Lessons from the playing field

My host at the high school sports event informed me that girl's sports, at least in Michigan, are struggling.

Twenty years ago, most high school sports fielded a Woman's Varsity team, a Junior Varsity team and in some cases a Freshman team for many sports. There were robust programs supplying soccer (futball), basketball and volleyball players as well as runners for track and cross country teams.

Currently, at least in the small(ish) rural districts, coaches have to actively recruit underclassmen to have enough players to field a Varsity team. Watching the teams play last night, it was clear that several of the players (at least on one team) had never really played soccer before.

When I asked my host what had changed, she shrugged her shoulders. "The culture changed. Too many distractions." is what she replied.

Specific to soccer, she pointed to the collapse of the intermediate skill-level leagues that supplied the lion's share of prep players in the past. There are still the "recreation" leagues for kids and there are high-end, competitive "travel leagues", but the step in the middle, the one that did not require parents to pay hotel bills in Fort Wayne or involve four hours of travel time are gone.

I know of one family whose entire plan to get their daughter into college was for her to get a full-ride scholarship. I think they would have been better served to hire a math tutor.

For the record, Belladonna knew several women athletes who received partial-scholarships where she went to college. The "drop-out" rate was mind-boggling. My guess is that 2/3 of the student-athletes did not graduate. Of the ones who did graduate, many of them found themselves holding degrees that did not command respect in the work-place.

It was a scam.

Back in the day...

Schools like West Point used athletics to teach life-lessons. Those life-lessons were forged in high-stress, time-urgent crucibles which meant they automatically became the default when the graduates were faced with other high-stress, time-urgent environments.

Other schools like Harvard and Yale, which used to be considered pretty good schools, copied West Point for the same reasons. Their goal was to generate leaders who performed with grace and skill under pressure.

The playing field repudiates the supremacy of the individual

The playing field proves that physics is immune to flowery language and a deftly delivered speech.

The playing field brutally punishes the player who stoops to the cheap-shot.

The playing field teaches that what you do when you don't have the ball is at least as important as what you do when you do have the ball.

The playing field teaches you to trust your fellow team-mates. Know where they are, communicate...and trust them.

The goalkeeper has the best view of the field. Just because she isn't running until she pukes doesn't mean that she can't tell you how to do your job better. 

The playing field teaches that how you practice Monday-through-Thursday is a good predictor of how you will play on Gameday.

The playing field teaches that life choices made off the field impact how your team will play on the field. The playing field teaches that life has consequences.

Part of the Yale Snowball intramural team

The playing field teaches that referees have limits. They don't see everything. They don't call everything they see. Relying on the refs to "call" every infraction is not a robust strategy.

The playing field rewards teams that can learn and adapt after they get schooled by a better team. The playing field brutally punishes teams to refuse to learn.

The playing field rewards teams with plans/plays. 

Please, feel free to add to the list in the comments. 

Quicksilver Music Moment

Link 

Busy, busy, busy...

It has been a long day.

Quicksilver showed up at 6:30 a.m. I handed her off at 9:30 and started cutting fence wire and loading the back of the truck. 2-3/4 hours time-on-task in the Upper and Hill Orchards. I got back home and took an hour long nap. Then off to watch a sporting event with Southern Belle. On the way home I stopped at Walmart for dog food, oatmeal, raisins and whole-wheat tortilla wraps. I got it all unloaded and sat down in the official recliner of the ERJ blog at 8:30 p.m.

At 1000 seeds to the ounce and approximately 60 clay balls, that more than 15 seeds per ball.

One of the tasks was to try out the seed pellets. I used the following mix and am pretty happy with it:

• 1kg damp sand
• 400 grams clumping cat litter (bentonite)
• 100 grams masa (corn flour)
• 100 grams Burpee Organic Fertilizer
• 400 ml of water

The mix was a little bit dry and crumbly but it packed like a snowball. If you try the mix, realize that you will have to make adjustments to the amount of water because "damp sand" is an imprecise term.

The area where I was planting the Redbud seeds. Two dead Bigtooth Aspen trunks in the foreground. "How has your Aspen?"  "Frankly, dead and decaying."

