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Second Place! · 1 June 2024

Photo courtesy of Marc Hillestad

Last weekend, the Cedarcrest High School Girls Track and Field team won second in state! It was an amazing weekend of competition.

The state Track and Field (T&F) meet is a crazy weekend of competition. There are running events and field event going on for three days. Jumpers and throwers and runners from all over the state gather to see what individuals and what teams will be the best. It is a crazy three days. And even though people try and figure out the numbers beforehand, nobody really knows who will come out on top as a team until all the events are done. We took ten girls, and seven of them scored enough points to bring home the second place trophy. Way to go girls!

Now, if you think that T&F is an individual sport with a team component, you are right. To an extent. But there are some aspects of the sport where the individual athlete might need to put the team first. Or maybe a high second. One of those considerations is in the relays.

Relays are usually people’s secondary events. The athletes like them, but usually not as much as they like their individual events. Which sometimes means that they need a little convincing. After all, running events have two components at the state meet – preliminaries and finals. Which means two races of the same thing. And when you add the preliminaries of relays, that can be a lot of racing. So the athletes need to buy into the team concept. They need to know that the relays are important. Important enough to make sacrifices of time and energy. Both in practice and in meets. Our girls did just that.

We had two relay teams at the state meet, the 4×200 meters and the 4×400 meters. Both relays scored points. And when those relay points were added to the points of the individual scorers, we had 59 points (compared to the winning team’s 67 points). Going into the last race of the meet, the 4×400m relay, we were tied for second. So all the girls had to do was pass the baton around the track and finish the race and we would win second place outright. They finished eighth, and the girls team won a trophy! Second place! Woo hoo!

Now second place is nothing to sneeze at. I know a coach who has won it all before who was excited to get a second place trophy. And we had never done it before. So we were ecstatic. The 2024 Cedarcrest Girls T&F team had done what no other Cedarcrest girls T&F team had ever done before. They got a trophy at state.

To be sure, every girl on the team contributed to the effort. One of our athletes had the majority of our points finishing first in two events and adding a second and third place in her other two events. L was the long jump and triple jump champion. She added her other points in the 100 meter (third) and 200 meter (second) races. M added points finishing fourth in the triple jump. (We had two placers in the same event!) MJ got third in the discus. L2 got fifth in the 800 meters race. And our team of K, A, L2, and S finished fifth in the 4×200m and eighth in the 4×400m relays. It was an amazing team effort.

It was an amazing three days that culminated an amazing season. Few people would have put our girls in second place in the state in the 2A championship, but our team did it. Congratulations Cedarcrest High School Girls Track and Field team! You are amazing.

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Big Brother and Little Sister · 25 May 2024

George Orwell thought that Big Brother was always out there listening. He was somewhat prophetic, but it is not Big Brother who is listening, it is Little Sister.

(Before I start, I must apologize if you or your child is named Alexa or Siri. No. I am not going to complain about those cute names for insidious devices, but I will mention them a time or two. Oh. And just for fun, you might want to read this blog post out loud. You never know what might happen.)

It has been a long time since I read the book 1984, but I remember that it seemed farfetched back then. After all, I read it sometime in the 1980s, so it seemed unlikely that the government could change so drastically. Or that seemingly every electronic device would be a listening device to keep tabs on everybody. Big Brother was surely never going to appear on the scene. At least not by 1984.

Today, over seventy years from George Orwell’s writing (and forty years from my reading), it is not the Big Brother-wielding, totalitarian government we should fear (hopefully), it is the Little Sister-wielding big business that we should be wary of. Yes, Siri and Alexa are surely listening. And when they listen, all of a sudden, you are getting ads everywhere about whatever it was you told little sister, Alexa, or her older sister, Siri. Well, not quite. You are getting ads about anything you talked about within listening distance of either sister.

By the way, some people have nicknames for their listening devices. When they want to talk about Alexa or Siri, they say something like “What’s her name” or “You know who.” It’s kinda like they don’t remember or that they are afraid Lord Voldemort will curse them just for mentioning his name. It is a clever ploy. After all, instead of saying that you want to maybe order something by talking to Alexa, you can just say, “I’m thinking of asking what’s her name to order more toilet paper in case the pandemic starts up again.” Or “Maybe we should ask you know who for directions.” Or even “Let’s get Lord Voldemort to order us some books.”

Personally, I think I am going to start calling our listening devices Little Sister. Think about it. Some little sisters listened to their older siblings and ran away saying, “I’m gonna tell Mom.” Or they blackmailed you into doing something for them because you said something that she should not have overheard. Not that my little sister ever did that to me, but there are at least literary examples of little sisters who do. At least I think so.

At any rate.

I do not mind asking Little Sister for directions. “Siri, do you know the way to San Jose?” Or to help me figure out the name of singers of songs. “Alexa, who sings the song, Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” But I wonder if Little Sister is really that smart. After all, Alexa might want give us the directions to get to Dionne Warwick’s house instead of telling us that Dionne Warwick sang the song. And Siri might check to see if the song is in our library or more probably, ask us whether we want to buy it.

But seriously. I do wonder about all the listening devices in our houses and on our persons. I wonder if our computers and our phones and our TVs and pretty much every electronic device listens to us and tells Little Sister everything. I wonder if just thinking out loud might accidentally have Alexa send us a few pallets of toilet paper.

When it comes down to it, I do not know whether Big Brother is out there listening or not, but I am sure Little Sister is. So much so that it might even frighten George Orwell.

(By the way, if you read this out loud and your doorbell is ringing, do not blame me if you have a pallet of toilet paper in your driveway.)

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No Errata · 18 May 2024

The nice thing about print on demand is that there are no errata.

When you publish a book or paper, you might later publish a list of errata. Errata are those pesky little errors that you or your editor did not catch before publishing. No matter how good you are, they seem to crop up. The nice thing about self-publishing and print on demand is that you can just fix the errata and nobody is the wiser. At least nobody who gets the book after you made the correction.

I came across one of these pesky little mistakes when I looked at a print copy of my latest book, The Church Underground. There it was right in the first chapter. My two main characters were talking about Moses and his older brother Aaron.

“I think you read that someplace.”
“Yeah. Genesis.”

Genesis! Moses and Aaron in Genesis Really! They are introduced in Exodus. Exodus. (That is Exodus in the Bible, not the Leon Uris novel by the same name.) Oh the horror.

I was disgusted at myself because of the blatant and obvious error. But I knew it was okay. After all, to date, I have only sold one copy of the book and I only have five other print copies. (I have a few people that I am planning on giving those copies. And I will tell them how embarrassed I am to have that glaring error right in the first few pages.) Oh the horror.

But like I said, I only have a few copies in print so far, so fixing the error will just be a quick fix. One quick edit. Create a new PDF. Upload said PDF. And voilà! A new version of the book. No need for recalls or a list of errata. Or a new edition. Of course, I have not yet done said process. At least not at the time of this writing. I have been too busy writing blog posts and working on other writing projects. So in the mean time, I suppose other people could buy the book with the glaring error. Oh the horror.

I suppose the folks who have a copy of the book or will have a copy of the book might keep it for posterity. They might save it as a possible collector’s item. One of the six copies in existence of the famous book, The Church Underground. Which is funny to think about. In reality, those six might be the only copies of the book ever printed. Which is okay. I love to write. And I love it that my books are published. I love it that anybody who wants a copy can order it and have it printed and shipped in just a short amount of time. Not that anybody will do that, but it is nice that writers like me can at least dream of a few sales here and there. Or even of just that one sale.

By the way, I like the fact that I actually do sell copies of my books now and then. Sure. The sales are neither rapid nor voluminous. But that is okay. The books are out there. I no longer just dream of having books that people can buy. I actually have books out there. Lots of books. At least lots of books ready to be printed. (Fifteen at last count and ten more available digital only.)

I know that my books are not hot sellers. At least not yet. But it might be a good thing. After all, since I just throw stuff out there, they might have a lot of errata in them. Which is okay. Since they are all self-published and print on demand books, I can just fix them. And voilà! No muss. No Fuss. No errata.