Dr. Metablog

Rah-Rah

Promenading last Friday on the semi-famous Boulder Mall, we stumbled upon a Certifiably Big Event.

Ours is a college town where the three major religions are marijuana, massage, and football. On the evening that precedes a Saturday home game, the Mall is turned over to a football rally--a gigantic and noisy one. Have any of my regular readers or stray internet pilgrims ever been to such an event?  It's quite an echt American experience: the uniformed marching band -- all epaulets and brass and drums, the perky cheerleaders, a float featuring sports heroes of yore, the hundred gladiators themselves (all much taller and thicker than ordinary human beings) along with chants and rousing speeches. Tons of school spirit and not a shred of irony.  

The next day, despite the ginned-up enthusiasm, our team was blown out by UCLA, 45-17.

Rallies are not my kind of event. I'm constitutionally allergic to rah-rah and for the last couple of decades I've been boycotting football.

Why no more football for me? In truth, football was never my passion. I hardly ever played the game -- only a little "two-hand touch" in the schoolyard, so I'm not surrendering much by proscribing a sport that is a danger to everyone's physical well-being. There are too many dreadful injuries, especially head injuries. Too many retired players afflicted with dementia. A few days ago, surfing the channels, I accidentally glanced at a few minutes of a NFL contest. Even in that brief stretch, a cornerback was badly battered and carried by stretcher into an on-field ambulance. To me, it looked like it could be a broken neck. I'm sorry that I paused to watch; it will be along time before I do so again.

And I've always been resistant to Rah-Rah. Rubs me wrong; always has, right from the start.

The local mall rally caused me to remember my first days at Cornell, 66 years ago. I was a most naive freshman (now "freshperson" or "first-year") and had not a glimmer of an idea about college life -- none of my family or friends ever having enjoyed such an experience. Completely at sea. My peers in the freshman dorm insisted, you have to go to the rally. I had no idea what a rally was but if going to college meant going to rallies, then why not? I knew no better and tagged along with my new acquaintances. So there it was, just like last night on the mall. The band, the cheerleaders, the athletes, the rah-rah exhortations. One after another the speakers (were they coaches?), told us how hard we were going to cheer tomorrow for dear old Cornell and victory. We sang Cornell songs, the lyrics to which were handed to us on a mimeographed sheets of paper. It was far too enthusiastic for me -- too patriotic I guess one might say. I was not true to my school. How could I love Cornell or think fondly of my alma mater. I had just arrived, for goodness sake, and hadn't even finished unpacking. The insisted-upon emotion seemed contrived and artificial and I resented the pseudo-nostalgia. I don't like being subsumed into a crowd. I respond negatively when I'm exhorted to cheer or wave or sing. It all seems dangerously close to the unthinking obedience of nationalist politics. 

And then, next day, came the game itself. Dutifully I trudged to Schoellkopf to watch our guys encounter Princeton. I remember nothing about the contest, not even who won or lost. But I can still feel the cold September drizzle -- and I know that I caught a stiff cold. In my four years in Ithaca, it was my first and only football game. 

I soon learned that Cornell had much to offer beyond the rah-rah. It took a year or so, but eventually I found my people.

The Ocellated Turkey

Turkeys, I was recently surprised to learn, come in two distinct species. The familiar one is the "wild turkey", Meleagris gallopavo, the big bird that in broods of twenty or so, wanders around my house and garden, eating seeds, insects, acorns and apples and occasionally leaving behind a fancy feather or two. 

They're new to the neighborhood. Until about twenty years ago, I had not seen a single turkey; now, they're everywhere. And bold. Or perhaps just indifferent to me.  

And then there's the second kind of North American turkey. It's rare -- found, nowadays, only in the Yucatan peninsula. It's the "ocellated turkey,"  and it's one heck of a fancy bird.

 

Ocellated? I was puzzled, stymied by this unfamiliar word. But then I remembered that an "ocellus" is an architectural term. An ocellus is the circular opening at the top of a dome, familiar to me from its celebrated use in the Roman Pantheon. "Ocellus" is obviously the diminutive of Latin "oculus," eye. It follows that an "ocellated turkey" is so called because it displays circular markings on its feathers, like a peacock (although none of the pictures of turkeys that I found on the internet revealed eye-like decorations. Many shimmering colors, however.

 

It's remarkable that the range of the "ocellated turkey" coincides with the habitat of the ocelot. Could such a turkey, if attacked and killed by an ocelot, be considered doubly ocellated"? And if, in its death throes, it thrashed and quivered, could it be said to oscillate?

