A box-elder beetle landed somewhere in the middle of the gathering — maybe at the dinner table — and someone moved to dispatch it. But before he could,  my neighbor Doug Stennett — great guy, by the way; recently retired from the OSU pharmacy school — said, “Wait, don’t hurt him. That’s  my friend, Othmar.”

Before then, the only Othmar that I had ever heard of was Miss Othmar, Charlie Brown’s teacher. But for some reason — and not just for me, but for everyone — the name Othmar became a permanent synonym for box-elder beetle, so much so that we now refer to them simply as othmars.

And we get a lot of chance to refer to them, especially on sunny fall and winter days, when they collect en masse on an ancient fir in our backyard and on the south-facing windows of our house. Of course, from those staging areas they often make their way into the house, which is no big deal because they are completely harmless if sometimes sort of pushy. For example, one recent morning I went to fetch a cup of coffee and saw this:

But again, no problem. Guess he just needed a pick-me-up to complete his day’s travels, and these bugs do travel, sometimes many miles. More on that tomorrow …

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“I have been a lifelong fan of the 49ers. I saw two preseason games in Sacramento. I was working at CalTrans at the time and 6 of us went to the game. We happened to be sitting next to Bruno Banducci who had retired. You could tell he wanted to be back there with the others the way he was yelling to them what to do. He had been famous for faking an injury near the end of the game to give the other guys a breather.

“The only real game I saw in Kezar Stadium was a game with the LA Rams in the late forties. Bob Waterfield was QB and Glenn Davis was on the team. I think Matt Hazeltine was on the 49ers. One Ram play, V.T. (Vitamin) Smith ran back a kickoff for 95 yards.

“I was going to Yuba College in 1949 when there was a program put on by four 49ers, Frankie Albert, Gordy Soltau and two others. They showed highlight clips. Once in a while it would show them coming off the field and having some Christopher’s Milk, sort of like what Bob St. Clair is doing now. Frankie showed me how to throw the bullet pass he was famous for.

“A few years ago, I bought a book “Giants and Heroes” by Diane Tittle DeLaet, which is an excellent book about her father. I had sent her a quote from a book of outrageous quotes and she liked the one about George Halas. She autographed the book for me and had Y. A. autograph it too. He put down “Nothing is Easy.” She also liked my mention that I had breakfast with Y. A. Tittle once at Stateline Nevada where I happened to be working. “Colonel Slick” is a very recognizable man!

“I have read a lot about the 1951 team with all the Hall of Famers on it. A girl I had known for many years got married to Ed Brown of the Chicago Bears. A good friend of mine, Greg Cosmos, has a Super Bowl ring from being the Equipment Manager for the 49ers. He got another ring from the Denver Broncos. He was equipment manager for Sam Wyche at Cleveland and Tampa Bay. I emailed your story to him yesterday…

“Thank you the great stories and pictures. On the website there were additional pictures and I greatly enjoyed the pictures of the old (Kezar) stadium. In 1940 I lived for the summer on Stanyan Street and used to go to the playground near the stadium.”

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We’re attending a fashion show – well, not really, but sort of – on Tuesday.

The Oregon State baseball team will unveil its five new Nike uniforms on Tuesday in an 11:30 a.m. ceremony at the Valley Football Center.

The general public isn’t invited, but we’ll have a story, and have arranged for a photographer to be there, so there should be plenty of photos to accompany our story in Wednesday’s print/online versions of our story.

Now, anyone whose seen the PGN knows my idea of high fashion is a baseball cap, accented by blue jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and a sweatshirt in the winter and cargo pants and a short-sleeved tee or polo in the summer. So you can take my observations with a grain of salt.

But we’ve seen enough uniforms over the years to recognize between the good and bad, and I’ve been told OSU’s new togs are very tasteful and not over the top/ghastly, like the usual Nike fare. And no secret messages/song lyrics/washing instructions will be encrypted in any of the pinstripes.

