Oh beautiful, for spacious skies: What makes American beautiful in 2025

Put aside politics for a moment. Please.

Not because it's unimportant. It's important.

Not because you can't make a difference. Because you can.

Not because if you eliminate the P, the letters can be rearranged to spell "colitis." Because that's true.

But put politics aside because it's time to celebrate things that make America great (and I realize that using the terms "make" "America" and "great" makes some of us cringe. Put that aside for a moment, too).

Friday is July 4, the 249th birthday of the United States of America. That means America is older than the cotton gin, the telegraph, the internal combustion engine and Tik-Tok. But it also means America is younger than the steam engine, the printing press and Dick Van Dyke.

As we celebrate our collective birthday, there are some uniquely American things to celebrate. They don't rank with freedom of speech, representative democracy or the Statue of Liberty on the list of greatest American achievements, but here are 10 random things that are pretty cool and worth honoring:

Hot dog eating contests. Food-eating contests are held around the world, but nobody does it better than us. Joey Chestnut (from Vallejo!) is the Babe Ruth of this "sport," but even the previous biggest star (the "Home Run Baker" of the "sport?"), Takeru Kobayashi made his mark in America. O beautiful, for spacious pies.

Sports. Other nations have favorite sports (usually soccer), but here we love everything. Football, basketball, baseball, hockey, golf, tennis, mixed martial arts, pickleball, hot dog eating contests (see above). I'm grateful to live in a nation with a smorgasbord of great sports.

Hollywood. This may be America's greatest export – our pop culture, which originally was communicated to the world through movies. Hollywood quickly established itself as the center of the film world and retains that role more than a century after Douglas Fairbanks and John Barrymore were the biggest movie stars in the world.

Dollywood. I've never been to Dolly Parton's theme park and don't expect to visit, but the fact that we do theme parks big and we're brash enough to use clever wordplay to name them is another great thing about our country. I guess you could say "Bollywood" is what makes India great, but then I'd say they're just importing our great cultural treasure.

The interstate highway system. It's popular to criticize our roads ("The Roman roads still exist, but then engineers got involved . . ."), but the interstate highway system is remarkable. You can get on Interstate 80 and drive east all the way to Teaneck, New Jersey. You can take I-5 from the Canadian border to Mexico. When cars became the main mode of transportation in the mid-20th century, which country leaned in the hardest? Our interstate highway system was launched in 1956 and completed in 1992. My country, 'tis of thee.

Individualism. No nation emphasizes the individual more than the United States and while it's frequently to our detriment, it also encourages personal responsibility. Most of us believe working hard can get us ahead (even though we generally agree that everyone doesn't start at the same place). That's why our nation has led the way in innovation for centuries.

T-shirt cannons. I don't know if these weapons – designed to fire T-shirts into crowds at a sporting event – are specific to America, but they are common here. If you go to a sporting event and have bad seats, there's still a chance the mascot will fire a T-shirt to you. What a country!

Starbucks. Born in Seattle, exported to the rest of the country and to the rest of the world. It's hard to imagine a world without Starbucks and Starbucks is an American company. Is this my effort to get some free coffee from Starbucks' corporate offices? Maybe.

Friendliness and optimism. Even during dark times for our nation, people in other countries think of Americans as friendly (maybe too friendly?) and optimistic. What do you think of the people in your life who are friendly and optimistic? You like them, right? That's all of us to the rest of the world.

July 4 celebrations. Whether it's music at the Suisun City waterfront, the parade in downtown Fairfield or a (possibly illegal) fireworks show you attend, we love explosions and fireworks and danger to celebrate our nation's birthday. Sure, it's flawed. But we have T-shirt cannons, hot dog eating contests and Starbucks!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

School daze: Turns out most Americans have similar high school memories

Spoiler alert: Your high school experiences weren't unique.

Most of us think our high school experience was distinctive. More painful than others. More romantic. More successful. More traumatic.

Maybe it was, but it turns out that our experiences are pretty common.

