James Amos

Sena Making Progress in Juggling

This is a progress report on Sena’s progress in juggling. She has been dedicated to practicing 2 or 3 minutes every other day. Frankly, she does more than that on some days.

She has been trying to move up to doing a 4-ball toss and catch. She thought she got it yesterday, and for a while so did I, even as I filmed it. The practice routine is to toss the balls 1-2-3-4 and catch. We thought she nailed it.

Then I looked at the video clips in slow motion. She wasn’t getting to 4 but she was getting to 3 more consistently. And part of what fooled us is that she’s now beginning to be ambidextrous. She can start the cascade from both her right and left side now!

Sena suggests I change the title of my YouTube section on juggling. As of yesterday, I changed it from Ugly Juggling to Ordinary Juggling. This distinguishes it from all the jugglers from whose videos I learn so much. They are extraordinary.

Thoughts on Beards

Sena ordered a beard kit for me. I’ve never seen one before. I’ve been trying to grow a beard for the last several months. It’s a new thing. Before retirement, I could get away with a mustache or a circle beard stubble. But I couldn’t see working at the hospital while trying to grow a full beard.

I’ve trimmed it a couple of times; I have a beard trimmer with a set of guards. I’ve got some bare spots, like a lot of guys. We saw a YouTube commercial about a product called beard growth oil. The guy said it covered his “potholes” in no time.

All the beard kits have about the same items. There’s beard shampoo, beard balm, and beard oil. They can have fragrances, like peppermint and eucalyptus or sandalwood. A lot of them seem to have infusions of things like avocado and papaya. The makers are big on natural stuff.

I’m just trying to grow a beard, not make a salad.

The kit has a comb, a brush, and scissors. I think the brush bristles are made of boar hairs. I wonder what’s special about boar hairs. Some of the kits come with beard growth oil and even a little mini roller to roll it into the hair roots. Some guys swear by it. I can’t help laughing when I think about it. And there are a large number of positive reviews about the kits in general.

I’m not sure what I would look like after beard growth oil. I might have a totally different appearance. If the kit comes with hair coloring, I might end up looking a little sinister.

On the other hand, I might resemble a department store Santa Claus. I’m not looking for the job.

I’m not sure what’ll happen with this. Until now, I have tended not to mess with my facial hair other than to snip away the stragglers and fly-aways.

I follow some guidelines. I trim the mustache away from my upper lip. I have no interest in tasting my meals long after I’m done eating. I shave neck hairs above my Adam’s apple. That doesn’t mean I’m uppity about neck beards. I just don’t like a scratchy neck.

We’ll see.

Off the Head Juggling Trick is Off the Wall

I saw the off the head juggling trick on the Juggle Man YouTube. This maneuver is off the wall. I looked at a couple of other videos because I just could not get the hang of it. One juggling teacher says it’s an “easy” trick. After fumbling a couple hundred times, I’m wondering why I’m hitting this wall with it.

I got the pattern wrong to start off—but that was the only way I could do it at all. When I started getting the pattern right, I was even more impressed with the jugglers who can make it look easy.

The two-ball practice I saw on one juggler’s video was painful. If you’re a guy and you’re doing the claw catch as instructed by some teachers, watch out. You can see what I mean in the video, and I’m not acting in that clip!

And once again, I’m having trouble letting go of a key ball that would allow me to finish the trick by smoothly moving back into the cascade.

I’ll keep you posted.

Iowa City Public Art Program 2023!

The 2023 Iowa Cty Public Art Program unfolds soon. The call for art submissions is on! The new temporary exhibits will go display August 7, 2023 through July 2024. Application information is at this link.

The Secret of Wiffle Ball Farm

I sometimes enjoy watching one of the paranormal TV shows, “The Secret of skinwalker Ranch.” I don’t want to mention the word “skinwalker” too often because some people consider it dangerous to even say it loud because they believe the skinwalkers will latch on to you. It’s kind of a boogeyman thing. Anyhow, the actors on the show can be pretty funny, even when they don’t intend it. There’s even an astrophysicist involved. My spellchecker says the word “skinwalker” should be capitalized. I figure if I don’t do that, I’ll be safe.

Anyhow, it gives me an idea for another show some producers might want to consider, “The Secret of Wiffle Ball Farm.” It would probably get an astronomically high rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It would have a similar format to “The Secret of skinwalker Ranch.”

The setting would be in Monticello, Iowa where the headquarters is located. It’s Whiffle Tree Mercantile. There is some controversy about whether or not you should leave the “h” in the spelling or not. If you’re the least bit superstitious, you might wonder if leaving the “h” in would open a wormhole vortex which would allow a giant Wiffle Ball to zoom in with a vicious curve trajectory and bean you on the back of your head.

