With Feathers

Obviously for a Jets fan, Long Island's Newsday will probably provide logically better coverage than, say, the New York Times because one of the Jets' spiritual homes is Long Island, not Manhattan. Anyone needing an illustration of this needs only to turn to the lengthy, prolonged, needless and embarassing slap in the face the team got when we tried to get a stadium on the West Side.

Tom Rock's Newsday articles on the Jets are helpful. In one piece on the talented Nick Mangold, Rock (I can't call him T-Rock; feels too personal) mentions that players are cozying up to the new Jet Thomas Jones, searching for evidence of the afterglow, looking for insight into what a Super Bowl appearance is like. He is their one player who can say. An entire set of X and Y Generation fans are wondering that same question. I don't know any Bears fans or Colts fans to consult; I mean, I know bandwagon fans for the former, and I don't actually think anyone outside Indianapolis roots for the Colts. I've been to Indiana once. There are dunes, by the way, off of one of the Great Lakes there. They're pretty amazing. Real sand dunes. No kidding. I don't even know if people from Indiana know they're there. I assume now that they know the Colts are not in Baltimore anymore.

So I sit here and wonder. A Super Bowl. What i-

Stop.

"Hope is the thing with feathers," said Emily Dickinson, and I have already noticed the familiar feathers of minicamp. In a few months I will use them in a metaphorical sense to fly to Hofstra and see the Jets for a day in training camp. I am a sucker - but better yet, a servant to my faith. The early Christians first believed that Jesus, as He promised, was coming back imminently. Like, any day now. And when that didn't happen, it wasn't as if the next generation took up Jainism or something. They hung in there. They revised their predictions, even forgot the misplaced predictions of the past and got ready for the long haul. That's what belief is. That's why I know that this business has got me and will not let go.

So I wonder. Helplessly, one might say. But with feathers, all the same.