BOREDOM IS SOPHISTICATION.

That's true of soporific public radio.

That's true of a concert of tenure music.

That's true of serious film (pronounced fillllllm).

That's true of juried art exhibitions.

Why should footie be any different?

It's “the beautiful game,” and for most of my adult life I’ve been patiently informed, usually by someone who calls it fútbol, that I simply lack the sophistication to appreciate it. But they’re wrong. Soccer isn’t beautiful. It’s boring, and it has nothing to do with sophistication.

The author documents a number of things, including outcomes often indistinguishable from a coin flip.

After a dozen footie-relevant posts in the past two months, it's time to put the dodecahedron back in the locker for a while.  That is, once stoppage time is done.

Sorry, I couldn't resist that parting shot!

Find yourself a circus and go to it.

TAKIN' IT TO THE STREETS.

Summertime is for street parades, and we'll take in a few.

Let's start in Czajków, Poland, where the District Brass Band Festival features, as one might expect, local marching bands, as well as the high-stepping majorettes characteristic of recent Polish street parades.

Our next stop is Neuss-Rosellerheide-Neuenbaum, Germany, with Die große Sonntags-Parade in the June 2026 Schützenfest.

Try not to think about marching on Poland.

We'll wrap in in Peru, Indiana, where the Circus City Festival Parade took place Saturday last.  The parade, in the fashion of small city summertime parades throughout These United States, includes fire apparatus, civic and political organizations, businesses, and the local schools' marching bands.  Taken together, the parade takes ninety minutes to pass.  Saturday was a hot day.  I found a shady spot with a decent view of the street, and recorded the circus-relevant units, particularly those involving horses, cages, or calliopes.  During the Circus City Festival, local young people demonstrate their skill in the circus arts, such as acrobatics, juggling, the trapeze, and the high wire.  Those performers marched, rode, or, as you will see, performed.

Half past July, and the blue norther teased its return last night. Sunsets are coming perceptibly earlier as well.

THE PERILS OF PRESENTISM.

There is no topic so humble that an academic can't befoul it.  Consider "The Rise and Fall of the Public Sandbox."  It's a review of a book, which suggests a lot of Theorrhea is in hiding.

SELF-INFLICTED JOYLESSNESS.

"The easiest way to be miserable" and "absolutely unnecessary," notes Derek Hunter.

THE LAZY APPROACH TO WRITING HEADLINES.

The long-departed "Best of the Web" feature at The Wall Street Journal repeatedly asked, "What would we ever do without experts?"  It was the easiest thing to do because it was not hard to find headlines offering cheap arguments from authority, such as "Congress might make daylight saving time permanent. Experts say another approach could be even better."

Dear reader, meet the expert.

No, seriously.  Let's add lazy editing to lazy headline writing.  Scroll all the way down to find Stanford behavioral scientist Jamie Zeitzer confirming what any annoyed pupper could tell you.  "When you get light in the morning, it speeds up the circadian cycle. When you get light in the evening, it slows things down. You generally need more morning light and less evening light to keep well synchronized to a 24-hour day."  The build-up goes on for paragraphs, if you're interested.

PARTICULARISTIC INTERSECTIONALITY.

It's impossible to make stuff like this up.  "June and July are about queer joy and resilience. It’s crucial we use the month and its festivities to fight for liberation."  Wait, what, wasn't it only in the past few years that June went from being dairy month to being fairy month?  But one month is not enough.

June’s Pride Month and July’s Black Pride Month serve as more than a celebration. They are a necessary corrective to the nation’s revisionist history, selective memory, and deliberate attempts to erase the struggles, achievements, and contributions of LGBTQ+ people.

Pride is about more than a single day or month of celebration. Without a commitment to justice, restoration, and lasting social change, our celebrations risk becoming merely performative. While Pride is undeniably a celebration of our lives, resilience, and achievements, it has always also been a public declaration demanding equality and justice. For many, like myself, celebrating Pride and making a political statement are inseparable, because the freedoms we celebrate were won through activism and continue to require vigilance and advocacy.

