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Category: National news from the Associated Press
January 17, 2020 5:51 pm Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia Supreme Court upholds weapons ban for pro-gun rally next week, rejecting appeal from gun-rights…
Former US Rep. Christopher Collins is sentenced to two years and two months in federal prison in insider trading case
NEW YORK (AP) — Former US Rep. Christopher Collins is sentenced to two years and two months in federal prison in insider trading…
Wall Street capped a milestone-setting week Friday with a few more as modest gains nudged the major stock indexes to all-time highs. The benchmark…
Sheriff: One dead, one seriously injured in an avalanche at Lake Tahoe ski resort
ALPINE MEADOWS, Calif. (AP) — Sheriff: One dead, one seriously injured in an avalanche at Lake Tahoe ski…
California sheriff says rescuers responding to avalanche at Lake Tahoe ski resort, several people unaccounted for
ALPINE MEADOWS, Calif. (AP) — California sheriff says rescuers responding to avalanche at Lake Tahoe ski resort, several people unaccounted…
Federal court dismisses lawsuit by 21 young people who claimed U.S. government climate policy jeopardizes their future
January 17, 2020 12:23 pm Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Federal court dismisses lawsuit by 21 young people who claimed U.S. government climate policy jeopardizes their…
Jury selected in Harvey Weinstein's rape trial, setting stage for testimony to begin next week
January 17, 2020 11:40 am Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Jury selected in Harvey Weinstein's rape trial, setting stage for testimony to begin next…
US industrial production fell 0.3% in December
January 17, 2020 8:18 am Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. industrial production fell 0.3% in December, as unseasonably warm weather reduced demand for heating from utilities. The…
US industrial production fell 0.3% in December, as unseasonably warm month limited the need for heating from utilities
WASHINGTON (AP) — US industrial production fell 0.3% in December, as unseasonably warm month limited the need for heating from…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Construction of new homes surged in December to the highest level in 13 years, capping a year in which falling mortgage rates and…
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So you have a brilliant idea for an app but you don't know how to get it off the ground. You start right here as this short guide will walk you through everything you need to turn your idea into reality.
Step 1. Define your idea.
To build a successful app you need more than just an idea, you shall define what exactly the solution will do and how it will help end users. Outline key features and don't forget to write down what makes your future product something special.
Step 2. Research your market.
Has this idea been implemented before? Look for similar solutions that already exist.
Who are my competitors? Don't get upset if you find competitors – it proves the idea to be profitable. At the same time, you should consider that if there're many of them it will be difficult to win against them.
What does my typical customer look like? What type of person he is? His age/gender/location/income? This short research will help you understand how many potential customers are there in the desired market and how you should act to draw their attention to your product. When answering the questions, you can also think of which mobile platform you shall choose: will it be native app or a cross platform development?
How much money shall I invest? How much I need to get started? Will I have to hire employees or is it better to hire a ready team? Where will this investment come from?
If after these questions you still feel like you have a killer idea, congrats! Let's go on.
Step 3. Acquire a domain name.
Having a good domain name is extremely important. You may discover that all the good ones are already taken, but you still need to find something short and catchy. And don't forget that though right now you're about to build an app, it's likely that in future you'll also create a website to it where you will be able to thoroughly describe your solution and promote it.
Step 4. Create a strategy.
Once your idea is proved to be viable, you need a strategy. Think about timeline and development milestones, how much the project will cost and how you will roll out to the market. As you gain numbers, you should make sure that the architecture of your product and its backend part are quite robust to handle the increased traffic.
Step 5. Go for it!
So, you have an idea and you have a plan. It's time to develop. Find a development team with rich experience and proper connections will be glad to assist you in turning your concept into reality. The right team and the right plan in place, your app will just make it big.
Need a consultation about your app idea? Contact us using the form below!


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HomeSportsWhat Messi said after winning his 6th Golden Shoe ahead of Mbappe, Ronaldo
What Messi said after winning his 6th Golden Shoe ahead of Mbappe, Ronaldo
October 16, 2019 Kenneth John Sports 0
Barcelona captain, Lionel Messi, on Wednesday hailed his teammates, Luis Suarez and Jordi Alba after winning his sixth European Golden Shoe at the Antiga Fàbrica Estrella Damm in Spain.
DAILY POST had reported that Messi received the 2019 Golden Shoe for the highest goal scorer in the Europe top five league competitions after his nearest challenger, Paris Saint-Germain's Kylian Mbappe fell short.
The Argentine emerged winner with 36 league goals, three ahead of Mbappe.
He claimed the award for the third time in a row, since the prize was recreated back in 1968.
The 32-year-old now has two Golden Shoes ahead of his nearest rival, Cristiano Ronaldo.
"Luis Suarez and Jordi Alba, who are here, and are two of the biggest reasons why I can receive this award. Without my team, I could never have won one. This is a trophy for everyone, a recognition of the entire dressing room," Messi said after receiving the award.
"The Champions League is something special and every year, we want to win it, but we are aware that La Liga is the most important thing.
"It is what leads you to performing well in the Copa del Rey and in La Liga. We are at Barcelona and we aim to win everything."
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


"Halloween" star Jamie Lee Curtis is politicizing the 2018 followup to the original film. For Curtis, the life-and-death struggle between her character Laurie Strode, who has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder for the last 40 years, and the newly released serial killer Michael Myers (the film is vague on why Myers was released from the mental institution) represents a form of female empowerment in the age of Harvey Weinstein and worse.
According to Curtis, the film is more than the jump scares and jetting blood that are staples of the genre. "Halloween" is about women "trying to take back the narrative in their own lives from men who have abused them, in myriad ways," she said.
Curtis is a liberal in a tinsel town dominated by them. She was a fervent Barack Obama supporter, once tweeting "bravo Obama" 15 times in response to Obama's 2012 State of the Union speech, and has indicated support for socialism. But one issue separates Curtis from the liberal herd: her support for the Second Amendment. She is no Liam Neeson, who got a career boost from the high body count in the "Taken" series but wants the same weaponry he glamorizes on screen to be banned in real life.
Curtis's character in "Halloween" stockpiles her survivalist compound with guns (along with booby traps) in preparation for the day Myers begins hunting her again. She supports the movie's message that having weapons for self-defense is essential.
It is this message of women needing guns for protection that makes "Halloween" more than a by-the-numbers slasher film. The jump scares are as predictable as ever, and Myers' motivations remain elusive. But refreshingly there is no "babe-in-half-naked-peril" in the film.
The movie also eschews the view that all is right again when the babe murders her assailant. By casting the fully dressed 59-year-old Curtis, the film-makers show the debilitating after-effects of these battles. Damaged, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Curtis has let Myers define her for four decades.
Added to this complexity is a mother-daughter conflict. Curtis' daughter escapes from her survivalist childhood and, unlike mom, wants to embrace optimism and a belief in the goodness of humanity. So the daughter raises her own daughter in this atmosphere. But when Myers starts slashing and stabbing, both realize that mom had a point about the need to make an armory out of her house.
Clearly the idea of female empowerment has box office appeal even when practiced by a 59-year-old. This exposes another weakness of the feminist movement. Liberal feminists support anti-predator laws and seek to limit, if not eradicate, the right of everyone, women included, to bear arms.
Curtis is more consistent on this matter, by acknowledging feminist empowerment is about more than "reproductive rights" and the Equal Rights Amendment. It is also about individual rights, and women being able to protect themselves is an ultimate expression of those rights.


By Chris Williams on June 28, 2012.
cases since then were caused by eating undercooked beef. However, large outbreaks of this illness have been traced to raw alfalfa sprouts, lettuce, and spinach, and smaller outbreaks to unpasteurized milk, juice, and cider.
Many medical entomologists believe that two flies, the house fly and the fruit fly may be transmitting E.coli O157:H7 onto food used for human consumption. Research has demonstrated that house flies pick up the bacteria on their feet and body hairs when they come into contact with animal feces, and then carry the bacteria to new sites. For example, a fly may walk across feces, fly a hundred yards, and land on the plate of barbecued ribs you've just placed on your deck, leaving bacteria behind. This type of disease transmission is called mechanical transmission because the fly simply carries the bacteria on its body to a new location.
Flies can also transmit bacteria in another way, when they swallow it. This is more than simple mechanical transmission of disease. The ingested bacteria are harbored in the intestines of flies and continue to be excreted in their feces for at least three days after feeding. Flies can "poop" bacteria wherever they are, on any surface, whether it's on your kitchen counter or your baby's pacifier. The bacteria can also grow and reproduce in the mouthparts of the fly. That's important because flies are constantly touching surfaces with their sponging "tongues" and leaving bacteria behind.
It's not just the house fly that transmits E. coli bacteria. Researchers from USDA found that the common fruit fly is an effective carrier of the bacteria and a possible cause of contamination in apples. While reports of apple cider contaminated with E.coli O157:H7 are rare, researchers have found that bacteria transmitted by fruit flies grew rapidly in the wounds of apples.
Good fly control in restaurants, stores, and other areas where food is prepared, stored, and eaten can reduce the risk of contamination with E.coli O157:H7, as well as other types of disease organisms. This is just one way in which professional pest control protects the health of the nation.


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The Fit Fete Expo
Join our group! https://fb.com/groups/1162966753780790/?fth=1
Join us at The Fit Fête on February 25, 2017 at RVP Studios 221 Bull Hill Lane West Haven, CT 06516 from 4pm to 7pm! This is a FREE event to the public featuring health, wellness, fitness and beauty industry vendors, a Zumba breakout session, a Belly dancing demo, free samples, a raffle and MUCH MORE!
Please feel free to share this flyer with your friends and family!
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Why Having a Teacher with Dreadlocks Matters
E4E.ORG Why Having a Teacher with Dreadlocks Matters "I don't just look like my students, I share their background. I know their stories, because it's my story too," writes E4E-Connecticut member MacArthur Cheek.
Relaxation gentle yoga for waking up, after a work and before bed time.
Relaxation gentle yoga for waking up, after a work and before bed time. https://t.co/LThphmqJMz via @YouTube What a gracious gift to be sent this video produce by Sharon Bailey YOUTUBE.COM Relaxation gentle yoga for waking up, after a work and before bed time. These asanas or poses and the use of the sama vritti(equal breathing technique) is great to begin…
NORM DAVIS, AUTHOR BOOK SIGNING, THE BLACK QUARTERBACK SYNDROME
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http://drnormdavis.com/
Mission of the book: To provide organizational success strategies for firsts and pioneers as well to their co-worker supporters and the organizations in which they all work.
The Black Quarterback Syndrome: How to Succeed as a First or Pioneer in an Organization
This management and co-workers handbook was inspired by the personal experiences of former Pro Bowl and first starting black quarterback in the National Football League, Marlin Briscoe. Dr. Norm Davis wrote this book and coined the phrase and concept, The Black Quarterback Syndrome after he discovered that many of Briscoe's development experiences in football were similar to the experiences of firsts and pioneers in corporate America.


