If you haven't been watching the Major League Baseball Playoffs, something incredible is happening.  The Kansas City Royals, perennial impoverished bottom-dwellers, made the playoffs for the first time since 1984.  They finally built a team that was young and fast with great defense and pitching.  Those are all things that people knew about heading into the playoffs, but they didn't expect this.    

A full page in the Times on Friday advertised a coming auction at Sotheby's of  a Mark Rothko painting.  It is called No. 21 (Red, Brown, Black and Orange).  Here is a picture of it.  

Malala Yousafzai became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize ever at 17 years old. If you remember, she was shot in an attempted assination because she was going to school. At that time she was 11 years old and rebelling against the Taliban's orders for all girls to wear burqas and stay home.   The Nobel committee also awarded the Peace Prize to Kailash Satyarthi from India who has been devoted to end child slavery and credited with helping free tens of thousands of children from forced labor.  

In addition to this weekly creative outlet I also utilize Facebook daily. Last week I posted the above photo along with the words "Until one has loved an animal part of their soul remains unawakened".Truth be told, they are not my words, but the tag line of our Pet Insurance company. Whatever their origin, these words muster up and describe an inner emotion that I did not know I harbored.   As many know our female Schnoodle (Schnowser-Poodle) "Charcoal" came into our lives a year and a half ago and she has enriched us immensely.   

A friend of mine was riding his bicycle, albeit in the “wrong” direction, in a bike lane in the City a few weeks ago. He was stopped by a policeman for riding the wrong way and was asked for identification. Unfortunately, my friend didn't have any identification on him or in his bike pack.

Yesterday, a woman in my wife's office lost a young baby to SIDS after about 3 or so weeks.  I am not blogging about this for sympathy or condolences.  I only know her briefly as a co-worker of my wife.  I can't imagine a much more horrific scenario in life.  I do not need comments for this blog, I simply wanted to state in public how incredible and impressive my wife is.  She took the phone call from the overcome-with-grief mother who was informing her and her office as to what had happened earlier that morning, reaching out to whomev