OT to SF: College at the turn of the (last) century...
Elf M. Sternberg
Okay, so, my Steampunk series is humming along, or perhaps
clanking along. Rather than set my story in some dingey London
Victorianesque underbelly, I've decided to take the approach of asking,
"What if our burgeoning mages happened to live in Dayton, Tennessee or
someplace very much like it in the 19th century?"
One thing I've realized is that I don't know enough about
college life in that era, and since my setting is (I hope) a college, I
need some reading material, stat. From what little I've gleaned, life
back then was drastically different: colleges were occupied mostly by
the vehemently idle rich, warehoused between adolsecence and taking over
Daddy's business. But I'd like some firsthand accounts. Can anyone
give any recommended books, memoirs, or the like, about what college
life was like in the U.S. and perhaps England between, say, 1860 and
1910?
Elf
--
Elf M. Sternberg will be unavailable during November.
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/
Dan Goodman
news:m33cpfq...@drizzle.com:
>
> Okay, so, my Steampunk series is humming along, or perhaps
> clanking along. Rather than set my story in some dingey London
> Victorianesque underbelly, I've decided to take the approach of asking,
> "What if our burgeoning mages happened to live in Dayton, Tennessee or
> someplace very much like it in the 19th century?"
>
> One thing I've realized is that I don't know enough about
> college life in that era, and since my setting is (I hope) a college, I
> need some reading material, stat. From what little I've gleaned, life
> back then was drastically different: colleges were occupied mostly by
> the vehemently idle rich, warehoused between adolsecence and taking over
> Daddy's business.
Depends on the college, almost certainly. This would not have been true of
religious-denomination colleges, and definitely not of colleges set up for
Blacks.
Brenda W. Clough
Also, decide right away whether it's a male college or a female college.
(There were no coed institutions so far as I know at that time period,
so that's not an option for you.) And select a region, if you can.
Then find a school of the right type, and pump them hard. Vassar, for
instance, has a rich history. Visiting the school and poring through
their archives and old school newspapers should be of great interest.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough
Read my novella "May Be Some Time"
Complete at http://www.analogsf.com/0202/maybesometime.html
My web page is at http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
David J. Starr
>
> Dan Goodman wrote:
>
> >Elf M. Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com> wrote in
> >news:m33cpfq...@drizzle.com:
> >
> >> Okay, so, my Steampunk series is humming along, or perhaps
> >>clanking along. Rather than set my story in some dingey London
> >>Victorianesque underbelly, I've decided to take the approach of asking,
> >>"What if our burgeoning mages happened to live in Dayton, Tennessee or
> >>someplace very much like it in the 19th century?"
> >>
> >> One thing I've realized is that I don't know enough about
> >>college life in that era, and since my setting is (I hope) a college, I
> >>need some reading material, stat. From what little I've gleaned, life
> >>back then was drastically different: colleges were occupied mostly by
> >>the vehemently idle rich, warehoused between adolsecence and taking over
> >>Daddy's business.
> >>
doctors, and lawyers. There were plenty of that sort of professional
who made a fair living but never got rich. More other than not a pre
civil war college would have a serious religious affiliation. After the
civil war you get the land grant colleges with an emphasis on
agriculture. Most colleges that were active in the 19th century are
still in business today, often in the original 19th cent buildings. A
campus visit will give you some local flavor.
And, unless your character is in, or headed for, the professions, a
high school education was considered quite adequate for business, sea
faring, railroading, telegraphy, farming, stuff like that. It wasn't
like late 20th cent were you need a college degree to stay off welfare.
Drinking was a popular 19th cent collegiate sport, still is for that
matter.
--
David J. Starr
Dst...@TheWorld.com
Dan Goodman
news:3DEE2EE3...@theworld.com:
In the early 20th century, when Peter Drucker got his first job in
Vienna, he was considered over-educated for the business world. He had
complete high school.
R. L.
wrote:
>Dan Goodman wrote:
>
>>Elf M. Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com> wrote in
>>news:m33cpfq...@drizzle.com:
>>
>>> Okay, so, my Steampunk series is humming along, or perhaps
>>>clanking along. Rather than set my story in some dingey London
>>>Victorianesque underbelly, I've decided to take the approach of asking,
>>>"What if our burgeoning mages happened to live in Dayton, Tennessee or
>>>someplace very much like it in the 19th century?"
/snip/
>Also, decide right away whether it's a male college or a female college.
> (There were no coed institutions so far as I know at that time period,
>so that's not an option for you.)
If Prince Edward Island around very approximately 1870 would fit, I'd
suggest L. M. Montgomery's ANNE OF GREEN GABLES and sequels. Anne attended
several kinds of boarding schools, academies, etc after the village school.
At one of the first (Queen's?) there were boys boarding also, iirc; she and
Gilbert were rivals for a school prize near the end of AoGG.
Also, Laura Ingalls Wilder's LITTLE HOUSE books have a lot about schools,
though I'm not sure how high they go.
R. L.
Dorothy J Heydt
R. L. <zzma...@zzsoniczz.zznetzz> wrote:
>On Tue, 03 Dec 2002 15:44:05 -0500, "Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com>
>wrote:
>
>> (There were no coed institutions so far as I know at that time period,
>>so that's not an option for you.)
>
>If Prince Edward Island around very approximately 1870 would fit, I'd
>suggest L. M. Montgomery's ANNE OF GREEN GABLES and sequels. Anne attended
>several kinds of boarding schools, academies, etc after the village school.
>At one of the first (Queen's?) there were boys boarding also, iirc; she and
>Gilbert were rivals for a school prize near the end of AoGG.
The University of California at Berkeley was certainly
co-educational by the turn of the last century. (Remember
Lillian Moller Gilbreth, of whom before her wedding the local
paper said, "Although a graduate of the University of California,
Miss Moller is nevertheless an attractive young woman.")
But yes, a lot of colleges of the period were one-sex-only,
particularly in the Eastern US. And in Europe too I suspect, but
have no data.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Lucinda Welenc
> Also, Laura Ingalls Wilder's LITTLE HOUSE books have a lot about schools,
> though I'm not sure how high they go.
>
not graduate from high school. Her sister Mary attended a 'College for
the Blind' but (working from memory here) got more about coping with
blindness there and very little academics.
--
Alanna
**********
Saying of the day:
When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking
spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I'm
leaving. -- Steven Wright
Dorothy J Heydt
Lucinda Welenc <lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>"R. L." wrote:
>> Also, Laura Ingalls Wilder's LITTLE HOUSE books have a lot about schools,
>> though I'm not sure how high they go.
>>
>Not college. Laura, even though she taught one-room school herself, did
>not graduate from high school.
Or even elementary school, though it's hard to tell. The school
she didn't graduate from (because she was getting married) had
recently expanded to a new building with *two* rooms.
Her sister Mary attended a 'College for
>the Blind' but (working from memory here) got more about coping with
>blindness there and very little academics.
A fair amount of academics actually.
<pause to grab the book because I know just where it is>
"She was going to study political economy, and higher
mathematics, and sewing, knitting, beadwork, and music." It was
a seven-year curriculum and Mary was probably about 16 when she
matriculated.
And also coping with blindness. The first time she came home
for a visit, her family were amazed at how she moved around the
room instead of sitting quietly in her chair all the time.
Lucinda Welenc
Thanks! My copies were either read to death or absconded, strangely
enough, about the time that my girls left home...
I remember most about the beadwork, and how they were amazed that she
could do such a thing without seeing the beads. Very little about what
she actually learned.
Wonder what she did with the higher mathematics and political economy
living the rest of her life staying home with Ma and Pa?
--
Alanna
**********
Saying of the day:
Nothing is as burdensome as a secret. - French proverb
Dorothy J Heydt
Goddam if I know. At least it gave her something to think about,
I suppose.
Brenda W. Clough
>In article <3DEEA4EC...@cablespeed.com>,
>Lucinda Welenc <lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>
>>"R. L." wrote:
>>
>>>Also, Laura Ingalls Wilder's LITTLE HOUSE books have a lot about schools,
>>>though I'm not sure how high they go.
>>>
>>Not college. Laura, even though she taught one-room school herself, did
>>not graduate from high school.
>>
>
>Or even elementary school, though it's hard to tell. The school
>she didn't graduate from (because she was getting married) had
>recently expanded to a new building with *two* rooms.
>
It's probably not possible to draw correlations between degrees then and
now. However, if you look at what she actually studied and did (LITTLE
TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE would be the right volume to consult) she seems to
have actually learned as much as many a modern high school graduate.
Brenda W. Clough
>
>Wonder what she did with the higher mathematics and political economy
>living the rest of her life staying home with Ma and Pa?
>
I have often wondered about that myself. She died relatively young and
unmarried. The TV show, in a burst of anachronistic enthusiasm,
supplied her with a hunky spouse and a job.
Ann Sharp
> One thing I've realized is that I don't know enough about
> college life in that era, and since my setting is (I hope) a college, I
> need some reading material, stat. From what little I've gleaned, life
> back then was drastically different: colleges were occupied mostly by
> Daddy's business. But I'd like some firsthand accounts. Can anyone
> give any recommended books, memoirs, or the like, about what college
> life was like in the U.S. and perhaps England between, say, 1860 and
> 1910?
Ann:
Can you narrow the time frame a bit? College changed drastically in
those fifty years.
If you want an idealized picture, there's a whole genre of
'boarding-school books' for this period.
... AND, LADIES OF THE CLUB, Helen Hooven Santmyer. and the
companion non-fiction book, OHIO TOWN. In the first chapter, the heroine is
graduating -- 1868 -- from the local female seminary. My late
grandmother, (University of California, Berkeley, Class of 1905), said that
LADIES was the book which caught most clearly what it was like to be an
American woman between the Civil War and the Depression.
To summarize my grandmother's conclusions, when she was a girl, first in
semi-rural Kentucky and then in San Francisco, the usual education was
elementary school -- through 8th grade. If you were graduated from high
school, you were Educated. You went on to college-university if you needed
the professional education -- usually, if you were a woman, it was because
you were being trained as a teacher.
L.P.H.,
Ann
Dorothy J Heydt
>
>>In article <3DEEA4EC...@cablespeed.com>,
>>Lucinda Welenc <lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>>
>>>"R. L." wrote:
>>>
>>>>Also, Laura Ingalls Wilder's LITTLE HOUSE books have a lot about schools,
>>>>though I'm not sure how high they go.
>>>>
>>>Not college. Laura, even though she taught one-room school herself, did
>>>not graduate from high school.
>>>
>>
>>Or even elementary school, though it's hard to tell. The school
>>she didn't graduate from (because she was getting married) had
>>recently expanded to a new building with *two* rooms.
>>
>
>It's probably not possible to draw correlations between degrees then and
>now. However, if you look at what she actually studied and did (LITTLE
>TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE would be the right volume to consult) she seems to
>have actually learned as much as many a modern high school graduate.
