There’s more to the world besides sports

Cultural Ramblings – By Glen Turner

All of the discussion around the good ol’ Capitol Theatre project has really made me think.

And this weekend, I had a long conversation with a friend, someone who is heavily immersed in ‘The Arts’ in the area.

This person was trying to raise support (and awareness) of a major topic through theatre, and she became very frustrated when she couldn’t get the support she needed, despite hours and hours and hours of trying. The final comment made about those efforts was… “If it’s for sports, people will support any idea!”.

As I said, it makes me think. Is it true?

Well, we’ve seen the many media comments from so many people about ‘how many arenas and baseball fields we could build – if we’d stop wasting money on things like the Capitol Theatre’….my words, of course, not a direct quote, but that’s been the drift.

I sometimes wonder if people reflect on the need for things other than sports.

Don’t get me wrong, I start my day every day with the Sports pages of two different newspapers….and, as I’ve said before, I’ve been a coach, an athlete and a supporter of most things of a sporting nature.

In fact, I’ll even watch curling occasionally!

But I do question the focus so many people have on just sports.

I used to work with many people, who, if they weren’t talking sports, they were watching sports. If they weren’t watching sports, they were playing sports. If they weren’t playing sports, they were working on the Executive of a Minor Sports organization……and so on, and so on…..

I guess I’m trying to suggest that there is more to life. I’ve always been trying to teach the concept of the “well-rounded personality”, rather than the concept of “there is nothing else, my blinders are on”.

To each his own, but there is a much bigger world out there than just from the perspective of the arena, the court or the diamond.