Cooperstown: 1 is good. 2 is better?

For many years in Cooperstown, there was a Hall of Fame weekend. It featured a parade, an exhibition game between two major league clubs, a regular season game between the Oneonta minor league team and an opponent, and of course, the induction ceremony, along with plenty of opportunities for the retired players to make a some money signing autographs on pictures, baseballs, bats, caps, any semi-flat surface.

Then a few years ago, someone had this bright idea: why doesn’t Cooperstown have TWO Hall of Fame weekends? One would be in late May or June, the other in the end of July or early August. The first event would feature the exhibition game. The second event would feature the minor league game. EACH event would feature a parade, and there would be TWO chances for the old-timers to make a few bucks. The merchants would be able to rake in some extra dough as well.

This year, the exhibition game was early, May 24, and one of the participants was the WORLD CHAMPION Boston Red Sox. My father-in-law, Richard, stood in line for 8 hours in February, but failed to get any tickets. So I didn’t go to the game for the first time in five years. He seemed destined to miss his first game in about fifteen.

On May 24, which was his birthday, Richard and his wife Joyce went to Cooperstown anyway; it’s only about 20 miles from Oneonta, where they live. He asked off-handedly whether there might be seats available, and there were! Some of the teams who had gotten an allotment of tickets had returned them. So that was a very nice birthday gift to him.

Richard has a book where he keeps a record of each game; he’s a season ticket holder of the Oneonta Tigers. For a regular season game, scorekeeping is not too hard, though we saw a 7-2-5-1 pickle earlier this year. (That means the left fielder threw home to the catcher who threw to third base who threw to the pitcher covering home and got the out.) But in the exhibition game, it’s almost impossible. For one thing, both teams bring up a bunch of minor league players, especially pitchers, just for the day. Also, the stars usually play only an inning or two. Also, one can leave the game, then come back in the game, which is not generally allowed in professional baseball.

This weeekend, Richard and I are going to the second 2005 Hall of Fame weekend in Cooperstown. Then we’ll walk through town picking out the old pros. “Hey, there’s Yogi.” “That’s Mudcat Grant.” “I think that’s Ferguson Jenkins.” Then we’ll see the Oneonta Tigers play the Tri-City Valley Cats (of Troy, NY, near Albany) in, as it’s always called, “historic Doubleday Field.” It’s a real thrill for the young players.

There is usually a Q & A with some of the inductees and/or other Hall of Famers. But this year, that’s been pushed back to Monday, featuring the new inductees, Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg.

Cooperstown is a pretty, idyllic place. But if you want to come just to to see the Baseball Hall of Fame, I MOST DEFINITELY recommend that you come some time other than the HoF weekends, some time when it isn’t a madhouse.

ROG

Blog Poem

This is an exercise stolen from Greg. The last one was a disaster, so I thought I’d try again.

Not only are these title lines from blogs, but they are from the MIXED Bag CD bloggers from what is currently on their pages. Only one is from mine. There are 11 titles that I put in the 10 lines.

Look for the ridiculous in everything, and you will find it.
SOULLESS RELIGIO-MANIACS
SPIN out of control
You People Are Weird Creeps
A bit more modern horror lamenting.
I have an Idea!
When I’m dictator …
Gonna Make You Behave…
Because I’m petty and can’t help myself
Kicking myself in the bootstraps

ROG

Blackout

The song playing in my head: Last Night, I Didn’t Get To Sleep At All. Actually, the last TWO nights.

Seems like only yesterday that I was in the dark in the sweltering heat without electricity. Wait, that WAS yesterday.

Let’s start with Monday night. It was warm and I had trouble sleeping. So I got up, posted my Tuesday blog, worked on a future piece, went downstairs to read or watch TV. I wondered what was the ugly thing Carol had attached to the curtain rod on the (partially glass) front door. Suddenly I realized it was a sleeping bat! Crap, I HATE bats. I paced around for about 10 minutes, then got a towel, grabbed the bat, opened the door, and tossed the bat (and towel) out the front door. I went upstairs and told Carol, and neither of us got any sleep the rest of the night.

Tuesday morning, the towel is still outside. Is the bat still in it? I put the towel in a box. Carol took the box to a lab, where the technician found no bat. In other words, I had put a towel in a box, and poked holes in it so it could breathe.

Tuesday noon, the Health Department didn’t believe we were exposed to rabies.

Prevention

Tuesday night, Carol implemented some bat-proofing activities, which included putting down a towel (another towel, not the bat towel) in the space under the door leading to the attic. This process also involved staring at the roofline at dusk to see if a bat might come in, so we could identify how the bat came in. This was a fruitless activity. We went to bed around 10:15 p.m.

At 10:30 p.m., the power went off, only for a few seconds, but long enough for the clocks to go to the flashing mode. Carol reset the clock, we went back to bed, and the power went out again, for 3 to 5 minutes. She reset the clocks AGAIN, and we returned to bed.

Daughter Lydia has a tendency to wake up during the night, but then she rolls over and goes back to sleep. But at 12:30 or so, she must have seen the netting Carol put over her crib as bat-proofing, and she started wailing uncontrollably. She stood up, which made her even more frantic. I went into her room and picked her up, expecting to rock her back to sleep in the guest room.

Then the power went off AGAIN. So I brought Lydia to our bed, because I figured it would be better to be on the prowl for bats together, and I got a flashlight. The power remained off. As the air outside became more still, the stickiness quotient increased. I looked for batteries for the portable radio to see if I could get some news. I found 4 new C batteries; unfortunately, the radio needed 6 D batteries.

Redux

I got dressed to go to the 24-hour grocery store a couple of blocks away. While we had no power, the school across the street that’s being torn down must have a generator for their night work. A house two doors down must also have a backup system. The main street in the area, Madison Avenue, was fairly well lit. The library had an emergency light system, the police station, the TrustCo bank and the gas station (which was closed) all had some lights from generators.

Unfortunately, the Price Chopper on Madison was dark. Almost mockingly, the street east of Main Street, just a block away in that direction, was lit. As I peered south down West Lawrence, dark as far as I could see, I discovered a peculiar thing. Tree-lined streets are lovely in the day, and quaint at night with street lights. But these same trees block the limited illumination of a half-moon already obscured by high clouds, making the trek down that street feel like a tunnel, with only a flashlight for guidance. It was strangely unsettling.

I went home, and the three of us slept, more off than on. (At 3 a.m., it was 79 degrees F, with a relative humidity of 66.9 at the Albany Airport, which is usually COOLER than it is in town – that reading meant hot and quite humid.) Finally, at 4:15 a.m. yesterday morning, power was finally restored.

The other tune running through my head is I’m So Tired.

Creative Commons

As a librarian, I tend to be cognizant of, and pulled by, two often conflicting values, the widespread distribution of information versus the desire to honor intellectual property rights (copyright, trademark, patent), the latter so the creators will be willing and able to “do it again.”

(Not that I always ABIDE by the latter, but I usually have a good excuse, or a very good rationalization.)

So, I was very interested in reading an article in the July/August 2005 Searcher, “The Magazine for Database Professionals”. The article, “Generosity and Copyright” by Laura Gordon-Murname, asked the question, “How can you help patrons identify public domain content…?”

The copyright law has become more skewed towards the copyright holder over time, especially since 1978, with longer periods and more lenient applications, so that the doodle on a napkin or a quick e-mail becomes copyrightable. According to Gordon-Murname, there are many critics who believe these changes fly in the face of the law as envisioned by Jefferson and his contemporaries. She quotes Larry Lessig, who says this “permission culture” has changed from “an opt-in system in which creators were required to register to an opt-out system.”

The Creative Commons Foundation was founded in 2001 to create “balance, compromise and moderation” for copyrights, offering “creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them.” Creative Commons has developed tools so that creative people who wish to share their work can specify who can use their works and under what circumstances.

Try the Creative Commons search mechanism or the new (March 2005) Yahoo! Search Creative Commons Search. You will be able to ascertain if the work:
– is in the public domain
– requires attribution
– can’t be use commercially
– must be used as is (no derivatives)
– allows for sampling

Of course, many federal government web sites are in the public domain. Gordon-Murname lists these sites that offer public domain content:
Library of Congress
National Archives
NASA
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Also these other PD locations:
Public Library of Science
Ibiblio, “the public’s library and digital archive”
Project Gutenberg, “the Internet’s oldest producer of FREE electronic books (eBooks or eTexts)”
The Online Books Page
Bartleby.com, “Great Books Online”

Some recent comments from the Copyright Office indicate that the Office is considering asking Congress to allow the “marketplace” to determine the price of using copyrighted material (after making almost everything imagineable under copyright), and expects the would-be user to go to the copyright holder to negotiate the price, if one can even FIND the copyright holder. I’m afraid this would stifle creativity in favor of endless litigation. Perhaps this “middle way” is a solution.

ROG

The Lydster, Part 16 "In My Own Little Corner"

I was a big fan of the 1966 television production of “Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella”. It starred Lesley Ann Warren and Stuart Damon. I loved the songs, even the goofy ones like “The Prince is Giving a Ball.”
Herald: His royal highness Christopher Rupert Vwindemier Vlandamier Carl Alexander Francois Reginald Lancelot Herman
Boy: HERMAN?
Herald: Herman.. Gregory James is giving a ball.

I think I liked the production in large part because I had a great big crush on Lesley Ann Warren.

(There was a 1957 version with Julie Andrews and Jon Cypher, which I don’t remember, although it may have been seen by more people than the M*A*S*H finale.)

Both versions features Cinderella singing “In My Own Little Corner”:
In my own little corner in my own little chair
I can be whatever I want to be.
On the wings of my fancy I can fly anywhere
and the world will open its arms to me.

There were times when I was a teenager, and even a few times as an adult, when I’d be at a party and feel suddenly overwhelmed- by too many people, or by some uncomfortable situation, or for no discernable reason at all. I’d go off to an unoccupied room, even the attic or cellar, or an unused stairwell, just to get away for a while, my version of “my own little corner.”

Daughter Lydia likes hanging out in corners, between the CD cases, in the bathroom, under the sink (which no longer has anything under it.) Sometimes she gets into hiding in the smallest spaces, then gets trapped, like cat stuck in a tree, and needs to be rescued.

I want for her to be whatever she wants to be. I want her to be able to fly anywhere. I desparately want the world to open its arms to her, though I know that won’t always happen, and that she’ll want to climb back into her own little corner.

I need to learn how to make her safe enough to venture out again, if I can. Like last week, when she went into a swimming pool for the very first time, and liked it…at least the top two steps.

Happy year and a third, Lydia.

ROG
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