Looking back to those three or four formative years, nearly all of us have some sort of romantic remembrance, a group of friends (maybe very small) with whom we identified, some sort of great classroom memory and some sort of bad classroom memory.

One theory why: From (roughly) age 14 through 18, almost all of us have some sort of crush on someone, some friends and take a bunch of classes. Logic indicates that those classes included some we liked and some we didn't.

Science backs me up. Well, if not science, a survey by YouGov (my favorite source for interesting data). According to their survey of more than 2,200 adults, more than three-fourths of us have high school memories of having a crush on or dating someone, having a group of friends, having a class we loved and having a class we hated.

In other words, common high school experiences.

Sorry to rain on your parade if part of your identity is telling people you weren't, "at the popular table" (which, by definition, fits an overwhelming majority of people. Because there is a narrow definition of "popular" for teenagers). Most of us weren't at the popular table.

I'm also sorry if, like Uncle Rico on "Napoleon Dynamite," you had your hopes dashed in high school by a coach or teacher who didn't give you the chance you thought you deserved. Most of us had that.

Sorry if you think your high school romance was especially dramatic or tragic. Maybe it was, but it's probably similar to many other people's.

Turns out high school has other common experiences.

If you lied to your parents, you're not alone: 67% of respondents did and the other 33% also did, but are liars who now lie to survey-takers.

Interestingly, some gender stereotypes are affirmed by the study. Men are far more likely to have gotten into trouble in school, including for fighting, while women are far more likely to have made the honor roll, but experienced anxiety or depression.

There's a generation gap on a few issues, too. Far more young people had cellphones in high school, while older people were more likely to have a driver's license  (because we had to physically drive to someone's house to talk to them without our family members listening in to our calls on the landline).

What's the lesson here? I guess it's that as awful or great as you think high school was, you're not alone. At least in our perception, most of us have had similar good and bad memories from that time.

As we get older, most of us tend to go to one end of the continuum when remembering high school. It was either the greatest time of our lives, filled with friends and parties and football games and academics or it was the worst time, filled with loneliness and being excluded and not sitting at the cool kids' table (which we all insist we wouldn't want to do anyway).

The most clear-thinking of us realize there's no way we'd want to be 15 or 16 or 17 again. We wouldn't again want to wonder what it would take to be cool, while noticing that our hair was terrible, struggling over having acne and wishing we were more athletic or smarter or more talented.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

'Ask Dad' returns to provide Father's Day advice

It's a Father's Day tradition as old as playing the final round of the U.S. Open golf tournament, not knowing what gift to get your father and dads being asked, "Why isn't there a Kids' Day?" and answering, "Every day is Kids' Day!"

It's the annual "Ask Dad" column in this space, where an artificial father answers questions from alleged readers.

It's Dan Landers, not Ann Landers. It's Mr. Manners, not Ms. Manners. It's po-tay-toe, not po-tah-toe.

On to the mailbag:

Dear Dad:

My sister and I were close while growing up, but since becoming adults, our relationship has been strained. I've tried to reach out to her, but she doesn't seem interested in spending time with me or my family. I even had my 16-year-old son go to her house to mow her lawn as a favor. She was insulted, thinking that I was saying her lawn was unkempt. What should I do?

Frustrated in Fairfield

Dear Frustrated:

Relationships can be complicated, but I commend you for sending your son over to mow her lawn. That's a good job for a teenager. Hopefully, he realizes the value of mowing in a circular motion, with the grass being blown to the middle. When you do that, each lap results in the cut grass moving toward the middle and makes it easier to rake when you're done. Of course, if you have a bag on your mower, it doesn't matter, but in my day, we had to mow and then rake.

I hope this helped.

Dear Dad:

My 6-year-old son just started playing youth baseball and his coach is much harsher than his father and I are. I'm concerned that the coach will ruin my son's confidence. How can I approach the coach to suggest that he goes a little lighter on my son without seeming like an overprotective mom?

