The Keynote Presenter

I am sort of tired. On Monday I made two workshop presentations (teaching with humor, time management for ag teachers) in Roanoke, Virginia for the Virginia Agricultural Teachers Association. On Tuesday my luncheon keynote presentation was Searching for the Wizard of Oz. As soon as I finished I jumped in the car and drove the three hours back to Raleigh so I could grab a flight to Springfield, Missouri. I arrived at midnight.

On Wednesday I did a workshop for the Missouri ag teachers on how to make the teaching of FFA information exciting. Today (Thursday) I made a keynote presentation titled Live Like You Were Dying: Balancing Work and Family

After the conference ended, I made my way to the Springfield National Cemetery to pay my respects to Jack Williams. While I don’t know Jack, I know about him. He was a former FFA member from Arkansas who was killed in World War II. He was a Medal of Honor recipient and was featured in one of my Friday Footnotes.

Looking forward to getting back in North Carolina late on Friday.

It was a pleasure speaking at the Fountain Park Chautauqua in Remington, Indiana earlier this week. This permanent Chautauqua was established in 1895 and is one of few Chautauquas in the nation that did not close during the great depression or during the World Wars. My presentation was about the tent or circuit Chautauquas that crisscrossed the country in the early 1900s and how they brought culture to agriCULTURE. There were at least 75 circuit and stationary Chautauquas operating in Indiana between 1907 and 1932.

To get a flavor of what it was like to be at an early Fountain Park Chautauqua I chose to stay at the hotel that was built in 1898. In hasn’t changed much since the early days except for the addition of indoor bathroom facilities. There is no air-conditioning, internet, television, etc. The rooms are pretty much like they were in the beginning. Below are pictures of the hotel and the room I stayed in.

I always enjoy making the “Give Me That Old Time Religion: Camp Meetings” presentation. Yesterday, I delivered this talk to the Cardinal at North Hills community. As part of the presentation I circulated my collection of hand held fans used at camp meetings and communion tokens that were required at some camp meetings before one could participate in the Lord’s Supper. The photo above is of a Camp Meeting tabernacle (looks like a barn to me) in Kentucky. In 1904 they had a serious drought in this community, met to pray for rain, and it starting raining. They have been meeting every since and it is said that it always rains during camp meeting.

I enjoyed speaking to 50 high school minority students about opportunities in agriculture this past Monday. Often minorities have negative views about agriculture and are not aware that agriculture is much more than farming. For this presentation, I identified a number of minority agriculture faculty at NCSU and at other universities and described what they do. I learned a lot about my colleagues and hope the students did also.

I enjoyed speaking at the Master Gardener College on the North Carolina State University Campus last week. The title of my presentation was Growing Plants, Growing People: Land Grant Colleges, the Extension Service, and Master Gardeners. The presentation was basically a history lesson on how land-grant colleges, the Extension Service and the Master Gardener program evolved. The Master Gardener program started in the 1970s in Washington State. The two Extension specialists who started it had both studied in Germany and learned that Germans bestow titles for hard‐earned proficiency levels in various crafts. The top proficiency level in horticulture is denoted by “Gartenmeister,” which they anglicized as “Master Gardener. And the rest is history.

I spoke at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at North Carolina State University last week. As people were coming in you would think it was a “real” college class because the students were avoiding the first row of seats. Perhaps they were just all Baptists.

This was the third time I have presented “The History and Evolution of the Outhouse” to OLLI. My assumption was that a number of attendees had attended one of the previous presentations. So I had a Version 2 of the presentation prepared if this was the situation, but it wasn’t. These people had been on the waiting list to attend the previous presentations but had not been able to get into the class. So I went ahead and presented Version 1; but now I have a Version 2 which is 95% new material for a future presentation.

It was enjoyable (and educational for me) to make a presentation to the Senior University group at Temple Beth Or in Raleigh last week. The topic of my presentation was the History and Evolution of the Outhouse. I started with two verses from the Torah – Devarim 23: 13-14 which translated into English reads ” 13 And you shall have a designated place outside the camp, so that you can go out there [to use it as a privy]. 14 And you shall keep a stake in addition to your weapons; and it shall be, when you sit down outside [to relieve yourself], you shall dig with it, and you shall return and cover your excrement. And with that, we were off and running.

Last week I spoke at the Hudson Memorial Presbyterian Church about the old-time camp meetings. What was neat was this was the first time I had made this presentation to Presbyterians. The Presbyterians were responsible for one of the most celebrated camp meetings in the history of Camp Meetings. That was at Cane Ridge, Kentucky in 1801.

I also had the opportunity to pass around my collection of communion tokens. In the early camp meetings conducted by the Presbyterians celebrating communion was a big event. However, before you could participate, you had to demonstrate to the church leaders that you were worthy of participating in this event. If the church leaders deemed that you were worthy, you were given a communion token that you would then present at the time of the Lord’s supper. I have collected 20 or so communion tokens from the 1800s. Some of them are shown below.

You would think making the same presentation over and over again might get boring. Yesterday I presented the History and Evolution of the Outhouse to a group at the SearStone in Cary, NC. One of the questions asked by the audience was how many times I had give this presentation and my answer was for over 30 years. But one reason it doesn’t get boring is because I typically learn something new from the audience every time I present. Yesterday I learned that 25% of the population in Russia uses outhouses. When I got home I looked that up, and learned that fact to be true.
https://russialist.org/one-russian-in-four-lacks-an-indoor-toilet-one-of-many-signs-there-are-now-four-distinct-russias/ The photo above is of a Russian outhouse. Now I may have to add this new information to my presentation.

Did you know there were Catholic Priests who were circuit riders in the 1800s? The operated in South Texas and were known as the Cavalry of Christ. I spoke at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at North Carolina State on Friday about Circuit Rider preachers. While the Methodist had the most circuit rider preachers, nearly every religious denomination had some circuit riders. They were dedicated, hardy individuals who braved cold and hot weather, robbers, marauding Indians, wild animals, sickness, thugs, poverty, and impassable rivers to spread the word of God on the American frontier. It was a hard life. Neatly half of the Methodist circuit rider preachers died before the age of 30 in the early 1800s. My presentation focused on true stories about these brave messengers of God.