First, retiring a player's number. When I went to Bowling Green State University in the early 1970's, they had never retired a player's number. There was a wonderful defenseman who I think wore #3 and whose name, I think, was Roger ---- . He was a fan favorite. His specialty was blocking the puck by dropping down and stopping it with his stomach. We wanted to have his jersey retired and the student newspaper ran a coupon for people to fill out to ask the administration to retire his number. They got a lot of response, partly because many of us badgered our non-hockey-loving friends into filling out the forms, too. However, they refused to retire his number. The player chose to go to graduate school instead of the NHL because he said he was too small for the NHL. Most students thought he was the best hockey player at BG. Has Bowling Green retired anybody's number? As I remember, the administration said they didn't want to retire any numbers because they thought it was a bad idea. Have they changed their mind? I also said I'd send a funny story. This has nothing to do with hockey, but so many people on this list have a good sense of humor that I'm sending it anyway. The person who sent it swears it's true. *** The Farside Comes To Life In Oregon I am absolutely not making this incident up; in fact I have it all on videotape. The tape is from a local TV news show in Oregon, which sent a reporter out to cover the removal of a 45-foot, eight-ton dead whale that washed up on the beach. The responsibility for getting rid of the carcass was placed on the Oregon State Highway Division, apparently on the theory that highways and whales are very similar in the sense of being large objects. So anyway, the highway engineers hit upon the plan--remember, I am not making this up--of blowing up the whale with dynamite. The thinking is that the whale would be blown into small pieces, which would be eaten by seagulls, and that would be that. A textbook whale removal. So they moved the spectators back up the beach, put a half-ton of dynamite next to the whale and set it off. I am probably not guilty of understatement when I say that what follows, on the videotape, is the most wonderful event in the history of the universe. First you see the whale carcass disappear in a huge blast of smoke and flame. Then you hear the happy spectators shouting "Yayy!" and "Whee!" Then, suddenly, the crowd's tone changes. You hear a new sound like "splud." You hear a woman's voice shouting "Here come pieces of ...MY GOD!" Something smears the camera lens. Later, the reporter explains: "The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere." One piece caved in the roof of a car parked more than a quarter of a mile away. Remaining on the beach were several rotting whale sectors the size of condominium units. There was no sign of the seagulls who had no doubt permanently relocated to Brazil. This is a very sobering videotape. Here at the institute, we watch it often, especially at parties. But this is no time for gaiety. This is a time to get hold of the folks at the Oregon State Highway Division and ask them, when they get done cleaning up the beaches, to give us an estimate on the US Capitol.