Putting Pressure On Pickleball

Pickleball is the increasingly popular new sport that is apparently easy to learn and fun to play for people of all ages. (I say “apparently” because I haven’t played it yet.) Now, however, some people are wondering if pickleball can somehow save American society. The New Yorker, for example, has published a piece entitled “Can Pickleball Save America?”

Yikes! That’s a lot of pressure to put on what is supposed to be a simple recreational sport!

Why are some people focusing on a sport that you play on a small court with paddles and a kind of wiffle ball? The underlying premise is that American used to be a much more social place. Americans routinely were involved in multiple social activities–like bowling leagues, civic associations, charities, fraternal societies, sewing circles, book clubs, and church groups, among others. This was true for generations; in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, in his classic book Democracy in America, observed that America was a nation of joiners. But recently, that joining activity, and the social engagement it fostered, has withered away to the point that a book was written about the sad phenomenon of Americans “bowling alone.”

And that’s where pickleball comes in. The sport’s broad accessibility, the zeal with which pickleball fans have recruited new participants, and the intrinsically social nature of the game, with players facing each other only a few feet away, raised hopes that pickleball could rekindle the joining spirit that de Tocqueville found and convert a nation of lone bowlers into a more community-minded society. And underlying that notion, I think, is a hope that if more Americans got out and interacted with each other, in settings that don’t involve politics or tweeting, perhaps our politics could become a bit less divisive and a bit more community-oriented, too.

So, can pickleball get us back to the America of yore, or will other, familiar forces like money, professionalism, and branding splinter the pickleball community, and thwart any hopes of the sport saving the country? The New Yorker article suggests that the jury is still out, while the pressure is on. It’s an interesting read. Pickleball has a lot going for it, but the forces at play are powerful ones. Those of us of a certain age remember when people thought the internet would be a tool that would allow for enhanced participation in society through a friendly exchange of ideas. How did that turn out?

In Our Own Personal Silos

The Brown Bear sent me this interesting article from The Economist.  The article is, on its surface, a rumination about Ohio Governor John Kasich and his new book, Two Paths:  America Divided or United, but the interesting stuff in the article wasn’t so much about the book as it was about our country.  It’s one of those articles that leave you nodding a bit, as you find that the conclusions drawn square with your own experience.

The gist of the underlying sociological message in the article is this:  Americans have become more and more confined and channeled in their interaction (or, more accurately, lack of interaction) with other Americans.  It isn’t just that Americans spend more time in individualized pursuits, such as watching TV, tapping away on their smart phones, working out, or surfing the internet — it’s that their entire lives are being designed, shaped, and structured to limit their exposure to people with different backgrounds, interests, and views.  In short, more and more people are living in their own personal silos.

One element of this phenomenon is that Americans now are much less likely to participate in joint activities — be it bowling leagues, fraternal organizations, churches, or community groups — than used to be the case.  Alexis de Tocqueville noted, in the classic Democracy in America published way back in the 1830s, that Americans were unusually prone to forming associations and joining groups.  That remained true for decades; Grandpa Neal, for example, bowled in the Masonic League in Akron for more than 60 years and was a member of the Masons, the Odd Fellows, and a host of other civic and fraternal groups.  How many people do you know these days who are willing to spend their weekday evenings and weekends away from their homes and participating in such activities?  I don’t know many — and I include myself in that group.

But the change is even deeper than that.  The Economist article linked above notes that Americans now tend to live in distinct enclaves with people who share their political views and conditions.  One indicator of this is voting patterns in elections.  In the 1976 presidential election, some 27% of Americans lived in “landslide counties” that Jimmy Carter either won or lost by at least 20 percentage points.  In the 2004, 48 percent of the counties were “landslide counties,” and in 2016, fully 60 percent of the counties in America — nearly two thirds — voted for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton by more than 20 percentage points.

What does this all mean?  It suggests that many Americans now tend not to even engage with people with different perspectives.  They don’t see them when they go home at night, they don’t talk to them, and they have no significant understanding of their thoughts, concerns, . . . or lives.  When people are so cloistered, looking only at the kind of websites that mirror their views and interacting only with people who share those views, there will inevitably be a great divide that will become increasingly difficult to bridge.  How do you get people who live in separate worlds, who don’t play softball or attend club meetings or participate in any interactive communal activities together, to understand and appreciate where people of different views are coming from, and why they hold those views in the first place?  Facile social media memes and tweets that depict people of opposing views as dolts, racists, sluggards, communists, or any of the other names that have become so common don’t seem to be working very well, do they?

This, I think, is one of the big-picture issues that we need to address as we work to get America back on track — and like many big-picture issues, it’s not really being discussed or addressed by anyone, because these days we focus on the small things.  I’m not saying, of course, that government should forcibly relocate people to achieve some kind of political or economic balance, or that government should focus on providing tax incentives to encourage people to join the local Moose lodge.  Government didn’t need to do that in colonial America or in the America of Grandpa Neal’s day, and it shouldn’t be needed now.  Somehow, though, Americans need to find a way to start actually talking to, and interacting with, each other again.

Alpine Village Revisited

When Kish and I were in upstate New York in June, we decided to visit Alpine Village, the memorable Lake George resort where I worked during the summer of 1976.  I’m glad we visited, because it brought back some memories — but it made me sad at the same time.

I’m happy to report that Alpine Village is still there, ready to provide a great vacation to anyone who visits Lake George.  The resort is owned and operated by an energetic man who refurbished the main lobby pictured here, gave us a tour, and filled us in on fires, new buildings, and other developments in the 35 years since I’d last been there.

A lot has changed,and two changes in particular saddened me.  First, the long tables where guests used to sit for communal meals are gone.  Today’s guests simply will not sit with strangers; they insist on dining at their own tables — and, I think, living in their own, imperturbable worlds.  To me, the elimination of communal meals on the “American plan” eliminates some of the adventure in an Alpine Village vacation, and also reaffirms how Americans continue to withdraw from socializing with their fellow citizens.  This retreat is part of a fundamental change in a people who used to routinely join every imaginable social organization.  (Read de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America if you don’t believe me.)  I don’t think this is a good development.

Second, when I told the proprietor how much I loved working in the dishwashing room, he shook his head sadly and said that he couldn’t find any American kids who were willing to do that job anymore.  The only applicants were immigrants who wanted to wash dishes as a second job.  Have our kids really gotten to the point where they won’t take jobs that are hot and dirty, but yield a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work?  If so, I am sorry for them, for they are missing out on an experience that could help them grow and learn — and have some fun, besides.