In the same spirit as last year’s self-plagiarism, I’m commemorating today’s Earth Day observance with a blog rerun.

The year is 1990, the place is a dorm lounge in my alma mater, and the source material is an old TV with over-the-air reception only (pre-cable). Throw in my general 18-year-old boredom, and you get this improbable save-the-planet vignette:

My favorite Earth Day memory is a prank I played 13 16 17 18 years ago. I was sitting in my dorm lounge with a dormmate. We were flipping through the channels (no cable TV in the dorms back then–the dark ages!!), and catching a couple of news reports telling us it was Earth Day. Then we land on Home Shopping Network, just as they start rolling out their fur collection for display and sale.

It hit me: Furs? They’re hawking freakin’ furs on Earth Day? Come on!

Now, I wasn’t then, nor am I now, a hard-core environmentalist or animal-rights advocate. I’m sympathetic with those philosophies, to a point, but I eat meat, wear leather, etc. Nevertheless, some part of my sensibilities was offended by seeing such a bizarre juxtaposition. I think I was offended by the stupidity, or more likely ignorance, on display by HSN.

So, I decided to do something. I got my phone, dialed up the HSN order line, and as soon as the customer service drone answered, I yelled, “EARTH DAY! FUR IS MURDER! BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT!!”. I did it a couple more times after that. Then I got my dormmate to call too, on his phone; he did a very low-key version of same spiel (sans yelling–that was my schtick).

We had our fun, and decided to keep watching the channel to see if our childish actions had any on-air effect. Lo and behold, about 10 minutes after the last of our calls, the show host mentioned, “By the way, folks, today is Earth Day”, and then abruptly switched from the fur display to something else. We laughed our asses off! It looked like we had stuck it to the man!

Normally I’d let this recollection stand as is. But doing so seems to confuse some people. Therefore, I feel compelled to include something in the way of context and clarification. (I doubt the offended Home Shopping drones will even read this far down, but at least I’ve got it down for the record, and won’t have to bother with further response.)

It seems to be eluding some that the episode above happened in 1990. When I was 18 years old, btw — so the “childish” insult doesn’t faze me, as I practically was still a child at that point. Also, whatever call-center procedures that are in place now most likely weren’t in effect back then. So don’t bother citing current SOP because it probably doesn’t apply.

Secondly, I never state that the operators somehow relayed those crank calls to the broadcast booth. However, you can bet those calls were being monitored from a higher source, and from there filtered to what was going on on-screen.

Lastly: Whether or not my imagined cause-and-effect really happened, the sequence is where the humor is. It still makes for a funny story, which is why I look forward to recycling it yet again next year.

Whenever I copy-and-paste an old post to create a new one, I get the feeling that I’m copping out.

But since today is Earth Day, I’ll frame this post as a prime example of what can be achieved by renewing your own resources — intellectual-property style. (It’s better than saying I’m swiping content from myself.)

So here it is, same as last year, albeit with a couple of minor diction edits: My college-era instance of sticking it to the man for good ol’ Mama Earth. Enjoy!

My favorite Earth Day memory is a prank I played 13 16 17 years ago. I was sitting in my dorm lounge with a dormmate. We were flipping through the channels (no cable TV in the dorms back then–the dark ages!!), and catching a couple of news reports telling us it was Earth Day. Then we land on Home Shopping Network, just as they start rolling out their fur collection for display and sale.

It hit me: Furs? They’re hawking freakin’ furs on Earth Day? Come on!

Now, I wasn’t then, nor am I now, a hard-core environmentalist or animal-rights advocate. I’m sympathetic with those philosophies, to a point, but I eat meat, wear leather, etc. Nevertheless, some part of my sensibilities was offended by seeing such a bizarre juxtaposition. I think I was offended by the stupidity, or more likely ignorance, on display by HSN.

So, I decided to do something. I got my phone, dialed up the HSN order line, and as soon as the customer service drone answered, I yelled, “EARTH DAY! FUR IS MURDER! BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT!!”. I did it a couple more times after that. Then I got my dormmate to call too, on his phone; he did a very low-key version of same spiel (sans yelling–that was my schtick).

We had our fun, and decided to keep watching the channel to see if our childish actions had any on-air effect. Lo and behold, about 10 minutes after the last of our calls, the show host mentioned, “By the way, folks, today is Earth Day”, and then abruptly switched from the fur display to something else. We laughed our asses off! It looked like we had stuck it to the man!

