Doubleheader

Saturday was my monthly American Corner doubleheader--American Sports Club followed by Readers' Club. Only 6 kids came to sports club but they were happy to break in our new (to us) donated baseball equipment from a U.S. organization called Pitch In For Baseball. It's still very much winter here, evidenced by the snow flurries that Lauren and I walked through pulling my suitcases filled with baseball gloves and balls, so we did Baseball 101 inside.

Lauren and I make pretty interesting coaches with only a couple years of little league between us, but thanks to the power of You Tube and its tutorials on such helpful topics like coaching youth baseball catching drills and how to catch a baseball, we did a respectable job (in my opinion).

As suggested in one of the videos, we started by tossing around a bean bag (OK, lentil-filled sweat sock) that Helene nicely whipped up at 10:30 on Friday night. Pros at throwing and catching, we moved on to catching grounders. Then everyone broke off into pairs and did that most American of pastimes, playing catch. With the exception of one kid, everyone was playing baseball for the first time ever and they were shockingly good. The kids were very enthusiastic and are eager to have an actual game outside in the spring.

After rolling the equipment home, I hustled over to the American Corner for the Readers' Club discussion of The Aspern Papers by Henry James. I'll be honest--I wasn't crazy about this book and although some of the other book club members liked it better, I wouldn't say anyone gave it a ringing endorsement. Next month's book is O Pioneers! by Willa Cather and I've been a bit ashamed that I went to University of Nebraska but never read anything by this fellow Husker and venerated author who set many of her stories in the state, so I look forward to finally reading one of her tales.

It was a very American Corner/You Tube week for me--I also gave a presentation there on Wednesday about Presidential Monuments (Mt. Rushmore, FDR Memorial, etc) where I used some You Tube videos to give people a virtual visit experience. Maybe I needed a spicier presentation title though--only 5 people came. I'm blaming the cold weather, even if it wasn't all that bad out. Besides learning to make my title zippier next time, I also discovered an amazing dance (watch this video from about 3:10 minutes) and did you know Eleanor Roosevelt was born a Roosevelt?