T. Buckingham Thomas

When I was enrolled at Oberlin College, my favorite place was WOBC-FM. I loved to hang out with my friends in the spacious studios of the student-operated radio station on the third floor of Wilder Hall, the student union building.

Nearly six decades later, in the wake of COVID, senior Emma DeRogatis-Frilingos told the Oberlin Review that “there's been a complete and utter disruption, and it's hard to focus on little things like tradition and consistency. There's been a campus-wide forgetfulness. Clubs and traditions have been disappearing.”

And WOBC literally disappeared from the third floor of Wilder. On April 28, 2022, came the announcement: the station was going to be disassembled and moved to a temporary location on the fourth floor as part of a multi-year project of renovating the building. In September 2023, I visited those smaller quarters.

On May 24, 2025, another tour of the quarters included one of my former colleagues: J. Michael Barone, who had been WOBC's Classical Music Director when I was Program Director in 1968. Mike writes:

I was on campus in May to receive an Alumni Award during commencement weekend, and happened to get into town just before the WOBC photo-op on the stairs in front of Finney.

I was surprised that, despite it being a special 75th anniversary year for WOBC, so few alumni showed up (fewer than half a dozen?).

They were doing 'history' interviews upstairs and coaxed me to visit them (as I was the oldest alumni representative on hand) and I provided them with about 20 minutes of my connection to WOBC ... which led directly to my involvement with what was to grow into Minnesota Public Radio, where I am still employed after 57 years (!).

Though I cannot discount my Conservatory courses in organ and music history, my experience during three years at WOBC provided me (and likely many others ... Randy Bongarten?!?) with (little did I realize it at the time) a lifetime career option which has, in its strange way, touched many. For instance, it was a delight to learn, while interviewing the 30-year-old Johannes Skoog (winner of the 2023 Canadian International Organ Competition and, subsequently, appointed Royal Swedish Organist) that he knew all about Pipedreams and had been listening (online) for the past 15 years!

Then the ground fell out. Mike included last Friday's article by Skylar Brunk of the Review, who quoted student engineer Beck Robertson:

Peters G33 is a temporarily-vacant faculty office in the basement of 138-year-old Peters Hall. The building includes classrooms for world language study. Unfortunately, during many hours of the day and night there's little other activity there.

WOBC moved their equipment into G33 late last month. They hoped to train DJs and begin broadcasting early this month. And they still dream of a future permanent home, still promised for a renovated space in Wilder.

Andrea Simakis, the director of media relations for the College, emailed the Review: “We know this displacement has been tough for everyone at WOBC and appreciate their help and patience as we work to build a safe and accessible home for WOBC operations.”

Many news stories about Taylor Swift's latest album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” featured a closeup of the cover. Was I the only person who wondered why there's an ugly white scratch running across the singer's face?

It turns out that she's partly submerged. The ragged white line is merely the edge of the water. Oh.

The federal government has introduced a website called College Scorecard that allows families to compare universities on several different metrics. One of them is how much money a recent graduate can expect to make.

At one end of the scale, alumni of North Dakota’s Sitting Bull College earn an average annual salary of only $11,600. At the other end, SUNY Downstate Medical Center graduates are paid nearly 11 times as much. In between are institutions you’ve actually heard of: MIT $91,600, Harvard $87,200, Penn State $47,500. My alma mater, Oberlin College, barely beat the national average at $38,400. In fact, 48% of Oberlin graduates earn less than people with only a high school diploma!

But that’s okay. I’m not surprised that Oberlinians are paid less than SUNY doctors, or MIT engineers, or Harvard lawyers, or Penn State executives. We tend to heed less lucrative callings. We may become educators or social workers or classical musicians or organic farmers or pastors or poets or performers. Our treasures are not necessarily in our bank accounts.

UPDATE, JUNE 1965: Speaking to graduating seniors, Herbert C. Mayer of the Class of 1915 offered this observation. "Oberlin may lack a high percentage of millionaires or tycoons, but it always scores high in lawyers, doctors, clergymen, teachers, and public servants. If you could read the volume of letters from my own Class of 1915 for our 50th anniversary, you would see the golden thread of moral leadership that runs through all of them."