But views on Pride are deeply divided—and not simply along the lines of race, class, gender, or sexual identity. Some LGBTQ+ Americans feel that activism, such as protests against police brutality and in support of Palestine, has made Pride too overtly “political,” and would prefer it serve primarily as a celebration where queer people can simply gather and enjoy themselves. Others, like religious conservatives and rightwing Republicans, see Pride as sinful and indecent behavior on public display. They dismiss Pride as a month-long bacchanalia of drugs, alcohol, and sexual excess, believing it desecrates the legacy of the Stonewall Rebellion and diminishes the political significance of the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

I wonder if author Irene Monroe got a Minimal Publishable Unit out of that, or if The Progressive isn't peer reviewed enough to claim academic credit.

MARKING OFF.

Thanks for looking in.

Showtime resumes sometime next week, should all go well.

CLIMATE CULTISTS NEVER REST.

It's the middle of July, which we used to refer to as the "dog days," either as a reference to Sirius, the Dog Star, prominent in the summer sky, or to the sort of humidity leading a prudent dog to do nothing.

It's not that heat waves haven't happened before.

90 years ago today, Wisconsin's hottest temperature on record was recorded! 🔥

A scorching 114°F in Wisconsin Dells took the cake, but many other locations weren't far behind.
July 1936 was the state's (and the nation's) hottest month on record. #wiwx pic.twitter.com/PVqCapQ2qi

— Wisconsin State Climatology Office (@WI_ClimateSCO) July 13, 2026

A PARTY IN THE U.S.A.

The host countries are no longer playing in footie's World Cup, and it's likely that one of the usual suspects will hoist it (what good is a cup that you can't sip beer from, anyway?) next week Sunday.

Fans of those sides are still in the States, and let them enjoy another week of pop refills and ranch dressing and the other frowzier charms of These United States.

I can't stop listening to this song. Best thing that came out of the World cup being in the United States this year. 🇺🇸

Watching this compilation of fans from all over the world at the 2026 World Cup in America is so heartwarming.

USA USA USA 🇺🇸pic.twitter.com/mwAWzAKcsg

— Stock Mom™ (@stockmom) July 2, 2026

The ball is in the air.  Welcome, welcome, to the land of the free.

A RAINY FREEDOM WEEKEND FOR RAILWAY PRESERVATION.

The Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad quit business on 3 July 1957 upon receipt of a favorable court ruling.  The Wheaton Shop blackboard is now property of the Fox River Trolley Museum.

Preservation operations began on a short stretch of electrified trackage in 1966.  For Indepedence Day, visitors were offered rides at the 1966 price of fifty cents.

A short stretch of the Aurora Elgin and Fox River Railroad remained in service as a diesel-powered railroad to move coal from an interchange with Illinois Central to the state hospital in South Elgin.  The Railway Electric Leasing and Investment Company made a deal with the railroad to operate trolley cars, initially on a very short stretch of electrified track.

WHERE'S MOJTABA?

Iran's Ayatollah Farewell Tour goes the way such things often go.  "Angry mourners hurl abuse at Iran’s peace negotiators."

Hardliners heckled Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister, and Masoud Pezeshkian, the president, as the funeral for Ali Khamenei continued into its fourth day.

Crowds shouted at Mr Araghchi: "Death to the traitor who sold out the homeland" and "bisharaf, bisharaf" ("dishonourable, dishonourable") as he moved through the mourners. The word "bisharaf" has a more powerful meaning in Persian than its direct English translation.

It was reported that he left the scene on the back of a motorbike.

Amid the crowd was Saeed Jalili, the hardline former negotiator and the only member of the supreme national security council to vote against the deal.

Some mourners kissed him on the cheek and urged him to "fix the country" – a pointed rebuke to the government staged at the very event meant to project national unity.

It comes after Iran's living former presidents – Mohammad Khatami, Hassan Rouhani and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – were not invited to Sunday's funeral prayer in Tehran.

They did not attend the Sunday procession, though Mr Ahmadinejad, who was thought to have been killed in the war's opening days, surfaced on Monday among the mourners in the capital.

The dead-enders continue to flip drones at ships exiting the Arabian Gulf.  Our President has revoked the "license" Iran has to sell oil.

