The Keynote Presenter

In recognition of Black History Month it was my pleasure to speak to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Raleigh last week on the topic “Booker T. Washington: Savior of His Race or Traitor?” We had a great discussion and the audience argued for and against the question posed in the title of the presentation.

I used electronic responders to engage the audience on a quiz about the life of Mr. Washington as we traveled through the PowerPoint slides. I wouldn’t call the slide below a trick question but 2/3 of the audience missed it. George Washington Carver was the scientist at Tuskegee recognized for his peanut research, not Booker T. Washington.

I will have to admit I was a little leery about accepting a speaking invitation in Indiana in January. After surviving six Indiana winters from 1976-1982 when I was a faculty member at Purdue University, I had an idea about what the weather could be like. However, the opportunity to speak with agriculture teachers and students about managing priorities in life and developing leadership skills won out.

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking at the 10^th Annual FFA Leadership Summit sponsored by Huntington University in Huntington, Indiana this past Thursday. The audience was receptive and the weather was not that cold, but was foggy.

I took a side trip to Syracuse, Indiana to learn more about Chautauqua Wawasee. This is a relatively new Chautauqua. While make this trip I passed a large herd of children’s’ rocking horses. Luckily I was not caught in the stampede.

It was a pleasure discussing priority management with the North Carolina State University REAL (Rurally Engaged Agricultural Leaders) last week. Most people might say the topic was about time management but we can’t really manage time. However, we can identify and establish priorities for our lives and careers and then make decisions as to how to spend our time based on this information.

It is nice to take a deep breath! I made four (or 5) presentations last week depending upon how you count them. The Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) along with the National Association of Agricultural Educators (NAAE) meet in Phoenix, Arizona. The presentations were:

• Bitter or Better: Eight Steps to Becoming a Resilient Teacher – Dr. Wendy Warner and I teamed up for this presentation to the NAAE.

• “C” You at the Top – Lessons in leadership, presented to both the NAAE and ACTE.

• I Hated Small Group Work Until… – presented to ACTE.

• On Your Deathbed Will You Wished You Had Trained on More CDE Team? – Presented to the NAAE.

After the conference I spent three days exploring Arizona. I visited Native American ruins, national parks and monuments, a copper mine, and Tombstone. Since I often speak about outhouses it was interesting to see the sanitation device that replaces outhouses in the copper mine (see below). Another whew!

It is always fun to speak to the Pamlico County Historical Association in Grantsboro, NC. Last night I spoke about the History and Evolution of the Outhouse. The audience was comprised primarily of senior citizens who had grown up in this very rural county in North Carolina. Thus, they were well acquainted with the subject matter. At the end of the presentation I asked the audience to share true stories of their experiences with outhouses. Some of the stories were hilariously funny.

I made the same presentation last week to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at North Carolina State University and received the same reaction.

I was honored to be invited to speak at the 150th Anniversary of the Grange in Pennsylvania. If you don’t know about the Grange it is rural oriented organization started soon after the Civil War in an attempt to improve the plights of farmers and reunify the country after the war. Washington State and Pennsylvania have the largest number of Granges. I made two presentations. I was the keynoter at the banquet and assumed the role of the Wizard of Oz. My main points were:

The next morning I assumed the role of Oliver Hudson Kelley, the founder of the Grange and described whey the Grange was needed then, and why it is needed now.

This past week I defied the message in Thomas Wolfe’s novel, You Can’t Go Home Again. I did go home – to Lampasas, Texas to speak at the annual Lampasas County Farm Bureau Convention. I grew up in Lampasas and graduated from Lampasas High School. So it was a thrill and honor to be asked to return home to speak to the Farm Bureau. I enjoyed visiting with people I knew 50 years ago and meeting new friends. My presentation was “Myths and Misconceptions About Modern Agriculture: Insights from the Wizard of Oz.” Of course I was dressed as the Wizard of Oz.

In baseball the fourth player in the batting order is known as the cleanup hitter. So I like to think since I was the fourth speaker at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at North Carolina State University yesterday that made me the cleanup speaker.

I enjoyed speaking about the plight of Japanese American farmers during World War II. One thing about speaking to a group of educated older adults is they are not afraid to ask questions. Perhaps the best question was were the Japanese in Hawaii put in internment camps during WWII? The answer was no because about half the population of Hawaii was Japanese so logistically it would have been a daunting task.

I spoke at the Fountain Park Chautauqua in Remington, Indian on July 17 on the topic From Cradle to Grave: The Impact of Sears Roebuck on Rural America. My goal was to get the audience to say, “I didn’t know that.” It didn’t take long. Sears and Roebuck was engaged in numerous activities to benefit rural America that few people know about such as paying the salaries of county agents, buying furs from trappers, producing movies about agriculture, providing scholarships to rural youth, promoting victory gardens, starting adult farmer short courses, establishing livestock chains, and the list goes on and on.

My first presentation at the Chautauqua Institute in New York was in 2011. They invited me back this year for my 12th presentation (in 2015 I made two presentations but missed one year because of the Pandemic). They must be hard up for speakers.

This year I spoke about From the New Deal to a Raw Deal: The Experiences of Japanese American Farmers During World War II. One of the audience members had grandparents who were in a relocation camp during the war. It was interesting talking to him. This presentation was based on a series of Friday Footnotes I wrote in May of 2022 https://footnote.wordpress.ncsu.edu/2022/05/19/a-raw-deal-part-1-5-20-2022/