Herman Wehmeier; Pitching 1950-2022

For three days last month we stayed in a BNB just across the Connecticut River in New Hampshire. The place is owned (or perhaps only managed) by a family bearing the surname Wehmeier. It's a rare name, but one not entirely unfamiliar to me. Like any member of my baseball-obsessed generation, I was immediately put in mind of the only other Wehmeier who's ever crossed my path. I refer of course to Herman Wehmeier, of famous memory, the right-handed pitcher who played fourteen seasons of major league ball, mostly for Cincinnati and the Phillies. His career, from 1945 to 1958, coincided with the period of my greatest interest and enthusiasm for baseball -- the years in which I studied Dodger box scores with an assiduity that I never granted to algebra or Latin.

Herman Wehmeier was a solid pro, but not a Hall of Fame quality pitcher. His lifetime W-L was 92-108 and his cumulative ERA was 4.80. He made it into the record books because he led the league in Walks Allowed three times, in Wild Pitches twice, and in Hit Batsmen and Earned Runs Allowed once apiece. 

When looking over his stats, one particular number stands out. Herm started 240 games in his career and pitched an astonishing 79 complete games. He finished one out of every three games that he started! A remarkable achievement from the perspective of 2022, is it not?  A new world of "closers," "set-up men," "openers" and precipitous yankings.

Among active pitchers, Max Scherzer, who might be my nominee for pitcher of the decade, has, in 14 seasons so far, pitched just 12 complete games. In his best year, 2015, he had just 4. Jacob deGrom, who is as talented a pitcher as baseball can boast, has started 207 games in his career so far, just 4 of which he has completed. The present leaders in complete games are veterans Adam Wainwright with 28 and Justin Verlander with 27.

Robin Roberts, one of the best pitchers of Wehmeier's era, once pitched 28 complete games in a row, one of them lasting 17 innings. Lifetime, Roberts started 609 games and completed 310. 

Herm Wehmeier

 

Are Baboons "Spirtual'?

A friend is intimately acquainted with a primatologist. She (the primatologist) has spent many a year, almost a lifetime, studying baboons. She has lived with them and claims to have been accepted as one of the troop. She travels with them when she can. I'm impressed by her dedication. I wouldn't want to travel for more than a couple of days with a group of human tourists, let alone energetic lower primates. My one encounter with baboons, in a  rest area in South Africa, was unpleasant. The baboons were noisy and aggressive. Sub-Yahoos.

The primatologist told my friend the following  story. She was accompanying a troop of baboons on a trek from one feeding place to another. They came to a river that they wanted to cross. They all stopped, sat down on the ground, waited silently for about thirty minutes. Then they all arose as one and proceeded to wade across the river. 

My friend said, and I quote verbatim, "it was a spiritual moment." 

To which I immediately responded, "I don't know exactly what you mean, but I can tell you that never in a thousand years would I interpret such an event as 'spiritual'."

All of us around the table were polite, so the conversation moved on to more fruitful topics and did not become contentious.

But later, I thought, what did he (and the primatologist) mean by the word "spiritual."  And the best that I can come up with, is that they both deduced that the baboons engaged in some sort of prayer--that they paused to solicit divine intervention before setting out on a hazardous adventure.

I'm not even slightly sympathetic to that reading. In actual fact, just between us, I think it's kind of dumb.

I can think of many a reason why a congregation of baboons might assemble themselves and take a moment. Perhaps they were assessing the flow of the river. Maybe they were waiting for the current to become less strong. Or perhaps they were looking at the other bank to see if there were predators hiding in the underbrush. Or, most likely, they were simply tired and were gathering their strength.

I think that my friend wanted to believe that baboons are spiritual, because it follows that if baboons can pray to a higher power, then there's something natural and universal about belief in a deity, even if it's the Great Baboon in the Sky. Conversely, I am just as convinced that baboons are smart enough to look around carefully before taking the plunge. No supererogatory hypothesis required. 

To me, the natural and material explanation is completely obvious -- although I must admit that the primatologist who offered the spiritual explanation and the friend who repeated it are both scientists of considerable repute.

Contradictory Assertions

We stayed at an inn in Lyme, New Hampshire called "Breakfast on the Connecticut." Good location, decent accommodations -- but they don't serve breakfast. Which reminded me of the famous sign in front of the Fairlee Diner on Route 5 in Fairlee, Vermont: "Open Seven Days a Week. Closed Tuesday."