Another weekend, and again not much in the news about Louisville City. As usual, that won’t stop me from rambling incoherently about whatever’s on my mind as I write this.

Today is Ratification Day in the U.S. Given that the federal government is still shut down, I expect all those Ratification Day celebrations they’d been planning are, sadly, off. Ratification Day is the day in 1784 that the Confederation Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War.

I often wonder why we don’t learn more in school about the first U.S. government under the Articles of Confederation. We learn that it was an ineffective government that prompted a bunch of smart-ish people to form a new government under the Constitution. Was that treasonous, I wonder? It’s not like the central government under the Articles of Confederation could have gotten their act together long enough to prosecute if it was, so I guess it’s kind of an academic point. Do those Articles even still exist? Are there copies? DOES ANYONE CARE?

I know who doesn’t: eighth graders. UNITED SOCCER LINKS:

• Last week, projecting travel distances for MLS teams if they were in Europe was all the rage. Here’s what USL teams would look like on a map of Middle Earth.
• SPEEDY STATUS: still not signed. It’s not a link, but I’m sure you wanted to know.
• Charlotte signed veteran defender Hugh Roberts.