(From the Janesville Messenger, 12-16-07)
Not that you need any more reminders, but there are eight shopping days left until Christmas.
Gift giving is going to be easy this year at our house. My wife, my son and I are getting new bicycles. My daughter is getting her class ring. End of story.
That probably sounds almost Scrooge-like in that there are no surprises, no presents under the tree, no toys sticking out of stockings or any of the traditional Santa-on-Christmas-morning rituals.
I must admit to getting cynical about the whole gift-giving aspect of Christmas. As our families have grown, we have gotten into the less-financially-straining act of drawing names among the siblings, siblings-in-law and siblings’ children to determine who is getting whom a gift. But over time, even that has lost its allure, and the past couple of years, I opted out of my family’s name-drawing gift routine. That probably sounds even more Scrooge-like, but gift giving is not what I treasure at Christmas.
What I do treasure is the fact that our entire family is together, talking, laughing, and eating much more than we should. My favorite part of Christmas with my family is sitting around the table after lunch just conversing, telling jokes and stories. Give me four hours of that and I’m a happy man.
So am I anti-gift? Get serious. However, I do believe the best gifts are not the ones purchased because the retail community has been reminding you for six months that December 25 is coming, or the ones you get because you’ve survived another planetary orbit around the sun. The best gifts are the ones that are unexpected, genuine, heartfelt and meaningful.
A couple of months ago, at the end of a Friday afternoon, I was packing up and ready to leave work for the weekend. I had worked a lot of stressful hours that week, and I couldn’t wait to go home and decompress for two days.
As I was logging off my computer, my phone rang. I hesitated for about 10 seconds, debating about whether I wanted to take the call or just split. With a sigh, I answered the phone. The voice on the other end of the line turned out to be a woman calling from Denver, Colorado, interested in purchasing space on one of my company’s billboards in Madison.
This woman was not with an advertising agency or company, but a small organization that simply wanted to direct certain individuals to a certain web site. The concept of billboards and how to use one was totally foreign to her, so I needed to take a good deal of time educating her.
We ended up spending 45 minutes on the phone together, primarily trying to figure out how we could present her message in such a way that it would be communicated effectively on a billboard. Outdoor Advertising 101 dictates that the message should be brief, but nothing about what she wanted to convey was brief. Her first idea was a paragraph of text, which would have been impossible to read from a moving vehicle. Even her web site address wasn’t nice and short. Rather than a billboard-friendly address like readlyke.com, it was a long jumble of hyphens and slashes.
One never likes to turn down business – she was certainly ready and willing to buy – but I led her to the conclusion that this wasn’t a good use of her money. She was a very pleasant person and before we ended our call, she asked if I was a sports fan. She said she was a huge Colorado Rockies baseball fan, and wanted to express her thanks to everyone in Wisconsin because had our Brewers not won their final two games against Colorado’s rival, the Rockies would not have made the playoffs and ended up in the World Series. On that jovial note, the conversation finished up and I left the office for home, a good deal later than I had intended.
I figured that was the end of that, until about a week later when a bulging envelope with a Denver return address appeared in my mailbox at work. As I opened the handwritten card inside, two football cards in plastic sleeves fell out of the envelope.
In her note, she wrote that she had gone to a sports collectible store the day after we spoke. On the way, she said, “I noticed a billboard with more information than I could read and realized that you could have sold me a nearly worthless billboard and didn't do so.”
“Although I've never lived in Wisconsin, I know that the Packers are almost a religion there. If you have a son, I thought this Brett Favre rookie card might be worth something some day.”
Not only did she send a football card from Favre’s rookie season with the Atlanta Falcons, but a card from the third of his three straight seasons when he was honored as the NFL’s Most Valuable Player. Needless to say, my son was thrilled. And she’s right; the rookie card will probably be worth a lot in the future. I can’t imagine it was inexpensive now.
That gift, which came out of nowhere, completely unexpected and uncalled for, genuinely touched me. It was as inspiring as it was pleasing.
So as we sit by the tree and unwrap our presents this Christmas, let’s not forget the other 364 days when someone could be moved by a heartfelt, thoughtful gift.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Living in Santa Nation
(From the Janesville Messenger, 12-2-07)
Americans like Christmas. Christmas is family, and presents, and stockings hung by the fireplace, and good food and everything else that we like. We like it so much we want to celebrate it year-round. So every year, it seems, we push the official start of Christmas further and further up.
Remember when the official start of the Christmas season was the appearance of Santa at the very end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on TV? No more. I saw retail Christmas displays by summer this year. Santa arrives at stores and radio stations switch to all-Christmas music long before Thanksgiving. Some folks had their outdoor Christmas lights up – and lit – before Halloween this year. It’s a weird juxtaposition, ghosts and goblins and gravestones in yards alongside icicle lights. We should just call the season Hallowistmas. Several years ago, when Hollywood came out with “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” a film about Halloween spirits taking over Christmas from Santa Claus, they didn’t realize how clairvoyant they were regarding the entangling of the holidays.
In the meantime, Thanksgiving has almost become a forgotten holiday. You don’t see many decorations with turkeys and Pilgrims anymore. It’s a shame, because its purpose and meaning shouldn’t be forgotten.
I have always personally put my foot down about not decorating our home before Thanksgiving. This year, however, we had little choice due to a commitment we made to MACCIT, Milton’s chamber of commerce.
Each year, the chamber does a “Christmas house walk” fundraiser featuring historic homes with their Christmas decorations. For several years, we have been asked to be one of the featured homes. After finishing several remodeling projects, we decided the time was finally right to say yes. My wife loves to have our home decorated for Christmas anyway, so giving her carte blanche for this event is like giving liquor store keys to an alcoholic.
The event takes place on the issue date of this publication, Sunday, December 2. Normally, that’s about the time we’re getting our tree and starting the decorating. This year, it was the end date for completion, so our preparation began very early.
I stuck to my guns and refused to put the icicle lights on the front of the house until after Thanksgiving. But that made little difference when the front lamppost and railings were decked long before.
As for the inside of our house, every room – including bathrooms – has been magically transformed into a winter wonderland. You can’t swing a cat in here without hitting pine needles, a string of lights or a Santa. I feel like I’m living in a store. I have never been on the Milton Christmas Walk – it’s always a tough choice between that and NFL football – but I have been assured that we are not going over the top.
I did take umbrage with the placement of the four-foot wooden Santa carved by my father-in-law. He is patterned after the old European Father Christmas, with a much longer white beard and a pointy red hood. No offense to my father-in-law, whose carving skill was award-winning, but when this thing stares at you as you’re sitting in your living room, it starts to look less like Father Christmas and more like a leering, deranged gnome. Its eyes follow you; it’s Santa as creepy stalker. Fortunately, it has been moved to another part of the living room so I can relax again.
I am getting used to the look of my house, as well as the unusually early sweeping up of pine needles. But I have to admit that my wife did a pretty phenomenal job of decorating. She also did some very clever things with old childhood memorabilia that I’m sure will delight those who participate in the walk.
Americans like Christmas. Christmas is family, and presents, and stockings hung by the fireplace, and good food and everything else that we like. We like it so much we want to celebrate it year-round. So every year, it seems, we push the official start of Christmas further and further up.
Remember when the official start of the Christmas season was the appearance of Santa at the very end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on TV? No more. I saw retail Christmas displays by summer this year. Santa arrives at stores and radio stations switch to all-Christmas music long before Thanksgiving. Some folks had their outdoor Christmas lights up – and lit – before Halloween this year. It’s a weird juxtaposition, ghosts and goblins and gravestones in yards alongside icicle lights. We should just call the season Hallowistmas. Several years ago, when Hollywood came out with “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” a film about Halloween spirits taking over Christmas from Santa Claus, they didn’t realize how clairvoyant they were regarding the entangling of the holidays.
In the meantime, Thanksgiving has almost become a forgotten holiday. You don’t see many decorations with turkeys and Pilgrims anymore. It’s a shame, because its purpose and meaning shouldn’t be forgotten.
I have always personally put my foot down about not decorating our home before Thanksgiving. This year, however, we had little choice due to a commitment we made to MACCIT, Milton’s chamber of commerce.
