[eDebate] Debate personal and confidential to tuna snider

[Art Kyriazis]

Prof. Alfred "Tuna" Snider
University of Vermont

Dear Tuna:

The Friends Select School in Philadelphia has asked me to serve as an 
adjunct debate instructor this year for their fledgling debate program 
which was started by jonathan kendall last year.  They are a private 
school located in the heart of downtown Philly with a very, very bright 
student body.  (Kevin Bacon is probably their most famous grad, class of 
76'), so that's one degree of separation!

Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm dealing with yet, but I get the feeling 
I've probably got a lot of inexperience or lack of experience on my hands. 

Also, as you know, LD has pretty much replaced policy debate as the 
debate du jour in high school, along with public forum debate, so i'm 
pretty open to almost any concept for these guys including speech 
events, since almost anything seems to be ok these days. 

I'm doing a pretty close synopsis of notes from Branham's book and from 
the websites, but any other materials or suggestions you have would be 
great.  I'm going to get in touch with Meany as well.

Also, I saw on the web about this wonderful thing you are doing with 
Sexton, Wade, Shrum et al at NYU--I can hardly believe you all used to 
judge me back in the day--you're all big shots now--and i wanted to say 
it's wonderful. 

you know that that debate league I used to run in philly for the bar 
ass'n?  you know that after we got a grant from the NFL and Jim 
Copeland, the other grant went to Wade in Atlanta based on our program; 
George Soros saw her program and that's how urban debate was born. 

I'm indirectly responsible for founding urban debate in the united 
states.  i'm like the cow that kicked over the can, etc. 

i feel as if that's really good karma, man.

sorry to be out of touch for a few years.  i was mugged in 2001 and had 
a broken wrist and two broken ribs; broke my right foot in 2002 and was 
in right foot cast; and in 2003 feb was hit by a bus and was badly hurt, 
blew out seven discs in my back and neck.  the last one really took a 
while to recover from.  I basically closed my law practice and when I 
passed the patent bar in 2002 became a fulltime consultant to the 
biotech/pharma industry (i did grad work at penn in 
biotechnology/molecular biology/biostat from the engineering school 
joint with wharton).

this is pretty much the second year i've been ambulatory in a good way 
in a few years so i apologize for being out of the loop. 

i did the debate coaching thing for a while as an adjunct at american 
for unger but we had a lot of participation problems down there.  i 
finally took a political job in 2000 and another one in 2002 and my 
practice had done very well financially up to that point. 

i'm really looking for ways to connect up with my past friends as well.  
i'd really like to see you at some point and say hello and make sure 
you're doing well. 

am enclosing xmas cards of my kids.  our daughter is 13, she's thinking 
about debate, though she's mainly into sports right now.

you cannot overestimate the influence you and summers and meany and 
seiler and all you debate guys had on me in my lifetime.  debate was 
like a key that opened all the doors for me.  it also made sense of 
everything, all the questions.  now i'm 48 almost 49 and i finally 
understand that true wisdom is this--i know nothing, but i question 
everything. 

it's very zen.  empty my mind, and fill my cup sort of thing.

--art kyriazis
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