Vaca Baseball Mom

Dear VBM:

As everybody knows, baseball is a game of failure: Even the greatest hitters fail seven out of 10 times. It's important to learn how to handle failure, particularly if you're new to it. Although I guess not every great hitter fails seven out of 10 times. Ted Williams hit .400 in 1941 and Tony Gwynn had a career .338 average, which meant he failed 6.62 times out of 10. Gwynn was a master of hitting and my guess is that if he were playing now, he'd still be a .320 hitter, but with more power. I suspect that even the analytics guys who run baseball now would admit that he would be a great hitter in any era.

I hope this helped.

Dear Dad:

I am 50 and work in an office where there are a lot of people in their 20s. I love their youthful energy, but it drives me crazy that they spend all their time looking at their phones. Sometimes I'll be talking to one of them, they'll get a notification on their phone or watch and will just stop listening to me. They instead stare at their device. What's the best way to handle that situation without sounding like an old man shouting at the clouds?

Confused in Suisun City 

Dear Confused: 

Changes in technology always have good and bad outcomes – and young people (or old people) staring at their phones is one of those. This has always been the case. Remember when drive-in movies began piping the audio to your radio instead of those speakers that clipped onto your window? That seemed confusing and it took away part of the fun of going to drive-ins. I remember one time when I was in high school, I went to an old-time drive-in with two of my friends, Scott and Oscar. When the movie was over, Scott drove off with the speaker still attached to his car. WHAP! It sounded like he'd had a blowout, but it was just the speaker popping off his window and slamming into its pole. Oscar and I laughed about that forever. We still talk about it.

I hope this helped.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Noon, midnight and the mistaken ways people describe them

I realized it was an obsession when my son texted me, asking me to confirm his thoughts: "12 p.m. Central is 10 a.m. here, right?" he wrote.

It was for a work meeting. His company's headquarters are in Minneapolis, so everything runs on Central time. He just wanted to be sure he was on time.

But that's not what I read. Or it wasn't all I read.

"Yes," I wrote back. "Although I hate it when people say 12 p.m. It's NOON, because p.m. means AFTER noon. But yes, you are correct."

I presume he rolled his eyes. Or was confused. Or didn't read past the first word. He'd struck the strangest pet peeve nerve in his weird dad's world.

I have myriad language rules that I expect people to follow when writing (and even speaking). I don't condemn you for using them, but I quietly edit you in my brain.

For instance:

• You don't end a sentence with a preposition (leading to Mrs. Brad and me saying such things to each other as, "I wonder to whom this belongs?").
• You don't say "of" before the word "myriad." (There are myriad reasons for that. I can't think of any, but I remember learning this and now I insist on it. Check the paragraph above for the correct style.)
• You don't put an "s" on the end of forward or backward. Unless you're British, of course. Otherwise, it's a big step backward. No "s."

But mostly, there is no such thing as 12 p.m. or 12 a.m., despite the work of virtually every person who makes a flier (hey! Another one. A sheet of paper advertising something is a flier, not a flyer). This is the rule where I draw the line, personally and professionally.

In my job, I occasionally edit items that include times. Nothing causes me to roll my eyes more than when an event starts or ends at 12 p.m. ("Which is that?" I'll ask whoever is nearby in mock confusion. "Is it midnight? Is it noon? Because there's no such thing as 12 p.m.!")

The midnight/noon reasoning is simple.

The acronym "p.m." means post meridiem, a Latin phrase for midday. In other words, p.m. is any time after midday, which is noon. Since noon is not after noon (it is noon!), it's not p.m. It's not a.m. It's noon.

The reverse is true for a.m., which means ante meridiem, Latin for before midday. Before noon. So midnight isn't 12 p.m. or 12 a.m. It's midnight.

If you think I'm crazy about this, I'm not! Wikipedia's entry on a.m. and p.m. includes a full section on the confusion that happens when people want to write 12 p.m. or 12 a.m. and attempted solutions, but it highlights that most style guides suggest the obvious: Use noon and midnight.