UPDATE, JANUARY 2015: Aya T. Kanai of the Class of 2000, fashion director at Cosmopolitan, tweeted, "I use what I learned in college every day, because at Oberlin I learned analytical thinking. It helps me every day."

UPDATE, NOVEMBER 2015: Class co-agent Chip Hauss ’69 (left) made a recent visit to Oberlin. “He saw three young women studying in the science center at 10 a.m. on a Saturday. After he got over his delight to find students studying so early and his frustration at their not knowing where he could get some caffeine, he stayed and talked.

“Ellie, Grace, and Tricia represent what is best about Oberlin. All are athletes and top students. All see Oberlin preparing them for careers in social change. Tricia is a neuroscience major who will become a nurse practitioner and a lawyer who can work for social justice. Ellie wants to work in disaster relief in war-torn parts of the world. Grace, alas, hasn’t sent me her resume yet.”

UPDATE, FEBRUARY 2016: Dr. Loretta Jackson-Hayes, an associate professor of chemistry in Memphis, promotes a liberal education for scientists. She writes in part, “Our culture has drawn an artificial line between art and science, one that did not exist for innovators like Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs. Leonardo’s curiosity and passion for painting, writing, engineering and biology helped him triumph in both art and science. Jobs declared: ‘It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.’

“A scientist trained in the liberal arts has another huge advantage: writing ability. The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine’s Gail Morris told Newsweek, ‘We need whole people.’

“Many in government and business publicly question the value of such an education. Yet employers in every sector continue to scoop up my students because of their ability to apply cross-disciplinary thinking to an incredibly complex world.”

If you ask whether college is worth it, don’t just compare how much you’ll make to how much it’ll cost. Consider more than return versus investment. A college is not merely a trade school to prepare you for a specific career. A college — particularly a liberal arts college like Oberlin — is a place where young performers and politicians, poets and physicists, talk to each other. It prepares you for life.

Scott Renshaw posts that he has “literally never heard the phrase ‘do your own research’ from the mouth of anyone who shows even a rudimentary understanding of how one conducts reliable research. And why are there suddenly more planets and stars than there were in the 1600s? Clearly some root cause is to blame, and not the advancement of scientific knowledge.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Virginia Montanez calls a brain-wormed weirdo, notes that autism rates among eight-year-olds have risen from 0.7 percent in 2000 to 3 percent in 2022. What might be the root cause that we can blame for this very dramatic 300% increase? There are several possibilities, including:

In the New York Times, autistic Maia Szalavitz writes, “To see the nation's scientific agencies following Mr. Kennedy's lead and promoting pseudoscience is shattering.” And Jessica Grose opines that the Trump administration is using Tylenol to blame mothers for their children's autism because it's easier than building a society that can support people with special needs.

But today we celebrate a different man by that name. It's the 70th birthday
of my longtime friend and neighbor: television director and soccer official
Thomas V. Huet.

I met Tom in his office when I started a new cable-TV job in 1980 with
Total Communications Systems in New Kensington, Pennsylvania.
Before long we (and all the others at TCS) were involved with telecasts
of Penn State football.

Tom and I each were part of the Olympic TV production crews at Seoul in 1988 and at Atlanta in 1996.

He and I were also in the truck for the broadcast of a memorable 2007 football game at The Big House (right).

“Still get a smile on my face,” Tom says, “when I think of the amazing crew I directed on that first weekend of CFB!”

And there's more. Four weeks ago, he posted: “38th Year as a Soccer Official! Still enjoy my time on the field with the athletes!

“One big mistake this year: they finally gave us headsets. TV Huet able to communicate/talk/provide play-by-play during a match? Not a good idea for my fellow officials! (If you know, you know!)

“Love Soccer! My happy place is on the field or in the TV truck working soccer at the highest levels!”

Tom also directs soccer telecasts for Apple+, MLS, and IMG, plus basketball telecasts for the former Vancouver Grizzlies of the NBA.

“25 years in Memphis for the Grizzlies — and 25 years directing the Grizzlies on TV for me! You've seen the Grizzlies through the lens of our outstanding crew since their move to Memphis. So many memories! Year 25 coming your way starting October 22nd!”