Each year, the chamber does a “Christmas house walk” fundraiser featuring historic homes with their Christmas decorations. For several years, we have been asked to be one of the featured homes. After finishing several remodeling projects, we decided the time was finally right to say yes. My wife loves to have our home decorated for Christmas anyway, so giving her carte blanche for this event is like giving liquor store keys to an alcoholic.
The event takes place on the issue date of this publication, Sunday, December 2. Normally, that’s about the time we’re getting our tree and starting the decorating. This year, it was the end date for completion, so our preparation began very early.
I stuck to my guns and refused to put the icicle lights on the front of the house until after Thanksgiving. But that made little difference when the front lamppost and railings were decked long before.
As for the inside of our house, every room – including bathrooms – has been magically transformed into a winter wonderland. You can’t swing a cat in here without hitting pine needles, a string of lights or a Santa. I feel like I’m living in a store. I have never been on the Milton Christmas Walk – it’s always a tough choice between that and NFL football – but I have been assured that we are not going over the top.
I did take umbrage with the placement of the four-foot wooden Santa carved by my father-in-law. He is patterned after the old European Father Christmas, with a much longer white beard and a pointy red hood. No offense to my father-in-law, whose carving skill was award-winning, but when this thing stares at you as you’re sitting in your living room, it starts to look less like Father Christmas and more like a leering, deranged gnome. Its eyes follow you; it’s Santa as creepy stalker. Fortunately, it has been moved to another part of the living room so I can relax again.
I am getting used to the look of my house, as well as the unusually early sweeping up of pine needles. But I have to admit that my wife did a pretty phenomenal job of decorating. She also did some very clever things with old childhood memorabilia that I’m sure will delight those who participate in the walk.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
JPAC's Christmas Gift
(From the Janesville Messenger, 11-18-07)
Laurel Canan, who writes a monthly column about the arts in this newspaper, is the executive director of the Janesville Performing Arts Center.
I have known Laurel for several years. When we get together and start brainstorming ideas, scary things happen.
For instance, before JPAC opened in 2004, Laurel and I were talking about what would be an appropriate opening night performance at the center. The next thing I knew, I was writing a play called “Janesville In Stages,” and we were busy trying to coordinate well over a hundred local actors, singers and musicians into a cohesive performance. When Laurel recently saw that event being rebroadcast on JATV-12, she called me to say she still couldn’t figure out how we pulled that off.
So last year, a similar brainstorming scene occurred in her office, and the result is that we are putting together another unique showcase for local talent on the JPAC stage.
On Tuesday evening, December 4, live radio broadcasting returns to the auditorium for the first time in decades. JPAC will be presenting “A Christmas Carol” on the stage for a live audience, while it is being broadcast over the airwaves on WCLO. In just about every way possible, we are trying to give this a 1940’s, old-time radio feel. Even the commercials will be read live from the stage. More than one person has compared this to “A Prairie Home Companion,” the wonderful weekly radio program broadcast live on public radio from Minneapolis.
The show will be JPAC’s Christmas gift to the community. The $5 admission we are charging goes entirely to the Good Samaritan Fund, which benefits the Salvation Army and ECHO. In addition, WCLO’s sponsorship revenue will also be donated. Theirs will benefit SpotLight on Kids, the children’s theater company in Janesville.
The script we’re using as the basis for this production has a strong pedigree. Citizen Kane himself, Orson Welles, initially produced it for radio in 1939. The role of Scrooge in that production was played by the incomparable Lionel Barrymore.
Technically, I am the director of this production, but that’s essentially just a title since we have assembled some of the finest acting talent in the area. If you frequent Rock County theater productions, you’ll recognize the names. To name just a few: Michael Chase, Colleen Burns, George Kiskunas, Ken Regez, Dave and Kathy Bitter, Ron Brown, Dennis Vechinsky.
Once word spread that we were planning to do this play, so many people wanted in that I didn’t have enough roles to give out. I had planned on taking a speaking role myself, but I ended up giving up them all out to involve as many people as possible. (Actually, I did leave myself a single four-word line performing the indispensable role of “Partygoer #2.”)
Even during our initial read-through of the script, I knew we were on to something special. If you would like to attend, call the JPAC ticket office at 608-758-0297. Or simply relax and enjoy the performance on WCLO that evening. If you miss it, the plan is for the play to be rebroadcast on the morning of Christmas Eve, and made available as a podcast on the WCLO web site.
Wish us luck the next couple of weeks as we iron out the technical issues, work on our timing, and make final preparations. We hope that you will enjoy our Christmas gift.
Laurel Canan, who writes a monthly column about the arts in this newspaper, is the executive director of the Janesville Performing Arts Center.
I have known Laurel for several years. When we get together and start brainstorming ideas, scary things happen.
For instance, before JPAC opened in 2004, Laurel and I were talking about what would be an appropriate opening night performance at the center. The next thing I knew, I was writing a play called “Janesville In Stages,” and we were busy trying to coordinate well over a hundred local actors, singers and musicians into a cohesive performance. When Laurel recently saw that event being rebroadcast on JATV-12, she called me to say she still couldn’t figure out how we pulled that off.
So last year, a similar brainstorming scene occurred in her office, and the result is that we are putting together another unique showcase for local talent on the JPAC stage.
On Tuesday evening, December 4, live radio broadcasting returns to the auditorium for the first time in decades. JPAC will be presenting “A Christmas Carol” on the stage for a live audience, while it is being broadcast over the airwaves on WCLO. In just about every way possible, we are trying to give this a 1940’s, old-time radio feel. Even the commercials will be read live from the stage. More than one person has compared this to “A Prairie Home Companion,” the wonderful weekly radio program broadcast live on public radio from Minneapolis.
The show will be JPAC’s Christmas gift to the community. The $5 admission we are charging goes entirely to the Good Samaritan Fund, which benefits the Salvation Army and ECHO. In addition, WCLO’s sponsorship revenue will also be donated. Theirs will benefit SpotLight on Kids, the children’s theater company in Janesville.
The script we’re using as the basis for this production has a strong pedigree. Citizen Kane himself, Orson Welles, initially produced it for radio in 1939. The role of Scrooge in that production was played by the incomparable Lionel Barrymore.
Technically, I am the director of this production, but that’s essentially just a title since we have assembled some of the finest acting talent in the area. If you frequent Rock County theater productions, you’ll recognize the names. To name just a few: Michael Chase, Colleen Burns, George Kiskunas, Ken Regez, Dave and Kathy Bitter, Ron Brown, Dennis Vechinsky.
Once word spread that we were planning to do this play, so many people wanted in that I didn’t have enough roles to give out. I had planned on taking a speaking role myself, but I ended up giving up them all out to involve as many people as possible. (Actually, I did leave myself a single four-word line performing the indispensable role of “Partygoer #2.”)
Even during our initial read-through of the script, I knew we were on to something special. If you would like to attend, call the JPAC ticket office at 608-758-0297. Or simply relax and enjoy the performance on WCLO that evening. If you miss it, the plan is for the play to be rebroadcast on the morning of Christmas Eve, and made available as a podcast on the WCLO web site.
Wish us luck the next couple of weeks as we iron out the technical issues, work on our timing, and make final preparations. We hope that you will enjoy our Christmas gift.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Whatever Happened To Class?
(From the Janesville Messenger, 11-4-07)
At the dry cleaners the other day, I was parked next to a pickup truck, one of those huge beasts that dwarfs all the other vehicles around it.
What I found astonishing, however, was not the pure size of this vehicle, but the message that was plastered on the cab’s back window for all followers to read. It was a parody of the “Harley-Davidson Motor Cycles” logo that said “Highly Dangerous Mother (expletive).” You can easily guess what the expletive was.
My first thought was to wonder if this vehicle gets driven to church, or to elementary school to pick up a first grader. My second thought was to wonder when obscenity laws were changed so that anyone could publicly display the F-word in letters larger than license plate numerals.
So whatever happened to dignity in America? Or class?
I realize that I’m going to make myself look like a prude or a snob in writing this column. Those who know me know I am anything but. I believe that off-color jokes or R-rated humor have a time and a place. The back of a vehicle driven on public roads isn’t one of them.
I’m glad my kids are older now, so I don’t have to explain to a 7-year-old what “Eats Chevys, S---ts Dodges” means. Or why Calvin from “Calvin and Hobbes” is urinating on a Bears helmet. Or why that’s the most profound thought some people can express.
