Camping out

  Jose Gatica, my son Matt, and I held a chess camp in West Des Moines last Thursday and Friday. I’ve never held a chess camp before but so many parents had asked me if I knew of one in the area during my tournaments this year I thought it would be worth the effort to set it up. Chess camps tend to be a series of chess lessons held over multiple days to give players a sort of ‘chess immersion’. Most chess camps have a headline instructor and I was lucky to have Matt agree to participate. As the 4 time state high school champion, he was someone the campers could look up to as a product of Iowa chess. With Matt on board, I asked Jose if he was interested. Jose teaches at a number of the area catholic schools and has also taught at chess camps. I’ve met Jose a few times and Tim McEntee is our mutual friend. Jose agreed to work on the camp, I rented some space to at the West Des Moines Learning Center, and we were off.

  Organizing the camp played to all of my weaknesses. When I organize and direct a chess tournament, it’s something I’ve done many times before and the only help I need is to set up the tables and boards at the start and cleaning up at the end. I know what I need to do, when I need to do it, and after having at least one tournament a month for the last 8 months, getting the tournament to come together is almost an effortless affair.

Matt Anzis is an Iowa scholastic legend to most of these kids. He went over some his best games and captivated the advanced players.

  Since I’ve never organized anything like the chess camp I was flying blind and wasn’t even sure about when to order supplies, snacks, t-shirts, etc.. Since I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to have the maximum 35 campers, I decided to wait as long as possible to get all the things I needed so I wouldn’t be stuck with a lot of extra t-shirts and awards that would just be money down the drain.

  Also, tournaments I organize tend to be a solo act. I’ve had some great helpers with the 100+ participant scholastic tournaments I’ve run, but normally I like to have my fingerprints all over the events I’m associated with so I’m aware of even the smallest problem or issue and if a parent or player has a question they know that I’m the person to come to. With the camp, I needed a lot of input from Jose from everything from the course content to the schedule to the positions we were going to use to explain concepts to the kids. Not only didn’t I have my usual ‘iron fist’ control of the event, Jose was in the process of moving and I’ve been super busy at work so our opportunities for communications to finalize our decisions were minimal.

  My comfort level wasn’t helped any with the massive storm that swept through Marshalltown on Monday, leaving most of the town without power. I was able to check my emails from work but wasn't nearly as responsive as I normally am. The company that was making the camp t-shirts was local and also had no power, so I had no t-shirts for the campers. And Matt was planning on printing his lesson plans during the week, so he had to make do with writing out his notes longhand.

Jose Gatica not only can get youth interested in chess, he also has a good sense for their mood.

  None of that mattered at the camp on Thursday. We all arrived around 9, got everything set up for the 10 o’clock start and the campers started arriving. There were a few fits and starts with late arrivals, but by 10:30 we were well underway.

  We had 17 campers that we divided into 5 advanced players and 12 intermediate players (Matt moved 2 players into the advanced section for day 2). Jose worked with the intermediate players and Matt worked with the advanced players in the morning, while I helped Jose out and served up snacks and drinks to the kids. During the planning, Jose was insistent that we set up time for the kids to get outside and play. I figured when the kids needed a break, I’d just dish out some snacks, but the kids were having snacks during the class sessions and when they got bored, they needed to get outside and run around at the nearby playground. Jose’s experience really paid off since not only did he insist on having some recess time, he also had me bring some footballs and soccer balls, and had me ask around for a nurse to be on call in return for a reduced entry fee to the camp.

  Matt was going over positions and games with the advanced players and they were getting along great, while Jose was getting along good with the intermediate players. After lunch, it was my turn to go over endings with the intermediate players. The lesson started off well, but after an hour, the kids started zoning me out and I couldn’t finish the lesson without getting outside for a touch football and playground session. I was kind of bummed but Jose reminded me that the kids don’t have the attention span to sit still for all that long. After playtime, I gave a short lesson on writing down the moves that went much better and day one finished up on a high note.

