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.
It was neat to speak in a hotel where you could look out on to the playing field of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball field from the hotel restaurant. The meeting room I was speaking in didn’t look out on the field, which is probably a good thing because the audience might have been distracted. I was speaking at a meeting of the ECMC Postsecondary Fellows Program. This program is operated through the College of Education at North Carolina State and is designed to prepare individuals for leadership positions in Postsecondary Education. They were a neat group to work with. My presentation was Career and Technical Education in a Changing World: A History. In case you want to stay at this hotel sometime and look out at the ball game, it was the Toronto Marriott City Centre.
It was a very nice room but I knew it would be too small when I first saw it. As people drifted in, it didn’t take long to fill the room up; then people started dragging in chairs from an adjacent room. Then the staff collapsed the portable wall on the left and doubled the size of the room and it was still a tight fit. I was speaking at a retirement center in Raleigh, NC about the history and evolution of the outhouse.
One of the neat things about making this presentation to an older audience is that they can relate to the topic since many of them had real world experience with outhouses. We had a great, engaging discussion of outhouses. I appreciate the staff at the Cardinal going to great lengths to plan stimulating programs to keep their residents mentally sharp and engaged.
Exactly a year ago in January, I was speaking to the Kentucky ACTE Leadership Cohort (TALENTS) and it started snowing. Well, guess what happened this year? Same place, same time, same event (but with a new cohort) and it snowed again. However, the snow was not nearly as bad as last year. It was nice pretty snow and only took a minute or so to sweep off my car. So, if you need snow, just ask me to
I made two presentations. The first was on how to use some assessment tools I have developed to improve teaching. The second was about “Being a 2nd Mile Leader.” Since I served as national president of four major professional societies during my career, I do have some ideas and experiences in regards to being an effective leader.