Good point. Intensive English grammar and American history, and
spelling and arithmetic, with a lot of stuff having to be done in
the head. No science of course. Oh yes, writing and geography.
(Those are the subjects the Superintendent tested her in, anyway.
Yes, I have the book sitting here on my bed, how could you tell?)
Beth Friedman
<clo...@erols.com>, <3DEEC1AD...@erols.com>, wrote:
>Lucinda Welenc wrote:
>
>>Wonder what [Mary] did with the higher mathematics and political economy
>>living the rest of her life staying home with Ma and Pa?
>>
>I have often wondered about that myself. She died relatively young and
>unmarried. The TV show, in a burst of anachronistic enthusiasm,
>supplied her with a hunky spouse and a job.
I thought there was even something (on the TV show, I hasten to add)
about her getting her eyesight back -- or was that just a fakeout for
plot purposes?
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
LAFF
(Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> The University of California at Berkeley was certainly
> co-educational by the turn of the last century. (Remember
> Lillian Moller Gilbreth, of whom before her wedding the local
> paper said, "Although a graduate of the University of California,
> Miss Moller is nevertheless an attractive young woman.")
>
> But yes, a lot of colleges of the period were one-sex-only,
> particularly in the Eastern US. And in Europe too I suspect, but
> have no data.
Some colleges admitted girls, but not many at first. My alma mater, the
Western University of Pennsylvania (well, that's what it was called
then; well before I got there it was renamed the University of
Pittsburgh) admitted its first female students in the 1890s. Two girls,
sisters, Stella Mathilda and Margaret Lydia Stein, graduated in 1898
"with identical grades, the highest in the class." "Miss Margaret Lydia
then obtained the master of arts degree, the first granted to a woman
at the University. . . . Also in 1898 Mary E. Hamilton was graduated by
the affiliated School of Pharmacy. In 1900 Mary L. Glenn graduated from
the School of Dentistry." (Quotations from _Pitt: The Story of the
University of Pittsburgh, 1787-1987_, by Robert C. Alberts [University
of Pittsburgh Press, 1986], pages 43 and 48.)
There's a reason the term "coed" applies to only women students. Not
only were women rare on campus until relatively recently, but they were
often thought to be more on the quest for "an MRS degree" -- finding a
husband -- than for serious study. Even the above passage includes the
information, where I inserted the ellipsis, that Margaret Lydia Stein
"later married John C. Fetterman, dean of the College [of Arts and
Sciences, the "liberal arts" undergraduate portion of the University,
from which yours truly also received a B.A. 74 years after the Stein
sisters did]."
(Oh, and my picture is in the book, too. Not a good picture,
unfortunately, but it's there nonetheless.)
Oberlin College in Ohio was the first in the U.S. to admit women
students, in the 1830s -- a very unusual, even daring idea back then.
(They were also the first to admit black students.)
http://www.oberlin.edu/archive/resources/women/index.html
--
_
( | Lois Fundis
(*| lfu...@weir.net
( | Latitude: 40.398637 (N)
/ | Longitude: -80.599882 (W)
( |
/ |_______
/
Dorothy J Heydt
Has to have been. What happened to her (I remember reading
somewhere) is that the scarlet fever caused her to have a stroke
--it wasn't damage to the eyes themselves.
Myself, I had a sort of a stroke* along the optic nerve of my
right eye, oh, five or six years ago. Looks like peering through
a muddy windshield. It hasn't got any worse but it hasn't got
any better, either.
(*it has a technical term which I've forgotten. Apparently at
the time the ophthalmologist, looking at my retina, could see
little hemorrhages all over the end of the optic nerve.)
Lucinda Welenc
She thought she was, but it was wishful thinking. She was feeling the
sunlight on her face and her brain was beginning to interpret heat as
light. When the doctor flashed reflected sunlight on her face, she
couldn't 'see' it, and everybody was vastly disappointed. Nothing about
any such thing in the books, of course.
--
Alanna
**********
Saying of the day:
Nonsense. Space is blue and birds fly through it. --Heisenberg
Manny Olds
> One thing I've realized is that I don't know enough about
> college life in that era, and since my setting is (I hope) a college, I
> need some reading material, stat. From what little I've gleaned, life
> back then was drastically different: colleges were occupied mostly by
> the vehemently idle rich, warehoused between adolsecence and taking over
> Daddy's business. But I'd like some firsthand accounts. Can anyone
> give any recommended books, memoirs, or the like, about what college
> life was like in the U.S. and perhaps England between, say, 1860 and
> 1910?
I attended San Jose State University, which started its life as a Normal
School [*] in (dredging memory) 1857 or something like that. I joined a
non-Greek academic fraternity that was founded in 1910 to provide a manly
haven for the few men who attended the college at that time. From the
histories of the school I have read, it was extremely non-elite.
[*] College for training teachers
--
Manny Olds (old...@pobox.com) of Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
"I beseech ye from the bowels of Christ: consider it possible that ye may
be mistaken." -- Oliver Cromwell
Manny Olds
> Myself, I had a sort of a stroke* along the optic nerve of my
> right eye, oh, five or six years ago. Looks like peering through
> a muddy windshield. It hasn't got any worse but it hasn't got
> any better, either.
> (*it has a technical term which I've forgotten. Apparently at
> the time the ophthalmologist, looking at my retina, could see
> little hemorrhages all over the end of the optic nerve.)
Was it "microinfarct"? I had one of those just in the area of my brain
that controls keeping track of where my right thumb is. The neurologist
told me that these are fairly common and that you don't notice them unless
they affect something like your right thumb (or your vision).
My brain is gradually retraining itself (I don't have to keep track of it,
er, manually anymore) but 8 years later it is still markedly clumsy.
--
Manny Olds (old...@pobox.com) of Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not
become a monster. For when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks
into you." -- Nietzsche
Dorothy J Heydt
Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>
>> Myself, I had a sort of a stroke* along the optic nerve of my
>> right eye, oh, five or six years ago. Looks like peering through
>> a muddy windshield. It hasn't got any worse but it hasn't got
>> any better, either.
>
>> (*it has a technical term which I've forgotten. Apparently at
>> the time the ophthalmologist, looking at my retina, could see
>> little hemorrhages all over the end of the optic nerve.)
>
>Was it "microinfarct"?
No, it was something on the order of "ischemic event" but there
was another word in there somewhere.
I had one of those just in the area of my brain
>that controls keeping track of where my right thumb is. The neurologist
>told me that these are fairly common and that you don't notice them unless
>they affect something like your right thumb (or your vision).
>
>My brain is gradually retraining itself (I don't have to keep track of it,
>er, manually anymore) but 8 years later it is still markedly clumsy.
I'm glad you're getting some improvement. How old are you? I'm
sixty, remember, and was about fifty-five when this thing set in.
The ophthalmoneurologist (think that's the term) told me quite
plainly, "It could get better, it could get worse, it could stay
the way it is, there's no treatment, and the other eye is at
risk. Keep your blood pressure down." So I've done that (my
other doctors have me on various meds for that anyway) and so far
the left eye is behaving itself.
Jenna Thomas-McKie
The hunky spouse got his eyesight back, I believe.
--
Jenna Thomas-McKie
jth...@aug.edu
"Circular Definition: see Circular Definition"
Beth Friedman
Heydt), <H6nHq...@kithrup.com>, wrote:
>In article <asnh4g$d8a$2...@news1.radix.net>,
>Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Myself, I had a sort of a stroke* along the optic nerve of my
>>> right eye, oh, five or six years ago. Looks like peering through
>>> a muddy windshield. It hasn't got any worse but it hasn't got
>>> any better, either.
>>
>>> (*it has a technical term which I've forgotten. Apparently at
>>> the time the ophthalmologist, looking at my retina, could see
>>> little hemorrhages all over the end of the optic nerve.)
>>
>>Was it "microinfarct"?
>
>No, it was something on the order of "ischemic event" but there
>was another word in there somewhere.
I suspect the missing word is "transient." A TIA, or transient
ischemic attack is like a mini-stroke -- although usually there's full
recovery from it, which it sounds like you didn't quite have.
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Dorothy J Heydt
No, the word was definitely not "transient," I've heard of TIAs
also and this wasn't it. It was doctor-speak for "if it were in
your brain instead of on your optic nerve we'd call it a stroke."
Manny Olds
>>
>>Was it "microinfarct"?
[...]
> "[...] Keep your blood pressure down." So I've done that [...]
My experts told me that a microinfarct is basically a small blood vessel
that had a tiny manufacturing flaw, not anything to do with anything like
blood pressure. I was (and am) mostly glad that it turned out *not* to be
MS--the spot was so small they couldn't resolve the MRI image well enough
to be sure, so I had to wait 6 months and have it again to see if it was
the microinfarct or demyelinization. That was a very long half-year.
And then shortly afterward, I found out that my aunt supposedly died of
ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), same as my grandfather. I had some stress over
that. (I say supposedly because my antisocial uncle wouldn't give us any
details or let us talk to her doctor, so he could have been working some
kind of nasty scam on us.) But my father has shown no symptoms, so even if
it was the familial kind, it almost certainly didn't come down to me. Now
they have a gene-marker test, but then I just had to wait to see if my
father started showing the signs.
Being sick is easier to cope with that waiting to find out, IMO. That is a
chronic emotional pain that has no treatment short of scary
personality-munging chemicals.
--
Manny Olds (old...@pobox.com) of Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
"Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the
immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or
reptiles." -- Romans 1:22-23 (RSV)
Dorothy J Heydt
Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>> Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>Was it "microinfarct"?
No.
>> "[...] Keep your blood pressure down." So I've done that [...]
>
>My experts told me that a microinfarct is basically a small blood vessel
>that had a tiny manufacturing flaw, not anything to do with anything like
>blood pressure.
Well, I was told that blood pressure was relevant.
>And then shortly afterward, I found out that my aunt supposedly died of
>ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), same as my grandfather.
Or, more topically, Stephen Hawking's disease. (Is there anyone
these days, other than baseball historians, who have heard of
Gehrig except in connection with ALS?)
>Being sick is easier to cope with that waiting to find out, IMO. That is a
>chronic emotional pain that has no treatment short of scary
>personality-munging chemicals.
Well, yes. I remember several years ago getting shooting pains
in my hands and feet. I went to the doctor and he told me it was
diabetes. I was much relieved; I had been thinking maybe brain
tumor. Now diabetes is a chronic pain in the butt, but at least
one knows what it is.
Geoff Wedig
> Being sick is easier to cope with that waiting to find out, IMO. That is a
> chronic emotional pain that has no treatment short of scary
> personality-munging chemicals.