For the Blog’s money, the creams the Beavers wore against North Carolina in the 2006 NCAA championship game are the best-ever. The gray pinstriped Miami knockoffs they wore against the Heels in the 2007 title game should never have seen the light of day.

But, we shall see what we see, and report accordingly.

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You probably read last week that Arizona has placed its men’s basketball program on in-house probation for a series of violations that occurred during the final years of the Lute Olson coaching era.

It gave itself some minor penalties that, in essence, don’t amount to a hill of beans and won’t seriously impact this program at all, much like forfeiting some wins in football and in several sports and vacating an NCAA track title won’t seriously affect Florida State, which also got caught for cheating recently.

You want meaningful punishment for major NCAA transgressions? No postseason play in the cheating sport, for the length of the probation. That’s the only way to get the offender’s serious attention.

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Here’s a story from the Hillsboro Argus on new OSU women’s soccer recruit Brandi Dawson of Forest Grove High.

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Finally, we’ve actually joined the 21st century and set up a Twitter account, which will (or might not) be updated regularly with breaking news about the Beavers, the Knights, and other sports we cover, or even a few personal observations.

For anyone without a life who might want to follow, it’s at twitter.com/EAFlash

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Related posts:

1. Brooks Hatch: Monday update
2. Brooks Hatch: Monday update
3. Brooks Hatch: Monday update, at the pool

Laura-Ann Chong on the bars in a home meet.
The Oregon State gymnastics team dropped to No. 7 in the country after defeating California on Sunday with a score of 196.375. The season average score, which rankings are based, is 196.010.

The funny thing about the drop was that was the first meet of the season the Beavers didn’t count a fall.

Oklahoma (196.435) is No. 1 with Alabama (196.405), Arkansas (196.120), Utah (196.060), UCLA (196.042) and Florida (196.020) right behind the Sooners.

Mandi Rodriguez is ranked No. 12 in the all-around (39.260) and Makayla Stambaugh is tied for 16th (39.200).

Rodriguez and Becky Colvin are tied for eighth on the vault (9.875), Laura-Ann Chong is tied for 14th on the beam (9.830), Melanie Jones is fourth on the floor (9.900) after one competition with Rodriguez tied for seventh (9.890) and Stambaugh tied for ninth (9.885).

Leslie Mak is No. 1 on the uneven bars (9.925), but she has only competed in the first event of the season due to her elbow injury.

The Beavers scored a 49.475 on the floor. That was the third highest score in the country this season. Oklahoma had a 49.600 and Stanford had a 49.575.

Another injury
Freshman Kelsi Blalock was hurt during warm-ups Sunday. She injured her left ankle on a vault. Her status will be determined later in the week.

Jones took her place on the vault and floor. She scored a 9.675 on the vault and had the stellar floor routine.

“There were a lot of positives (in the meet); the floor team was spectacular,” coach Tanya Chaplin said. “They did a great job of focusing in after Kelsi got hurt and got the job done. There are still some areas to clean up and we’ll be back in the gym this week to work on those things.”

The schedule
It’s an odd week coming off a road Sunday meet. The Beavers will only have one hard practice Tuesday with today and Wednesday being off days.

They face off with Pacific-10 Conference rival No. 18 Arizona at 7 p.m. on Friday. After that, there’s only one more home meet March 19 against Kentucky.

There are four straight road meets after the Arizona contest at UCLA, Arizona State, LSU and Utah.

Kelsi Blalock warming up at home meet.

To see more photos from throughout the season, check out the GT’s photo gallery here.

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Related posts:

1. Cliff: Gymnastic notebook
2. Cliff: Gymnastics notes
3. Cliff: Gymnastics preview

Hasso wanted to start a regular feature on page A2 called “Snapshot.” The basic premise was  to invite readers to send in photos they had taken, and we would pretty much run every picture they sent in, more or less in the order we received them.

I envisioned a steady stream of awful photographs that would do nothing to improve the look of any page: static, out of focus, ill composed, poorly exposed, etc. See, lots of people feel like they are good at photography, but the fact is, in most cases there’s an enormous difference between pros like our Mark Ylen and David Patton and members of the general public. Photography is an art and science; there’s way more to it than picking up a point and shoot, or a cell phone, and hitting the shutter release.

