May 1, 2018

Articles and Newsletters and Pulitzers, Oh My!
I quietly reached a few milestones recently, though I didn't realize it until last night. On April 20, USATT and Butterfly both published my article, $2700 3-Star Butterfly MDTTC April Open. It was my 1800th published article. (I count that as one article, though it was published in two places.) I've had two more articles published since then, for a total of 1802. Why is that number important? (Other than, of course, being the year the Treaty of Amiens was signed between France and the United Kingdom, ending the War of the Second Coalition, and the establishment of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the U.S.)

This morning's blog is my 1802nd blog entry since I started tabletenniscoaching.com in January, 2011, so I've now had as many blog entries as published articles, or 3604 total. Since I blog Mon-Fri, the number of blog entries will soon far exceed the number of published articles. (I don't count blog entries as published articles.)

I keep a running list of my published articles. They include 1593 on table tennis; 62 non-fiction, non-table tennis articles, 33 of them at Orioles Hangout, the rest mostly on science or writing (my favorite of the latter being "Fifty Writing Quotes"); and 90 science fiction and fantasy short stories. I also have 13 books - 8 on table tennis, 4 SF or fantasy novels, and 2 short story collections. Yes, that adds up to 14 because The Spirit of Pong counts as both a table tennis book and a science fiction and fantasy novel! (What, you haven't read it? What's wrong with you!)

That 1800th article mentioned above was about the MDTTC April Open, the 199th USATT tournament I've run. This past weekend I ran my 200th, the Hopes Trials - see yesterday's blog. It will likely go up today as USATT and Butterfly news articles. As noted yesterday, all but two have been two-day tournaments, so that's 398 days of running tournaments . . . and I think the rest of my life has been either coaching or writing!

I hit another milestone yesterday with the publication of the May issue of the Maryland Table Tennis Center Newsletter. I started the monthly newsletter six years ago, and this was the 72nd issue, meaning I've now done one more of those than the 71 issues of USA Table Tennis Magazine I did during my two tenures as USATT editor (1992-95, 1999-2007). Of course, USATT Magazine, the national magazine for USA Table Tennis, was a much bigger magazine. It was replaced by the online USATT Insider a few years ago. Overall, I've been the editor for 194 issues of magazines, newsletters, or program booklets. Besides the above there were 19 USATT program booklets, 8 Hall of Fame programs, 3 issues of Table Tennis Coaches Quarterly, and a bunch of others.

All this, and not one Pulitzer or Nobel nomination!!! Jeez.

World Team Championships
The World Team Championships continue in Halmstad, Sweden, April 29 - May 6. You should be able to follow the action there with news, results, photos, and video. Make sure to check out the Point of the Day and the Daily Review! Here are two new USATT articles and two from Butterfly:

New from EmRatThich
Here are eight new videos from the Worlds.

How to Glue Long Pips Without Sponge
Here's the video (25 sec). If you've tried this, you know how tricky it can be to do this without getting bubbles or wrinkles.

Soccer Pong?
Here's the video (9 sec) of Jon Persson of Sweden (world #63) demonstrating his foot juggling skills with a ping-pong ball.

Cats and Pong
Here's the Picture!

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