Having attended an NCAA Division II school, I have a soft spot in my heart for the equivalent of the lower-minor leagues in college sports.

That said, the brewing storm over the subdivision of the NCAA’s Division III into upper and lower tiers strikes me as pretty pointless.

“At the convention, there were people walking around saying, ‘I’ll never join a Division IV,’” [Williams College athletic director Lisa] Melendy said. “No one wants to be in Division IV. The name has such a substandard sound. It sounds like you’ve been demoted.”

You’re already talking about the basement; would getting shifted from third- to fourth-string be that much of a hit? After you get past Division I and I-A, primetime collegiate sports are largely theoretical.

Then again, things could go even lower:

No one wants to tackle the prickly subject of what to call the new divisions. A Division IV could be avoided with a Division III-A and Division III-AA. Others have proposed using proper names for the divisions. And some administrators suggested there would be enough discord that the N.C.A.A. should be prepared not just for a Division IV but also a Division V.

I think all this splintering will prompt ESPN to start spinning off parallel sub-networks, just to keep up on coverage.

Microsoft’s sorry excuse for an unPod, the Zune, comes with a curious product slogan:

Welcome to the Social.

It’s clever, in that it implies a community phenomenon for the media player, which of course you’d want to join. It also boosts the much-hyped Zune-to-Zune wi-fi file transfer capability that Microsoft has used as the key differentiator from the iPod.

For me, though, the first thing that came to mind wasn’t really the uncommon noun definition, ala “ice cream social”.

Rather, it was one of the outcomes of my favorite college drinking game, Three Man. As in, roll a 9, and then call out “SOCIAL!” as the cue for everyone in the game to take a swig.

I’m guessing someone in Zune marketing dredged up some beer-soaked memories of their college drinking days when they settled on that tagline. College kids have been a primary grassroots market for promoting the Zune, so I’m sure that consideration went into it as well. Positioning an mp3 player as a drinking accessory? It’s got to work better than the Zune’s cruddy design and features…

I can only assume that Rite Aid’s agreement to absorb the Brooks/Eckerd drugstore group for $2.6 billion will result in the disappearance of both the Brooks and Eckerd store brands.

If so, as an alumus of Eckerd College, I’m happy as a clam. Not that I encountered many instances when someone would ask, upon finding out where I went to school, why I decided to go into pharmaceuticals. And the withdrawal of Eckerd stores from Florida, combined with their rather thin presence in New York (as far as I’ve seen), pretty much eliminated that possibility anyway. Still, I’d rather there be one, and only one, Eckerd brandname out there.

Now, I’ve got to cross my fingers that my alma mater doesn’t pull a fast one and rename itself “Rite Aid Tech” or something…

It was questionable that the Jean Coutu Group persisted with the Eckerd brand after buying the remains of the operations in 2004, when CVS simply assimilated its half under its own banner right away (including in Florida, where Eckerd Drugs started its life). The chain’s expansion up the East Coast didn’t build much equity, and ultimately put the company in a position where it had to sell itself off. Now, less than a decade later, it’s about to be snuffed out completely.

How’s that small college supposed to compete with big universities to attract prospective students? Increasingly, they’re instituting (and re-instituting) NCAA football programs, which are considered quick-fix galvanizing components of the long-lasting college experience.

“When you recruit a halfback, you get a few of his male friends, maybe his sister and his sister’s boyfriend, too,” said JoAnne Boyle, president of Seton Hill University. A 123-year-old former women’s institution in Greensburg, Pa., Seton Hill added football last year.

“I could have started a spiffy new major of study, spent a lot of money on lab equipment and hired a few new high-powered professors,” Dr. Boyle said. “I might have gotten 25 more students for that. And I couldn’t have counted on that major still being popular in 15 years.

“Instead, I started a football team, brought in hundreds of paying students, added a vibrant piece to our campus life and broadened our recognition factor. And in the long history of American higher education, one thing you can count on is football’s longevity. Football is here to stay.”

Come for the pigskin, stay for the bachelor’s degree!

The funny thing is that for years, football programs at smaller schools were an endangered species. Because an institution with only a couple thousands students couldn’t hope to put together a top-flight Division I squad, and that Div. II and III competition wasn’t considered noteworthy enough to be an attraction for current students or alumni, football often became hard to justify on a cost basis.