When the advanced players got a little bored, I split them into 2 teams of 3 players and made them play, but alternating moves between players and no talking. Everyone enjoyed the different kind of chess until a teammate would make a mistake.

  Day 2 went even better than day one. I got to work with the advanced kids in the morning and the beginners in the afternoon. A lot of these kids only know me from running tournaments, so it was nice for me to interact with them talking about chess in a give and take atmosphere instead of just giving them a prize or telling them who they are playing next. In the afternoon, I was much more cognizant of Jose’s advice and as soon as I saw the kids zoning out, we got them outside for more playtime. We finished the camp with a short tournament, gave everyone some chess related merchandise, and took some pictures. While we were cleaning up after the camp, the building director came in and told us he was so impressed with the camp that he would let us have it there next year at a reduced rate.

  I think the kids all had a great time and I hope they learned some valuable chess lessons. I got a lesson in relaxing and letting events unfold, and I learned that Jose is someone I can count on to be prepared and also someone I can learn a lot from about how kids relate to chess. I also learned that when buying snacks, kids prefer Sunny D to apple juice by a 2 to 1 margin and that cheddar cheese crackers and mixed fruit cups win hands down over pepper jack crackers and tropical fruit cups. The camp turned out to be a chess and financial success and gave me a big dose of enthusiasm as I gear up for another school year of scholastic chess tournaments after the inevitable dwindling attendance of the summer tournaments. And having gone through the planning process, I will be much better prepared for next year’s camp.

It could be worse

  I’m entering this blog from the Marshalltown Library parking lot. The free Wi-Fi is the first use I’ve gotten from the new library in 3 years. Thanks to a huge storm in Marshalltown this week, our house has had no electricity since Monday morning at 4 AM. Power has been restored to a few blocks but not mine. I think that the closer you live to a bar or liquor store, the better your chances of having your power restored since I noticed all the bars and liquor stores had their power on around 5pm Monday. This same kind of storm hit 10 years ago and my block was one of the last to have power restored. Both times I’ve been able to watch people in the house across the street watch TV while I have been deprived of watching one of my favorite Law and Order – Special Victims Unit or NCIS episodes for the two hundred and eighteenth time.

  Alliant Energy has a web site that you can enter your phone number and they will tell you when your power is going to be restored. 48 hours after the storm, the web site said they are surveying the impact and can’t make an estimate at this time. What a joke. The one time you could use this information, no one updates the site. You could say that Alliant Energy should be busy working on restoring electricity and not updating some web site and you'd have an excellent point, but then my question is “what’s the point of having a web site to tell me when my power will be restored if they won’t update it until the power is restored?” I looked this afternoon and saw my power was scheduled to be restored yesterday. Thanks!!

Good News! My electricity will be fixed yesterday!

  In the 21st century, no electricity also means no internet and no phone since they both come from the cable company. This is good and bad. On the plus side, no internet means I can’t check on work from home. So far, no crises have erupted that would require me to drive to Des Moines in the middle of the night (turning a big plus to a big minus). On the bad side, I’ve organized a chess camp for Thursday and Friday and no email means no contact with the parents and no electricity means the people in town that were making the camp t-shirts and prize buttons for me won’t get them done in time. My amusement the last 3 days have consisted of walking and playing with my dogs Daisy and Baxter, reading books, and hanging out with Kathy, which are things I enjoy doing even when the power is on. The things I’ve missed most are emails, facebook, the phone, TV, radio, and internet chess. These aren’t trivial things, but nothing I can’t live without. I didn’t miss not seeing the all-star game and I’ve spent so many years opening a can and sticking a spoon or fork in it (even soup!) that I still think of a cooked meal as a luxury. Kathy is becoming an expert at grilling, but I think she is missing ice cream most of all.

