What about the flooring and light bulbs? Still, it must be amazingly appetizing to see the Terracotta Army, giant dragons, high fashion, and even the Dunhuang Caves, with their statues and ancient library of Buddhist texts.
Better hurry. The park’s in Shanghai, which resides on the same latitude as San Jose, Calif., so it’s only open from late-December to mid-February. It’s like our own Ice Alaska in terms of duration and amazing sculptures, but our ice melts harmlessly and beneficially away, and I fathom how the Chinese go about their annual clean-up.
The word “fathom” has several meanings. It’s long been a naval measurement of depths and has meant “get to the bottom of” since 1620, according to Online Etymology Dictionary.
Its origins extend to the truly ancient Proto-Indo-European root term “pete-,” meaning “to spread, stretch out,” and from there it became the Proto-Germanic “fathmaz,” meaning “embrace,” and eventually the Old English “faeom,” pronounced “fathom” and meaning “length of the outstretched arms (a measure of six feet).”
Outstretched arms, especially those of promising pitchers, are of steady interest this time of year to baseball fans. Fortunately, there’s a slew of new and fascinating baseball books at our library that have arrived just before major leaguers report to their spring training camps. For true fans, it’s the perfect time to read about baseball.
Chad Harbach’s “The Art of Fielding” came out last September to rave reviews, but that’s an awful time for the release. By then fans are either disgusted with their teams or too engrossed in the final games.
I began “Art of Fielding” after New Year’s, when the anguish of my team’s collapse during the World Series had faded, and count me among the ravers. Harbach tells of a tremendously talented fictional college baseball player striving for perfection, weaving in, Herman Melville, contemporary college life, and, according to the New York Times, “the Human Condition.”
Times reviewer Gregory Cowles says baseball and literary fiction are comparable: “The charges against each are familiar and overlapping: too slow, too precious, not enough action. … You may as well complain that lemons are too yellow. The indictment amounts to a kind of category error; detractors went looking for entertainment, and found art instead.” Cowles adds, “Harback makes the case for baseball, thrillingly, in his slow, precious and altogether excellent first novel.”
Novels aren’t for everyone, but how can any fan pass up the library’s new nonfiction baseball offerings, like “Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funny Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ’70s” by Dan Epstein; “High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time” by Tim Wendel; or “Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert: The Wild Saga of Interracial Baseball Before Jackie Robinson” by Timothy Gay?
I couldn’t resist reading Jason Turbow’s “The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, & Bench-clearing Brawls: the Unwritten Rules of America’s Pasttime.”
Examples of unwritten rules include not “showboating” or embarrassing opponents, not stealing a base when your team has a large lead, and running hard every play, even when it appears hopeless. The last one invokes a coach’s verbal retribution, while the others often leads to seeing some scary pitches close to your neck very soon.
The library’s rules are written down and posted by the doors, and repeatedly breaking them leads to banishment rather than beanballs. They boil down to personal safety and treating those around you with respect.
Running through the library worries others, who wonder “What’s wrong?” Talking in the “no conversation” areas breaks the concentration of those nearby. Leaving children under the age of 9 unattended in a public building visited by nearly a thousand people a day is dangerous.
Fortunately, most library patrons love and respect the institution. Me, too, along with baseball, and as Al Pacino pointed out once in a movie, “Biochemically, love is just like eating large amounts of chocolate.”
Greg Hill is director of Fairbanks North Star Borough libraries.
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