How did Tom get started in television? A year ago he told the story in a Facebook post that I've reproduced here.

President Trump loves to use similar expressions, but he overhyperbolizes beyond all credibility. “For Trump,” writes John McWhorter, “to say something is to force it, to assert in the same breath that it's true and that its truth cannot be questioned.”

• The Kamala crime wave is going on at levels that nobody has ever seen before.
• Crime that's at levels that nobody's ever seen before in Baltimore.
• Groceries, food has gone up at levels that nobody's ever seen before. We've never seen anything like it — 50, 60, 70 percent.
• Numbers that we haven't seen here ever.
• There will be a market crash the likes of which has not been seen before.
• First time they've ever seen anything like this.
• The likes of which nobody's ever seen before.
• Christians [will] turn out in numbers that nobody has ever seen before.
• We're going to bring this into a golden age like never seen before.

And obsequious Cabinet members echo the President.
• This is going to be a wakeup call like people have never seen.
• We're getting cooperation from countries that we've never seen before.
• We've never really seen the world change in this way.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore says that Trump doesn't have experts. “He has sycophants who go into cabinet meetings and spend three and a half hours telling him how good he is instead of actually educating him.”

“Never-before-seen things,” observes Chris Megerian of the Associated Press, “are happening with stunning regularity. Trump's successes are legendary in his eyes, and the country's problems are urgent crises that require him to consolidate power and take drastic action. Nothing is ever getting a little bit better or a little bit worse — it's always so good or so bad that it's never before been recorded in the annals of human history.”

For whatever reason, I like seeing the face of a woman with non-threatening friendly light-colored eyebrows. For example, the face of Kelli Giddish from Law & Order: SVU, which tonight kicks off its 27th season (!)

My preference for blondes and redheads, including those whose hair has been lightened, is that the brows ought to match the hair color. I don't like aggressive dark-colored eyebrows, especially when artificially enhanced like Sabrina Carpenter (center) or Laura Loomer.

I was originally going to use this version of the Loomer picture, but it has obviously been maliciously altered to exaggerate her presumed plastic surgeries.

(Sorry if I scared you.)

After the Charlie Kirk assassination, Loomer posted: "It's time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization. The Left are terrorists. We must shut these lunatic leftists down. Once and for all. The Left is a national security threat.” And she DM'ed Democratic strategist Mike Nellis: “You and your son are going to hell.”

(Sorry if I scared you.)

The Beatles released their “White Album” when I was a college senior, and we featured it prominently on our campus radio station WOBC. One of the great songs on the first of its four sides was George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” I didn’t discover until recently that George didn’t play the solo; the gentle weeping was provided by uncredited guest star Eric Clapton, who also joined in this performance.

Half a century later, what is it that we should be bewailing? Pope Francis and I would say it’s the slow death of our planet.

The Associated Press reported last week that according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the month of August “smashed global records for heat.” So did the entire summer. “That's the fifth straight record hot season in a row and the fourth consecutive record hot month. Meteorologists say 2015 is a near certainty to eclipse 2014 as the hottest year on record.”

Many of us don’t want to hear it, but scientists have been trying for years to alert us to global warming. As more and more people burn more and more oil and gas and coal, the atmosphere is being polluted by greenhouse gases. In the coming years, low-lying lands will be flooded by rising seas, temperate farmlands will be transformed into dusty deserts, species will go extinct, and billions will starve.

The rich and powerful can buy and sell us, but they won’t restrain the use of fossil fuels because that would reduce their profits. None of us want to sacrifice. We might have to make drastic changes to our lifestyles. Will we not be able to drive our cars as much? Will coal miners have to find other jobs? No, we don’t want to do anything about global warming. And commentators divert us with excuses to avoid doing anything.

Sean Hannity: “I don’t believe climate change is real. I think this is global warming hysteria and alarmism.” Tucker Carlson: “You can’t tell me that global warming is destroying the earth.” Rush Limbaugh: “It’s already a hoax, it’s already been established: There is no man-made global warming.”