What comes first, a return of internal unrest in Iran, an Iranian tanker seized by the U. S. Navy on the high seas, or Israel and the USA opening up a can on the mullahs?  Now that Independence Day is over, will that can be opened during the World Cup closing rounds, before the general elections, or after those?

TIME TO PLACE A PIN OR TWO?

Going into Freedom Weekend, we saw "El Niño is 'strengthening rapidly,' forecasters warn. Here's what it could mean for your weather."  The Narrative is in the secondary headline.  "Think more Pacific hurricanes, a wetter and colder winter across the southern U.S. — and potentially the hottest year on record."

 JOIN

OUR HAPPY

INFORMED THRONG

TWELVE MILLION READERS

CAN'T BE WRONG!

PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT THE LAND UNTO ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF.

Yes, American Independence in all its incomplete, contradictory, tawdry, and uplifting glory.

Cold Spring Shops will be taking the rest of Freedom Weekend off.  That likely involves preservation railways, food trucks, concerts, and fireworks.  "Yes, Independence Day has become a contested holiday of late.  And yes, in the end of Chevron deference does this nation enjoy a new birth of freedom, this time from swarms of domestically appointed officers who harass the people and eat out their substance."

We'll see.  It is altogether fitting and proper that a celebration of the independence of a nation conceived in liberty and betting on emergence might be contested and messy.  Enjoy it all the same, and stay hydrated.

ACROSS THE CONTINENT AND TO THE MOON.

Less than a century after American Independence, a by-then continental country survived a second British invasion that involved a sack of its capital, followed a great civil war that tested whether such a country could long endure, and spiked down a railroad from Council Bluffs to Sacramento.

Within a century, men from Planet Earth first set foot on the Moon.

This year, the semiquincentennial of American Independence, another crew of astronauts launched from that nation again circled the Moon, and Union Pacific's Big Boy has gone east to participate in the Independence festivities.

It is only fitting and proper that the railroads participate.  The last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, laid the first stone of the Baltimore and Ohio on Independence Day, 1827 supposedly remarking that so doing was at least as significant, if not moreso, than signing the Declaration.  Railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln authorized construction of the Pacific Railroad, while the country was engaged in a great civil war.  He chose a central route in consideration of the military exigencies of the times.  That chalking on 4014's smokebox door, "Big Boy" above a V-for-Victory, predates United States participation in the War, and yet, without the big steamers, moving men and material to ports on two coasts would not be as easy.  Legend has it that a German war prisoner, late in the War and being transported to the forests of the Pacific Northwest, it being the practice to offer prisoners an opportunity to earn money by assisting at civilian work, noticed a Big Boy on a nearby track, counted the wheels, and lamented that it would not be possible to defeat a nation that had locomotives such as those.  Not even, to crack wise for a moment, with rocket scientists that did the engineering for the Moon missions of the late 1960s. 

THE AMERICAN PROJECT.

Yuval Levin, "America’s 250th Isn’t Just a Birthday."

In celebrating America’s 250th, we are recommitting ourselves to a national cause that we did not choose but which we now see that we would and should choose.

We do this not because prior generations offer us a model of perfection—they certainly do not. We do it because they offer us a model of contending with imperfection and of striving toward the good and the true. This is what it means to celebrate our country this year: We affirm the rightness of the original choice made by prior generations by making that same choice again ourselves.

Our political tradition articulates the terms of that choice unusually clearly for us in the Declaration of Independence. We choose to live in light of the truth that we are all created equal, and of its implications. We haven’t always lived up to the standard of that truth, but it has always been there to hold us to account. We are a nation that, in moments of great national celebration, feels compelled to recur to that truth: to repeat it, to restate it, to recommit to it, and in that peculiar way to celebrate ourselves.

That’s the kind of celebration we should strive for this year. Call it a birthday, call it an anniversary, call it whatever you will. But treat it as an opportunity for mature, reverent reflection and judgment about the political tradition we are privileged to be part of and the nation we are privileged to belong to—an opportunity for gratitude, and therefore for hope.

Happy 250th.

Indeed.

MORE CHEST-THUMPING FROM THE NORMIES.

