When was the last time you played ping pong?

I commented yesterday on Poland’s preoccupation with TV airing of the ping pong elimination rounds during of the 1996 Summer Olympics. I may have been blind to the nuance of that programming decision: today in the IHT (here) one can read about China’s current ping pong diplomacy with Hong Kong. Perhaps airing ping pong matches between China and other countries had political import 8 years ago; perhaps it spoke to alignments between Poland and the mainland Chinese government ? Let’s not forget about the political motivation behind Olympic TV favoritism.

Ping pong diplomacy is itself an odd concept, at least to those of us who cannot fathom the sending of teams across state lines to coax support for strategic governmental action. We’ll send political candidates to kiss babies and eat Wisconsin cheese, but ping pong teams -- that’s just too out of our league. Though we did engage in ping pong diplomacy with China some years back, I think one has to write this off as an odd moment in American history. I don’t think people even have ping pong tables in their garages anymore, as they did in “Leave it to Beaver” days. Ping pong definitely seems to be one of those sports (along with perhaps badminton or archery) that has failed to catch the American imagination. We prefer watching burly men piling in heaps in pursuit of a ball that isn’t even round in shape (see, I DO understand football!). None of this clicking of a little ball against a table surface. How wimpy is that.

I think another trip is in order

It’s not that I am restless, oh no. Who would ever accuse me of that? I can stay put, in the same way that an old person can after they’ve decided they’ve seen the world and it doesn’t measure up to the comfy mattress back home. Really, I am capable of not leaving Madison for months at a time. [Blogger honesty kicks in here:] Make that weeks – certainly being stationary for weeks is quite possible for me.

But this is not such a time. Tomorrow I am off to the East Coast, to do my good deed of the year (helping another – no, make that one, two, perhaps even three others – move boxes and furniture up and down countless steps). For the most part I’ll be in New Haven – the city that struggles with a high unemployment rate, but still manages to maintain the highest concentration of free WiFi cafes anywhere. It will be the first trip I will have taken where blogging should not present technical challenges. I say this with some trepidation because I know that with computers, something always goes wrong when you least expect it to.

In addition to blogger nirvana, I expect to find the following: better weather (come on Wisconsin, this summer you were one wet noodle weather-wise; get it together!); better pizza (New Haven has the single best pizzeria this side of the Atlantic – not that I tried them all, but others have backed me up on this); more people sporting that tense, furrowed-brow look (which is visibly absent in Wisconsin because life, for the most part, is less stressful here); fewer mosquitoes (what do they want to hang out in CT for when they have wet and green WI?); and no farmer’s market to speak of (they can’t even fake it: two stalls and they call it market – what a laugh).

I’m running ahead of myself. Today is still all about wet, buggy, but beautiful nonetheless, Wisconsin. Hey, I’m loyal.