Meanderings, 1 June 2024

Welcome to June! Around these parts of the globe, the end of May was a bit too much like April in weather and temperatures, but this weekend feels much more the way June ought to feel. By the way, have you noticed how well the Cleveland Guardians are playing? (Just thought I’d mention that.)

Photo by Hans Veth on Unsplash

Eighty years late, but that’s better than never! I once read an outstanding biography of Josh Gibson. Title: The Power and the Darkness. If you want to read a good book on the Negro leagues: Robert Peterson’s Only the Ball Was White.

NEW YORK -- Josh Gibson became Major League Baseball's career leader with a .372 batting average, surpassing Ty Cobb's .367, when Negro Leagues records for more than 2,300 players were incorporated Tuesday after a three-year research project.

Gibson's .466 average for the 1943 Homestead Grays became the season standard, followed by Charlie "Chino" Smith's .451 for the 1929 New York Lincoln Giants. They overtook the .440 by Hugh Duffy for the National League's Boston team in 1894.

Gibson also became the career leader in slugging percentage (.718) and OPS (1.177), moving ahead of Babe Ruth (.690 and 1.164).

"It's a show of respect for great players who performed in the Negro Leagues due to circumstances beyond their control and once those circumstances changed demonstrated that they were truly major leaguers," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "Maybe the single biggest factor was the success of players who played in the Negro Leagues and then came to the big leagues."

A special committee on baseball records decided in 1969 to recognize six major leagues dating to 1876: the National (which launched in 1876), the American (1901), the American Association (1882-1891), Union Association (1884), Players' League (1890) and Federal League (1914-1915). It excluded the National Association (1871-75), citing an "erratic schedule and procedures."

MLB announced in December 2020 that it would be "correcting a longtime oversight" by adding the Negro Leagues. John Thorn, MLB's official historian, chaired a 17-person committee that included Negro Leagues experts and statisticians.

She had those Bette Nash dash skills:

The aviation world is mourning Bette Nash, a D.C.-based flight attendant who died earlier this month after spending nearly seven decades serving passengers in the skies — and making history along the way.

Nash began her career with now-defunct Eastern Airlines at age 21 in 1957, when Dwight Eisenhower was president, flights between New York and D.C. cost $12 and “stewardesses,” as they were called, served lobster on platters and passed out cigarettes on board.

The industry changed drastically during Nash’s tenure, especially with the introduction of technology (no more handwritten tickets, for example). American Airlines eventually took over some of Eastern's routes.

But, as she said at a celebration of her 60 years of service in 2017, the joys of the job remained.

“My favorite part of flying over the years has been greeting my passengers as they board and deplane,” Nash said at the time. “People really are fascinating and it’s truly been a joy.”

Nash became an increasingly recognizable fixture on American Airlines flights in recent years — particularly on shuttle flights between Washington and Boston, which the company affectionately nicknamed “the Nash-Dash.” She preferred that route because it enabled her to spend time caring for her son, who has Down syndrome.

Nash earned the Guinness World Record for longest-serving flight attendant in 2022, by which point she had been working for more than 64 years.

There was no one like him. Watching him play was fun and his skills as a commentator were, well, there was no one like him.

Bill Walton was never afraid to be himself.

Larger than life, only in part because of his nearly 7-foot frame, Walton was a two-time NCAA champion at UCLA, a two-time champion in the NBA, a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, an on-court icon in every sense of the word. And off the court, Walton was a chronic fun-seeker, a broadcaster who adhered to no conventional norms and took great joy in that, a man with a deeply serious side about the causes that mattered most to him.

“Bill Walton,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said, “was truly one of a kind.”

Walton died Monday at the age of 71 after a prolonged fight with cancer, the league announced on behalf of his family. He was the NBA’s MVP in the 1977-78 season, the league’s sixth man of the year in 1985-86 and a member of the league’s 50th anniversary and 75th anniversary teams. That followed a college career in which he blossomed while playing under coach John Wooden at UCLA, becoming a three-time national player of the year.

“I am sad today hearing that my comrade and one of the sports world’s most beloved champions and characters has passed,” Julius “Dr. J” Erving, a fellow Hall of Famer, wrote on social media. “Bill Walton enjoyed life in every way. To compete against him and to work with him was a blessing in my life.”

Tributes immediately began pouring in, and the NBA held a moment of silence to commemorate Walton’s life before Game 4 of the Boston Celtics-Indiana Pacers matchup in the Eastern Conference finals on Monday night.

Walton, who entered the Hall of Fame in 1993, was one of the game’s most celebrated figures. His NBA career — disrupted by chronic foot injuries — lasted only 468 games combined with the Portland Trail Blazers, the San Diego/Los Angeles Clippers and the Celtics. He averaged 13.3 points and 10.5 rebounds in those games, neither of those numbers exactly record-setting.

Still, his impact on the game was massive.

“I love him as a friend and as a teammate,” Celtics legend Larry Bird said. “It was a thrill for me to play with my childhood idol and together we earned an NBA championship in 1986. He is one of the greatest ever to play the game. I am sure that all of my teammates are as grateful as I am that we were able to know Bill. He was such a joy to know and he will be sorely missed.”

Woodpeckers can be Metalpeckers, too:

A few weeks ago, at about 6:45 in the morning, I was at home, waiting to talk live on the air with Morning Edition host Michel Martin about a story I'd done, when I suddenly heard a loud metallic hammering. It sounded like a machine was vibrating my house.

