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ArchiveJUNE 2024

 
JUNE 29, 2024   WHEN THE OPPRESSED GAIN POWER,
                               MUST THEY BECOME OPPRESSORS?

This spring, the situation in Gaza triggered a nationwide wave of protests.  My alma mater, Oberlin College, was involved in a small way.  About 130 students gathered outside the Mudd Library near Wilder Hall “to demand an end to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and the college's investment in Israel.”

The encampment on campus lasted only about one day, but dozens of comments were posted by Class of 1968 alumni on their reunion website.  A couple of the more philosophical essays raised Dangerous Questions.  For example, “Can a democracy elevate the rights of one religion within it over another?”

 
JUNE 28, 2014 flashback    STILL NIL-NIL?

Soccer is far from my favorite sport, but I have been tuning in to parts of the FIFA World Cup being played in Brazil.  As a TV graphics operator, I like the compact “score bug” that ESPN has been using. 

Notice the red block on the left, which tells us that the red jerseys are being worn by the Russians, and the white block on the right, which indicates that the white jerseys are being worn by the Koreans.  Nice and simple.

There’s no need to squeeze in logos or flags, and the viewer can quickly determine which players belong to which team.

On most basketball telecasts, depending on the network, we also try to use the team colors on the score bug.  But we complicate the issue.  Suppose Notre Dame is visiting Pitt.  Both teams have blue and gold as their colors.  We could use blue for one team and gold for the other, but there’s an added problem:  the white letters ND and PITT are supposed to appear on top of the team colors, and white letters on a gold background don’t show up well.  (Nor would black letters on a blue background.)  So after some debate, we decide to use blue backgrounds for both schools.  It would be better if we could simply use a generic background plus jersey blocks like this:  blue for Notre Dame, white for Pitt.

In this year’s World Cup, the United States unexpectedly won their first game, tied the next, and on Thursday lost the third but by only one goal.  That stellar 1-1-1 record has entitled the USA to advance.  We’re in the Round of 16!  Hurray, us!  You and I had absolutely nothing to do with it, of course, but that doesn’t stop you and me from feeling pride in our national accomplishment.

Some Americans aren’t happy, however.  They still deride soccer as a “communist sport.”  This is despite the fact that none of the 32 competing nations has a communist government.  Russia and Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina may have been communist once, but they aren’t now, and none of them made it through to the Round of 16.  Communist Cuba and China and Vietnam and North Korea aren’t even in the tournament. 

For the Americans who dislike soccer, excuses have to be invented.  Soccer is socialist, they say, with all the players working together toward a single goal.  (Isn’t that true of most sports?)  Because it’s low-scoring, the team that loses 1-0 doesn’t get its feelings hurt too badly.  (Tell that to the losing team, except the USA on Thursday.)  Games can end in an unsatisfying tie.  (Until recently, all of these arguments could also be applied to the National Hockey League.)  The game is somehow for sissies.  (Jim Rome was quoted in The Guardian: “My son is not playing soccer.  I will hand him ice skates and a shimmering sequined blouse before I hand him a soccer ball.”)

I suspect the disparagement of soccer as a “communist sport” began around 1948.  Then as now in America, the Do-Nothing Congress and the Party of No resisted all changes.  After all, America was exceptional.  We were already the greatest nation in the world, so nothing new was needed.  Certainly we shouldn’t import alien ideas from other so-called nations.  Here in the United States, the only legitimate “football” was the violent full-contact version.  Also, the blacks knew their place, the gays stayed in the closet, and everybody in town went to the same church.  Some people today feel the “Real America” should still be like this.

In Joe McCarthy’s day, the right wing looked with suspicion on any foreign concepts originating outside this country, including soccer.  Congress actually formed a committee to suppress Un-American Activities, labeling the Un-American Activists as communists.

Recently C. Edmund Wright ranted, “At its heart, soccer is the perfect socialist sport.  ...When the World Cup rolls around, that's where the arrogance of soccer folks meets up with the one-world feeling and the can't-we-all-just-get-along crowd and all sorts of international bodies that want to treat the U.S. like just another country like Cuba or Iran.”

Now I happen to believe that we are one world.

I tuned in the USA-Portugal match last Sunday.  I was in my car at the time, so I listed on ESPN Radio.  With the relative lack of action, soccer on radio was an interesting novelty.  The game was described by ESPN Radio’s lead soccer announcers, JP Dellacamera and Tommy Smyth.

That brought back a memory.  Nearly 30 years ago, JP and I shared a car for 70 miles on Interstate 70.

John Paul Dellacamera had gotten his start as a soccer announcer in 1982, calling games of the Pittsburgh Spirit in the Major Indoor Soccer League.  I was riding with him in 1986, give or take a year.  We were going to telecast a college basketball game.  My company, TCS, put the two of us on a plane from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis.  There we were to rent a car and drive west to Indiana State University.