Maybe it's piling on to follow yesterday's "I couldn't help but notice that all these Europeans driving around being charmed by the U.S. are celebrating the very things that Leftists have the most contempt for" with today's "The Left Asked for This, It Got It, and I Can't Stop Gloating" by A. J. Christopher with Pajamas Media.

This summer, European visitors are falling in love with America.

Ironically, leftist insistence that Americans drop their predilection for brutish, uncouth sports like football and baseball and embrace a cultured, international sport like soccer brought this about. This push had nothing to do with the sport itself. If Americans loved soccer and the rest of the world loved baseball and football, leftists would be arguing for the opposite.

Okay then, what better way to expose us ignorant, backward Americans to soccer than to host the FIFA World Cup on our shores? We did just that, and the world came to watch.

And here is what the left expected to happen: Europeans were supposed to smirk at us. They were supposed to mock our religion and our guns. They were supposed to turn away in righteous disgust at our abundance and free refills and buffet lines and big trucks and big houses. They were supposed to shake their heads at our supposed lack of culture. They were supposed to see a racist behind every tree and under every rock. They were supposed to catch a glimpse of discord and poverty and hate and perpetual ignorance. And they were supposed to leave here hating this country even more so than when they arrived.

But they didn’t.

They fell in love with us. And by “us,” I mean the real, everyday America. They didn’t go to the Met Gala; they went to Walmart. They didn’t dine at the French Laundry; they ate at Waffle House. They didn’t scoff at bigger portions; they consumed them with glee. They weren’t impressed by Priuses; they were impressed by Ford F-150s. They didn’t sniffily order some 25-syllabled cup of pretention from the local fair trade cafe; they drank American beer, listened to American country music, and ate American bar food. They don’t marvel at inner-city legal drug zones; they marvel at the wide open expanses of American beauty.

They love ranch dressing. They love the military flyovers. They love the gas stations. They love the 24/7 business hours. They love the huge American flags

They love that America is so big, but not so much because of land mass and square footage. In those terms, Russia is big. China is big. But there is a bigness about America that isn’t measured in yardsticks. Anyone who has taken road trips across America can attest that you don’t just grasp the bigness of America. You grasp its openness. You feel free. It’s something you can’t explain until you’re immersed in it. And that feeling is reinforced through the welcoming friendliness of every drive-through town.

In short, everything our visitors love about America is everything the left hates about America.

Of late, the Europhiles and the self-styled progressives have offered the counter-argument that the big cities where the matches themselves take place are those places the Militant Normals like to refer to as crime-ridden slums.  That doesn't work so well, not with the Texas games in Arlington and the New York games in the Meadowlands and the Boston games somewhere down toward the Cape and the San Francisco games in Santa Clara. and the way the overseas teams get moved around, there are lots of opportunities to check out those Waffle Houses and Cabela's and the like along the way.

Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address Mr Christopher's conclusion is not.

So to the leftists behind the soccer push, your persistence has inadvertently led to the greatest PR success our nation has experienced since Tocqueville. Thank you, leftists, for bringing middle America and middle Europe together. Thank you for helping to demolish your own lies. Thank you for helping the world fall in love with us.

More than a few of the fans might be sticking around for Independence Day fireworks and concerts, and may they enjoy them.

CERVECEROS.

Baseball provides young men with opportunities, both to excel and to show leadership.  "Three months ago, Milwaukee Brewers catcher William Contreras and outfielder Jackson Chourio donned Team Venezuela jerseys in the World Baseball Classic, leading their home country to a win over teammate Brice Turang and Team USA."

Two major earthquakes provided a leadership opportunity.

Venezuelan Milwaukee Brewers All-Star catcher William Contreras, outfielder Jackson Chourio and coach Nestor Corredor have joined forces with Forward Latino, Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church and Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish to launch the "United for Venezuela" Emergency Relief Effort.

Two catastrophic earthquakes struck Venezuela on Wednesday evening, with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5. The death toll has risen to at least 1,430 people, with thousands more injured and missing, and countless families displaced.

The linked article alludes to "frustration" in Venezuela, perhaps aggravated by twenty years of Chavista khrushchobas.

When late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez built this coastal housing development bearing his name as part of his socialist revolution, residents found a fresh start after deadly floods had decimated the area more than a decade earlier.