(Note: Citing Wikipedia to support my argument makes me nervous. Wikipedia has a 1,025-word entry on toilet paper orientation and a 392-word entry on the idea of a "toast sandwich"–toast between two slices of bread. However, I'll take support where I can get it.)

I stand on the truth. My son may think I'm losing it. My workmates think I obsess over it. Mrs. Brad may have heard my explanation dozens of times and the entire world may know what someone means when they write "12 p.m."

I don't know what they mean.

Gary Cooper and Eric Clapton would agree with me. The movie was "High Noon," not "High 12 p.m." and the song was "After Midnight," not "After 12 a.m."

It's simple. Say noon and midnight and we all understand.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

The true history of my nickname (that I gave myself)

A basic rule of nicknames is that you can't give one to yourself.

Except for Kobe Bryant (who named himself "Black Mamba" and it stuck – after people mocked him for it for several years), no one gives themselves a nickname. Frank Sinatra didn't name himself "Chairman of the Board." Muhammad Ali didn't name himself "The Greatest." Beyoncé didn't name herself "Queen Bey." Heck, Alexander III of Macedon didn't name himself "Alexander the Great" and Walt Williams didn't name himself "No Neck."

However, I broke the rule.

I gave myself a nickname at age 10 and it stuck for decades. Some people still call me Otis, the nickname fifth-grade Brad gave himself.

As a teenager, most of my friends called me Otis. My stepmother – not known for her light-heartedness – sometimes called me Otis. My next-oldest sister would often call me Otis. At one of my jobs, I went by Otis. The Volkswagen Rabbit that I drove throughout college had a personalized license plate: Otiscar.

I was Otis.

It's a dumb story. In fifth grade, my best friend Troy and I decided that we needed nicknames. I don't remember Troy's (Marvin? Skeeter?), because it didn't stick.

Mine did. I picked mine because I admired Otis Sistrunk, the Oakland Raiders' defensive lineman of that era. Sistrunk had a shaved head when it wasn't common. He didn't play college football and said he came from the University of Mars. He seemed funny.

I didn't like the Raiders, but Otis Sistrunk was cool. His name was cool and so were other Otises (Oti?) in sports: Chiefs wide receiver Otis Taylor. NFL running back Ottis Anderson. NBA guard Otis Birdsong. Additionally, all were black, which made it more enticing to a white suburban kid who already had picked out his Muslim name, since it seemed like a thing in the mid-1970s (I would be Ahmad Abdul-Aziz).

Otis stuck. By late middle school, my friends would explain it to people we met ("Wait. What's his name?"), who then called me Otis. The naming ebbed and flowed. I was Brad when I started college.

But when I started working at Red Baron Pizza at age 18, there was already a Brad there. Too confusing. "You can call me Otis," I told the manager. For five years – all the way through college – I went by Otis. More and more people called me Otis.

Mrs. Brad and I started dating during that time and she never called me Otis. In fact, she used to mock my personalized license plate by insisting my plates said, "Oti Scar."

Hah hah hah.

At age 20, I was Otis, but over time, the nickname faded. When I started working at newspapers – first in my hometown of Eureka, then in Fairfield – I went by Brad. I moved away from everyone who knew that was my nickname.

I wasn't ashamed of the nickname (I would tell people the story if it came up for some reason), but I was now just Brad. I've been Brad for decades, except to some longtime friends. Some of my oldest friends: Guys like Kenny and Dwayne and Matt – still refer to me as Otis. 

The other day, Mrs. Brad and I were talking about nicknames and she asked how I came to be called Otis.

I told her: I gave it to myself, after Otis Sistrunk.

"You can't do that," she said. "Nicknames are given by other people."

She's right: That's true for most people.

Just not for the Black Mamba and Otis.

Reach Brad "Otis" Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

After all these years, the laugh track survives

Open: Brad's front room in the evening. Mrs. Brad sits, watching TV, as Brad enters the room.