What's really fun is chronic illnesses that sometimes disappear, leaving you
wondering when the next blow will fall. For awhile there, the 'good' times
were filled with dread that a bad time was just around the corner, and the
emotional weight was choking me slowly. These days, I've gotten much better
at living in the now, and not worrying too much about the pain that will
return someday.
It's the best of both worlds, I tell you, the dread <-> pain cycle. You
can't win that one.
Geoff
Manny Olds
Isn't that the theory of torture? It's not the pain the breaks you down,
it is anticipating the next episode of pain mixed with not knowing when it
will come.
--
Manny Olds (old...@pobox.com) of Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
"I think that, if there's one clear theme in "Star Wars," it's that
no one *has* a family. Or not for long." -- John Kensmark
Geoff Wedig
> Geoff Wedig <we...@darwin.epbi.cwru.edu> wrote:
>> Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>> Being sick is easier to cope with that waiting to find out, IMO. That is a
>>> chronic emotional pain that has no treatment short of scary
>>> personality-munging chemicals.
>> What's really fun is chronic illnesses that sometimes disappear, leaving you
>> wondering when the next blow will fall. For awhile there, the 'good' times
>> were filled with dread that a bad time was just around the corner, and the
>> emotional weight was choking me slowly. These days, I've gotten much better
>> at living in the now, and not worrying too much about the pain that will
>> return someday.
>> It's the best of both worlds, I tell you, the dread <-> pain cycle. You
>> can't win that one.
> Isn't that the theory of torture? It's not the pain the breaks you down,
> it is anticipating the next episode of pain mixed with not knowing when it
> will come.
Certainly wouldn't surprise me. If so, I've been tortured for well nigh 5
years now. And yes, the not knowing is important. It wouldn't be so bad if
it were predictable, but it varies anywhere from 2-6 months, most commonly
around 3 months. I'm at about 3 months since the last bad time at this
point. But I try not to think about it too much.
Geoff
Brenda W. Clough
It was. The TV show is only distantly related to the books. Like the
recent MUSKETEERS movie, it's an entirely different story about
characters with familiar names.
Heather Jones
>
> In article <aso1qh$mkp$1...@news1.radix.net>,
> Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >And then shortly afterward, I found out that my aunt supposedly died of
> >ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), same as my grandfather.
>
> Or, more topically, Stephen Hawking's disease. (Is there anyone
> these days, other than baseball historians, who have heard of
> Gehrig except in connection with ALS?)
I don't know if it counts as "non-ALS related", but his
retirement speech seems to have ensconced itself into the
category of "famous American speeches".
Heather
--
*****
Heather Rose Jones
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
*****
Marilee J. Layman
>In article <asnh4g$d8a$2...@news1.radix.net>,
>Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Myself, I had a sort of a stroke* along the optic nerve of my
>>> right eye, oh, five or six years ago. Looks like peering through
>>> a muddy windshield. It hasn't got any worse but it hasn't got
>>> any better, either.
>>
>>> (*it has a technical term which I've forgotten. Apparently at
>>> the time the ophthalmologist, looking at my retina, could see
>>> little hemorrhages all over the end of the optic nerve.)
>>
>>Was it "microinfarct"?
>
>No, it was something on the order of "ischemic event" but there
>was another word in there somewhere.
TIA, Transient Ischemic Attack, like a baby stroke.
>I had one of those just in the area of my brain
>>that controls keeping track of where my right thumb is. The neurologist
>>told me that these are fairly common and that you don't notice them unless
>>they affect something like your right thumb (or your vision).
>>
>>My brain is gradually retraining itself (I don't have to keep track of it,
>>er, manually anymore) but 8 years later it is still markedly clumsy.
>
>I'm glad you're getting some improvement. How old are you? I'm
>sixty, remember, and was about fifty-five when this thing set in.
>The ophthalmoneurologist (think that's the term) told me quite
>plainly, "It could get better, it could get worse, it could stay
>the way it is, there's no treatment, and the other eye is at
>risk. Keep your blood pressure down." So I've done that (my
>other doctors have me on various meds for that anyway) and so far
>the left eye is behaving itself.
And do they make you take aspirin?
--
Marilee J. Layman
Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
Brian M. Scott
Heydt) wrote:
[...]
>Or, more topically, Stephen Hawking's disease. (Is there anyone
>these days, other than baseball historians, who have heard of
>Gehrig except in connection with ALS?)
Sure; he was simply too good a player not to be remembered as
such. (And I don't even like baseball.)
[...]
Brian
Lucinda Welenc
Is there anything you can do/not do in order to prolong the good times?
Of the two, I think not knowing is worse. It was close to a year before
my fibromyalgia was diagnosed, and I was getting "well, maybe it's MS,
or Lupus, or Rheumatoid arthritis, or Lyme disease (ad infinitum ad
nauseum) and we won't know until we've run all these tests." For which
one had to go, hat in hand, to the HMO's referral office, and ask
"Please, sir, may I have some more//// these tests which my doctor says
he needs?" Worrying that one might have a progressive, crippling
disease is MUCH worse than coping with a cyclic thing like FM. If it's
a good day/week/month, then I enjoy it. If not, I cope -- but then,
I've had 12 years of practice!
--
Alanna
**********
Saying of the day:
Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one. -
Chinese proverb
Richard Horton
<hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>
>> In article <aso1qh$mkp$1...@news1.radix.net>,
>> Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> >And then shortly afterward, I found out that my aunt supposedly died of
>> >ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), same as my grandfather.
>>
>> Or, more topically, Stephen Hawking's disease. (Is there anyone
>> these days, other than baseball historians, who have heard of
>> Gehrig except in connection with ALS?)
>
>I don't know if it counts as "non-ALS related", but his
>retirement speech seems to have ensconced itself into the
>category of "famous American speeches".
Cripes. You don't have to be a baseball historian, just vaguely
interested in baseball, to have heard of Lou Gehrig.
Charlie Gehringer (great player who I assume is right next to him in
the Encyclopedia) -- OK, only baseball historians, Detroit Tigers'
fans, and people who like baseball a lot without necessarily being
historians, will have heard of him. But Lou Gehrig? Not a household
name, maybe, but still!
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Dorothy J Heydt
Richard Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>
>Cripes. You don't have to be a baseball historian, just vaguely
>interested in baseball, to have heard of Lou Gehrig.
You sure about that?
>Charlie Gehringer (great player who I assume is right next to him in
>the Encyclopedia) -- OK, only baseball historians, Detroit Tigers'
>fans, and people who like baseball a lot without necessarily being
>historians, will have heard of him. But Lou Gehrig? Not a household
>name, maybe, but still!
I'm sorry to have pushed your button.
I suspect a spectrum could be laid out between passionate
baseball fans at one end, through baseball historians, people who
like baseball a lot without being historians, people who are
vaguely interested in baseball, all the way to people like me
on the other end who go into terminal boredom whenever it's mentioned.
I'm not sure where on the spectrum people are who have heard of
Gehric in a context other than his having had ALS. That's
certainly the context in which I heard of him, but then I'm way
out in the ultraviolet here.
LAFF
(Brian M. Scott) wrote:
My dad met Gehrig once. (Then again, my dad was a big baseball fan.)
And Gary Cooper played him in the movie. (Gehrig, not Dad.)
Richard Horton
wrote:
>I suspect a spectrum could be laid out between passionate
>baseball fans at one end, through baseball historians, people who
>like baseball a lot without being historians, people who are
>vaguely interested in baseball, all the way to people like me
>on the other end who go into terminal boredom whenever it's mentioned.
>
>I'm not sure where on the spectrum people are who have heard of
>Gehric in a context other than his having had ALS. That's
>certainly the context in which I heard of him, but then I'm way
>out in the ultraviolet here.
I've already told you -- the line can be drawn pretty much at "people
who are vaguely interested in baseball". (I'd be willing to allow
that that last category probably includes a fair amount of people who
haven't heard of Gehrig, OK.)
I know you are terminally bored by baseball, and that's fine. And as
such I'm not in the least surprised that you've only heard of Gehrig
in connection with ALS. But, seriously, for just that reason you
shouldn't pronounce that maybe except for baseball historians
everybody else will have only heard of him in that connection. That's
just not true.
You really haven't pushed one of my buttons, either. But it's obvious
to me that Gehrig is more famous as a great baseball player than you
seem to think, if only because his most famous record was just broken
in the last few years.
Marilee J. Layman
<rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 05 Dec 2002 12:33:09 -0800, Heather Jones
><hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
>>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>>
>>> In article <aso1qh$mkp$1...@news1.radix.net>,
>>> Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>> >And then shortly afterward, I found out that my aunt supposedly died of
>>> >ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), same as my grandfather.
>>>
>>> Or, more topically, Stephen Hawking's disease. (Is there anyone
>>> these days, other than baseball historians, who have heard of
>>> Gehrig except in connection with ALS?)
>>
>>I don't know if it counts as "non-ALS related", but his
>>retirement speech seems to have ensconced itself into the
>>category of "famous American speeches".
>
>Cripes. You don't have to be a baseball historian, just vaguely
>interested in baseball, to have heard of Lou Gehrig.
I'm not interested in baseball at all, but I know who Lou Gehrig is.
Mostly because of ALS, though.
Brooks Moses
> Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >And then shortly afterward, I found out that my aunt supposedly died of
> >ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), same as my grandfather.
>
> Or, more topically, Stephen Hawking's disease. (Is there anyone
> these days, other than baseball historians, who have heard of
> Gehrig except in connection with ALS?)
Yes, me, but only vaguely.
- Brooks
Helgi Briem
<rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 05 Dec 2002 12:33:09 -0800, Heather Jones
><hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
>>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>>
>>> In article <aso1qh$mkp$1...@news1.radix.net>,
>>> Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>> >And then shortly afterward, I found out that my aunt supposedly died of
>>> >ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), same as my grandfather.
>>>
>>> Or, more topically, Stephen Hawking's disease. (Is there anyone
>>> these days, other than baseball historians, who have heard of
>>> Gehrig except in connection with ALS?)
>>
>>I don't know if it counts as "non-ALS related", but his
>>retirement speech seems to have ensconced itself into the
>>category of "famous American speeches".
>
>Cripes. You don't have to be a baseball historian, just vaguely
>interested in baseball, to have heard of Lou Gehrig.
Most of the people in the world (well over 95%) have never
played baseball. Almost as many have never seen baseball,
never heard of baseball and have as much interest in
baseball as a Tralaxian. Baseball is solely played in the
US (+ Japan and Cuba I believe, both due to US influence)
I have only heard of Lou Gehrig in the context of his
disease.
--
Regards, Helgi Briem
helgi AT decode DOT is
A: Top posting
Q: What is the most irritating thing on Usenet?
- "Gordon" on apihna
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
(Geoff Wedig) wrote:
It's a rotten club, but welcome to it.
I find you really do have to shut your mind to it while things are OK.
'That was then, this is now.'
