Schedule of upcoming Speaking Events

Now there's a post title I never thought I would use.   For those who know me only in the virtual sphere I should explain that I am by default something of an introvert, and the notion of standing up in front of sizable groups of people and informing/entertaining them would not have occurred to me until rather late in life.

But my odd little hobbies have taken on their own life, and people seem interested in hearing about them.  So here's what I'm up to in March and April.

March 2nd, 1pm.  Digging Hill 80, Archaeology of a World War One Battlefield  This is one of three programs I'm doing in an "archaeology series" for Chippewa Falls Community Education.  Like the others it is an updated version of something I did for the Chippewa Valley Learning in Retirement program.  I now have the benefit of better photos of the conserved artifacts, and of course the somber reburial of the dead, at least one of whom was identified by our efforts.  

March 24th, 1pm.  Robotics in Education I'm doing this one for the Learning in Retirement program.  It's part of our efforts to help the Pablo Center for the Arts get a team going for next year's campaign.  I'm hoping we have enough of our robotics team around on spring break week that I can just be a sort of "ringmaster" while robots and students amaze retirees.  I did something along these lines three years ago and it worked out  pretty well, but that one was done in Chippewa Falls.  This will be at the Pablo Center proper, a rather impressive space. 

March 31st, time TBD.  Brewery History of Western Wisconsin  This one is at the Chippewa Valley Museum and is part of a series they are doing on the German heritage of our area.  Some Learning in Retirement members suggested I just redo the Forgotten Brewery Caves  talk that went well last fall, but I'll try to be a bit more wide ranging. Not that a few cave photos won't turn up also.

April 6th, 1pm.  Visiting Rome.  Skip the Colliseum. Another reworking of a prior program for the Chippewa Falls Community Ed folks.  This one might actually be the most difficult one to pull together, it reprises one from years back and neither my photographic skills nor my Powerpoint mojo have held up well.  Lots of work on this one.

April 20th, 1pm. Vindolanda, Archaeology of Hadrian's Wall.  Also for Chippewa Community Ed.  This should be an easy one....I'll be in the final packing up stage for the 2020 digging trip to Vindolanda and should be "in the zone" for this.  Also I've availed myself of some images of recent finds that are spectacular.

If anyone is interested in attending these, here's the particulars:

For the Chippewa Falls community ed programs, info at:  Cardinal Learning

Here's the Chippewa Valley Museum calendar.  It has not been updated yet.

The Learning in Retirement Program wants you to be a member and sign up in advance HERE.  But if you turned up and said you were a friend of the robotics team I think you'd be fine.  

New Purpose in Life

Fall brings a change of seasons, and even in retirement a certain change in attitude.  Some residual, long buried instinct that summer vacation is over reasserts itself and I decide that Things Need to Be Accomplished.

The middle school robotics program starts up in a couple of weeks.  This year I have the kids for a few extra weeks, so after the three pound robot combat portion of the class is done I've rounded up a couple of Barbie Jeeps.  It's always fun to trick them up, put them under RC control and have a hallway race.....

I'm also back in college.  A strange place to find myself at this stage in life.  Expect periodic dispatches from the Halls of Academe.

But that's not enough.  So I have declared a new goal for this fall.

I'm gonna win a bunch of stuff.

One of the big home improvement chains just opened a branch not far off my commute to school.  And every week they are having a drawing, giving away all manner of swell guy oriented stuff.  I'm going to stop in each and every week and toss a bunch of entry forms in the box. I'll keep y'all posted on what I am expecting to win.  And what I actually do end up with. Hey, its not entirely implausible.  Earlier this year I put a single entry into the box at our local grocery store and won a grill.  True, it advertises a brand of Lite Beer that I consider a puny and insipid imitation of real beer, but free is free.

The Gigantic Guy Store on the day of their Grand Opening.

It was a bit hokey but they had a store wide scavenger hunt.  By tracking down certain items and finding stickers there you could fill out this "bingo" style card.  We each did one.  Score: two free car washes. 

I looked high and low for a box where you could enter the drawing for the Big Stuff.  Among other things there was a pallet full of power tools.  But atypically, there was no box.  There was an ipad on a pole.

I suppose it makes sense to do things this way.  The entries are logged in automatically, no doubt passing along address and email info straight to their marketing department.  And the tedious process of trying to decipher bad handwriting is eliminated.

