Confluence Trash Bash Rehash

Nothing could have been more apropos for yesterday’s Fifth Annual Confluence Trash Bash than the 100% recycled bags that were available to some 200 volunteers after the event.  The sides of the Missouri American Water items were decorated with a few hundred colorful plastic bottles.   Simply stated on the very bottom of the bag’s front was “I Used To Be a Plastic Bottle.”

The event was held in or near four different sites in the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan Area.  I chose Creve Coeur Park because I not only grew up nearby, but also because it’s a place I frequent several dozen times every single year. 

My mom used to come to Creve Coeur Park in the 1950s by streetcar.  It’s a historical fact that is documented in a shelter next to the playground in the upper part of Creve Coeur Park. That’s reached by going west on Dorsett Road and turning right into the park prior to reaching Marine Avenue.  It can also be reached by walking up some 300 steps from the parking lot to your right while coming down the hill on Marine from Dorsett Road.

I’m thrilled that I signed up for Station Two, which was the vast area down by Mallard Lake behind The Lakehouse Grill.  After turning in my signed liability waiver at Sailboat Cove, I was equipped with gardening gloves and several bags by the event organizers.  I headed straight behind the eating site and to the right.

What a total eye-opening experience it was on the appalling side!  In the first 20 minutes alone, I found enough plastic bottles, cans, glass containers, Styrofoam cups and parts of broken cooler pieces, plastics, pens, and some five or six different types of balls to fill six trash bags about a foot wide and 2 ½ feet high.  As one of some two dozen or so volunteers working that area, I filled another five or six bags over the next couple hours! 

So many shocking stories of finds were shared with many others during the cleanup process.  They included a large, round laundry basket, a huge bag that we were told was used to hold sand for sandbagging, and a very tall, ornate light bulb.  It was also announced at the end that some 1,065 bags of trash were collected along with hundreds of tires from a nearby dump site.

I have visited many areas of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers plus tributaries and creeks that flowed from those waterways.   One could often find a smattering of trash that might have been deposited there by the current from hundreds of miles away.  But that’s not the case at freestanding Creve Coeur Lake and its small water offshoots.  

Why would people not bring plastic grocery bags or the like to collect their trash then load them back into their vehicles or deposit them into metal drums close to the long, walking trail?

That was part of my response to new friend Caitlin Zera, a Webster University photo journalism/media major.  I spent a good amount of time collecting trash with her and her father. 

Zera was also taking a good variety of photos along the trash-lined shores before interviewing me as a former journalism student during our barbecue lunch to help complete her school project.

It was different for me being on the receiving end of interview questions, but the answers came easy.  I told her that although I was surprised that so many people would just leave their containers and other items, it pretty much fits into other areas of our throwaway society.  Just consider all the neglect in other areas of our society and how poorly some people treat others and their own pets.

Our environment, including the water sheds are too precious for us to spoil with trash, runoff from pesticides, and the like.  Constant education is one of the solutions, and I will be sure to continue to spread the word on the subject and volunteer again next year!

The other major meeting sites for this year’s event were St. Ferdinand Park in Florissant, the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge area off Riverview Drive in Bellefontaine Neighbors and the Choteau Township area of Granite City, Illinois.

Trailnet, Great Rivers Greenway, Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, St. Louis Audubon Society, and the Missouri Department of Conservation were also among several sponsors of the event. 

Free Missouri Stream Team t-shirts were also distributed to volunteers.  That’s pretty much the intent of the project—to help keep Missouri water areas FREE of trash by pushing a greater STREAM of consciousness into the minds of our residents in the realm of clean water.

First Loves Last a Lifetime

Ah, spring!  It’s the perfect time for a young man to fall in love!

For me, it’s was more than just a mere spring fling.  I was a mere 8 ½ years old, but the spring of 1964 was just right for me to fall head over heels.

Getting an early start must be hereditary.  Love of baseball hit my dad in the early 1930s.  Since his name was Hank Greenberg, it was natural for him to become a huge fan.  His namesake, the original “Hammerin’ Hank” and future Hall of Famer, started shining for the Detroit Tigers in 1933.

Having Greenberg as a childhood idol helped my dad maintain his baseball interest, and our love for the game had similar births.

