She Liked Inspector Maigret

 Elise Moeller Ostrom, 1927-2023

When her husband my uncle died,
I sent her a note and a mystery novel.
When next I saw her, she said,
"Thanks for your note and for not
sending me a goddamned book on grief."

She has just died, age 95, after decorously
drinking a lot of beer and devouring
crime novels for seven decades.
I never saw her not composed. She
saved that for privacy.

Her opinions firm as tungsten,
she voted liberal and pro-union
but wanted results, not fools
prattling ideology.

Her father was a football coach
and she married one, followed
fanatically the S.F. 49ers. Into old age,

she grew flowers, stacked her own
firewood, shoveled snow, and
fed migrating doves. We liked
each other a lot because, I think,
we liked words. Love? Grief?

Well, sure, but with restraint.

hans ostrom 2023

Velton Stopped Cheering

Velton stopped cheering
at football games and football
matches when he realized
that no one could hear him
above the noise.



hans ostrom 2017

Bowl Season

Here's a partial re-post from 2007--concerning (football) bowl season, which doesn't make any sense even in the culture to which in belongs (American):

Bowls I would like to see played, to make "bowl season" more interesting:

1. The Despair Bowl, featuring the two worst teams in college football. Different faith-traditions could sponsor this bowl and offer hope to the teams and their long-suffering fans.

2. The Absurdity Bowl, in which, if a team "scores," points are subtracted, not added. So if a team scored a lot, the scoreboard would read "-58" or something like that. The defenses would attempt to let the offenses score; they would be hospitable, polite, and supportive. The offenses would be inoffensive, reticent, and shy.

3. The Don't Go To War Unless It's Absolutely Necessary Bowl, featuring teams from the military academies. Before the game, all in attendance would pray in their own fashion that the players would never have to see military action and especially not have to suffer wounds or get killed in combat, ever.

4. The Poetry Bowl, in which players from the two teams would choose their favorite poems and read them aloud to the crowd during the four timed quarters. There would be a half-time, during which the teams could change their strategies and consult different anthologies. Judges would determine which set of poems was more interesting and which team gave better readings. All the players would earn academic credits in English at their respective universities.

5. The Zen Bowl, featuring no teams, only spectators, who would file in and look at the empty field. Cheerleaders representing no teams would "cheer" silently.

6. The Interpretation Bowl. This would be an ordinary football game, but on television, you could select different commentators to describe and interpret the game. The menu would include political scientists, feminist scholars, anthropologists, game-theorists, mathematicians, physicists, psychologists, and so forth. Everyone at home would get the deeper meaning of their choice.

7. The Out Bowl. This would be a game between two teams composed of players from all teams across the nation--perhaps East and West. Players would be invited to come out as gay, but no player would be outed without his permission. One aim would be to assemble enough gay players to field two teams. Another aim would be to help the United States get over its homophobia and realize that about 10 per cent of any given group--including athletes--is gay. (Consider the appeal of gladiator-movies.) I predict that this Bowl will not occur soon.

8. The Soup Bowl. Innumerable corporate sponsors would support this Bowl lavishly, but all the profits would go to feeding the homeless, who would be able to attend the game for free (if they so desired), after a good meal, a hot shower, and a fresh change of clothes.

Gaming Humans

In the photo, the soccer-players seem to be ruminating on the futility of it all.

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Humans and Their Games

In golf, humans attack a tiny white ball with long
metal clubs and then walk or ride in pastures, acting
as if the attack had not occurred. A bit later, they
attack again. The ball flees from them, but it rarely
escapes. No one knows what the ball did to offend
the humans. In chess, humans move figurines around
a small board and never talk. They look like pouting
children. In bowling, people roll a large sphere
toward milk-bottles, which have been beautifully
arranged. The aim is destruction, apparently. In

soccer, people run around an enormous field arguing
about who should possess a single leather ball.
Clearly, more soccer-balls and less field constitute
one obvious solution to this prolonged frustration.
In hockey as in golf: small object, large clubs,
inexplicable anger. Ice, however, is added, and
men embrace frequently, although their attire
turns them into clumsy clowns. Now, baseball

is a game in which too much activity is considered
gauche. Standing, scratching, staring, murmuring,
yelling, signaling, spitting, waiting, eating seeds,
hiding in caves, and using tobacco are crucial to this
game and constant. There is a sense in which the
game is opposed to activity. Football, though,

is nothing less than felonious assault observed
and encouraged by thousands. Make no mistake:
in this game, men attack men. Skiing and luge
are gravity-assisted suicide. Ski-jumping is
a bad idea someone in a Nordic country once had.
It is inadvisable. Racing cars around an oval

track is loud and repetitive like the screams
of a demented man. In tennis, the net always
remains empty, and the lake around it has
dried up. Somehow, in spite of all these
absurd spectacles, we can be induced to care
who wins, after which we forget who won,
and we go back to work. The rules of these
games become our era's sacred texts.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Concerning Games

(The image is of a "shocked" Monopoly man; maybe he invested with Madoff)

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Not Much For Games
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I was never much for games. In "Hide and Seek,"
I was content to let the others remain in hiding. I
enjoyed the solitude. In "Tag," there seemed to be
celebrity attached to being It, so why share it?
I liked collisions in football, but they gave me
headaches. I liked playing right field in baseball
but was often tempted to keep walking--into other
fields beyond. In Monopoly, I wanted to disperse
the property equally, end the game, and go drink
hot cocoa--unaware the world cocoa-
market was probably controlled by a monopoly. In
charades, I always want to to say the answer and stop
the nonsense. I liked badminton and table-tennis--something
about an obsessive concentration on one object and
the pleasure of returning what came over the net.
"Gambling" is misnamed; it is ritualized losing.
My father played poker well, had no "tell."
I'm competitive, but I've never trusted the trait.
Survival is the only game, and is no game,
and will be lost in due time. Let the games
begin, and continue, but often without me.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Are You Ready for Some Football? Yes and No.