  When I told someone how I haven’t had power this week, their response was a bright and cheery “It could be worse.” I felt like asking how and then if they said something like “at least you still your health”, I’d reply that I also found out I just have a debilitating illness just to see how it could get even worse. Then I felt like saying “Duh” in a derisive tone of voice. Instead I just nodded in agreement and mumbled my assent because I suppose the comment was well intentioned and I have enough on my plate without starting anything, but it got me thinking how I just don’t get the ‘It could be worse” crowd. Don’t take that rant to mean that I don’t appreciate all that I have. It is just that I reject the notion that I shouldn’t want better for myself and my family just because ‘it could be worse’. And when something bad happens, it isn't better because something worse didn't happen.

  When someone tells me their troubles, I offer my sympathies, offer to help if I can, and offer a solution if I think of one (but not if the person I’m talking to wants to shoot down my suggestions so they can continue to wallow). The one thing I never do is tell them how things could be worse. I don’t see how that is going to make anyone feel better by knowing things could even get worse. If I was going to point out how things could get worse when someone is sharing bad news, when they share good news, wouldn’t I have to be consistent by pointing out how things could even be better? Or should I keep on talking about how things could be worse? After all, if things are good it could get even ‘worser’ than before it got less worse.

  When I have problems like no power or feeling sick or my car’s not working or a sick dog or getting stuck in traffic or losing a chess game, I try to just acknowledge that I’m not happy about it and move on. On those few occasions where I catch myself thinking about how it could get worse, I quickly descend into paranoia. When a project I was working on was having all kinds of problems a couple of weeks ago (mostly due to stretching a system beyond its breaking point), I was waking up in the middle of the night and checking my emails to see if anything had gotten worse. Maybe that ‘It gets better’ slogan has some merit after all. I wasn’t a big fan of it before, but I guess I’d rather say that to a suicidal harassed teenager than ‘It could be worse!’

  In my opinion, telling anyone a situation could be worse than it already is isn’t a comfort but an invitation to overactive imaginations to create nightmarish scenarios. But in the interests of fairness, I thought I try it the next chance I got. When I rolled into work today at 6:30 (I came in early because I couldn’t check some overnight processes on my computer at home – no power, remember?), I had a conversation with the older gentleman who was the overnight security guard. It was early and I was tired so I don’t remember the exact wording, but as I recall, it went something like this:

“How’s it going?”
“Not so good. Yesterday, the doctor told me I only had 2 days to live.”
“It could be worse!”
“You know, you’re right. Wow! What a relief, I feel better now. Boy, I’m sure glad I ran into you today!”

I’m not sure I really believed him…

It could be worse. If they had bigger silos, there would have had twice as much damage.

A modern-day legend

  The Yankees’ Derek Jeter got his 3,000th hit against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays today with a third inning homer off the Rays best pitcher, David Price. Because Jeter is a Yankee his chase for 3,000 has been more closely followed than the recent quests of Craig Biggio and the steroid user Rafael Palmeiro to reach the 3,000 hit milestone. I knew when he got to 2,000 hits at the age of 32 and was still averaging 200 hits a year that unless he got injured, he’d get to 3,000 and there was an outside possibility of his reaching 4,000. The decline in Jeter’s abilities over the last 2 years makes 4,000 hits out of the question. The next big Yankee milestone will be in 2 or 3 years when Alex Rodriguez will be due for his 3,000 hit (He’s 250 away). Rodriguez will get a big media treatment when his time comes, but the Yankee fans will give him the same lukewarm response that Roger Clemens 300th win got in 2003. This is understandable, since Jeter is a homegrown Yankee product, while Rodriguez and Clemens were products of other teams who came to the Yankees for money and the chance to win the championship they could never lead their teams to.

  Because he is a Yankee, Jeter has come in for a large share of criticism from the national sports media outlets like ESPN for signing a big money contract this past winter ($51 million over 3 years) and hitting leadoff even though he turned from a .320 hitter with some pop to a .270 hitter with almost no power. They’ve even been bringing up how Jeter refused to move to third base when Rodriguez (an All-Star shortstop) was signed.