And then when you get signals that you're off again, have some kind of a
procedure in place, if it's only to make an appointment with the doc, that
can make you feel more in control. This may not work for you, but I find
it makes things more tolerable.
Mary
Richard Horton
>Most of the people in the world (well over 95%) have never
>played baseball. Almost as many have never seen baseball,
>never heard of baseball and have as much interest in
>baseball as a Tralaxian. Baseball is solely played in the
>US (+ Japan and Cuba I believe, both due to US influence)
a) This is an exaggeration. Baseball is played throughout the
Caribbean area, in Mexico and Canada, in Taiwan, and even (IIRC) in
Australia. Due to US influence? Sure.
b) Anyway, what does this have to do with my comment? I said if you
are vaguely interested in baseball, you've probably heard of Lou
Gehrig as a baseball player. You're not even vaguely interested in
baseball. So how you've heard of him doesn't apply.
Dorothy J Heydt
Good point. I, on the other hand, have lived in the US all my
life, and my major contact with baseball consisted of having had to
play softball (a watered-down version with, um, softer balls and,
I assume, softer rules) in elementary school. We've all had the
discussion on how being forced to participate in team sports is
horrible. I will say that elementary-school softball had one
mitigating feature not intended by its creators (who, I assume,
just borrowed the rules from baseball without thinking about them).
Bruised thumbnail sketch for the other 95%:
There are two teams, see, and each is arranged in order of rank.
Pitcher, catcher, first second and third basemen, infielders,
outfielders. In elementary school this was more on the order of
pitcher, catcher, some basemen, everybody else. When a given
team is "in the field," they are arranged with the highest ranks
closest to the scene of the action. When the team is "up at
bat," each comes to the bat in rank order.
A game of elementary-school softball begins with the teacher
choosing two captains and the captains choosing players for their
teams. Naturally all the kids who are good at softball are
chosen first, the rest of us not till the reluctant end (the
captains reluctant to take us, and we reluctant to be named, but
the teacher insists). There we are at the bottom of the order.
Our team's time up at bat is generally over before the sequence
can get down to us, and when we're in the field we're way out in
the outfield where our classmates' spindly little
elementary-school muscles can never hit the ball hard enough to
reach us.
(All this with the caveat, "unless the teacher interferes with
the rank order on the mistaken assumption that everybody ought to
have a chance to play.")
$DEITY what a stupid game. They were all stupid, but that one
had at least that one mitigating factor. (See caveat above.)
After eight years of standing way out in the outfield, trying to
pay no more attention to the game than is absolutely necessarily
(i.e., look alive when it's time to come back in), perhaps you
can see why all baseball data are filtered out before they can
reach my consciousness.
Jenna Thomas-McKie
> 'tis said that on Thu, 05 Dec 2002 23:37:50 GMT, b.s...@csuohio.edu
> (Brian M. Scott) wrote:
> > On Thu, 5 Dec 2002 17:35:12 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
> > Heydt) wrote:
> > >Or, more topically, Stephen Hawking's disease. (Is there anyone
> > >these days, other than baseball historians, who have heard of
> > >Gehrig except in connection with ALS?)
> > Sure; he was simply too good a player not to be remembered as
> > such. (And I don't even like baseball.)
Apparently MasterCard thinks enough people will have heard of him that
they reference his farewell speech in one of their ads.
> And Gary Cooper played him in the movie. (Gehrig, not Dad.)
Yes, and _The Pride of the Yankees_ gets aired fairly regularly on "old
movie" channels.
--
Jenna Thomas-McKie
jth...@aug.edu
I used to be amused - now I'm just bored.
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
wrote:
snip
>>Wonder what she did with the higher mathematics and political economy
>>living the rest of her life staying home with Ma and Pa?
>Goddam if I know. At least it gave her something to think about,
>I suppose.
In that era such things were tantamount to teaching household
management and economy. There's some pretty dang radical stuff in
home economics texts of the time.
jrw
Geoff Wedig
> Geoff Wedig wrote:
> Is there anything you can do/not do in order to prolong the good times?
I have three separate doctors whom I see anywhere from once every other week
to once every few months. Unfortunately, all they can do is adjust
medication when things get rough. See, that's part of the problem. You get
used to the medications, and they stop being as effective. Then you start
feeling awful, and you fiddle with the medication, which takes a few months,
because the medication is not generally effective for a minimum of two
weeks, and eventually everything is smooth again.... for awhile.
There are things that can be done in many cases. Reducing general stress
levels, exercising, all those good healthy things you should do anyway.
In my case, the correlation between these things is rather shaky though. In
fact, there's a strong sense of "Overdoing it causes it" in that, if I
exercise too much it can cause bad times. It's like I'm in a sandy pit. I
can climb out, but I have to do it slowly, or the wall caves in and I'm back
where I started (or often, worse).
> Of the two, I think not knowing is worse. It was close to a year before
> my fibromyalgia was diagnosed, and I was getting "well, maybe it's MS,
> or Lupus, or Rheumatoid arthritis, or Lyme disease (ad infinitum ad
> nauseum) and we won't know until we've run all these tests." For which
> one had to go, hat in hand, to the HMO's referral office, and ask
> "Please, sir, may I have some more//// these tests which my doctor says
> he needs?" Worrying that one might have a progressive, crippling
> disease is MUCH worse than coping with a cyclic thing like FM. If it's
> a good day/week/month, then I enjoy it. If not, I cope -- but then,
> I've had 12 years of practice!
Yes, knowing you have the disease is easier than not knowing what's wrong.
The first six months, when they had no idea what was the problem, and doing
test after test after test.... That was awful. And, given that stress makes
things worse, and getting all these tests is very stressful..... The pain
just kept growng and growing and...
The good news is, understanding the pain has given me a scene or two in the
WnIP that I otherwise wouldn't have, most likely.
Geoff
Geoff Wedig
> In article <aso53b$n7g$3...@eeyore.INS.cwru.edu>, we...@darwin.epbi.cwru.edu
> (Geoff Wedig) wrote:
>> Certainly wouldn't surprise me. If so, I've been tortured for well
>> nigh 5
>> years now. And yes, the not knowing is important. It wouldn't be so
>> bad if
>> it were predictable, but it varies anywhere from 2-6 months, most
>> commonly
>> around 3 months. I'm at about 3 months since the last bad time at this
>> point. But I try not to think about it too much.
> It's a rotten club, but welcome to it.
> I find you really do have to shut your mind to it while things are OK.
> 'That was then, this is now.'
Yep. It's a skill that takes awhile to master, though. I'm nowhere near
perfect at it.
> And then when you get signals that you're off again, have some kind of a
> procedure in place, if it's only to make an appointment with the doc, that
> can make you feel more in control. This may not work for you, but I find
> it makes things more tolerable.
No, I have routines that I follow, knowing what's going on, now.
Lucinda Welenc
.
> After eight years of standing way out in the outfield, trying to
> pay no more attention to the game than is absolutely necessarily
> (i.e., look alive when it's time to come back in), perhaps you
> can see why all baseball data are filtered out before they can
> reach my consciousness.
Amen, sister! I spent my time in the outfield watching to make sure
that ball came nowhere near me. I'd already had my glasses broken twice
during elementary school 'games'.
Didn't help -- one of the little bastards that I had to call 'classmate'
purposefully threw the ball at my face from about 6 feet (2 meters, more
or less). (A softball is about the size of a man's fist, and not much
softer.) Broke my glasses, blacked my eye, damned near knocked me out.
And did they punish him? Don't be silly -- it was just another
'accident'!
--
Alanna
**********
Saying of the day:
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster 13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress. -- Ransom K. Ferm
Dorothy J Heydt
Lucinda Welenc <lwe...@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>.
>> After eight years of standing way out in the outfield, trying to
>> pay no more attention to the game than is absolutely necessarily
>> (i.e., look alive when it's time to come back in), perhaps you
>> can see why all baseball data are filtered out before they can
>> reach my consciousness.
>
>Amen, sister! I spent my time in the outfield watching to make sure
>that ball came nowhere near me. I'd already had my glasses broken twice
>during elementary school 'games'.
>
>Didn't help -- one of the little bastards that I had to call 'classmate'
>purposefully threw the ball at my face from about 6 feet (2 meters, more
>or less). (A softball is about the size of a man's fist, and not much
>softer.) Broke my glasses, blacked my eye, damned near knocked me out.
>And did they punish him? Don't be silly -- it was just another
>'accident'!
Amen, hallelujah!
I never had that happen, but I feared it constantly.
If I were running a school, the little twerps would indeed get
compulsory exercise. But it would be game-playing only for those
who wanted it. The rest of us would get out and walk, maybe even
run, around and around the game-players. At a safe distance.
Boudewijn Rempt
>
> I never had that happen, but I feared it constantly.
>
I've had it happen. I seriously hate any kind of round object
that speeds its way towards my nose or its environs...
> If I were running a school, the little twerps would indeed get
> compulsory exercise. But it would be game-playing only for those
> who wanted it. The rest of us would get out and walk, maybe even
> run, around and around the game-players. At a safe distance.
>
I'd have them choose between fencing, archery and pointlessly
running long distances quite fast.
--
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org
Robin Parkinson
> In article <3df07d52....@news.cis.dfn.de>, Helgi Briem
> <he...@decode.is> wrote:
>>On Fri, 06 Dec 2002 03:30:22 GMT, Richard Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net>
>>wrote:
>> >>Cripes. You don't have to be a baseball historian, just vaguely
>>>interested in baseball, to have heard of Lou Gehrig.
>>
>>Most of the people in the world (well over 95%) have never played
>>baseball. Almost as many have never seen baseball, never heard of
>>baseball and have as much interest in baseball as a Tralaxian. Baseball
>>is solely played in the US (+ Japan and Cuba I believe, both due to US
>>influence) I have only heard of Lou Gehrig in the context of his
>>disease.
>
> Good point. I, on the other hand, have lived in the US all my life, and
> my major contact with baseball consisted of having had to play softball
> (a watered-down version with, um, softer balls and, I assume, softer
> rules) in elementary school.
[snip chord-ringingly familiar story]
> After eight years of standing way out in the outfield, trying to pay no
> more attention to the game than is absolutely necessarily (i.e., look
> alive when it's time to come back in), perhaps you can see why all
> baseball data are filtered out before they can reach my consciousness.
For English schoolboys, cricket performs the same purpose. Evne though I
went to the same school as Vivian Stanshall (albeit somewhat later) it
never once occurred to me to pack a slim volume of Mallarme for those
quiet moments on the boundary. Shame.
Oddly enough, once I didn't have to play it every week in summer I grew to
quite like the game and now watch fairly regularly.
