Oof. I love Penn State dorm food, but I think I'm too old for such shenanigans. They fed the run-off judges for the History Day thing out of the Finlay Commons for lunch. Two cheeseburgers, some fries, juice & milk, way too many chocolate-chip cookies. Now I can barely move, I feel like a rattlesnake on a chilly, overcast October afternoon.

Things went about as well as such things do these days. There seems to be fewer and fewer actual educational professionals judging at these things - last year there weren't many in the papers judging panels, and this year, I didn't work with a single teacher in either one of my panels. Yesterday was Judge Brown, me, and a lady from the documents section of the PSU main campus library - all of us from Bellefonte, BTW, we got into a big gossip section about my one-time landlord & all the fires we've been getting in town. Today was Bruce Teeple, the guy who's working on the Prince Farrington history, and a lawyer from Southeast PA who does a history column on the side. We seem to be doing OK, but where are all the folks with pedagogical training? Off doing the "fun" subjects like performances & documentaries?