The worst catastrophe, if it comes, is still decades away. I won’t be alive to see it. Younger folks figure they’ll be able to find a way to cope. Besides, it won’t happen at all because Rush says it’s a hoax.

I regret to inform you that Rush is the one who’s lying. He and the other perverted deniers are full of hot air. They’ve inverted the facts. The real hoax is their insistence that we can carry on as usual.

Portrait by Wu Wei

George Harrison is gone now, but he sees the world here that’s sleeping.

“I look at you all.
I look at the trouble
and see that it's raging.”

I’ve taken the liberty of rearranging his lyrics slightly. The words in green are alternate versions from Harrison’s earlier demos of this song. The words in blue are alternate versions from me.

Over the weekend I caught a little of the telecast of a small-college football game from Joe Walton Stadium at Robert Morris University. I've worked one or two games on that hillside west of Pittsburgh.

It was rather hard to watch. The director seemed to be cutting from one angle to another for no particular reason. Worse, it seemed he had instr

ucted his primary camera, “I don't want to miss any of the action. So stay zoomed out, kind of like this.

“At the bottom of the screen, I want to see all the people standing around on the near sideline. And at the top of the screen, I want to see the trees beyond the far sideline as well as the shopping center across University Boulevard.

So on every play that went to the far side of the field, we saw a wide expanse of empty grass in the foreground and, on the upper part of our TV screens, a confusing mass of tiny players doing something or other.

We can expect better coverage this Thursday when ESPN takes us to East Carolina's Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium in Greenville, NC. I've worked telecasts from there too. But I have to check the map because I keep getting the city's name confused with other collegiate sports meccas that I've never visited:

Finally, let's go to another place I've never visited: Azerbaijan. Near the end of Saturday's Formula 1 qualifying session in Baku, championship leader Oscar Piastri crashed in Turn 3.

Another driver, Esteban Ocon, was disqualified from qualifying. This happened when officials measured his car's “rear wing main plane tip deflection.” Due to a manufacturing problem, “the distance between the two sections of RV-RW-PROFILES and RV-RW-TIP inboard of Y=525 varied by more than the permitted 0.5mm.”

Half a millimeter? That's the diameter of one of these things. Not one of the pencils; one of the leads.

Half a millimeter? You couldn't slip a stack of three playing cards into a gap that small. The FIA Technical Regulations are extremely exacting.

Yesterday I watched the Grand Prix itself. Piastri, relegated to ninth position on the grid, jumped the start. Le

ss than a minute later, things got much worse when he slid into the Turn 5 barrier and out of the race.

He's still ahead of teammate Lando Norris by 25 points in the standings, but the two McLaren drivers don't normally make mistakes like that.

Sky Sports pit reporter Ted Kravitz apparently is familiar with the British version of the old game show To Tell the Truth. Quoth Ted, “Would the real Oscar Piastri please reveal himself.”

Starling Marte of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who usually hits left-handed pitchers well, has been slumping since July. An article in yesterday's paper gave the numbers and ended with the factoid that his walk rate against lefties (3.4 per cent) is only half what it was in 2014. That sounds like a drastic falloff. It isn’t. It’s a drop from 6.3% to 3.4%. Had it been a drop from 63% to 34% it would have meant something, but Marte’s bases on balls have always been infrequent. In 2014 he walked six times against lefthanders. So far this season, only four times. That’s a whopping difference of one walk every three months.

Language learning site Preply has listed the town names in each of the 50 states that are hardest to pronounce correctly, meaning the way that local residents do. I'm proud that I already knew how to say the following:

Ouachita,

Arkansas

Winnemucca,

Nevada

Newark,

Delaware

Schenectady,

New York

Coeur d'Alene,

Idaho

Gnadenhutten,

Ohio

Loogootee,

Indiana

Pawhuska,

Oklahoma

Osawatomie,

Kansas

Nacogdoches,

Texas

Worcester,

Massachusetts

Montpelier,

Vermont

Sault Ste. Marie,

Michigan

Oconomowoc,

Wisconsin

And that's despite the fact that I've personally been present in only Loogootee, Worcester, and Montpelier!

