Rubber Chicken Circuit Case Report

Speaking Engagements—The Rubber Chicken Circuit One of the important parts of my job was public speaking. Having been a college teacher and having taught a lecture class of over 350 students in General Botany and well over 100 in Ecology, I was comfortable speaking before audiences. The talks I gave almost always fell into three categories: explaining our departments programs, promoting our departments programs, and presentations on current environmental issues. Generally, I enjoyed these speaking engagements but when two or three occurred in the same week it got tiring, particularly when you had to outline what you were going to say on the way to the talk, and didn’t get home until midnight. Usually audiences were receptive to what I
I learned the bitter way to provide only the very essential information at the very first talk I gave after taking the job. The talk was to the State Soil and Water Conservation folks and without thinking much about it I provided the resume to the introducer that was part of my personnel file at the University. The introducer got up and endeavored to introduce me by reading my resume. After he got to the organizations to which I belonged, he quit and said “it looks as if this man has been a member of every organization in the United States except the NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan!” The first thing I did when I got back to the office was red-line about 95% of the stuff in the resume and ask Martha to type up what was left. That’s what I used from that point
Their concern was that because of the Republican governments in several of the coastal counties a Republican governor might be able to “pack” the Commission using his discretionary appointments and selecting nominees from Republican counties. Although those of us promoting the bill felt this was a far-fetched concern, we still had to respond to it as the votes of certain key legislators hinged on the final wording of that provision. Finally, we decided to change the wording to 5 appointees at the Governor’s discretion and a draft reflecting that change was circulated in the legislature. One key senator balked at 5 and Jim Harrington and I went over to explain why 5 was a “magic” number that satisfied Democratic concerns about Commission “packing” yet provided adequate discretion to the Governor. After listening carefully to our explanation, he thought for a bit and finally said “that sounds alright to me, and what you say sounds fair, but if it is proposed by a bunch of Republicans, there must be something wrong with it. I can’t accept it.” So, Harrington and I left and on the way back to the office decided that if it meant passage or defeat of the bill, we would drop back to 3. The senator accepted 3 and ended up voting for the bill. In our discussion, Harrington and I agreed that in the long run the matter about which we were arguing