  Normally I have nothing nice to say about the Yankees spending top dollar for players that are past their prime. In the 70s, Steinbrenner won a couple of championships while paying top dollar for players in their prime like Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, and Goose Gossage, but in the 80’s and early 90’s the other rich owners beat the Yankees to the prime free agents while Steinbrenner overpaid for over-the-hill players like Ken Griffey Sr., Davey Collins, and Ken Phelps and mediocre players coming off their best year like Pascual Perez, Ed Whitson, and Steve Kemp. Meanwhile the Yankees slid into mediocrity and finally became a last place team managed by a Stump Merrill. With Steinbrenner suspended, the Yankees slowly rebuilt the farm system with players like Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettite, and Mariano Rivera and picked up inexpensive free agents that other teams thought were over the hill like Paul O’Neill and Wade Boggs instead of trading the jewels of the farm system for star players looking for a buck. Once the team had established itself as a contender, star pitchers like David Cone and Jimmy Key, and John Wetteland were purchased and the team finally made the playoffs in 1995 after a 14 year drought.

  The Yankees lost in the 1995 playoffs to the Mariners, but retooled for 1996 by getting the Mariner first baseman Tino Martinez to replace the retiring Don Mattingly, Joe Girardi at catcher, and giving the shortstop job to Derek Jeter. The Yankees won the World Series in 1996 and 3 more from 1998 to 2000. There were a lot of factors leading to the championships, but from a Yankee fan’s perspective, after 18 years of no championships, the winning started when Jeter showed up and in Jeter, Pettite, Rivera, Williams, Posada, O’Neill, Brosious, Martinez, etc., this generation of Yankee fans had a group of legends to match Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig from the 20’s, Joe DiMaggio and Gehrig in the 30s, Dimaggio, Phil Rizzuto, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Mickey Mantle in the 50’s, Mantle, Ford, and Roger Maris in the 60’s, and Thurman Munson (my favorite player as a kid), Ron Guidry, and Graig Nettles in the 70’s.

  Not only is Jeter a modern day legend on the field, he has never disgraced himself off the field the way Tiger Woods and Roger Clemens have with their infidelities or Clemens, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, etc. have with their steroid use. A guy like that should be able to play for the Yankees for top dollar as long as he wants based on his past service and hopefully he will recognize when it’s time to retire and I won’t have to see him hanging on hitting .191 with the Pirates, Royals, or some other loser team.

  The reason that Jeter didn’t move away from shortstop in 2004 to make room for Rodriguez was that Jeter didn’t have the arm to play third base and the Yankees had no room in the outfield. It was best for the team that he played shortstop. The reason that Jeter is batting leadoff this year is that the Yankees don’t have a leadoff hitter. Gardner steals bases like a leadoff man but doesn’t get on base enough and can’t hit lefties. Granderson is fast like a leadoff man, but he is in the top 10 in home runs and is needed hitting later in the order. Jeter is the best fit at leadoff. If the Yankees still had Johnny Damon, Jeter would be hitting second or seventh. He has always bounced around the lineup and hit whenever he was needed and never complained about it either. I’m sure his pride will be hurt when he is moved down in the order, but at the moment, the Yankees don’t have a lot of options at leadoff.

  Getting 3,000 hits makes Jeter a sure-fire Hall of Famer. You may think that he was already a lock, but there is an anti-Yankee bias for the HOF and I could see the same argument used against Jeter that kept Phil Rizzuto (Yankee shortstop from 1941 to 1955 and 1950 AL MVP) out for 30 years. The argument against Yankees seems to be that if you take them off the championship teams, you remove a lot of their Hall of Fame argument. To me, that is a lot of nonsense. The Yankees have always been able to have any player they wanted on their roster, and yet they chose Rizzuto be their shortstop when they won 5 World Series in a row from 1949 to 1953. Being a shortstop on a dynastic team should be proof of a Hall of Fame resume instead of an argument against it.