When the first snapshots started coming in, they reinforced my prelaunch feelings. Most of them were not real good for any number of reasons.

But gradually, the snapshots began to improve and so did my outlook; if someone wanted to send in a posed picture of five generations of their family at a reunion, as long it as it was more or less in focus and correctly exposed, what was the harm in that?

The snapshot program proved popular, based on the number of them we were receiving, and I began to see it as filling an important niche for a paper the size of ours: Sort of a community forum that gives readers a chance to see their photos of their friends, family, pets, etc. in print.

All of that is the good news. The bad news is, our supply of snapshots has been fairly low the last month or so; usually we have at least a dozen of them on hand at any given time, but at the present time, I believe the arsenal is down to a single picture, albeit a cute one: A shot of a baby and a puppy napping together; look for that one in the next day or two.

So, if you’ve taken a photo in the last month or so that you’d like to see in the paper, now is an excellent time to share it with us. Just email it to news@dhonline.com along with caption information, including names of those pictured and their ages if they are children. Also include a phone number where you can be reached in case we have any questions.

And as always, thanks for your interest in the blog and in the newspaper in general. We appreciate your readership.

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Sure, I can be anything I want to be, dad. That’s a knee slapper. He stares back at me from his position on the chair.

No you can, if you’re willing to do the work, I insist. Still not even a glimmer of belief.

A little bit later, we’re sitting side by side at the table. I’m using my iTouch and he’s staring at a paper he’s supposed to write. Five minutes later, he’s still staring.

It’s time for a different approach. OK, son. Let’s suppose you give up and refuse to do the work in school. You won’t get the grades, which means you won’t earn the credits and then you won’t graduate.

Now let’s see what jobs are available for high school dropouts. Unless you’re lucky enough to work in a factory moving screws from belt to another for eight hours a day for the rest of your life, you will probably make minimum wage. At that rate, you can figure on an average of less than $300 a week and maybe $1,200 a month.

Now assuming you can get a job, because employers aren’t salivating over high school dropouts, let’s figure out your average monthly expenses. By now, I have the calculator out punching in numbers.

Let’s start with rent at maybe $700 if you’re lucky.

Utilities: $70

Heating: $200 in the winter

Car insurance: $100 or more

Food: $150 to $300 a month depending on the size of your family.

We go through each of the basic expenses for the family and quickly figure out that at his current wage, he can be as much as $2,000 in the hole.

And that’s assuming there is no car repairs.

Or nobody needs to go to the hospital.

Or the car doesn’t require registration fees.

Suddenly homework doesn’t look so bad, does it?

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A national holiday in sports will be celebrated Sunday for the Super Bowl. Former Beavers OL Kyle DeVan is the starting RG for the Indianapolis Colts. If you haven’t read his remarkable story, yet, check it out here.

The gymnastics team competes at California at 2 p.m. on Sunday. Here’s the meet preview. It should be an easy win for the Beavers. They return home Friday night against Arizona.

Check out this Q&A with gymnastics phonem Makayla Stambaugh with the Pac-10 here. Does anyone else think her answer to who she would like to be for a day strange? Think about it.

The No. 20-ranked wrestling team continued its stellar season with a win over Fullerton on Friday, and another one over No. 16 Cal Poly on Saturday.

There are two more road duals next week at Boise State and Oklahoma to end the regular season. Then it’s on to the Pac-10s and NCAA meet.

The men’s golf team had a nice holiday weekend in Hawaii to kick off the season, but only finished 12th in the tournament.

And since it is the Super Bowl day, here are two my favorite halftime shows with Kiss below and Aerosmith and Britney on top. I nearly picked the Janet Jackson incident, but I couldn’t take that much of Justin Timberlake. Britney counteracted him with Aerosmith.

