One of the best baseball writers working today — or, rather, one that I enjoy reading a great deal — is NBC’s Craig Calcaterra. He’s as good at writing about the individual moments as he is at taking the hundred year view, and he’s at his best when he put baseball in a social context.Continue reading “American Surrender”
Author Archives: Allyn Gibson
Getting Productive with LEGO
Working from home these last three months, I’ve had to participate in a new thing for me — video conferences! Unfortunately, I don’t own a webcam. I did, at one time, have a PlayStation 2 camera, and I had the drivers for Window XP for it, but I’ve no idea what happened to the PS2Continue reading “Getting Productive with LEGO”
Speculating about The Great Gatsby
Some recent thinking on Twitter… F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby enters the public domain at the beginning of 2021. Header photo: “Gatsby,” by Larry Yeiser, licensed CC BY-ND 2.0
A Loss in the Lynchburg Baseball Community
This came across my Twitter feed late yesterday afternoon: My mom introduced me to Ronnie Roberts two years ago. I’d driven down from Pennsylvania for a Lynchburg Hillcats game — it was Margaritaville Night, and my brother’s company was the night’s t-shirt giveaway sponsor — and at the table where you picked up the t-shirtContinue reading “A Loss in the Lynchburg Baseball Community”
Exploring Georgetown, 1890
I saw this on Twitter Wednesday morning. It’s a photograph from the Georgetown University archives of Georgetown in 1890, looking out at the Washington Monument, taken from Georgetown’s Healy Hall. In the fall, I wrote about digging into a street map of Washington, circa 1883 and using it to find where my ancestors lived inContinue reading “Exploring Georgetown, 1890”
The Madness of Rob Manfred
Rob Manfred has abandoned reason for madness. For the last few days Major League Baseball has been floating a plan to start baseball next month. At first the plan was for all thirty teams to play in Arizona, making use of spring training facilities, playing in front of empty stadiums. That plan has morphed —Continue reading “The Madness of Rob Manfred”
Completing the Census
It’s 2020, and that means that the decennial Census must be completed. On Wednesday, April 1st, I filled out the Census survey online. And, as I said I would two years ago… As I wrote in that two year-old blog post, “I have decided that I will report that my ancestors come from Grand Fenwick,Continue reading “Completing the Census”
A Perfect Spring Day
Thr last few days have been a little rainy, a little chilly, a little gloomy. And work has been in a bit of a holding pattern; what I’d normally be doing this week — the order forms — has been pushed to next week, so I’ve spent the last two days trying to do nextContinue reading “A Perfect Spring Day”
Teddy Roosevelt in Baltimore
This is something I found a couple of weeks ago and have been meaning to share. On September 28, 1918, former president Theodore Roosevelt visited Baltimore and delivered a speech at Oriole Park on Greenmount Avenue to extol the Fourth Liberty Loan (ie., war bonds), and this video shows TR and dignitaries delivering a speechContinue reading “Teddy Roosevelt in Baltimore”
Wrapping Up the Catalog Copy
I don’t know about anyone else, but my sleep patterns have turned to utter chaos these last three weeks. One night I might have bifurcated sleep (sleep, significant break, sleep), the next restless near-insomnia, and the next ten solid hours of sleeping like the dead. That, at least, has been my pattern over these lastContinue reading “Wrapping Up the Catalog Copy”