Meanderings, 22 June 2024

Good morning! Kris and I are pleased to announce one of our Monarch caterpillars has become an official butterfly! Quite fun to watch the growth from an egg through several morphings of caterpillars, then a chrysalis, and now a beautiful butterfly.

Photo by Kathy Servian on Unsplash

Willie Mays has passed away. Kris and I bumped into him one evening in the airport in San Francisco. Quite a thrill. Yes, I saw him play.

Willie Mays, a generational baseball player known as the 'Say Hey Kid', has died at 93. He was considered by many to be the greatest all-around baseball player in history.

Mays' Hall-of-Fame career spanned more than two decades, from the 1950s to 1970s. He spent nearly all of those years with the Giants – first in New York and then in San Francisco. He was named to the All-Star team 24 times and won National League Most Valuable Player awards in 1954 and 1965.

“All of Major League Baseball is in mourning today as we are gathered at the very ballpark where a career and a legacy like no other began. Willie Mays took his all-around brilliance from the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League to the historic Giants franchise," said Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred. "From coast to coast in New York and San Francisco, Willie inspired generations of players and fans as the game grew and truly earned its place as our National Pastime."

MLB is hosting a game Thursday between the Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals at historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala. where Mays once played. Baseball officials were already planning to honor Mays's extensive career at the game including an unveiling of a Willie Mays mural.

Fans are already remembering the incomparable skill and infectious joy the player nicknamed "The Say Hey Kid" brought to ballparks across the country.

Somehow, the name Willie Mays never was enough. Talk to those who watched him play...those who heard about what he did...and it was always the great Willie Mays.

What he did, as a ballplayer, was everything. In the trade, the best all-around players are called five-tool players. Mays mastered all five.

What is not thrilling are the stories, like this one from Reggie Jackson, about the racism African American athletes have experienced:

Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson said it was difficult to return to Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, for the Negro Leagues tribute game Thursday because of the onslaught of racism he experienced when he played there decades ago.

In 1967, before he climbed up to the majors, Jackson played with the Birmingham A’s in the Double-A Southern League as one of the few Black players on the team. The team played at Rickwood Field.

The baseball legend, who was part of Fox’s broadcast crew for Thursday’s game, said during the broadcast that his return to the place where his baseball career kicked off was “not easy.”

“The racism when I played here, the difficulty of going through different places where we traveled,” Jackson said on the Fox broadcast. “Fortunately I had a manager and I had players on the team that helped me get through it, but I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”

He said he would never want to relive that part of his life.

“I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and say ‘a n***er can’t eat here.’ I would go to a hotel and they would say, ‘a n***er can’t stay here,’” he said.

LA school and banning cell phones:

The Los Angeles school board voted Tuesday to ban cell phones in classrooms, a trend that has been spreading to multiple districts across the U.S.  

The move, approved by a 5-to-2 vote, makes the school district the largest yet to ban cell phones, with the board pointing to studies that show they distract students, have negative affects on mental health and stifles in-person connections.  

“Kids no longer have the opportunity to just be kids,” said board member Nick Melvoin, who introduced the measure. “I’m hoping this resolution will help students not only focus in class, but also give them a chance to interact and engage more with each other — and just be kids.”   

Further details on the ban, which will take effect in January, will be solidified at future meetings.  

The two school board members who voted against the resolution did so over concerns about the totality of the ban and wanting distinctions between bans during instructional and noninstructional time, according to the Los Angeles Times.  

Opponents of the bans are typically concerned about students not having access to contact their parents in case of an emergency.  

Wow, 7-9! Olivier Rioux.

At eight years old, he was 6’ 1”. By sixth grade, he was almost 7 feet tall. And now, as an incoming college freshman, he’s listed at 7’9’’ — and poised to be the tallest college basketball player ever.

Olivier Rioux, once the record holder as the tallest teenager in the world, is now listed on the University of Florida’s men’s basketball roster after committing to the Gators last fall. At the time, according to recruiting site 247sports, the Montreal native and three-star recruit was just 7’6”.

