Mondays with Mike: Winter fever

It’s not far away now. The White Sox annual fan fest just wrapped up Sunday, sold out—partly in celebration of the 10^th Anniversary of the White Sox World Series Championship—but also out of optimism for a great coming season. The Sox added some terrific players, they’ve got some young ones developing fast, and, well, at this time of year, hungry for sunshine and baseball, I’d be optimistic regardless of what they’d done in the off-season.

There was some baseball sadness, too—the great Ernie Banks died on Friday. I could write about Ernie Banks, but man, there’s no shortage of accounts out there. I especially like a couple, one by Roger Wallenstein, a lifelong Sox fan who recalls the Aparicio vs. Banks arguments of his childhood, and one from a local sportswriter and radio guy, Barry Rozner.

Need a little beauty in the middle of winter? Check out Brian Miller’s photo gallery.

All this daydreaming of baseball past and future is a sign—we’re at the point in winter where the doldrums are accumulating, and it’s hard to keep a straight line of thought, at least for me.

Which is my way of saying, I got nothing this week except a couple of articles that I found compelling enough to share. I hope you’ll give them a read.

• When I lived in Washington, D.C. way back when I discovered a magazine called Washington Monthly. It’s fostered some of the very best government and policy journalism and journalists, and happily, it has maintained standards.
  This month, there’s a piece about the legal standing of “corporations as people.” The writer, a Boston College law professor, makes the argument for corporate personhood—with some proper clarifications, and I have to agree. (Read it before you pass judgment.)
• Football’s almost over, thankfully, but it’s going out in a ball (get it, see what I did there?) of fire. Well, here’s an article about a running pet peeve of mine—the claim that big sporting events, from Super Bowls to Olympics—are economic boons. Ask Glendale, Ariz., about that.
• From a self-serving point of view, I love good press about passive house, which is the building design methodology and energy standard that I promote in my day job. Here’s a really nice piece at National Geographic.
• For a little visual relief and some pure beauty, give these albums a look. Our nephew Brian Miller teaches English in Japan, and he’s a superb photographer who’s capturing and sharing what he sees.

And, you know, there’s this, too. Adds ten years to my life every time I see it, at the very least.

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See you next week.