  It bothers me a lot to see the media nip at the heels of a champion like Derek Jeter, who has always done what’s best for his team, but that’s what the media does best. It’s a shame he is at a reduced level of ability at the same time he is getting all this attention for his 3,000 hits. It makes people forget what a great hitter he was in his prime, hitting over .300 with 200 plus hits almost every year, and that doesn’t even count all the clutch plays he’s made in the playoffs and World Series. I was happy to see him go 5 for 5 in today’s milestone game to help people all over the country see the Jeter that Yankee fans have been treated to for the last 17 years. Jeter will be as big a legend to Yankee fans 50 years from now as Mickey Mantle is to the 70 year olds today and DiMaggio, Gehrig, and Ruth were to their fathers and grandfathers.

Fool me once…

  In May, I wrote about how I spent $31 to nominate my blog for the Chess Journalists of America Awards despite having my submission last year voted the worst entry ever. The deadline on the entry form I received was June 15th so I sent in my nomination form the first week in June. I never heard from the chairman of the awards committee, who was supposed to acknowledge my entry, so I emailed a reminder and a week later I received an acknowledgement email. On the 16th, I looked on the CJA website to see which entries had been received since the nomination form said that they'd be posted when entries were closed. No entries were posted. Then on the 20th, I received an email from Mark Capron. Mark is the editor of the Iowa State Chess Association magazine ‘En Passant’. Matt had written the story of his 5th place finish at the National High School championships for that magazine last year and Capron wanted to know if I had submitted it for a CJA award, because if I hadn’t he would submit it on behalf of the magazine. I hadn’t submitted it but I was confused since I thought the entries were closed for a week. I took another look on the website and lo and behold, the deadline had been extended to July 6th.

  There was no mention of the extension on the web page, just a link to Alexandra Kosteniuk’s June 16th chess blog posting announcing the CJA awards and the July 6th deadline as if there was no previous deadline. Kosteniuk mentions in her blog that ‘it's FOR YOU that the CJA is running its annual Awards program, and I want YOU to participate and to WIN AWARDS!’ (Her capitalizations)

  I don’t mean to seem rude to the CJA president and former Woman’s World Chess Champion, but c’mon Alexandra!! If you really wanted ME to ‘WIN AWARDS’, you could have left the deadline as it was and I’d have a better chance to ‘WIN AWARDS’. The least the CJA could have done was to mention a reason for extending the instead of just breezily pretending that there was no extension at all.

  How can groups that pull this kind of stunt have any integrity? How can anyone ever take their deadlines seriously? What kind of message does this send to people like me that sent in their entries on time? I suppose if there were enough people like me that respected deadlines, there wouldn’t have been a deadline extension. After the fiasco of my asking the judge (personally but anonymously) in 2006 what he thought of my submission and being told he never heard of it, I feel like I’ve gotten fooled twice. Well, shame on me but the CJA has seen its last penny from my pocket.

  I did manage not to get fooled twice on another more important front. I worked for Fisher Controls in Marshalltown from 2008 to 2010 as a contractor for Robert Half. As a contractor, I agreed to work for the company for 2 years for a set wage. I enjoyed working so close to home, but in the middle of 2009, Fisher decided to cut all the contractors pay. They weren’t losing money, just not making enough. It was described to us as a ‘win-win’ since by agreeing to a lower wage we all got to keep our jobs. I saw how it was a ‘win’, but missed the part about how it was a ‘win-win’ (I had the wrong perspective). Then Fischer ended up letting many of the contractors who took a pay cut go anyway (No, they did not give them back the pay they’d given up in order to keep their jobs a few months prior). I’m sure they saw that as a ‘win-win-win’. Once the company showed they felt no obligation to be truthful or live up to their own obligations, I started looking for a job and a few months later got one.

  Since then, Fisher Controls has been making more money and has hired a recruiting company out of their parent corporation Emerson’s hometown to do their IT recruiting and look for programmers. I got an email from the recruiter letting me know of an opportunity in Marshalltown. I wrote back asking if the opportunity was full time or a contract position and how much it paid. I was told it was a long term contract and the salary was open and they would ‘pay the right amount for the right person’. Sounds like the old phrase ‘Salary based on experience’, which means the company’s experience in paying the least amount of salary. I wrote back and asked if the job came with any benefits and if the right amount went up to an absurdly high number I picked out of the sky and was told I could get full benefits ‘which can include 3 weeks paid time off, Medical, and Dental’ and also asking me if I was looking for the absurdly high number in addition to the benefits. I thought the word ‘can’ was odd since if it CAN include those benefits it also CANNOT include these benefits. At this point I called off the game and told the recruiter I wasn’t interested since I’d heard of an employer in Marshalltown who gave all their contractor pay cuts so they could keep their jobs and then laid them off a couple of months later anyway. I’m surprised this guy didn’t even bother to read my resume to see if I’d worked at Fisher or maybe he did, but his job was just to get me in the door, get his commission, and then who cares about me.

  It is always gratifying to be pursued by those that have wronged you in the past, but in my experience it’s foolish to expect different results from the same people. If I did go back to work at Fisher, as soon as the economy hit a bump or they decided they just weren’t making enough money, I’d be in the same situation I was 2 years ago. I wish this recruiter had called 2 months ago for a refresher course before I let myself get fooled for the second time by the Chess Journalists of America.

A Guy who got it

Ed (19??-2011)

  Last Wednesday, I received the unwelcome news that my friend Ed from the Salvation Army had passed away this week at his home. In February, I wrote about how I attended Ed’s sermon at the Salvation Army and how inspired I was from it. When I saw Ed in March, he told me he was working on a sermon in May and would let me know when he was ready. We talked about his February sermon and I’m happy now that I got to tell him how inspired I was.

  On Thursday at chess club, Majors John and Judith were preparing for Ed’s funeral which was going to be on Friday morning. I wanted to go, but at work I had a time critical project that was coinciding with a maintenance shutdown of some government servers and had to be in Des Moines (A telling sign that my priorities are out of whack). Major John was Ed’s best friend and Ed had followed him around to his different posts in the Salvation Army. He told me that Ed had died sometimes between Tuesday (when he was last heard from) and Wednesday (when he was found) while working on his computer.

  The next to last time I saw Ed was on the courthouse square in late April. My wife and I were out doing our Saturday rounds of the thrift stores and on our way back saw that Ed was out on the square with his hot dog stand during the annual Garden show. I stopped over and had a fantastic Chicago-style Polish Sausage with hot sauerkraut, relish, and mustard while we chatted a bit. Ed was having a great time selling the hot dogs and talking with the food vendor next to him.

  The last time I saw Ed was in May on a Thursday night. We were having our chess club and Ed was cooking a dinner for a service organization that was having a meeting at the Salvation Army. I remember asking Ed when he was going to have the sermon he was telling me he was working on and he said he didn’t know. He then told me that he was the luckiest guy around because he was able to get his hot dog stand even though he never had a way to afford one because everything just came together to get him one.

  Ed had a little table in the Salvation Army kitchen that was piled high with his books and notes for future sermons. He was very religious and believed we are living in the end times, but unlike some of the very religious people I know, he never acted like he was going to heaven and you were going to hell unless you agreed with him. I always judge people by how they are with me and Ed was always supportive of my efforts to reach people through chess.

  I never even knew Ed’s last name, but that’s probably the way he wanted it. He was more about results and actions than names and titles. I saw all the old photos of Ed that were being set out for the funeral. Since I only knew him for the last few years, there was obviously a lot I’ll never know about him. I remember his joy at making a batch of chicken wings or chili for us to feast on during chess club and I also remember him working to the point of exhaustion picking up supplies in Des Moines and driving them to Applington-Parkersburg when the town was nearly destroyed by a tornado.

  My friend Alex Golubow wrote me once that “really make a positive difference in other people's life and that is when life is worth living...”. That describes Ed to a T. Rest in Peace, Ed. I’ll be doubling my efforts to see you someday and get another one of the best Chicago style dogs around.