Fernando's Excellent Australian Adventure

Fernando Verdasco during his Australian Open quarterfinal match against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga

Fernando Verdasco came into the 2009 Australian Open determined to improve his performance at this tournament. With a 4-5 career record in Melbourne and never having managed to get beyond the second round, there was a lot of room for improvement.

And improve he did. This year, Verdasco, who won the decisive match that gave Spain the Davis Cup in 2008, spent his off-season training with Gil Reyes, the man who turned Andre Agassi into a monument to fitness. Verdasco returned to the tour with more stamina and more confidence. He made it to the final of the warm-up tournament in Brisbane, where he lost to Radek Stepanek, and arrived in Melbourne to find that he had a very tough draw, possibly facing Stepanek again in the third round, 4th-ranked Andy Murray in the fourth, last year's Australian Open finalist Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the quarters, and the number one ranked player in the world, Rafael Nadal, in the semifinals. But first he had to get past round two.

In fact, Verdasco breezed through the first three rounds of the Australian Open without dropping a set and handing his former nemesis Stepanek a double bagel in the final two sets of their match (6-4 6-0 6-0). But then came Andy Murray, who appears to be challenging Rafael Nadal for the title of the "beast" of tennis. Murray was one of the hottest players in men's tennis in 2008, winning 5 titles and making it to his first Grand Slam final at the U.S. Open (l. to Federer). Murray finished 2008 with his highest ATP ranking to date (number 4) and started 2009 by taking the title at Doha (Qatar Open), beating 2nd ranked Roger Federer in the semifinal and the 9th ranked and apparently revitalized Andy Roddick in the final. In fact, many people considered him to be the favorite to take the Australian Open title this year. I doubt if anyone but his mother thought Fernando Verdasco, a handsome, amiable good-time guy who up to now has been best known for partying, night-clubbing, dating Ana Ivanovic, and posing in the nude, had a prayer against Murray.

It was a taxing five-set match in brutal heat, but Verdasco beat Murray (2-6 6-1 1-6 6-3 6-4) to set up a quarterfinal showdown with Jo Wilfried Tsonga, who rode his appearance in the 2008 Australian Open final (l. Djokovic) and titles in Bangkok and the Master Series tournament in Paris to a current ranking of 8th in the world. This was Verdasco's first appearance in a Grand Slam quarterfinal, and he bounced back after his long match with Andy Murray to defeat Tsonga in 4 sets (7-6 3-6 6-2 6-2).

Now he was in his first-ever Grand Slam semifinal and had to face Rafael Nadal. Nadal, who won his first Grand Slam (and his first singles title!) at age 18 at Roland Garros, won his fourth Roland Garros title in a row in 2008, beating Roger Federer decisively in straight sets. From there, Nadal, no longer just the "King of Clay," went to Wimbledon and beat Federer again in a 5-set final that many people regard as one of the greatest matches of all time. Wimbledon championship in hand, Nadal continued his tear through the ATP with a total of 8 titles in 2008. He took over the number 1 ranking from Roger Federer just before the 2008 U.S. Open, where he lost in the semifinals to Andy Murray. Nadal finished 2008 ranked number one with a match record of 82-11.

Today, Fernando Verdasco lost to Rafael Nadal, but he made a real fight of it, going down in 5 sets (7-6 4-6 6-7 7-6 4-6) in the longest match in Australian Open history (5 hours and eleven minutes). In a battle of left-handers, Verdasco had 95 winners and 78 errors, but it wasn't enough to beat Nadal. He got down 0-40 in what turned out to be final game, then fought back to 30-40 before losing the match on a double-fault. After the match Verdasco said, "I need to be proud for the tournament I made and the level I played today also. I think it was unbelievable match. I [hit] 20 aces. I was serving 210, 215 a lot. So I cannot think about that I made two double-faults in one game, because tennis is like [that] sometimes." Thus ended the first all-Spanish semifinal at the Australian Open.

