Blue & Gold

Forgot to wear my Homecoming gold/yellow shirt, so ...

This week's goal ...

... loan more soccer books!

Field Hockey Having A Banner Year

Our varsity Field Hockey team won the Sectional title and is heading to the regionals! To celebrate their accomplishment I drew this banner on the library bulletin board. Go Knights!

Used my nifty geometric crayons from many moons ago!

Casey

I enjoyed the invitation this morning to recite "Casey at the Bat" for 5th graders as they begin their unit on the integration of baseball (with a culminating trip to the baseball hall of Fame!). I also dropped off a bibliography of baseball titles in the ACSLIB as well as some charts from SABR that they might use for "graph reading."

Getting the ball rolling

ACS homecoming in on the calendar for October 7th. I transferred some recent ACS sports images onto one of our 4'x8' canvases with a projector. I'll start adding some color with some torn/cut paper "brush-strokes." My experience is that once students see that messy edges are OK, they will jump in to help/take over.

Today's geography lesson

Crimson Knights Fan

Annual Spirit Week Greeting

Used my handy masking tape stash to usher-in Senior Class Pride in the library.

Decided to leave some of my "maker marks" to prompt discussion on how I made them.

15, count 'em, 15

Congrats Joe on racking up 15, count 'em, 15 strike-outs on the way to a 12-1 win in the first round of the Section IV baseball tournament!

Pre-season at ACSLIB

Nothing like an autograph-signing to generate Spring interest in baseball books. We hired this guy and then wired him with a remote speaker & mike as readers gathered around the ol' dugout!

On the drawing board

Been drawing at my bulletin board for Spirit Week and beyond.

ACS Library: Post-season HQ

Opening Day Offering

Breaking Sports News from the LOC Archives

This recent find at the LOC features some footage of legendary pitcher Walter "Big Train" Johnson in the 1924 World Series. Great stuff as we enter the MLB playoffs.

Football at ACS

Provided a little context for our newly-merged football squad by breaking out our videotape-from-8mm film footage of 1940 six-man football at ACS. Great stuff.

Think it might be time for me to try some in-house conversion to a digital format because I would love to have this posted in our digital archives.

P.S. Here's the first one!

April 2nd

OK OK. Today is our weather/field-delayed home opener. And so we bring this recitation out of mothballs in support of our starting pitcher...if not poetry, too.  Go Knights!

The NYT again

From the New York Times

I loved this photo spread in the print edition of the Times on Wednesday. What a great visualization to bring home the scope and scale of Winter Olympic venues!

Booktalks

     Why We Run by Bernd Heinrich is a kind of ultimate science/sport book. Heinrich, a renown scientist and naturalist (and author of Winter World), recounts his preparation for competing in a 100 kilometer ultra-running event by illustrating that humans deserve to stand among the elite distance runners in the animal kingdom.

    In fact, his physical and mental preparation - everything from stride-length, breathing mechanics, and diet depletion - is supported and informed by his studies of the natural world; the way that camels stay cool or the way birds gorge for migration. Even the “singing” pattern of frogs and the digestive secrets of bees are aligned and applied to his long term race training and strategies.

    His awe of the natural world is matched by his deep love of running. He quotes great runners as often as he does scientific papers, but it is the way he stitches science to the sport that reveals the beauty of the scientific mind. He is at once a driven athlete and a methodical pursuer of the unknown... not to mention a lucid and inspired writer.

    His personal story alone would be a moving memoir. That he shares the stage with the vast company of life-forms that have framed his quest is what makes this read a revelation as well as an inspiration.

    This is a tough book. The subject matter is relentless, but the author’s tenacity to capture dignity within distress triumphs. It is the story of the hard-nosed Americans who stayed in “No-Man’s-Land” during the Dust Bowl era.

    Theirs is not a story of ultimate success in the face of adversity, rather it is for us, the revelation of the power of the American dream; to own and work and keep a place of one’s own. Beginning with nothing and looking for not much more, the personal journeys of a dozen people are drawn with realism and respect by Egan. The physical hardship and mental anguish that crippled most of them is painstakenly recounted, year on year. And yet, we root for them even as their modest hopes are buried by a natural world out of control.

    How that compromised corner of America deteriorated from millions of acres of waist-deep prairie to barren soil is laid before us with clarity. It is a story of deception, the lure of the fast-buck, and the back-door pitfalls of capitalism. Ultimately, however, it is a book of personal lives that illustrate an era more powerfully that statistics or the famous; lives as heroic, if desperate, as any in history.

The Champions' Court

We are going to put our school trophies to work as chess pieces on our big board; a little school spirit to spice the strategy.

Sharing my voyage of discovery

I've been getting quite a response to the composite image I created for the school's home page.

So I put together a bulletin board to illustrate my "voyage of discovery;" learning to remove backgrounds from photos and make them transparent.

I also added some words about why I embark on these journeys...like every day.