In which we have little to say about debate, but say it anyhow

I have so little going on in my debate life that you should stop reading this now.

Once the season wraps up in Sailorville, that’s it. I don’t do any camps, so for me summer is entirely the DJ and whatever vacation I’ll be taking. Granted that this year the vacation is the DisAd, but despite it containing multitudes of debate folk, it has nothing to do with debate, and we don’t talk about debate or the debate world or anything in it. We didn’t mention debate more than once during the DiDeAd in 2010, and that was the tiniest riff to which we never returned. You’re surrounded by the most complex entertainment venue on the planet and you’re going to gossip about the CFL? Gimme a break. Besides, half the people on the trip, literally, are not a part of the debate world now, and only one of them ever was, back before half my team now was even born. It’s old news, or other people’s news. Come to think about it, we don’t gossip much about the CFL, or anything or anyone else debaterly, during the height of the season. We may compare notes on all sorts of things, of course, like why CP should be strangled for a particular quirk in tabroom or whether it’s MJP or MPJ, but as often as not we’re talking about something else altogether. That’s probably why we all get along. I mean, debate only goes so far, and then there’s, I don’t know, everything else?

That said, I do intend to throw a summer reading list at the Sailors that they can ignore at their leisure. I was especially impressed with Mills’s The Racial Contract, which AT recommended, plus if they haven’t already hit those inevitable canonical tomes like Locke and JSM by now, this is sort of their last chance. For that matter, you won’t really get the point of Mills if you haven’t read Mill & co. And the various aspects of the subject of race aren’t going away any time soon, and I feel that the Sailors, as PFers in their own little universe, need to be brought up to speed on exactly what’s what. Come to think of it, I think everybody needs to be brought up to speed on exactly what’s what. My take-away from the various discussions on race and privilege and diversity is that we need a lot more discussions of race and privilege and diversity. I’m admittedly ignorant of the subject in the context of actual debate rounds, an ignorance I intend to dispel, but the debate rounds themselves are only a part of the picture. I think I’m beginning to understand things I’ve never really thought about before. From such understanding comes change, and the goal should be to share as much of that understanding as possible.

One thing I have been trying to do that’s debaterly is capture content and tweet it via NDCA. Most debate sources that tweet spend most of their time talking about professional sports, but I do comb through them trying to find things relevant to topics du jour. And I’ve been taking my debate RSS grabs and funneling them over there. My hope, of course, is to heighten the visibility of NDCA as a source of discussion and content, and a lot of doing that is just getting into the habit of farming and replanting. Having nothing else debaterly going on at the moment to distract me enables me to get into those habits.

Meanwhile, this weekend CP is heading to the chez for a visit, and many of us will gather and share what gossip we might have left over from 2013-14 before battening down the hatches for 2014-2015. And we’ll also explore the darkest corners of Brooklyn while we’re at it. Wave if you drive by us.