But I think this may work to my advantage.  The sort of folks who actually have time and interest in store openings and prize drawings tend to be retirees.

And I'm more computer savvy than most such!

Glorious Winnings Updates - if applicable - in the weeks to come.

That Meme I might have invented once......

I like to write.  I try to keep my banter interesting.  When I talk I sound about the same, although decades of spousal eyebrow raising has trained me to be a little "less" interesting in conversation.  Most of the time.  But it would still stand to reason that given enough years I would come up with some phrase - written or spoken - that would catch on as a commonplace saying....or a silly internet meme.

Well, maybe.

The movie Up is a marvelous piece of work.  Seeing it again recently I was reminded that it made popular the phrase "Cone of Shame" for the plastic collar that dogs are sometimes forced to wear.  But I was using this phrase long before the movie came out in 2009.  And I think, just maybe, I was the originator of the phrase Cone of Shame.



Here's the case.

1. We had a Golden Retriever/Yellow Lab mix named Rosy whose life was unfortunate. Long story, but she had to wear The Cone often.  She lived from 1996 to 2008.  I have a very solid memory of calling the device The Cone of Shame in that time period.

2. The main creative mind behind Up is a certain Pete Docter.  While it is possible that some other writer was involved I assume it was Mr. Docter who put "Cone of Shame" into the script.

3. And.....there is a shaky connection between Mr. Docter and myself.

It involves my Aunt Connie.  She is a musician of considerable talent and the long time director of a Youth Symphony that Pete Docter was in.  I think Connie also taught him in music lessons and later had his two sisters in the Symphony.  So....does it work to imagine that Connie, on one of her visits to rustic Wisconsin, heard me use the phrase, then repeated it in the hearing of the highly creative Pete Docter?

Ah....the dates are so close, so very close.

Pete Docter was hired right out of college, starting at Pixar in1989. He wrote the first draft of Up in 2004. Of course he was living in California then. But did he come back and visit old friends?  And, I suppose we could toss in one additional link to the chain....I figure one of the younger siblings?  Or perhaps I was even using this phrase earlier than I remember, with our previous mutt Bezoar the Wonder Dog.     

Alas, I have to concede the possibility that the meme went the other way.  Could Connie have gotten it from her precocious young student and mentioned it to me?  I suppose I should credit what is plausibly the real origin of "Cone of Shame".  Pixar actually hired a veterinarian/animal behaviour expert to consult on the film.  Ian Dunbar sounds like he has a very interesting career and it is possible that he and I independently came up with the phrase.

The sad end for Chuck Knoblauch

I remember Chuck Knoblauch.  He was a second baseman who came up with the Minnesota Twins in 1991 and had a stellar year.  He was American League Rookie of the Year, and played a key role in their Cinderella World Series Championship.

But his career as a whole was not a great one.  He had a few good years in the mid 90s but fell out of favor with the local fans by insisting on being traded.  He ended up with the hated New York Yankees. Minnesota fans - generally among the best behaved in the game - jeered and booed him.  Very unusually, they even threw things at him.

His fielding went first.  Soon he was routinely launching throws past the first baseman.  A move to the outfield did not help.  Eventually he was traded to the lowly Kansas City Royals.  By now he was not hitting much either.  He was released and not offered a position by anyone else.

So, what finally happened to Chuck Knoblauch?  I found the answer in a market in Alsace...

Hmmm...one row down...

I meant to quit right there.  Just another minor post that makes a bit of harmless fun out of the fact that a player I mildly disliked had the same name (it means garlic) as a variety of German sausage.  But sometimes a story keeps going even after you thought you had wrapped it up.

Because the story of Chuck Knoblauch really does have a sad end.

Playing well is not enough when you wear a Yankee uniform.  Excellence is demanded.  "Knobby" started to make some notable mental errors.  In a post season game in 1998 he stood and argued with an umpire while a ball was still in play.  An alert Cleveland base runner scored all the way from first.

His fielding deteriorated.  Much like the pitcher "Nuke" Laloosh in the classic movie Bull Durham you never quite knew where his throws to first would end up.  He once hit the mother of sportscaster Keith Olberman square on the head.

On June 16th, 2000 he hit bottom as a ball player.  He made three throwing errors in six innings before "voluntarily" leaving the game.  He then put on this street clothes and left the stadium while the game was still in progress.

