That's a moment in "Love Like Water, Love Like Fire" by Mikhail Iossel, which an astute reader I know has just recommended to me. It's a book of linked stories about life in the Soviet Union.word frequency calculator#
Over on Facebook a friend was reporting in on the college football scores. The defeat of Alabama brought forth this old memory of mine.#
In 1975, when I had my first college apartment a mile or two from the Mizzou campus, the football season started with the mighty Alabama. Around the complex, some folks were having beer and listening to the game out on their simple concrete pad patios. In the second half, as it become possible to entertain the unlikely idea that the Tigers might hold onto the lead nobody expected them to acquire in the first half, noise levels on the patios rose steadily. But it turned out that many, many more of us were watching the game in our little living rooms, and as the fourth quarter ended in Missouri victory unseen crowds spilled out of sliding doors all across the complex and the volume of the crowd noises exploded. Alabama won all eleven of its other games that year. Gotta love an underdog. #
It was my first couple of weeks away at college, my first experience of the instant solidarity of a home-town crowd of college students. It was moving and mysterious, though I confess that I am often suspicious when I find myself being moved by the presence of a crowd, beers in hand or otherwise.#
That's a moment in "Love Like Water, Love Like Fire" by Mikhail Iossel, which an astute reader I know has just recommended to me. It's a book of linked stories about life in the Soviet Union.word frequency calculator#
Over on Facebook a friend was reporting in on the college football scores. The defeat of Alabama brought forth this old memory of mine.#
In 1975, when I had my first college apartment a mile or two from the Mizzou campus, the football season started with the mighty Alabama. Around the complex, some folks were having beer and listening to the game out on their simple concrete pad patios. In the second half, as it become possible to entertain the unlikely idea that the Tigers might hold onto the lead nobody expected them to acquire in the first half, noise levels on the patios rose steadily. But it turned out that many, many more of us were watching the game in our little living rooms, and as the fourth quarter ended in Missouri victory unseen crowds spilled out of sliding doors all across the complex and the volume of the crowd noises exploded. Alabama won all eleven of its other games that year. Gotta love an underdog. #
It was my first couple of weeks away at college, my first experience of the instant solidarity of a home-town crowd of college students. It was moving and mysterious, though I confess that I am often suspicious when I find myself being moved by the presence of a crowd, beers in hand or otherwise.#
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Last update: Monday October 11, 2021; 1:00 PM EDT.