Also, I probably qualify as having a 'vague interest in baseball' for a
near-homeopathic value of 'vague', in that I attended one game while I was
in the 'States a few years ago, I more or less understand the basics of
the rules and I could probably name half-a-dozen teams if you got the
thumbscrews out, Furthermore, if I were ever in the USA for a prolonged
period would probably make the effort to attend games at least as
regularly as I attend cricket matches over here. However, I have never
heard of Lou Gehrig.
- Robin.
--
Trout: slightly fishy, but never coarse. http://www.troutmag.org
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>In article <3df07d52....@news.cis.dfn.de>,
>Helgi Briem <he...@decode.is> wrote:
>>On Fri, 06 Dec 2002 03:30:22 GMT, Richard Horton
>><rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>> >>Cripes. You don't have to be a baseball historian, just vaguely
>>>interested in baseball, to have heard of Lou Gehrig.
>>
>>Most of the people in the world (well over 95%) have never
>>played baseball. Almost as many have never seen baseball,
>>never heard of baseball and have as much interest in
>>baseball as a Tralaxian. Baseball is solely played in the
>>US (+ Japan and Cuba I believe, both due to US influence)
>>I have only heard of Lou Gehrig in the context of his
>>disease.
>
>Good point. I, on the other hand, have lived in the US all my
>life, and my major contact with baseball consisted of having had to
>play softball (a watered-down version with, um, softer balls and,
>I assume, softer rules) in elementary school.
My primary association with baseball is that I once hit someone in the
head with a baseball bat (and yes, it was the right thing to do).
Marilee J. Layman
I'd rather watch Damn Yankees!
Charlie Allery
Dorothy J Heydt wrote in message ...
>
>Bruised thumbnail sketch for the other 95%:
>
>There are two teams, see, and each is arranged in order of rank.
>Pitcher, catcher, first second and third basemen, infielders,
>outfielders. In elementary school this was more on the order of
>pitcher, catcher, some basemen, everybody else. When a given
>team is "in the field," they are arranged with the highest ranks
>closest to the scene of the action. When the team is "up at
>bat," each comes to the bat in rank order.
>
Yeah, but _when_ is your team's time at bat up? and _how_ many innings do
you have? That was the bit I never understood. In rounders (european
version - and yes, I suspect we've been here before) the team bats until all
players are out (and you only get a rounder if you complete a 'home run',
nothing else counts). In the version called Danish rounders, you can have
the whole batting team on the same base and get them all out with one ball.
But in either case, you only get the one innings.
Charlie
Dorothy J Heydt
Charlie Allery <cha...@charlieallery.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote in message ...
>>
>>Bruised thumbnail sketch for the other 95%:
>
After three of your batters have struck out (= swung at, and
failed to hit, three balls pitched at them). In
elementary-school softball, this can happen very quickly.
and _how_ many innings do
>you have?
In real baseball, nine (unless more for reasons I do not bother
to comprehend).
In elementary-school softball, whenever the P.E. period is over
and you get to go back inside.
Brian M. Scott
Heydt) wrote:
[...]
>Good point. I, on the other hand, have lived in the US all my
>life, and my major contact with baseball consisted of having had to
>play softball (a watered-down version with, um, softer balls and,
>I assume, softer rules) in elementary school.
I would describe it as a closely related but distinctly different
game, not nearly so much watered down as simply different.
[...]
Brian
Julian Flood
"Dorothy J Heydt" wrote
> baseball
It's rounders with a cricket ball.
JF
Next!
Brooks Moses
> Charlie Allery <cha...@charlieallery.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >Dorothy J Heydt wrote in message ...
> >>Bruised thumbnail sketch for the other 95%:
> >
> >Yeah, but _when_ is your team's time at bat up?
>
> After three of your batters have struck out (= swung at, and
> failed to hit, three balls pitched at them). In
> elementary-school softball, this can happen very quickly.
That's a sufficient condition for your time at bat to be up, but not
necessary -- the necessary condition is three of your batters are out;
striking out (failing to hit the ball is called a "strike", thus the
idiomatic references to "three strikes") is but one way to be out.
Batting the ball successfully, but having it caught before touching the
ground, is another way to be out. Also, once the batter has hit the
ball, they can later become out by being tagged by the ball while not
standing on a base.
This, of course, also has caveats, and the caveats have caveats.
Notable ones are that hitting the ball but not having it go in an
appropriate direction is called a "foul ball", and counts as failing to
hit the ball (unless it's caught, which still counts as an out) --
except that, if it would be the third failure to hit the ball, it
doesn't actually count as anything. Even if you don't swing at a ball
that's pitched at you, it can still count as failing to hit it, if it
was pitched in the right place (through an imaginary rectangle in front
of the batter). If a pitch is outside of this imaginary rectangle, and
the batter does not swing at it, it is referred to as a "ball" (a
conceptual item not to be confused with a small spherical physical
object); if a batter accumulates four of these before they either get a
hit are out, the batter is "walked" and proceeds to first base. Batters
have limitations on when they can run from base to base, and which paths
they can use to do so.
There are a couple more layers of caveats on those, and I think that's
pretty much it.
> and _how_ many innings do
> >you have?
>
> In real baseball, nine (unless more for reasons I do not bother
> to comprehend).
_Those_ reasons are actually quite simple. After the ninth inning (or
any succeeding inning), if the scores of both teams are equal, another
inning is played. Repeat until, at the end of an inning, the scores are
no longer equal.
- Brooks
Dorothy J Heydt
Brooks Moses <bmoses...@cits1.stanford.edu> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>> Charlie Allery <cha...@charlieallery.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> >Dorothy J Heydt wrote in message ...
>> >>Bruised thumbnail sketch for the other 95%:
>> >
>> >Yeah, but _when_ is your team's time at bat up?
>>
>> After three of your batters have struck out (= swung at, and
>> failed to hit, three balls pitched at them). In
>> elementary-school softball, this can happen very quickly.
>
>That's a sufficient condition for your time at bat to be up, but not
>necessary -- the necessary condition is three of your batters are out;
>striking out (failing to hit the ball is called a "strike", thus the
>idiomatic references to "three strikes") is but one way to be out.
>Batting the ball successfully, but having it caught before touching the
>ground, is another way to be out. Also, once the batter has hit the
>ball, they can later become out by being tagged by the ball while not
>standing on a base.
All this is true, but IIRC (and it's been a while) what happened
in elementary-school softball was that pretty quick three people
struck out. Sometimes without a bat ever having gotten within
sniffing distance of a ball.
Lucinda Welenc
My daughter's school had something they called "Fitness for Life" or
some such nonsense. They made the kids play something different every
month, tennis, golf, archery, swimming, etc. in the hopes that the kids
would find something to interest them enough that they would continue
the sport even after nobody was forcing them to do it. (HAH![1])
Missey was already into archery, and not bad at it. But would they let
her bring her own nice recurve bow and the arrows that had been fitted
to her reach and draw weight? Of course not. She had to use the same
cheap 10-pound fiberglass bow as everyone else[2], and when she came
home and told her father that half the arrows were missing fletchings,
he hit the roof. Complaint letters to the school and the school board
followed, pointing out the safety problems with arrows that don't fly
straight because they only have 2 feathers. Rather than get decent
equipment, they just dropped archery from the list. :(
[1] Why do they think that enough determination and nagging and forced
participation in 'sports' will turn a natural non-athlete into an
Olympic contender?
[2] Neither of them were happy that it wasn't being taught right either;
drawing the bow back to some wavering place between one's ear and
shoulder does not make for marksmanship.
--
Alanna
**********
Saying of the day:
I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere
near the place. -- Steven Wright
Mark Atwood
>
> I'd have them choose between fencing, archery and pointlessly
> running long distances quite fast.
How about more useful stuff? I would choose to make avaoiable Martial
Arts, Yoga, Strength Training, or Running.
One of the first physically vigorous class I enjoyed was a "Weights
101" class I took early in my years in University. On the first day,
the instructor came in, tapped the two biggest guys in the class,
looked around and asked "does anyone else lift, or have competed in
high school sports?" She looked around for the raised hands, tapped
them as well, and then said to them, "You're out. Drop this class."
And the rest of the quarter was a lot of fun.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Laura M. Parkinson
>In article <asrde2$gsl$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk>,
>Charlie Allery <cha...@charlieallery.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>Dorothy J Heydt wrote in message ...
>>>
>>>Bruised thumbnail sketch for the other 95%:
>>
>>Yeah, but _when_ is your team's time at bat up?
>
>After three of your batters have struck out (= swung at, and
>failed to hit, three balls pitched at them). In
>elementary-school softball, this can happen very quickly.
*grins* Other conditions for getting "out" have already been mentioned
below, I see, but I also thought I'd add that an inning consists of
each team being up to bat once.
I suspect that this is the same in most games, but just in case, I
thought I'd mention it. (No, I'm not a sports person, how can you
guess?)
--
-'-,-'-<<0 Trickster 0>>-'-,-'- lpark...@mindspring.com
http://lparkinson.home.mindspring.com
"Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be
destroyed." -Richard Adams, Watership Down
Brian M. Scott
<bmoses...@cits1.stanford.edu> wrote:
[...]
>This, of course, also has caveats, and the caveats have caveats.
>Notable ones are that hitting the ball but not having it go in an
>appropriate direction is called a "foul ball", and counts as failing to
>hit the ball (unless it's caught, which still counts as an out) --
>except that, if it would be the third failure to hit the ball, it
>doesn't actually count as anything.
And of course this has no analogue in cricket, which allows the
ball to be played through the entire 360 degrees. Baseball has
nothing like the hook to deep square leg, the late cut through
the slips, or the shot that delicately steers the ball toward
fine leg.
Another difference comes to mind: if the pitcher hits the batter
with the ball, the batter automatically advances to first base.
(If the bowler hits the batsman in cricket, it's just too bad.)
[...]
Brian
Brian M. Scott
<cha...@charlieallery.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote in message ...
>>Bruised thumbnail sketch for the other 95%:
>>There are two teams, see, and each is arranged in order of rank.
>>Pitcher, catcher, first second and third basemen, infielders,
>>outfielders. In elementary school this was more on the order of
>>pitcher, catcher, some basemen, everybody else. When a given
>>team is "in the field," they are arranged with the highest ranks
>>closest to the scene of the action. When the team is "up at
>>bat," each comes to the bat in rank order.
No, the batting order has no necessary relationship to the
fielding positions. It is entirely arbitrary, but once it has
been established, it must be adhered to throughout the game.
>Yeah, but _when_ is your team's time at bat up? and _how_ many innings do
>you have?
Brooks has answered this well enough that you probably now know
more about penguins than you cared to know. The only thing that
I'd add is that baseball has nothing equivalent to the
declaration in cricket.
>That was the bit I never understood. In rounders (european
>version - and yes, I suspect we've been here before) the team bats until all
>players are out
This is borrowed from cricket (or has a common origin).