My dad was just seven when the 1930 baseball season began.  By the time it ended, he was hooked for life.  Managed by Charles “Gabby” Street, the hometown St. Louis Cardinals edged the Chicago Cubs by just two games for the National League pennant.

Leading the way were “Sunny Jim” Bottomley, Frankie “The Fordham Flash” Frisch, and Charles “Chick” Hafey.  Every member of the Redbirds’ starting eight lineup hit over .300, making things easy for pitchers “Wild Bill” Hallahan, Jesse “Pop” Haines, Charles “Flint” Rhem, and Burleigh “Old Stubblebeard” Grimes.  Talk about nicknames!

The Cardinals lost the World Series that year to the Philadelphia Athletics, but repeated in the National League in 1931, and knocked off Jimmy Foxx, Al Simmons, and the heavily-favored A’s.

The 1934 World Champion Cardinals, known as “The Gashouse Gang,” with the likes of Frisch, Joe “Ducky” Medwick, James “Ripper” Collins, James “Tex” Carleton, and especially Jerome Hanna “Dizzy” Dean and  Paul “Daffy” Dean, made it easy to be a baseball fan in St. Louis.

My mom, Delores, born in 1930, is also a long-time baseball fanatic.  She was a fervent rooter of the overachieving St. Louis Browns when they captured their only American League pennant in 1944 before losing four games to two to a Cardinals’ team that featured a young Stan Musial. It was our town’s only “Trolley Car” series.   The Browns always took a backseat to the Cardinals among St. Louis baseball fans, and moved to Baltimore after the 1953 season to become the Orioles.  Needless to say, Mom has been a Cardinals fan ever since, watching every single game!

Now, it was my turn!  I was not even seven years old when I attended the first game I truly remember. It was on Tuesday, June 12, 1962 at the OLD Busch Stadium I, formerly known as Sportsman’s Park, at Grand & Dodier.  I was there with my parents and my two elder sisters, Sherry and Debby. 

We started our descent from those wooden general admission seats shortly after the Phillies came to the plate in the eighth inning with a 2-1 lead.  Before we exited, the Cardinals’ 25-year-old second baseman Julian Javier had drawn a walk.  Suddenly, the crowd noise grew to a thundering ovation as rookie first baseman Fred Whitfield, who came up from the Cardinals’ minor leagues for the first time just 16 days previously, connected on a pitch that I still remember bouncing onto the street in front of us. That’s actually the only thing I remember about the game. 

I was actually able to track down the box score because I had recalled more than 50 years later that Whitfield homered late in the game as the Cardinals won.  He hit only eight all season, his only year with the Cardinals before being traded to Cleveland the following season.  This was the only game in which he homered late in a winning effort.      

In order to give Whitfield a chance at first, it was also was one of the few games Musial still played some left field instead of first base.  Ironically, Whitfield died January 31, 2013, just 12 days after Musial had passed away.

                 

The following season, the Cardinals, in Musial’s final season, made a late-season pennant run, winning 19 of 20 in September.  Then, St. Louis was swept three in a three-game home series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, who won the pennant by six games.

Sherry, Debby, and I grew up bleeding true red Cardinal blood.  Baseball was king in our house.  We went to some 15-20 games a year and never tired of hearing the colorful bellowing of St. Louis native Harry Caray and the then low-key, dry wit of Jack Buck on KMOX Radio.  Both are members of the broadcast wing of the National Baseball Hall of fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY.

What went hand-in-hand with the game itself?  Baseball cards, of course!  That’s where one, big, inanimate object helped enrich my childhood love.  Outside our tiny house in the mid-county suburb of Olivette was a giant, red rustic wooden fence.

After living at that house for about four years, that red fence on one side had suddenly gained tremendous importance as a shortcut to fantasyland!  Sherry would take some of her allowance money, and together we would climb the five ladder-like wooden slats to the top, then climb down to the rarely-traveled side street that awaited us on the other side below.  Just about ¼-mile away was baseball card heaven—Sherman Brothers Delicatessen!

In season, baseball card time was one of the most anticipated times of the week!  Back then, it was just a nickel for a five-card pack of Topps cards that was accompanied by a flat, pink stick of bubble gum, measuring about one inch by two inches.  We would often get the special of six packs for a quarter!

