What's in Dave's Head

  We had awoken at three a.m. to break camp at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to get as far along our return to the rim before the heat and intense sun began their assault on us. Our guide, another in our party, and I had dropped off some duffels to be carried out by mule at Phantom Ranch, a half-mile from our campsite, and we were returning in the dark to meet the others and begin our upward trek. Straight ahead, in a notch between two distant bluffs, hung the moon - a crisp bright crescent against the darkness that my camera rendered as an amorphous blob. The canyon exists in two worlds, dark and light, each with indescribable beauty. The dark night, devoid of light pollution, reveals the stars as the original canyon inhabitants saw them – uncountable, bright, seemingly nearly close enough to touch. As the sun begins its arrival, the sky’s occupants disappear, and the landscape is painted with vivid colors.   We rejoined the others, collected our things, said goodbye to the can

We’re in the middle of March Madness, the only time I watch college (or any) basketball on TV. It’s been entertaining, but nothing like two of my favorite spectator sports: boxing and tennis. Growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s, I was a big boxing fan. The “circle in the square,” as boxing is known, rivaled Major League Baseball as the dominant sport in the U.S, with heavyweight greats Mohammed Ali, Joe Frazier, and George Foreman, along with hard-hitting Ken Norton, Larry Holmes, and Leon Spinks holding the heavyweight crowns (there were multiple, competing sanctioning bodies) from 1965 through 1979, except for brief stints by Ernie Terrell and Jimmy Ellis.  Fights between any two of Ali, Frazier and Foreman were major events, much bigger than the Super Bowl, of which the first was played in 1967 and watched by 51 million viewers. Four years later, the NFL’s top player and its first real superstar, Joe Namath, earned $250,000. To put things in perspective, the first Ali-Frazier fight,