Has the 'Fever' already 'broken'?

Kathleen and I are unabashed Caitlin Clark fans (not to mention Iowa women's basketball fans) and we have managed to watch nearly all of Caitlin's first nine games in the WNBA.

It has been a bit, well, frustrating.

Statistics don't tell the entire story but hers are, overall, quite good. She would prefer a better percentage of shots falling, I assume, and she could argue that the inconsistent officiating and the general acceptance of all sorts of grabbing and bumping among players could have something to do with that. I assume she will make adjustments. 

She consistently racks up assists (among the league leaders) despite her teammates being poor shooters thus far. Many potential assists have not counted as her teammates were hacked and thus missed layups, though they may have scored from the free throw line. That's the rule.

She can't be happy with the number of turnovers she has been tagged with, though in watching the games it appears that a significant percentage of those are due to her teammates not handing her passes, not realizing that she will attempt to get the ball to them in unusual situations, etc. She also handles the ball on most possessions, meaning she simply has more touches and more opportunities to mess up. 

No one wants Caitlin Clark to beat them, so she sees more doubleteams than anyone else in the league (they actually keep a stat on this!). 

She has three technical fouls already, and has often been frustrated by officiating and rough play. Once she accumulates eight technicals, she must sit out one game. Imagine how that might go over with fans who shelled out big bucks for their chance to see the league's newest star. 

Last night, the Seattle Storm started four former all-stars and boasted an average of nine years of WNBA experience contrasted with the Fever's average of three years. The Fever coach is in only her second year and often seems overmatched. Injuries kept two of the team's top eight players off the court last night.

The Fever, as a group, are just not very good shooter, seem undersized and inexperienced, and have generally been overwhelmed by some to the league's best teams. At some point, missing wide open shot after wide open shot, including layups, overwhelms offensive schemes and great passing and passionate fan support. 

The Fever have played more games than any other team in the league, with little rest between games and little opportunity to practice. In the long run, this will balance out. But the hole may be too big to climb out of.

All this sounds like me making excuses, and that is what losing teams tend to do (and their fans!). To her credit, I have not heard Caitlin making excuses in her interviews.

But my litany of woe eventually leads to falling attendance and falling viewers, don't you think? All but one of those first nine Fever games were on some national network, and there are 25 more such broadcasts on the schedule. All those network executives who gambled on big numbers must be questioning their investments. About 15,000 showed up last night in Indianapolis. Impressive. But how many masochists are there in the state who will continue to jam the arena only to watch their team lose... again?

There are a lot of those #22 jerseys in the "fan shops" and it won't take long for the initial enthusiasm of young girls and their parents to fade. Americans have very short attention spans.

It's early in the season, of course, but it appears that the WNBA veterans have collectively chosen to make an extra effort to diminish the Caitlin Clark effect. That's what proud athletes do, and good for them. She would not want special treatment and she knows success is never guaranteed.

Many officials are "front runners," so to speak, and will pile on the questionable calls and non-calls that they have gotten away with in former years. After all, few were watching the games. And they aren't used to her evident emotions on the court, so there is a human tendency to punish her for her effrontery.

There will be a pause in the season during the Olympics. Right now I am imagining the Fever sitting at a handful of victories against dozens of defeats. 

What will the WNBA do with all that squandered enthusiasm and the Pyrrhic victories of veterans strangling the young stars?

Our neighbors are often willfully ignorant

Humans are a puzzle, that's for sure. 

It is a well-researched truth that most people consider their own elected representative "just fine," while bemoaning the quality of other reps. Most people say their own neighborhoods are safe while agonizing over crime elsewhere. Most people claim their own financial situation is pretty good, while bemoaning financial issues in the wider country. Most people rate their own local school highly while criticizing the state of American education more generally.

And a large percentage of self-proclaimed religious people seem fine with supporting a man they would prefer not to sit down to dinner with, much less worship with, as he raves about the mentally ill invading the country. And last week some bizarre Third Reich post appeared for a day on his boutique social media site. What a kidder that Trump is!

The stock market recently reached 40,000 (it was below 20,000 four years ago) and hardly anyone seemed to care (it has dropped nearly a thousand points over this past week). Certainly no credit is given to President Biden, but the one thing the stock market appears to do fairly well is reflect investor optimism in the near future. But even Democrats seem downcast about the nation's financial and employment future. Go figure.

The latest polls indicate that young people, in particular, and several minority groups, are abandoning Mr. Biden and that Trump now leads in several of the only states that will matter in November: the "battleground" states.

I find some comfort in deeper analyses of these polls. They are early, of course, and many people don't pay much attention to politics or even current events. If any of them do start paying attention, perhaps Biden's prospects will brighten. The polls also reflect the current views of registered voters, as opposed to those voters who claim they will certainly vote in November. Among that group, Biden has a small lead. And I take away some small glimmer of hope.