At 18, he may still be growing. Rioux’s listed height tops former record bearer Paul Sturgess, who was 7’8” and played for both Florida Tech and Mountain State from 2007 to 2011. And, if Rioux makes it to the NBA, he’ll become the tallest NBA player ever, too.

Rioux hasn’t publicly commented on the record, but he has been open in the past about enjoying his tall stature. In an interview with Guiness as a 16-year-old, the Canadian said he likes being noticed and interacting with people because of his height. He sees everything from a higher angle, he said, which “gives me an advantage during a game.”

A must-read about Cornerstone University, and I want to thank John Fea for attention to this story:

Quoting a published article: “Growth is always hard, but we’re listening continually to new students and current students and demands, and we want to make sure we provide a great education that’s focused on them.”

[Now Fea] Apparently unable to express any sorrow or regret about what has happened, here Moreno-Riaño claims that people are upset because of growth, not because of the huge loss of what has just occurred. He says the institution is continually listening to new and current students. I wonder if the institution is listening to the countless students across social media and across campus who have expressed anger, grief, and shame about the nature of these cuts, and about the way that they have been made, and communicated?

Of course, the attempt at spinning these cuts as good for humanities and liberal arts, and the highly dubious statements and numbers provided by the administration to Wood TV-8, suggests that Cornerstone may well be listening – and panicking about the negative publicity and anger that these actions have triggered and is now seeking to arrest the damage.

The fact that Cornerstone shared Buursma’s article on Facebook shows that the university thought it gave a good representation of the official Cornerstone view. WOOD–TV8 has some Cornerstone ties. Our sources tell us that the Vice Chair of Cornerstone’s Board, Lori Cook, known by her stage name Maranda, hosts a popular television show on the local Wood-TV8 network.

We are told by two sources that yesterday, at an all-campus meeting to celebrate the success of the President’s vision of “program refinements,” faculty and staff were warned that if they shared any information about the program eliminations or faculty terminations with students the University would take action against them.

What a mess.

From David Turner, former prof at the seminary at Cornerstone:

Cornerstone’s long trip has now taken a strange turn—a Bible Institute turns into a liberal arts college and seminary which turns into a university with no full-time faculty in the humanities. What’s up with that?

One alum of the seminary responded to the jettisoning of the humanities faculty by saying “Welcome to the East Beltline Trade and Vocational School.” Sarcasm aside, at this point any CU stakeholder who thinks in terms of worldview has to wonder about the school’s values, identity, and mission—let alone its theological mooring. How can CU implement and embody its commendable worldview statement with no full-time faculty to articulate and apply Christ’s teaching to human history, philosophy, literature, and music? Adjunct prof’s may do their best, but their work will inevitably be inferior to that of career professionals in those fields. …

Euphemistic administrator-speak aside, CU has chosen to reduce quality and expenses in order to attract more students to cheaper, trendier vocational programs. These students will get what they paid for, but they won’t get a quality education in the disciplines that help them develop Christian values for their careers.

If the students who came to CU to study with the dismissed humanities faculty actually stick around, they will experience “teach-outs”—hastily gerrymandered programs facilitated by adjunct professors who will receive a small stipend for stepping into the mess.

As far as the seminary goes, it now has only four full-time faculty. It’s new part-time dean is already focused on administrative and teaching duties in the undergraduate program. This is not a plan for stability, let alone growth. Look for the seminary, with roots reaching back 82 years, to fade away and be absorbed into CU’s graduate schools.

The “generous settlement” the humanities faculty received only weeks after signing contracts for the 2024-2025 academic year will apparently run out in December 2024, leaving eight faithful servants of Christ with no chance of securing new full-time academic appointments until September 2025.

The CU board of trustees endorses this inhumane treatment of its humanities professors. Meanwhile, Cornerstone touts huge increases in enrollment and the president receives a 50% raise in salary. If you find that difficult to believe, just google CU’s publicly available form 990 for 501(c)3 non-profit organizations.

The cornerstone seems to be cracking.

SMcK: And Douglas Groothuis has just moved to Grand Rapids to teach at this cracking institution. Did he know in advance what would happen?