Subtlety is a lost art. Coarseness rules. We’re so insistent on making whatever our point is, that we feel we need to slap someone across the face with it.
Rewinding back to my comment about going to church, it appears even church isn’t immune from inappropriate public sentiments. I went with my family to the Holy Hill Shrine near Hubertus recently, on a gorgeous day in which the fall colors made this beautiful place look even more amazing. The grounds were packed with people, most of whom showed the proper respect for a religious area. But not everyone was with the program, like the pair of women who looked like they were dressed for their next shift at the Sugar Shack. Then there was the young man wearing a shirt advertising Trojan condoms. Ironically, he was wearing this at a Catholic shrine. I also saw a guy in church wearing a Michael Vick jersey. I don’t think he was there to pray for Vick’s redemption.
Maybe people just don’t realize what’s appropriate and what’s not anymore. The definition of obscenity has been erased. The mass media has undeniably had a lot of influence in that respect.
When cable television first started airing edgier fare, it was no big deal. Like going to an R movie, you paid for the privilege. But now, tired of losing audience, free television and radio have decided to “catch up.” I always watched “NYPD Blue” but had to make sure my kids weren’t still awake at 9:55 because you could always count on the last scene involving entangled naked bodies. And just try to find a comedy where the jokes aren’t sexual in nature. The thinking seems to be, if it’s not dirty, it’s not funny. Ironically, you now have to get cable just to find programming that your children can watch.
In 1961, FCC chairman Newton Minow derided television as a “vast wasteland.” If he thought that then, what must he think now?
The biggest problem is that Hollywood doesn’t think anyone will watch a show that doesn’t have shock value, whether it’s in the humor or the violence. And it’s a shame.
When John Ratzenberger (who played Cliff on the classic comedy “Cheers”) appeared at the Greater Beloit Chamber of Commerce dinner earlier this year, I had an opportunity to speak with him about what has happened to television since that show went off the air. Ratzenberger made a very insightful comment. He said that today’s shows are being written by the first generation of writers brought up on television, not on literature. It made sense; inbreeding yields disastrous results.
All one can hope is that the pendulum will swing back at some point, and America will regain some dignity. Until then, the top story on your network newscasts will continue to be the latest Britney Spears sighting.
At the dry cleaners the other day, I was parked next to a pickup truck, one of those huge beasts that dwarfs all the other vehicles around it.
What I found astonishing, however, was not the pure size of this vehicle, but the message that was plastered on the cab’s back window for all followers to read. It was a parody of the “Harley-Davidson Motor Cycles” logo that said “Highly Dangerous Mother (expletive).” You can easily guess what the expletive was.
My first thought was to wonder if this vehicle gets driven to church, or to elementary school to pick up a first grader. My second thought was to wonder when obscenity laws were changed so that anyone could publicly display the F-word in letters larger than license plate numerals.
So whatever happened to dignity in America? Or class?
I realize that I’m going to make myself look like a prude or a snob in writing this column. Those who know me know I am anything but. I believe that off-color jokes or R-rated humor have a time and a place. The back of a vehicle driven on public roads isn’t one of them.
I’m glad my kids are older now, so I don’t have to explain to a 7-year-old what “Eats Chevys, S---ts Dodges” means. Or why Calvin from “Calvin and Hobbes” is urinating on a Bears helmet. Or why that’s the most profound thought some people can express.
Subtlety is a lost art. Coarseness rules. We’re so insistent on making whatever our point is, that we feel we need to slap someone across the face with it.
Rewinding back to my comment about going to church, it appears even church isn’t immune from inappropriate public sentiments. I went with my family to the Holy Hill Shrine near Hubertus recently, on a gorgeous day in which the fall colors made this beautiful place look even more amazing. The grounds were packed with people, most of whom showed the proper respect for a religious area. But not everyone was with the program, like the pair of women who looked like they were dressed for their next shift at the Sugar Shack. Then there was the young man wearing a shirt advertising Trojan condoms. Ironically, he was wearing this at a Catholic shrine. I also saw a guy in church wearing a Michael Vick jersey. I don’t think he was there to pray for Vick’s redemption.
Maybe people just don’t realize what’s appropriate and what’s not anymore. The definition of obscenity has been erased. The mass media has undeniably had a lot of influence in that respect.
When cable television first started airing edgier fare, it was no big deal. Like going to an R movie, you paid for the privilege. But now, tired of losing audience, free television and radio have decided to “catch up.” I always watched “NYPD Blue” but had to make sure my kids weren’t still awake at 9:55 because you could always count on the last scene involving entangled naked bodies. And just try to find a comedy where the jokes aren’t sexual in nature. The thinking seems to be, if it’s not dirty, it’s not funny. Ironically, you now have to get cable just to find programming that your children can watch.
In 1961, FCC chairman Newton Minow derided television as a “vast wasteland.” If he thought that then, what must he think now?
The biggest problem is that Hollywood doesn’t think anyone will watch a show that doesn’t have shock value, whether it’s in the humor or the violence. And it’s a shame.
When John Ratzenberger (who played Cliff on the classic comedy “Cheers”) appeared at the Greater Beloit Chamber of Commerce dinner earlier this year, I had an opportunity to speak with him about what has happened to television since that show went off the air. Ratzenberger made a very insightful comment. He said that today’s shows are being written by the first generation of writers brought up on television, not on literature. It made sense; inbreeding yields disastrous results.
All one can hope is that the pendulum will swing back at some point, and America will regain some dignity. Until then, the top story on your network newscasts will continue to be the latest Britney Spears sighting.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
I Was A Teenage Rock Painter
(From the Janesville Messenger, 10-21-07)
Milton High School, like many high schools, has a large rock in front of its building. This rock, “The Rock,” has for many years been a canvas for legalized graffiti. So it’s something akin to a rite of passage for an MHS student to paint The Rock.
Of course, back in 1976-80 when I attended MHS, I painted The Rock a few times. But in attempts to be more creative, my high school friends and I tried to do more than just boringly paint our class year on it.
Once, we actually tried to bury The Rock. Late one night, several of us went there with shovels and dug a hole next to The Rock. Our plan was to dig the hole, roll The Rock into the hole, cover it with dirt and then place a cross next to it. About a foot into the dig, we hit concrete. You see, The Rock is on a patch of grass in the MHS parking lot. Apparently, pavement was poured underneath and then the dirt was added. Undeterred, we rolled The Rock into the hole anyway, tried to cover it with the dirt we dug up and placed the cross next to it. The reaction from students Monday morning? A collective yawn. The Rock basically looked somewhat dirty and nobody knew what the cross meant. The change in The Rock’s height was hardly noticeable, even to those of us who had done the deed. But at least we proudly came away from our caper with a blurry photograph – which still exists – of the group posing with shovels in front of The Rock. Hopefully, the statute of limitations on destruction of public property has passed.
When burying The Rock didn’t quite have the shock value we desired, we hatched another plan – burning it. So again, under cover of darkness, a group of us went to The Rock, poured gasoline on it and ignited it. If anyone ever needs a prime example of how teenagers’ minds do not function properly, this is it. Fortunately, none of us got burned in this caper, which would have definitely qualified us for a Darwin Award for getting injured in an incredibly stupid manner. It’s almost comical to remember how we lit the match, tossed it on The Rock, and ran like crazed lunatics in every direction. In the end, however, The Rock burned for less than 30 seconds and unless you really looked for a scorch mark, no one on Monday morning could tell the difference.
So now with a daughter attending Milton High School, The Rock entered our dinnertime conversation. I had joked a few times with an old high school friend that we should go up and paint “Class of 80” on The Rock sometime, just for a lark. Well, the other three members of my family thought that was a great idea for us to do that evening.
Somehow, I had never envisioned painting The Rock as a family activity. But on the evening of October 6, it was just that. The plan was to spray a base coat of black on both sides of The Rock, and then paint my class number on the side facing High Street and my daughter’s facing the school. Well, according to plan, it was a typical Lyke family activity. My son was mad because the spray paint he had wouldn’t work. Both kids bickered about getting in each other’s way. And my daughter was unhappy that the flashlights didn’t provide enough light for her to see when she was attempting to paint her class number on her side. It certainly wasn’t like the old days.
