I ain't up here ta' read!

The other day I saw a link on another blog which allowed you to check the "reading level" of any particular blog against against the benchmarks educators use to evaluate the reading levels of their students. And since I now have eight different blogs I post to periodically, I figured I'd better test them all.

As one might have expected, most of my blogs (four out of the eight -- Rev Tim's (mostly) Annual Holiday Circular Letter, Hilsen fra Danmark, The Eclectic Cleric FRS and The Eclectic Cleric FPC) all tested out as "College: Undergraduate." My original The Eclectic Cleric blog only came in at High School reading level however, while for some inexplicable reason, the archive of sermons I preached on Nantucket (The Eclectic Cleric ACK) pulled down a "Genius" rating. No wonder they liked me there so much.

My mother's memoir, Betty Jo Remembers, (which also contains the texts of my younger brother Erik's eulogy and my memorial homily) was rated at "Jr High" reading level. But the blog I'm proudest of was this one right here. If you want to benefit from the wisdom of ol' Obi Wannabe Kobe here, all you need is an elementary school education!

About the title of this post: There's an annecdote about a young Henry Aaron, who came up to bat in the 1958 World Series with Yogi Berra catching behind the plate. Berra noticed that Aaron wasn't holding the bat with the trademark facing up (an indication that the grain of a wooden bat is properly aligned to hit the ball most effectively and prevent the bat from breaking), and pointed this out to the younger ballplayer.

"You'll want to hold the bat with the label up," Yogi said.

"Yogi," Hammerin' Hank replied, "I came up here to hit, not to read...."

(Aaron hit .333 in that Series, 9 for 27 with 2 doubles and 2 RBIs. And still the Damned Yankees came back from a 3-1 deficit to win the fall classic that year...again....)