What’s changed? I guess the breadth and depth of football fandom has reaped a lucrative market for all things gridiron. In addition to the appeal for the student body, clothing merchandising has a huge appetite for a variety of team colors/logos, and as long as the school/team really exists, it’s got the cache to be a strong seller. There’s the revenue stream a small school needs.

This trend soon may be affecting me. Dinky little Eckerd College, my alma mater, has been on a sports-promotion kick ever since new President Donald Eastman came on board a couple of years back. The school’s never had a football squad, and was founded with the intention of never having one. Sports has purposely been a secondary part of the Eckerd experience; the most glory it gets is when its Division II baseball and/or hoops teams make a little noise in their conferences every few years.

But when I drove through the St. Petersburg campus a couple of weeks ago, during a brief visit, I spied a couple of goalposts set up on the far edge of the school’s athletic complex! I figured that was a harbinger of things to come, and this article tells me I’m right.

Hey college grads: Expect to make slave wages in your first job out of school. That’s not news, I know.

Just make sure they’re not too slavish, because the salary you settle for in that first stint could set a trend for you, career-wise:

These data confirm that people essentially cannot close the wage gap by working their way up the company hierarchy. While they may work their way up, the people who started above them do, too. They don’t catch up. The recession graduates who actually do catch up tend to be the ones who forget about rising up the ladder and, instead, jump ship to other employers.

Your pay range is established early, and becomes part of your permanent record, so to speak. I can attest to that: I think I swapped monetary compensation for security too often in the past, and consequently, found it hard to credibly demand more money in subsequent jobs. And naturally, one of the first things prospective employers look at salary history, as a shorthand assessment of someone’s worth and talent (fair measure or not). When matched against your peers, it really becomes a handicap.

Of course, “jumping ship” to another company strictly for advancement opportunity is standard practice nowadays. At least for white-collar workers, the chances of committing to one company for your entire working career are laughably slim (unless, say, you happen to own said company — and even that’s no guarantee). So a payscale legacy reinforces the need to be nimble in personal career development. But again, that salary history does follow you around.

So what’s a fiscally-disadvantaged young worker to do? Aside from free agency, s/he can go the office tell-all blog route, which is fraught with reprimandable risk but also offers lucrative satisfaction:

Busted bloggers like Jessica Cutler (a former Capitol Hill intern whose blog, Washingtonienne, is now a novel), Nadine Haobsh (a former beauty editor whose blog Jolie in NYC earned her a two-book deal) and Jeremy Blachman (a lawyer whose blog Anonymous Lawyer is being released as “Anonymous Lawyer: A Novel” this summer) were all interns, entry-level employees and worker bees who traded up on in-the-trade secrets.

The generation entering the work world has noticed.

“Everybody I’ve read about that got fired for having a blog is on to such great things,” said Kelly Kreth, 36, who was fired from her job as the marketing and public relations director at a real estate firm in Manhattan last fall for blogging about her co-workers.

“I’ve had my online diary for six years, and it is very important to me,” Ms. Kreth said, calling the firing the best thing that happened to her. “It led to me opening my own business and making triple what I was making before.”

A book or movie deal is not a bad way to exact revenge. Of course, for every jackpot, there are thousands of unemployed crapouts.

My advice: Stay in school for as long as you can. You can blog from your dorm as easily as you can from a cubicle, and the meal plan is probably better!

Today’s Earth Day was a pretty miserable one here in New York: Non-stop rain, with a temperature dip approaching winterish weather.

Where’s the love, Mother Gaia?

I suppose you have to take the deary days along with the sun-shiney ones. Anyway, I’ll take any excuse to laze around the house all day.

In honor of the holiday, I’ll go into blog reruns. This one goes way back, both in terms of recounting and actual action. Enjoy my college-era episode of sticking it to the man, Earth Day-style:

My favorite Earth Day memory is a prank I played 13 16 years ago. I was sitting in my dorm lounge with a dormmate. We were flipping through the channels (no cable TV in the dorms back then–the dark ages!!), and catching a couple of news reports telling us it was Earth Day. Then we land on Home Shopping Network, just as they start rolling out their fur collection for display and sale.

It hit me: Furs? They’re hawking freakin’ furs on Earth Day? Come on!