How exciting it was taking turns opening these glorious packs, one at a time, as the other person waited anxiously to try and catch a glimpse of what was inside. 

“Wow!  We had a Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson, or Cardinal great Ken Boyer!”  A few seconds later, we may have uttered, “Oh, no!  Not another Choo Choo Coleman!”

We never thought about any monetary value of baseball cards.  But we did want the best players and our favorite Cardinals.  After all, we often played war with the cards.  Aces were guys like Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Sandy Koufax.

Considering how much money old cards can currently bring, it’s unfortunate that most of the cards of the top players received the most creases from handling.  Well, at least I still have some 7,000 baseball cards with loads of sentimental value!   My dad’s mother threw out his shoe boxes filled with cards from the 1930s and 1940s while he was in France late in World War II.

Those trading cards certainly helped fuel my love for baseball, and that fence provided a great means to that end.  But the fence meant a whole lot more.  It was the entire fair ball outfield wall for neighborhood whiffleball in our own “Field of Dreams.”  A large drum lid was home plate, an old tire was third base, a broken chair that lay flat was second base, and I don’t recall what we used for first.

Our own “Green Monster” stood down the left-field line.  Unlike the one at Boston’s Fenway Park, this green fence didn’t earn its nickname because of its height.  It was only about five feet high.  What we thought lay behind it was what terrified us!

We lived at the very end of the street and there were no houses behind us.  Instead, the green fence separated us from an enormous field with weeds and very tall grass that never seemed to get cut.  We imagined there were loads of snakes and rats lurking there. 

We wouldn’t dare venture into that field to search for the hundreds of whiffleballs we fouled off.  Luckily, our parents didn’t care how many balls they had to buy.  They would often join us, and we were all doing what we loved.  But we did make a rule that if you hit the ball over that green fence, it was an automatic out.  So, we righthanded hitters learned right away about hitting the ball to the opposite field.  There was a lot more open space down the rightfield line, anyway!

The magic of those baseball cards and our own backyard playing sessions were intensified by what was happening on National League playing fields in 1964.

The Cardinals, who two weeks earlier had acquired a young Lou Brock in a trade with the Chicago Cubs for starting pitcher Ernie Broglio and a couple lesser talents, began July in seventh place, 9 ½ games out of first.  St. Louis was still 7 ½ out in September.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia had been in first place since mid July, building a seemingly insurmountable lead as the season headed into that final full month.  Then something strange happened to the Phillies.  After being used to winning more than 70 per cent of its games for two months straight, Philadelphia began September playing .500 ball.  Later in the month, the Phils lost 10 games in a row!

With the season in its final week, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and San Francisco were all within three games of one another!  The Cardinals then completed a three-game sweep of visiting Philadelphia.

My family went to the middle game of that series, for which I still have the scorecard.  It was Ray Sadecki pitching for the Cardinals against Dennis Bennett for the Phillies.  Cardinal first baseman Bill White homered near the scoreboard clock for an insurance run in a 4-2 victory.                                                     

I still remember sitting near the top row of the grandstand and still have many ticket stubs from that era--$1 for those general admission seats and 50 cents for bleacher seats.  We all stood up and made noise by banging the wooden seats up and down!

I’ll also always remember scoreboard watching as then first place Cincinnati hosted Pittsburgh. Because of all the transistor radios around us, we were well aware of the situation. 

All of a sudden, Caray shouted, “Pittsburgh has won!  Pittsburgh won its ballgame, 2-0!  It’s over!  Pittsburgh has just beat the Reds, 2-0!  Holy cow!  Within 15 seconds of the Cardinals win, (Bill) Mazeroski threw out (Chico) Ruiz, and the Pirates beat the Reds, 2-0! The National League race is in a tie!  And the Phillies in third place stay only a game-and-a-half out!”

The following night, another eventual Hall of Fame broadcaster, long-time Cardinals catcher Tim McCarver belted an early home run to help the Cardinals to a series sweep and the National League lead!

However, the Cardinals then dropped the first two games of that final homestand against a New York Mets team that finished the season dead last with a 53-109 record.  Meanwhile, the Phillies broke out of that long losing streak just in time to knock off Cincinnati on Friday before their rare Saturday open date.

