Friday, March 30, 2012

In Response

If you click on just one link this morning it should be the well-conceived opinion piece Lucy Pollard '10 wrote for The Dartmouth in response to the infamous Rolling Stone article. She strikes the balance that the Rolling Stone writer avoided.
Dartmouth has accepted a record-low 9.4 percent of applicants this year. The Dartmouth lists rates for all Ivy League schools:
  • Harvard 5.9
  • Yale 6.8
  • Columbia 7.4
  • Princeton 7.9
  • Dartmouth 9.4
  • Brown 9.6
  • Penn 12.3
  • Cornell 16.2
According to The D, that's a record-low for every school except Columbia.
Still another story from the school paper takes a look at rugby coach Alex Magleby '00, named earlier this month as head of the USA Rugby national sevens team.

Green Alert Take: I've had a chance to sit and interview Alex several times and it's no surprise the national team sought him out. He would be an elite coach in any sport at any college in the country.
If you watched the Duke-Lehigh game in the NCAA men's basketball tournament, you would probably agree that a guard named CJ McCollum was the best player on the floor and he wasn't from Duke. McCollum, a Lehigh junior, has declared for the NBA draft but he hasn't hired an agent, meaning that until April 11 he can reverse course and play his senior year at the Patriot League school. The Morning Call has the story.
Speaking of basketball guards, Penn standout Zack Rosen will be at the Final Four in New Orleans as a finalist for the Lowe's Senior CLASS AWARD honoring players for "great achievement during competition and in their community while staying in school." There's a story here and better yet, the Daily Pennsylvanian's Buzz blog has a photo of a huge mural in New Orleans that features Rosen alongside North Carolina's Tyler Zeller, Michigan State's Draymond Green, Zack Novak of Michigan and Ronald Nored of Butler.
Time to vent a little bit. I saw a commercial for ESPN's The Next Round where host Scoop Jackson twice said, "He don't . . ." I'm on the same page with Mrs. BGA when it comes to this stuff. There ought to be an electric dog collar around the necks of commentators who use grammar like that and they should get a nice buzzing for every "He don't" or "Should have went" they utter. It's bad enough when they bring in an athlete who uses grammar like that, but when it is the host – a writer mind you – that is totally unacceptable.
That Certain Hanover High Senior has Meet the Marauders Night for baseball this evening at the high school. Prior to a speech from the coach about rules and expectations, etc., the boys line up in front of the the audience in the gym. As they are introduced they take one step forward in their new uniforms and tip their caps. They stand there uncomfortably while the coach says something about each of them before they step back into the line. A little corny maybe, but all fine and good.

Here's my vent. When you live eight miles from school and you have something in the early evening, it doesn't make much sense to come home, so TCHHS is staying in town. Before getting on the bus at 7 this morning he asked me, "What should I do?" I said, "Go to the library and get a jump on your homework."

Although he always hits the books before dinner, I don't think the poor kid finished his homework before midnight once all week and several times he still had to get up early to wrap up his work. It will be the same thing Sunday night I'm sure. He's always tired. But when I suggested he use his time after school today to get after it, he looked at me like I had two heads.

Green Alert Take: I wouldn't have done my homework on a Friday, either. ;-)
Now for my final vent. Mrs. BGA had to go to Concord yesterday to testify in a hearing. Good thing she left early because she got a flat tire about 10 minutes down the road and made it to the state capital just one minute before the hearing was to start. It's the second flat we've had in three weeks, both times the day after our dirt road was graded. One year we had four, count 'em, four flat tires, each time within days of grading.

And so, when Mrs. BGA called yesterday to tell me about still another flat, I wasn't all that surprised. When the town trucks come down the road, they dump tons of dirt and rocks and construction detritus to even out the ruts, but they don't do a very effective job of sifting out nails and screws and the like. I went out to the road after Mrs. BGA called yesterday and before I had walked 150 feet I pulled up a 10-inch piece of metal rod about the diameter of a drinking straw. We'll be bringing that by the town office next week.

The upshot of the flat three weeks ago (from a big nail) was it could not be repaired and we ended up having to buy four new tires because, as we've been told before, on a four-wheel drive vehicle the tires must match up. Well, guess what? They told Mrs. BGA yesterday that this flat can't be repaired. Fortunately, the other tires are new enough that we can sub in just one new one this time. And, just as fortunately, we decided sometime ago to pay a little extra for a warranty when we get new tires. We do love living up here, but as those grammatically challenged announcers shout on ESPN, "Come on, man!"

End of vent.