1. The latest in Rising Tide: Herbert Hoover oversaw and engineered the relief effort during and after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and his work was nothing short of remarkable. My own thinking about Herbert Hoover has never been very substantial. I know that his single term as president was catastrophic. The stock market crashed and the Great Depression took over the USA. But, now I know that he made a well-deserved great name for himself in organizing refugee camps, delivery of food, rescue efforts, and the rest of the logistics necessary to ease thousands of people's suffering during the Mississippi River basin's slow, mighty, destructive, and months-long flood in 1927.
Some time soon, I'm going to return to the podcast Presidential and listen to the episode on Herbert Hoover and listen to what his biographer, Charles Rappleye, has to say about this contrast between Hoover's astonishing success leading disaster relief and his terrible failure as a president.
2. I drove uptown to Heritage Health this afternoon, joined a short line of cars, signed a couple of forms, drove under a car port, opened the Sube's door, and received my first Covid-19 vaccination. The woman who inoculated me directed me to join another line of cars. I complied. A woman marked the time on my side view mirror and instructed me to sit for fifteen minutes. I read about Herbert Hoover and disaster relief and soon the Heritage employee returned, wiped my mirror clean, made sure I didn't have any immediate adverse reaction to the shot (I didn't), and I drove home.
Back home, I did what I normally do, and would have never known I'd been vaccinated.
3. Injuries and Covid-19 have been particularly rough on both the Oregon Ducks and the Arizona State Red Devils' men's basketball programs.
I tuned into their game tonight, mostly interested in the Ducks. Would Chris Duarte play well after what appeared to be a severe injury seven days ago against WSU? I wondered if Will Richardson would continue to improve, having recently returned to action after a long layoff after thumb surgery. I wondered how this team would be gelling. They've had a lot of disruptions and they've missed a ton of practice time. As is often the case, year to year, with the Ducks, their roster from a year ago to this year had a lot of turnover, so these players are not really used to playing together yet, even though it's February.
The Ducks impressed me. Christ Duarte came out on fire. He scored 18 points in the first half and, after being unable to walk on his own after being injured seven days ago, looked, to my untrained eye, totally recovered. Will Richardson is getting back into the swing of things. L. J. Figueroa got hot in the second half and scored some impressive three pointers. Lastly, and, I'd say, very quietly, Eugene Omoruyi scored 18 points and captured 10 rebounds.
I'm with broadcaster Dave Pasch. Pasch pointed out that Dana Altman has done an exceptional job coaching this Ducks' team in the face of all the time they've been off and with all the injuries to different players
You might have missed his point last night because Bill Walton misinterpreted it and stampeded all over Pasche's observation with a diatribe on teams not making excuses and fighting through adversity.
Pasch wasn't making excuses for the Ducks. He praised the work Dana Altman has done in a very difficult situation.
Bill Walton doesn't always listen very well.
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