Passing the Gavel

The board of directors of our groundwater management district have hired a new person who will be starting work next week.  The new position is a manager trainee slot which will assume the district manager duties when I retire in the next few months.  By way of introduction, the successful candidate is Katherine Wilkins-Wells.  She is a recent graduate of Colorado State University who will be moving to Colby from Fort Collins, CO.  I am pleased to have the chance to get her acclimated and trained over the next several months.  So much to do and so little time... 

One of the interesting questions I have is the fate of this Blog.  Will she want to continue it as part of her duties?  Or jettison it as soon as possible?  We didn't really discuss it during the interview process since the Blog has always been my personal contribution/diversion.  The board has always been aware of the fact that I have been doing it, but they never really formally sanctioned it.  I do know the blog medium well enough to know that it's certainly not for everyone.

Anyway, I'll offer it to her, but it will be her choice to keep it or not.  My guess is that I'll keep it up and running until I leave, but we'll just have to wait and see thereafter.  Regardless, it's been a pleasure scouring for water-topics and taking stabs at presenting them in interesting ways - at least as interesting as I could manage.  I tried to keep it varied, any way.

If you'd like to weigh in on the topic of continuing the Blog or not, please feel free to do so with an appropriate comment.  With a little bit of luck, the comments may give Katherine some helpful direction (and maybe even some encouragement).  In any event, stay tuned...  

Water and Baseball - Why Not?

The small Kansas town of Muscotah in NE Kansas (Atchinson County) is planning to build a baseball museum inside their old water tower tank.  The museum is sort of focused and will feature Musctoah's native son Joe Tinker who played for the 1908 world series champion Chicago Cubs.  Yep, he's the guy immortalized in the 1910 baseball poem by Frank Adams called "Baseball's Sad Lexicon", which speaks to how effective Joe and two of his teammates were in becoming the most famous double play combination in baseball's history.  The trio was Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance, who were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame together in 1946.

"Baseball's Sad Lexicon"

These are the saddest of possible words:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double--
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."


Anyway, there is a little bit of water in the post so I thought I'd share.  And who knows, Tinker and the Tower may be about the same age, and the tower may even at one time had Joe's name on it.  At least I'm pretty sure Gayle Leonard will like it!  Check out her water tower posts if you Evers gets the Chance to Tinker around in her blog.  Sorry...