T. Buckingham Thomas Archive 2018 October

It wasn't for sportscasting that I attended Syracuse for my Master's degree in radio and television, but the university certainly has graduated a long line of outstanding play-by-play people including Bob Costas of NBC, Marv Albert of TNT, and Beth Mowins and Sean McDonough of ESPN — all former Glickman honorees.

Most Bible-believing folks consider it a sin to seek guidance from any spiritual source other than God. Horoscopes, psychics, Tarot cards, palm readings, fortune telling, crystal balls, Ouija boards, astrology, contacting the dead — they're all of the devil!

Leviticus 20:6 warns us, “As for the person who turns to mediums and to spiritualists, to play the harlot after them, I will also set My face against that person and will cut him off from among his people.”

But everyone has questions about the future.

Even great rulers have questions.

In my latest retelling of a Biblical tale, the King of Israel secretly goes undercover and resorts to necromancy to learn his fate.

It's Witchcraft!

Jim Krenn was late for work again this morning at WDVE-FM's Morning Show, but he had a new excuse. He explained, “Somebody told me this is the week that we set our clocks back.” This is in fact the week, although daylight time won't end until Sunday, November 2. The switch used to happen on the last Sunday in October, and some clocks are still programmed to reset themselves on that date. When Krenn saw such a timepiece, he thought that the changeover had already happened. Therefore, he set the rest of his clocks back, and this morning he slept in. Somebody told him, and he wanted to believe, so he accepted the idea without further confirmation.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette interviewed people at a coffee shop in Greensburg, PA. One said he's voting for John McCain “‘because he's a Christian. Obama is not. I heard he's a Muslim and that he took the oath of office on the Koran.’ Told that was untrue, he shook his head in disbelief. ‘It's what I've heard and what my whole family has heard.’” Somebody told him, and he wanted to believe, so he accepted what he'd “heard” as true without checking further.

The newspaper found another man who said he wouldn't vote for Obama “because he'd raise capital gains taxes. I'd have to go on assistance.” Does this man even know what capital gains are? He certainly must not be aware that Obama's proposal to increase the maximum tax rate on them from 15% to 20% applies only to families earning more than a quarter million dollars a year. Such families need not worry about having to go on welfare. But he heard “tax increase” and thought it applied to him, so that was all he needed to know.

Can such misapprehensions be corrected, or have the people hardened their hearts and their heads?

Robert Burton relates how he “jokingly asked a health club acquaintance whether he would change his mind about his choice for president if presented with sufficient facts that contradicted his present beliefs. He responded with utter confidence. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘No new facts will change my mind because I know that these facts are correct.’

“In the current presidential election, a major percentage of voters are already committed to ‘their candidate’; new arguments and evidence fall on deaf ears. And yet, if we, as a country, truly want change, we must be open-minded, flexible and willing to revise our opinions when new evidence warrants it. Most important, we must be able to recognize and acknowledge when we are wrong. Unfortunately, cognitive science offers some fairly sobering observations about our ability to judge ourselves and others.”

Have Americans begun to treat their political beliefs like their religious beliefs, sacred and immutable, so that those who disagree must be crazy or evil and their Satanic arguments must be ignored?

In another article, Jonathan M. Gitlin notes, “We like to think that people will be well informed before making important decisions, such as who to vote for, but the truth is that's not always the case. Being uninformed is one thing, but having a population that's actively misinformed presents problems when it comes to participating in the national debate, or the democratic process. If the findings of some political scientists are right, attempting to correct misinformation might do nothing more than reinforce the false belief.”

It's disturbing to think that people believe what they want to believe, and any attempt to convince them otherwise is counterproductive.

2018 update

"Proud man,
dressed in a little brief authority,
most ignorant of what he's most assured."

Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 2

Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center writes:

"We've documented a nearly 20 percent rise in the number of hate groups coinciding with Trump's campaign and presidency — and there's been a sharp uptick in hate crimes."

