Excerpts

From — college sports on the brink of disaster

A Brief History of College Sports

FROM CHAPTER ONE

“The American sporting scene has always produced bona fide heroes who set standards we all can admire and aspire to. Separating the acceptable from the unacceptable in the full panoply of collegiate sports is an indispensable part of understanding how we lost our birthright and how it might be regained. The ideal of the scholar-athlete was enshrined early at Yale, where the best-known exemplar was Nathan Hale, an early hero of the Revolutionary War. Words he spoke moments before the British hanged him on September 26, 1776—“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country”—enshrined Hale in immortality. At 21, he’d been caught spying for the Continental Army. A handsome, muscular young man with blue eyes and reddish brown hair, Hale had graduated from Yale with first class honors in 1773 and went on to teach in two Connecticut secondary schools. A diary he wrote in the early months of 1776 notes his avid interest in wrestling, checkers and football. He’d played football (then more a version of rugby) at Yale and is said to have performed the extraordinary feat of jumping from one waist-high hogshead cask into an adjacent one. A statue of Hale stands today near City Hall in New York. 

In his inaugural address on October 19, 1869, Harvard President Charles W. Eliot gave an early definition of the scholar-athlete when he called the sons of Harvard an “… aristocracy which excels in manly sports, carries off the honors and prizes of the learned professions, and bears itself with distinction in all fields of intellectual labor and combat…”

From — Katyn: Stalin’s Massacre and the Triumph of Truth

CHAPTER NINE

The Liquidations

“Only the bullets were merciful in the NKVD [Soviet Secret Service] abattoir. They pierced the occipital bone, coursing upward from that small protrusion at the base of the skull, then passing through the brain to a point of egress between the nose and hair line. The wound angle represented hard evidence that the executioner shot victim from behind at close range. A shot thus aimed offered two practical advantages: It caused instant death and minimal loss of blood. It was a vintage Bolshevik technique developed in the early days of the revolution when Lenin's secret police, the Cheka, routinely shot so-called enemies of the people in basements of prisons and public places throughout Russia. Wishing to avoid a bloody aftermath with half-dead victims writhing on the floor, the Cheka perfected what the Germans would later call the Nackenschuss or shot in the nape of the neck. By the 1930s it had become the standard method used by the NKVD to dispatch Stalin's purge victims and others.

At Katyń 4,599 victims—all from what the Soviets called Camp 13 or Kozelsk—were buried in eight common graves ranging in depth from six to eleven feet. The largest of these was L-shaped, eighty-five feet by twenty-six feet at its longest and widest points. Its twelve layers of bodies were neatly stacked so that the heads of those in each new row were placed face down on the feet of the men below. This grave held approximately 2,800 men. The weight and compaction of tons of heavy sand used as fill between the surface and the men on the top layer was so great that it served to compress the bodies; as fluids began to leak in the decomposition process, a bacteria-free seal was formed that helped mummify the corpses. The finishing touch on this mokraya rabota, or “wet job,” was a tidy landscaping finish: Small birch trees were transplanted onto the surface of each grave. The NKVD made its last deposits in that gruesome bank below on or about May 13, 1940, with no reason to expect that the world would witness sensational withdrawals three years later.”

From — From Honey with Love: My Adventures as a Second Chance Dog

(for young adults—forthcoming in 2021)

CHAPTER TWO

JAWS OF STEEL

Never shoulda chased that sorry skunk through the mornin’ fog, or any time for that matter. Sooner or later the little yuckster was bound to foul up somethin’; and even if he didn’t squirt his yucky perfume, and even if I did catch him, I wouldn’t wish skunk meat on a lurkin’ log. It’s worse’n roadkill … okay, trail kill if you’d druther. 

My dumb move was caused by lettin’ down my guard. Sometimes, with no warnin’ at all, I forget to listen to the wild genes that alert me to danger. When that happens, I’m as blind as a newborn pup; and that’s exactly what happened when that pajama-suited nitwit ran out in front of me struttin’ like he owned the swamp, tauntin’ take your best shot dingo girl! Sure, I tore off after him … ran the little yuckster halfway down the ridge where he scrambled inside a hollow log half my size. I could stick my head in only so far—enough to see his come and get me sucker! grin. I cut loose a few high-pitched barks just to let the beady-eyed bugger know his string was runnin’ out.

Then, quicker’n a bat flyin’ out of a cypress beard, the candy-striper darted out the far end of the log and took off lickety-split down the Critter Trail toward the water. I knew full well I was s’posed to stay off that trail, that coyotes watched it all the time. How many times had Mama and my wild genes warned me it was courtin’ disaster to even go near there? But dumb me, I plumb forgot and chased off after the rabble rouser. I was catchin’ up, too, ‘bout to nab his bushy tail, when in a flash —

WHAM!

Was that a gator log or the Phantom? Another bite or two and I’ll be gone.”