Preply also needed to cite towns in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Nebraska. They picked Berlin, Milan, and Cairo, the existence of which I was previously unaware. However, it appears they're each pronounced the same peculiar way that I'd already learned for towns in Ohio and Ohio and Illinois, namely BURR Lin and MY Linn and KAY Ro. Those are not how they're pronounced in the old country.

My college classmate Jan Olson lived in southeastern Pennsylvania, not far from Newark, Delaware. She told me that the Delaware city is not trochaic as one would suppose (NEW Urk) but rather iambic (New ARC).

That's because of its location. Blame it on the surveyors who laid out the Twelve-Mile Circle around New Castle in 1701 to establish the curved northern boundary of the colony. Newarc, or “Newark” to use the British spelling, marks the western terminus of the New Arc.

For six months in my youth I lived in the suburbs of another Newark. Located in central Ohio, it's pronounced in the more common NEW Urk manner. I recently learned about the Apple Tree Auction Center (blue symbol), just 2000 feet from my former home. Some time after I moved away, the Center was founded by local resident Sam Schnaidt, five years older than I.

Earlier this month, it was discovered that the Center was holding two 17th century still-life paintings that were originally owned by Adolphe and Lucie Haas Schloss. According to researchers, the Jewish-French family's collection of 333 paintings were “hunted down, seized, and divvied up by Nazi officials and their French collaborators in 1943” and destined for Hitler's planned museum in Linz.

These two 5-inch by 8-inch oil-on-copper images are believed to have been painted by Dutch artist Ambrosius Bosschaert (1573-1621). They were found in an unclaimed bank safety deposit box, consigned to Apple Tree, and listed for sale online.

The Monuments Men and Women Foundation wants to determine the consigner and persuade them to voluntarily relinquish custody, so that the artworks can be returned to the Schloss family.

This weekend I ran across a picture of demonstrators asking why God destroyed Sodom. These hate-full homophobes think they have the answer, but apparently they don’t read their Bibles carefully.

Contrary to what we’ve been led to believe, God doesn’t always know everything. In this case, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had been accused of unspecified wickedness, and God wondered how bad the situation could be (Genesis 18:20-21). He decided to send angels to investigate. If they couldn’t find ten good people (18:32), they would destroy the “cities of the plain” (19:13).

When the angels arrived in Sodom, Lot hospitably invited the strangers to stay with him. However, Lot’s neighbors had resented him ever since he had immigrated to their town (19:9). Surrounding his house, they demanded that he hand over the undocumented aliens. The mob wanted to rape the angels (19:5). Lot came out and offered his daughters instead, because it’s more virtuous to give up some of your own property than to allow your guests to be treated unkindly (19:8). But the angels yanked Lot back into the house and warned him to get his family out of town before the rain of fire began.

Aside from the mob’s threat, there’s no indication here that homosexual activity was more common in Sodom than anywhere else. So why did God destroy the city? What was its sin? Hostility to outsiders? “Sodomy”? Something more? The Bible gives us the answer. It’s in Ezekiel 16:49.

To me, the Sodomites sound like present-day Republicans who don’t think taxes on the wealthy ought to be used to assist the less fortunate.

Ezekiel 16:50: “They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them, as you have seen.”

More than 12 years before Saturday Night Live debuted on NBC, I wrote a quasi-SNL skit and performed it with a few friends one Monday evening before a live classroom audience. It got laughs, so we repeated it in the high school auditorium later that same month.

Having watched comedy on TV for years, I had some idea of how to write it. Reading my script now, I notice that I began with a serious interview to get the audience off guard, then started with the jokes, using timing and physical humor and a Jack Benny line (now cut that out!) and a callback (hic) to an earlier gag. Later, the elaborate setup for the Battle of Zama was overlong with a rather lame punch line, so it probably could have been cut.

But the highlight was the surprise entrance of one of our classmates: Dorothy Goddard, pictured here, who happened to be the daughter of our Latin teacher. Dot was playing the role of “Mrs. Goodhard,” a parody of her mother and her familiar quirks. And then things got out of control.

Half a century after the script was written, it was the 100 Moons article on this website in March of 2013. Another 150 moons have passed. I think I should link to it again.