It happened again about 15 seconds later. And again after that.

This rhythmic clatter seemed to be coming from my basement utility closet. Was my furnace breaking? Or my water heater? I worried that it might happen while I was on the air.

Luckily, the noise stopped while I spoke with Michel, but restarted later. This time I heard another sound, a warbling or trilling, possibly inside my chimney.

Was there an animal in there? I ran outside, looked up at my roof — and saw a woodpecker drilling away at my metal chimney cap.

I've seen and heard plenty of woodpeckers hammer on trees. But never on metal. So to find out why the bird was doing this, I called an expert: Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who recently created a course called "The Wonderful World of Woodpeckers."

McGowan said woodpeckers batter wood to find food, make a home, mark territory and attract a mate. But when they bash away at metal, "what the birds are trying to do is make as big a noise as possible," he said, "and a number of these guys have found that — you know what? If you hammer on metal, it's really loud!"

Woodpeckers primarily do this during the springtime breeding season, and their metallic racket has two purposes, "basically summarized as: All other guys stay away, all the girls come to me," McGowan said. "And the bigger the noise, the better."

Over time, some urban woodpeckers have learned that metal is more resonant and reverberant than wood, and amplifies sound much more than trees do, he added.

I value this Substack by Kristin Kobes Du Mez:

If you’re like me and you’ve been tracking polling data on the 2024 election, you may be feeling a little unsettled. A couple caveats: This far in advance, polls have relatively little predictive power. Moreover, some of the polls putting Trump over Biden are still within the margin of error. Still, given what is at stake in the election, the numbers are disconcerting, particularly in the all-important swing states.

This reality was swirling in my head on a Sunday morning a couple weeks back. It was Ascension Day, and as I settled in to listen to the sermon, I felt that the words were meeting me exactly where I was:

“What is the calling of the church? You know what that is. Take up your cross and follow me. The church is called to follow its king in self-sacrificing love.”

“Somehow the church tends to pick up the idea that we’re supposed to win. That our place in the world is not one of suffering love, but victorious power….”

“It’s so easy for the church to forget that Christ did not call us to rule but to serve. He called us, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, to come and die. The church’s role in history is to live the way of the King, the way of the cross, the way of self-giving love.”

Yes, this. The church is called to love, not to seize power. This is why, as a Christian, I’ve been pushing against Christian nationalism. (I have reasons for doing so as an American, too.)

It’s no surprise that I’ve ended up where I am on this issue. This is the preaching I’ve been listening to for now. In fact, Len Vander Zee, the pastor I was listening to now, had pastored the church I attended in graduate school many years ago.

As I listened to the sermon, I was thinking about steeling myself for the months ahead. I thought of the organizations and networks I was involved with, of the posts I had planned here, of the traveling I would be doing, of the projects (some yet to be unveiled) that I’d be dedicating my time and energy to. My mind was wandering, but I was still following along with the sermon. And then I heard the words that jarred me. Len was quoting Celeborn and Galadriel in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, saying: “together through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.” Tolkien expanded on this in a letter to a friend: “I am a Christian….so I do not expect history to be anything but a long defeat, though it contains…… some glimpse of final victory.”

A long defeat.

Bob on Books is right-on books:

I’m borrowing my title from an article (paywalled) published on May 9 in the Chronicle of Higher Education under the same title. The article described the struggle of college professors with students not doing assigned readings, of reducing the number and length of readings without any improvement, and often summarizing readings in class. They noted declines in ability to follow a longform, complex argument, and fragmented and distracted thinking. This has been found to be accompanied by declines in writing ability (a 750 word essay being too long–ironic because this post will likely surpass that), and difficulties with notetaking if not structured by the professor.

The article explored various factors contributing to such decline:

• Inadequate reading instruction going back to primary education.

• Standardized test-oriented instruction, focused on close reading of short passages.

• COVID related declines due to relaxed requirements and isolation from good instruction (although these declines were being noted pre-COVID–and have only accelerated)

• Lack of leisure reading among teens.

• Smartphone use and social media, where reading comes in fragments and rapid scanning..

• Preference for information through audio-visual sources, often attended to while multi-tasking.

The upshot is either dumbed-down instruction or remedial efforts to teach reading, sometimes incorporated into instruction.

It is scary to think of the possibility that we are turning out functionally illiterate high school graduates and marginally literate college graduates without the habits equipping them to be lifelong learners. Yet it is disturbing to me that many state legislatures seem more concerned with what students should not be reading and what should not be on library shelves than the fact that students are not reading!

A few things seem vitally important:

• Reading skills seem foundational. The article raises the use of whole language approaches that fail to teach phonics (which was an important part of my reading instruction).

• Equally foundational is the association of reading with love. It can be the closeness of read aloud times with a parent or caregiver, sometimes learning the words of favorite stories. It is finding stories children love to read, sometimes with multiple readings.

• It’s talking about stories, fostering critical thinking skills. This can be fun and discussions may be memorable!

• It seems that learning how to read texts that are not “fun” is important. It’s more than just slogging through. It’s identifying what body of knowledge a text is addressing, what questions it is trying to answer, and then looking for how the writer unpacks those ideas.

• I’m also struck by the fact that audio-visual culture might be an ally rather than an enemy. Book-Tok has been hugely influential in driving the sale of Young Adult fiction (this might be a good reason to save Tik-Tok!). I’d love to see media influencers exploring how they might encourage college-level reading skills among their followers.