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First, an explanation for my silence for most of the month. One week I was in Cambridge, MA for the end of the week (when I normally post), and I have also been busy preparing and grading exams, doing my annual reports for the university, writing a grant application, and revising a paper for resubmission. My desk is a bit cleaner now, and I will be back to posting more regularly now, including some posts about the final exams in my courses.

But today’s post is about something completely different. On this trip to Cambridge I stayed into the weekend and my wife joined me, and we had a chance to visit the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Realizing that we will be in Boston again with the children later in the year and also realizing that an annual membership is less expensive than two visits, we took out a membership.

Beyond all the things we saw on the visit – particularly a superb special Egyptian history exhibit “The Secrets of Tomb 10A” – getting the membership gave me the feeling of joining a cultural community in a city that is not my home, but one I frequently visit.

And this takes me to the deeper question of why we travel. For me, the key reason is to understand the history and culture of other places. My main attractions are museums, art galleries, and religious shrines. In the Eighties and Nineties, when I travelled frequently, especially in Asia, I wrote quite a few travel pieces for the Globe and Mail, about things like Kabuki theatre, Chinese and Japanese gardens, and religious shrines.

To my profound regret, the travel pages have increasingly become dominated by foodie travelers, who travel primarily to visit a handful of upscale restaurants. And while local cuisine is a part of local culture, and for that reason deserves some attention, many foodie travel articles display little locavore interest, and simply go for the places with the Michelin stars.

I read an egregious example of this in the New York Times on Sunday April 25. In the “36 hours” feature, correspondent Jaime Gross was in Kyoto, a place so significant to Japanese culture that, during World War II, it was the only major city the Americans did not bomb.

She began by noting that Kyoto has 2000 ancient temples and shrines, and then suggested twelve activities. Four were in some sense cultural (the Geisha district, a well-known park, a museum devoted to the tea ceremony, and a comic book (manga) museum. Five were restaurants, two bars or clubs, and the twelfth was shopping. Clearly, none of the 2000 temples or shrines nor the famous Nijo Castle appealed to her.

On two visits to Kyoto, each a weekend, I rented a bike, and cycled from shrines to gardens to castles, treating the meals as refueling stops. I couldn’t imagine a more fascinating way to spend a day – anywhere.

There are two terms, both of biblical origin, I would apply to Ms. Gross’s notion of travel, at least as displayed in this article: philistine and Am Ha-aretz. The latter is a Hebrew phrase from rabbinic Judaism, literally “people of the land,” connoting people who are rustic, uncivilized, and ignorant.

The challenge of the “36 hours” concept is to accept the time constraint and make choices. That article displayed unwise and uncivilized choices. In its essence, foodie travel is about indulging the senses and ignoring the mind. A bad choice, and not my choice.

Back in high school, I played golf as often as I could. My family didn’t belong to a club, so I played the public courses and the one I liked best was the City’s Don Valley Golf Course. If I recall, the total fee for juniors under 18 starting before 11 am was $.95, of which $.75 was for playing and $.20 for insurance. Adults had to pay all of $2.95. That was quite a while ago. For example, the lowest rate for juniors is now $28.

I stopped playing golf in university; it just took too long and didn’t provide as much cardio as a good run or swim. What led me back to Don Valley was the interest of one of my sons in Toronto’s many ravines. He wanted to see the Hogg’s Hollow ravine, and the Don Valley Course was the best way. We went to have a look as the golf season was coming to an end. And this led me to revisit the course as a runner.

There’s a brief period of less than a month between the end of the golf season and the first snowfall of the year, which happens to be coming down as a write this post. The course is being used by runners and dog-walkers, but when the snow falls, the trails disappear.

I found four ways to access the course: the club house, the service yard on the west side of Yonge just north of York Mills, under the bridge over Wilson just west of Yonge, and through a gate from Earl Bales park on the northwest corner of the course (near the green on the third hole). The most daunting of these is the bridge, because there is a steep slope down from Wilson and because some homeless people have set up underneath it.

Instead of running through the course on the way to somewhere else, I decided to make the course the object of the run and retrace each of the 18 holes in the same order as a golfer would play them.

After the first hole, the course goes under Highway 401. I vividly recall from my earliest days there before the widening of the highway that the second hole was a long par five, with an elevated tee, and a double dogleg. As the highway was expanded and cut more and more of a gash through the course, the second continually diminished, even becoming a short par three. At least it has been restored to something approaching its former glory, and is now a long par four. The front nine is relatively flat, and what surprised me is that so many of the holes – the second, third, sixth, and eighth – are all long par fours or fives.

The back nine is to the south of the 401. The holes are quite a bit shorter – a total of 2700 yards compared to the front nine’s 3400 yards – but from the twelfth on they are much hillier, with elevated greens or tees on the valley wall abutting the 401. These holes run back and forth between the river and the valley wall. So I followed the holes, running up and down between tees and greens. This was a serious workout. My preference was to run the back nine first, get the hard slogging over first, and then coast on the more level ground.

Altogether, it was a great run, combining physical challenge with the mental effort of reconstructing how the course was configured. Thinking back to my acquaintance with Don Valley four decades ago, I was remembering playing rounds after I had completed the school year, with a sense of both achievement and expectation. The sun was so bright then, the sky so blue, and the grass so green. Put together the effort and the recollections, and I had quite a run.

