Or, Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut. Maybe that's what Bubba Chut's been looking for as a team name. Uncle Wiggly. Works for me. It would probably work for Bronx Science, too.
Anyhow, Uncle Wiggly was in Connecticut over the weekend, working with the folks in Newtown who were hosting an event. Connecticut has always been problematic in forensic circles. They do have local, intramural debate, and a little activity between schools, from what I can determine, but not much more. Every year, it seems, some schmegeggie raises his head and is directed to me as local NFL District Chair, and I go through the whole rigamarole and they're never heard from again, but Larry Saladin (whose team so ought to be called the Saracens) seems to be an exception. He knows what he's doing, he's run a team all year, they've shown up hither and yon, they've done well, and they look to come back even stronger next year. Hell, they even figured out to invite Uncle Wiggly with his vast tabbing skills (he is the only person known to have been thrown out of the Vassar tabroom and into the Lakeland tabroom, with similar results) and his Intergalactic Locutus Chip keeping him always in contact with DVM, me and the Borg, the end result of which was, well grab my socks and call me Shorty, a mention on old hellinahandbasket.com, right between calls for archival information on the 1927 event at Bronx Science and requests for alms to keep up the bandwidth. I truly hope that Newtown can infect other Nutmeggers with their enthusiasm. The more the merrier, if you ask me, and eager grassroots debate is so preferable to jejune national $ircuit stuff.
I posted an updated reading list on the Hen Hud team website over the weekend. I think I went into it with grander plans than I came out with. Originally Marc M had written this up for me, and I'd posted it, and over the years I'd tinker with it and add new titles and whatnot, and when all was said and done I didn't see much point in changing it too much this year. Plus I just got lazy. BenT suggested adding Al Toqueville's ON DEMOCRACY, which I think is a fine choice, but that and S&S and Putnam are the only new titles; the world of potential LD reading is vast, and what we're concentrating on here is core, as compared to elective. I put Putnam in as required Summer reading (although there is a choice of titles) because I think it's a fine start for anyone interested in sociology. It's well written, it's smart, and it even offers some communitarian thought that can be reprocessed back into rounds (as Emcee did on every topic, plus his college application essays, his driver's license and, I think, all his romantic conversations, such as they are). There's also all sorts of secondard readings on the list, a hodgepodge of novels that are either marginally debatic or simply worth reading so that you'll have something smarter to talk about on the bus than your favorite scenes from Family Guy. Not that I don't like an endless run through of "remember that scene" as much as the next guy, but only if the next guy if Heinrich Himmler.
The NFL LD guidelines committee has resurfaced. I was invited originally (only God and Scott Wunn know why) to sit on this committee, which is meeting in Dallas, but I demurred, since I wouldn't be there. But then again, old Fred Robertson who's chairing the committee sent me a document from Smilin' J, and I just couldn't resist telling Fred that, if I can, I'd like to be kept in long distance. Smiley's document is almost as long as Caveman, but better organized and less likely to be a podcast. Whew! I can't wait to read it. I've set aside July and the first two weeks of August.
Speaking of Caveman, I finished the rough of part two last night; it'll probably come in at about an hour in length when it's edited, and there's still plenty more parts to go. This isn't a lecture, it's a life commitment, and you can dedicate a whole small Nano to it. The lecture does improve some of the points in the written text, though. I keep reading and studying the subject material, so every time I go back at it, I either know more to add or find errors to correct. I have to admit I felt great joy finishing Delirious New York. Koolhas makes a lot of tenuous connections but the core idea of Manhattanism and congestion survive the text and definitely add context to modernist urbanists. I'm just about ready to give up coaching LD and start coaching the Hen Hud conceptualist architectural team. Do we have one of those? Probably not. I should give Scarsdale a call. If ever a high school had a conceptualist architectural team, Scarsdale would be it.
(Yeah, today's title, if you couldn't place it: JD Salinger. Holden C's parents would have about 2 Hs apiece if he told about his youth, and UWIC is a Salinger story. If you're curious, study the trail of UWIC into Hollywood, which explains why Jerry never let any others of his stories get sold to Tinseltown, a point he pounds home in Catcher.)
2 comments:
"whose team so ought to be called the Saracens"
YES. And I thought I was the only one clever enough to make that kind of joke when I made some references drawing on my college seminars this past weekend. Some of the Newtown kids just stared at me, though. But I guess I often get that kind of response.
The tournament was great, and there were a lot of eager future LDers. You'll be hearing from them, and from me about tem, soon.
Is that a new Nostrum pfd? Alert the masses, good sir, dark genius!
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