This isn’t so far-fetched, at least not as far-fetched as the “skinwalker” capitalization phobia. There is a story about the cartoonist, Gary Larson, getting a letter from Wiffle Ball, Inc. lawyers insisting that Larson capitalize all the letters in WIFFLE in the future and should only be used in reference to a product made by The Wiffle Ball, Inc.

Everybody knows you can put a righteous curve on a wiffle ball, maybe especially if you alter it in sneaky ways (see below). The ball has holes in it and I think I might have played it when I was a kid. If I had been a kid in 2011, I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to play it in New York instead of Iowa. It was banned as unsafe for a short while by the state legislature. People laughed at that so hard they probably peed their pants.

The name Wiffle Ball got its name from the whiff sound you heard when players struck out, mainly because of the outrageous curve a pitcher could throw with it. I think I read somewhere the inventors left the letter “h” out because it cut down on the cost of advertising. Regardless, you’ll still sometimes see Wiffle Ball spelled as Whiffle Ball.

But to get back to Whiffle Tree Mercantile (is it too late?), the mystery about it is whether or not you can find Wiffle balls for sale there. There might be a controversy about maybe a conspiracy to hide the ball from the public by favoring another meaning for “Whiffle” by tying it to the word “tree”.

Hang on to your hat, it gets pretty confusing pretty fast. The whiffle tree (which is often spelled “whiffletree”) is supposedly a mechanism to distribute forces through linkages. It can be used to connect an animal harness to a vehicle like a cart or plow. The name would be understandably be used as a cover for an antique store in Iowa.

But wait. There’s another dimension to the meaning of whiffletree. One guy says it’s a mechanical digital-to-analog converter. It’s based on the mechanical one described above, but it was a kind of calculator used in typewriters. The comments in the YouTube video are pretty enthusiastic about it, which makes you wonder what star system they’re from.

But hang on, the conspiracy and mystery go deeper than that. Some say that the whiffle tree is where you hang your whiffle bat. Okay, we need an astrophysicist or at least a scientist of some kind to play a serious role here—sort of.

In fact, there’s a story on the internet posted in 2010 about a mechanical engineering professor who studied the unhittable Wiffle Ball pitch and possibly discovered the secret. Dr. Jenn Stroud Rossmann studied the aerodynamics of the Wiffle Ball as well as something called “scuffing” which is to cut or scrape the ball so as to give it almost magical properties to make batters strike out. Scuffing is legal in Wiffle Ball, but not in regular baseball. What’s up with that?

The connection of all this with Whiffle Tree Mercantile in Monticello, Iowa is the biggest mystery, of course. What are they hiding? Why don’t they just tell us on their web site whether or not they sell Wiffle Balls? Is there an underground cache of scuffed Wiffle (Whiffle) Balls somewhere in the back of the store? Did extraterrestrials teach humans how to scuff them? Why does the internet story about Dr. Jenn Stroud Rossmann show her juggling Wiffle Balls? Is there a wormhole connecting Jones County (where Monticello is located) with Area 51 and when will the Federal Government simply admit that?

These and countless other questions could be answered in the soon to be considered blockbuster paranormal TV show “The Secret of Wiffle Ball Farm.”

Celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week!

Teacher Appreciation Week this year started on May 8, 2023. I found my old report cards from Lincoln Elementary School in Mason City, Iowa. Lincoln was torn down many years ago to make room for expanding the Post Office. But I have my memories. I rediscovered reasons to celebrate the dedication of teachers. I don’t know how many people keep their grade school report cards. My mother kept mine along with old elementary school photos, including class pictures.

Jimmy!

Brief remarks on my grade cards remind me how supportive my teachers were—and how they expected me to buckle down. I was kind of a handful and there are indications that I had difficulty focusing my attention. My fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Cole, was instrumental in identifying my near sightedness, which helped me to get my first pair of eyeglasses.

It wasn’t a bed of roses. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Myrton (who always smelled like cigarettes), once slapped me so hard it made my nose bleed because I bumped into her when I was running around the classroom. I don’t remember why I was doing that. She was really sorry for slapping me.

And there was the time me and another kid got caught throwing snowballs on the playground (I can’t remember what grade I was in), which led to the usual penalty levied by the school Principal, Esther Ahrens. We each had to draw really small circles (signifying snowballs) to fill a sheet of paper.

We (meaning the kids) thought Ms. Ahrens was a witch. On the other hand, on a really hot day shortly before summer break, my 4^th grade teacher, Ms. Hrubes, started acting really strange and was sort of wobbling at the open window in the classroom. There was no air conditioning in the school. Ms. Ahrens happened to be walking by the room and rushed into the room just in time to catch Ms. Hrubes as she was falling backward in a dead faint from heat exhaustion.

But other than that, along with the usual physical and psychological cuts and scrapes of elementary school, I remember those years as instrumental in turning me and other kids into smarter, nicer people and better citizens. We also learned how to make really tasty homemade ice cream the old-fashioned way, using nested containers, the larger of which had a mixture of salt an ice and a hand crank.

