Elliot Washor's TGIF 03.14.2025

“Are you with me now” A J Ryder

Ready, Now That You Are – George Benson

It’s been a very long time for the world to catch up to what we are up to. You might not believe this but Dennis and I always said ‘we were 30 years ahead of our time’ and now in our 30th year as BPL and The Met, we are ready now that you are to share our practices. This week, I went to Greenville, South Carolina for our third Harbor Freight Fellows Conference in South Carolina and it was a blast to be there, especially since it was held at the minor league baseball stadium, Fluor Field home of a Red Sox minor league team called Drive.

 It's All in The Game – Many a Tear Has to Fall – Nat King Cole

As you can see, the team owners lit up the Jumbotron for us and it was great to see BPL and HFF on the screen in a ballfield that all the community could see. It reminded me that this spring training the umpires will be bots. I’m pretty concerned about the loss of human ‘timing and touch’ and the decision-making and judgements that are part of a sport linking us to the first tools ever used by our species, those being a stick and a stone becoming a bat and a ball. The irony of having a skilled trades conference with the use of hand tools and the new insertion of bots into baseball is not lost here. Do bots make things quicker and more efficient? Personally, the controversy and ramifications in baseball and beyond are huge. Already too many don’t trust the judgements of people and want to rely on bots and algorithms to make the final call on difficult choices. This applies to medicine, law, education and more. The Harbor Freight Fellows is putting mastery of human skills like tool use back in the equation and the IBPLC is doing the same by including the judgements of teachers, students and mentors. Not that AI doesn’t have a place in baseball and education but what place? when and where? are legitimate questions. As my buddy Doug Stowe points out: “What you’re measuring matters. Accuracy is not the same thing as enjoyment. We watch baseball to kill time, not to maximize it.” ‘Nuff said.

Back to the conference….

On the first day Crishell scheduled a select group of 50 people from workforce, industry, school districts, policy and politics to attend. Both Danny Corwin, the Executive Director of Harbor Freight Tools for Schools and I gave talks on the value of the skilled trades. Our back-to-back talks dove-tailed nicely with one another. Afterwards we went to the South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind where last year we had two Harbor Freight Fellows. The next day, Crishell, Charlie, Sonn had three hundred people from all over South Carolina at the conference. It was here our Harbor Freight Fellows of this year had time with all the attendees. This grassroots effort emerged from Crishell’s hard work in keeping everyone at the table and moving our collective agenda forward. We now have all sorts of industry, workforce and political support thanks to the hard work of Crishell. This is truly amazing and is a great example of how our work in schools contributed to our work scaling out of schools into the real-world.

Next week, I’m back home in San Diego focused on our work in California.

And….

Happy Women’s History Month

Si, tu vois ma mère

Be well!