A FINAL TO REMEMBER

The United States National Team won its third World Cup final recently, and we were very lucky to witness it in person!

The US team started the tournament slowly, and many feared that the US would not make it out of its group stage, labelled the "Group of Death." This was because the US' play early in the tournament was quite lackluster due to a combination of nerves and poor player selections and tactics by Coach Jill Ellis.

These mistakes were corrected as the tournament went on, and the solid US defense that only conceded one goal in five matches kept the American's dreams of a third title alive.

It was fitting that the US' opponent in the final was Japan - the team the US had beaten in the 2012 Olympics, the last major international final, but who had defeated the Americans in the last World Cup final in 2011. 

Japan had played uninspiring, robotic football for the entire tournament, but they did enough to win each of their five games. Most predicted that Japan would bring their A game to the final and that the Americans would face a tough test. 

Those observers were wrong. Because within three minutes, the US was up 1-0 on a Carli Lloyd set piece goal. Two minutes later, Lloyd scored again. Lauren Holliday added a third within the first quarter hour. At twenty minutes, Carli Lloyd scored her third, a beautiful shot from midfield that caught the Japanese keeper off her line.

We and the overwhelmingly partisan US crowd went wild, but there was more excitement to come. Japan scored, and added one more in the second half. However, Tobin Heath from the US quickly responded to make it 5-2, which would be the final score.

I have never been more proud of an American sports team, and I am thrilled that we were able to witness such a remarkable match. Here's to our national team. U-S-A! U-S-A!

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

Good books make one think. Great books, on the other hand hand, make one reflect on one's place in this world. By that metric, All the Light We Cannot See is a fantastic book.

The novel by the American Anthony Doerr is set in wartime Europe and tells the story of two young people - one a blind French girl named Marie-Laure and another a German boy named Werner. The book alternates between their perspectives and tells their war stories, which are seemingly unconnected. However, there is a connection between these characters, and the book is a deep study in empathy and the ties that bind us despite our different nationalities and ideologies.

The book has clear shortcomings. The prose is often pretentious. One of the German characters is really more of a caricature, and Werner's character is not fully developed. Despite this, All the Light We Cannot See manages to move and inspire.

It does so by telling a heartbreaking story from the perspective of two lost souls struggling to survive and maintain their dignity in one of Europe's bleakest times. Pick up the book. You will not be able to put it down. Afterwards, you will appreciate all the light around you that you might not have seen before.