'Tis the season for football in the U.S., little rectangles of grass lit up on Friday nights in innumerable towns, suburbs, and cities, littler rectangles of pixels and High Resolution lit up with college and professional football on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Thursday--oh, heck, every day of the week.

I played football in high school. I was a second-string quarterback as a freshman, and my longtime friend Ronn English and I still cherish a black-and-white photograph of us: I have just pitched the ball to him, "sweep right," our classmate Rick is blocking for him, Ronn is about to take off, and I'm about to turn and look for someone to block. Such moments and photographs make all the endless practices and physical pain seem, briefly, to be "worth it," but upon further review, I'm not sure, nor do I think many football players are, even the very wealthy, although at the time, of course, to play seemed like a terrific idea. The ratio of moments-actually-enjoyed to moments-of-exhaustion-pain-and/or-boredom amounts to too small a fraction, and the more scientists learn about concussions (among other injuries), the less football seems like a net-gain.

As a junior and senior, I played safety, the furthest position back on defense, responsible for defending against the pass and for tackling anyone who has escaped defensive linepersons and line-backers. (I'm sure a conventional football fan would just love my use of "lineperson," but in fact women are beginning to play high school football.) Mostly I remember the collisions, my body meeting the body of someone running with the football. Velocity and mass, muscle and bone. I also remember the hard fields, which turned to dirt and mud in autumn; --also the odd co-mingled sounds of the fans, the cheerleaders, the grunting players, traffic far off in the night, a referee's whistle, coaches yelling, the echo in the helmet....

The following poem, "High School Football," first appeared in the South Carolina Review. The poem about high-school-football in the U.S. is James Wright's "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" (and yes, we have no apostrophe in Martins). Last year a visiting poet-and-professor said he might teach Wright's poem and mine together, and of course I was cheered by that prospect; it's not everyday that a poet has a poem put in the company of one by James Wright. Experiencing that comparison felt every bit as good as intercepting a pass, something I did, officially, only three times over two eight-game seasons. The poem:

High-School Football


We stuffed our crotches into hometown pants.
Clacked on concrete out to mud and grass.

Hit each other. Bled. Got dizzy.
Sweat, got knocked down, got up,
got down, puked, hit each other, bled.
We were having fun.

I swear reasons existed then
for playing. Honest I swear
there was a girl on the goal line
promising a slow dance. A referee
waited to whistle me into manhood.

We were not good.
Often we had to buy the ball back
from the other team. Once were down
forty points before the game began.
Our coach sold real estate at half-time.
Our cheerleaders hung us in effigy.

We pounded each other
until no one was left on either team.
The pads and helmets and shoes
went on grunting and blocking and tackling.
Fans stayed to see which set
of equipment would win.

We could hear that Homecoming crowd
roaring in the stadium
as we loaded the cars. We drove
to the bus station, took
the midnight express out of there.

(first published in the South Carolina Review, Winter 1985).

I became a fan of the professional Oakland Raiders in a highly circuitous, even accidental, way. I grew up in a canyon of the Sierra Nevada, pre-cable, and the only television-signal that made it into the canyon was that of an NBC affiliate in Sacramento. NBC broadcast games played in the brand-new American Football League, and Oakland was the AFL team from California, so I became a fan of that league and that team by default. Oakland's owner, Al Davis, a former English major, became an interesting cultural figure; he is self-admittedly obsessed with football; he has even said that he has led "a tunnel-life." He is the first NFL owner to have hired an African American coach and a Latino coach, and the first to have hired a woman executive. A colleague and friend who grew up in Ballard (Seattle) before the Seahawks existed is also a longtime Raider fan--and a New York Yankee fan. Apparently he has chosen well, considering the "world championships" (American overstatement at its best or worst) both teams have accrued. The Raiders have fallen on hard times, but the Yankees persist, in part because of a robust bankroll and a determined owner. Capitalism and professional sports seem to be happy companions.

I don't really watch football on TV anymore, not in a sustained way. I glance at it. I leave the TV on, so it becomes a virtual campfire. Occasionally I'll walk past it or sit down for a few moments and catch a few plays. The cat will be asleep nearby. The only televised sport my wife is interested in watching is professional tennis; she claps and cheers.

You don't have to be Kafka to realize that such apparently meaningful spectacles of sport (such as football games) are, in fact, absurd, but there is still some kind of creature-comfort to be had from watching football, at least for many men (and some women), partly because old memories visit, partly because a football-play is a little drama performed in (usually) less than 12 seconds, and partly because the game and the game-as-broadcast are so highly ritualized. And there are good memories of specific players, the Oakland Raiders being known as a haven for cast-offs, eccentrics, tricksters, and not-so-gentle giants. Ultimately, football on TV is a visual lullaby.

Goodnight, James Wright, wherever you are; and let us say a prayer and/or hold a good thought for Kevin Everett, injured terribly in a professional football game two weeks ago.