The Inciter in Chief encourages his fanatics to believe it's okay to hate everybody else ... Muslims, refugees, Democrats. Kick them out, lock them up, blow them up. And don't forget journalists who report things you don't want to hear. Cut off their fingers, cut off their heads if you must.

On Monday, CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta said:

"At rally after rally after rally, having the President of the United States whip people up into a frenzy and attack the press is the most depressing thing that I've ever witnessed as a journalist. That's the Trump effect. It has normalized and sanitized cruelty."

Adlai Stevenson, the U.N. Ambassador from 1961 to 1965, is the key figure.

I focus on one weekend between his two campaigns as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, a weekend when he visited his relatives at my future college and was interviewed on my future radio station.

Incidentally, the only Stevenson whose path ever actually crossed mine (at the Albany airport on January 20, 1992) was Adlai's second cousin once removed, McLean.

The first game of the 2018 World Series will be played tonight. Baseball fans remember the first game of another World Series 30 years ago. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, pinch-hitter Kirk Gibson hit a two-run home run to win it for the Dodgers. Oakland pitcher Dennis Eckersley dejectedly walked off the field, making this the first round-tripper in Series history to be referred to as a “walk-off·” home run.

When something exciting happens during television broadcasts, the producer often tells the announcers via their headsets to “lay out.” That means stop talking. Shut up and let the pictures tell the story, along with the sounds of the celebrating fans.

On radio, “laying out” doesn't work as well because there are no pictures. The audience hears the fans cheering wildly, but why exactly? What just happened? What's going on?

Nevertheless Don Drysdale, calling the game on Dodgers radio that night, did lay out.

He could have recounted the pitch and the long fly ball. He could have described Gibson limping around the bases and being mobbed by teammates.

But check the tape. Drysdale remained silent for nearly two whole minutes, spoke 19 words, and then laid out for almost a minute more. He was speechless!

After 45 years, Home Box Office will show boxing for the final time this coming Saturday, when Daniel Jacobs faces Sergiy Derevyanchenko at Madison Square Garden for the vacant IBF world middleweight title. Executive Vice-President Peter Nelson explains, “Our audience research informs us that boxing is no longer a determinant factor for subscribing to HBO.”

I provided the live graphics for at least eight of these telecasts beginning in the late 1980s, including:

Jan. 1988

Mike Tyson
vs Larry Holmes

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June 1988

Mike Tyson
vs Michael Spinks

Oct. 1988

Julio Cesar Chavez
vs Jose Luis Ramirez

Feb. 1989

Mike Tyson
vs Frank Bruno

In 1990, HBO rewarded me with working trips to Tokyo and Tahoe and Reno.

Later I was on the crew for an event at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, part of a lower-budget HBO series called Boxing After Dark, or BAD for short.

When the coordinator handed me a floppy disk to load, I thought it had been damaged and marked “no good,” because it was labeled BAD DISK. My bad.

In letters excerpted for this month's 100 Moons article, I describe my 1990 adventures, including watching a political speech in Japan and later walking all the way to California.

Elsewhere on this website, I've transcribed a nine-minute extemporaneous speech that was captured by my cassette recorder at Oberlin College in 1969. The speaker was one Howard Emmer, an “outside agitator” visiting from Kent State University to encourage opposition to the ongoing war in Viet Nam.

I've recently unearthed some additional information online. It turns out that that two months after his Oberlin talk, Emmer was arrested at Kent State and jailed for a year. Five days after his release in 1970, the Kent State shootings took place. The newly discovered details are in a red box at the end of the transcript.

I myself was not a demonstrator, either for or against the war. My feelings about it were so ambiguous that I even found my opinions changing from one side to the other according to my environment. At home in conservative rural Ohio, I tended to agree with everyone around me that we should support our President and our troops in the battle against Communism. But on Oberlin's liberal campus, I tended to agree with everyone around me that we should pull our troops out of a conflict where thousands on both sides were dying for no good reason.

