This week was magazine week, so I read parts of a few different magazines. One was Sports Illustrated, the year-end double issue (December 12) that features the stories of their two Sportspeople of the Year awardees: Mike Krzyzewski and Pat Summitt, both college basketball coaches. That feature was very interesting. I learned a lot about these two people (including how to pronounce Coach K's name) that convinced me they are both truly worthy of the award; their lives and careers are exemplary and their stories just what we needed after a year of disheartening sports scandals.
Another interesting article in the same SI issue profiled Alex Kline, a 17-year old college basketball scout, who is apparently a prodigy in that field, having started with it at the age of 14. He's not being paid for his work, but he is certainly being paid attention to by college coaches and the many people who follow his Twitter, Skype, and Facebook posts. It was a fascinating story!
Also in that issue was a story about Hmong high school football players (to borrow from Shakespeare, though they be but little, they are fierce!), and an article by famous sports photographer Walter Iooss Jr. discussing his work. Both were worth reading.
In the Summer 2011 issue of Colonial Williamsburg (the Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation), there was a very interesting story about the continuing excavation of Jamestown settlement in Virginia. I also read a story about the Civil War Battle of Williamsburg. I had not even known there was such a battle, so I enjoyed learning how the townspeople dealt with having the Yankees take over their town (after a fairly short fight).
Another magazine I read part of was the latest issue of Smithsonian. It featured a new series called Evotourism, where different locations around the world showing some aspect of evolution are discussed as tourist destinations. What a great idea! I wish I could go to some of the places they point out. In that issue also I found a story about art and Gertrude Stein in Paris and an enlightening article about Roger Williams (who established a colony in Rhode Island) and his insistence on separating church and state, a new (and disturbing) idea at that time.
There was one fascinating fact I gleaned from one of Smithsonian's short pieces at the front of the magazine: woodpeckers' heads are protected from repetitive, high-impact pecking by "spongy spots in the skull, along with tissues of different sizes in the upper and lower beak" (5) that absorb the shock. Who knew?
This was a fun week of catching up on my magazines. Next week it's back to books, this time a non-fiction memoir I've had on my shelf for a while: Sky of Stone, by Homer Hickam.
Until then, happy reading!
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