>(and you only get a rounder if you complete a 'home run',
>nothing else counts). In the version called Danish rounders, you can have
>the whole batting team on the same base and get them all out with one ball.
>But in either case, you only get the one innings.
Note that in baseball, unlike cricket, 'innings' can only be
plural; the singular is 'inning'.
Brian
Dorothy J Heydt
LAFF
<cha...@charlieallery.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Yeah, but _when_ is your team's time at bat up?
After three players have been called "out". Which can happen "three up
and three down", or can require the entire team -- well, at least all
nine of the players in the lineup at that time -- to "bat around" and
then some, depending on how well they do in that inning. I think
"batting around" must be similar to what you mention below, " the team
bats until all players are out," but only three outs are needed. Other
players can get on base somehow in the meantime, and hopefully score (or
not if you're a fan of the other team).
and _how_ many innings do
> you have?
Usually nine. In baseball, an "inning" ("innings" is the plural) is one
turn at bat for each team, the home team going last. Sometimes there are
extra innings (if the game is tied at the end of nine innings, they
play until someone wins), and sometimes the game is "called" early
because of rain, or in a park with no lights, darkness -- a game is
official after 5 innings, I believe the rule is -- but nine is the usual
length. (The last half-inning is not played if the home team, which
would be up then, is already ahead, so a game can be "official" at
four-and-a-half innings, and a regulation nine-inning game often is only
eight-and-a-half.)
>That was the bit I never understood. In rounders (european
> version - and yes, I suspect we've been here before) the team bats until all
> players are out (and you only get a rounder if you complete a 'home run',
> nothing else counts). In the version called Danish rounders, you can have
> the whole batting team on the same base and get them all out with one ball.
> But in either case, you only get the one innings.
Now, that is truly strange to a baseball fan. Not just the disconcerting
grammar of "one innings", either. In baseball, only one player from the
batting team can be on any one base at a time -- if there are two, one
of them is declared "out". (An exception is if the runner on third base
"steals home" while one of his teammates is at bat. The run counts and
the player at bat is not considered out because of the steal.)
For that matter, how many bases are there in your version of rounders?
And cricket is totally incomprehensible to many of us.
--
_
( | Lois Fundis
(*| lfu...@weir.net
( | Latitude: 40.398637 (N)
/ | Longitude: -80.599882 (W)
( |
/ |_______
/
Boudewijn Rempt
> Boudewijn Rempt <bo...@valdyas.org> writes:
>>
>> I'd have them choose between fencing, archery and pointlessly
>> running long distances quite fast.
>
> How about more useful stuff? I would choose to make avaoiable Martial
> Arts, Yoga, Strength Training, or Running.
>
I think it's a mistake to teach children useful stuff. Useful stuff
has the tendency to get out of date -- like all those schools teaching
children computer skill by telling them how Word works.
Anyway, I don't see why any of the things you mentioned are more useful --
especially since we have the running in common -- so that should be ok :-).
Boudewijn Rempt
>
> My daughter's school had something they called "Fitness for Life" or
> some such nonsense. They made the kids play something different every
> month, tennis, golf, archery, swimming, etc. in the hopes that the kids
> would find something to interest them enough that they would continue
> the sport even after nobody was forcing them to do it. (HAH![1])
>
Well, thats better than having to go through the same list of, er rounders,
running quite short distances, hockey, soccer and rounders year after year.
Anyway, we all know that sports makes many kids suffer; no doubt there
would be far fewer authors without compulsory P.E. :-).
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
PE was the only class all of my classmates throughout all my school days
loved passionately. It was pretty mild, mind you: the guys basically
played soccer and we played volley.
I hated it, but I was very much alone in that.
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan - ada...@despammed.com - this is a valid address
homepage: http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
English blog: http://annafdd.blogspot.com/
Blog in italiano: http://fulminiesaette.blogspot.com
Charlie Allery
Brian M. Scott wrote in message <3df15fa9....@enews.newsguy.com>...
>ball to be played through the entire 360 degrees. Baseball has
>nothing like the hook to deep square leg, the late cut through
>the slips, or the shot that delicately steers the ball toward
>fine leg.
>
>Another difference comes to mind: if the pitcher hits the batter
>with the ball, the batter automatically advances to first base.
>(If the bowler hits the batsman in cricket, it's just too bad.)
>
>[...]
>
Heh. In rounders (which is what us girls have to play at schools that don't
let us play cricket), if the bowler throws 3 no-balls, you get a
half-rounder, and the bowler has to keep on trying. In cricket, you get a
run for every no-ball. And of course, if the bowler hits the batsman in the
head, it usually counts as a no-ball doesn't it? (Above shoulder height?)
As for playing cricket ... well there was the first time I played for
Shepton Mallet against Dowlish Wake, as 12th 'man', and the opposition
brought back their fast bowlers in the failing light. Nothing like being
treated as one of the lads, is there? :-) The 12-year-old at the other end
wanted to run and got himself out and I carried my bat with one run to my
name <preen>.
Charlie
Charlie Allery
Laura M. Parkinson wrote in message <3df16131...@NEWS.CIS.DFN.DE>...
>>failed to hit, three balls pitched at them). In
>>elementary-school softball, this can happen very quickly.
>
>*grins* Other conditions for getting "out" have already been mentioned
>below, I see, but I also thought I'd add that an inning consists of
>each team being up to bat once.
>
>I suspect that this is the same in most games, but just in case, I
>thought I'd mention it. (No, I'm not a sports person, how can you
>guess?)
We only have innings in rounders and cricket over here. Rounders you only
get the one, cricket you get two in full-length matches (4 or 5 days) and
one in a one-day match. And 'innings' is the singular as well as the plural.
:-) Each innings continues until the whole team is out - which is why it is
so difficult to contemplate an innings that is as short as your baseball
ones.
Charlie
Charlie Allery
LAFF wrote in message ...
Normal rounders has 4 bases, which are usually poles stuck either into the
ground, or into bases. You are 'on' a base if you are touching the pole or
base with a hand or a foot. You have to run around the outside of all 4
bases, but if you're going to stop on one then you have to touch it. 4th
base is not the same as the batting square, and has to be touched to be
'in'. Otherwise pretty much same as baseball, you can be out if the fielder
touches the pole with the ball before you get there, or touches you with the
ball between the bases (and I seem to recall that originally this could be
by throwing the ball at the player, not just by tagging them with it in your
hand).
What I call Danish rounders is a more unusual form of the game which I
assume that I know because my mother did some PE training in Denmark in the
late 40s. The only real difference is in the bases being marked squares
about a metre square. Players already on a base can run between bases once
the ball has been bowled (and not until then), but cannot be 'run out' by
another player joining them on the base. This can end up with 8 players on
3rd base while the last player is up to bat, and an amusing all out charge
for 4th by 8 people, which generally puts so much pressure on the fielding
team that they make it! It is a much more enjoyable game for small children
because even slow runners cannot be 'run out' by a faster child and can
enjoy the game.
>
>And cricket is totally incomprehensible to many of us.
Ah, well, you need to devote several days in contemplation of cricket to
really understand it, but it helps if you consider it to be our equivalent
of American Football. You have 2 teams and one has possession of the ball.
It's so slow because it's really all about tactics, and setting up the field
correctly. After the ball is bowled, the action then plays out until the
ball is effectively 'dead' (usually when back in the fielding team's hand,
so close to the stumps that the batting team will not risk running). Then
you consider what offensive tactic (what ball to bowl) and what defensive
tactic (to attack the ball or just to defend your wicket) to employ, and
then (as in US football) what actually happens is in the lap of the gods.
:-)
Charlie
Charlie Allery
Julian Flood wrote in message ...
>
>"Dorothy J Heydt" wrote
>
> > baseball
>
>It's rounders with a cricket ball.
>
As I understand it, constructed like a rounders ball, but the same size as a
cricket ball.
Charlie
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
(Geoff Wedig) wrote:
> mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>
> > In article <aso53b$n7g$3...@eeyore.INS.cwru.edu>,
> > we...@darwin.epbi.cwru.edu (Geoff Wedig) wrote:
>
> >> Certainly wouldn't surprise me. If so, I've been tortured for well
> >> nigh 5
> >> years now. And yes, the not knowing is important. It wouldn't be
> > so >bad if
> >> it were predictable, but it varies anywhere from 2-6 months, most
> >> commonly
> >> around 3 months. I'm at about 3 months since the last bad time at
> > this
> >> point. But I try not to think about it too much.
>
> > It's a rotten club, but welcome to it.
>
> > I find you really do have to shut your mind to it while things are
> > OK. 'That was then, this is now.'
>
> Yep. It's a skill that takes awhile to master, though. I'm nowhere
> near
> perfect at it.
Me either, because sometimes you can't, but don't beat yourself up about
it.
>
> > And then when you get signals that you're off again, have some kind
> > of a procedure in place, if it's only to make an appointment with the
> > doc, that can make you feel more in control. This may not work for
> > you, but I find it makes things more tolerable.
>
> No, I have routines that I follow, knowing what's going on, now.
That's good. The more ability you have to control part of what's going
on, the more it's possible to bear with it, I think.
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
bo...@valdyas.org (Boudewijn Rempt) wrote:
Am I the only person who actually liked compulsory PE?
OK, there was the row when we badly wanted to play football rather than
cricket, but the gym teacher was ex England Ladies cricket team, so guess
how far _that_ got...
At least I don't belong to the post-compulsory-PE generation in the UK,
who aren't fit enough when they join the army, not just to do the basic
training, but to wear the /boots/ -- because boots are too heavy for their
little trainers-accustomed feet. (OK, end of Smug Rant.)
Personally, I'd take charging around in the mud and rain over yet another
boring period in class, but I guess that was just me...
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
cha...@charlieallery.demon.co.uk (Charlie Allery) wrote:
<rounders>
> you can be out if the fielder
> touches the pole with the ball before you get there, or touches you
> with the
> ball between the bases (and I seem to recall that originally this could
> be
> by throwing the ball at the player, not just by tagging them with it in
> your
> hand).
Yes. Memories of happy days. :)
All right, not so happy when it was me on the receiving end of the flung
ball, but it was very satisfying to pop somebody with a throw /just/
before they reached the base.
The only other significant thing I recall about rounders is that we
considered it bad form to whack the ball off to about "seven o'clock"
where the rest of the team were waiting to bat, so that (a) you stunned a
member of your own team, and (b) the opposing fielders had to grub around
under your team's feet for the ball and get their hands stepped on.
This never happened, you understand. Not deliberately. Oh no.
Yes, they did mention 'sportsmanship' as a concept...
Mary
Brian M. Scott
>>"Dorothy J Heydt" wrote
>> > baseball
A little bigger, I think.
Brian
Dorothy J Heydt
It's a distinct possibility.