Entering the final day of the regular season, Sunday, October 4, 1964, it was the Cardinals 92-69, the Reds 92-69, the Phillies 91-70, and the Giants barely eliminated at 90-71.  The Reds could have won the pennant that day, the Cardinals could have won it, or the season could have ended in a three-way tie!

That last scenario looked even more plausible after Rookie-of-the-Year Richie Allen’s second home run of the game gave Philadelphia a 9-0 lead over Cincinnati, and Bobby Klaus’ two-run double gave the Mets a 3-2 fifth inning lead in St. Louis.  But Boyer, Dick Groat, and Dal Maxvill drove in runs in the bottom of the fifth.

The Cards led 11-5 in the ninth inning when Caray stole a line from Giants’ announcer Russ Hodges.

“A high pop foul, McCarver’s there, the Cardinals win the pennant!  The Cardinals win the pennant!  The Cardinals win the pennant!”  

All the kids from our neighborhood gathered to rejoice with an impromptu celebration on our front lawn as the Cardinals won their first pennant since 1946 before later topping the Yankees in a seven-game World Series.

Just seven months later, my family moved.  I missed that red fence, but still love my baseball cards, the sport itself, and of course, the Cardinals!

Let the March Madness Begin!

The month of March got its name from Mars or Marzio, the Roman god of war.  To the naked eye, Mars indeed looks blood-red, a reasonable depiction of what spilled out of combatants from the pure madness of those ancient battlefields. 

 

March and madness!  Perhaps those two could be combined in some way!  And so it was done. 

 

Credit for coining the term ‘March Madness’ generally goes back to 1939 when author Henry V. Porter wrote an essay describing the Illinois High School Association’s basketball tournament.  Porter later embellished the use of the term in 1942 when he produced a lengthy poem entitled, “Basketball Ides of March.”  Here are the first and last stanzas of that creation:

          The gym lights gleam like a beacon beam,

          And a million motors hum,

          In a good will flight on a Friday night;

          For basketball beckons, “Come!”

          A sharp-shooting mite is king tonight.

          The Madness of March is running.

          The winged feel fly, the ball sails high,

          And field goal hunters are gunning.          

                                  

 

          With war nerves tense, the final defense,

          Is the courage, strength, and will,

          In a million lives where freedom thrives,

          And liberty lingers still.

          Now eagles fly and heroes die;

          Beneath some foreign arch.

          Let their sons tread where hate is dead;

          In a happy Madness of March.                                             

The term ‘March Madness’ was not applied to the NCAA Championship Tournament until 1982.  That was when CBS broadcaster Brent Musburger used the term while announcing a tournament game.    

 

Yes, it’s the same Musburger who got into a bit of hot water for going ga-ga over Miss Alabama’s Katherine Webb, girlfriend of quarterback A.J. McCarron, who ultimately led his Crimson Tide to a 42-14 pasting of Notre Dame in the BCS championship game of January 7, 2013. 

Oddly, 1982 was the season that ended with Michael Jordan, who earned Atlantic Coast Conference Freshman-of-the-Year status, hitting a late baseline jumper to give North Carolina a 63-62 title win over Georgetown.

 

The very next season, the March Madness upstart was North Carolina State.  Entering the tournament as a #6 seed, the Wolfpack, led by young coach Jim Valvano, upset the heavily-favored top seed, The Houston Cougars, known as The Phi Slamma Jamma Team of center Hakeem Olajuwon.  Lorenzo Charles won it 54-52 on a dunk at the buzzer off a teammate’s three-point shot that fell short.    The Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research was named after Valvano, who passed away from cancer just 10 years later at age 47.

 

In 1985, Villanova, a mere #8 seed in its bracket, led by Coach Rollie Massimino, stunned center Patrick Ewing & his #1 overall seed Georgetown, 66-64 in the title game. 

 

Far more recent March Madness came in the first round of last year’s tournament.  Two #2 seeds were upset by #15s.  The University of Missouri lost 88-84 to Norfolk State while perennial power Duke was upset 75-70 by Lehigh.

