bogen.org

You’ll have to excuse the punny headline. I borrowed it from the sister of a curling teammate. Regardless, it does describe how interest in curling is growing as a result of recent Olympic coverage.Yesterday, Sarah and I worked for three hours at an Olympic open house hosted by the Madison Curling Club. I’ve worked several open houses over the past four years and I’ve never seen more than twenty or thirty people turn out for any given open house. However, several hundred people turned out yesterday to give curling a try. Nearly all of them were driven to attend by the coverage of the sport during the Turin Olympic Games. It would not be exaggeration to say that almost no one was expecting the number of people who showed up at the club.

A common comment we heard was “I don’t necessarily understand the game, but it was on all the time, and I wanted to give it a try.” Of course, after trying to deliver and sweep a stone, the nearly universal response was, “Wow! It is much harder than it looks.”

Many of the people who came out to try the sport will hopefully sign up to play next fall. That’s a long time to try and keep people hooked on a sport based on some television coverage and a half-hour on the ice, but we try.

It is heartening to see more people signing up for the sport. In Canada, a million people or more curl regularly. In the United States, there are roughly 15,000 active curlers. The more people we can get curling, the better the facilites we can build, the better the competition we can face, and ultimately, the better we can do at major curling events like the Olympics.

Some photos we took in Arizona are now available in the Photo Gallery.

Last night, we returned to Wisconsin after spending six days in Arizona. By the time we got home, it was nearly 2:30 in the morning. When I have some time, I’ll write more about our trip. The short version is that we saw and did a great number of things and a good time was had by all.

A collection of news stories from around the web.

• Things not to report stolen.
• Don’t call us; we’ll call you.
• Try not to sell cocaine to uniformed officers
• They said the Titantic was unsinkable, too.
• Driving naked doesn’t lead to chafing, but it does lead to a ticket.

Glyn Williams’ book, The Prize of All the Oceans is an interesting in-depth look at Commodore George Anson’s voyage around the world and his capture of the Spanish treasure galleon in 1743.The hardships routinely endured by seamen and officers of the Royal Navy in the 18th century would make the most arduous modern military service seem like a relaxing vacation by comparison. Scurvy, exposure, lice, typhus, minimal rations, back breaking labor, and the constant threat of death were the life of a Royal Navy seaman in the 18th century.

Anson left England with 1900 men on five ships. He returned with under 500 men on one ship. Many of the men who returned to England had not started the voyage with Anson (they were pressed into service along the way), and so the death rate is even higher than it appears. Tellingly, only four of the dead were casualties of enemy action. The vast majority died as a result of malnutrition and disease.

The officers and seamen suffered through unimaginable hardship and deprivation on the journey and yet, somehow, were able to capture a ship in the heart of Spanish territory that contained fabulous weath mined from Spanish South America.

Williams’ book is a balanced look at the voyage and its hardships. He generally steers clear of hyperbole and is careful to note the agendas and tone of various sources. His book is clearly a synthesis of the original sources as he works mainly from Royal Navy records, logbooks, and journals kept by those involved. Williams seems more interested in discovering the truth of what happened than idolizing or demonizing Anson. He covers the numerous, draw-out legal battles that wound their way through the English courts in the years following the journey. He even goes so far as to point out what various indviduals seemed to learn, or failed to learn, from the journey in the years after their return to England.

The Prize of All the Oceans is an accessible and enjoyable examination of history long past. The long, dangerous nature of sea journeys at the time is exposed in all its unfortunate detail by Williams’ work.