As part of Geo-informatics team, I work on planing, consulting, analysis, design and collaboration all thing related Geospatial and Map Service. In every project, I focus on how to present spatial data in the right way. "Vallaris" is our main Geospatial product, I take care in part of business logic and flow. Outside office I enjoy kettlebell workout and outdoor activities such as trail running, hiking and volunteer.


Breathing Time - Did He Like It?
March 28, 2014: Beau Willimon, who began his career as a playwright but is now best known as the man behind the Netflix series "House of Cards", doesn't always work in the character-heavy mode of that show. His sparse play Breathing Time, now being staged by Fault Line Theater at Teatro Iati, is a simple study in how ordinary relationships can be shaped or put in perspective by much larger events. The play begins with a long stretch of workplace banter between two office mates, the hard-charging Jack (Craig Wesley Divino) and the strait-laced Mike (Lee Dolson). The two actors talk about nothing in particular — Mike's young son; Jack's hot new assistant, Karen (Whitney Conkling) — for a rather extended stretch, but Mr. Divino and Mr. Dolson make it amusing and absorbing for just as long as it needs to be.
March 28, 2014: Breathing Time is the latest suit-and-tie drama by Beau Willimon, who adapted House of Cards for Netflix and wrote Farragut North (which inspired the Ryan Gosling starrer The Ides of March), but this one is sweeter but less impactful. Produced by Off Broadway's Fault Line Theatre, the show opens on a generic corporate setting in downtown Manhattan in the early aughts — you can tell by the boxy computer on one of the desks. Mike (Lee Dolson), a straitlaced banker, and his overgrown frat boy officemate Jack (Craig Wesley Divino) bro out in the first hour of the workday before their morning coffee kicks in, talking about their families, planning money-making ventures, and ogling a hot new employee (Whitney Conkling).
March 27, 2014: It's a genuine coup for the Fault Line Theatre, a little-known, four-year-old off-Broadway company, to be presenting Beau Willimon's Breathing Time. At this point the playwright couldn't be hotter, with such credits as The Ides of March—the film version of his play Farragut North—and House of Cards, the hit Netflix series he created and for which he serves as showrunner and executive producer. So it comes as no small surprise that his latest effort is being given its world premiere at a tiny theater in New York City's East Village.
March 27, 2014: It's only time before Beau Willimon's theater rep eclipses his high-profile in television. With both his stage work and House of Cards, he's a superior storyteller, and his newest effort, Breathing Time, which opened Thursday at Off Broadway's Teatro IATI, only confirms that reputation after the success of Farragut Nort and The Parisian Woman. What's Broadway waiting for? Any of those three Willimon plays are superior to the original plays seen so far this season on the Great White Way.


