Thursday, June 11, 2026

One way to measure a life

 The news story, in Spanish, began: There are those who say that a life is measured in World Cups.

I didn’t really understand that point of view until I got to know some fans of El Tri, the Mexican national team.

Mexico, Canada and the United States are hosts to the World Cup, but it’s not an equal partnership. I’m not sure you can measure the seriousness with which something is taken within a culture. But consider the number of appearances each country has made in El Mundial:

• Mexico: 18.

• United States: 12.

• Canada: 3.

There are those who say that fútbol is becoming a big deal in the United States. It’s something else in Mexico.

When people ask, I say I have two teams, not one. I hope Canada does well, too.

at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

The effort to know the world

 Wendell Berry wrote some things I argue with. But I’m not sure we’ve had a writer who was better at getting to a glaring problem with Ameri...

  • Alice Oswald's poem on battle
     An appropriate read for Memorial Day? How about Alice Oswald’s long poem  Memorial , which recounts how soldiers in the  Iliad  met their e...
  • Lang: 'Letters to Dead Authors'
      Andrew Lang, a Scottish polymath who lived from 1844 to 1912, wrote   Letters to Dead Authors . I like the idea of the book, rather than t...
  • The things you hear
      Some days you go into the woods and see all kinds of things. Some days you don’t. And then there are days when you don’t see but   hear . ...