 

This year’s NCAA Tournament field of 68 was set earlier this evening.   St. Louis University started the season with a 3-3 record through November 28^th.  That was under interim head coach Jim Crews, who was guiding the team of ailing nationally-renown coach Rick Majerus, who passed away just three days later. 

 

Since then, the Billikens are a resounding 24-3, including their first ever Atlantic 10 regular season championship and today’s conference tournament title, 62-56 over Virginia Commonwealth University at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Crews was been named The Sporting News College Coach of the Year for leading SLU to status as the best pure non-superstar team in the country.  Just 4.3 points per game separates top scorer Dwayne Evans from #5 scorer Jordair Jett.  Sandwiched between them are Cody Ellis, Kwamain Mitchell, and Mike McCall, Jr.  Other top players the past two seasons are Rob Loe and Cory Remekun.

 

The Billikens start the tourney this Thursday in San Jose, CA at 1:10 pm Central time.  The opponent is the #13 seed New Mexico State Aggies, a 24-10 team from the Western Athletic Conference. 

Meanwhile, The Missouri Tigers, longtime of the Big 8/Big 12 Conference, just completed their first season in the Southeastern Conference.  Mizzou is 23-10 overall, earning a #9 seed and will face the #8 Colorado State Rams, 25-8, and runnerup in the Mountain West Conference.  That game will be played Thursday at 8:20 p.m. Central time in Lexington, KY.

Coach Frank Haith’s Tigers had a perfect home record this season, but struggled mightily on the road.  Mizzou is led in offense by Laurence Bowers and Jabari Brown, and on the boards by Alex Oriakhi.  Phil Pressey is the Tigers’ point guard, while Keion Bell and Earnest Ross are also featured players.

Another area team, the University of Illinois, is a Big Ten entry that finished the season with a 22-12 record.  The Fighting Illini earned a #7 seed and will play #10 Colorado, 21-11 out of the Pac-12, this Friday at 3:40 pm Central time in Austin, TX.  Coach John Groce's Illini is led by guards Brandon Paul and D.J. Richardson and former Lafayette High School forward Tyler Griffey. 

 

The overall top seed of the tournament is Coach Rick Pitino’s Louisville Cardinals, a long-time Big East power that finished with a 29-5 record.  Louisville will be in the same half of the 16-team Midwest Region as SLU and Mizzou.  Other #1 seeds are Kansas (South), Gonzaga (West), and Indiana (East).

Time Marches On!

As someone who despises any hint of cold weather, I can rejoice in the fact that it’s mid-March and we have finally reached the final days of another long winter.  For me, it’s the season in which time seems to stand still.  Perhaps that’s a good thing.

Back in May of 1998, I conducted lengthy interviews with my parents for the creative 50^th anniversary scrapbook I was preparing for them.  I was racing with time to get the massive undertaking completed at least a few days before that celebrated June 27^th date.

Even without that Golden Anniversary album in front of me, I’ll always remember one of my mother’s quotes:  “You go to bed one night when you’re young; you awake the next morning and you’re old!”

 

My mom is now 82, and my dad passed away at age 86 nearly four years ago on April 21/22, 2009, less than 10 weeks shy of their 61^st anniversary.  The more that time slips away in my own life, the greater understanding I have of my mom’s saying.

 

Others have said the same thing in different words. One of my favorites is “Time is at once the most valuable and the most perishable of all our possessions. “  That offering was coined by one of our nation’s early congressmen, fully known as John Randolph of Roanoke (VA).

 

I can certainly relate to both of those quotes and several others!  While others live to work, I’ve always lived within my means with a credit rating of 840 or 845. I absolutely live for experiences like traveling, dancing, and socializing.  For the latter two, I take hug therapy to an art form.  I go out on weekends and weeknights, and have fun one-on-one, in small groups, and in large ones.  Considering family and friends, it’s great to realize that “the best things in life aren’t things.” 

 

Is your glass half full or half empty?  I keep gulping down the contents (normally the non-alcoholic variety) and have my glass refilled.  As I get older, I don’t always recall everything, but as in the old Jim Croce tune, “Time in a Bottle,” I have kept a diary for some 30 years and have assembled scrapbooks for travel, sports, and other special occasions well before they were in vogue.  After all, as British philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time!”  