With winter upon us, I’ll leave Don Valley for trails with surer footing, but I look forward to visiting it again in running shoes in the spring, in that brief window between snowmelt and the start of the golf season.

As we head up to Halloween weekend, here’s an update on the home front. Our older son, who has become interested in men’s fashion, is going as a magician, so that, for the first time, he can wear a top hat and tails. And our younger son, who has developed a deep interest in baseball this summer, is going as a New York Yankee, wearing number Derek Jeter’s number 2.

We’ll pick up some pumpkins after school Friday, carve them Saturday afternoon (following fencing class and a birthday party earlier in the day), and go trick-or-treating in the neighbourhood on Saturday evening (knowing from experience which streets are best), then watch some of the World Series game, and finally collapse into unconsciousness. A busy, and hopefully memorable, day will be had by all.

As the weather cools off, we are developing new ways to have physical activity indoors and my younger son and I have come up with a version of indoor baseball, with certain characteristics of squash. In a basement room 18 feet by 11 feet we set up a diamond going lengthwise. We use a foam rubber ball, which the hitter whacks and usually ricochets off one or more walls. The batter is out if he gets three strikes, if the pitcher catches the ball on the fly, or if the pitcher tags him out on the basepaths. Only home runs count, i.e. hits aren’t cumulative.

There is an open door on the third base line. My son, who is right handed, has developed great skill at hitting the ball out of the doorway, which is a home run. I’m left handed, so find it impossible to do that. We both have developed facility at the fielding side of the game — quickly seizing the ball as it bounces around the room — and holding the hitter to something less than a homerun, as well as the base running side of the game — taking as many bases as we can without getting tagged.

We don’t have an open door on the first base line, so my son has an advantage over me. I suppose we could equalize things by closing the door, but I’m happy to see him develop his skill at pulling the ball, i.e. hitting it down the third base line into left field. We both play as competitively as we can, so his advantage is a result of the structure of the field, rather than because dad isn’t trying hard.

It’s interesting that the game has evolved as we’ve played it, and we’ve worked up a set of rules that both of us understand and try to exploit. We’ll see how it evolves during the winter.

I’ll be back to narrative next week.

Summer is almost over, but I will take a break from my usual topics and themes to look back on what has been a highlight of this summer: my two sons’ discovery, and my rediscovery, of baseball. The Borins boys are nine and six, ideal ages for picking up a new sport.

Our turn to baseball was multi-faceted.

First, we got gloves, a bat, and a softball, and we started practicing, either at a nearby baseball diamond or on the lawn. I was pitching at a distance of about 20 feet. We were also playing catch, and I would throw grounders, fly balls, and line drives. It was wonderful watching the boys learning how to connect with a pitch, or how to position themselves to catch a fly ball. As I was both pitcher and fielder, they often blasted the ball past me, but I occasionally had the thrill of catching a hot line drive at twenty feet. (“Dad, you’re cheating!”)

Second, we started watching baseball games. This has been a miserable year for the Jays, so we’ve experienced our share of frustration. The worst was a game that my younger son and I attended, where the Jays were leading the Devil Rays 9-1 in the seventh and ended up losing 10-9. Still, we have occasionally seen the Jays win convincingly (for example 14-8 over the Yankees last Sunday) and have watched many well-executed plays.

Third, we’ve been reading about the history of the game and talking about its complex rules and the strategies that coaches use. There is a wealth of books for children, as well as visual material, such as Ken Burns series for PBS. The history of baseball, of course, mirrors the social history of America. The life stories of Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson are metaphors for the Black experience, just as those of Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax speak to the Jewish experience.

For a child to make sense of the rules and practices of baseball is a tremendous mental exercise; baseball really is the sport of intellectuals. So I have been busy explaining sacrifice bunts, relief pitcher substitution, why lefties don’t play in the infield, and how an unassisted triple play could happen. And, as luck would have it, baseball experienced one of only fifteen unassisted triple plays in its history this summer. We’ve also begun to get into the statistics of batting averages, earned run averages, and on-base percentages. And while we’ve read a book recounting Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, I haven’t yet tried to demonstrate Stephen Jay Gould’s proof that it never should have happened in the first place.

What are we now looking forward to? At this point, we’d like to see the Jays put out of their misery and the playoffs begin. We will happily shift our loyalties to more successful representatives of the American League East, likely the Yankees but possibly Boston.
And, for next year, as the boys get bigger and stronger, I hope that – if they want – they will outgrow their dad’s version of sandlot ball and get involved in games with their friends or perhaps in Little League. We hope to delve deeper into baseball history, strategy, and statistics.

And, finally, for the Blue Jays – our home team – there is always next year.

On this Remembrance Day, two episodes come to mind. I made my donation to receive a poppy and the elderly veteran who pinned it on my collar thanked me. We should be thanking him for what he did for us.

At the request of one of my students, I ended today’s class at 10:45, rather than 11, so we could attend the Remembrance Day ceremony at UTSC. We spent the class discussing Errol Morris’s brilliant documentary The Fog of War, which focuses on Robert McNamara’s ambivalent reflections about the Vietnam War and, as Secretary of Defense at the time, his responsibility for it. After a morning of sitting and thinking and talking about war, it was appropriate to stand silently to pay our respects to those who fell.