Despite what must be a disappointing loss, Fernando Verdasco made his Grand Slam breakthrough and will rise into the ATP top ten for the first time when the rankings come out on Monday. He apparently found a new seriousness of purpose through his pivotal role in the 2008 Davis Cup final, achieved a higher level of fitness by training with Gil Reyes in Las Vegas, and received much-needed self-confidence through a 2-hour private conversation with Andre Agassi on Christmas Eve 2008. Vardasco won't reveal any details of his talk with his childhood idol Agassi, but it seems to have given him a shot in the arm. On the eve of his match with Nadal Verdasco said, "Right now I'm believing so much about me and I just think that I can beat anyone." Let's hope he can keep hold of that belief. Vamos, Fernando!

Aretha's Church Hat

Aretha Franklin sings at President Obama's Inauguration on January 20, 2009

Aretha Franklin had the honor of singing at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, and she made big-time news with her hat. The gray chapeau with the enormous bow outlined in Swarovski crystals was made by Luke Song of Mr. Song Millinery in Detroit.

When I first saw Aretha Franklin at the inauguration ceremony, all I could think of was that she was wearing an African-American lady's classic Sunday hat. A long time ago, the TV documentary show Sixty Minutes did one of its more light-hearted segments on the elaborate hats that many African-American women wear to church on Sundays. The hats were wonderful, and the broadcast was an education for a white, upstate New York Catholic kid who grew up in the black lace mantilla era of church going millinery or-- God forbid, the piece of Kleenex held down by a bobby pin when you had to go to church and didn't have a scarf or some other approved headgear to put on. Who knew there was such a thing as a church hat? In fact, CBS seems to have a thing about hats. In 2000, Sunday Morning did a piece on African American "hat queens." They also covered Queen Elizabeth's hats when she visited the USA in 2007.

Anyway, when I saw Aretha's hat, I knew for sure that this was a special day, even if Ellen DeGeneres later made fun of it. What does she know anyway? It was a gorgeous hat and perfect for the occasion. Apparently I wasn't the only person who thought so, because Mr. Song's telephone was ringing off the hook even before the swearing-in ceremony was over, although some people might not want to pay $500+ for the hat, assuming they could get one. They probably couldn't, because it was made espcially for Ms. Franklin, but I'm sure people will be wearing Aretha-hat knockoffs before you know it. In fact, Mr. Song will sell you one for $179.

I couldn't be bothered sitting through the agonizingly slow parade that followed the swearing-in and inaugural luncheon in the Statuary Hall at the Capitol (which took out two senators, Byrd and Kennedy, before it ended), but I didn't need to. Next to the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Obama replace Mr. Bush, Aretha's hat was a highpoint that couldn't be surpassed.

President Obama and the Hopes of the Nation

Today Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, and tomorrow morning he will start work with an almost immeasurable burden of the nation's hopes weighing on his shoulders. Right now, the New York Times has a fascinating interactive feature called "I hope so, too" (or at least, that's how it would read if the writers at the Times were still literate people) that distills into 29 categories the responses of 200 people from 14 states who were asked to name their greatest hopes for the Obama presidency . The feature allows readers to hear excerpts from the answers of the people who were interviewed and click on a button if they share the hopes that were expressed. In addition, there are already over 600 posted comments that state many other hopes not included in the feature.

I clicked on so many of the hopes in the feature that I lost count, but these ten were among the ones I shared:

1. Enact universal health care
2. Protect the environment
3. Improve the economy
4. Improve education
5. End the war in Iraq
6. Promote gay rights
7. Restore civil liberties
8. Close the prison at Guantanamo Bay
9. Increase government accountability
10. Restore the separation of church and state

There were other hopes expressed that I also share whole-heartedly (such as ending global poverty) and some that I definitely do not share (such as ending the right to abortion or keeping our troops deployed in the Middle East), but ten seems like a good number, so these are mine. However, it seems to me that the one hope that would make at least some of the hopes listed above possible is that the government should embrace bipartisanship in order to act in the best interests of the nation and the world. Unfortunately, given the entrenched behavior of politicans, I expect to read about the discovery of a universal cure for cancer before I read about concrete examples of politicians of both parties working together to accomplish important national goals.