But after two back‑to‑back earthquakes flattened parts of the ​1,100-unit complex on Wednesday, engineers are urging the Venezuelan government to swiftly audit similar public housing that is still standing.

Let's leave the recriminations to others.  Today we hail Milwaukee area residents stepping up.

On June 29, all three were on the same team, in more ways than one.

The trio, joined by teammates Christian Yelich, Brice Turang, Sal Frelick, Abner Uribe, and Jared Koenig, helped pack boxes of supplies bound for Venezuela as the nation continues to reel following two separate magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes that leveled buildings across the South American nation last week. As of June 29 the death toll in Venezuela was estimated to be 1,719, according to Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez.

“We feel the love, the willingness to help out, and we appreciate it,” Chourio told reporters through interpretation by coach Nestor Corredor ahead of the Brewers’ game at American Family Field against the Cincinnati Reds.

The appearance by members of the team for day one of the relief effort held in conjunction with Forward Latino drew a large response from Brewers fans and members of the community on its first day. The group’s national president Darryl Morin told WTMJ they had received phone calls from all across Wisconsin and neighboring Illinois asking how they could help.

“When ​the players reached out and said ‘we want to be a part of this, we want to help raise awareness’, we were overwhelmed,” said Morin. ”Just having them associated with this, I mean cars are literally lined up across the block waiting to make their donations.”

It might be that donors made a little extra effort to bring food and tools for an opportunity to shake hands or high-five some of their favorite players.  The players, one radio report noted, were busy filling boxes and taping them shut.

Blessed Sacrament parishioners are continuing the donation drive into next week.  Conditions must be dire in the earthquake zones as among the items being accepted are canned goods, cases of bottled water, and garden tools, all of which are expensive to ship by air freight.

SEE YOU DOWN THE ROAD.

Water for Elephants is a book that was adapted for a movie, and now there is a stage play.

I must confess that adapting a book where a lot of the action is on a train to a stage play is more of a challenge than adapting a stage play, Pressure, is to a movie.  The movie version of Water for Elephants made use of a steam train at a railroad museum as well as circus wagons from the Baraboo collection.

The stage version of Water for Elephants is performing in Chicago, and the cast recently visited Baraboo.  I can't embed the clip, which runs about a minute.  The museum has repainted most of the "Benzini" wagons, including the grease joint, back to more accurate colors reflecting their real owners.  The clip did not reveal whether the cast got a look at the one wagon still lettered for "Benzini."

TRANSPORTATION MIRACLES REQUIRE PREPARATION.

Reason contributors, including Liz Wolfe, have a troubling blind spot where road socialism is concerned.  "New Jersey Transit is preparing backup ferries to help with demand as fans try to make it to the World Cup. I kind of love how they assume public transit will buckle under the pressure."

Not-a-tall.  I heard one senior law enforcement official describe the World Cup as "multiple Super Bowls" in multiple cities in three countries over six months.  Let's bear in mind that the National Football League unaccountably scheduled a Super Bowl for the Meadowlands, and more people than New Jersey Transit anticipated rode the trains.  Lesson learned.

It is not, however, the World Cup, or the Super Bowl, or New Jersey Transit that concerns me.  Rather, it is a centennial.  "In 1926, the North Shore Line built a much larger temporary station, and borrowed rolling stock from the Chicago Rapid Transit Company, for a one-day International Eucharistic Congress at Mundelein.  A rainstorm provoked an early departure for many pilgrims, and the railroad handled it."

In less than ten score years, Chicago went from "mission" territory to birthplace of a Pope.  Strictly speaking, the aforementioned XXVIII International Eucharistic Congress took place in Chicago and at St. Mary of the Lake seminary, then east of a village called Area (pronounced a-REE-a) and subsequently renamed for George Cardinal Mundelein, who made no small plans.  Neither did the seminary, now known as the University of St. Mary of the Lake, not to be confused with the California university that keeps turning up in intercollegiate sports tournaments.  Nor did Samuel Insull, whose country farm was near the seminary.  For that matter, the cardinal offered the Vatican the use of St. Mary of the Lake as emergency quarters during the War.  The Pope might not have had any divisions, but he was no coward.