As we were finishing up, a trio of students – including one wearing a Craig High School shirt – arrived to check out what we were doing. I certainly got the impression that they wanted to undo our handiwork later that night. I encouraged them to at least give it a day. When they saw my orange-on-black “Class of 80” proudly displayed, one boy revealed himself not to be an A student in math.
“Wow, that’s like 28 years ago,” he calculated. “What are you, dude, 46?”
Well, at least he can add 18 and 28.
Regardless, I was extremely pleased to drive by The Rock the following day and see “Class of 80” still proudly displayed for all to see. Unfortunately, the choice of colors on my daughter’s side of The Rock didn’t turn out so well, but she’s got until 2010 to take another shot at it.
As for me, maybe I’ll just wait another 27 years and see how I feel about it.
Milton High School, like many high schools, has a large rock in front of its building. This rock, “The Rock,” has for many years been a canvas for legalized graffiti. So it’s something akin to a rite of passage for an MHS student to paint The Rock.
Of course, back in 1976-80 when I attended MHS, I painted The Rock a few times. But in attempts to be more creative, my high school friends and I tried to do more than just boringly paint our class year on it.
Once, we actually tried to bury The Rock. Late one night, several of us went there with shovels and dug a hole next to The Rock. Our plan was to dig the hole, roll The Rock into the hole, cover it with dirt and then place a cross next to it. About a foot into the dig, we hit concrete. You see, The Rock is on a patch of grass in the MHS parking lot. Apparently, pavement was poured underneath and then the dirt was added. Undeterred, we rolled The Rock into the hole anyway, tried to cover it with the dirt we dug up and placed the cross next to it. The reaction from students Monday morning? A collective yawn. The Rock basically looked somewhat dirty and nobody knew what the cross meant. The change in The Rock’s height was hardly noticeable, even to those of us who had done the deed. But at least we proudly came away from our caper with a blurry photograph – which still exists – of the group posing with shovels in front of The Rock. Hopefully, the statute of limitations on destruction of public property has passed.
When burying The Rock didn’t quite have the shock value we desired, we hatched another plan – burning it. So again, under cover of darkness, a group of us went to The Rock, poured gasoline on it and ignited it. If anyone ever needs a prime example of how teenagers’ minds do not function properly, this is it. Fortunately, none of us got burned in this caper, which would have definitely qualified us for a Darwin Award for getting injured in an incredibly stupid manner. It’s almost comical to remember how we lit the match, tossed it on The Rock, and ran like crazed lunatics in every direction. In the end, however, The Rock burned for less than 30 seconds and unless you really looked for a scorch mark, no one on Monday morning could tell the difference.
So now with a daughter attending Milton High School, The Rock entered our dinnertime conversation. I had joked a few times with an old high school friend that we should go up and paint “Class of 80” on The Rock sometime, just for a lark. Well, the other three members of my family thought that was a great idea for us to do that evening.
Somehow, I had never envisioned painting The Rock as a family activity. But on the evening of October 6, it was just that. The plan was to spray a base coat of black on both sides of The Rock, and then paint my class number on the side facing High Street and my daughter’s facing the school. Well, according to plan, it was a typical Lyke family activity. My son was mad because the spray paint he had wouldn’t work. Both kids bickered about getting in each other’s way. And my daughter was unhappy that the flashlights didn’t provide enough light for her to see when she was attempting to paint her class number on her side. It certainly wasn’t like the old days.
As we were finishing up, a trio of students – including one wearing a Craig High School shirt – arrived to check out what we were doing. I certainly got the impression that they wanted to undo our handiwork later that night. I encouraged them to at least give it a day. When they saw my orange-on-black “Class of 80” proudly displayed, one boy revealed himself not to be an A student in math.
“Wow, that’s like 28 years ago,” he calculated. “What are you, dude, 46?”
Well, at least he can add 18 and 28.
Regardless, I was extremely pleased to drive by The Rock the following day and see “Class of 80” still proudly displayed for all to see. Unfortunately, the choice of colors on my daughter’s side of The Rock didn’t turn out so well, but she’s got until 2010 to take another shot at it.
As for me, maybe I’ll just wait another 27 years and see how I feel about it.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Don't Believe Everything You Read
(From the Janesville Messenger, 10-7-07)
During the week of September 11, I received a patriotic and much-forwarded e-mail entitled “Twin Towers.” It featured a pre-attack photo of the World Trade Center and an excerpt from Oliver North’s testimony in front of a Senate committee during the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings.
What does Oliver North have to do with the 9-11 attacks? Well, in this excerpt, North was questioned about a $60,000 home security system he had purchased. North responded that he was in fear of his life because a terrorist had threatened him and his family. He claimed this terrorist was the most evil man alive and he recommended the U.S. form a team of assassins to kill him. The terrorist’s name was Osama bin Laden. The Senator questioning him, who scoffed at North’s suggestion, was Al Gore.
It’s an interesting little excerpt. It would be even more interesting if any of it were true.
This is just the latest example of people believing anything they read in an e-mail, and then forwarding it to all of their friends. For people with an agenda – like the original author of this e-mail obviously had – the Internet must be a Godsend. Gossipers and rumormongers can now share with the entire world, not just their immediate circle of acquaintances.
If you have e-mail, you have likely received one or more of the following totally false chain e-mails:
· Forward this e-mail to 10 people, and Miller will send you free beer (or Microsoft will send you money).
· Unsuspecting travelers are being drugged and waking up in a bathtub full of ice with their kidneys removed.
· Dr. Pepper (or Pepsi) is printing the Pledge of Allegiance on their soda cans without the line “under God.”
· Don’t dial a certain area code, or thousands of dollars of charges will show up on your phone bill.
These e-mails are getting more and more annoying, although the kidney one inspired a very funny cartoon on YouTube called “Charlie The Unicorn.” But all of these frivolous e-mails could have been easily debunked by going to a website called Snopes.com. The site is devoted to tracking down Internet rumors and declaring them true or false.
A five-minute trip to Snopes revealed that the North story was flat-out bunk. In fact, North himself drafted a letter setting the record straight, once this e-mail started making the rounds and he started getting asked about it. It turns out that North never mentioned Osama bin Laden during his testimony, and Al Gore wasn’t even part of this Senate committee. North did mention an evil terrorist during his testimony, however. It was the Palestinian guerilla Abu Nidal, whom North offered to meet man-to-man on equal terms. So at least that gives a basis for how this Oliver Twisted story got started.
Even chain e-mails that are not mean-spirited or politically motivated suffer credibility issues. I’ve had the same group of jokes e-mailed to me several times, variously attributed to George Carlin, Steven Wright and Rodney Dangerfield. A friend recently sent me a very funny statement by British comedian John Cleese declaring America’s independence from Britain revoked. Just out of curiosity, I looked it up on Snopes. Did Cleese really write it? Nope.
It’s almost like a line from comedian Bob Saget’s old routine. He would say something ridiculous, then claim it was true by saying, “No, really. I read that. I wrote it down, and I read it.”
So now whenever I get one of these false e-mails that has been forwarded to a group of people, I reply to the whole group and include the link to Snopes.com that proves it false. This probably has embarrassed more than a few people, and hopefully, removed me from some group e-mail lists. But I consider it my duty to set things straight, so I am forming a group to try to stamp out these goofy e-mail forwards once and for all.
It’s called the National Educational Council for Truth In E-mail (NEC-TIE). Our slogan: “Choking on chain e-mail? Join NEC-TIE!”
Look us up on Snopes.
During the week of September 11, I received a patriotic and much-forwarded e-mail entitled “Twin Towers.” It featured a pre-attack photo of the World Trade Center and an excerpt from Oliver North’s testimony in front of a Senate committee during the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings.
What does Oliver North have to do with the 9-11 attacks? Well, in this excerpt, North was questioned about a $60,000 home security system he had purchased. North responded that he was in fear of his life because a terrorist had threatened him and his family. He claimed this terrorist was the most evil man alive and he recommended the U.S. form a team of assassins to kill him. The terrorist’s name was Osama bin Laden. The Senator questioning him, who scoffed at North’s suggestion, was Al Gore.
It’s an interesting little excerpt. It would be even more interesting if any of it were true.
This is just the latest example of people believing anything they read in an e-mail, and then forwarding it to all of their friends. For people with an agenda – like the original author of this e-mail obviously had – the Internet must be a Godsend. Gossipers and rumormongers can now share with the entire world, not just their immediate circle of acquaintances.
If you have e-mail, you have likely received one or more of the following totally false chain e-mails:
· Forward this e-mail to 10 people, and Miller will send you free beer (or Microsoft will send you money).
· Unsuspecting travelers are being drugged and waking up in a bathtub full of ice with their kidneys removed.
· Dr. Pepper (or Pepsi) is printing the Pledge of Allegiance on their soda cans without the line “under God.”
· Don’t dial a certain area code, or thousands of dollars of charges will show up on your phone bill.
These e-mails are getting more and more annoying, although the kidney one inspired a very funny cartoon on YouTube called “Charlie The Unicorn.” But all of these frivolous e-mails could have been easily debunked by going to a website called Snopes.com. The site is devoted to tracking down Internet rumors and declaring them true or false.
A five-minute trip to Snopes revealed that the North story was flat-out bunk. In fact, North himself drafted a letter setting the record straight, once this e-mail started making the rounds and he started getting asked about it. It turns out that North never mentioned Osama bin Laden during his testimony, and Al Gore wasn’t even part of this Senate committee. North did mention an evil terrorist during his testimony, however. It was the Palestinian guerilla Abu Nidal, whom North offered to meet man-to-man on equal terms. So at least that gives a basis for how this Oliver Twisted story got started.
Even chain e-mails that are not mean-spirited or politically motivated suffer credibility issues. I’ve had the same group of jokes e-mailed to me several times, variously attributed to George Carlin, Steven Wright and Rodney Dangerfield. A friend recently sent me a very funny statement by British comedian John Cleese declaring America’s independence from Britain revoked. Just out of curiosity, I looked it up on Snopes. Did Cleese really write it? Nope.
It’s almost like a line from comedian Bob Saget’s old routine. He would say something ridiculous, then claim it was true by saying, “No, really. I read that. I wrote it down, and I read it.”
So now whenever I get one of these false e-mails that has been forwarded to a group of people, I reply to the whole group and include the link to Snopes.com that proves it false. This probably has embarrassed more than a few people, and hopefully, removed me from some group e-mail lists. But I consider it my duty to set things straight, so I am forming a group to try to stamp out these goofy e-mail forwards once and for all.
It’s called the National Educational Council for Truth In E-mail (NEC-TIE). Our slogan: “Choking on chain e-mail? Join NEC-TIE!”
Look us up on Snopes.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Return of the "Short Attention Span" Column
(From the Janesville Messenger, 9-16-07)
When one idea for a column just won’t do, it’s time once again for a “short attention span” column....
- Thank you to everybody who commented on the September 2 column about my car accident. My purchase criteria changed dramatically when shopping for my replacement car. My new vehicle’s best feature? A crash test rating of 5 stars out of 5 possible from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. And yes, Janesville, it’s a General Motors car.
- Speaking of driving, we have passed another milestone in my family. My daughter is 15.5 years old, which means she now has her Class D drivers license instruction permit. Or in other words, her “temps.” Until this momentous day occurred, I’m not sure she had ever steered so much as a bumper car, so we were literally starting from square one. My first experience in the passengers seat featured death-defying, white-knuckled driving at 10 mph in an empty high school parking lot. Not that I was much better at her age, mind you, despite the advantage I had of a few years experience driving tractors on our farm. My dad was probably happy that the car in which he was teaching me – a 1972 Buick Centurion the length of a battleship – had automatic transmission, since I had a tendency to pop the tractor clutch and send unsuspecting bale stackers flying off hay wagons.
- News flash: Britney Spears gives an awful, embarrassing performance on the MTV Video Music Awards. News flash II: No one is surprised. This was a no-lose scenario for MTV. In the unlikely event that she puts on a terrific performance, they score big. In the likely event that it’s just another chapter in what’s become Hollywood’s biggest career flameout, they also score big. Think about it; when’s the last time you heard much of anything about MTV? The channel is passé, but they got big press for hosting this debacle. I could live a happy life never reading another word about or seeing another clip of Britney, but it would be premature to pronounce her career over. After all, Mike Tyson still gets boxing matches. There will always be an audience for freak shows.
- The National Football League season has started, and once again, I have joined a fantasy football league. For the uninitiated, a participant is the coach and general manager of his own football team, selecting real NFL players to be on his “fantasy” roster. You are matched up each week against another team and the winner of the “game” is the team whose players rack up the most points using a scoring system based on their statistics from the real games. It is a fun diversion, though it now means I have a lot of other players to cheer for on Sunday besides Brett Favre and the Packers. It almost makes you think some ingenious employee of the NFL came up with this idea, to make you even more hooked on the league. But let’s face it; fantasy leagues are basically made up of guys practicing accounting skills while pretending to be football coaches. The only reason fantasy football isn’t considered the sport of geeks is because it involves, um, football. And nothing related to football can be anything less than manly.
- As I write this column, six years ago today I was sitting in a quiet coffee shop in downtown Janesville, when a young woman I didn’t know came up to me to tell me the most ridiculous story. She said that airplanes had flown into both of the towers of the World Trade Center. I found it so incredible that despite being only a few blocks from my office, I called there to see what had really happened. I will never forget that day. We must never forget.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Now I Know How Crash Test Dummies Feel
(From the Janesville Messenger, 9-2-07)
The mid-life crisis is over.
Back in January, I wrote in this column about how I had satisfied the symptoms of my illness by purchasing an Audi A4 Quattro. Today, my beloved car resides in Audi Heaven, surrounded by cherubim and seraphim singing in German.
I write this from the perspective of someone who two days ago sat in his stopped car waiting patiently to turn left into his office parking lot, when another vehicle barreled into him from behind at 55 mph.
When I look at that last paragraph, I still can’t believe that it happened to me. And that I walked away from the wreckage. And that, save for a little bit of stiffness in my neck and a swollen lip, I am feeling no ill effects.
The trunk of my car is gone from the force of the impact. The seat I was sitting in ended up in the back seat. The front passenger side door was the only one that would even partially open to let me out.
Yet I am alive, and amazingly well. And I returned to work today, feeling somewhat guilty that I didn’t yesterday, the day after the accident.
The what-ifs in this scenario are mind-boggling. What if my car had been pushed into oncoming traffic? What if my car had ignited? It is not lost on me that I am an incredibly lucky guy.
The person whose car struck me did not fare as well as I. I know that the Jaws of Life were needed to get her out of her car, and that she needed to be transported via Medflight to a hospital in Madison. That is all I know about this person; I don’t know her name, don’t know how she’s doing, don’t know how to find out. I would like to know that she is doing fine.
Some people think I should be incredibly angry with her for ruining my car. But - and I must admit this surprises me - I am not. I harbor this person absolutely no ill will. She obviously didn’t want to get in an auto accident and win herself a helicopter ride. All I can think of are the times I was distracted behind the wheel, operating a cell phone, getting a CD for the stereo, or even typing an e-mail on my Blackberry. And I think there but for the grace of God go I.
Sometimes I think God sends you a wake-up call, and this one was mine. It woke me up to a lot of things, like attentive driving and the value of seat belts. But most importantly, it gave me something I had been lacking for a while – perspective.
Recently, I had been stressing a lot about different things. And it had been showing. My co-workers had noticed. My friends had noticed. My family had noticed. Now none of the things that were worrying me seem to matter in the least. I walked around today in a near state of giddiness.
I am not shedding tears over my car. Yeah, it was a great car. But cars are replaceable. Material things are just that – things – and you shouldn’t get attached to things. It was a lesson I should have learned when I went to New Orleans last year, helping the residents who lost nearly everything in Hurricane Katrina. But I guess I needed something more personal to make the lesson really sink in.
Amazing how sometimes it takes something so bad to make you feel so good.
The mid-life crisis is over.
Back in January, I wrote in this column about how I had satisfied the symptoms of my illness by purchasing an Audi A4 Quattro. Today, my beloved car resides in Audi Heaven, surrounded by cherubim and seraphim singing in German.
I write this from the perspective of someone who two days ago sat in his stopped car waiting patiently to turn left into his office parking lot, when another vehicle barreled into him from behind at 55 mph.
When I look at that last paragraph, I still can’t believe that it happened to me. And that I walked away from the wreckage. And that, save for a little bit of stiffness in my neck and a swollen lip, I am feeling no ill effects.
The trunk of my car is gone from the force of the impact. The seat I was sitting in ended up in the back seat. The front passenger side door was the only one that would even partially open to let me out.
Yet I am alive, and amazingly well. And I returned to work today, feeling somewhat guilty that I didn’t yesterday, the day after the accident.
The what-ifs in this scenario are mind-boggling. What if my car had been pushed into oncoming traffic? What if my car had ignited? It is not lost on me that I am an incredibly lucky guy.
The person whose car struck me did not fare as well as I. I know that the Jaws of Life were needed to get her out of her car, and that she needed to be transported via Medflight to a hospital in Madison. That is all I know about this person; I don’t know her name, don’t know how she’s doing, don’t know how to find out. I would like to know that she is doing fine.
Some people think I should be incredibly angry with her for ruining my car. But - and I must admit this surprises me - I am not. I harbor this person absolutely no ill will. She obviously didn’t want to get in an auto accident and win herself a helicopter ride. All I can think of are the times I was distracted behind the wheel, operating a cell phone, getting a CD for the stereo, or even typing an e-mail on my Blackberry. And I think there but for the grace of God go I.
Sometimes I think God sends you a wake-up call, and this one was mine. It woke me up to a lot of things, like attentive driving and the value of seat belts. But most importantly, it gave me something I had been lacking for a while – perspective.
Recently, I had been stressing a lot about different things. And it had been showing. My co-workers had noticed. My friends had noticed. My family had noticed. Now none of the things that were worrying me seem to matter in the least. I walked around today in a near state of giddiness.
I am not shedding tears over my car. Yeah, it was a great car. But cars are replaceable. Material things are just that – things – and you shouldn’t get attached to things. It was a lesson I should have learned when I went to New Orleans last year, helping the residents who lost nearly everything in Hurricane Katrina. But I guess I needed something more personal to make the lesson really sink in.
Amazing how sometimes it takes something so bad to make you feel so good.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Rocky Mountain High
(Here is the original version - the director's cut, if you will - of a column that was written for the 8-19-07 edition of The Janesville Messenger. A poorly edited version ran in that issue under my byline.)
For those of you who may be regular readers of this column, you may have noticed something missing for the past month and a half. Specifically, this column.
The events of the last couple of months – a death in my family and an unusually busy time at work – led to a total breakdown in my creative process. In other words, Writer’s Block. It must come as a shock to my friends, but I literally had nothing to say.
Fortunately – or maybe not, for my friends - I found the cure. It came in the form of a week’s stay in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Never before has my vacation been so well timed or so badly needed.
And it didn’t disappoint. For lovers of the great outdoors, RMNP is paradise. We took full advantage of it, hiking over 35 mountainous miles during the course of the week. An afternoon rafting trip on some river rapids was a high point. I’ll also never forget being greeted at the top of a mountain trail by a well-aimed July snowball thrown by my son. And when we weren’t hiking or venturing about, I even managed to read the new Harry Potter book.
Shaving? Ha! My razor sat lonely and unloved as my beard grew out, revealing enough white hair to rival Miracle the buffalo. And speaking of hoofed mammals, bighorn sheep, elk and mule deer were plentiful in the park. So were stores that sold elk jerky, buffalo jerky and various other types of jerky. Apparently, jerky is the state snack in Colorado because everyone is advertising it.
Important travel tip – if you are driving 1200 miles with two teenagers in your car, make sure you have a DVD player with you. The only time they stopped sniping at each other was when they were watching a movie.
Though I did all I could to leave Wisconsin behind for 10 days, it was impossible to do so because my dreaded Blackberry – which also serves as my cell phone – was there with us. My wife begged and pleaded with me not to bring it along. She knew I wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to check my work e-mail. Unfortunately, it was the only phone we own with a nationwide calling plan, so I felt we had no choice but to bring it in case of emergency – which did come, in the form of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. We wasted no time in dialing relatives and friends in the Twin Cities to check on their safety.
As usual, she was right; I peeked at my work e-mail on a daily basis. It was a good thing too, because by the end of the week, I was getting some nasty e-mails from people wondering why I hadn’t responded to their earlier inquiries. As a courtesy, I had set my auto-responder to reply with my vacation message only once to each person who sent me an e-mail. Unfortunately, by the end of my vacation, people had forgotten that I was gone and started wondering why I was ignoring them. Of course, in the old days, someone would have just picked up the phone and called my office, but we are now squarely in the impersonal electronic communication era. So from a trail overlooking a mountain lake, I was tap-tapping my tiny keyboard explaining to someone in Louisiana that I was 1200 miles from the office.
But even that reminder of what was waiting for me back home couldn’t replace the pure joy of being able to just get away from it all. When I hear of people that don’t take vacations – and I’m amazed how many people don’t - frankly, I don’t know how they can survive. My father, a farmer, was that way. He took one day of vacation a year, to spend the day betting on the ponies at Arlington Park in Chicago. The other 364 days, he milked cows twice a day, drove tractors, shoveled manure. The only real vacation he and my mother had in 37 years of marriage was their honeymoon.
Maybe it’s all in what you’re used to, but I think that for pure mental health reasons, every human needs a peaceful yearly respite of some kind, even if it doesn’t involve a long trip.
For those of you who may be regular readers of this column, you may have noticed something missing for the past month and a half. Specifically, this column.
The events of the last couple of months – a death in my family and an unusually busy time at work – led to a total breakdown in my creative process. In other words, Writer’s Block. It must come as a shock to my friends, but I literally had nothing to say.
Fortunately – or maybe not, for my friends - I found the cure. It came in the form of a week’s stay in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Never before has my vacation been so well timed or so badly needed.
And it didn’t disappoint. For lovers of the great outdoors, RMNP is paradise. We took full advantage of it, hiking over 35 mountainous miles during the course of the week. An afternoon rafting trip on some river rapids was a high point. I’ll also never forget being greeted at the top of a mountain trail by a well-aimed July snowball thrown by my son. And when we weren’t hiking or venturing about, I even managed to read the new Harry Potter book.
Shaving? Ha! My razor sat lonely and unloved as my beard grew out, revealing enough white hair to rival Miracle the buffalo. And speaking of hoofed mammals, bighorn sheep, elk and mule deer were plentiful in the park. So were stores that sold elk jerky, buffalo jerky and various other types of jerky. Apparently, jerky is the state snack in Colorado because everyone is advertising it.
Important travel tip – if you are driving 1200 miles with two teenagers in your car, make sure you have a DVD player with you. The only time they stopped sniping at each other was when they were watching a movie.
Though I did all I could to leave Wisconsin behind for 10 days, it was impossible to do so because my dreaded Blackberry – which also serves as my cell phone – was there with us. My wife begged and pleaded with me not to bring it along. She knew I wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to check my work e-mail. Unfortunately, it was the only phone we own with a nationwide calling plan, so I felt we had no choice but to bring it in case of emergency – which did come, in the form of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. We wasted no time in dialing relatives and friends in the Twin Cities to check on their safety.
As usual, she was right; I peeked at my work e-mail on a daily basis. It was a good thing too, because by the end of the week, I was getting some nasty e-mails from people wondering why I hadn’t responded to their earlier inquiries. As a courtesy, I had set my auto-responder to reply with my vacation message only once to each person who sent me an e-mail. Unfortunately, by the end of my vacation, people had forgotten that I was gone and started wondering why I was ignoring them. Of course, in the old days, someone would have just picked up the phone and called my office, but we are now squarely in the impersonal electronic communication era. So from a trail overlooking a mountain lake, I was tap-tapping my tiny keyboard explaining to someone in Louisiana that I was 1200 miles from the office.
But even that reminder of what was waiting for me back home couldn’t replace the pure joy of being able to just get away from it all. When I hear of people that don’t take vacations – and I’m amazed how many people don’t - frankly, I don’t know how they can survive. My father, a farmer, was that way. He took one day of vacation a year, to spend the day betting on the ponies at Arlington Park in Chicago. The other 364 days, he milked cows twice a day, drove tractors, shoveled manure. The only real vacation he and my mother had in 37 years of marriage was their honeymoon.
Maybe it’s all in what you’re used to, but I think that for pure mental health reasons, every human needs a peaceful yearly respite of some kind, even if it doesn’t involve a long trip.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Does Every Relationship Have Defining Moments?
(From the Janesville Messenger, 7-15-07)
If you’re a regular reader of this space, you’ll recall that my Father’s Day column a few weeks ago was devoted to my father-in-law, Loren Risse, whose health was declining as he fought mesothelioma, an incurable lung cancer.
Nine days after that column appeared, Loren lost the battle. At about the time that the presses will be printing this newspaper, I will be attending his memorial service. In fact, Father’s Day was really his last “good” day. His six children were all there with him and he still had some mobility, still had an appetite, still was able to carry on lucid conversation. The deterioration after that was rapid; it was like he willed himself to hang on as long as he could until his whole family was able to be with him one last time.
It sounds strange to say, but his death was a relief. He had been in a lot of pain for many months. During his last couple of days, his only movement of any kind was to grimace, despite being on enough morphine to choke a horse. Within minutes after he died, his facial muscles contracted to form what appeared to be a smile. I don’t think that was a coincidence.
Up to this point, I had been fortunate to avoid dealing with death in my immediate family, with one brutal exception - my father in 1985. In an eerie coincidence, my father died when I was 23 years and 9 months old – the exact amount of time that my wife had been a part of my life when her father died.
When my dad died, I was filled with anger. Angry that the doctors couldn’t save him, angry that he wouldn’t see my post-college life come together, angry that he died before my wedding, angry that he would never meet his future grandchildren, angry that my older siblings got to have him 10 years more than I did.
My immediate reaction to this one wasn’t anger; it was regret. Could I have been a better son-in-law?
Loren and I had very little in common, aside from his daughter being my wife. He loved hunting and fishing, while hunting doesn’t appeal to me and I’ve fished maybe a handful of times. Our political views were diametrically opposed. He was extremely talented with his hands, building and carving. I’m lucky when I can hammer a nail properly. Our disparity in interests didn’t lead to a great deal of deep conversation. Could I, should I, have tried to reach out more?
Maybe it’s too much to expect, that every relationship we have contain some deep defining moment or moments. Perhaps that’s the stuff of Hollywood. Maybe in the long run, it’s enough that you shared laughs over a meal or a game of dominoes, were there to help when the other one needed you, and knew how much respect was in each other’s heart.
If you’re a regular reader of this space, you’ll recall that my Father’s Day column a few weeks ago was devoted to my father-in-law, Loren Risse, whose health was declining as he fought mesothelioma, an incurable lung cancer.
Nine days after that column appeared, Loren lost the battle. At about the time that the presses will be printing this newspaper, I will be attending his memorial service. In fact, Father’s Day was really his last “good” day. His six children were all there with him and he still had some mobility, still had an appetite, still was able to carry on lucid conversation. The deterioration after that was rapid; it was like he willed himself to hang on as long as he could until his whole family was able to be with him one last time.
It sounds strange to say, but his death was a relief. He had been in a lot of pain for many months. During his last couple of days, his only movement of any kind was to grimace, despite being on enough morphine to choke a horse. Within minutes after he died, his facial muscles contracted to form what appeared to be a smile. I don’t think that was a coincidence.
Up to this point, I had been fortunate to avoid dealing with death in my immediate family, with one brutal exception - my father in 1985. In an eerie coincidence, my father died when I was 23 years and 9 months old – the exact amount of time that my wife had been a part of my life when her father died.
When my dad died, I was filled with anger. Angry that the doctors couldn’t save him, angry that he wouldn’t see my post-college life come together, angry that he died before my wedding, angry that he would never meet his future grandchildren, angry that my older siblings got to have him 10 years more than I did.
My immediate reaction to this one wasn’t anger; it was regret. Could I have been a better son-in-law?
Loren and I had very little in common, aside from his daughter being my wife. He loved hunting and fishing, while hunting doesn’t appeal to me and I’ve fished maybe a handful of times. Our political views were diametrically opposed. He was extremely talented with his hands, building and carving. I’m lucky when I can hammer a nail properly. Our disparity in interests didn’t lead to a great deal of deep conversation. Could I, should I, have tried to reach out more?
Maybe it’s too much to expect, that every relationship we have contain some deep defining moment or moments. Perhaps that’s the stuff of Hollywood. Maybe in the long run, it’s enough that you shared laughs over a meal or a game of dominoes, were there to help when the other one needed you, and knew how much respect was in each other’s heart.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
A Tribute To A Dad
(From the Janesville Messenger, 6-17-07)
Today’s column won’t delve into my usual topics of business, politics, the community, or slice-of-life observations.
Today’s column is about a man.
My father-in-law, Loren J. Risse, is a carpenter. He’s 80 now, having retired several years ago after a lifetime working for Milwaukee County, but his work never stopped. He is not the type to sit still. His post-“retirement” years have been spent working on a variety of carpentry projects, including working with Habitat for Humanity and carving birds.
Loren’s work has shaped his life. And he has used it to touch others’ lives. He built the house his children grew up in. He built his son’s house. He built his daughter’s house. He extensively remodeled another son’s house. He did several projects in our house.
Retirement did not dim Loren’s skills. Even though he got so good at carving that his work was of equal or better quality than carvings sold for hundreds of dollars, he always did his birds for gifts, never for money. Our living room is adorned with his work; a loon, a chickadee, a cardinal and an owl are daily reminders of his talent.
It comes as no surprise that Loren has always been strong in his Christian faith. Carpenters with a passion for serving others tend to stick together.
A devoted husband, a supportive father of six, Loren is the quiet, hard-working everyman that perfectly fits the profile of an American patriarch. He is the epitome of the work ethic and the devotion to family that you might expect of someone raised during the Depression. But he also has taken time to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Since retiring, he and his wife of 52 years have taken several trips around the world, seeing things that he probably never dreamed he would see while growing up on farms in rural Iowa and Upper Michigan.
Last year, when we were remodeling our dining room, Loren custom built a corner china cabinet for us. It was the first time I had noticed age having any kind of an effect on him. While he was working on it, he kept experiencing shortness of breath. Never had he been huffing and puffing like this. He commented that he felt like he had aged 10 years in a couple of months.
Little did we know at the time that our china cabinet would be his last major carpentry project. He was soon diagnosed with mesothelioma, an incurable cancer of the lining of the lung. The only cause of this form of cancer is exposure to asbestos, which he and other workers unwittingly threw around like hay bales in the 1950s.
Loren has a silent way about him, but he is a fighter. There was never a doubt that he would take this on with every means available to him. He quietly accepted the horrible side effects that came along with the chemotherapy and experimental drugs meant to keep the cancer in check.
It has been hard to see this seemingly ageless dynamo get whittled down so quickly. We had hoped to have Loren over to our house for Father’s Day, to see how we finished the kitchen and dining room project of which his cabinet is the centerpiece. Instead, we will be going to his home, as he is no longer well enough to travel.
This Father’s Day, more than any one previous, Loren will know in no uncertain terms just how much his family loves and appreciates him. Of course, he has always known it, but it probably never has been expressed as emphatically as it will be this weekend.
I encourage each of you not to wait to let your father know just how much they have meant to your life. If you need a reason, let this weekend’s holiday be it.
Today’s column won’t delve into my usual topics of business, politics, the community, or slice-of-life observations.
Today’s column is about a man.
My father-in-law, Loren J. Risse, is a carpenter. He’s 80 now, having retired several years ago after a lifetime working for Milwaukee County, but his work never stopped. He is not the type to sit still. His post-“retirement” years have been spent working on a variety of carpentry projects, including working with Habitat for Humanity and carving birds.
Loren’s work has shaped his life. And he has used it to touch others’ lives. He built the house his children grew up in. He built his son’s house. He built his daughter’s house. He extensively remodeled another son’s house. He did several projects in our house.
Retirement did not dim Loren’s skills. Even though he got so good at carving that his work was of equal or better quality than carvings sold for hundreds of dollars, he always did his birds for gifts, never for money. Our living room is adorned with his work; a loon, a chickadee, a cardinal and an owl are daily reminders of his talent.
It comes as no surprise that Loren has always been strong in his Christian faith. Carpenters with a passion for serving others tend to stick together.
A devoted husband, a supportive father of six, Loren is the quiet, hard-working everyman that perfectly fits the profile of an American patriarch. He is the epitome of the work ethic and the devotion to family that you might expect of someone raised during the Depression. But he also has taken time to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Since retiring, he and his wife of 52 years have taken several trips around the world, seeing things that he probably never dreamed he would see while growing up on farms in rural Iowa and Upper Michigan.