SEPTEMBER 13, 2015
LOOK BOTH WAYS

Where children walk to and from school, ideally there should be a friendly policeman to help them get across the street safely.

The little village where I grew up had only three traffic lights and no multi-lane highways, so traffic wasn’t that heavy. We didn’t have many law enforcement officials either. But if we couldn’t station an actual cop near a crossing to scare any speeders into slowing down, perhaps we could deploy a metal decoy.

Also, we could deputize older kids to watch out for the younger kids. Members of the student “safety patrol” wore diagonal white belts and badges, their symbols of authority.

The AAA provided red and white flags on long wooden poles which were held horizontally to block either vehicular or pedestrian traffic, as required. The belts supported the free end of the poles.

I always thought this arrangement was the norm. But last month I read that the financially troubled Penn Hills school district has been paying crossing guards. They’ve been paying 71 adults a total of $600,000 a year! Now they plan to save hundreds of thousands of dollars by cutting the force to only 25 guards. Some Penn Hills students do have to cross heavily-used roads, but state law doesn’t mandate any crossing guards at all.

In nearby McKeesport, a 15-year-old student was struck and killed by a school bus ten days ago at the same spot where a 14-year-old was killed by a dump truck a year and a half before. The busy intersection is fully equipped with traffic signals, painted crosswalks, and lighted “walk/don’t walk” signs. Were these kids carefully obeying the rules, or were they carefreely jaydarting? I suspect the latter. Now the authorities will install barrier railings, lengthen the “walk” intervals, and stagger the bus departures. They’ll find the money somewhere to hire a crossing guard temporarily. “It could be a week, five weeks or a year.” Will that be enough?

Up in Augusta, Maine, last summer, school officials eliminated all of that district’s paid guards. Board of Education chairwoman Susan Campbell said many children cross the street anyway, even when school is not in session. “Do you think those kids don’t cross the road all summer long to get to the playground? I think kids are crossing all the time.” And Superintendent James Anastasio noted, “Very, very, very few communities have crossing guards anymore, and those who do, cross with volunteers. Most people are reacting to what they remember, walking to school as children. But very few children walk to school now. Many more parents drive their children to school than in the past.”

(These old photos are not from my school.)

Penn Hills had to take out a $12 million loan to balance its budget. If money is that tight, maybe they should consider once again employing old-school methods: metal cops and adolescent escorts, no salary required.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2025 GUN VICTIM

Quoting Professor PZ Myers: “You guys didn't pray hard enough. He's dead.

“This is bad news. Not only does no one deserve to be murdered, but this is going to be used to blame everyone the Right hates.

“Remember what he believed.

“You can gun down small children and far-right political figures, and we still can't get gun control. In South Korea, guns are tightly regulated — even hunting rifles are expected to be locked up in the city courthouse, and if you want to use them, they have to be checked out. I would vote for that.”

Baseball’s best pitchers — especially those who are relatively inexperienced or recovering from surgery — are burning themselves out during the long regular season, then having to sit out the more important stretch drives in September and playoffs in October.

In 2012, the Nationals shut down Stephen Strasburg on September 9 after 159.1 innings. This year, Matt Harvey’s agent Scott Boras warned last week that the Mets will put his client in “peril” if they use him for more than 180 innings; the latest guess is that Harvey will make only one more regular-season start. And Pirates pitcher Gerrit Cole already has thrown 180.2 innings, many more than his previous career high; because the Bucs would like to keep Cole fresh for the postseason, he’s skipping his regular start tonight.

• Replace the customary five-man pitching rotations with six-man rotations. Granted, a manager will still try to find a way to get his ace onto the mound every five days, thus using him up before the postseason. To minimize this, add a rule that anyone who pitches five innings or more on a given day is ineligible to pitch again until six days later. If a game is a blowout, the manager might replace the pitcher after 4.2 innings so he could make another start in a few days. No problem; that would tend to save his arm, while giving a long reliever a chance at a win.

Or . . .

• Shorten the season from 162 games to about 142, provided that you can somehow convince the owners to give up the revenue. Forget the first half of April, when weather in the North can be challenging. Start the season on April 15 as it did in 1947 and call it Jackie Robinson Opening Day to honor Robinson’s debut with the Dodgers on that date, meanwhile ending the silly April 15 custom of making every player wear #42. Then finish the season early enough to allow the wild-card teams to play five-game series (not one-game playoffs) during the last week of September.