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Quicken Loans Pressroom
Quicken Loans Inc., America's largest mortgage lender and the largest provider of FHA mortgages.
J.D. Power has named Quicken Loans the Highest in Customer Satisfaction for Primary Mortgage Origination nine straight years — 2010 through 2018.
Dan Gilbert founded Rock Financial in 1985, which would become known as Quicken Loans.
Quicken Loans unveiled a new logo for Rocket Mortgage, the first completely online mortgage experience.
Since 2010, Quicken Loans
Contributed $150+ million,
and our Team Members
Volunteered nearly
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Quicken Loans Tees off Partnership with Golf Sensation Rickie Fowler
– Partnership with elite golfer the first in golf for Quicken Loans –
DETROIT, April 8, 2015 – Detroit-based Quicken Loans, the nation's second largest retail mortgage lender, today announced a long-term partnership with PGA TOUR® golf professional Rickie Fowler. The sponsorship will include the Quicken Loans logo gracing Fowler's signature orange golf bag as well the young superstar serving as a Quicken Loans spokesman on the PGA TOUR.
"Rickie stands out not only as an incredible golfer but also as someone who brings a new level of enthusiasm to the sport – which makes him a perfect fit for Quicken Loans," said Jay Farner, President and Chief Marketing Officer for Quicken Loans. "Quicken Loans has a history of boosting excitement in the world of sports with special events like hosting the first college basketball game on an active aircraft carrier and offering a billion dollars for a perfect college basketball bracket. Now we are looking forward to building on that legacy by teaming up with this one-of-a-kind golfer."
"Quicken Loans is a true competitor, consistently bringing home client satisfaction trophies for their mortgage process," said Rickie Fowler, the world's 12th ranked golfer. "I can't think of a better brand to represent. I will do my best to bring home some championships for this winning team."
Rickie Fowler was the top ranked amateur golfer for 36 weeks between 2007 and 2008. He joined the PGA TOUR in 2009 and was named the PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year in 2010. Fowler placed top-five in all four majors in 2014, one of only three players to ever do so. The Masters will be his first tournament on the PGA TOUR representing Quicken Loans.
Quicken Loans is the title sponsor of the Quicken Loans National for the second year. The tournament will be played at Robert Trent Jones GC in Gainesville, Virginia on Sunday, August 2, 2015. Quicken Loans is also the official mortgage sponsor of the PGA TOUR.
About Quicken Loans
Detroit-based Quicken Loans Inc. is the nation's second largest retail home mortgage lender. The company closed $140 billion of mortgage volume across all 50 states in 2013-2014. Quicken Loans generates loan production from web centers located in Detroit, Cleveland and Scottsdale, Arizona. The company also operates a centralized loan processing facility in Detroit, as well as its San Diego-based One Reverse Mortgage unit. Quicken Loans ranked "Highest in Customer Satisfaction for Primary Mortgage Origination" in the United States by J.D. Power for the past five consecutive years, 2010 – 2014, and highest in customer satisfaction among all mortgage servicers in 2014.
Quicken Loans was named among the top-30 companies on FORTUNE magazine's annual "100 Best Companies to Work For" list for the last 12 consecutive years, ranking No. 12 in 2015. It has been recognized as one of Computerworld magazine's '100 Best Places to Work in IT' the past ten years, ranking No. 1 in 2014, 2013, 2007, 2006 and 2005. The company moved its headquarters to downtown Detroit in 2010, and now more than 10,000 of its nearly 12,000 team members work in the city's urban core. For more information about Quicken Loans, please visit QuickenLoans.com, on Twitter at @QLnews, and on Facebook at Facebook.com/QuickenLoans.
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Category: 1995–2010
Editor's note: SABR welcomes new member Dylan Brennan of the Philadelphia area Connie Mack chapter. You can follow Dylan's wonderful journey through the Hobby at his Twitter page @cardsstory.
For as long as I can remember baseball and card collecting has been a passion of mine since I ripped my first pack as a kid somewhere around the age or 8 of 9, idolizing legends like Derek Jeter, Ken Griffey Jr., Albert Pujols, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and so-on. It's always been more than a hobby to me, it's been a way of life.
My first two best friends and I would run to the closest store that sold cards, which was a K-Mart about 500 feet from our front doors. Whenever we had some money in our pockets it was like Christmas. We'd all run over there. If we had $7, it all went toward baseball cards. We'd go straight to one of our basements and start ripping through pack after pack hoping for the games biggest stars and some hometown heroes.
It's funny to think back to these times, when one of my biggest worries was when I could go out and play sports with my buddies and what players I was going to pull in a pack of Topps baseball cards, long before the real world inevitably hit me out of nowhere like a freight train. But what I didn't know during those 30 seconds of ripping through a pack of cardboard, was that I was starting to form my deepest passions in life: baseball and card collecting.
Ever since those first packs I was hooked on collecting, having added thousands of cards in my childhood. As I got older and started high school, I collected frequently until about junior-senior year when I soon discovered that hanging out in the woods with my buddies and having a few beers was slightly more interesting to me at the time.
A few years later, I went away to college which to tell the truth, wasn't really for me. I did about 3 semesters away at school then came home when I was 18 and went straight to work. (Ah, the American dream!) This is about the time I started getting back into collecting. I collected mostly autographs of any and all Hall of Famers, star players, and childhood favorites that I could get my hands on.
I've always had a keen interest in vintage cards. It's a hard thing to explain, as a lot of things that we love can be. But seeing pictures of cards of legends like Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Walter Johnson, and Christy Mathewson was like a short tour through the Baseball equivalent of the Louvre. I had to have them. And once I started to add some vintage to my collection, I quickly learned what I truly loved to collect.
There's just something unique about vintage baseball cards. The feel, the smell of old cardboard that strangely enough has been one of my favorite smells in the world. Small pieces of art that have been passed around for 70, 80 or even 100+ years. I think that's what makes some cards similar to a painting or any work of art.
Art almost always has a story to tell and often, the artist leaves it up to its viewers to interpret their own version of the story in their mind. Baseball cards are like that in a unique way. The feeling of holding a beautiful T206 card in your hand and wondering where that card has been for the last 110 years is what makes it so special. The hands they've passed through. The stories they could tell, I could only imagine.
I've been lucky enough add a lot of cards this past year that I never thought I would own. I've also been able to meet some truly great people along the way. I'm excited for what 2021 brings for my collection and I look forward to meeting more awesome people in the process.
Editor's note: You came to the right place!
Author Dylan BrennanPosted on December 28, 2020 December 29, 2020 Categories 1900-1938, 1939–1955, 1956–1968, 1969–1980, 1981–1994, 1995–2010, 2011–present, Childhood16 Comments on My collecting story
Sending out an alert for anyone who follows this blog but isn't on Twitter or Facebook. SABR has been celebrating its upcoming 50th anniversary by having each committee contribute a 50 at 50 article on the SABR website. The Baseball Cards Committee's contribution went up today.
Rather than making it a top-50 list or some other ranking, we decided to go a different direction and treat baseball cards as timeline that they are with a post of 50 cards for 50 years.
Baseball cards aren't just something to collect. They mark the seasons and document the game as it happens. Looking back at them shows us the history of the game. Who played. What was important. What happened. How we analyzed things. Cards may fall under the category of "ephemera" but the ephemeral nature of what they record is what makes them such an important chronicle of the game.
Our list is not intended to be definitive or authoritative. Both the history of the hobby and the history of the game are way too interesting for each year to be able to be summed up in a single card. Instead we look forward to the discussion and critiques that always follow such lists.
While Jason and Nick are credited with compiling the contents, we wish to thank the multiple other experts who allowed us to pick their brains and challenged our choices.
Author SABR Baseball Cards Research CommitteePosted on December 8, 2020 December 8, 2020 Categories 1969–1980, 1981–1994, 1995–2010, 2011–present, Announcements13 Comments on 50 at 50
Christie Brinkley likely was taking selfies long before you. Way back in 1996.
Want proof? Take a look at the back of that year's Pinnacle Series II baseball card set. In it are 16 limited, random insert cards – one per 23 packs – that feature playful pictures the supermodel-turned-photographer snapped of herself and select members of the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians.
Serious and casual collectors alike may remember the initial popularity of the set and the news that Pinnacle had hired Brinkley. I was a semi-serious collector in those days, and up until a few years ago, I vaguely remembered the cards and the media buzz surrounding, first, the photo shoot, and second, the set's release in late July of that year. (Sports Illustrated wasn't so buzzed. More on that later.)
My memory of the card set was jolted about five years ago when a work colleague leaned back in his squeaky office chair and, from his cubicle across the narrow hallway, casually asked, "Hey, Chad. Have I ever shown you this picture of me with Christie Brinkley?"
The pop time for me to launch from my chair and dash to his office was all of 1.3689 seconds. I immediately fixed my eyes on his computer screen, where sure enough, beamed a photo of Christie Brinkley and my co-worker, mild-mannered, soft-spoken John Lucas, who in the 1990s, was the creative manager of design and photography at Pinnacle.
Christie Brinkley and John Lucas
In the photo, Brinkley is wearing white ringer top with thin, navy horizontal stripes and mirrored sunglasses. She, of course, looks flawless with her long blonde locks swept back from her face. Only few are out of place, but even those strays look perfectly placed. If you look closely, you can barely see three of John's fingers extending around Christie's waist.
He must have thought he had died and gone to heaven. But, it was only Florida.
John is repping his company well in the shot, wearing a white Pinnacle T-shirt and brand-matching cap. He has Christie's left arm on his right shoulder, and a smile that brilliantly and brightly encapsulates the moment.
John played it cool because "You had to play it cool," he told me. "You couldn't get star struck. You had to come across as a professional. She was very gracious and friendly, just a regular person who was very excited about the opportunity."
As you can see in the photo, Brinkley and John are standing on an auxiliary field behind West Palm Beach Municipal Stadium. Excited to be there. The ballpark was then the spring training site of the Atlanta Braves. In the distance and over Brinkley's right shoulder, are the bleachers of the crowded ballpark. The Indians and Braves, the previous season's World Series combatants, were set to play an exhibition game that day. It was the first meeting since Atlanta took the Fall Classic from the Tribe five months earlier.
"I can't believe I never showed you this," John said as I stood in his cubicle peering at the photo on his Mac. I couldn't believe it either. We had known each other for a year or more at that point and had talked a lot of baseball, but this episode in his life, inexplicably, never came up.
So, or course, I had a ton of questions, and John was happy to answer. I think we both were giddy to talk about baseball and a supermodel we both had eyes on since we were teenagers.
The origin story behind the photo begins with John, whose job at Pinnacle was to guide the design and photography for card products, and his quest to "always be looking to break the repetitive tradition of baseball card photography," he told me. "I was always striving to come up with photography concepts that would be different, edgy and well-received by our customers."
Part of the issue with the same-ol', same-ol' card designs, at times, was with the players. They often were unreceptive to anything beyond basic concepts and poses. That conundrum came up in a conversation John had with the company's photography director, Don Heiny, who told John about a time when a woman photographer had been assigned to a card photoshoot and garnered way more cooperation from the male players than had previous male photographers.
It was a valuable chunk of knowledge for John to store away in his memory, and it didn't take long for the figurative flashbulb to spark about his head and rekindle the thoughtful guidance.
John was a fan of Brinkley, then 42, and he knew that she had an interest in photography from behind the camera.
"Wow," he thought," what if we send Christine Brinkley on assignment to spring training as a photographer for Pinnacle? The players would pose any way she asked."
John took his idea up the ladder in the fall of 1994, sending a memo via fax – "this was pre-email days," he reminded me – from his office in Connecticut to Pinnacle corporate headquarters in Grand Prairie, Texas.
In his memo to Michael Cleary, who was then Pinnacle' chief operating officer and chief marketing officer, John relayed his conversation with Heiny about female photographers' workability with male athletes, and he incorporated those thoughts in his pitch, writing:
"What experienced, female photographer is very well-known, has shot sports photography before (boxing) and is extremely beautiful? Christie Brinkley. Now I know it sounds crazy but think of all the P.R. we could get from this. The obvious stumbling block is first her acceptance and secondly the price. But we'll never know unless we ask. Please call me with your thoughts. Thank you."
John faxed the proposal, with the subject line: FUTURE DREAM TEAM SET, to Cleary on November 4, 1994 and then he waited.
And, waited.
"I never heard anything about it," John recalled, until I asked someone there [in Texas] about it, and they said, 'Are you kidding? That's all everyone is talking about.' I was really happy."