A recent UCLA study indicates that my flip-flops are not unusual among college students. Excerpts from an article by the AP's Justin Pope:

“College students shift noticeably to the left from the time they arrive on campus through their junior year. The reason, according to UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute, isn't indoctrination by left-leaning faculty but rather the more powerful influence of fellow students. And at most colleges, left-leaning peer groups are more common than conservative ones. After college, students — particularly women — move somewhat back to the right politically.”

Why do most colleges have more liberal students that conservative ones? The right-leaning students tend to go elsewhere and concentrate in a smaller number of schools, including Bible colleges and other religiously-oriented institutions. “So at most colleges,” explains Pope, “there are more left-leaning peer groups, and students on balance move leftward.” He quotes a researcher: “If you find yourself in a peer group where on balance the attitudes lean left, you'll tend to move in that direction.”

And if later you find yourself in a small town where on balance the attitudes lean right, you'll tend to move in that direction.

OCT. 16, 2018 MOONSTRUCK

It's late in the afternoon. A youngster hears honking overhead. He looks to the southern sky and spots a goose, flying at an altitude of maybe 500 feet. He also sees a first-quarter moon, and to his horror, the bird flies very close to it.

“Look out!” he cries, throwing up his hand, but the goose can't hear him. Both the bird and the moon are far above. They both appear about the size of his thumbnail.

He asks his grandfather about it, as in this “Pluggers” cartoon from June 9. Are heavenly bodies really a hazard to migrating wildlife?

That's a naïve worry, of course. The youngster has not yet read a science book, so he's still a flat-earther.

His common sense tells him the earth is level like a floor. His common sense also tells him the sky above is a flattened dome. This dome, or “firmament,” seems to be about 500 feet over our heads. Both the goose and the moon are up there on the ceiling (G).

When the goose flies to the western horizon (H), which is miles away, it will appear much smaller to us. We naturally assume that by midnight, when the setting moon also reaches the horizon, it too will appear much smaller.

But our surprise, it still looks as big as our thumbnail! Has someone blown up the moon? It's no longer goose-size; it's now skyscraper-size!

The illusion is discussed in great detail by John Roderick and Jeopardy's Ken Jennings in this edition of their podcast. (They also mention the belief that a full moon brings out the crazies. I offered an explanation for that idea here.)

As educated people know, the earth is not flat. The sky is not a flattened dome. The moon is not on the ceiling, merely 500 feet up there. It's much, much higher — 1.3 billion feet away!

And six hours later, when the rotation of the earth has apparently moved the moon from overhead X to horizon Y, it's still about the same distance from us. It remains thumbnail-sized.

Our astonishment that it still appears so large leads to the sense that it must have grown.

I remember attending some event in the 1950s in the basement of our church. The speaker gave thanks for how blessed we were to be living in America, the greatest nation on Earth. The audience applauded.

As I was just a humble young boy, this was the first time I had heard that concept expressed. Life in the United States is certainly good, at least for most of us. But on the planet there are more than a hundred nations, each with its own national customs and virtues. The speaker was saying that this nation, the one where we happen to have been born, is the best of them all.

That might be true, I thought. But surely it's a claim that could be debated. In the meantime, it seems immodest for us as Christians, and impolitic for us as citizens of the world, to assert superiority over all other peoples and to look down upon our inferiors.

However, since then I've learned not to object to the smug patriotic conceit that we're better than everyone else. After all, if you doubt that America is the best, you hate America.

And statistics show that the U.S. is in fact the leader in a number of categories. These include military might, carbon emissions, and divorce rate. Among developed nations, the United States has the most preventable deaths per capita and the most prisoners per capita. We couldn't be better.

Not only that, but our national debt topped $10 trillion last week. In New York's Times Square, the National Debt Clock had to be reworked to squeeze in another digit.

Associated Press writer Marcus Franklin found a visiting couple from Switzerland, pilot Svet Stauber and his doctor wife Roberta, snapping a picture of the sign that had run out of space.

Svet said, “It's symbolic. It's a very big symbol. It's a complete failure of the system. It's the most powerful country in the world with a conservative government for the last eight years, and it's running the biggest debt ever.”

Roberta hoped that the country's current predicament would deflate its “ego” and “arrogance.” She said, “You think you are the best country in the world. I hope America reflects about this.”

I operated the Duet graphics machine for high school football telecasts from 2008 through 2016 on the regional channel once called Fox Sports Net Pittsburgh, later called Root Sports, and now called AT&T SportsNet.

Usually this job is truly a “duet,” with a Graphics Coordinator telling the operator what to do. However, for these lower-budget shows I had to be my own coordinator. Therefore I had to be organized. Using mnemonic systems and abbreviations and other tricks, I managed to get all the important numbers I’d need during the game onto a single sheet of paper (plus another sheet listing the rosters’ key players).

I last updated my charts two years ago. You probably won’t be interested in the details, but lest all that work fade into the mists of time, I’ve posted it here under the title Football Duet for a Soloist.

OCT. 9, 2018 WHAT I LEARNED
OCT. 9, 2018 AT THE BIG MEETING

In my last post I showed you many of my college classmates with whom I shared the previous weekend. Now it's time for some details including innovative buildings, pronouns, a strange poem, and eight million dollars. From the class after mine, I also talked with a former WOBC DJ whose old family friend had helped found the NAACP in 1910.

My new article's all about A Summit at The Hotel.

Last weekend I returned to Oberlin College to join eighty other alumni on campus. We were there to prepare for an event to be held May 24 through 27, 2019: the reunions of graduating classes from 10, 30, 45, 50, and 60 years before. The Class of 1970 was also represented to get an early start on their 50-year reunion, even though it won't happen until 2020.

The 50th is the big one, of course. The chart shows that nearly half the attendees at our “summit” were from 1969 and 1970. We all got together for socializing and dinners, such as the one above in the Tappan Room of the Hotel at Oberlin. But the individual classes, including my Class of 1969, also held breakout sessions to plan their particular activities.

Below are some photos. The ones with the crimson borders should be credited to John Kramer; those with the gold borders, to George Spencer-Green.

Left to right in the first group are Mr. Kramer, Biz Glenn Harralson, Mr. Spencer-Green, and the Class of 1969 officers: vice-president Carol McLaughlin Fishwick and president Wayne Alpern.

David Eisner	Bonnie Wishne	Chip Hauss	Tom Thomas	Bob Weiner
Les Leopold, Wayne Alpern		Bill Truehaft	Mike Jarvis	John Bowman
Mimi Lam	Christie Seltzer Fountain	Carol McLaughlin Fishwick, Bob Shay		Debby Horn Roosevelt

Various classmates volunteered to coordinate such events as a panel on liberal activism (Bob Weiner points out that the term nowadays is “resistance”), a service project, and another panel on the ways Oberlin has changed us.

But the weekend won't be all seriousness; it will also be a time for fun and reconnections. Our plans include a talent show, a story-telling session, and the traditional men's and women's breakfasts. We might even get together as early as Wednesday, May 22, 2019, to enjoy the attractions of the big city of Cleveland!

Then the Commencement/Reunion Weekend will find us all gathering at Oberlin. Stay tuned for further details.

I'm watching old TV. In a documentary about a 1958 plane crash, the control tower notes the time as “three-one.” Then, near the end of the 1936 movie The Great Ziegfeld, an actress arranges a phone call for “after the second act; that's right, about ten-five.”

Have I been wrong?

All my life I've written times like these as “3:01” and “10:05,” with a colon acting like a decimal point and a zero holding the tens-of-minutes place. And I've pronounced them “three-oh-one” and “ten-oh-five.”

Serious conversations and comical gift-giving were part of the scene in October 1968. But there was also a soprano folk singer. There were athletes protesting during the National Anthem. And there was my football broadcast partner, who wouldn't stop talking.

Click here for the latest installment in the 14-month series recalling my life 50 years ago.