(Crowd applauds loudly, recognizing the star of the show.)

Brad (in Ricky Ricardo accent from "I Love Lucy"): Hi honey, I'm hoooome!

(Laughter)

Mrs. Brad: Well, it's about time. I was about to see if a picture of you was on the side of the milk carton!

(Laughter)

Brad: Are you a time traveler from 1980? (He looks at the camera and shrugs. Laughter, then applause)

Mrs. Brad: Speaking of 1980, your haircut looks like it's from 1980.

(Crowd shouts, "ohhhhh!" then laughs, then applauds)

Brad: You'll never guess what I learned today.

Mrs. Brad: How to tie your shoelaces?

(Laughter)

Brad: No, more important than that. And with velcro, who needs shoelaces? (Crowd chuckles) Anyway, think of sitcoms.

Mrs. Brad: Hmmm. I think I can do that. (She looks at the camera and rolls her eyes. Crowd laughs.)

Brad: Doesn't it seem like laugh tracks for those shows went out of style a few decades ago? That modern shows don't or shouldn't have laugh tracks and that most of the new shows are shot with a single camera?

(Crowd grumbles)

Mrs. Brad: I don't know, but we need laugh tracks! How else would people know when to laugh?

(Long applause)

Brad: I don't know about that. Shouldn't it be obvious when to laugh? You laugh when something's funny.

Mrs. Brad: Well, then how would they know when to laugh when you say something?

(Crowd laughs)

Brad: Why I oughta . . . 

(Crowd chuckles)

Mrs. Brad: Oughta get a haircut from this century?

(Laughter, then applause)

Brad: But seriously, there are currently 12 adult sitcoms on network TV and seven of them use laugh tracks . . . or least some canned laughter. The fake kind.

(Audience gasps)

Mrs. Brad: It's not fake. It was real laughter when it was recorded.

(Applause)

Brad: But some of the people laughing on 2025 sitcoms are dead. They've been dead for decades. They were recorded in the 1950s!

(Audience gasps)

Mrs. Brad: You're a real ray of sunshine, you know that?

(Laughter)

Brad: It just seems weird that something that seems so outdated remains so strong. I thought the best recent sitcoms are all those single-camera, non-laugh-track shows. It turns out that the laugh-track sitcoms are still happening. It's like we're too dumb to know what's best.

Mrs. Brad: When you say we're too dumb to know what's best, are you talking about TV or the elections? (Crowd shouts "ohhhh" and then applauds.) And what shows are you talking about that don't use a laugh track?

Brad: "The Office." And shows like that.

Mrs. Brad: OK. What other shows don't have laugh tracks?

Brad: Umm. "M*A*S*H*?" "Barney Miller?"

(Laughter)

Mrs. Brad: They went off the air nearly 50 years ago. Is there any show since then that you can cite?

Brad: Seinfeld?

(Laughter)

Mrs. Brad: Anything after the invention of fire?

(Laughter)

Brad: Why I oughta!

(Laughter)

Mrs. Brad: Maybe the reason is that a laugh track is reassuring. Maybe it's just a way for people to feel comfortable and maybe it's a way that older audience members can feel a connection to the past. You know, maybe we should do that: Have a connection to the past?

Brad: Do you mean?

(Henry Winkler walks on stage)

Winkler: Aaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

(Crowd cheers wildly.)

Brad: Why I oughta!

(Crowd laughs, breaks into applause and screen fades into the credits)

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Shocking study: Women say more words than men during adulthood

Women speak more words per day than men, but only during a very specific period of life.

Of course, that period of life is 25 to 65.

So . . .  most of adulthood, which is a strange thing to pull out like it's a weird little period of time. It's 40 years. In terms of the study's findings, 43.8 million more words are spoken by an average woman during that period than an average man.

Nearly half are asking how a man is feeling or suggesting how should drive. But I jest.

The finding – that women speak 3,000 more words daily than men during most of their adult life – is probably no surprise to most women other than Mrs. Brad. Who, if the data is true, must say many, many, many words to herself.

