Saturday Morning Links

1. I usually stay away from sports here (except for running), but we’re going to get a little sportsy today. Via NPR, the No. 3 Iroquois Nationals team was not part of the lacrosse 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Alabama because they weren’t a sovereign nation. In comes the Ireland team, who gives up their spot so the Nationals can play. Lacrosse was invented by Native Americans and was named Lacrosse because “la crosse” means “the stick” in French. And talk about sacrifice for the Ireland team is pretty special.

2. Let’s continue to keep up with Aaron Chamberlain who continues to bike the perimeter of Texas. week 3 meant beers and Texarkana to Vernon and week 4 was Vernon to Dalhart:

I woke before sunrise so I could get a jump-start on the winds. I had to ride forty miles to Stratford before turning south to Dalhart. Heading west on Highway 15 in the dark was a little spooky, with no lights but my bike light and the stars. There wasn’t much to see for the first hour. I could only hear cows bellowing somewhere in the blackness. An hour outside Stratford the crosswinds had picked up substantially, but the idea that they would soon become tailwinds kept me going strong. In Stratford, I had a perfectly normal lunch of egg rolls and tater tots. The fried food was comforting since the temperature in the morning had been in the high forties. Back on the road, this time heading south on U.S. 54, I soaked in the sun and relished the powerful tailwinds. Nine miles outside of Dalhart, I crossed Chamberlain Road in a tiny town called Chamberlin. Not sure who screwed up there, but it was nice to pass through my namesake before ending the long ride. It really was a long ride, but I was glad it ended with help from the wind gods.

3. Outside Online’s Wes Siler on the removal of the Bureau of Land Management’s Perry Pendley, and possibly all of the things he wanted to do to public lands (I had no idea lots of this stuff was happening):

The actions threatened by the ruling include everything from oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), to a new rule that permits electric bicycles to be operated on federal lands, and even mineral extraction on lands that used to be a part of Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument. It’s potentially an unraveling of nearly every anti-public-lands, pro-extraction effort taken by the Trump administration over the past 14 months, and the ramifications of all that go much further, too.

I again do not understand the idea of taking away public lands, that they should be there for everyone, for your kids, grandkids, etc. There’s only so much of it, I just cannot understand of taking it away and would seem like everyone wants to keep public lands public.

4. The Ringer’s Tim Greiving with an oral history of one of my favorite movies, Best in Show. I think Best in Show led me to Waiting for Guffman.

Fred Willard (Buck Laughlin): I was thinking of my character, and the lines that would come out of my character, who was supposed to be an ex-athlete, who has just signed on to be a color commentator, and who had no real knowledge of the dogs. In other words, he didn’t value the different types of dogs. I pictured him as imagining that everyone has tuned in to hear what he had to say, as opposed to watching the Westminster Dog Show. So he contributed more about himself than he did about the dogs. He just made wild comments.

5. Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert.

I don’t know if it is wrong that I was just staring at Shires’ abs for 15 of the 16 minutes. And then, Isbell, thinking that Jewel might tell his daughter that she can’t yodel for shit.

It gets easier, but it never gets easy.