Arrayed against that glimmer: a recent Harris poll came up with these gems: 

• 56% of Americans believe that the U.S. is in a recession, which it is not. 
• 49% think unemployment is at a 50-year high, though it is consistently near record lows. 
• 72% think inflation is increasing, though it continues to fall. 
• 58% blame Biden for mismanaging an economy that is in fact the strongest in the world.

It all makes you wonder whether the nation has suffered some sort of stroke. Interestingly, people who get their news mostly from what we call the mainstream press -- network TV, newspapers -- report much more accurate understanding of current events. Unfortunately, the percentage of people getting their news from more considered sources continues to shrink.

There will always be some percentage of our fellow humans who take pride in being blissfully ignorant, perhaps rejoicing in simply being obstinate or provocative. After all, a survey from a decade ago found that nearly a quarter of all Americans stated that the sun revolves around the earth! I wonder if they simply misunderstood the question.

I often suggest to my writing students that they delete phrases that begin with "I believe..." As in "I believe that overwhelming numbers of studies confirm the unshakable fact that the earth is round." To start off this unremarkable sentence with "I believe" adds nothing. Their beliefs are irrelevant.

Yet many voters likely will be choosing based on their "beliefs" rather than readily available facts. 

Tough times for rational thought. 

Convenience comes in several forms

In case you were wondering after my last post about perhaps keeping the sharp object away from me, I have pretty much recovered from end-of-semester self-loathing and we are on to the next class. It's a sprint over four weeks that covers most of the material in a 16-week version of Strategic Writing. 

I have made some tiny additions to the course that supplement what the department coordinator for this popular course has created, trying to head off future pitfalls and errors. They may actually help students perform more efficiently and successfully. But whether they help much or not, it will all be over in (now) 25 days. 

This post is going up on a Wednesday because we are off to California tomorrow to attend Delaney Kennedy and Jay Chase's wedding in Petaluma. Delaney is the daughter of brother Tim (I like to mention him when I can since he is one of the elite coterie of this blog's readers), and the event promises to be quite the thing. All seven of my siblings will be there, despite our increasing decrepitude, and about half of Delaney's cousins, as well. 

I was reminded of how complex these large celebrations can be when Maggie, Tim's bride, sent out a group text checking on interest in her reserving a large space at an Italian restaurant for Friday night (the wedding is Saturday, and people have got to eat). She likely immediately regretted her invitation as she first received dozens of texts confirming interest in such a gathering, and then had to continue the group nuttiness by asking for menu choices (the restaurant naturally limited the breadth of dishes they were prepared to have ready for such a large group). 

People might have simply replied directly to Maggie, of course, but many eagerly shared their interest in the Chicken Marinara or the salmon with the entire family. After all, it's so easy to just REPLY.

Convenience is a mixed blessing, as I often find. And many of us are quite willing to pay a premium for saving a bit of time and/or a bit of physical effort. A minor example of this is my booking an Uber to the airport for early tomorrow morning, and not thinking twice about the added $8 charged for a reservation. Hey, one less thing to worry about.

Another example of preferring convenience would be our booking six shows for the Lone Tree Arts Center for the coming year, and not booking any shows at the Buell Theatre downtown. There are some terrific shows that come through Denver each season and we may choose one or two, depending upon our mood, the weather, and scheduling.

But the light rail is experiencing all sorts of problems with maintenance and even more with frequency... plus there are those pesky crackheads who are soothed by the gentle sway of rail carriage. Or we could drive 40 minutes and pay about $20 for parking in the ramp near the theater. Plus the tickets are quite pricey, and we usually opt for the "best seats available" since we don't make the journey down there all that often these days to join 2,000 of our friends at the show.

The Lone Tree Arts Center, on the other hand, is an easy 15-minute drive, with free parking, with shows presented in a modern 280-seat theater. As "season ticket holders" (if you order at least four shows), we get preferential ticket purchasing opportunities (before the riff-raff). So we get center seats at the top of the first section, with no one sitting immediately behind us. And the tix are about half the price of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. 

We won't be seeing "Wicked" or "Six," but we will enjoy live theater while avoiding the extra investment of time and money required to attend downtown. 

So, wait a minute... I guess I DID NOT need to spend more for convenience. I just chose to adjust my show choices and be satisfied with "not Broadway." 

That's what I mean by a "mixed blessing," I guess. 

Semester ends with a whimper...

Campus demonstrations don't bother online courses, I'm glad to say. I am not so glad to note that the lack of picketers may end up being the highlight of my latest finals week.

I never have very high hopes for my Colorado State course, at least in terms of students producing a high-quality final report that combines research and some sort of arguments to address an important issue in the students' academic areas/careers. That doesn't mean most of them won't get A's, of course, since the grading is rigged in ways that would make a KGB officer blush. 

It's a strategic writing class, in theory, but we don't do much of that and I'm not really allowed to include much practical writing. There are lots of textbook quizzes and two multiple choice exams, each worth 100 points in the 975-point course. The quizzes may be taken twice, and CSU students are very good at tests. 