The study, conducted by University of Arizona researchers and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (which has a tremendous advice column and hilarious comic strips), found that the average 25- to 64-year-old woman spoke 21,845 words per day, compared to the average men of the same age, who spoke 18,570 words (my guess at most common of those male words: "Huh?" "What?" "Whatnot" and "Cool.").

For context of just how many words that is, my columns average about 600 words. The Declaration of Independence is 1,320 words. Novels are usually around 100,000 words. The Bible is about 780,000 words. That last meeting you were forced to attend featured about 1 billion words.

So the average woman says a novel's-worth of words in a five-day period. The average man needs an additional day-plus to reach that level. 

An earlier University of Arizona study from 2007 by the same researcher found that women and men each say about 16,000 words per day, but the follow-up study found differently. The first study focused primarily on college-aged people who lived near Austin, Texas (why would the University of Arizona study people who lived near the University of Texas? They're not even in the same conference!) so it wasn't seen as widely representative. This version used far more participants in multiple countries with a wider age range.

There was no signficant differences between genders for those ages 10-24 and 65 and older. But from 25-64? Hoo boy.

According to the researchers, one reason that women talk more during that period is they are generally the primary caretaker for children, so they speak more words. Others just think blah, blah, blah. (I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.)

The least talkative person in the survey spoke about 100 words a day and the most talkative spoke more than 120,000. You probably know both of those people and have probably been stuck in a longer-than-comfortable scenario with each of them.

Which is worse? Too many words or too few words? Or is a combined 40,000 words between the average man and woman OK, regardless of the division?

This column is 500 words, so only 18,070 left for me. Which is cool and whatnot.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Curry and then who else? Ranking the Bay Area's top athletes

We live in a wonderland of professional sports figures.

Even after the heartbreaking departures of the A's and Raiders, the Bay Area is the envy of most of the sports world, due to the fact that our major pro sports teams (for purposes of this exersise, we mean the Giants, 49ers, Warriors and Sharks) all consistently make serious efforts to win.

That's not true everywhere (and wasn't true when the A's were still here).

Beyond that, consider the number of charismatic stars who have played here (Willie Mays, Joe Montana, Rickey Henderson, Barry Bonds, Rick Barry), and you realize this region has a wealth of great sports figures.

But who are the best? Over the years, I've done this exercise many times, going back 15 years. Curiously, only three people have topped the list (Tim Lincecum, Buster Posey and Stephen Curry), but dozens of stars have been part of the top 10.

There's no science to this, just art (by which I mean don't blame me if I forgot your favorite person). Here are the current top 10 figures in Bay Area sports:

10. Matt Chapman, Giants. He's the type of athlete who you don't appreciate until he's on your team: He's steady, spectacular at times, but generally a really good grinder. Chapman is like the student who isn't the best in any class, but at the end of the year, she has a 4.0 grade point average.

9. Macklin Celebrini, Sharks. He was the first pick in the 2024 NHL draft and had a solid rookie season at age 18 (he was born in 2006!). Celebrini is positioned to become the Sharks' biggest-ever star, due to his early standing in the league and how things appear to be set to build the franchise around him. Bonus points: His name is familiar because his father is the Warriors director of sports medicine and performance..

8. Logan Webb, Giants. He's not the longest-serving Giants player (that's Mike Yastrzemski), but he's been the starting pitcher four consecutive years and has led the National League in innings pitched for each of the past two season. He's old-school in the best way possible.

7. Christian McCaffrey, 49ers. A unicorn in the NFL – a great running back who could be a great wide receiver if needed and maybe could play quarterback in an emergency. McCaffery was injured most of last year, so he's slipped on this list, but if he returns at anywhere close to the standard he's set in eight NFL seasons, he's a top-three NFL running back. Bonus points: He attended Stanford.

