Helen Candaele (O'Callahan): The "Ted Williams" of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, who taught me how to slide into second base on my belly, but without groveling. A great Mom to her five boys. In a league of her own.

Tom Paine: American revolutionary pamphleteer, my favorite drunk and rascally atheist; Elite America has never quite accepted this guy into the revolutionary pantheon.

Scarecrow: Thought he didn't have a brain, but he had a heart that made up for the lack. Autodidact, and manic about it. Best type. 

Helena and Camille: They know how to love life, and they seem to learn more in two days than I learn in two years. My two Odes to Joy.

Beethoven: The Ninth Symphony: how is it possible?

Muhammad Ali: Manila XIII and XIV rounds: "Round thirteen. Both box in the center of the ring, a light exchange of punches. Ali goes to the ropes briefly, then shoves Frazier back to the center of the ring. Ali is moving on his toes, holding his fists and forearms almost relaxed at the waist level. Frazier advances, duck, but doesn't punch; he's readying a left hook--a hard right to Frazier's head. Frazier buckles forward. Ali almost falls over him, shoves him away, Frazier advances again, ducks, a left hook by Ali misses, Frazier  punches, one, two, three times, then the two exhausted boxers embrace, but  Ali shoves the heavier Joe Frazier off him once more.  You cannot lie to a machine, can't make a fool of it, Jose Torres had  written, and Frazier was a fighting machine. For Frazier every punch that connected with Ali's body was a piece of victory. Ali had to prove to Foreman that he would never be able to land the punch that he was hoping for; that he, Ali, would absorb anything Foreman had to dish out to him, and at the end still be able to strike Foreman with hard, precise blows...When the bell for the fifteen rounds,  Muhammad Ali get up to the last round, But then collapses. When he come to again, he speaks into a microphone shoved into his face: "I want to retire, this is too painful, this is too much work. "I don't think that two big men have ever fought like me and Joe Frazier. One fight, maybe, maybe. But three times we were the only ones. All of the men I fought in boxing, Sonny Liston was the scariest; George Foreman was the most powerful; Floyd Patterson was the most skilled boxer. But my roughest and toughest was Joe Frazier. He brought out the best in me, and the best we fought was in Manila. That fight I could feel something happening to me. Something different from what I'd felt before. "That fight was the closet thing to death I knew". And he was right. To be an individual means to bear within ones' own breast, so to speak, the contradictions of instinctual and cultural demands. Ali was an individual, balanced, recognizing his own peril, but always able to rediscover himself in battle, the ability to delay instinctual drives, to specialize in one' s labor, prudence, foresight, frugality, and self-imposed discipline." Ali was the balanced individual, but eventually, no longer compensated for his , no longer reimbursed for his expenses, his specific achievements. When he stood, and shook, upon the platform of the Olympian lighting of the torch, he stood proud, suffering the punishment for what he had become. His personal achievement was reduced to the status of icon, for all of us to enjoy and admire.....because his hands shook and his body was batter and worn, for all of us to witness as the price paid for his individuality in the market place where boxers, weak and shaking, took their bows before the world, his achievements second to his status as hero and failure, to some a crime of inhumanity, to others a picture of heroism of aggressive tendencies elevated to godhead. Was Ali's life a series of shocks, or a misconceiving of goal and success? The left and right of a powerful hand, or a form of gang warfare civilized within a twelve by twelve ring?