Now, I wasn’t then, nor am I now, a hard-core environmentalist or animal-rights advocate. I’m sympathetic with those philosophies, to a point, but I eat meat, wear leather, etc. like your average dude. Nevertheless, some part of my sensibilities was offended by seeing such a bizarre juxtaposition. I think I was offended by the stupidity, or more likely ignorance, on display by HSN.

So, I decided to do something. I got my phone, dialed up the HSN order line, and as soon as the customer service drone answered, I yelled, “EARTH DAY! FUR IS MURDER! BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT!!”. I did it a couple more times after that. Then I got my dormmate to call too, on his phone; he did a very low-key version of same spiel (sans yelling–that was my schtick).

We had our fun, and decided to keep watching the channel to see if our childish actions had any on-air effect. Lo and behold, about 10 minutes after the last of our calls, the show host mentioned, “By the way, folks, today is Earth Day”, and then abruptly switched from the fur display to something else. We laughed our asses off! It looked like we had stuck it to the man!

Don’t mention it, Mama Earth.

And speaking of Ybor City, I recently got word that one of its long-time institutions, The Masquerade, has abruptly gone out of business.

Perhaps fittingly, a crappy-looking MySpace page replaces it. As for the actual physical location, I’m sure something will spring up from the ashes.

Since I hadn’t stepped into the place in ages, I can’t say I’m extremely broken up about the fade-out. Despite a fairly diverse booking schedule, Masquerade tended not to get packed unless death metal acts played — and that’s not even remotely the type of scene I go for. And, being far more of a concert venue than an actual bar, it really wasn’t what I liked about going to Ybor.

My nostalgic ties to the place reside in the distant past — some 16 years ago, in my freshman year in college. I recollected the brief experience once on this blog; by way of a eulogy, I’ll repost the pertinent part here:

I’m old enough to remember when The Masquerade was the only thing that existed, club-wise, in Ybor. Back in 1990, some friends at school dragged me out there for a rare off-campus clubbing opp. I was new to the area, and the drive seemed horrendously long from south St. Pete; for a long while after, I was convinced we had driven most of the way to Orlando…

Not much more to relate about that long-ago night. I remember a bunch of us — maybe 7 or 8 people — piled into what had to be one of the last working 1960s-era VW Bugs in existence, and drove the twenty-odd miles up I-275/I-4. I believe I drove part of the way, either going there or coming back; don’t remember precisely why. I remember there were lots of red velvet couches all over the place, which must have long since disappeared by the time the Ybor revival had really kicked off. I remember there was nothing around the club back then but blocks full of boarded-up storefronts and warehouses — again, this was just before the district was revived, and it was a vaguely scary place to be. And today, I don’t remember who it was I went there with; I think most of them left after my freshman year (I can barely visualize the face of the girl who owned the Bug; her name’s long since faded from my brain cells).

Freshman seminars, where first-year students get an intimate introduction to college instruction, are suddenly en vogue and almost a necessity for schools luring students.

It’s a way to stimulate the fresh fish early, fortifying them for the next four years:

John Gardner, founder of South Carolina’s National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, says he can think of just one downside.

“It is possible you get a student motivated and stimulated with an almost graduate-like experience,” said Gardner, who advises colleges on such programs. “And then — bang! — you turn them loose on the real first year, which isn’t anything like that.”

This all sounds very familiar to me. Maybe it should: My alma mater has been doing it for decades. Eckerd College’s freshman-only Autumn Term was designed to break in first-year students gently, focusing on interactive learning. It’s also meant to start a student off on a mentoring relationship, since the Autumn Term instructor often winds up being the academic advisor for at least the first year.

So, it looks like my little college has been ahead of the curve for a long while now. It’s a shame to see EC lose what had been a unique selling point; maybe it should really start emphasizing how long it’s been in the freshman seminar business.

News that the U.S. Postal Service has achieved debt-free status for the first time ever does not make me wonder about the usual postal-related things, like how much a stamp’s going to cost next year (39 cents — like it matters, as I can’t remember the last time I sent a letter) or whether or not Saturday postal delivery is still subject to being cut.

No, I’m wondering about my friend and former roommate, Schmu. He’s been working as a high-rolling consultant for the USPS for the past couple of years. I imagine one of his objectives was to get the operation out of the red. Could Schmu have been behind this stunning turnaround? If so, I’m sure to hear about it.

(No, I’m not going to reveal his real name here. But if you’re really interested…)

Don’t know how I missed this: Dennis Lehane, of “Mystic River” fame (probably moreso for the movie adaptation), has come back to teach at his (and mine) alma mater, Eckerd College, with plans to boost the school’s creative writing program into a national attraction.

First step is adding some zip to this January’s “Writers in Paradise” conference at EC:

Stephen King, among the most acclaimed modern scary-story writers, will teach a one-day class at the conference.

Lehane has written a play, Coronado, which he will read at the conference. Eckerd will then put on the play in April at American Stage, Lehane said.

The Dorchester, Mass., native said he has another “ace in the hole” in regard to the conference, but doesn’t want to reveal it yet.

Let me dispel what you’re probably thinking: No, I’m not that “ace in the hole”. I’m probably busy that night, anyway.

Swirlings around Eckerd’s writing program always interest me. One of the reasons I went to the school — and thus, came to live in Tampa Bay — was the strength of that program. I didn’t wind up staying with it; I figured I didn’t necessarily need a degree in writing. But I’ve still got a soft spot for it.

Ah… I cannot tell you what a warm, fuzzy feeling I got from reading about the Florida Marlins batboy who heaved his guts out from the old gallon-of-milk-in-sixty-seconds trick.

Because college just wouldn’t have been the same without that scam, along with the classic Wonderbread challenge. And we never even had to offer the princely sum of $500; I doubt more than 10 bucks was ever wagered.

Of course, some joker’s always upping the ante in this arena:

The Saltine Challenge: Ingest six Saltine crackers in 60 seconds (Note: All challenges must occur without the help of water or any other digestive lubricants)…

The Cinnamon Challenge: Ingest one teaspoon of cinnamon in 60 seconds (Note: cinnamon sugar is not acceptable)…

The Saltine Challenge No. 2: Ingest four saltines in 60 seconds AND then whistle.
The Twinkies Challenge: Ingest three twinkies in 60 seconds.
The Wendy’s Challenge: Put the entire contents of a Wendy’s kids meal into a blender (small hamburger, fries and Sprite), and ingest it in five minutes.

Hard to believe why anyone would hate us for our freedom…

I had forgotten about the controversy caused by Bow Wow Wow over its Manet tribute album cover, some twenty(!) years ago.

Actually, I’m not sure I’d forgotten about it, as much as just feeling its residual effects. I remember a big deal being made over lead singer Annabella Lwin being so young (15 during the band’s brief heyday), but I don’t think I recall this specific uproar.

Anyway, judge for yourself:

And a bonus trivial tidbit: I found out that my alma mater hosted a Bow Wow Wow concert back in the early ’80s (good luck confirming that; even yearbook records for Eckerd College from that period tend to be sketchy).

My fellow Eckerd alum Richard (regular readers of this blog know him as “Hunk Oman”) tipped me off to this past Sunday’s commencement address at the old alma mater. It was delivered by none other than Dennis Lehane, Class of 1988.

Lehane is easily EC’s most famous graduate — probably the school’s only famous grad (excluding myself, of course). He’s the author of “Mystic River”, which was adapted into a much-acclaimed movie. Lehane’s often spoken highly of his time on campus, so it’s no surprise that he’d come back to visit.

According to Rich, the commencement remarks got some attending parents hot under the collar, to the point where there was much gesticulating and general huff-and-puffing. I’m guessing these choice passages did the trick:

There is an angry, loud and unfortunately popular contingent in this country that will have you believe empathy and mercy are for cowards. No, callousness and apathy are for cowards; empathy and mercy are the province of the brave. And even though this contingent’s loudest mouths all came from wealth, and the only bootstraps they ever pulled up were made of imported Italian leather, they will have you believe that the future of our country lies in the lack of a helping hand and the striking motion of an angry fist. This contingent has made themselves popular by feeding off our innate need for anger. They offer no solutions with the exception of placing more wealth in the hands of those who don’t need it. (To put it another way, I need another tax break like Brad Pitt needs help with dating.) Meanwhile they assail everything that’s good and intrinsically American and pure in this country - the right to free speech, the right to love whomever you choose, the privilege of helping others less fortunate than you, of educating our children, of ensuring a good life for our elderly, of caring for our sick. They want to privatize education and privatize Medicare and privatize Social Security and privatize you right out of the very things that make this country great. I know another word for “privatize” but I can’t use it because I’m in polite company. Make no mistake about it, these are the same people whose ancestors and ideological compatriots from eighty years ago were against Social Security, workers comp, disability insurance, affordable health care, pensions, the eight hour day, the forty hour week, the weekend, women’s right to vote, blacks’ right to vote, integration, and special benefits for veterans… all the while wrapping themselves in the flag and telling us what America is…