I introduced myself to John Paul.  He told me he preferred to be called JP.  He suggested that I should do the driving, since he had no idea where Terre Haute was and I had at least been in Indiana before.  He also warned me that he had a special requirement, I forget what, something like having to drink some water at least once an hour.

During the trip, JP expressed frustration about his professional difficulty of getting assignments to broadcast soccer, his specialty.  I guess he’s been doing all right over the ensuing decades.

 

JUNE 25, 2024   BEING GOOD NEIGHBORS

Americans receive a multitude of benefits from the government, including highways, education, police protection, defense, health care, and disaster relief.  However, when taxes are imposed to fund those benefits, many hard-working taxpayers complain of the perceived unfairness.  For example, “I don't have any children, so why should I have to pay for that new elementary school?”

To read more, click this box for a classic article I posted to this website more than a hundred months ago.

This month's 100 Moons article reminds us that taxes are part of the social contract, an obligation that we owe to our fellow Americans.

 

JUNE 22, 2014 flashback
THE CALHOUN ROAD

On the outskirts of Livermore, Kentucky, my grandfather H.F. Thomas once sold D-X gasoline.

 His gas station was located on the back road out of town, which we usually called “the Calhoun road” because it led to the county seat of Calhoun ten miles away.

Many towns have streets labeled with the distant destinations to which they would eventually take you, if you followed them far enough.

When I worked in Marion, Ohio, I traveled on Delaware Avenue and Mount Vernon Avenue and Bellefontaine Avenue.  Each was oriented towards a county seat in a neighboring county.

Here in Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh area has Washington Pike and Freeport Road and Butler Street, among numerous others.

But the nearby city of Indiana takes a longer view.  Its main thoroughfare is Philadelphia Street, named for a well-known settlement nearly 300 miles to the east.  If we’re no longer limited to towns within easy driving distance, I think we should rename my street Anchorage Avenue.

Back then, most roads were still unpaved.  That explains the mud on the side of H.F.'s car.

Here's another angle of it featuring his son, my Uncle Phillip.

 

JUNE 19, 2024   WE WERE NOT THE LEADER

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo) was a history major at Stanford.  However, for Juneteenth last year, he ignored what he had learned and tried to make his Christian constituents feel good about themselves.  He tweeted,

"Today is a good day to remember:
      Christianity is the faith,
      and America is the place,
             slavery came to die."

Wrong, wrote the editorial board of the Kansas City Star.  “Slavery flourished here for more than two centuries. It is no exaggeration to say that America's economic might was built on a foundation of enslaved labor.”

In those days, Christians supported involuntary servitude by quoting the Bible.  The Good Book even endorsed whipping the unfortunate captives, though not to death.

“Anyone who beats their male or female slave must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but if the slave recovers after a day or two, they are not to be punished, since the slave is their property.”  – Exodus 21:20-21

Ron Filipkowski has noted that “Slavery was ended in virtually every developed country before the U.S.”  In particular, Britain's 1833 Slavery Abolition Act outlawed the practice in almost the entire Commonwealth — but not here, of course.  “We were not the leader of a movement to end slavery!  We were at the tail end of global emancipation efforts.  And other countries were able to ban it without fighting a bloody civil war.”

Robert J. Elisberg reminds us that the Southern states that defended slavery and seceded in 1861 were led by Democrats, while the Northern states that remained in the Union were led by Abraham Lincoln's Republicans.  After the war, some members of the Democratic Party “learned from its horrible mistakes and became aggressive defenders of civil rights for Black people.  However, conservative Democrats who refused to support this quit the party and became Republicans!

  “In 1948, the ‘Dixiecrats’ were outraged by a civil rights plank in the Democratic party platform, and many walked out of the convention.

  “In 1964, Mississippi Democrats walked out of that year's convention when a Black slate was going to be admitted.

  “And in 1968, the switchover became pretty much completed when Richard Nixon had his ‘Southern Strategy,’ going full racist.  The South became pretty much Republican and has been so since.”

 

JUNE 17, 2024   LOCAL HORSE MAKES GOOD

Ohio's Blake Taylor is a recent North Union High School graduate.  (That was my school, sort of.  It used to be called Richwood High School, but as soon as I graduated it was immediately consolidated and renamed North Union.)  Blake is proud of his photogenic horse named Blossom.

Blossom's portrait by Stephanie Moon is one of five featured on a set of new postage stamps honoring “the unwavering loyalty, tireless dedication and wild beauty of America's equines.”  A first-day-of-issue ceremony is scheduled for this afternoon in St. Joseph, Missouri, before the start of the 164th Pony Express Re-Ride.

 

JUNE 16, 2014 flashback    NO NAVIGATOR'S VOICE NEEDED

One gadget my new car doesn’t have is a GPS navigation system.  I don’t use GPS.  But it’s not that I’m avoiding computers.  I simply prefer to use Google Earth, in order to know in advance where I’m going.

2024 UPDATE:  Since I wrote this bit, I replaced my old flip-phone with a modern smartphone.  Therefore, via the Google Maps app using GPS, I do now have a navigator's voice available.

Staring at a screen while driving is unsafe, so I lay the phone on the passenger seat and let its voice call out the turns.  "In a quarter mile, bear right onto Wandering Lane."

Nevertheless, I still like to plan my trip beforehand as described below.

Last winter I got a flyer from a new restaurant at “3231 Leechburg Road.”  I’m familiar with that road, but it’s a couple of miles long.  Where exactly is 3231?  I fired up Google Earth on my desktop computer and typed in the address.  The program immediately showed me where it is:  the former Quizno’s sandwich shop.  Set back from the other buildings and therefore easy to miss, Quizno’s is no longer in business at that location.  I may or may not decide to go to the new place.

When I’m assigned to work at, for example, Hometown High School, I’m given an address several days in advance.  So when I have the opportunity, I ask Google to plot a course to “225 White House Road, 15163.”  Then I examine the map in detail, paying special attention to the turns.  For the tricky parts, I use Street View and memorize the terrain.

“Okay, I’ll come up to a stop sign with a Sunoco station on my left.  There's a big blue-and-yellow sign.  I’ll make a right turn, then immediately get in the left-hand lane to make a left turn at the traffic light, just before the golf course.  I’ll follow that road for 2.6 miles.  Soon after passing Truman Road — there should be a green sign on the right — I’ll turn right onto Eisenhower Road, which is rather narrow.”

Now when I actually make the trip, I’m not driving in unfamiliar terrain.  I’ve been there, seen that!  Virtually, that is.

 

JUNE 13, 2024   PRODUCE ROCKS IN RICHWOOD

In Richwood, Ohio, the village where I grew up, a Farmers Market is held on Thursday evenings.  This year it's in Shelter House #1 at the lake, and opening day is today.

 

Shoppers might notice a brightly-painted stone or two lying under a bench.  The explanation is in a story I'm calling Richwood's Grandma Rocks.

 

JUNE 10, 2024   MEET THE PARENTS

“Catchy,” channel 2.5 in Pittsburgh, replays old situation comedies.  It recently acquired the mostly-forgotten 1965 version of Gidget.  This series, which aired for only one season, starred the cute and talented Sally Field as a 15½-year-old surfer girl.  “Gidget” and I were in high school about the same time, but we had different experiences:  I was studious, she was boy-crazy.

One episode that I happened to watch was #21, in which she met her current boyfriend's parents for the first time.  I immediately recognized the actor playing the young man's father: Hal March (right), who once quizzed contestants on The $64,000 Question.  His program, with an 85% share in 1955, had been much more popular than Sally Fields's show.

 


That brought back more memories.  One was from 56 years ago this week, when, as a member of the Oberlin College Class of 1969, I was awaiting the upcoming Commencement of the Class of 1968.

Near West College Street I encountered a classmate:  Jan Olson, my friend and lab partner.  She introduced me to her parents, also on hand for the ceremonies.

One of us found a caterpillar species on Tappan Square that I had never met in person: an inchworm.

Jan's boyfriend was a member of that graduating class, but a year later they would break up.  In the meantime, while Jan and I were seniors, I dated her casually.  When my parents visited the campus in September, we took her to lunch.


Then on November 8 she invited me to dinner at the Oberlin Inn with her visiting folks.

As we walked to the Inn, she playfully asked, “Are you nervous about meeting my parents?”

I reminded her that I had already done so.

 

 

JUNE 8, 2014 flashback    AND THEY ALL LOOK JUST THE SAME

It’s after midnight on a starlit Wednesday night in Las Vegas, Nevada, so the temperature has cooled to 86° on the far northwest side of the city.

You’re Victor Thompson, a captain in the local fire department.  You’re sleeping peacefully in your modern home in your quiet gated community.

Suddenly your wife wakes you.  Someone is insistently ringing the doorbell!  You get out of bed to find out what’s going on.

Two young men are banging on the front door.  They’re shouting things like “Hey, open up, stupid!  We’ve got the beer, but this #$% door is locked!  We’re locked out!  Let us in, you #$%!”  You argue with them, but they become belligerent and won’t stop knocking.  You fear a home invasion.  You take steps to defend your family.  You grab the firearm you keep nearby.  You shoot through the door.  You hit one man in the chest.

I’ve augmented the story by inventing details and dialogue, but the basic facts are there.  According to an article last week in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the supposed intruders “were at the door after confusing the home with another in the neighborhood.  They had been celebrating a birthday with another person at a nearby house.  They left for a short time and thought they were returning to the same house.  They did not understand why they weren’t being let back in.”

UPDATE:  Gun culture is multiplying tragic stories like this, although St. Louis professor Anders Walker says that "stand your ground" laws "all basically hold you can only use lethal force if you have a reasonable fear you're going to be injured." 

On April 12, 2023, an 84-year-old man in Kansas City fired two shots through a glass door into a teenager who rang his doorbell on Northeast 115th Street, having confused it with an address on Northeast 115th Terrace.

Five days later, a 65-year-old man in upstate New York fired at least two shots at a car that mistakenly drove into his driveway.  He was charged with murder in the death of a 20-year-old woman.

As somebody tweeted, "our national experiment in freely giving deadly weapons to anyone who wants one and cultivating an atmosphere of paranoia and fear is going extremely well."

How could the Las Vegas men mistake one house for another?  “Residents who live nearby,” the article explained, “described the neighborhood as quiet, yet easy to get lost in.  Keith Patton, who lives on the street behind where the shooting happened, said he and his mother have confused the houses by driving or walking up to the wrong driveway several times.”

How confoundingly alike could these little boxes be?  On Friday afternoon, I decided to see for myself.  I took a quick trip to Las Vegas.  Yes, I did!  I used my preferred mode of transportation for such exploration, Google Earth.  It’s much cheaper and faster than an airplane ticket, and I returned with these pictures in half an hour.

I found that the houses are indeed similar and very closely spaced, though they’re hardly identical —  unless it’s 2:00 in the morning and you’re drunk.  That’s Captain Thompson’s home on the left, distinguished by a luxurious 300 square feet of grass in the front lawn.

And the streets are indeed easy to get lost in.  Captain Thompson’s community is a compact square only a quarter of a mile on a side.  Several such squares have been carved out of the beige flatness of the surrounding desert.  One example is the square shown below, ironically named Vista Verde (Green View).  Construction has been completed on almost all of the houses.

The area of this square is forty acres.  Now you young folks don't remember this, but back in my great-grandfather’s day, forty acres was the ideal size for a single-family farm.  When Vista Verde is finished, its forty acres will contain not one but 170 single-family homes.  (A few of those structures might be for general community use.)

Notice the efficient maze of streets, designed to slow speeders.  There are only two ways in and out, through the gates in the middle of the north and south sides of the square.  In the interior it’s left, right, right, left, left, right, right, left, left, right; and if you get caught in a dead end, you need to use the cul-de-sac to turn around.

Las Vegas is growing by 50,000 new residents a year, and they keep building developments like this.  I wouldn’t want to live in such a cramped residential area, crawling over the other workers’ cells to find an exit from the hive.  The West boasts its wide-open spaces, but back here in the East there really are green views.  It's almost heaven.

Google Earth,
Take me home
To the place I belong,
Pennsylvania!

 

JUNE 5, 2024   WHAT'S NEW

Apparently most little boys can tilt their heads all the way back to look straight up.  Apparently my neck is less flexible.  Therefore I learned that I must also lean back from the waist, causing me to almost lose my balance, leading to a lifelong phobia about looking up.

Anyhow, that's a theory that I added this month to my 2003 confession about cringing.

During the past quarter century (almost), I've written over 700 such articles that are linked from this website's colorful menu.  Their contents aren't graven in stone.  Sometimes I discover a typo that needs to be fixed, and sometimes I run across new information that needs to be added.

Here are some other recent updates which I haven't mentioned on this home page until now.

In April 2024, I reported declining enrollments at the three Pennsylvania Western University campuses including the former CalU.
I quoted a famous pilot who argued that expansion is justified for “virile” nations who want to conquer other nations' territory.
And I linked to a video of the lovely Mimmu, our public-relations contact at a 2001 hockey tournament.

In May, I confirmed that an oldtime radio program was not merely the audio from a TV show.
I found architects who agree that a certain geometric shape should be described as a snack chip.
To a Cinerama article, I added a note about an even wider view from a single video camera.
I added a 1943 view of the porch of the dorm behind which our college radio station once lived.
I imagined our newer studios being invaded by numbskulls.
I updated the layout of the desks in my graduate school's lecture hall.
I heard from a man named Bill McKinney whose great uncle “Short” hired my father in 1929.
And to my father's wartime letters from India, where he contracted a mild case of malaria, I added a photo of a later Lions Club food stand.

 

JUNE 2, 2024   TUK'S THE ANSWER — WE NEED A QUESTION

Does an ancient Southeast Asian symbol lead to a blah cure?  A fictional corporate executive suggests it might.

That's because his assignment is Finding a Problem for a Solution.

 

 

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