 Since the Redbud that I have seen growing wild has always been on the slopes above the flood-plains, I surmised that the seeds want to land on mineral dirt and not leaf-litter or duff. So rather than pitching them willy-nilly, I scuffed through the leaf-litter, dropped the clay-ball on the mineral dirt that I exposed and then stepped on the ball to squish it into intimate contact with the dirt.

The Liberty is past full-bloom. Melrose is at full bloom. This picture is from the Upper Orchard.

Mostly I worked the cusp of the slope near the road and overlooking the valley that is east of the Hill Orchard and the Upper Orchard. 

I was very pleased that the ball showed no inclination to stick to the sole of my shoe.

Random photo

A nice looking seedling Sweet Cherry. I saw this on my commute to "the office" today. I am tempted to liberate some scion even though Mrs ERJ (mostly) broke me of that habit.

 

Drought monitor. Moisture in the top 40" of soil (root zone). Displayed as a "percentile" of historically observed values on a tract-by-tract basis.

 

I am pretty sure I have at least three readers in New Hampshire and a few in the Piedmont region. Do they have burn-bans and fire warnings in place?

Follow-up on the power station

Reading the comments helped me clarify my thoughts. Thank-you, all.

I have two sets of needs that have some overlap. So maybe I need two different solutions.

On one hand I have three properties I am working on, two of them "remote". One of them has the Upper and Hill Orchards and a 1200 square-foot pole barn that is not electrified. It would be nice to be able to plug in a 5000 lumen (50 Watt) shop-light so I can clean out the trash and not trip on my feet. 

I also have an aversion to using the battery I count on to start the vehicle for mundane purposes. The Hill and Upper Orchard are approximately 40 miles away from "home" and while I have walked that distance it is not a fast process. I do have a mountain bike squirreled away in the barn, so I could probably knock the trip back in about four or five hours but I would not be a happy guy.

The other set of needs is anchoring-a-basecamp. If the grid is intermittent, then there is much to be said for skimming some power while it is energized to use for the very highest value applications when it is not energized.

• Medical equipment
• Communication
• Security (driveway alarms at a minimum)
• Securing information (internet, news)
• Light for reading, threading needles
• Enough power to run an AM/FM radio
• Run the blower on our fireplace insert

If the grid becomes very unreliable the same "flex" power means you can run the generator in the day when there is more noise-clutter to hide the sound signature for use during the quit hours. Solar is fine but not always sufficient, even in Arizona.

At this point, the very unreliable grid scenario seems unlikely. The powers-that-be understand that things will get VERY sporty in their A-o-O if the power drops out too often for too long. Even the warlords in Shitholistan understand that dynamic. 

Brains rather than batteries

Some of these things can be "managed" around. Can't function without hot coffee in the morning? Before microwaves, folks used to make it the night before and pour it into a thermos.

Need to communicate with neighbors? Bulletin boards work and the American Revolution was coordinated with "Broadsheet essays" tacked to the wall of the communal privy. And there is always the neighborhood gossip.

Dogs are still the best security system. A fish-line and tin-cans still work. 

Practices-and-procedures vs Infrastructure

I worked for a boss named John Pitlanish who explained it this way:

The advantage of changing work-instructions is that they can be rewritten tomorrow. Validate the changes today with your Team Leader. Start training the operators tomorrow on the new way.

If you only work the "infrastructure fixes" then you are looking at a minimum of twelve-months before it hits the factory floor, and more likely it will never get approved.

So even though it is harder to "manage" practices-and-procedures fixes they are the only practical way to fix things in the short-term.

Safety LOVED infrastructure fixes. They had an entire hierarchy of fixes with "Re-instruct the operator" as the least desirable and "Eliminate the hazard" as the most desirable. 

Managers get changed every 18 months. Operators change every 24 months. Grind the concrete flat and it stays flat for 30 years. The fix does not evaporate when it is buried in the infrastructure.

So there is a place for both. The quick bandage and the deep, permanent fix. 

Power Stations

 

I am looking at small power stations and trying to figure out how they might fit into my plans.

Athanasius in Ukraine gets a lot of use out of theirs because they have intermittent power issues due to the ongoing war. He was able to charge up batteries for his cordless chainsaw from one. Without the power station he would have changed his plans and done something else or been cutting wood by hand.

Like many things, the market is organized by various "price points". Currently, $200 will get you a 300 Watt-hour unit with a robust battery technology.

But what will 300 Watt-hours get me?

It can run two LED, 800 Lumen bulbs for 15 hours (overnight in the winter).

It can run a small electric blanket that is used to warm massage tables for 15 hours.

It can run a 6 Joule, low-impedance electric fence energizer for 30 hours. 

It can run a 32" TV for 5 hours so it is not enough juice to run a video-based security system overnight.

From a command-and-control standpoint, it provides enough power to recharge a VERY large number of cellphones or hand-held radios or rechargable AA batteries. 

It can run a 20" box fan for 5 hours. 

It can run a 1/4 horsepower motor for almost 2 hours so you better hope the power comes back on if a storm knocks out your sump-pump. Incidentally, this price-point will not deliver enough wattage to start a conventional sump-pump due to inrush current at start-up.

It can recharge 2, 20V 6.0 amp-hour batteries for my cordless tools. 

It cannot run an air conditioner or the fan on a furnace. It cannot run a microwave or a water heater.

I am on-the-fence about spending the money on something like this. The system seems hellbent on building data centers in excess of our power generation capacity. The spike in petroleum prices is causing a rush toward Electric Vehicles which will drive more demand.

Consequently, I expect more power-outages in the future. It probably makes sense to get something like this before the rush.

Any thoughts from my readers? 

Walnuts, expedition to Lansing, Grizzly Bears and Ducks

There is not a lot to report.

Walnuts 

A fine gentleman mailed me seven scion of Persian Walnuts (Juglans regia) that he just happened to have in his refrigerator. I grafted those onto likely Black Walnut seedlings which pop up around our yard without any input from me.

The four "North Platte" scion were grafted on two seedlings near Mrs ERJ's garden, one just east of the driveway and one seedling north of the wood-pile. I marked them with bright pink surveyor's tape.

The three Combe were grafted west of the collapsed barn, east of the standing barn and south of the drainfield. I marked them with a flag of "natural" colored masking tape.

I don't expect them to show signs of life for at least four weeks. Walnuts are like rattlesnakes, they really like heat. Not warmth: Heat.

A trip to the big-box store

I bit the bullet and drove to Lansing to visit the Menards on the west side of Lansing.

I came back with welded wire fence to make cages to protect newly planted seedlings from deer. I bought two hand-sprayers and some 5" round duct to protect various fruit trees from the predations of woodchucks and raccoons.

While I was there, I checked out their onion sets. They were plump and heavy, unlike the ones at Meijers (a grocery store). On a whim, I picked up three bags and will use them as markers to identify exactly where the rows of potatoes are. Onions come up much more quickly than potatoes do. 

Grizzly Bears are no longer "Ursus horribilis"

They are now lumped in with the Eurasian Brown Bear and since the EBB binomial name Ursus arctos has seniority, it becomes the official, scientific name for the Grizzly Bear as well.

I was faked out for a bit. I looked at Ursus arctos and thought "Polar Bears???".

Definitely a Public Relations win for Yogi Bear.

Ducks

The ducks got a small wading pool for their enclosure.

It is partially submerged and has a ramp made from the dirt I removed to facilitate their getting in.

As stated at the top: Not much to report. Everything is fine except that we have too many ticks.

Name that movie (and studio)

 

Better times...

Bonus points for the year it was first in theaters and the city it was filmed in (big surprise). 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

A hillside orchard

Iosif Evstafevich Krachkovsky was born in 1854 and died in 1914. He is considered a "Russian" painter. Many of his paintings were made in Ukraine.

He certainly knew how to paint an expressive sky. 

A garden

A well

Hat-tip to the usual guy...

...the tireless Lucas Machias