Basketball and bloging

The winning shot! Hampden freshman shoots final second basket! - click to enlarge
Photo: Maine Public Broadcasting via Facebook

  The past week has been Tournament Week here in Maine, the cities of Bangor, Augusta and Portland have been busy places.  I'll just talk about the Bangor part of things.  Maine is split into two "divisions", East and West; the "big" schools, class A, play in Augusta.  The East Class B, C, and D schools play in Bangor, The Mecca, and the West B, C and D schools play in Portland.
  The Mecca is a nickname for the Bangor Auditorium, and tournaments have been played in the present building since 1954-55, this is the final year - a new facility opens next summer, games have been in Bangor since the end of WWII, or before.  It's history, it's fun and it's basketball at it's finest.
  My favorites are the C and D schools, those with less than 250 students, oh the fun it is to watch those games, or listen on the radio; I've never been in person, even though I've planned on it for 25 years!
  Next week the State Championships will be played, all in Augusta it's considered more central for some reason.  Bangor is actually more in the center since the geographical center is near Dover-Foxcroft which is 30 miles away.  Augusta is center because it's the Capital and because most of the population lives south of there - it's the big city folks against the "people in the sticks"!  I love being in the sticks.
  The school teams in Maine are named for a large variety of animals, raptor birds, and groups of people, or in one case a single person (the Red Eddies or Edward Little in Auburn).  There are some names that a few people find objectionable, the Witches, Redskins, Warriors, and Crusaders; I'm not dis-liking any of them, it's a matter of acceptance for me.
  My problem is use of the word "Lady" as in Lady Witches or Lady Bears!  There are female and male bears, yes.  I thought we had pretty much reached equality in Maine high school sports, girls are allowed to wrestle or play baseball (in some schools is necessary), so why do some schools continue the use of the word "lady"?  Even my favorite college team are the Lady Bears which are part of the Baylor Bears.  It's kind of easy to know it's a girls game, they introduce the players and if names like Emily, Suzy or Rachel are used it's probably a girls game.  On the radio it's the same.  The only confusion might be if the players are named Taylor, Madison, Jordan, Yvon/Yvonne or Francis/Frances - then it might be hard to tell on the radio.
   I find the use of "lady" to be objectionable - maybe that a little strong - but un-necessary for sure.  Just my opinion.

  Now we'll write about blogs.  I have been doing this for nearly four years, it started in May of 2009 and it's been daily except when I was hospitalized or traveling - not too many missed days.  My problem now is with loading photos, identifying photos and general photo bull crap. 
  In the "old days" I could just show photos from my own computer but now I load photos from my computer - after I've found and identified them, to www.picasaweb.com which along with blogspot is a part of Google.  This week picasaweb has made it even more difficult to upload photos by adding an extra step or two, and making it difficult, period.
  In short, it's getting to be a bit of a pain in the ass!  I intend, for now, to continue but to be honest it is getting tiresome with all of the extra steps - you may find more days without photos, for instance, or maybe a few more days missed (painful to even think about).  We will see.