It couldn't be a more "university" thing to have two multiple choice exams for over 20 percent of the total score in the course. What could be more "academic" than for a school to mandate reading about writing over actual writing in a... writing course.

One of my goals for the course is to get students to demonstrate that they can write with a specific primary intended audience in mind. I ask for a "prepared for..." statement on the title page, and the hope is that will help them keep their focus and push them to use appeals and tone that a audience like a state legislator or a CEO of a company or a department chair or the chair of a national organization would appreciate. The goal is to write for an audience that can enact any recommendations they come up with.

Over and over, they just write general comments, filled with vague points and unfocused advice.

I supply over a dozen sample reports for them to browse since they have never written such a report before. I spend a lot of time in the class advocating for reader-friendly document design but few college students have any skills in Word beyond using it as a typewriter. Still, you would think that adding a few subheads to break up the long stretches of gray, academic prose would be within their power. You would be underwhelmed by their power.

The Metro class often disappoints, but I have a larger investment in the course since I created it on top of some loose parameters the First Year Writing program insists upon. And once in a while I can see extensive growth in those writers. This semester, not so much.

There is no textbook beyond documents I have created, often based on published columns and other material from the New York Times or Washington Post. I also draw from all the same materials that I would use were I teaching a high school English class. There are no multiple choice exams.

My repeated advice is, "No claims without support." Even more basic is my repeated plea for a clear and concise thesis statement that can guide their persuasive essays. 

To my dismay, over half the class did not demonstrate a very strong grasp of either using a strong thesis statement or following up claims with some sort of specific evidence in their final persuasive argument on some aspect of mandatory national service. I may need to find something less complex for the next group of future leaders.

After over a decade of struggling with these online courses, with limited success, I think more and more of the power of the "defaults" that students develop in their secondary education. Habits are tough to break.

And the nature of the online course means that much of my specific advice comes through comments that I insert directly on their essays and reports through Canvas, the management system both CSU and Metro use. Kathleen often kids me about the constant "click click click" of my keyboard as I respond to essays each week. It is a sort of white noise for her as she works on cleaning up some family history research she has been doing.

I suspect I am mostly writing to myself, based upon the glacial improvement I see, if I see any at all. Perhaps my comments are white noise for the students, as well.

But no one learns more than the teacher, as the old saying goes. Boy, am I getting educated.

But no rest for the wicked. I embark on a four-week version of the CSU strategic writing course on Monday, following a full weekend of rest and rejuvenation. 

I'm sure it will all be better.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming... we're finally on our own

It's protest season, something that has been missing from campus life for quite some time. I know this because the TV news and national news sites and cable outlets can't stop yakking about it. I also get a daily update from the Metro president about how things are going and about how talks continue and how the university supports the right to protest, but peacefully, of course.

Nothing makes mature, thoughtful adults more nervous and outraged and just plain put off as college students chanting slogans and blocking public right-of-ways and generally refusing to listen to reason. It takes very little to get would-be fascists to call for the National Guard to clear things up (as a number of far-right politicians have done). The president has called for peaceful protests. Pundits have weighed in on how these protests are helping Trump (or maybe not) and certainly are dividing the Democratic Party. 

Maybe stuff like this will make the difference in November but it's good to remember that it's now early May... so it's safe to assume MORE stuff will be happening. And it's all going to make "the difference."

Or not. Apparently, many Americans just aren't paying attention. They don't hang out on college campuses and actively avoid all political news. Many Americans report that they long for the Golden Era of happiness led by former President Trump. Wait... was there a pandemic with over a million dying as the guy in charge recommended drinking bleach?

But back to the campus protests: it's tough to argue against calling for the killing of children and innocents of all ages to stop. The government of Israel has exacted much more than an "eye for an eye" in Gaza, though the butchers of Hamas could end it all in a moment by surrendering or fleeing or just returning the hostages.

Yesterday, Hamas announced that they were continuing talks about the cease fire offers on the table. So all should be well very soon. Ha! 

The U.S. continues to send humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza while also sending weapons to Israel, so the mixed messages are certainly there. 

A message that is NOT mixed is regarding the protester demands that Metro State divest from any financial dealings with Israel and stop offering exchange programs with that nation. It's not mixed because Metro doesn't have any investments in Israel nor does it offer any exchange program with that country. So, mission accomplished?

I see that Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, are leaders of the local protest. That makes me a tiny bit nostalgic for the late 60s. But I am not nostalgic for a repeat of the Democratic National Convention and the chaos and the eventual landslide victory for Nixon. 

I am hopeful that once spring classes end (finals are next week around here), the energy will drain away, the tents will be packed away, and we can return to arguing about Taylor Swift overexposure and that TV quality isn't quite enough to satisfy the reviewers who revere shows that no one watches. 

Looks like a Summer of Love is in the offing.