Making a difference for generations to come

A tear falls from the coachean eye. Probably 4 sailors will debate jury nullification. And over in Pfffter land, where trees are regularly falling to deaf mariner ears, they get to play with affirmative action. There is a certain ouch factor to this, but at least we’ll get some discussion in meetings. And speaking of ouch factor, is it true that if a tree falls on a deaf person who doesn’t hear it coming, it doesn’t hurt? Just asking.

(Instant translation of previous paragraph: I like the new topics, and wish more of us would be able to debate them.)

This weekend we ran an MHL at Brooklyn Tech, which is roughly the size of the Pentagon only with one less side. It’s a minute over the Manhattan Bridge, and it wasn’t terribly hard to find (we used the mantra, “Hey, there’s the Scarsdale bus; follow them!”) but it was a bear if you had to park. Once inside the place, it was sort of plain and industrial without feeling oppressive; it’s just the kind of building you’d build if you wanted to put a lot of students in one place at one time a minute over the Manhattan Bridge. The classrooms were quite cheerful and bright, the cafeteria was bigger than my entire school, and come to think of it, even the elevators were bigger than my entire school. The killer, though, was the auditorium, where we held the awards. It was four or five stories high and absolutely spectacular. My guess is that the designers of the building deliberately went to town on it (its vintage is similar to some of the old classic movie palaces). In any case, it made you want to have all your ceremonies there. (O’C take note: Big Jake is Punk City by comparison.)

As for the event itself, it was mostly your regular MHL. Confusion at startup was minimal, with the usual suspects attempting to change their registrations and being told no, with a new (and potentially usual) suspect not understanding the concept of signing up for the tournament or, apparently, simply following directions. But we got things started by 10, the goal, and ended by 6:30, the other goal. In the middle we required the services of Mr. Shelton to go into policy rounds and hit judges over the head with frying pans as a means of explaining to them that the novices might not benefit all that much from a critique twice as long as the actual round, which did get things back on track after a minor snafu at lunch (too many people trying to eat at the same time, mostly as a result of judges whose critiques were twice as long as their actual rounds). Good grub, by the way.

Coming up this weekend is triple witching hour, with dueling-banjo tournaments at Scarsdale, Newark and Pennsbury. I will, of course, be chez JV as usual, sorting out the alternating novices and varsity. And sleeping in my own bed for a change, which I rather enjoyed this weekend. That, and reading bulletins from Emory from O’C and the Panivore, not to mention not reading O’C’s history of the event on Stump the Chump. I mean, my weekend was literally filled with not reading it. I didn’t read it Friday. I didn’t read it Saturday. And Sunday I made it complete by not reading it twice. I’m sorry, but it’s a high school debate tournament, people, not the Nobel Peace Prize. We honor those who came before us, yeah, yeah, yeah, but as the VCA knows, it’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I feel there are better ways of spending time at tournaments than the adults patting each other on the back. I don’t care what the hell you name after me when I’m gone (or for that matter, when I’m here); what I care about is sending legions of debaters into society to demonstrate pen twirling to their grandchildren some day. That, my friends, is making a difference. The rest of it is all dust in the wind.