That, I'm sure, is an understatement.
Nearly a year later, and after the usual back-and-forth negotiations with Brinkley and her representatives, John, his photography director, Heiny, and an assistant left their offices in chilly Connecticut for the warmth and excitement of spring training in West Palm Beach, Florida.
In the planning stage, they selected a group of players from the Braves and Indians as their subjects for this innovative, new card concept. "Both teams had really good and popular players, which made for strong collectable cards," John told me as I, still astonished, stood in his office, hanging on every word. "At the time, these guys were baseball superstars, and their cards were collectables."
The original plan had been to photograph six players from each team for a total of 12 cards in the set. However, for whatever reason – John does not recall – four other players were added for a total of 16 cards.
The players were, from the World Series champion Braves: Greg Maddux, Ryan Klesko, David Justice, Tom Glavine, Chipper Jones, Fred McGriff, Javier Lopez, Marquis Grissom, and Jason Schmidt. From the American League champion Cleveland Indians were Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, Carlos Baerga, Sandy Alomar Jr., Jim Thome, Julio Franco and Kenny Lofton.
Once Pinnacle photographers met Brinkley at the spring training site, the shoot ran relatively smoothly. That is often not the case because there are "so many variables," John said, "when you're dealing with professional athletes."
But, John was right in the reasoning behind his idea. "I figured if Christie said, "Hey guys, do this, do that – beyond the normal poses – they would certainly be cooperative and do it. And, they did!"
Well, most everyone.
Teaser alert: Albert Belle was a bit of a challenge.
John and Brinkley separately brainstormed ideas for poses. Pinnacle gave its model-slash-photographer a bio sheet for each player. She read those and developed concepts. John knew baseball and knew oodles about each of the players. Many of the props used the card photos were his idea, and some came right off the top of his head.
Literally.
"That fedora Fred McGriff is wearing, that was mine," said John, who also designed the art for the cards. "And, I took a drill and cut into the baseball," to give the appearance of teeth marks on the leather. McGriff is holding the ball near his open mouth as if he had just taken a large bite into the leather. The concept for McGriff's card, No. 6 of 16, was a play on his nickname the Crime Dog, after McGruff, the animated bloodhound who appeared in PSAs in those days and was known to "take a bite out of crime."
"We did quirky little things to make it interesting," John recalled.
Marquis Grissom and Kenny Lofton were two of the Major League's top base stealers at the time, and Brinkley wanted to illustrate that fact on the card. For Lofton, who had stolen 54 bases the year before, she had the speedster pose holding a base in each hand as if he were literally stealing bases. Brinkley posed Grissom, also known for blazing the base paths, in a mock run with a radar gun pointed in his direction. When you look at the card, that's John's right hand holding the radar gun.
John was the mastermind behind Braves' pitcher Tom Glavine's card. Knowing that Glavine was "a big golfer" John said, as were many of his teammates, they posed him on a pitcher's mound, in full baseball uniform, with a pitching wedge ready to strike a baseball. "It was almost like he was chipping out of a sand trap," John said.
Speaking of chipping, or more precisely, Larry "Chipper" Jones in this case, Brinkley proposed the idea to pose the then young ballplayer with his Braves cap on backward, his blue jersey partially untucked and sleeves rolled-up, and thick eye black across his cheeks. He was blowing a bubble as big and round as Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.
The next day, the Greeneville (South Carolina) News published a quote from Jones saying, "All right, I've got Christie Brinkley undressing me."
In addition to the card, Brinkley's photo of Jones made Beckett Baseball Card Monthly's June 1996 cover with a big, bold yellow headline that read: "Uptown Boy." An inset photo shows Christie brushing makeup on Chipper's nose.
Jones wrote about the experience in his 1997 book "Chipper Jones: Ballplayer," claiming he had always had a crush on the model – of course, he did; everyone did – and worried about catching grief from Braves' skipper Bobby Cox, who as Jones wrote "was a stickler for how you wear your uniform… But hey, she did with me as she pleased. What am I going to say?"
Way to take one for the team, Chipper!
On the card's back, under the words "Christie Brinkley Collection," is a fashion-editor-style description of the photo concept. It reads:
"Struck by Chipper's youth, Christie rumpled his shirt, smudged his eye black and stuck a wad of bubble gum in his mouth to get that "sandlot" look."
Jones and most of the other players we're willing to play along, just like John had imagined back in his Pinnacle office months earlier when he developed the concept. "Their jaws were on the ground, smiling like little puppy dogs and doing everything she asked," he recalled.
But, Albert Belle wasn't having it.
"Christie and I both had concepts for Albert, but he said no to all of them," John said.
So, they scrambled to find an idea Belle would agree to. John remembered the game in Belle's then then recent history when the slugger yelled toward the Boston Red Sox dugout and flexed his bicep to show where his home run power originated. "Everyone knew about this, and we wanted to show his jacked biceps," John said.
Albert's response to the idea?
"No! I don't repeat myself," he said to John and Brinkley.
"Wow, what do we do now," John recalled her asking.
What do you do when the surly slugger repeatedly rejects your ideas?
Forget the biceps. Tug at the heartstrings.
Perhaps in a moment of tossing her arms in the air in frustration, Brinkley asked Belle if he would hold her 13-month-old son, Jack, on his lap. Belle agreed.
"Albert was very happy to sit there with Christie's son on his lap," John told me. "He even cracked a nice, big smile."
Brinkley snapped a round of photos, and that moment became the card. When the set was released in July, Pinnacle showed off the set to reporters and photographers at New York's All-Star Café. An Associated Press photo from the event ran in newspapers the next few days showing the supermodel holding an oversized replica of the card depicting Belle with Jack sitting on his lap, both wearing Cleveland caps.
It was a hit!
On the back of Belle's card, No. 10 in the collection, is Brinkley's hastily self-snapped photo. It shows Jack, reaching from Albert's lap, for his Mom. Belle is in the middle of the two, still smiling.
All of the card backs have Brinkley selfies taken with the ballplayers, via a bulky film camera – not a phone, of course. Most are non-descript with Brinkley smiling brightly, snuggled up to, or with her arm around, the ballplayers. The back of Chipper's card shows Brinkley blowing a bubble, just like her subject. Indians third baseman Jim Thome – known for punching the ball out of the park – is wearing boxing gloves on the front and back of his card.
David Justice's card back shows the 5'9" Brinkley looking up to the 6'3" slugger who towers above her. On Jason Schmidt's card, it appears it was he who took the selfie, not Brinkley. Carlos Baerga is shirtless in his photo with the supermodel. He has a red heart painted on his chest because "he was the heart of the Indians," John recalled.
Everything during the two-day shoot seemed to be working. The players were into it. Brinkley was having a blast. John was enjoying his moment in the sun.
The downside, however, was it took hours before the group could examine the results.
Remember, this was 1996.
"The night in between the two days of shooting, my director of photography, the photographer's assistant and I had to get in a rental car and drive down to Miami from West Palm Beach to an after-hours photo lab and have them process the film and the pictures," John told me.
The trip was about an hour and half each way after an exhausting day of work.
"We went down there to process the film of the pictures so we could bring them back and show Christie what they looked like, to make sure she was happy with the results of her work.
She loved the pictures," John said smiling. "She was very pleased."
Pinnacle had to be pleased, too, because collectors loved the unique concept. Also, Business Week reported that Brinkley's ability to persuade the players to pose without demanding fees – some of "which can run up to $10,000 apiece," the publication wrote – saved Pinnacle a substantial amount of money.
Today, Beckett lists each cards' value at .50, including the un-numbered card picturing Brinkley sitting on her knees on a beach, topless it appears, holding a book to her chest. But when the cards came out, they were uber popular with collectors. In their "Sports Collectors" column in the Aug. 4, 1996 edition of The Journal News (White Plains, New York), John Kryger and Tom Hartloff quoted individual card values they had received from "one dealer's price list."
Atlanta pitcher Greg Maddux's card was valued the most then at $49.95. Behind him was Belle, Chipper Jones and Manny Ramirez at $39.95. The lowest values were $14.95 for Grissom, Schmidt and Julio Franco. As of this writing, you can find the individual cards online with prices usually ranging from .99 for Belle and Klesko to $49.99 for Jones.
But, John, who still has the full set, never has given a thought to the cards' market value or what they are selling for on eBay. "I never looked at them in that way," he said. "I've always looked at them as an example of quick thinking and my job and role with the company."
Once the cards were released in July 1996, tons of media coverage focused on their novelty and immediate popularity. There was plethora of coverage from newspapers – many ran AP photos and stories, magazines and even late-night TV even talked about the cards.
It was mostly favorable, and great publicity for Pinnacle, which is what John had planned for his company.
There was, however, one notable exception, even if it was tongue-in-cheek.
In its popular weekly feature, "This Week's Sign That The Apocalypse is Upon Us," Sports Illustrated wrote: "Pinnacle, a Texas-based trading-card company, has hired supermodel Christie Brinkley to photograph selected Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians for a soon-to-be-released set of baseball cards."
SI picked the Brinkley photo shoot that particular week because, well, "Jeez, I don't have a specific memory of it, Chad," replied Jack McCullum in an email when I posed that question to him… 23 years after the fact. McCullum and fellow SI writer Richard O'Brien co-edited the section in those days. They "went through dozens and dozens of newspapers, magazines, press releases, etc. to find our weekly Apocalypse," McCullum wrote.
More than two decades later, John laughed about SI's witty assertion that his idea was sending civilization toward its doom.
"You can take it a couple of ways," he said to me over the phone back home in Connecticut, months after our initial conversation. "You can take it like, 'Wow, they're really insulting my concept.' But, you can look it as great publicity, and it was published everywhere, even in a global magazine like Sports Illustrated. Overall, that and the whole experience was pretty amazing."
USA Today thought so, too. It gave the card concept its stamp of approval in its April 16, 1996 edition, writing "Thumbs-up: To a seemingly hokey idea that also is practical. Christie Brinkley will appear on some Pinnacle baseball cards coming in July. But she had a function beyond presumed sex appeal. In actually shooting the cards' photos (including ones of herself), Brinkley got players to strike off-beat poses. Cleveland's Albert Belle posed with Brinkley's baby boy. Says Pinnacle's Laurie Goldberg, "there wasn't much chance of getting some of these guys with a regular photographer."
Four more words needed to be added at the end of Goldberg's quote to complete the sentiment:
Great idea, John Lucas.
Author Chad OsbornePosted on November 29, 2020 November 27, 2020 Categories 1995–2010, Interviews, Photography, Pinnacle and Score, Set Building3 Comments on Christie Brinkley's 1996 Pinnacle set goes 'beyond presumed sex appeal'
My favorite players all share one thing in common: they are all great defensive players. Pudge Rodriguez is one of those, one of the best defensive catchers of all time. He came up with the Rangers in 1991 and went on to to become a 14-time All-Star, 13-time Gold Glove winner (MLB record for catchers), 7-time Silver Slugger, and the AL MVP in 1999 on his way to Cooperstown.
Pudge picked of an MLB record 88 runners in his career, and I was there for one of them in 1998. In the third inning against the Angels, he picked off Phil Nevin at first base. Rodriguez also had an RBI infield single in the first. I was so excited to see one of my heroes have such a good game.
Pudge signed with the Marlins in 2003 and went on to win the World Series that season. Then he went to the Tigers in 2004 and had another trip to the World Series in 2006.
Pudge was traded at the deadline in 2008 from the Tigers to the Yankees. He signed with the Astros before the 2009 season, then was traded back to the Rangers in August of that year. He then signed with the Nationals and finished his career with two years in Washington.
I have 39 cards in my Pudge collection, all of them from the Topps Flagship, Traded, or Update sets. These include All-Star, Gold Glove, and Postseason Highlights.
Most of my favorites show him in his catcher's gear. I'm a sucker when it comes to cards showing catchers in their gear. I was a catcher when I was in Little League and if I played again I would be behind the plate.
Number one on my list is the 1994 Topps card. It shows him right after he released a throw to second base, with his mask falling to the ground. It highlights his legendary throwing ability.
His 2002 Gold Glove card shows him ready to receive a pitch. He's wearing the blue Rangers uniform and gear with red trim. I like that color combination better than the all red that the Rangers wore for a while.
His 2009 Update card is excellent. Pudge is shown making a play at the plate with a runner crashing into him. It looks like the runner is getting the raw end of this deal.
Finally, even though there are several more that show Pudge in his gear, his 2005 card shows him standing on second, and it looks like he's pointing to the scoreboard and showing the Tigers that they are either not out of it yet, or that they have the lead.
I have decided to add Fleer and Donruss to my player collections, so I went from having 100% of the Pudge cards, to having just 57%. Oh well, that's what happens when you're a collector, right?
Author DavePosted on November 27, 2020 Categories 1981–1994, 1995–2010, 2011–present, Single Player, ToppsTags Ivan Rodriguez11 Comments on Player Collection Spotlight – Ivan Rodriguez