The notes and letters with my report cards often had illuminating comments:

“Jimmy has done well in Physical Education class. He has excellent aim and can hit a moving car’s windshield with a rock (yelling ‘bombs away’) with fair accuracy.”

“During this quarter, I was able to dissuade Jimmy from trying to fly like superman from the second-floor window of the classroom.”

“Jimmy reads well. He could apply himself more carefully in science. We were finally able to remove all the exploded paint from the gymnasium. It took only a few weeks this quarter.”

“Jimmy’s command of spatial relationships has improved a great deal! He can figure out how to fill his emptied milk carton with spinach in seconds, often without attracting the attention of the lunchroom monitors.”

I’m giving a great big thank you to all the teachers! You deserve it!

Stamp Out Hunger NALC Food Drive

It’s that time of year again; the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) food drive. Learn more about it at this link.

Donors can fill a bag with non-perishable food items and place it by their mailboxes, which letter carriers will pick on the second Saturday in May, which is May 13, 2023.

Help stamp out hunger!

Racial Affinity Group Caucusing Separate But Not Equal to Segregation

I read the New England Journal of Medicine perspective article “Racial Affinity Group Caucusing in Medical Education—A Key Supplement to Antiracism Curricula.”

I did not see the word “segregation” anywhere in the paper, although the Daily Mail news item used it frequently in a manner that I suspect was intended to incite indignation over separating White and Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) medical students into Racial Affinity Group Caucuses (RAGC). This was for the purpose of ultimately integrating them with the goal of defeating racism.

Words matter. The word “segregation” used in the way some news reporters did is bound to conjure up 1960s images of the effect of Jim Crow laws and remind those old to remember it the speech of Alabama governor George Wallace pledging “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Separating people into groups for the purpose of working out a solution to racism can be called segregation only in the strictest sense of the definition. If you can separate denotation from connotation, I think you have to question the use of the word in the news article, which was heavily freighted with negative connotations.

When I was a student at Huston-Tillotson College (now H-T University, one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in the 1970s, the Greek fraternity and sorority pledges were segregated from those who chose not to pledge, including me. I was really happy to be segregated when I witnessed the hazing of the pledges.

The women and men students at H-TU who lived on campus were segregated into male and female dormitories. This did not stop certain activities like dances and fraternity events.

I recall reading news stories a year or two ago about some black college students wanting to be segregated into different dormitories at predominantly white college campuses. I don’t agree with the idea, but it sounded like some black students preferred it.

I like my socks segregated from my dress shirts. But that’s just me.

My Right-Hand Juggle Tricks Lefty

I’ve been working on my juggle tricks using my non-dominant side and it’s a little easier than I thought it would be. It didn’t take nearly as long to train my left side to handle the right-side tricks compared to the right.

I’m not sure I how to explain that. Those who teach juggling usually advise practicing with your non-dominant side at the same time you train your dominant side. I didn’t start until after about seven months.

A while ago, I tried doing the behind the back trick on the left. I felt a sudden muscle spasm in the left side of my neck. I told myself I was too old to switch sides and left it at that. But then I discovered later there were certain tricks I couldn’t do unless somehow, I got ambidextrous.

It took me less than a day to teach my left side to do the right-side tricks like behind the back, under the leg, and the finger plex.

I still don’t know how the finger plex trick got its name.

Gators OMG!

The other night I saw a spot on a paranormal TV show that apparently ran out of anything supernatural to talk about. Instead, it showed a few videos of real events that could make you say “OMG.” In fact, that was part of the title of the episode.

One of them was a surveillance video of a Florida man saving his puppy’s life by wrestling with an alligator. While the Florida man was walking his dog, somehow it managed to escape its leash and plunged into a pond.

The pond was full of gators and one grabbed the puppy. Florida man jumped into the water and wrestled with the gator, which was actually not much bigger than the pup. The guy had a cigar in his mouth before the fracas. And he still had it during the desperate struggle. Even after he ducked underwater, he burst out—still clenching the cigar in his teeth.

The little gator still clenched the puppy, which was limp initially, but came back to life and cried pathetically while Florida man pried apart the jaws of the reptile, eventually freeing the dog (which got puncture wounds or a crushed rib cage depending on which version of the narrative you believe, the paranormal TV show or the TV news video).

I keep calling the guy “Florida man” because the TV news broadcast on YouTube with a few comments about how dangerous a Florida man (or almost any Florida resident) can be, even to a gator. You can get a better sense of the bias leading to jokes about Floridians by reading New York Times bestselling author Dave Barry’s book, “Best State Ever: A Florida Man Defends his Homeland.”

The only way that video would have been more spectacular is if a full-grown gator had clenched Florida man, the little gator, and the puppy—with just the cigar poking out of big daddy gator’s jaws. It could have happened. The pond was full of the reptiles. OMG!

We’ve seen Florida gators. I think tour guides steered us clear of Florida man.