Newsletter #95 — Same-Look Videos
December 1, 2024
Newsletter #95 — Same-Look Videos
Same Look— This is what the first frames of my YouTube videos looks like. Before I created this "brand" look, every single first-frame was different: chaotic. Now I think a viewer can see that these videos are of a set.
I don't know if the fact that the cover screens are different colors works for me or against me. I worry that if I made them all the same color, they would look monotonous and people might think I was just publishing the same video over and over.
After updating all of my old YouTube videos and giving each a new title, I now see a steady increase in the number of views of these videos.
Baseball Down Under — Baseball has been played in Australia since the 1850s, brought there by American miners who flocked to the gold rush in the Australian state of Victoria. By the 1870s Australian baseball teams were playing one-off matches. In 1888 Albert Spalding took the Chicago White Stockings to Australia on a world tour.
By the 1930s women were playing organized baseball in Australia and competed in national championship play. One of the people who has written extensively about women in Australian baseball is Tanith Harley, herself an Australian.
A couple of years ago I met Tanith on social media and we exchanged information on the history of women in baseball. And now I have met Tanith in person, when she visited the US to do further research on Leona Kearns and Nellie Kearns, who I've written about in Women at Play and in articles. It was fantastic to meet Tanith and learn about her research on both continents.
Even though there was nonstop rain in Chicago the day of Tanith's visit, she and Phil and I were not daunted in our efforts to honor Maud Nelson. We visited the site of a house, now razed, that Maud lived in. Several blocks away was another house she lived in, still intact. From there it was only two blocks to the Edgewater Beach Hotel, where Maud was working when she met Costante Dellacqua, who would become her second husband and travel with the Chicago All-Star Ranger Girls.
And from there we made our way to Graceland Cemetery, where Maud is buried. I had a pretty good memory of where her tombstone was, but the section she's buried in is large, and my memory wasn't accurate enough. It took us a while to find her grave and pay tribute. Tanith left a baseball from Australia alongside the gravestone.
Learning Curve — I enjoy making writing-related videos to post on YouTube and share elsewhere, but it takes a lot of time to memorize a script. So, I've downloaded a free teleprompter app and am practicing using it with Zoom. This seems as if it should be easy, but it wasn't. The thing I had trouble with was my eye movement. It looked as if I was reading a script: my eyes moved back and forth.
I googled a bit on how to correct this. The advice was to learn to stare "through" the words, absorbing them without reading them. This was, actually, fairly easy to learn!
And now, having downloaded a teleprompter app and having learned how to use it, I'm ready to create more videos.
Reader Review — Here's a heart-warming reader review of Exit Velocity, on Amazon, by Reba.
I was so enthralled with Exit Velocity that I could not put it down! All in ONE book, the author covered some of the most important topics in the world- friendship, family, working class struggles, strength of community, gun violence, women's rights and justice overall. All in one book, combined with adventure, fantasy, love, baseball, and really good popcorn! I laughed, I cried and I enjoyed meeting and learning to care about every character. If everyone read this book, the world would be a better place.
Mule Book — My December 1 blog gives a bit more information on my mule book.