>At least I don't belong to the post-compulsory-PE generation in the UK,
>who aren't fit enough when they join the army, not just to do the basic
>training, but to wear the /boots/ -- because boots are too heavy for their
>little trainers-accustomed feet. (OK, end of Smug Rant.)
Oh, I grant people need some kind of physical exercise. It's the
compulsory participation in team sports, with the subtext that
you *MUST CARE ABOUT THE GAME,* that bugs me and I assume others.
C. S. Lewis complained about his school's attitude that "games
must be compulsory because everyone likes them except a few
rotters who should be forced to" goes back several generations
now. There's also Stella Gibbons's Flora Poste remarking, "They
complained when I didn't run after the ball, so I ran after the
ball, but that wasn't enough, it seems you had to run *somewhere*
with it. And then they asked me if I couldn't be persuaded to
care, because my father had been so keen, and I said I couldn't
really, and they said I was No Good."
>
>Personally, I'd take charging around in the mud and rain over yet another
>boring period in class, but I guess that was just me...
I guess.
Brian M. Scott
<cha...@charlieallery.demon.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
>Heh. In rounders (which is what us girls have to play at schools that don't
>let us play cricket), if the bowler throws 3 no-balls, you get a
>half-rounder, and the bowler has to keep on trying. In cricket, you get a
>run for every no-ball. And of course, if the bowler hits the batsman in the
>head, it usually counts as a no-ball doesn't it? (Above shoulder height?)
I don't know what the current rule is, but I'm pretty sure that
it didn't used to.
>As for playing cricket ... well there was the first time I played for
>Shepton Mallet
Held by Robert Malet temp. Henry I.
>against Dowlish Wake,
Held by Ralph Wac in 1189. (No, I have no interest at all in
English place-names. Of course not.)
>as 12th 'man', and the opposition
>brought back their fast bowlers in the failing light. Nothing like being
>treated as one of the lads, is there? :-) The 12-year-old at the other end
>wanted to run and got himself out and I carried my bat with one run to my
>name <preen>.
:-)
So now I can associate *two* people with cricket and Somerset:
you and Ian Botham. ;-)
Brian
Alma Hromic Deckert
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>Am I the only person who actually liked compulsory PE?
no, Ash probably did too <g>
A.
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
wrote:
> In article <assti7$2v1$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
> <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >Am I the only person who actually liked compulsory PE?
>
> It's a distinct possibility.
'S okay. I've got used to finding myself among minorities. <g>
>
> >At least I don't belong to the post-compulsory-PE generation in the
> UK, >who aren't fit enough when they join the army, not just to do the
> basic >training, but to wear the /boots/ -- because boots are too heavy
> for their >little trainers-accustomed feet. (OK, end of Smug Rant.)
>
> Oh, I grant people need some kind of physical exercise. It's the
> compulsory participation in team sports, with the subtext that
> you *MUST CARE ABOUT THE GAME,* that bugs me and I assume others.
<snip Lewis and Gibbons>
What I've never understood is why, when they said was important, you just
didn't shrug and think "No, it's not." In my case: "no, it's not, it's
just fun."
Yes, we were supposed to care about where the various school 'houses' were
in the sports league, but I didn't -- and accusations of being morally
inferior I tended to treat with what I think, in the army, is referred to
as "dumb insolence". I'd learned to think for myself by then -- and to
find out that Authority wasn't going to agree with me, nine times out of
ten, so I was used to that.
It's odd, there were other criticisms from On High that really got to me,
but the sports ethic just slid off like I was Teflon. I have no idea why.
> >
> >Personally, I'd take charging around in the mud and rain over yet
> another >boring period in class, but I guess that was just me...
>
> I guess.
And it's odd, because the writing life isn't team player oriented in the
slightest; it's most suited to those who can work on their own.
Mary
Katy Mulvey
From the official rules:
http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/baseball_basics/mlb_basics_objectives.jsp
1.09
The ball shall be a sphere formed by yarn wound around a small core of cork,
rubber or similar material, covered with two stripes of white horsehide or
cowhide, tightly stitched together. It shall weigh not less than five nor
more than 5 1/4 ounces avoirdupois and measure not less than nine nor more
than 9 1/4 inches in circumference.
- Katy
Dorothy J Heydt
<mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <H6r9p...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
>wrote:
>>
>> compulsory participation in team sports, with the subtext that
>> you *MUST CARE ABOUT THE GAME,* that bugs me and I assume others.
><snip Lewis and Gibbons>
>
>What I've never understood is why, when they said was important, you just
>didn't shrug and think "No, it's not."
That would do me no good, I was still expected to act as though
it were.
Elizabeth Shack
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>Am I the only person who actually liked compulsory PE?
I hated it, but I don't think it should be done away with. I wish
there was a way they could run it so it wouldn't drive people away
from sports and exercise. Something where instead of making you do
six laps of the track until you were done, they could actually teach
you how to improve. I actually like jogging now that I can do it in a
park and go as far or fast as I want, instead of collecting straws
going around a track and watching everyone else go in to play
dodgeball.
Don't know what they could do about the team sports though; that was
more a problem with the attitudes of the other students.
--
Elizabeth Shack eas...@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~eashack/life.html
Busy. Got coffee?
Dorothy J Heydt
Elizabeth Shack <eas...@nospam.earthlink.net> wrote:
>On Sat, 7 Dec 2002 13:37:11 +0000 (UTC),
>mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>
>>Am I the only person who actually liked compulsory PE?
>
>I hated it, but I don't think it should be done away with. I wish
>there was a way they could run it so it wouldn't drive people away
>from sports and exercise.
OK, making a distinction between sports and exercise... sports
being a form of evil zombie mind-control that incidentally
involves some exercise...
I think the best tactics they could have used on *me* would've
been, "Look, you live in a body made of muscle and bone and
stuff. You will never get free of it till you die, and you'll
be even more miserable if the body you're in isn't healthy. You
have to give it some exercise, boring though the exercise may be.
It's like brushing your teeth."
>
>Don't know what they could do about the team sports though; that was
>more a problem with the attitudes of the other students.
In my case, I think, mind you I say I think, it was a problem
with my attitudes versus those of the instructor. She always
thought I should care, I was always ready to be damned if I'd
care. I don't remember the other students giving a hoot what I
thought.
Charlie Allery
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote in message ...
>In article <H6r9p...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
>wrote:
>
>> In article <assti7$2v1$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
>> <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
>> >
>> >Am I the only person who actually liked compulsory PE?
>>
>> It's a distinct possibility.
>
>'S okay. I've got used to finding myself among minorities. <g>
I enjoyed PE because we got to try out different things - like badminton,
volleyball, rollerskating, indoor or roller-hockey, trampolining etc. In
'games' (2 periods in the afternoon) we generally ended up doing what we
were good at or were in the team for, or 'the alternative' - in the summer,
this was rounders, and I was the only player who was there because I
_wanted_ to be!
>>
>> Oh, I grant people need some kind of physical exercise. It's the
>> compulsory participation in team sports, with the subtext that
>> you *MUST CARE ABOUT THE GAME,* that bugs me and I assume others.
><snip Lewis and Gibbons>
>
>What I've never understood is why, when they said was important, you just
>didn't shrug and think "No, it's not." In my case: "no, it's not, it's
>just fun."
>
>Yes, we were supposed to care about where the various school 'houses' were
>in the sports league, but I didn't -- and accusations of being morally
>inferior I tended to treat with what I think, in the army, is referred to
>as "dumb insolence". I'd learned to think for myself by then -- and to
>find out that Authority wasn't going to agree with me, nine times out of
>ten, so I was used to that.
>
I really _Cared_ about the outcome of the game ... until the end of the
match, at which point it was completely irrelevant and not worth getting
upset over. I thoroughly enjoyed doing my best, and subscribed to the
classic 'it's the taking part that counts' motto. But then, my mother was a
PE teacher.
>It's odd, there were other criticisms from On High that really got to me,
>but the sports ethic just slid off like I was Teflon. I have no idea why.
>
>> >
>> >Personally, I'd take charging around in the mud and rain over yet
>> another >boring period in class, but I guess that was just me...
>>
>> I guess.
>
>And it's odd, because the writing life isn't team player oriented in the
>slightest; it's most suited to those who can work on their own.
>
But you've just explained that you enjoyed charging round in the mud etc for
your own reasons as much as for the team aspect of it. You weren't doing it
to be 'in with' the others in your year, but because you enjoyed it. Those
who played the sport because they wanted to be part of the team probably
couldn't cope with the solitude of writing. Me, I was a goalie, standing at
the back shouting at the rest of the team. Happy if I never touched the ball
all game (because we'd be winning) and happy if I had loads to do and we
lost. :-)
... and you were lucky to have the choice of cricket. We just had netball or
hockey. I had to wait until my ex- was playing for a bottom of the league
local cricket team to finally get my chance to play.
Charlie
Charlie Allery
Charlie Allery
LOL!!
I think that if the ball went behind the batting line, you could only run to
1st base and in fact you used to walk it because the backstop could never
get there in time to threaten you.
Charlie (wondering if come the summer we should try to organise a UK rasfc
rounders match in a park ... Battersea?)
Mary Messall
> On Sat, 7 Dec 2002 13:37:11 +0000 (UTC),
> mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> >Am I the only person who actually liked compulsory PE?
> I hated it, but I don't think it should be done away with. I wish
> there was a way they could run it so it wouldn't drive people away
> from sports and exercise.
The best PE classes were always the ones that involved toys, it seems
to me. Parachute games were fantastic, and one of my schools used to
get out those little scooters that you propel by moving the handlebars
back and forth. I recall playing with the giant bouncy-balls with
handles more than once, rolling around and falling off. We did obstacle
course type things now and then, and would make up courses for
ourselves involving the playground equipment, during recess. I don't
think we ever had a trampoline in school, but we had one at home, and
spent hours burning calories and risking our necks...
We also spent recesses trying to do gymnastics (when we weren't trying
to put each other in trances to remember our past lives, or playing
games to see who we'd marry) and seems like one of my schools had some
balance beams and vaulting horses and whatnot that we got to try tricks
on occasionally.
I guess the thing which really makes those memories so much fun, and
the team sports memories so traumatic, is that when the toys came out
nobody cared what you did with them. You weren't being forced to follow
rules, and their was no enemy eager to see you to let down your team
and humiliate yourself. I don't think it's necessary to force kids to
run laps or choose sides just so they'd get excericise. Most of the
time it's getting them to stay still that's the problem.
Pity we couldn't play with scooters and parachutes in high school.
-Mary (Games are definitely much better when you make up the rules
yourself. We had four square games with permissible moves called
"teaparty" and "spike")
--
{I drank at every vine. / The last was like the first. / I came upon
no wine / So wonderful as thirst.} {"Heaven bless the babe!" they said
"What queer books she must have read!"} -two by Edna St Vincent Millay
http://indagabo.orcon.net.nz/ -> my soapbox and grandstand and gallery
Tim S
> In article <assti7$2v1$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
> <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Am I the only person who actually liked compulsory PE?