Roberto Alomar: Un Pelotero Especial
One of the joys of living in Cooperstown is the annual Friends of the Village Library Used Book Sale. Well, sort of annual. The summer sale was called off due to the plague, but the resourceful volunteers at FOVL cobbled together a weeklong sale last week.
There are always cool finds beyond the scads of Danielle Steeles, Sean Hannitys and John Grishams. This is an old community, and ancient books tend to pop up now and then. This is not a diverse community, so I was shocked to see two Spanish language baseball books – La Maquinaria Perfecta, about the 1954-55 Santurce Cangrejeros and Roberto Alomar: Un Pelotero Especial.
My affection for Robbie Alomar is deep. He was always a favorite of mine, but looms large in our family history because, while we awaited the birth of our second son (in January 1993), I was watching the Jays-A's playoffs while we discussed potential names. By the time Alomar blasted a 9th inning home run off Dennis Eckersley is Game 4 of the ALCS, it was decided – Robbie (officially Robert Samuel). I've met Alomar a few times. The first time I told him my son was named for him. He was stunned. (One of my favorite memories was when we met, again, at a Hall of Fame event, and when I went up to him for a photo he said, "I know you." Validation!)
Back to the book. It a thick, oversized, glossy tribute, with tons of fantastic pictures. One Appendix has a terrific smattering of Alomar cards – official issues, Baseball Cards Magazine custom, Gary Cieradowski art card, minor league cards. It's a feast that I had to share.
As to Robbie himself, it's almost required that someone feels compelled to chime in about the spitting incident. Don't. I don't know the guy, but he's been nice every time we've met. For him, don't judge a person at their worst. For you, I wish the same.
Author Jeff KatzPosted on October 9, 2020 October 7, 2020 Categories 1995–2010, Books and Blogs, Single Player9 Comments on Roberto Alomar: Un Pelotero Especial
I remember watching Ozzie Smith on Johnny Bench's show The Baseball Bunch back in 1983. This was the year after Smith's Cardinals broke my heart by beating the Brewers in the World Series. Still, Smith was an incredible fielder, and he had some great tips. I became a fan of the Wizard of Oz and have been ever since.
Smith made his debut with the Padres in 1978. He spent four years there before he was traded to the Cardinals. He won the first two of his record 13 Gold Gloves as a shortstop.
Smith continued his Gold Glove streak in St. Louis, winning it in his first 11 seasons as a Cardinal. He led the Cardinals to the World Series and scored in the sixth inning of Game 7, the inning that the Cardinals took the lead that they would not give up. I'm not bitter.
Smith was a fifteen-time All-Star, including eleven as starting shortstop, a National League record for the position.
Smith was a fixture in St. Louis through the 1996 season. He hit .303 in four NL Championship Series and played in three World Series.
I find it odd that of his 27 Topps flagship and traded cards, only three of them have him wearing his glove. He was the best fielding shortstop in the game, yet there were six times as many cards showing him with a bat or running the bases.
I have three favorite Ozzie Smith cards. The first is 1980. I love the whole body swing and the contrast between his jersey and pants.
His 1981 Record Breaker card shows him doing what he does best as he's moving toward the ball in the field.
The 1993 card shows him signing autographs for kids.
My Ozzie Smith collection consists of 27 Topps flagship and traded sets. I stuck with Topps, and more specifically these sets, to keep my collection more manageable.
Author DavePosted on October 2, 2020 October 4, 2020 Categories 1969–1980, 1981–1994, 1995–2010, Single Player, Topps8 Comments on Player Collection Spotlight – Ozzie Smith
On Becoming Complete: A Spiritual Journey
What is complete? Who decides that? How do we know when we get there?
Recently, Mark Armour (co-founder of this blog and current SABR President), Tweeted the good news that he snagged a 1956 Yankees Team Card and his 1956 Topps set was finished. But was it?
One Tweeter threw out a picture of the unnumbered checklists
and Jason (our current blog co-chair) said, "yeah, you need those to be complete." This lead to a series of comments on what makes a whole set whole. Do you need the 24 blue team checklists inserted in 1973 packs, but not numbered, to have a complete set of that year? How about 1974, where you'd need the red team checklists, the Traded set and all Washington variations to be done.
I do think about this a lot. I'm now 3 away from a complete 1961 Post set, having bought a nice Clemente. There are 200 numbered cards in that set and having one of each number is what I'm shooting for. BUT, with all variations (company issue vs. box issue, Minneapolis vs. Minnesota Twins, players with more than one team, transaction notations, and so on), the set runs to 357! That's almost 180% of the base numbering. Will I be complete at 200? I'm saying yes.
If you need unnumbered inserts to be complete. Do you need all unnumbered inserts? That would be absurd.
If you narrow that down to checklist inserts, my thoughts turn to the 2004 Cracker Jack set, which had two separately numbered checklists, which were not made of the same card stock.
And, while I don't know how the 1963 Fleer checklists were distributed, that card is unnumbered.
Furthermore, does being an insert in and of itself make it part of the whole set? Can't be, right? These were inserted in 1971 packs, but nobody (at least nobody I know) considers a 1971 Topps set incomplete if you don't also have a complete set of these.
There has to be a right answer, and this is it:
A set is complete when you have all the numbered cards. Master sets are complete when you have all variations, non-numbered cards, etc.
Getting back to 1956 Topps, if you're not complete without the checklists, then you're also not complete unless you have all white and gray back variations and the different team card versions. In fact, they're called variations for a reason; those cards are "a different or distinct form or version of something." I would argue, in fact I am arguing, that the checklists are also variations – they are different from all the other 1956 because THEY HAVE NO NUMBER and, without a number, they are outside the set as presented.
Obviously, to each his own on this, but there must be a clear standard. Perhaps we all know what it is, and that's why complete sets tend to be sold by the definition above, and, when variations, unnumbered checklists, etc. are part of the listing, they are given a separate shoutout.
I'm sure there are many thoughts on this, and maybe I want to hear them. I'm not sure. I imagine I will anyway.
Author Jeff KatzPosted on August 16, 2020 August 13, 2020 Categories 1956–1968, 1969–1980, 1995–2010, Fleer, Inserts, Set Building, Topps35 Comments on On Becoming Complete: A Spiritual Journey
Cards from 2000 are old enough to legally drive and vote, and almost old enough to legally drink. I want that to sink in – they are 20 years old. I think that qualifies them as vintage according to some definitions of the word. To a 10-year-old collector starting today, they are as old as 1966 Topps cards were to me when I "seriously" began collecting in 1986 (meaning I had a binder and some 9-pocket pages). Yes, production and collecting has changed over time, but I didn't have a lot of cards from 1966 as a 10-year-old.
Pack inserted autographs have been available since 1990, when Upper Deck inserted Reggie Jackson autographs into its product. Perhaps the "signature" product is 1996 Leaf Signature, with its one autograph per pack insertion rate. There are great topical subsets, like the 1997 and 1998 Donruss Significant Signatures, which are essentially all HOFers … and Don Mattingly. And of course, there are "vintage" autograph sets, like the Topps Stars run of rookie reprint autographs in the late 1990s. There have been a few posts on autographs on the blog but I think only Jeff has a similar type of post on pack inserted autographs with the Sports Illustrated Covers Autographs.
I want to focus specifically on the 2000 Skybox Autographics set. In an earlier post on master set building I mentioned that 2000 Skybox Dominion was one of the first master sets I attempted to put together. Some of these cards were part of that master set building process. However, the Autographics set was a multi-product set, with only a subset of players available in Skybox Dominion. Others were available in E-X, Impact, Metal, and Skybox. Some players were available in multiple products. Eventually the master set building of Skybox Dominion morphed into trying to build the complete Autographics set (Jeter and Pedro being the pricey remaining autographs to that quest).
First, let's clear up some confusion. Here are fronts and backs from three different years (1999, 2000, and 2001) of autographics cards:
The 2000 set is the one in the middle. The 1999 copyright date on the back is the source of confusion, as is the 2000 copyright date on the back of the 2001 card. That was the time period when companies would sometimes release next year's products this year (a 2000 product would be released in 1999), sometimes last year's product this year (a 2000 product would be released in 2001), and sometimes, if a product had multiple series, one series would be released in one year and the other in the next year.
To me, the 2000 set is the best looking. The big block "Skybox" running diagonally across the 1999 cards detracts from the photo, and the smaller photo on the 2001 cards, likely to leave more space to focus on the autograph, minimizes the focus on the player. Also, I'm a bigger fan of vertical cards than horizontal cards. The 2000 set is borderless, with bright color backgrounds which generally match a primary color of the player's team (orange for Orioles, blue for Dodgers, etc. – I have no idea if inspiration for these colorful backgrounds came from T206s). There are a variety of shots: some action, some posed, and some in-game shots that I wouldn't really call "action" shots. The shadows also add a nice effect. There's some white space for the on-card autograph, which tends to be preferred to sticker autographs. There's also an embossed Skybox logo that stays fairly well hidden on most of the cards. Granted, the backs of the 2000 and 2001 cards are weaker than that of the 1999 cards, but I'll trade off a weaker card back to remove that big block diagonal logo from the front.
The set is 132 cards with players ranging from Hall of Famers to prospects who never made the majors. The checklist is reasonably deep, particularly when one considers everyone was either active or potentially active that year.
Hall of Famers (or likely HOFers): Beltre, Boggs, Vladimir Guerrero, Gwynn, Hoffman, Jeter, Randy Johnson, Maddux, Edgar Martinez, Pedro Martinez, Mussina, Ripken, Thomas
Guys with HOF numbers: Bonds, Palmeiro, A-Rod, Beltran (I would have had him as a likely HOFer but who knows how the Astros sign stealing scandal will affect his candidacy – does anyone remember the sign stealing scandal with everything else that has happened in the past few months?)
Stars/Semistars/Minor Stars: Abreu, Alou, Berkman, Mike Cameron, Carpenter, Eric Chavez, Will Clark, Damon, Carlos Delgado, J.D. Drew, Jason Giambi (and Jeremy too), Helton, Tim Hudson, Andruw Jones, Kendall, Konerko, Lankford, Magglio Ordonez, Rolen, Rollins, Salmon, Soriano, Tejada, Billy Wagner, and probably a few others I'm missing.
Of course, there's also Glen Barker (197 plate appearances), Orber Moreno (50.2 IP), and Angel Pena (206 plate appearances), who wound up with limited MLB action. And Norm Hutchins, Cesar King, and Aaron McNeal, who wound up with no MLB action. And Matt Riley – if you don't remember him, look up his minor league numbers early in his career. But that's what makes this set interesting – an autograph set of all HOFers (or almost HOFers) like 1997 Donruss Significant Signatures is great, but the variety of players in this set is more representative of the game.
The semistars also add to the appeal of the set. Ray Lankford was a really good baseball player, yet he only has 10 different autograph cards from manufacturers (that is counting the three versions of his 1997 Donruss Signature autograph as three distinct cards and his two versions of the 2000 Skybox Autographics as two distinct cards – more on that in the next paragraph). Tim Salmon has 110 different autograph cards, and many of those have small print runs (under 100). Lest you think that is a lot, Wade Boggs has at least 1,400 different autographed cards; Cal Ripken has at least 3,700 (these numbers are probably outdated at the time of the post – they are taken from Beckett's online guide). Lankford has fewer cards than Boggs has autographed cards; Salmon has fewer cards than Ripken has autographed cards.
In addition to the regular version of the card, there is also a purple foil version numbered to 50. The words Skybox Autographics running along the side of the card are the text that is in purple foil. I have seen Purple Foil cards without the numbering, which I believe were back-ups to be used as replacement cards. My understanding is that those cards made their way into the hobby through some liquidation sale, but I'm not sure how credible that story is. I have seen other cards (2002 Fleer Triple Crown parallels) without some of the numbering that are claimed to have entered the hobby the same way. I have also seen some numbered versions without the purple foil. I am more skeptical of those – I think they are just the regular cards that someone numbered after the fact. The numbers on the purple foil versions are hand-numbered, which allows that to happen. As always, education is the key.
Overall, the set appeals to me from both its look as well as its player selection. The design was also used in basketball and football sets around the same time and has been used in "retro" sets in 2012 for those sports.
Author artiezillantePosted on August 12, 2020 August 12, 2020 Categories 1995–2010, Autographs, Fleer, Set Building4 Comments on 2000 Skybox Autographics
The first HOF baseball card for every team (part one)
Author's note: All teams noted refer to their most recent MLB incarnation. For example, the San Diego Padres here are the MLB team and do not include cards/players from the PCL franchise of the same name.
This post celebrates a set of cards largely off the radar to most collectors but historic nonetheless, and it begins with an ambiguous question. What was the first baseball card to depict a Hall of Famer for each of baseball's current and historic franchises?
To help clarify, I'll start with a couple of teams featured on SABR Baseball Cards Twitter.
When most collectors imagine an early Montreal Expos card of a Hall of Famer, good chance they picture this.
However, this didn't become an Expos card of a Hall of Famer until 2003 when Carter made the Hall. What I'm looking for here is the first time a collector could hold up an Expos card and say, "Hey, this guy's in the Hall of Fame!" and this would have been 23 years earlier when Expos legend Edwin "Duke" Snider headed to Cooperstown.
At that time, there was only this single card depicting Snider in his Expos colors, his coach card from the 1976 SSPC set. (Yes, I'm ignoring team cards and team issued photos here.)
This Snider card remained the only Expos baseball card of a Hall of Famer until Larry Doby made the Hall in 1998, conferring HOF status on this Topps/OPC card from 1973.
Continuing through the 1969 expansion teams, the answer is once again a subject better known for his tenure on other teams. When you think Billy Herman, you probably think of the ten-time all-star second baseman and baseball cards like this, if not his 1950s and 60s coach/manager cards with the Dodgers and Red Sox.
But the first time a young Padres collector could put a Hall of Famer in his pocket to take to school was in 1978, thanks to this Family Fun Center card of the Friars batting coach. As the back of the card notes, Herman got the call from New York in 1975, making this card a HOFer card the moment it was issued.
It's hard to think of Royals Hall of Famers and not instantly (or exclusively!) think of George Brett, who made the Hall in 1999. However, that didn't mean Royals collectors had no Hall of Famers in their collections until then.
Eight years earlier, well traveled hurler Gaylord Perry made the Hall, thereby promoting several of his 1984 cards to Hall of Fame status. The Fleer set alone had three, including one with Brett, to go with two highlights cards from Topps.
Six years before Perry, in 1985, Hoyt Wilhelm's plaque went up in Cooperstown. Like Perry, Wilhelm had pitched for seemingly every team. Unlike Perry, his cardboard legacy with the Royals was quite thin, paper thin to be exact. In fact the knuckleballer's only card came courtesy of the 1969 Topps Stamps set. (UPDATE: Per Tim Jenkins, Wilhelm was also a Royal in the Deckle Edge set that same year.)
Of course the prior year another Royal saw his plaque go up. The Killer became a Hall of Famer in 1984, elevating his 1976 SSPC card with Kansas City to HOF status.
In reality, however, Royals collections were well stocked with Hall of Famer cards well before 1984, thank to Bob Lemon's induction in 1976 and his early 1970s Topps and O-Pee-Chee manager cards.
The final 1969 expansion team was the Seattle Pilots. As the team existed for only a single season and wasn't exactly stocked with talent, there is not a single Pilots card of a Hall of Famer. This Ichiro retro card from 2010 may be as close as the Pilots ever come.
UPDATE: Thank you to David Bender for alerting us to this 1992 Leaf Studio Heritage card of Class of 2014 Hall of Famer Paul Molitor decked out in Seattle Pilots gear. If only!
Following the 1969 season, Bud stole the Pilots and renamed them the Milwaukee Brewers. Unlike the other three teams covered thus far, the first Hall of Fame Brewers card is very likely the one you would have guessed.
In 1982, Hank Aaron became the first Brewer to enter the Hall. Among his many Brewers cards, 1975-76 and post-career, we'll go with card #660 from 1975 Topps.
With the new locale and nickname in 1972, I'll distinguish the Rangers from their not very long and not at all storied history as the (new) Washington Senators. If we don't see Rangers on the jersey or a "T" on the cap, it doesn't count.
Unless it's Teddy Ballgame, in which case an airbrushed cap, psychedelic team lettering, and satin collar is all we need!
Major League Baseball returned to the Pacific Northwest in 1977 with the arrival of the Seattle Mariners. For the first 14 years of their existence the Ms had no Hall of Fame baseball cards. That changed when Gaylord Perry entered the Hall in 1991. Perry has dozens of cards with Seattle, but his earliest comes from the 1982 Topps Traded set.
1977 also marked the first year of the Toronto Blue Jays franchise. McCarthy postcards issued that same year included 1972 inductee Early Wynn and 1986 inductee Bobby Doerr.
However, my focus in this article is on "true" baseball cards, a notion we often note around here could be a whole series of posts in itself. With this stricter criterion in mind, Jays collectors would need to wait two more decades for a card of a Hall of Famer.
With Phil Niekro's induction in 1997, his lone Toronto card (1988 Classic) became the inaugural Hall of Famer baseball card in Blue Jay collections and it would remain the only such card for more than a decade until Rickey Henderson's 2009 induction.
The Rockies, who began play in 1993, famously had a total of zero Hall of Famers until the recent election of Larry Walker to the Class of 2020. Not surprisingly then, Walker provides (or will provide, if you want to be technical) Rox collectors with their first ever Rockies HOF card.
Walker, of course, has over a billion different Rockies cards (okay, not quite), but I'll feature his 1995 Topps Traded and Upper Deck cards as among the many from his first year with the squad.
Florida/Miami Marlins
Entering the league the same year as the Rockies, the Marlins can boast baseball cards of numerous Hall of Famers and may even add another if the new Jeter/Topps collaboration extends into the dismal GM chapter of his career. The first time Marlins collectors could know the joy of a Hall of Famer in their midst was thanks to the 2002 Topps set, which included a manager card (okay, eight different-ish ones) of recent inductee Tony Perez (HOF 2000).
The D-Backs joined the National League in 1998, and have so far had two Hall of Famers on their roster: Roberto Alomar (2011) and Randy Johnson (2015). Their first HOF card is therefore of Alomar, and you can take your pick from nearly 200 of them, all from 2004.
UPDATE: Am thankful for our terrific readers, including fellow SABR Baseball Cards author Artie Zillante, for turning up this nugget from the 2002 Keebler Arizona Diamondbacks set. If you're good with the shared real estate, then Yount (HOF 1999) definitely nudges Robbie Alomar aside.
The team formerly known as the Devil Rays entered the American League in 1998 with the instant star power of Fred McGriff and Wade Boggs, quickly followed the next year by Jose Canseco. Of the three, Boggs (2005) is the only one in Cooperstown, hence the man responsible for the first Devil Ray HOF cards. He has too many cards to count in the various 1998 sets, but here are two.
With the change in both geography and nickname, I'll treat the Nationals franchise as distinct from its Expos ancestry and just treat it as if the Nats were a brand new team that appeared out of nowhere to start the 2005 season. While the Nats may claim Tim Raines, Andre Dawson, Walter Johnson, and even Josh Gibson in their Ring of Honor, I'm starting the franchise with Ryan Zimmerman.
Regardless, Nats fans didn't have to wait before adding a HOF card to their collections. All they had to do was get lucky opening packs that year.
Houston Astros/Colt .45s
Having looked at baseball's newest franchises from 1969 forward, we're now ready to go in reverse. First up are the Houston Astros, who entered the National League in 1962 as the Colt .45s.
Of the future Hall of Famers (Nellie Fox, Eddie Mathews, Robin Roberts, Joe Morgan) lurking in 1960s Astros sets, the first to make the Hall was Roberts in 1976. Another Astro, Yogi Berra, made the Hall four years earlier but his first Astros cards didn't come until much later. Therefore, Roberts it is!
The Rajah had been a Hall of Famer for 20 years when he joined the Mets as their third base coach in 1962. However, there was no immediate cardboard to herald his arrival. The closest we come is a 1966 James Elder postcard.
Baseball card purists (emphasis on "card") may prefer this 1962 Topps card of Casey Stengel, which gained Hall of Fame status upon the Old Perfessor's 1966 induction. Not the airbrushing department's best work, but perhaps it was part and parcel for the altogether woeful season Mets fans endured that season.
los angeles/california/anaheim angels
Too many official name changes to keep track of here, but you know who I mean. The Halos joined the American League in 1961, the same year MLB adopted the 162-game schedule. Their wait on a HOF baseball card was decidedly longer than that of Mets fans. It was not until Frank Robinson made the Hall in 1982 that Angels collectors could add a HOF card to their binders.
Robinson's first Angels "card" is from the hard-to-find 1972 Topps Candy Lid test issue, and is much like the 1962 Stengel in that Frank appears as an Angel in name only.
Rather than rectify the wardrobe malfunction the next year, Topps may have actually made things worse with its 1973 release.
His 1973 photocard aside, it was not until 1974 that Angel fans (and Rodin fans!) truly had a Robby card they could be proud of.
Washington Senators II
These are the Senators, 1961-1971, not to be confused with the Senators, 1901-1960, which means there will be no Walter Johnson cards to consider. As was the case with the Rangers team they became, their first HOF card was Ted Williams.
Just as the new Senators started up in D.C., the old Senators headed to the Minnesota and became the Twins. The star of the team at that time also (in 1984 upon induction) gave Twins fans their first Hall of Fame baseball card.
The team formerly known as the St. Louis Browns began play in 1954 and would not have an eventual Hall of Famer on a baseball card until 1957 when they added three to the cardboard lineup.
However, it was not until 1983 that even the first of these men received his call from Cooperstown. First Orioles HOF baseball card honors instead went to Robin Roberts who made the Hall in 1976 and had cards with Baltimore as early as 1963.
what's left?
My focus in this article has been on expansion teams or franchise moves that ditched both the city and the nickname. As such I skipped over the Oakland A's, Kansas City A's, Los Angeles Dodgers, and the like. All told, that leaves me with 16 modern-era franchises left to cover in a future article.
Unlike the cards identified in this article, where any one of them could be had in good shape for less than $10, the cards in the next article would be a bit more difficult to collect, with pre-war cards of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner, and Babe Ruth representing nine of the sixteen teams.
Author jasoncardsPosted on June 12, 2020 June 14, 2020 Categories 1956–1980, 1981–1994, 1995–2010, 2011–present, Moves, Expansion, etc…, Themes8 Comments on The first HOF baseball card for every team (part one)
My Card Collections
All of my collections
I started collecting baseball cards in the late 1970s. The earliest cards I remember having were Brewers from the 1979 Topps set. Unfortunately, though I have obtained them again, I did not hold on to those cards. The card that has been in my possession the longest is a 1980 Jerry Augustine card. And I still remember the first "old" card I got, a 1974 Bill Parsons that I received in a trade in about 1985.
1980 Jerry Augustine and 1974 Bill Parsons
In the 1980s, I bought wax packs, usually Topps, though I did get '82 and '83 Donruss and '85 Fleer. I remember opening the packs and sorting and resorting the cards. Sometimes I sorted them by team, sometimes by position, sometimes by making teams of my favorite players. By the time I was in high school, I started to focus on a collection. I decided that I wanted to collect all of the Topps Brewer cards.
Hunt For Brewer Cards
When I started this collection, Topps had four main sets: Main, Traded, Tiffany, and Traded Tiffany. The two Tiffany sets were almost identical to the other two, except they had a higher quality print. I decided to limit my collection to the Main and Traded sets. I also decided to include the '69 and '70 Seattle Pilots.
1969 Seattle Pilots
At the time, the only way to get older cards was to go to a card shop or a card show. I spent many Saturdays at card shows rifling through boxes of older sets looking for Brewers that I did not have. I always brought my notebook that had all of the players that I knew were in each set, helped tremendously by the Topps Baseball Cards of the Milwaukee Brewers picture book that was a giveaway at one of the Brewer games. I still remember the TV commercial for that, with broadcaster Mike Hegan having his 1976 card pointed out.
1976 Mike Hegan
It took me close to 20 years to complete the set. Now I make two or three orders a year to collect the Series 1, Series 2, and Update sets. Currently, I am only missing one of the 2019 Keston Huira Update cards (#150). I will pick that up when I get the Series 2 cards this summer.
Collecting The Faves
Right around the time I started to get close to completing my Brewer collection, I started to collect cards of my favorite players. I stuck with Topps Main and Update (or Traded) sets. The first players I collected were Ozzie Smith, Jim Gantner, Pudge Rodriguez, and Brooks Robinson.
Of those players, the only cards that I'm missing are of Robinson. I still need his '57 rookie card, his '67 main card, and a '67 checklist that has his picture on it. I have two of each of the Gantner cards, one for my Brewer collection and one for my player collection.
Brooks Robinson
I have since added three other players. I have a complete set of Jonathon Lucroy and Gary Carter, adding to the former when a new card comes out. The other player that I collect is Jose Altuve. I am only missing his 2011 Update rookie card. I'm not sure if I will continue collecting Altuve in light of the cheating scandal.
Gotta Love The Team Portraits
My most recent collection is Topps team portrait cards. They were some of my favorites when I first started collecting. Topps had them almost every year from 1956 through 1981, and then from 2001 through 2007. For some reason, they did not have them in 1969, and some teams were not represented in 1968. Houston had a card in 1963, but did not have another until 1970, when they were renamed from the Colt .45s to the Astros.
1956 Team Cards
The team cards are my favorite to collect right now. All of my other collections are either complete, I'm missing some expensive cards, or are just getting the current cards. The team cards still involve the hunt, trying to find as many as possible in one shop to save on shipping. In all, there are 729 team portrait cards, and I have almost half of them.
Paging Through The Boys Of Summer
There are currently 2,097 cards in my collections, which are currently housed in four binders. I only order cards two or three times a year, but each time I pull out all of the binders and go through them.
Usually, that brings me back to summers spent riding my bike to the store to buy packs of cards. Sometimes it reminds me of a particular Brewer memory. And sometimes I remember being seven years old in the back yard, pretending to play a game with a lineup made up of the names on the back of the team cards.
Author DavePosted on June 8, 2020 June 9, 2020 Categories 1956–1968, 1969–1980, 1981–1994, 1995–2010, 2011–present, Childhood, Organization and Storage, Themes, Topps5 Comments on My Card Collections


On a different note than my last post, I'm going to share what has helped me get my thoughts together.
I'm a doodler, I like to just scribble and this is part of the reason that bullet journaling really works for me. It's not just the fact that I have a place to put my thoughts, but also a place to make my doodles work for me.
It's not perfect, but nothing ever really is, and I hardly ever expect it to be. Real and functional is much better than instagram-perfect.
The only thing I would do differently if I had to re-do this layout is I would take friday and move it to the right side. Just because that's more how my weeks work since my husband will be at work friday, saturday and sunday. You can do it however it works for you!
The little icons in the bottom right hand corners are the focus rooms for my chore schedule. In other words, the little potty doodle means that I have to clean the bathroom today. Bed- bedrooms, stove- kitchen, vacuum and duster- living room, you get the picture!
The little snowflake on wednesday means it may snow, and since that's a day I volunteer, I want to know what the weather will be like. You can make that more complex if you need to, and I may incorporate that more into my layouts in the future.
I thought about adding more to this but it seems to cover all my bases, I have a pretty empty week so it doesn't need much else.
This is just one of the little ways I keep my brain together and even just this little bit of creativity has really helped me come out of my slump, so I hope it inspires you!
A parent's work is never done. I break up my cleaning into morning, naptime, and before-bedtime routines. This is separate from my regular to-dos which comes more on an as needed basis. Other things I commit to doing them weekly, monthly or seasonally.
You can use the basic outline of this routine to shape your own and organize the tasks important to your home and get them all done!
The 'structure' to my routine has greatly boosted my morale and has helped me identify my goals in a clear and concise way.
Play candy crush and drink coffee– I'm on a 306 day streak on candy crush and it's just a silly way to spend time inside my own brain before my child wakes up. I'm on level 1552ish!
Make bed– While making the bed, I clean the room from last nights water glasses and clothes. I take this time to open the curtains even if the sun isn't up yet. I love sunshine!
Wash face– Sometimes with cleanser, sometimes just a wet towel. I need to wipe the sleep off my face somehow.
Brush hair- Some days I've gotten all the way gto 5pm realizing I hadn't brushed my hair at all that day, so I moved this to my morning routine just to keep tabs on myself.
Change clothes- I could just wear my jammies all day, and sometimes I just change into different jammies, but day 3 with oatmeal on your shirt can catch up to your self esteem real quick.
Check schedule and order priorities- I glance at my top to-do's or appointments, and figure out how it will all look, then execute!
I don't like to clean while my kid naps, it seems like I'm doing myself a disservice. I could be napping too y'know!
Wipe counters- They are always gross by naptime.
Journal/yoga/self care- When she's finally asleep and I've set myself up comfy on the couch, I do something for myself. Sometimes I need to write my feelings, work my body or do something relaxing (napping) or painting my nails. Nap time is MY time!
Set up wake-up activity for daughter- She's sometimes grouchy, so having something for her to focus on when she first wakes up really helps the grump. Could be chicken nuggets, or a learning activity. It could even be an episode of Storybots while I finish whatever I was doing. Every day is different!
Food cleaned off dishes/put in dishwasher- I can't go to bed when there's food sitting out, I lay awake picturing that scene from creepshow with the cockroaches and I just can't relax. The dishes don't have to be done, just food scraped off is fine.
Each day has a focus room, and I do a deep cleaning chore per the room of the day. I alternate wednesdays and tuesdays because I'm typically out of the house volunteering, so I don't commit to much cleaning those days.
Dust- We have lots of knick-knacks so I dust them and rearrange them. It's sort of therapeutic.
Deep mop kitchen and bathroom- I spot mop during the week with my homemade swiffer pads, but once a week I get the real mop out and do the rooms that have tile. Kitchen first!
Go through toys- There's always fridge magnets or tupperware or something hiding in my kids toybox. While I love the Montessori aspect of kids playing with household stuff, I also need my mixing spoons back.
Wash throw blankets- I'm forever huddled with a blanket no matter the temperature, so I get spaghetti stains out about once a month or whenever they get weird.
Wash windows- My husband has a glass cleaner recipe that we swear by, so once a month we pop the windows down and get the inside and outside and all the cobwebs out.
Spot treat carpet- Whether it's milk spills or someone stepped on a strawberry, there's always something to get up from the carpet. I currently have some paint in my carpet I'm doing some experiments on.
Sage the house- I do this with the new moon, which is basically once a month. I also will do it after we host an event or something. Clear all that yuck out of here!
I'm sure I'm forgetting something but I just wanted to show a more in depth look at how I keep things going. I keep my routine sustainable and realistic and I'm rocking it! I hope this gave you some inspiration on how to make your own routines that work perfectly for your own home.


This package contains fifty-three (53) Pieces of Cardstock Ephemera Die-Cuts. Great for accenting and embellishing any of your Craft Projects. Look for coordinating Decorative Brads, Page Flags, Stickers, 6"x8" Paper Pad, Decorative Clips, 12x12 Designer Papers and Blank Journal Books.


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Dennis Goodwin (fourth ¼ 1929 – 12 April 2011) was an English professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1950s and 1960s. He played at representative level for Great Britain and England, and at club level for Barrow, Leeds and York, as a , or , i.e. number 3 or 4, 8 or 10, or, 11 or 12, during the era of contested scrums.

Background
Dennis Goodwin's birth was registered in Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire, England, and he died in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England.

Playing career

International honours
Dennis Goodwin won a cap for England while at Barrow in 1955 against Other Nationalities, and won caps for Great Britain while at Barrow in 1957 against France (2 matches), in 1958 against France, and New Zealand (2 matches).

Championship final appearances
Dennis Goodwin played right-, i.e. number 12, in Leeds' 25–10 victory over Warrington in the Championship Final during the 1960–61 season at Odsal Stadium, Bradford on Saturday 20 May 1961.

Challenge Cup Final appearances
Dennis Goodwin played left-, i.e. number 4, in Barrow's 0–10 defeat by Wigan in the 1951 Challenge Cup Final during the 1950–51 season at Wembley Stadium, London on Saturday 5 May 1951, in front of a crowd of 94,262, and played left-, i.e. number 4, in the 21–12 victory over Workington Town in the 1954–55 Challenge Cup Final during the 1954–55 season at Wembley Stadium, London on Saturday 30 April 1955, in front of a crowd of 66,513.

County Cup Final appearances
Dennis Goodwin played left-, i.e. number 4, in Barrow's 12–2 victory over Oldham in the 1954 Lancashire County Cup Final during the 1954–55 season at Station Road, Swinton on Saturday 23 October 1954, and played right-, i.e. number 3, in Leeds' 9–19 defeat by Wakefield Trinity in the 1961 Yorkshire County Cup Final during the 1961–62 season at Odsal Stadium, Bradford on Saturday 11 November 1961.

References

External links
Leeds RL legends reunited
Club History, Facts and Figures
(archived by web.archive.org) Back on the Wembley trail
Fond farewell to our rugby league legend

1929 births
2011 deaths
Barrow Raiders players
England national rugby league team players
English rugby league players
Great Britain national rugby league team players
Leeds Rhinos players
Rugby league centres
Rugby league props
Rugby league second-rows
Rugby league players from Barrow-in-Furness
York Wasps players

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Regardless of the mode of delivery, the course you have designed requires regular monitoring and evaluation throughout the teaching period to ensure the learning journey planned is achieving the intended outcomes, and the students are on track to achieve learning success. This enables an opportunity for both students and teaching staff make adjustments to areas that may not being achieving the desired plan.
The following web pages include information, approaches and strategies to support you in understanding the role of monitoring engagement in learning, engaging in a range of ways to gather information and enabling opportunities to maximise student learning through regular monitoring of their progress.


While mandatory teacher lesson plans might seem like an idea long retired, I am continuously amazed at how many districts and schools still heavily rely on this approach as part of their master plan to improve instruction. Have we learned nothing from state mandated standardized tests, which also (1) force compliance, and (2) turn our attention away from what matters most, student learning?
In the spirit of Mark Barnes, Starr Sackstein, and Teachers Throwing Out Grades, here are five reasons to throw out your lesson plans.
It started with generally clunky and overpriced "student clickers" by such brands as SMART Technologies and Einstruction, and over the past few years it has transitioned into slick apps like Socrative, Kahoot!, and Plickers. Time and time again we have seen these apps demoed during professional development sessions and written about on websites and blogs. Nevertheless, we need to be careful that we do not prioritize technology over pedagogy by referring to these apps as "formative assessment tools" when they are anything but.
For my latest district professional development day I conducted a one-hour presentation on the topic of student opportunities to respond, which focuses on how long each student has to be actively engaged in order to "make it through" the current lesson.
My current school district is about to begin the process of examining our standards-based report cards, particularly at the elementary level. When I was made aware of this initiative, I had just finished reading Fair Isn't Always Equal by Rick Wormeli and How to Grade for Learning by Ken O'Connor, and I was in the process of making my way through Developing Standards-Based Report Cards by Thomas Guskey and Jane Bailey. Without hesitation, I highly recommend all three. While one of my previous posts is based on Wormeli's book, this post is based mostly on the work of Guskey and Bailey. (Inspiration from O'Connor is sprinkled throughout both, and I will dedicate more time to his book in the future.) I should also mention that the contents of each book are not mutually exclusive, as there is definitely a great deal of overlap when discussing assessing and grading in the standards-based classroom. However, Wormeli tends to focus more on daily instruction, while Guskey and Bailey provide more research for standards-based report cards.
I have always thought that assessing and grading is the one area in which there is the widest gap between research and what is actually taking place in classrooms (with my classroom having not been the exception). Over the past few days I finally decided to read through Rick Wormeli's Fair Isn't Always Equal. This book does a tremendous job of touching upon all of the topic's key points without getting too technical. I could definitely see this resource being used for a teacher and/or administrator book study. You can read it cover to cover, or you can easily just dive into certain chapters to target areas of interest.
After reading the book, here are five changes that I would make to my assessing and grading procedures if I were to return to the classroom as a teacher.


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Polygon Created with Sketch. FSC Skills Central Blog
Reconciliation demands learning and closing the gaps in Indigenous labour opportunities
Indigenous Knowledge Leader, Fleming College
Indigenous populations
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Indigenous peoples compose 4.9% of the total Canadian population, as of 2016. However, we have experienced significant growth in our numbers recently, with an increase of 42.5% over the past decade and an 18.9% growth rate over the past five years, according to Statistics Canada. Furthermore, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has identified that an estimated 350,000 Indigenous youths will turn 15 years old by 2026. This collective coming of age will provide an unprecedented opportunity to leverage investments in job and skills training and employment readiness that will enable Indigenous youths to fill crucial labour shortages in Canada.
Over many decades, Canada has "affirmed, reaffirmed and renewed" its commitment to respectful relationships with Indigenous peoples in Canada, I believe, with good intentions. There was The Royal Commission on Aboriginal People in Canada (1996), the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, 2015 and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls (2019). It was not until July 2019, though, with the confirmation of unmarked graves at former Indian residential schools that Canadians, businesses and institutions picked up the Calls to Action in earnest and began to explore how to use their privilege in Canada's labour market to make qualitative and quantitative change.
As an Indigenous person, I find that this "time of Reconciliation" in Canada has been a long and somewhat painful journey. Yes, painful, due to the truth telling and sudden awakening of many sectors in Canada, as well as the volume of work that has been identified as a result. Addressing gaps in Indigenous labour opportunities is an exercise in "decolonizing" the tools that have been tried for decades, while at the same time helping educate people in the labour market and career development fields about Indigenous peoples.
There are two different directions that institutions and industry have taken: 'Indigenization' and 'Decolonization'. The former is a redoing or reaffirming of education to include Indigenous ways of knowing, thinking, feeling and being, while the latter refers to an undoing or unsettling of colonial power and a restoration of Indigenous practices. No matter which avenue one pursues, there are great resources and established, trusted information that individuals can access to inform their learning. For example, the first of its kind is the Indigenous Labour Market Platform which develops and shares Indigenous labour market information and hosts the project, Capturing change in Indigenous labour markets, made possible by the Future Skills Centre. Another resource is NationTalk, a trusted source of information for the Indigenous community in Canada featuring a newswire, employment, event and tendering service. Both of these resources relate to Indigenous employment, skills development and labour market trends, and I encourage people to access them to learn more.
Regardless of which path a business, industry or institution takes, the success of the endeavor relies on building relationships with Indigenous people. Unauthentic efforts that do not include relationship building when Indigenizing or decolonizing will yield short-term results and will rarely bring long-term benefits. A learning mindset is key. Education such as the Indigenous Perspectives Designation – which strives for authentic inclusion of Indigenous truth, perspective and experience – demonstrates a genuine commitment to Reconciliation as it pertains to skills development and creating opportunities for Indigenous peoples.
Building relationships starts with education. Canadians and residents of Canada, regardless of race, have been given little opportunity to learn about Indigenous peoples, culture, or the barriers to employment, education and skills development that we have faced. If individuals, with the best intentions, "jump in" to identify barriers and attempt to find solutions without learning about Indigenous peoples, then they will find themselves encountering many missteps and mistakes.
Breaking down our own misconceptions and ignorance as they pertain to Indigenous peoples in Canada is an act of Decolonization and will assist in the inclusion of Indigenous peoples in all that we do. Statistics Canada notes that First Nations, Métis and Inuit people make up an increasingly large share of the Indigenous population. Therefore, greater understanding will be crucial going forward.
There were 1,673,785 Indigenous peoples in Canada in 2016. Where do Non-Status Indigenous peoples fit into this narrative? Urban Indigenous? The fact is, Indigenous peoples, as a whole, represent a complex, diverse population within Canada – a country where most people define themselves by the geographical location in which they reside. Contrarily, Indigenous peoples identify their diversity by their language, cultural practices, and oral history, to name a few. After years of oppression, we are now learning and/or reclaiming all of these for ourselves.
Training and professional development are available across Canada so that everyone can learn more, virtually and in person, free or at a reasonable cost. The University of Alberta has developed Indigenous Canada, an open online course. This free resource explores complex experiences faced by Indigenous peoples from their historical and critical viewpoint, highlighting national and local Indigenous-settler relations. It delivers important information and is a great place to start learning. For more sector-specific training and professional development, more effort is required. With a little time and research, sector specific opportunities can be found, including the anti-racism Indigenous cultural safety training program at Sanyas in B.C. and tips on building relationships with Indigenous peoples at Indigenous Corporate Training.
I encourage everyone to keep learning from one another and reaching out with humility and understanding that will propel us forward on the path to Reconciliation.
Elizabeth Stone is the Indigenous Knowledge Leader at Fleming College and a member of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation. She is a longtime volunteer on the Indigenous Women's Council – Women and Gender Equity Canada.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint, official policy or position of the Future Skills Centre or any of its staff members or consortium partners.
Indigenous nation thrives after "investing in ourselves" – Q & A with Membertou Chief
Written by Chief Terrance Paul
This article first appeared on the Magnet website. It is a great example of the…
Indigenous women thrive in northern Manitoba tech training program
Written by FSC Staff
When Brenda Bignell first enrolled in a program in The Pas, Manitoba to improve her…


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub