THE PAGE TURNS

October 18, 2026October 21, 2026

The Immovable Object Don’t Get No Respect

Golden State Valkyries & Atlanta Dream are in the WNBA finals, two of the best defensive teams in the league. The first game met the defense-forward narrative. Back in June, Kiah Stokes blocks a shot by Angel Reese. Photo from San Jose Mercury News.

The Best Defense Is a Good Offense…

That’s what they say. Lead with offense and defense will take care of itself. They also say:

Irresistible force meets the immovable object…

But offense, the irresistible force, gets most of the credit. So what happens if you build a team–a basketball team in particular–around defense? What happens if you recruit two-way players, athletes who are almost equally good at preventing scoring as they are at scoring? If you find ways to rotate the defense fluidly, to move players in and out of the game by having everyone on the bench play with ease, to slow the game down, block the shots, scramble after balls until your defense creates your offense?

The answer is that you don’t appear in any of the stats. But you appear in the finals. With a chip on your shoulder.

September 7, 2026October 21, 2026

Picnic & Protest, the Origins of Labor Day

International Workers of the World archives, wikimedia.

May 8, 1882: Peter J. McGuire, at that time the general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners… suggested the first Monday in September for the holiday he had in mind, “as it would come at the most pleasant season of the year, nearly midway between the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, and would fill a wide gap in the chronology of legal holidays.”

Mr. McGuire’s resolution was adopted and a committee was appointed to plan a demonstration inline with his suggestion of a street parade, “which would publicly show the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations”, to be followed by “a picnic or a festival in some grove.”
Origin & Significance of Labor Day, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1936.

It’s Labor Day weekend, though unless you’ve been a member of the pipefitter’s union or the Wobblies, you may not realize that does not refer to doing household projects before the bad weather starts or going back to work after summer vacation. Labor Day has a very special history in the United States, even though the influence of organized labor is not what it was in 1882 when the holiday was designed. It’s worth a pause to remember why it’s there. What may be more interesting is why it’s then. Choosing an early day in September was a feature, not a bug, of the union organizers, nearly 150 years ago. Well-played, I say.

July 4, 2026October 21, 2026

Patriotism Disagreeable

New York’s Fourth of July Centennial 1876 in front of Madison Square. No Taylor Swift but lots of fireworks. From alamy.

We long for that perfect Fourth of July. Perhaps there was some festival, some county fair, some town picnic you went to as a kid, and you can still remember the crispness of the coating on the corn dog or the smell of the kettle corn.

2015 Capital Fourth with a proper crowd, listening to rollicking music.

The enthusiasm of the band, banging out some Sousa with gusto or even some toe-tapping rock ‘n’ roll, the dusk dropping slowly, sky melting into fireworks which, as a kid, were bright and loud and wondrous. If you were born before 1970, you might even wax nostalgic for the tall ships that glided with so much grandeur and grace into New York Harbor. Even just 11 years ago, the Capital Fourth was mobbed with people of these diverse United States, welcomed to eat the overpriced snow cones in humid Washington and spread out on the National Mall to listen to cannons go off in the “1812 Overture” and whisper to each other, “that’s not about the War of 1812, y’know.”

Oh, the nostalgia of the corn dogs and our tall ships.