6. Fred Warner, 49ers. He's charismatic, he's fast, he's strong and he's a willing leader on the Bay Area's favorite sports team. Warner does everything at full speed and for those rare times when he's off the field (he plays injured), there's a huge dropoff.

5. Draymond Green, Warriors. The best defensive player of his generation, a four-time NBA champion and the emotional spark for the Warriors (often for good, sometimes for bad). Green is wrapping up his 13th season with the franchise, something that only 25 NBA players have ever surpassed (including Steph Curry, with 15 seasons) and is the bad cop to Curry's good cop on the national stage.

4. Nick Bosa, 49ers. One of the best pass-rushers in the NFL, he's the most famous defensive player on the Niners (not the best. That's Warner). There's a reason the team buckled and gave him a huge contract two years ago – players with his skill set are rare. And he's just 27.

3. Buster Posey, Giants. While a player, he was consistenly near the top of this list. Now he's the team's top executive (he's not yet 40!) and is the most famous member of the franchise (next on the list are broadcasters Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow). Giants fans trust him to rebuild the franchise and it will take some significant failure to diminish that confidence.

2. Brock Purdy, 49ers. It's an automatic that the quarterback of the 49ers – by far the most popular sports team in the Bay Area – is one of the most important sports figures in the region. That's true if it's Joe Montana, Steve Young, Tim Rattay or Alex Smith. It's particularly true for Purdy, famously the last pick of the draft, who led the team to the NFC Championship game in his first two seasons (going to the Super Bowl in the second of those years).

1. Stephen Curry. His star power is obvious now, but when drafted in 2009, Curry joined a franchise that had one playoff appearance in 15 years – and proceeded to miss the playoffs the next three seasons. That he's seen as the greatest shooter and one of the greatest winners in NBA history is remarkable. That's he's a perfect "face of the franchise" for a team that is one of the glamor franchises in sports is a tribute to Curry and his teammates.

Reach Brad Stanhope at Bradstanhope@outlook.com.

'What a Show!' – Americans Split on View of Middle Ages

The Middle Ages have an image problem.

By that, I don't mean your 50s and 60s, which some people (who apparently think we live to 120) call middle-aged. I mean the real European Middle Ages, the era of knights and castles and plagues and the Crusades and bathing once a month and the Inquisition ("What a show!" as sung in "History of the World, Part I," the Mel Brooks movie where I learned most of what I know about history).

We don't love the Middle Ages. We don't hate them, either.

A recent YouGov survey showed that 34% of Americans have very or somewhat favorable views of the Middle Ages and the same percentage have very or somewhat negative views. Americans are split on everything (who should be president, whether the designated hitter is a good idea, whether frying beats flame-broiling and whether the Middle Ages was a good time). 

It's remarkable that such a high percentage of people have a favorable view of a period when life expectancy was about 35 years, when less than 20% of people could read and when almost no one had a car or TV. But the other things – chivalry, cool architecture (of famous places, not the homes of those illiterate people who somehow lived to their 40s), the Vikings (they won much more than the modern football team does) – have cache with people.

This is all complicated by the definition of "Middle Ages," although I wouldn't want to live in any version of the times mentioned. The survey-takers asked about the Dark Ages, Late Antiquity and Classical Antiquity. It's really different ways to define the period from about 500 until about 1600 or so. There's nuance on the question of which period includes, for instance, the invention of the printing press. Or when Marco Polo lived. There's an even deeper question of whether it's OK to open your eyes during a game of Marco Polo if you're in water over your head and you're getting nervous about drowning.

But enough about water sports. This is about our view of the Middle Ages. Quit trying to distract me.

Those who took the survey were as divided on the definition of the Middle Ages as they are on the question of Pepsi vs. Coke. A majority considered Columbus' journey to the Americas and Martin Luther writing his Ninety-Five Theses as being post-Middle Ages, while also believing that King Henry VIII annulling his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (which happened after both of the preceding events) was during the Middle Ages.

