What in the World?
From 1957 through 1974, a Hartford, CT television station aired a most extraordinary weekly program called What in the World. The...
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May 7, 20239 min read
Guest Toteboard: Baseball and the 'Sweet Nuthin'
Herman's Toteboard is pleased to feature its very first guest column. The author, Aiden Downey, is a Georgia-based writer, Renaissance...
Apr 1, 20232 min read
More Diamond News: A Team By Any Other Name . . .
Many of you may be familiar with Stanford University’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI), a multi-year project directed...
Mar 4, 20235 min read
The Monsters are Still on Maple Street
Sixty-three years ago today, CBS first aired the classic Twilight Zone episode, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” one of Rod...
Mar 1, 20236 min read
The More Things Change . . .
On a mild summer night a little more than forty-five years ago, five teenage friends were driving around their suburban New England...
Sep 19, 20229 min read
Linguistic Landmines, Part II: Is the Toteboard Anti- Pronoun? Or Pro- Antinoun?
Note: This is the first of the occasional sequel to Linguistic Landmines, Part I. It is clear that any kind of name is nothing but a sign...
Jul 26, 20228 min read
Post-Dobbs Fallout: This One Goes to Eleven
A friend was recently recalling the time three years ago, when she was bit by a rattlesnake while jogging in a marginally accessible part...
Jun 16, 202212 min read
She Says Gazpacho, We Say Gestapo: The Toteboard's Take on Marjorie Taylor Greene
Politicians, especially republican politicians, often say stupid things. Sometimes, they say really stupid things. And sometimes, they...
Apr 3, 202211 min read
Supreme Court Press: No More Clearance, Clarence!
Such a capacity for growth, as a Justice develops his or her own constitutional philosophy, is essential if a person is to become a truly...
Mar 7, 202216 min read
Field of Bad Dreams: Ownership's Assault on Major League Baseball
During the dog days of the summer of 1966, that venerable Connecticut journalistic warhorse, the Hartford Courant, provided a valuable...
Jul 1, 20216 min read
If it Quacks like a Racist . . .
Now that MLB’s decision to pull the All-Star Game out of Georgia has inextricably linked baseball and voting rights, the Toteboard has...
May 5, 202116 min read
Linguistic Landmines: In Defense of the Offensive
Note: This installment of the Toteboard addresses some very sensitive issues, and in so doing quotes sources that employ offensive and...
Jan 25, 202110 min read
The Sorry Legacy of the Trump Era
With the inauguration of Joe Biden, the swearing in of three ethnically iconic democratic senators, the expulsion of Trump from the White...
Jan 13, 20214 min read
Once Upon a Time in Georgia
At an educational institution in GA a couple of months ago, the full faculty voted on whether or not to change an important policy, one...
Jan 9, 20212 min read
Burnt Bridges
When Saddam Hussein realized that his defeat was imminent in the first Gulf War, he ordered his troops to ignite hundreds of Kuwaiti oil...
Jan 7, 20218 min read
Karma is a Bitch!
Buddhist mythology depicts an elaborate network of colorful realms where beings may go in their next life, as the result of the...
Nov 14, 20207 min read
Election Reflection, Part I: Omens of Chaos
Note: this is the first of a series of Toteboard post-election reflections. Some thirty years ago, a friend was speaking candidly about...
Oct 20, 20206 min read
Two Weeks to Midnight: Reflections on a House Divided
In honor of the college students who are taking midterm exams on campuses all over the country (thanks to their morally compromised...
Oct 6, 20208 min read
Senate Update (four weeks to go)
The election is exactly four weeks away, the vice-presidential debate is coming tomorrow, and it’s time for an update on the state of the...
Sep 30, 20203 min read
Biden Comes to Debate, Trump Comes to Debase . . . Himself, and the Country
As people of sound mind try to shake off the shell-shock of last night’s “debate” and process what this all means for the election, and for
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