 

How about you?  What’s your attitude toward time?  Are you instead collecting ‘what ifs?’ Do you talk yourself out of living by focusing on negatives or worrying about what might go wrong? You can’t change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying about the future.  

 

Time is of the essence!  The clock keeps ticking.   Unless you can build “The Time Machine,” as in the 1960 H.G. Wells-inspired movie, or go “Back to the Future,” your time is also finite.  As the sands keep sifting downward from the top bulb of the hour glass to the bottom one, how do you choose to spend the balance of your days?

 

As the late and great Galesburg, Illinois poet Carl Sandburg once wrote, “Time is the coin of your life.  It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.  Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

 

Oops!  Look what time it is!  Time to get ready and meet some of my dancing friends!  Time is fleeting!  Until next time…  

Home Schooling Can Be the Ultimate Educational Experience

Education is one of the prime functions of parenthood.  Shortly after our offspring is born, the nurturing of the child with love and the very basics of life are the initial lesson.  What happens thereafter can vary greatly from parent to parent.  

 

There are many terrific parents in our society. However, it seems that for many others, parenting pretty much ends not long after a child’s birth. That certainly wasn’t the case for me and my son David. 

 

Children normally don’t enter any regular classroom environment until pre-school or kindergarten.  But a lot can be taught to a child before then.  It was natural for me to expose David to many simple things in nature by taking him to local and state parks.  Many things are found along a simple trail or by a creek.  Teaching can include concepts like the changing appearance of shadows at varying times of day. 

In the early 1990s, I did a story on a top high school diver who was home schooled until about seventh grade.  Upon attending school, she was ranked #1 in her class for two straight years!   I then researched and found that, once in school, the average home schooled child was in the 93^rd percentile academically.  That knowledge and the strong bond I had already developed with David made his early education choice an easy one.  

 

In addition to writing and working part-time at Western Union, I home schooled David from most of September 1994-June 2000, and did likewise with two of his half-brothers for most of those last three years. 

 

During home schooling, the children and I participated in countless events and activities through the North County and West County Christian Home School groups, and they were the only children whose primary teacher was a male. I handled all the teaching after the first three weeks. We were also the only ones who didn’t use a pre-packaged curriculum.  Finally, instead of just doing the required 1,000 units in a calendar year, with 600 being core units, we averaged about 1,300 core units of some 1,700 total units.

David also won two spelling bees, took violin lessons at a regular school, and played two years of Catholic Youth Council basketball through another school.  I also involved him in Cub Scouts and he had ample time to go to the park down our street and play sports and do other acitivites with the neighborhood children.

In addtion, David was doing just about all high school work well before he went to regular school in fifth grade.  He was ultimately one of just about 25 in his high school class who graduated Summa Cum Laude among some 500 students.  Both of his half-brothers, who had struggled to maintain 2.0 grade point averages, became 3.0 students once returning to public school.

A few years later, I attended one of the monthly meetings of St. Louis Mensa, held at the Washington University extension on Forsyth.  Back then, there was a special guest speaker or forum based on a different subject.  I will never forget the one that concentrated on various forms of teaching.

The panel was represented by teachers and administrators of public and private schools, magnet schools, and Montessori schools.  There is just one thing I currently recall about the exchange between panel members and the crowd of about 50 Mensa audience members. 

There were a couple panel members who, when asked about home schooling, immediately brought up the anti-socialization argument while offering no positive comments about home schooling.

 

At that time, I not only suffered from large group anxiety, but also had an extreme phobia about anything that resembled public speaking.  Nevertheless, I stood up, knees and voice shaking, and gave all on hand a detailed account of what home schooling could mean to a child.  Not only can it be a favorable way of helping keep a child's distance from many of the bad influences of life, but it's also a prime way of helping him build self-esteem and self-reliance.

I also firmly believe that home schooling is the best means of teaching a child HOW to think and not WHAT to think regarding the heavy doses of indoctrination evident at many schools. 

 

My life has been chock full of hundreds of highlights in writing and work awards, and activities saurrounding sports, travel, social functions, vacation planning, scrapbooking and other creative projects, astronomy, dancing, volunteer work and the like. But home schooling is probably the decision I've made for which I am most proud!