OK, here are a few more since I was looking around. This one was an important and serious one, back when the world needed the U.S. to get back on its feet to protect them.

One more classic to get you in the festive mood.

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Related posts:

1. Super Bowl weekend notes
2. Cliff: Wrestling this weekend
3. Final home weekend

The other night, I was taking batting practice in our barn as my wife Roberta walked by. For some reason, I asked the question: “So if I were playing a role in a movie, would I look believable as a baseball player?”

“Yes,” she said. “Although not so believable while wearing those overalls.”

I’d forgotten that I’d transitioned into batting practice from my farm chores without changing into more sports-oriented clothes, but I still found a quick comeback.

“I’m trying to be like Roy Hobbs,” I said, evoking the star-crossed farmboy hero of “The Natural.”

Actually, what I was trying to accomplish with the overalls had nothing to with the mysterious star of the fictional New York Knights. Even though I sometimes get teased — “Hey Dad, you look like Bob the Builder,” my daughter Pam recently said — I’m sort of partial to overalls when working around our place, for a couple reasons:

– I don’t need to remember to grab a belt to keep them  from falling down, and

– If my work involves hay, overalls tend prevent a certain uncomfortable situation: Hayseeds embedded in the bellybutton.

btw, a couple years ago I allowed myself to be photographed in my overalls for a blog post dealing loosely with Henry Fonda, Tom Joad and “The Grapes of Wrath.”

If you click on the link above, you can read the post, but for some reason the photos of myself and Fonda/Joad don’t appear, so here they are again; wouldn’t want you to have to miss them:

Henry Fonda as Tom Joad.

Lundeberg as Fonda as Joad.

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OSU’s 1-3-1 zone was too much for Oregon in a 62-42 win. It was the biggest margin in a Civil War game at Gill since the Beavers took a 94-51 win on Feb. 13, 1982.

It was OSU’s first sweep of the Ducks since 1992-93.

“I like the competition, I like the camaraderie of the Oregon people,” OSU coach Craig Robinson said. “It is a healthy rivalry and when I heard that this was the 333^rd  (game of the series), that’s a long time. So it really is meaningful.

“It’s meaningful for our program. We’ve made ourselves relevant in the league again. We’re closer to the middle.”

The Beavers have been playing tough defense lately, but have been looking for some scoring from players not named Calvin Haynes.

Haynes is OSU’s go-to player, but the other Pacific-10 Conference teams are all too aware of that fact.

On Saturday, the Beavers had a few others step up, starting with Omari Johnson, who scored 16 points in the first half on four 3-pointers.

Seth Tarver also had a strong game, as did Jared Cunningham.

“I really want to point out, Seth has struggled on offense, and he usually gets his points off his defense,” Robinson said. “It doesn’t show up in the box score when he bothers guys into making bad plays, taking bad shots or making bad passes. To see him score a bit was a relief.”

The Beavers nearly had five players in double figures. Johnson had 18, Haynes and Cunningham had 11 and Seth Tarver and Roeland Schaftenaar added nine.

That was due to crisp execution of the offense. The Beavers had 20 assists on their 21 baskets.

Combine that offensive execution with that defensive intensity and you get a 20-point win.

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Related posts:

1. Hampton: Civil War II
2. Hampton: Civil War
3. Hampton: Beavers stop MVSU

He’s a 5-foot-7, 185-pounder from De La Salle High in Concord, Calif. Ward accepted a scholarship and a greyshirt opportunity, which means he’ll join the Beavers in January, according to Rivals.com.

Ward is an all-purpose back who runs the 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds. Rivals ranks him as a three-star athlete and the No. 23 prospect at his position in the country.

The Beavers didn’t sign him right away because of an abundance of ball carriers, including one signed for the coming season, and they are at the scholarship limit.

Greyshirting pushes Ward back a year and spreads out the RBs in difference classes. Ward didn’t receive any offers due to his size. He’s the brother of former Oregon CB TJ Ward.

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Related posts:

1. Hoop recruit
2. Another recruit
3. Cliff: Another football recruit