The Keynote Presenter

There is not much better than making a presentation about the Women’s Land Army in a location that is surrounded by thousands of acres of corn fields. That describes the Fountain Park Chautauqua in Remington, Indiana this week. Remington is the home of several seed corn companies and has a rich agricultural heritage. Most people in the audience had never heard of the Women’s Land Army, so it is always a pleasure to present new information to a receptive audience. In case you don’t know the Women’s Land Army was an organization of women who went out and worked on farms during WWI & WWII because the men had gone off to fight in the war. In WWI, about 18,000 women served in the Land Army but there were 1.5 million during WWII. The Farmerettes, as they were called, helped win the war by producing food. While Rosie the Riveter received much acclaim, the Farmerettes were busy working on farms across the country. The photo shows young ladies from Vassar learning to farm.

At the Chautauqua Institution in New York this past week the theme was “The Art of Play”. A variety of speakers looked at the importance of play in our daily lives. My presentation tied into that theme. I spoke about the old-time camp meetings. Not only were they used to strengthen the faith of the believers and to convert the sinner, they were a time of social interaction and play. Folks on the frontier were often isolated, so the camp meeting was a time to renew acquaintances and for the younger folks, it was a time to play (and for courting). The image is an artistic rendition of a camp meeting in the 1830s.  When people were convicted by the Holy Spirit some would sway. If you look on page 3 of the Daily Chautauquan you can learn more about the presentation.

This past Sunday I enjoyed speaking at the Dimock Camp Meeting Ground in Pennsylvania. The title of my presentation was “Give Me That Old Time Religion: The Camp Meeting Story”. It was appropriate that I talked about the development of Camp Meetings at a historic camp meeting ground. Dimock was established in 1877.

To make the presentation I dressed up as Bishop Francis Asbury, the first American Methodist Bishop, who was active in promoting the development of camp meetings in the late 1700s and early 1800s. He traveled the country on horseback. So it was neat to see his silhouette on the Methodist historical marker on the chapel. Here is how the local newspaper reported on the event.

When I speak about the History of the Outhouse, I typically distribute electronic responders to the audience and have them answer questions that I pose during the presentation. Earlier this week 71% of the audience at the Glenaire Retirement Community in Cary, NC accurately responded that October 31 was the most dangerous night to be in an outhouse because it might get tipped over. And three audience members confessed that they had actually tipped over an outhouse.  Since the audience was somewhat older, the results were not surprising. I don’t think the younger generation would know much about tipping over outhouses.

It was a beautiful day to go to the North Carolina Coast and engage with the government employees in Carteret County on May 24. My presentation was Searching for the Wizard of Oz in the Workplace and at Home. We concluded that we are not in Kansas anymore and that we need to use our brain, have courage, and show heart in working with family, co-workers, and clients. But the bottom line is there is no Wizard of Oz, so we individually will have to assume the role of the Wizard of Oz at home and at work.

While most of my presentations are of interest to wide audiences, there are times when I return to my academic roots and make a research presentation designed for university professors of agricultural education. That is what I did last week in Charleston, SC.

In 1947, one of the giants of the agricultural education profession – Rufus Stimson died (photo to the right). At the time of his death, he was compiling a book containing biographical sketches and photos of the early leaders in the field. The book was never published. I spent 10 years searching for the missing manuscript. I even went to his retirement home on Cape Cod searching for this manuscript. To make a long story short, I eventually found the manuscript in the attic of the FFA Center in Alexandria, Virginia.

In my presentation, I told the story about the search for the manuscript,  shared some Stimson artifacts that I obtained during my search (such as his typewriter), and revealed for the first time ever, the identity of 180 people who had been identified as the early pioneers of agricultural education.  During the presentation, I passed out pages of the lost manuscript to the audience so they could see what was found. The image to the right is the biographical sketch of Booker T. Washington. There were 180 pages like this in the manuscript.

It was truly memorable! That is how I would describe the presentation about Rosenwald Schools to the “Lunch ‘n Learn” group at Christ Church in downtown Raleigh last week.

Julius Rosenwald, the President of Sears and Roebuck, established a fund in the 1910-1930 era to build schools in the South for black children (the schools for black children were deplorable). Local communities raised money to match Rosenwald’s contribution. Schools were built using uniform building plans that had exacting details. During the life of the program, over 5,000 schools were built in the South. At one time 1 out of every 3 black children in the South attended a Rosenwald school.

What Rosenwald did was truly memorable but what made this presentation memorable was the fact that four members of the audience had actually attended Rosenwald Schools. I asked these folks to share their experiences in attending a Rosenwald School. And that is what made the presentation memorable.

I enjoyed speaking to the NC-IPMA on Friday in Atlantic Beach, NC.  So who is the NC-IPMA? It is the North Carolina Chapter of the International Public Management Association for Human Resources (IPMA-HR).  It s the premier professional association for public sector human resources professionals. HR professionals from all over the state attended. My presentation focused on Searching for the Wizard of Oz – At Work (and at Home).

It was a challenge getting there as the wind was gusting at 50-60 miles per hour and had even toppled a pine tree across Highway 70 near Kinston. There is joke that speakers blow in, blow off, and then blow out. Well, it was the wind that was blowing on Thursday and Friday.

One of the first presentations I made about outhouses was to the Rotary Club in Frankfort, Indiana about 40 years ago. I used a Kodak Carousel Slide projector and 2 x 2 Kodachrome slides. So I guess it was appropriate to again appear before a Rotary Club to speak about outhouses. But this time it was in Cary, NC (yesterday) and the technology was a PowerPoint presentation driven by a Lenovo laptop computer that was displayed on a huge flat screen television using an HDMI cable. The audience responded to questions I posed using handheld electronic responders. The technology had changed but the principles espoused by the Rotarians and the subject matter was still the same.

It was fun (and an honor) to get to speak at the 1ooth Anniversary Celebration of the Agricultural Education Program at Clemson University this weekend. Dr. Parr from Murray State University played the role of Senator Hoke Smith and I was Representative Dudley Hughes (both from Georgia) and we were traveling by train from Atlanta to Washington, DC (circa 1917) with a quick stop in Calhoun, SC (which is now Clemson).  On our train trip we discussed why the Smith-Hughes Act was needed, reviewed the provisions of our proposed legislation, and speculated what the future would be like if this legislation was not passed.  The 200+ people in the audience got to eavesdrop on our conversation. Pictured below are photos of the real Smith and Hughes.