So the next time someone pulls the “libel-by-label” card and trots out tired, stale cliches about “the bleeding hearts,” ask them what they stand for. Not what they stand against. What they stand for. And if all they can come up with is some lame BS about a “family-values” world where the family is white and wealthy and the values are something you decree while driving your Hummer to the golf course, then ask them to please keep driving that Hummer over the Mexican border and out of our country because they, my friends, are un-American, not us. And if you ever think about demanding that someone pull himself up by his bootstraps? Ask yourself if you did. Or did you - maybe - have some help? From your parents? From friends? From this great institution?

I doubt many parentals took the advice on that road trip to Mexico (unless they already had reservations in Cabo). But if such direct language makes them that upset, it probably speaks more clearly to their true nature than anything else can.

Aside from the foregoing, I particularly liked Lehane’s comments on the nature of honor:

Honor isn’t Mother Theresa in Calcutta. That’s sainthood. Honor’s a day-to-to-day thing, a small gut-check. Honor is not doing what’s easy if doing so hurts a single soul. It’s the affirmative answer to one simple question you ask of yourself every day: Did I behave with dignity and respect toward all living things? That is the measure of honor and the measure of a human being.

If you’re cynical, you’ll say, “I wasn’t honorable today because the world was dishonorable toward me and I had to fight back.” Sorry. Wrong answer. The measure of a person lies not in what the world does to him, but rather in how he responds to the world. When someone says, oh-so-jadedly, “The world is thus,” you must reply: “No. Thus, have we made the world.” Put another way, hell is not a pit of fire with horned demons jabbing at you or poor Kenny from South Park. Hell is not, as Sartre said, other people. Hell is you, after you’ve sold off your soul and realized it doesn’t have a twin.

Well crafted. Makes me wish I had met him while we were both campus-dwellers (Lehane graduated the year before I got there as a freshman).

If there really was any unusual amount of discord over these remarks, they weren’t noticable enough to warrant mention in the local paper’s account, which was more focused on the presence of the President of Liberia at the event.

An esteemed novelist and a foreign head of state at little old Eckerd’s graduation party. I don’t think my commencement, a dozen years ago, had that kind of star power.

The above pin button won’t mean anything to you unless you happened to attend a certain liberal arts college located in St. Petersburg, circa the early 1990s. I particularly like the “Absolut Eckerd” bottle.

Perhaps the alumni association would like this artifact for their archives. If so, give me a hollah.

I’m kinda hoping Dean Sorochty comes across this. It was a thrilling three years, Roger.

I wouldn’t have believed it, had I not gotten a notification from my alumni association in the mail today. The Eckerd College men’s basketball team is going to Gainesville in a couple of weeks to take on the nationally-ranked University of Florida!

Never thought I’d see the day.

Okay, okay. It’s just an exhibition game, a meaningless tuneup for both squads (although I’d bet it’s more meaningful for EC). It would never happen during the regular season, not least because Eckerd is Division II and not worth the Gators’ time.

Still, it’s significant. Athletics has never been high-profile at Eckerd; they never even merited full scholarships. But the school’s new president apparently sees sports as a way to boost the national profile, and so he’s finagled a limited number of scholarships in all programs. I imagine this game is designed to get some exposure, only the first step for such efforts.

I’m not a hoops fan. Still, I’m tempted to take the trip to UF for this. It’s on November 9th, the day after the deadline for my current all-consuming project, so the schedule’s clear. And while the idea of a long bus trip normally would repel me, the college component would make it fun. The key would be having some familiar alum along for the ride. If there’s a decent group going, I’m there.

Got a kid that’s flunking out of school? If you’re in the vicinity of Mystic, Connecticut, the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration has a program that gives students an alternative learning environment, while they mess with the fishes.

Although it’s not the intent, I’m guessing this program is grooming several budding marine biology majors. Which brings to mind my alma mater, which is known for its marine science program.

More to the point, it reminds me of the comically high attrition rate that Eckerd’s marine science program has. When I was attending, something like a third of incoming freshmen came to the school to study dolphins and other cute aquatic life. Then, they’d get a first-semester dose of daily four-hour lab sessions in microbiology and the like. By the end of the year, the chaffe had been separated from the wheat, and bunches of formerly aspiring Jacques Cousteaus had turned their interests to economics or psychology. An early lesson in Darwinian principle.

The reunion weekend rolls on, with a big dinner tonight at Leverocks on St. Pete Beach. (I had seafood for lunch, so I’m wondering what I should get tonight at this seafood joint.)

There’ll be about 25 of us, plus kiddies. And I’ll pretty much know most of them, excluding some spouses. It’ll be fun to catch up. I know it’s been at least a couple of years since I’ve seen many of them, and in some cases, more like five-plus.

I can’t imagine this being a late night. Most everyone is married, and anyone who’s not won’t be the partying type. For that matter, I’m not sure I’m up for much either. I’m coming into the office tomorrow to wrap up a bunch of things, so the smart move would be to go to dinner, have a couple of hours of fun, then come home, wind down and hit the sheets.

Not that I’m known for making the smart move.

My little rundown of college nicknames was, as R* pointed out, devoid of women.

For the most part, that’s the way it was. Regularly-used nicknames seemed to be more a guy thing at my school (and for that matter, at my high school as well). If anything, nicknames hung on girls tended to be intentionally and wholly derogatory, and so weren’t something you’d say to their faces. Example: I recall one girl at Eckerd getting the nickname “Hummer”, and it didn’t refer to her choice of vehicle.

That said, after digging into my memory banks, I have come up with a few female classmates who regularly went by colorful nicknames:

“Yen” - Jennifer T. (redacted by request from the same; hopefully I’ll remember her name years from now - ed.) Gained from some English Language Students (ELS) who lived adjacent to her dorm during Freshman year; most were Latin, and tended to pronounce “Jen” as “Yen”. Especially since there were so many other Jennifers on campus, the nickname quickly gained currency.

Kind of an odd duck. Very bright and personable, but could be off-putting. When I last ran into her, about five years ago, she had just gotten married and was on her way to Philadelphia.

“Cricket” - Barbara Small (I think). Don’t know the origin of the nickname, although I think she had it long before college.

Really a friend of a friend of a friend. Casual acquaintence. Partied with her a few times, but never really hung out.

“Angel” - Angela, don’t remember last name. Shortening of the first name, also had it before college.

A weird girl. Petite, kind of crude, not particularly pretty, but had certain… assets that made her desirable. Mainly got to know her for a brief period during which she was going out/sleeping with a friend of mine during Freshman year, and somehow we maintained a relationship through the rest of college.

Yup, that’s it. If I think of any more notable nicknames, male or female, I suppose I’ll post. I don’t want to overplay this, though.

As previously mentioned, earlier tonight I made my way to Woody’s on St. Pete Beach for an informal kickoff to this college reunion weekend.

It was a small gathering. There were about 10 of us total (plus some offspring). I knew about half of the alums: Rich and Mary Anderson, Jesse and Myla Turtle, Anne Chapin (who’s now married, but I don’t remember her married name). There were a couple of people there who graduated my freshman year, and if I ever knew them, I’m afraid I’d long since forgotten them. They seemed like a nice group.

I was the only Class of ‘93 representative, so I felt a little stranded. Not that it wasn’t fun to chat with everyone who was there, but it would have been nice to see some former classmates, not to mention roommates. But there’ll be opportunity for that in the next couple of days.

Aside from that, I enjoyed the brief gathering. It was nicely low-key, and left me with a true feeling of camaraderie. This, despite none of the people at Woody’s being among my closest Eckerd friends. Just having the shared experience at the same school was enough, and I guess that’s the point of these reunions.

Jesse provided a nice touch: He wore an old Blakely House t-shirt, some 10 years old, that had some kind of mock code of conduct on the back. I was amazed he still had any old t-shirts from his college days; I know I disposed of mine long ago (although I do have one concert shirt from back then still in my closet). I should have snapped a picture of it; if he wears it again, I definitely will.