In my experience, political behavior denotes self-interested action that is mainly directed at pleasing the interest groups that will keep the politician in office, whether it benefits the nation or not. Think of kowtowing to the corporations that give the politicians money. Think of pork barrel projects. Think of the military-industrial complex. Think of Henry Paulson giving $350 billion to his friends at U.S. banks and insurance companies without demanding any accountability. How do we get from these actions to enacting universal health care or rescuing the economy? Yes, I believe in separation of church and state, but even so it will take a lot of prayers to get the powers that be in our government to change the way they operate, and I am not optimistic.

Fernando Verdasco in 2009-- Rise or Fall?

Fernando Verdasco, Davis Cup hero against Argentina.

Fernando Verdasco ended 2008 on a high. He had lifted his ATP Tour ranking to 11th in the world, including a title in Umag (Croatia), and he beat Argentine Jose Acasuso in the last rubber of the Davis Cup Final to secure victory for Spain. Before the match, Verdasco had told Spain's Davis Cup coach Emilio Sanchez that he wanted to be a hero, and he delivered.

According to Deuce Magazine, Verdasco then did something that was for him uncharacteristic. Leaving his family behind in Spain, Verdasco flew to Las Vegas in December to work with Gil Reyes, the trainer who played a key role in making Andre Agassi a great tennis champion. Anyone who has seen Verdasco's sculpted body, and many have had the chance since he agreed to pose nude for the UK version of Cosmopolitan in 2008, might find it hard to believe that he needed to increase his fitness, but Verdasco wanted to start strong in 2009.

So far, it seems his plan is working. He made it to the final of the tournament in Brisbane, two weeks before the start of the Australian Open and is seeded 14th at the Open. Unfortunately, he will find himself in the quarter of the draw anchored by world number 4 Andy Murray, who turned into a powerhouse in 2008, winning 5 titles and making it to his first Grand Slam final at the U.S. Open, where he lost to Roger Federer. Murray has already started 2009 with a roar, winning the title in Doha by beating Roger Federer in the semifinal and Andy Roddick in the final. Also in Verdasco's quarter are last year's Australian Open finalist Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, seeded 5th, 9th seeded James Blake, and 22nd seed Radek Stepanek, to whom Verdasco lost in the final at Brisbane.

Fernando Verdasco would have had a tough row to hoe at the Australian Open in any case, because his record there is a miserable 4-5, and he has lost in the second round the past three years. This year, if he makes it to the third round, he will be facing his Brisbane nemesis, Radek Stepanek. If he gets past Stepanek, he will have to face Andy Murray. If he were to beat Murray, he would have his countryman, number 1-ranked Rafael Nadal in his future. Frankly, his prospects are not good, but even making it past the third round would be a victory of sorts and a contribution to the fast start he is hoping for in 2009.

After the Australian Open comes the early clay court season in South America, where Verdasco has a chance to shine, followed by two Masters Series tournaments in the USA, then the important European clay court season leading to Roland Garros. If Fernando Verdasco wants to rise above his 2008 11th place ranking, he needs to keep his momentum going and become better known for celebrating victories than posing without his clothes.

A la famiglia! To the family! (With caveats)

Barack Obama and his family on November 4, 2008. Mrs. Obama's mother is seated to her right.

Right now there is a lot of speculation about how the Obama family unit will shape up when they finally occupy the White House on January 20, 2009. There is, of course, the momentous decision of what puppy to buy for the Obamas' two daughters, Sasha and Malia. Occupying nearly as much attention, however, is the question of whether Mrs. Obama's mother, Marian Robinson, will move into the White House, as well. At this point, it looks as if she will, although she isn't sure how long she will stay before returning to her own home in Chicago. But as of January 20, 2009, the First Family in the White House will be a multigenerational family, which reflects a growing trend in the United States.