>
> It's a distinct possibility.
Most of the people in my class enjoyed games. I didn't, but since I enjoyed
most of the other lessons more than them, it only seemed fair that it should
sometimes be the other way round.
>
>> At least I don't belong to the post-compulsory-PE generation in the UK,
>> who aren't fit enough when they join the army, not just to do the basic
>> training, but to wear the /boots/ -- because boots are too heavy for their
>> little trainers-accustomed feet. (OK, end of Smug Rant.)
>
> Oh, I grant people need some kind of physical exercise. It's the
> compulsory participation in team sports, with the subtext that
> you *MUST CARE ABOUT THE GAME,* that bugs me and I assume others.
> C. S. Lewis complained about his school's attitude that "games
> must be compulsory because everyone likes them except a few
> rotters who should be forced to" goes back several generations
> now.
Ah, well, nobody particularly minded that I wasn't good at games (except
running fast), which makes the difference I suppose.
Tim
Dorothy J Heydt
You weren't being forced to follow
>rules, and their was no enemy eager to see you to let down your team
>and humiliate yourself.
Or teachers following the teams around making them WANT to try to
WIN.
I don't think it's necessary to force kids to
>run laps or choose sides just so they'd get excericise. Most of the
>time it's getting them to stay still that's the problem.
I might have been willing to run laps, if they had been willing
to settle for noncompetitive speeds. Choosing sides was the pits.
And I was one of the ones who would've been happy to stay still,
preferably with a book.
Dorothy J Heydt
Charlie Allery <cha...@charlieallery.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>... and you were lucky to have the choice of cricket. We just had netball or
>hockey. I had to wait until my ex- was playing for a bottom of the league
>local cricket team to finally get my chance to play.
Well, as a female high-school student I sometimes had a choice
and sometimes didn't. E.g. in a given quarter I might be made to
play something the teachers liked three days a week and given a
"choice" for the other two. Nonchosen things included softball,
basketball, volleyball, field hockey, and there were probably a
few others. Chosen things could come from a group such as water
ballet, lifesaving training, modern dance, tennis, badminton, and
probably a few others. I chose anything in the swimming field
(no competitive swimming as far as I can remember, not in
classes, I daresay there was an afterschool swim team, but catch
me staying after school for sports!) or modern dance whenever I
could. I remember one quarter, though, "choosing" badminton
because it was the least obnoxious of the things available. This
was in southern California in the mid-1950s.
Heather Jones
>
> Lucinda Welenc wrote:
>
> >
> > My daughter's school had something they called "Fitness for Life" or
> > some such nonsense. They made the kids play something different every
> > month, tennis, golf, archery, swimming, etc. in the hopes that the kids
> > would find something to interest them enough that they would continue
> > the sport even after nobody was forcing them to do it. (HAH![1])
> >
>
> Well, thats better than having to go through the same list of, er rounders,
> running quite short distances, hockey, soccer and rounders year after year.
It's also better than getting stuck, year after year, with PE
teachers who are enamored of long-distance running, and who think
that _everyone_ will benefit from long-distance running, and that
a kid who complains the running makes their heel hurt is
goldbricking rather than experiencing a torn achilles tendon, and
that a kid who complains that running makes their knees hurt is a
whining complainer ....
When I got to High School and we could choose our own PE fields
(like bicycling or swimming or gymnastics) I actually had half a
chance at finding some sort of fitness activity I'd be likely to
keep up. It was a bit too late, though.
Heather
--
*****
Heather Rose Jones
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
*****
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
cha...@charlieallery.demon.co.uk (Charlie Allery) wrote:
Oh, that rings very, very faint bells...
> Charlie (wondering if come the summer we should try to organise a UK
> rasfc
> rounders match in a park ... Battersea?)
Now _there's_ a thought. We'll need a copy of the rules, and in the case
of some of us, runners... :)
We need to organise it for the one sunny day, too!
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
wrote:
> In article <ast8mp$ae0$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
> <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
> >In article <H6r9p...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
> Heydt) >wrote:
> >>
> >> Oh, I grant people need some kind of physical exercise. It's the
> >> compulsory participation in team sports, with the subtext that
> >> you *MUST CARE ABOUT THE GAME,* that bugs me and I assume others.
> ><snip Lewis and Gibbons>
> >
> >What I've never understood is why, when they said was important, you
> just >didn't shrug and think "No, it's not."
>
> That would do me no good, I was still expected to act as though
> it were.
I guess...
By 11 or 12, I'd worked out that education had taken a sharp turn away
from what I enjoyed about it at Primary School -- i.e. learning
interesting things. The objective had become to turn me into something I
had no interest in being. My objective was to avoid it. Whether by
provoking great rows, or fading into the wallpaper; I didn't mind which...
OK, so it took me a while to notice the socialisation progress. :) Comes
of spending so little time with children before I went to school. I was
used to regarding myself as 'adult', in many ways, and that makes it
easier to give a games teacher the old hairy eyeball.
I've never been sure whether team sports are supposed to teach losing
gracefully, or the importance of winning...
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
<splutter!>
She says no, she sneaked off to weapons practise, because football is too
bloody dangerous... :)
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
cha...@charlieallery.demon.co.uk (Charlie Allery) wrote:
>
> mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote in message ...
> >In article <H6r9p...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
> Heydt)
> >wrote:
> >
> >> In article <assti7$2v1$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
> >> <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >Am I the only person who actually liked compulsory PE?
> >>
> >> It's a distinct possibility.
> >
> >'S okay. I've got used to finding myself among minorities. <g>
>
> I enjoyed PE because we got to try out different things - like
> badminton,
> volleyball, rollerskating, indoor or roller-hockey, trampolining etc.
Hell's blistering bells! Roller-hockey?!
Netball, cricket, tennis, field sports, and running; plus hockey and the
occasional impromptu football match. We didn't get exotic things like
roller-skates, more's the pity. I did enjoy the trampoline in the gym,
but I still don't know how I didn't break my neck.
And, speaking of gyms, I still can't climb up a rope. :-(
>In
> 'games' (2 periods in the afternoon) we generally ended up doing what we
> were good at or were in the team for, or 'the alternative' - in the
> summer,
> this was rounders, and I was the only player who was there because I
> _wanted_ to be!
To be honest, I remember most of my class as being enthusiastic about
anything that meant they could run around making a lot of noise, so
rounders was popular.
> >> Oh, I grant people need some kind of physical exercise. It's the
> >> compulsory participation in team sports, with the subtext that
> >> you *MUST CARE ABOUT THE GAME,* that bugs me and I assume others.
> ><snip Lewis and Gibbons>
> >
> >What I've never understood is why, when they said was important, you
> just
> >didn't shrug and think "No, it's not." In my case: "no, it's not, it's
> >just fun."
> >
> >Yes, we were supposed to care about where the various school 'houses'
> were
> >in the sports league, but I didn't -- and accusations of being morally
> >inferior I tended to treat with what I think, in the army, is referred
> to
> >as "dumb insolence". I'd learned to think for myself by then -- and to
> >find out that Authority wasn't going to agree with me, nine times out
> of
> >ten, so I was used to that.
> >
>
> I really _Cared_ about the outcome of the game ... until the end of the
> match, at which point it was completely irrelevant and not worth getting
> upset over. I thoroughly enjoyed doing my best, and subscribed to the
> classic 'it's the taking part that counts' motto. But then, my mother
> was a
> PE teacher.
:-)
Just as well you didn't mind it, then...
I remember they tried to convince us that it didn't matter whether you won
or lost, it was how one played the game. Maybe that's why being on the
losing end of a match wasn't the occasion for any great disgrace?
Although I've always had a preference for winning, that they didn't
eradicate. <g>
> >It's odd, there were other criticisms from On High that really got to
> me,
> >but the sports ethic just slid off like I was Teflon. I have no idea
> why.
> >
> >> >
> >> >Personally, I'd take charging around in the mud and rain over yet
> >> another >boring period in class, but I guess that was just me...
> >>
> >> I guess.
> >
> >And it's odd, because the writing life isn't team player oriented in
> the
> >slightest; it's most suited to those who can work on their own.
> >
>
>
> But you've just explained that you enjoyed charging round in the mud
> etc for
> your own reasons as much as for the team aspect of it. You weren't
> doing it
> to be 'in with' the others in your year, but because you enjoyed it.
It never occurred to me to be 'in' with any group, mainly because by the
time I'd realised there /were/ groups (I was slow, OK?), I was already in
the "weird eccentrics who get into interesting sorts of trouble" group,
with my small number of friends. I supposed we would have been called
geeks, if the term applied pre-computers. But certainly proto-writers and
proto-computer persons...
> Those
> who played the sport because they wanted to be part of the team probably
> couldn't cope with the solitude of writing. Me, I was a goalie,
> standing at
> the back shouting at the rest of the team. Happy if I never touched the
> ball
> all game (because we'd be winning) and happy if I had loads to do and we
> lost. :-)
Yeah, that sounds a reasonable win-win option!
>
> ... and you were lucky to have the choice of cricket. We just had
> netball or
> hockey. I had to wait until my ex- was playing for a bottom of the
> league
> local cricket team to finally get my chance to play.
Eh. Let me explain. Would you like to have to play cricket under the
instruction of a woman who I believe once played for England, and who
seemed to want every 13 year old to be instantaneously that good, and that
interested in it?
My knowledge of the rules of that kind of game rarely gets beyond "hit the
ball and run like buggery!"; I'm not the ideal audience for a discussion
of leg-byes...
Mary
Helen
o.uk writes
>
>Am I the only person who actually liked compulsory PE?
>
just wasn't cool in the 60s.
>OK, there was the row when we badly wanted to play football rather than
>cricket, but the gym teacher was ex England Ladies cricket team, so guess
>how far _that_ got...
>
>At least I don't belong to the post-compulsory-PE generation in the UK,
>who aren't fit enough when they join the army, not just to do the basic
>training, but to wear the /boots/ -- because boots are too heavy for their
>little trainers-accustomed feet. (OK, end of Smug Rant.)
>
I do worry about the younger generation, to be honest. Not only the
lack of exercise but also the diet. We may have moaned about our school
dinners, but with hindsight they were much healthier than the food many
kids eat now, despite so called "healthy choices" on canteen menus. We
were lucky if we had chips one a week; they seem to be on the menu every
day now.
>Personally, I'd take charging around in the mud and rain over yet another
>boring period in class, but I guess that was just me...
>
>Mary
And me. Though we didn't like the mud. My class preferred netball to
hockey. The summer with athletics and tennis was the best.
Helen
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk