This was a busy blogging weekend. The farther you scroll down the more treasures you'll discover.

The Explorers Club
No. XXIII - The French and Indian Wars, Part III: Fort Ticonderoga and Fort William Henry.






The forts are pieces of living history I had the good fortune to visit during those years when my brother spent his summers in upstate New York. Fort Ticonderoga is a restoration of the genuine article. Fort William Henry was razed by, who else, the French and the Indians; the extant fort is an exquisite recreation of the original.

To Be or Not To Be: Honolulu Blue... Forever?
The moment of crisis is upon us. Shall I be a stalwart for the Detroit Lions, subjecting myself to all the frustration and inevitable heartache that entails, or shall I seek more pleasant pastures as a partisan for another club, forsaking a bond forged in childhood and strengthened by thoughts of home?

My love for the Detroit Lions is a complicated thing, quite unlike my love for the University of Michigan and Michigan football. Change is the essense of college football; players have four years at most to make their mark, so fan loyalty is to the institution not the players or even the coaches. The late, great Bo Schembechler was the coach of my childhood; like President Reagan, he'd been in his office as long as I'd been self-aware and to my pre-pubescent mind this was the natural and unchangable order of things. But things change, the order of things changes, and I learned that Michigan is not about Bo Schembechler, Michigan is bigger than any one man. From Bo to Mo to Lloyd and beyond, I am a Michigan man. I could no more quit Michigan than I could forsake Holy Mother Church.

It's always been different with the Detroit Lions. I have been a fan of the Lions for as long as I have been a fan of football. I was afforded the privilege of watching Barry Sanders during the whole of his amazing and all-too-brief career. I was watching when Mike Utley was paralyzed, when Ty Detmer threw seven interceptions in a single game. I marveled at how good a quarterback Scott Mitchell was during his brief and sporatic moments of brilliance, then mourned every time he returned to his usual form. It's a crime that more NFL fans don't know just how great a receiver Herman Moore was. Even during the roller coaster years of the now-fondly missed Wayne Fontes, I never thought I would feel anything but affection for the Lions. Sure, we'd never get beyond the first round of the playoffs, but that was alright. They were the Lions, after all, one can only expect so much. And there was always next year.

But then came Matt Millen. I see no reason to delve into the sorry history of the last six seasons beyond commenting that the Dark Bastard would like the Lions to finish 2-14 in this season since it would form a lovely bit of symmetry: 2-14, 3-13, 5-11, 6-10, 5-11, 3-13, (2-14). The Lions have a long and indistiguished history of mediocrity, yet I feel safe in the assertion that there is something fundamentally different about the Matt Millen era. Something is different, something has changed. And if the Lions are not as they were, should I root for this new entity as I did the old?

There are four reasons to cheer for a professional sports team: geographic loyalty, arbitrary loyalty, mercenary support for a likely contender and/or returning champion, and spite (I cheer for the New York Mets whenever they play against the New York Yankees, but during the remainder of the year the Mets could drop dead for all I care). A good example of mercenary support would be the jerkholes across the nation who wore Dallas Cowboys merchandise in the mid '90s; this is a low and unworthy reason to support a team and no one worth knowing would engage in such behavior. My support for North London's Arsenal Football Club is a combination of arbitrary loyalty and spite. Years ago, The Guy decided that BTW should take an interest in English soccer; it sounded like a lark and I was game (arbitrary). Since The Guy had thrown his lot in with a bunch of wankers, David Beckham's Manchester United, I chose the only team with a more august record, Arsenal (spite). Happily, I later learned that Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity and About a Boy, et al., was a lifelong Arsenal supporter (read his book Fever Pitch, it's not about soccer as much as it is about the glorious irrationality of being a fan). So, I have Nick Hornby as a peer while Man U's precious Becks is a washed up has-been who can't hack it in the Europe anymore and is trying to hide in the hinterland of American soccer. Ha!

My loyalty to the Lions, then, was always geographic in nature: I love Michigan, the Lions are the only NFL team in Michigan, even when they played in Pontiac the team's name was "Detroit" and rightly or wrongly Detroit is the face of Michigan to many Ausländer. Therefore, a cheer for the Lions was a cheer for Detroit and all of the Great Lakes State. Roar, Lions, roar! This devotion, then, was inherently uncritical. Sure, the Lions weren't any good, but I'd originally embraced them as lovable losers. With the lovability came the losing, I couldn't gladly accept the one and complain about the other. I would have loved nothing more than to cheer Barry Sanders to Super Bowl glory, but I was perfectly content to cheer my team through both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Those were good days.

I had thought those days gone forever and the bonds of geographic fealty sundered by the immensity of Millen's hubris, but in this my recent experience with the Red Wings and the monster Bertuzzi is enlightening. The Red Wings are my team. If I wish to reap the joy of the good (three Stanley Cups in six seasons), I must be willing to bear the sorrow of the bad (the dishonor of allying with a villain such as the monster Bertuzzi). In the same way, the Lions are my team. I know, you've read this far and you expected something for more dramatic. Has all this sound and fury really signified nothing. Sorry, but yeah, kinds. It's as simple and stupid and relentlessly sentimental as that, the Lions are my team. The Lions will never win a Super Bowl in my lifetime, but I was convinced of that ten years ago. They will never rival the glory and commitment to excellence of the Red Wings, but Vince Lombardi was wrong: winning isn't the only thing.

The only difference now is that spite has partnered with geographic loyalty; I may quit the Lions the day after Matt Millen is finally canned, I may go to my grave wearing Honolulu blue and silver, but I will still be a Lions fan on the day Matt Millen is run out of town on a rail. And that'll be all the victory I need.