For my non baseball fan readers I will point out that both of these deeds - asking to be taken out of a game and then abandoning your team with a game in progress - are Unthinkable Acts in baseball tradition.  It brings to mind a quote from Bull Durham. Witless pitcher "Nuke" Laloosh asks his catcher:

   "How come you don't like me?"

   "Because you don't respect yourself, which is your problem.
     But you don't respect the game, and that's my problem."

When the Kansas City Royals don't want you any more your career as a player is over. And with his attitude Knoblauch could not have expected to find work as a coach or scout.

Things seemed to go from bad to worse.  He divorced his first wife in 1997.  He pleaded guilty to domestic assault on his second wife after an incident where he choked her.  They divorced in 2010.  He is now married for the third time.

He was named in the investigations regarding performance enhancing drugs in baseball. Eventually he was allowed to avoid testifying when he simply admitted that he had used such substances...and that they had done him no good.

He is one of the few players from the 1991 Twins who never comes to reunions.  He has four World Series rings but his only friend in the baseball world is a journeyman player he got to know in the final twilight of his career.  When he sold the condo that had been his home during his playing days he told the real estate agent to "just throw all the junk away".  Looking in boxes she found among other things his Gold Glove Award.

In the few interviews he has given post baseball he seems puzzled, listless.  His was such a meteoric rise.  And such a complete fall.

It brings to mind another Bull Durham quote.  A frustrated and intoxicated "Crash" Davis holds up the arm of the young pitching phenom and says:

"You see this?  This arm is worth a million dollars.  All the parts of me together aren't worth fifty cents a pound."

Although for the record the Knoblauch sausage did cost a bit more than that.

But it is what our society does with athletes.  We find them young.  We train them hard.  We make their path in life easy, so very easy that maturity and responsibility rarely develop.  We laud them, we worship them, these Demigods in pinstripes or shoulder pads.

Then when the knees, or the timing, or the stamina slip....we abandon them.

Shed no tears for Chuck Knoblauch.  He made a lot of money in his career.  Most of the young men pursuing their "hoop dreams" or their NFL contract, or their signing bonus get discarded long before they attain any success.  They limp along on their bad knees, telling tedious stories of past greatness.

More sausage ground up and spit out by the sports machine.

It sounds as if Chuck Knoblauch has found some peace.  He is married again.  He has two children. He atypically for his peers did not lie about his using performance enhancing drugs.  When asked why he did not attend a reunion of the 1991 World Series team he said he did not think he could stand having his kids hear him booed.

In this at least he seems to have found wisdom.

 He has admitted his guilt, paid the legal penalties.

And when a man has learned that his true stature is how he stands in the eyes of his children he may at last have become a real man.

He is not my favorite Old Ball Player.  But if he had the courage to step back on the field I would not boo him.

---------
Update 24 July, 2014

The news of the day is that Knoblauch has been arrested again, this time for assaulting his current wife.  The details are sordid.  He is said to have been drunk and to have beaten her in a room where one of their children was sleeping.  The Minnesota Twins have quite properly cancelled his induction into the team's Hall of Fame, scheduled for one month from today.

Legally of course Knoblauch is innocent until proven guilty.  Morally however there can be little doubt that he is a troubled, disgusting individual.  It is to be hoped that his next uniform is blaze orange.

Is there ever a point at which redemption becomes impossible?  C.S. Lewis had some interesting thoughts on the matter.  It was in a somewhat different context but he proposed the theory that if a first Fall from Grace required a certain amount of atonement, a second would require that amount squared and a third would require that the amount be cubed.  So as Knoblauch's sins increase linearly the measures he would have to take to get right with his former fans and fellow citizens increase exponentially.  I doubt he has it in him.

My thoughts and prayers to the family of this man.  They deserve far better.

Chuck Knoblauch is now the poster boy for spoiled, entitled, greedy athletes who treat the world, even that part of it that should be dearest to them, with contempt.
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Update 11 August, 2014

For a post that started out being about sausage and that was probably tossed together in about 15 minutes this one has generated quite a bit of interest.  And some criticism.  As I have tried to make entirely clear, I have no sympathy whatsoever for domestic abusers.  But after much reflection I have decided that the piece is in fact better when I delete one sentence.  I have not done this before in over three years of regular posting, and am in fact a little reluctant to do so now.  But the reality is that I can't expect my readers to see the world through the perspective of an ER doctor, and that their misconstruing my intent is through no fault of theirs.