Maybe they just thought Henry (who was 42 at that time) was in his middle ages. Or maybe, like me, they had no idea about Henry VIII, other than the silly 1965 song by Herman's Hermits, which isn't about the king after all. Most of that ignorance is also likely due to the fact that it wasn't covered in "History of the World Part I," I guess.

We're split on our views of what we think of the Middle Ages, we're split on when they happened, we're split on whether you can open your eyes in Marco Polo to avoid the threat of drowning, but we have some consensus on specifics. 

Most of us dislike the Black Plague and the Hundred Years War. Most of us like castles and chivalry.

But looking closer at the numbers brings some further troubling data. For instance, 73% of people have a negative view of the Black Plague, which killed between 30% and 50% of Europeans. But 9% of people have a positive view of it.

What? Who has a positive view of the Black Plague?

Similarly, 16% of people have a positive view of the Inquisition. I hope the Black Plague fans are just an extreme subset of the Inquisition fans ("Here we go!"), rather than a different group. We're in trouble if 25% of people have a favorable view of one of those events.

Ultimately, our view of the Middle Ages is confused. Movies about the era aren't about people starving to death at age 8. They're not about losing two-thirds of the people in your village to the Black Plague, which you attribute to some sinister spirits. They're not about people freaking out because they're afraid they'll drown in a swimming pool because no one told them there was an exception to the "keep your eyes closed" rule when you're "it."

That's my conclusion: We have a mixed view of the European Middle Ages because we don't know much about them. Maybe that's generous -- not judging something we don't know. Maybe it's ignorance -- thinking things used to be great because we only watch movies about people who have it good.

Or maybe it's just because everyone didn't have the privilege of watching "History of the World Part I," where we learned about the Inquisition, stand-up philosophers and "The 15 Commandments."

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Easy as 1-2-3: There's no reason to change Alphabet song

Things are always changing. Sometimes for the good, sometimes for the worse.

We allowed the designated hitter in all of baseball, not just the American League. We determined that chest hair on men was undesirable. We decided that Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson and Mahatma Gandhi were bad guys, not good guys.

Times change. Things are different now than they were 20, 40 or 60 years ago. Adapt or die.

That's all fine, but this is a bridge too far: They're trying to change the tune and flow of the Alphabet song. Yes. That song.

The one you sang to learn the alphabet. The "elemen-o-pee" song. They're changing that one. Or attempting to do so (and by "they," I means some people on the internet).

It's an outrage that could disrupt the entire educational system. It's a change that shouldn't be made.

We can change our view of O.J. Simpson and decide that Harry Truman was a good president and admit that disco music wasn't that bad. But can we change the flow of the ABC song that shares a tune with "Baa-Baa Black Sheep" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"?

There's plenty of reason to say no, but the biggest reason is that the proponents of the new version (new = the earliest version I can find of it is from 2019) are trying to take away the part of the song we like the most. You know, the "elemen-o-pee" part.

I presume there's a reason for it. They think little kids will get confused and not realize that L, M, N, O and P are letters. They're right, but that's not a reason to change it. Generations of kids have learned the alphabet despite the "elemen-o-pee" portion. Maybe because of it.

Perhaps the confusion makes the magic.

Things don't have to be perfect to work. There's value in learning how to drive in an old, imperfect car. It's OK to take vacations where everything doesn't come out perfectly. Sometimes, the best meal can be food that's not perfectly prepared.

And there's value in the traditional version of the Alphabet song.

If we let them change the tune and flow of the Alphabet song, what's next? Will we try to make everything easy for kids? Will we stop having to, two and too mean different things? Will we stop talking about Persia, Prussia and Russia as different places? Will we stop telling them 4 is more than 2, but ¼ is less than ½?

No, no and no. But each of those makes more sense than changing the Alphabet song.

If we change the tune and flow (let's face it, we're changing the lyrics if we take out elemen-o-pee) to the Alphabet song, everything could be on the table. And that's a frightening proposition.

Just say no to the new Alphabet song.

Now I've said my ABCs, next time won't you sing with me?

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.