Lost in Time
August 25, 2015
So, North Korea is establishing its own unique time zone – “Pyongyang time” – named after the nation’s capital city. North Korea will fall 30 minutes behind Japan whose time zone was imposed on the entire Korean peninsula more than 100 years ago.
Actually, North Korea is more than 30 years behind Japan in almost every aspect of civilized life.
This time zone adjustment gesture is of little practical significance because North Koreans have been closed off from global interaction by the impositions of their brutal dictators since the end of World War II. It’s symbolism befitting the backward nation’s isolationism.
The negative effects of this isolationism upon the nation are visible across the Demilitarized Zone from South Korea. Behind visitors to the DMZ is the vibrant mega-city of Seoul, South Korea. Across the river is a bleak, barren landscape with no sign of life. No people, no agriculture. Just a few buildings, without inhabitants. Built only for show.
There are many lessons to be learned from this contrast, on many levels. Of course, we see how people thrive more in an atmosphere of freedom than totalitarianism. We see the benefits of engagement over isolationism. We see that symbols without substance are meaningless.
Lessons for nations, to be sure. But reminders for enterprises of all kinds, including ours.
And a note to North Korea ... Newfoundland Island has had its own time zone for many years. It’s 30 minutes ahead of the rest of North America, and a century ahead of North Korea.
Dodger Lessons
August 6, 2013
The first baseball team I played on was the Dodgers. I’ve been a Dodger fan ever since, checking their place in the National League standings almost every day of the season, year after year. It would have been difficult to learn more about sports and life from any professional sports franchise than one could learn from the Dodgers as I was growing up.
It was the Dodgers who returned integration to the Major Leagues in 1951, which from my home in central Wisconsin seemed unremarkable; and when I became old enough to think about baseball, Jackie Robinson was my most favorite player for a long while.
It was the Dodgers who led the Major League’s migration from the northeast to the west, which my young mind could not grasp. From historic Brooklyn to Los Angeles? To play in the Coliseum?
I could not know then that this leading edge of professional sports franchise mobility would become an early adopter of a new toy called “television,” and that this would solidify baseball’s place as the national pastime for two more generations.
I coped with tragedy as catcher Roy Campanella suffered a paralyzing injury. I considered religion’s place in life as Sandy Koufax declined to pitch on Jewish holy days.
The Dodgers of my youth already knew that life is not fair. How could it be after Oct. 3, 1951, when the hated Giants’ Bobby Thompson hit a ninth-inning homerun to steal the National League pennant from my Dodgers?
Sadly, the Dodgers of more recent years have been beset by the kind of ownership dramas now common among professional sports as the insipid idle rich ruin even the most stable and storied franchises.
And speaking of rich, had it not been for my dear mother’s insatiable desire to clean out every closet she found, I might be rich too. For I had collected, and kept in mint condition, the baseball card of every Dodger player of the 1950s. They were thrown out while I was away at college.