When I was a kid, my Aunt Mary and her family lived in the same house as my maternal grandmother at 102 East Tenth Street, in Oswego, New York. My great grandmother, my great-aunt, and one of my great uncles lived next door on one side on the corner of East Tenth and Schuyler Streets, my grandmother's sister and two of her children lived next door on the other side on East Tenth Street, and one of my grandmother's brothers and his family lived directly behind her on Schuyler Street. My paternal grandmother lived on her own on Willow Street in Syracuse, but her home was the upstairs apartment in a house owned and occupied by one of her daughters and her family.

In those days, multigenerational families were common. It seemed as if most of the people I knew had a least one relative beyond the nuclear family living with them, although few of them lived in anything like the compound occupied by the Familos (of which my grandmother was a daughter) in the area of East Tenth and Schuyler Streets in Oswego. Between my grandmother's family and my Uncle Ed's (Aunt Mary's husband) family, nearly everyone in the neighborhood was a relative, and everyone was in and out of 102 East Tenth Street all day every day. This was pretty hard on my aunt, who heard an almost constant litany of "Mary, put on a pot of coffee!" or "Mary, Uncle Allie's staying for lunch!" or "Mary, your brother Pete and his family are on their way from Ohio!" She must have thought she was running a hotel in those days. And later, when my grandmother was ill with Parkinson's disease and housebound, Aunt Mary must have wondered why the relatives always showed up at mealtimes and almost never when they could have kept my grandmother company while my aunt went shopping or had a few hours out with her husband.

Over time, the phenomenon of the multigenerational family living under one roof faded away for the middle class. Children grew up and moved away from the old neighborhood, maybe even out of state, and their children did the same. And so-called "empty-nesters" often moved away, too, to retirement homes in Florida or Arizona. Family ties were stretched thin, and often people didn't see each other except at holdays or, unfortunately, funerals. Now the situation is changing again.

According to the 2000 Census, nearly four million (3.9 million) American households consist of three or more generations living together. In some cases, these are ethnic families, many of them Hispanic or Asian, in which multigenerational living arrangements are traditional. In some cases, they are families in which grown children have landed back in the parental household because of economic or marital problems (so-called "boomerang" children), or families in which the children grow up but don't leave the home. And some sad cases involve grandparents caring for their grandchildren because their own children are incapable or incarcerated. Now, however, we are seeing a new trend, families with children in which both parents have careers and at least one in-law lives with them.

Today, the New York Times ran an article suggesting (more subtly than I am stating it) that the new "in" accessory for two-career families is the live-in grandparent, who can share in the childcare, cooking and cleaning duties. According to the Times, this has required an adjustment in power relationships in order for the generations to live comfortably together in the modern world. Today, says the Times, mom is a working woman's best friend, and people aren't afraid to say so.

I think that's great. However, my concern is that the folks who are finding mom to be their best friend now must realize that someday their parents are going to cease being caregivers and need care themselves. You can't just say, "Gee, thanks for all you did. It's time to go to assisted living now." If Grandma is really a part of the family, then everyone needs to save up financially and emotionally for the next stage and accept it graciously. I am unmarried and childless. My life companion (his life, obviously) is a 6-pound Yorkshire terrier. My mother lived with me for the last five years of her life, and my only regret is that maybe I didn't do everything I could have to provide her with the best possible life, although I always found great satisfaction in Mom's reports that the other ladies in her bridge club envied her. Those years were not always easy for me, but I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world.

So, here's to the family, but don't forget about future responsibilities, folks, because they will be there before you know it, and you'd better be ready to step up.

Do you trust me? I wouldn't!

You may think you know who's behind the mask, but do you really?

There's an awful lot of information being offered on blogs these days. No matter what topic you choose, somebody, and probably more than just one somebody, is blogging about it. If you do a Google search about nearly anything, blog entries pop up right away, and sometimes it takes a while to realize that what you have found is posted on a blog because many of them are formatted to look very professional and authoritative. The question is, who writes all those blogs, and why should I, or you, pay attention to them?

