When it comes to talking about the event

When it comes to talking about the event, it goes without saying that you should probably avoid trying to talk to white people about any of the actual players in the World Cup aside from the biggest stars. Most white people cobble their soccer knowledge together from UK celebrity gossip and a few games of FIFA on the Wii.

But if you do find yourself talking to a white person who actually knows a lot about soccer you are probably talking to a European, or worse, a white guy who tries too hard.

The latter is especially dangerous, as they have likely been waiting for years to meet someone to converse with about “football” and with soccer’s year round schedule, they will never leave you alone.
IN SOME PARTS of the nation, the gathering of more than 100,000 people on a Saturday afternoon would make for a good college football game (and one that gets plenty of media coverage).

What I did understand, later but still way before Claudia did, was that it was impossible. That we could never break free. No matter what we did, we could never separate them from us. Our bodies were built by the lentils and flax they’d fed us. Their bone structure lingered in our faces. Their humour and neuroses were planted deep in our brains, and we’d inherited their voices, their sayings, their stories. They were our parents. Even when Claudia’s rebellion was complete—when she ditched the punk scene and left that territory to me, when she started wearing brand names and married a stockbroker—even then, they forgave her and loved her and got really high at her wedding.

A couple of nights before we left for Port Hardy, Claudia listened to Nomeansno in her room and I sat at the kitchen table, using my pastels to draw a picture of Sid Vicious. Mom was in the kitchen too, rolling her evening joint. And I knew that, twelve hours away, Dad was doing the exact same thing. “Juniper?” said Mom. “Why don’t you come sit on my lap?”

What about when a gathering of a similar size takes place in Washington, D.C., to protest against the war in Iraq? Last Sunday's Boston Globe tucked the story on page 6 with a photo but without any mention on the front page.

That was the first problem for many readers. Add to that the next day's rather prominent display of another rally by a much smaller group of prowar demonstrators in Washington on Page A2 -- the lead national news page on a weekday. Now you've got the ingredients for an onslaught of angry e-mails and phone calls.

''I'm flabbergasted at the relative amounts of space given to the anti- and prowar demonstrations," wrote Saul Rubin from Arlington. ''For those using the Globe as their main or only news source, the impression of what went on was vastly distorted. I expect better."