defiant old man in the campaign’s final weeks certainly blew up in his face. But on election night, there was McCain in his concession speech, coming across as honest, wise, calm and thoughtful. He knew it was time to move on, and he did so, but not before an eloquent reference to the public outrage exhibited a century ago when President Theodore Roosevelt invited and then dined with Booker T. Washington at the White House.

 “America today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time,” he said. “There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States. Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth.”

The idea of the U.S. of A. standing alone as the greatest nation on the planet might have lost its luster in the last decade, but given our core beliefs of freedom and democracy, where else would you want to be? Seriously—through all the griping, moaning and finger-pointing, at the end of the day ,where else would you rather be? Most likely not Lithuania, especially as a professional basketball player. It seems that Valdas Garastas, the head of the Lithuanian basketball federation, is none too pleased with the African-American players who have come to play in his country. Last month in the Khaleej Times, he took issue with two Americans, Loren Wood and Willie Deane, who play for the team Zalgiris Kaunas.

“I’d fire that n****r who plays for Zalgiris right away,” Garastas was quoted as saying, without saying which player he meant. “The next generation [of Lithuanian players] isn’t being groomed. All they have playing are some black a**holes.” (Note that the asterisks were included here, as the actual words were printed as blazingly as they were spoken.)

Garastas later issued an apology, but there was little outrage at his statements. Can you imagine what would happen if someone in a similar role uttered such a thing here? Well, people have, and they have been rightfully punished. That’s because America, now 232 years strong and growing, continues to move on. Yes, we take some steps back, and we stumble every now and then, but we move on—onward and upward.

“This victory alone is not the change we seek,” Obama said in his victory speech Tuesday night. “It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.”

Packing a majority of my collected material belongings, most of which I do not need, now or ever again, last week, I did so with the idea that for the next several months, while still based here, I will essentially be travelin’ light. The world keeps changing, and as I crouch over my temporary work desk with my dog snoring nearby, I wonder where I’ll be moving on to next.

Happy times ... and is the world my oyster, or merely a big blue marble? SP