Considering that this is a blog post, you must think I have a lot of nerve writing this, but somewhere along the line I was trained as an academic researcher, and I spend a good deal of my time nagging undergraduates about the quality of the sources they use in their papers. I should say immediately that I am not talking about online academic journals that publish refereed articles in a non-print, electronic format. With the sky-high cost of publishing anything these days, putting your academic journal online seems like a good move. (It also cuts down on the number of those cute little article reprints that your colleagues press upon you. Sure they're justifiably proud of having gotten published, but what are you supposed to do with those things? How fortunate to have a shredder at home.) No, what I am talking about are the blogs written by folks like me, or folks who know a great deal more than I do, or folks who just want to see their words "in print," whether they know anything or not.

For many of us, and for me in particular, blogging is just a matter of putting your thoughts out into the ether and hoping that someone who is interested will read them and maybe even respond. And even if readers don't respond, there is still a great deal of satisfaction, not to mention real benefit, in getting your thoughts in order and expressing yourself in a formal manner. Whether one expects a response or not, once the blog is published, it will eventually find its way onto the search engines, and people will find it when they search the topic about which you have written. Knowing that puts a burden of responsibility on the blogger to be truthful and accurate, even if one is under no requirement at all to be fair and balanced. The information literacy tutorial provided by our college library gives four criteria for evaluating the quality of materials. They should be useful/relevant, timely, appropriate, and authoritative. The sticking point with blogs is obvious: How do you know that the writer of the blog you are reading has any credentials whatever? Anybody can write a blog. That's the point. Ever since I have written entries for encyclopedias, I have become very sceptical about credentials. If they'll let me write for an encyclopedia, God only knows who's writing blogs.

It pays, therefore, to be a very critical reader these days, because you have very little idea whether the author whose words you are reading knows anything at all. Fortunately, it's not always overpoweringly difficult to check the accuracy of what you are reading. For example, if I tell you that corvine means "of or pertaining to crows," you can look it up and see if I am right. I may even be obliging enough to give you a source for my definition. But once you get past the basic things like whether I know the meaning of the words I use, what then? And that isn't as basic as it sounds, because I have found that many of my students use words that don't mean what they think they mean. I won't burden you with examples, but it's all too true.

Some blogs assume a cloak of authority by their association with institutions that we trust, more or less anyway. So if you read blogs associated with the New York Times or CNN, for example, you may think that someone who knows something is monitoring what is written on those blogs. Maybe that's true, although I don't know that it's true. It's a jungle out there, and you have to be careful. Just remember, I warned you.

What are the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?

The map at the left shows the close proximity to one another of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Whenever conversation flags, I am apt to ask my older sister, Sue, what are the seven wonders of the ancient world? Sometimes we manage to name them all from memory, and sometimes we don't. If we name the seven wonders correctly, we generally progress to the names of the Nine Muses, which we never remember in total. Unless we're in a really masochistic frame of mind, that's the end of our quiz.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were prominent examples of what is called monumental architecture. They were tombs, temples, palace gardens, victory statues, and an enormous lighthouse, whose light could reputedly be seen 50 miles away. One thing they all had in common was that they were big. Another thing is that they were all built around the Mediterranean basin, from Greece to Turkey to Egypt, and the Greeks had a hand in nearly all of them, directly or indirectly. There have been various lists of the so-called seven wonders of the world, including those of Herodotus and Philo of Byzantium. The list of monuments below is the same list given by Antipater of Sidon. By the end of the Middle Ages, all of the listed structures were gone except the Great Pyramid, which survives to this day.

The Great Pyramid of Giza (ca. 2560 B.C.) This enormous structure, the tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops), was built on the plateau of Giza near Cairo at a time before the wheel was invented and without iron tools. The base of the pyramid is a perfect square, and its triangular walls converge to form a point. It was built of enormous limestone blocks and deep inside is the burial chamber of Khufu. The Great Pyramid is still in existence today, although it was stripped of its smooth facing of polished limestone slabs, which were later reused for other building projects. The controversial glass pyramid in front of the Louvre, designed by I.M. Pei, is modeled on the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (ca. 600 B.C.) There is a fair amount of controversy about whether the Hanging Gardens of Babylon ever existed at all. They were supposed to be incredible gardens built on the heights of his palace in Babylon, in ancient Mesopotamia, by King Nebuchadnezzar II. The stories say that Nebuchadnezzar had the gardens contructed as a wedding gift for his wife, Amytis of Media. If the gardens existed, they were probably not as large and lush as they are usually represented. Situated in the desert environment of what is now Iraq, it would have been extremely difficult to get water up to them. According to accounts, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were destroyed by an earthquake about a century after their construction.