Besides the subsequent behaviour of Mr. Knoblauch has cast a darker shadow on the entire matter.

Thanks to the anonymous poster who suggested the ideas came through better for this - one time only - post facto editing.  T

We now return to our regularly scheduled program

On Monday I noticed that my usual blog audience went up a bit.  From, oh, 30 or 40 bemused eccentrics to over 6000 readers.

This of course is a true sign not of the Apocalypse, but of the Instalanche.  http://www.instapundit.com/ is one of the more widely read blogs in this quadrant of the galaxy, and if Professor Reynolds takes a shine to you and lays down a link, well, you get a lot of people wondering what the fuss was all about.

Why Reynolds, aka The Blogfather, found Mordor slugs worthy of recognition is difficult to say.

Well, when thousands of unexpected house guests turn up you quickly run to the cupboards and lay out a few bowls of potato chips for them.  Hence a little extra posting this week.

But next week back to Monday/Wednesday/Friday.

Special treat next week if you like dubious archeology.....three posts on "The Lost Roman Province of Occidentia", the peculiar tale of Roman artifacts "found" in the Americas.

Cheers, and belated greetings to the Instapundit Legion.

T

My call from the Baseball Hall of Fame

Sometimes in life odd things happen.  A few years back I had an idea for a magazine article that got a little out of hand and turned into a book.  I had accidentally become the world's sole, and thereby leading, authority on a highly obscure topic.  Specifically, the history of baseball as played by prisoners of war.

I did a bit of research, talked with a number of old timers and put together a rough outline.  Anybody who has struggled with a blizzard of rejection slips should now avert their gaze.  I sent an email to McFarland, a small press that does a lot of baseball and history stuff.  They said, sure, we'd love to have it.  Finish it up and send it along.  And so I did.

Small press publishing, where you actually get paid, is a couple of notches up in status from self publishing, but really not a big deal given the actual size of the checks that I still get a couple of times a year.

I figured that, being the World's Authority and all, I might as well have a little fun with this and so I offered to give a talk at the annual Society for Baseball Research meeting (SABR) in Milwaukee.  This was a fun and erudite crowd. 

After that my phone started ringing.  I would be at the office and my receptionist would say things like "Sports Illustrated on line one", or "It's ESPN again".  I guess the world of baseball scholarship has some back channels.  The SI possibility did not pan out.  I suppose my asking about the swimsuit models might not have helped but actually they seemed to have considered, then declined an issue on sports in time of war.  Recall this was shortly after 9/11/2001 when emotions were running high.

ESPN was another experience.  They would call from time to time, chat about this and that and nothing much happened.  Then one day they just said it was a go, and that they would be coming to Minneapolis for filming, and did I know a good place for us to do this?

I said, well, how about Fort Snelling?  I figured it had a military feel to it, and looked a bit harsh and foreboding.  They had all the arrangments made in a couple of days.

I spent an hour of filming with them, subsequently edited down to about five minutes of really good stuff.  It became part of a special they did on sports in World War Two for a program called Outside the Lines.  It is really interesting working with a large media outfit when they feel like doing something.  I suggested a guy in Canada they might like to talk to and sure enough, off they go to interview him.

I don't even remember when the call from Cooperstown came.  But they wanted me to come for a special Memorial Day weekend honoring veterans.  There would be panel discussions by Hall of Famers who fought in WWII, and other activities.  My small role fit in as part of their Author's series, basically the chance to give a talk in their auditorium.

And so I did.  It was a less enthusiastic audience than the SABR mavens, but I give a good talk and without notes or Powerpoint.

I was invited to a reception that evening where all the big names would be on hand, but declined, feeling a bit out of place.  I should have gone, what the heck, modesty is over-rated.

I did meet Bob Feller in the elevator.  I shook the hand that supposedly threw the fastest pitch in major league history.  He rubbed the towheaded noggin of our youngest son who was with me.

Since then I have given a few talks on the subject, but when people ask me if I am going to write another book I waffle a bit.  The publishing industry is not what it was a decade ago, and it would be hard to imagine another small press undertaking that would morph into so many interesting opportunities.