Announcing History

Friday is our first and only teacher day before we're at school with the students. It's hard to believe the new school year is almost here, but I'm starting to anticipate it with a good deal of excitement. My idealism has not yet been beaten out of me. I still wonder what fresh, bright, eager faces will soon occupy my classroom, hanging on my every word of wit and wisdom as I discourse on the mysteries and wonders of history. Ok, maybe not quite. But I'm still looking forward to connecting with some new students.

Today I went over to work on setting up my classroom. Had some sweaty but good work in getting stuff moved around. Still have lots of materials I hope will be moved out of my room by the teacher now teaching the courses that were taught by the teacher in my room last year. I want to move U.S. History books onto shelves that are now occupied by Sociology books! And I hope I will be able to get an overhead projector screen, not to mention a projector in my room. Last year there were none in it, and although they have been requested, I will not rest easy until they actually show up in my room. I imagine I'll be left to mount the screen, so I'll have to bring in my hammer and nails, and hope the holes I pound in the walls don't find the wrong spots and leave irreparable damage for years to come. But such are the dangers that come with working in a school district that expects its teachers to be everything, including handyman.

Now onto the most exciting part of this post. Last week I went to the Baseball Hall of Fame! It was a great way to continue our vaction, after a splendid time at the Demmes. All kinds of cool stuff was there. Being the history geek I am, I spent about twice as much time in the museum as my parents. The Red Sox World Series display was the best part. It even had The Sock. As in Schillsbloodysock. Wow.

I also became a radio announcer. Yup, that's right. We went to a hands-on radio workshop where a museum lady told us how games used to be announced over the radio, often not live, but compacted together in an hour and a half or so. Then she told us we were going to recreate a radio broadcast as a group. Then she looked at Dad, a brother who will go unnamed, and myself, and was like "Ok, I'm going to start off by picking some people instead of asking for volunteers. Are you three together? I need two of you to be our announcers." Dad insisted I do it with this brother, even though I said Dad should. So my bro and I trotted down to the front of the room where we sat at a little table with a microphone, and were handed our scripts. I was the play-by play announcer, with bro as the color commentator. The snippet we were given to do was from Mark McGuire's then record-breaking home run number 62, off of Steve Trachsel. While we went over our lines, the lady got other audience members to work on all kinds of sound effects, including bat cracking, chimes, vendors, crowd noise, public address announcer, etc. Then we practiced a little. Then we taped the segment, which was about three minutes in length.

I did my best to stay even mannered for most of the broadcast, like Joe and Jerry do when announcing Sox games, not getting very animated unless there's a home run or some great play. But when Big Mac hit the line drive blast towards the left field wall, I had to practically scream to be heard above the noise of the studio crowd. It was a lot of fun. After we finished and listened to the broadcast together, the lady gave us the tape to keep. So now I can add a baseball broadcast to my broadcasting archives, which previously majored in basketball in the Larry Bird era...