It was a recent Sunday. I tuned the TV to an afternoon baseball game and curled up on the couch, my back to the screen and my face buried in a pillow and my eyes closed, listening to the commentators.

Since the beginning of televised sport, radio announcers have been enlisted to supply the TV sound track.

I’ve read about Red Barber calling a Reds-Dodgers doubleheader on a pioneering 1939 NBC telecast. The technology was primitive; the New York Times reported, “At times it was possible to catch a fleeting glimpse of the ball as it sped from the pitcher’s hand toward home plate.” Viewers might not have been able to comprehend what they were seeing had it not been for Red’s play-by-play description.

It wasn’t until late in the 1980 football season that NBC and Don Ohlmeyer were confident enough in their pictures to broadcast an announcerless game. I remember watching that one-time-only experimental telecast, Jets versus Dolphins. We viewers heard only what we could have heard in the stadium: cheering, PA announcements, and the sounds of players hitting each other. I rather enjoyed the realism.

On this recent Sunday, I wasn’t paying nearly as much attention. Within a few minutes, I had slipped into an afternoon nap.

When I woke up a couple of hours later, the baseball game was still on. I wondered, “What’s the score?” I could have bestirred myself to roll over and peer at the corner of the screen, where the score bug is always visible. But I was too lazy. I lay there and waited for the announcers to tell me.

Much play-by-play commentary is superfluous. We can see “There’s a ground ball to shortstop,” so we don’t really need to be told. Therefore, TV narration has gradually become less comprehensive. Sometimes if the guys are telling a story, they may not feel the need to interrupt themselves to say “Ball two outside, and the count is now 2 and 1.”

This attitude has now extended to the score. I’ve heard of radio announcers using an egg timer to remind themselves to give the score every three minutes. TV announcers don’t worry about that. An attentive viewer can be expected to know what’s happened in the game so far, and if he forgets, the score bug can remind him.

As an inattentive “viewer,” I had to listen for clues. If a certain batter had “grounded out in the fourth inning,” that implied we were now in about the sixth inning. If the announcers started worrying about the Pirates bullpen, the Pirates were probably protecting a small lead. Eventually, about the eighth inning, when a walk was described as bringing the potential tying run to the plate, the mystery had been resolved. I could remain in my comfortable semi-napping position.

Two days after North Korea invaded the South on June 25, 1950, President Harry S Truman announced that the U.S. would intervene to support South Korea. What? It hadn't been even five years since our victory in World War II, and now we were at war again? (Well, technically it was a UN-sanctioned “police action.”)

Residents of my future Ohio home town didn't have to think back very far to recall the difficulties of wartime rationing of civilian goods like gasoline that were more urgently needed for our allies and the military. For example, purchases of sugar had been restricted from May 1942 until June 1947. Now, three years later, the soldiers were marching again. Domestic products were not being rationed again, not yet anyway. However, the citizens were beginning to hoard again.

“Sugar was a scarce article in the grocery stores in Richwood last week,” reported the Richwood Gazette on July 13, 1950. “The war scare caused the shortage.

“One local dealer on Saturday had a small supply which sold at 5 lbs for 55¢ — an increase over the price before the run was made. Many people bought in large quantities and already had a supply. The scarcity will work quite a hardship on housewives as it came right at the canning season for cherries and other fruits.”

I realize that most of us are too young to have used “ration points” during World War II. We might not understand the term. So I Googled it. Within a minute I was reading this explanatory article and discovering that the product which was rationed the longest, more than five years, was — sugar!

There we encountered some non-natives: buffalo. Reportedly, they're the descendants of 14 bison brought to the island in 1925 (a century ago!) by a movie crew filming a Western called The Thundering Herd.

The animals were calmly grazing as we tourists drove by, but I've been told that they can stampede as fast as 35 miles per hour.

You can't roller skate
   in a buffalo herd,

But you can be happy
   if you've a mind to.

   — Roger Miller