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (ca. 550 B.C. ) Artemis was, among other things, the Greek goddess of fertility. She is sometimes depicted as having many breasts. Ephesus (now in modern Turkey) was the site of a fertility cult associated with Artemis. There an enormous temple to Artemis was contructed. Although only a few ruins remain, this temple was thought to look much like the Parthenon in Athens, only much bigger. The temple was destroyed by arson in 350 B.C. This was possible because the marble temple had a wooden interior framework. When that burned through, the roof collapsed.

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia (ca. 432 B.C.) This seated representation of the chief of the gods, Zeus, was designed and executed by the sculptor Phidias for the temple of Zeus at Olympia, the site of the Olympic Games. It was made of ivory and allegedly stood over 40 feet high. The statue was destroyed. It either perished in the burning of the temple of Zeus in 425 A.D. or was taken to a palace in Constantinople as war booty and subsequently lost in a fire in 475 A.D. No one knows exactly what the statue looked like, but there have been many representations of it over the centuries. The statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. is modeled on the statue of Zeus at Olympia.

The Tomb of Mausolus (Mausoleum) at Halicarnassus (ca. 350 B.C.) was the monumental tomb of the Persian satrap Mausolus and his wife Artemisia. The word mausoleum is derived from this structure. Mausolus ruled a powerful fortified city which is now Bodrum, in Turkey. Inspired by Khufu's pyramid, Mausolus had a huge tomb constructed for himself. This enormous structure, designed by a Greek architect, embodied a mixture of styles and was decorated with many statues, including a huge chariot drawn by four horses that stood at the peak of the tomb's roof. Today, a similar statute of a chariot stands atop the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Mausolus died before the tomb was completed, but his wife finished it after his death, and both of them were buried there. The tomb was destroyed by a series of earthquakes ca. 1400 A.D. Many existing buildings have been modeled on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, but they do not have the extensive exterior decoration. One example is the Masonic Temple in Washington, D.C.

The Colossus of Rhodes (ca. 280 B.C.) - Rhodes is a Greek island located in the Aegean sea not far from the coast of Turkey. After the breakup of the Greek empire following the death of Alexander the Great, Rhodes withstood a great siege and built a huge bronze image of the sun god, Helios, in the harbor of the city of Rhodes as a sign of its victory. This cast bronze statue was said to be more than 100 feet tall. The statue, known as the Colossus of Rhodes, was destroyed by an earthquake in 226 B.C. However, its ruins were a great tourist attraction for a long time therafter. A modern, but much more durable, version of the Colossus of Rhodes is the Statue of Liberty, which stands on an island in New York harbor. Designed by Auguste Bertholdi, the statue was erected in 1886. Its interior framework of steel was designed by French engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, best known for the Eiffel Tower in Paris. With interior support much like the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty is much more stable than the Colossus of Rhodes, which collapsed only 56 years after its completion.

The Pharos of Alexandria (ca. 247 B.C.) Of all the seven wonders, this is the one that interests me the most, perhaps because it was the most practical one. The Pharos was an enormous lighthouse built in the harbor at Alexandria. It was reputed to be about 400 feet high. It was used as a navigational aid, but, of course, it was also a prominent symbol of the power of Alexandria. The Pharos was seriously damaged by earthquakes in the 14th century A.D., then the ruins were used to build a fortress (Fort Qaitbey) in 1480 A.D. Stones from the base of the Pharos are visible in the surviving fortress. Remnants of the Pharos have also been discovered on the sea bottom in the harbor of Alexandria. Since 1994, underwater archaelogists have been plotting, measuring, and weighing the underwater ruins of the Pharos, and some of the remnants have been recovered.

So now, if anyone asks you, you can list the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.