Last year, when we were remodeling our dining room, Loren custom built a corner china cabinet for us. It was the first time I had noticed age having any kind of an effect on him. While he was working on it, he kept experiencing shortness of breath. Never had he been huffing and puffing like this. He commented that he felt like he had aged 10 years in a couple of months.
Little did we know at the time that our china cabinet would be his last major carpentry project. He was soon diagnosed with mesothelioma, an incurable cancer of the lining of the lung. The only cause of this form of cancer is exposure to asbestos, which he and other workers unwittingly threw around like hay bales in the 1950s.
Loren has a silent way about him, but he is a fighter. There was never a doubt that he would take this on with every means available to him. He quietly accepted the horrible side effects that came along with the chemotherapy and experimental drugs meant to keep the cancer in check.
It has been hard to see this seemingly ageless dynamo get whittled down so quickly. We had hoped to have Loren over to our house for Father’s Day, to see how we finished the kitchen and dining room project of which his cabinet is the centerpiece. Instead, we will be going to his home, as he is no longer well enough to travel.
This Father’s Day, more than any one previous, Loren will know in no uncertain terms just how much his family loves and appreciates him. Of course, he has always known it, but it probably never has been expressed as emphatically as it will be this weekend.
I encourage each of you not to wait to let your father know just how much they have meant to your life. If you need a reason, let this weekend’s holiday be it.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
When Your Favorite Songs Are Safe Enough For Show Choir
(From the Janesville Messenger, 6-3-07)
A couple of months ago, I wrote in this space about how my latest birthday jolted me into a midlife crisis. Well, I’m pleased to say that I’ve moved on. I’ve now accepted my advancing age and the fact that things that seem like they happened yesterday are in reality ancient history.
Exhibit A to this self-realization occurred recently when I peeled a day off the daily sports calendar on my desk. Besides featuring a “This Day in Sports History” event, the calendar also lists the day’s sports birthdays. My eyes popped out of my head when the calendar said that Brooks Robinson, one of my childhood baseball heroes, was turning 70. I had to do the math to believe it. As a kid, I had a poster of Brooks on my bedroom wall, making one of his patented diving stops at third base. I watched Baltimore Orioles games on TV just to see him play. He is 70??
To add insult to injury, Reggie Jackson, one of my personal baseball villains, turned 61 the same day. I used to go to Milwaukee County Stadium when the New York Yankees were in town just to boo Reggie. But now he’s gone from the AL to the AARP.
Exhibit B occurred the following week when I attended my daughter Corinne’s final show choir concert of the year at Milton High School. Corinne plays trombone in the band, which means she’s relegated to the back, behind the singers and dancers. However, for this final performance, some extra numbers were added. In one, the horn section of the band got to take the stage for its own choreographed performance. So what songs did the horn section perform for their big debut? A medley of songs by the band Journey.
For those of you not familiar with Journey – like my daughter – they were big stars in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, in the genre now known as “classic rock.” Hearing them as part of a show choir performance was as jolting as the first time I heard a David Bowie song redone as elevator music. Of course, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised since this choir has been doing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” all year long, and for good measure, added “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas to their final show. Also not surprising was Corinne’s admission after the show that she had never heard any of the original versions of the songs she was performing.
When we got home, I looked up some old Journey videos on YouTube so she could get the full experience. I struck gold, finding the priceless old MTV video of their song “Separate Ways.” It’s priceless because it is hysterically bad. The over-dramatized expressions are unintentionally funny, and their apparent stab at intended humor consisted of pretending to play non-existent instruments, reminiscent of the days of “air bands.”
As for “Carry On Wayward Son,” her first reaction to the video was “Those guys have a lot of hair.” Her second was that she liked her show choir’s version better.
It turned out that song was a hit when I was 15, the same age Corinne is now. After the shocking realization that the song was 30 years old – and that I had seen Kansas in concert 27 years ago – I began to put things into perspective. “Carry On Wayward Son” is as far-removed from her era as “For Sentimental Reasons” by Nat King Cole was to mine in 1977. I want my daughter to think classic rock songs from the ‘70s are cool, but at 15, did I think Dinah Shore songs from the ‘40s were cool? Um...no.
To put it even further in perspective, 30 years before I was 15, rock and roll did not even exist as a form of music. Heck, it wasn’t even a twinkle in Chuck Berry’s eye.
So I guess I should be happy that my daughter’s age group is paying attention to the songs I loved as a teenager, even if they are now considered safe enough for show choir. Maybe I’ll invite Reggie Jackson to their next event and offer to buy his senior citizen discount ticket.
A couple of months ago, I wrote in this space about how my latest birthday jolted me into a midlife crisis. Well, I’m pleased to say that I’ve moved on. I’ve now accepted my advancing age and the fact that things that seem like they happened yesterday are in reality ancient history.
Exhibit A to this self-realization occurred recently when I peeled a day off the daily sports calendar on my desk. Besides featuring a “This Day in Sports History” event, the calendar also lists the day’s sports birthdays. My eyes popped out of my head when the calendar said that Brooks Robinson, one of my childhood baseball heroes, was turning 70. I had to do the math to believe it. As a kid, I had a poster of Brooks on my bedroom wall, making one of his patented diving stops at third base. I watched Baltimore Orioles games on TV just to see him play. He is 70??
To add insult to injury, Reggie Jackson, one of my personal baseball villains, turned 61 the same day. I used to go to Milwaukee County Stadium when the New York Yankees were in town just to boo Reggie. But now he’s gone from the AL to the AARP.
Exhibit B occurred the following week when I attended my daughter Corinne’s final show choir concert of the year at Milton High School. Corinne plays trombone in the band, which means she’s relegated to the back, behind the singers and dancers. However, for this final performance, some extra numbers were added. In one, the horn section of the band got to take the stage for its own choreographed performance. So what songs did the horn section perform for their big debut? A medley of songs by the band Journey.
For those of you not familiar with Journey – like my daughter – they were big stars in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, in the genre now known as “classic rock.” Hearing them as part of a show choir performance was as jolting as the first time I heard a David Bowie song redone as elevator music. Of course, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised since this choir has been doing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” all year long, and for good measure, added “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas to their final show. Also not surprising was Corinne’s admission after the show that she had never heard any of the original versions of the songs she was performing.
When we got home, I looked up some old Journey videos on YouTube so she could get the full experience. I struck gold, finding the priceless old MTV video of their song “Separate Ways.” It’s priceless because it is hysterically bad. The over-dramatized expressions are unintentionally funny, and their apparent stab at intended humor consisted of pretending to play non-existent instruments, reminiscent of the days of “air bands.”
As for “Carry On Wayward Son,” her first reaction to the video was “Those guys have a lot of hair.” Her second was that she liked her show choir’s version better.
It turned out that song was a hit when I was 15, the same age Corinne is now. After the shocking realization that the song was 30 years old – and that I had seen Kansas in concert 27 years ago – I began to put things into perspective. “Carry On Wayward Son” is as far-removed from her era as “For Sentimental Reasons” by Nat King Cole was to mine in 1977. I want my daughter to think classic rock songs from the ‘70s are cool, but at 15, did I think Dinah Shore songs from the ‘40s were cool? Um...no.
To put it even further in perspective, 30 years before I was 15, rock and roll did not even exist as a form of music. Heck, it wasn’t even a twinkle in Chuck Berry’s eye.
So I guess I should be happy that my daughter’s age group is paying attention to the songs I loved as a teenager, even if they are now considered safe enough for show choir. Maybe I’ll invite Reggie Jackson to their next event and offer to buy his senior citizen discount ticket.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Curse of the Crackberry
(From the Janesville Messenger, 5-20-07)
Once upon a time, we lived in a world where we used a telephone to communicate with our business clients, we met face-to-face to sign contracts, and if we were on the road, we found a pay phone to call our office. We sent typed or handwritten letters and thank you notes through the U.S. Mail. And when we were in the office, we actually spoke to our co-workers.
Then technology stepped in, bringing us the fax machine, the personal computer, e-mail and the cellular phone. Communication has now gotten so impersonal, we e-mail our co-workers from twenty feet away.
When cell phones first started taking hold, I resisted getting one. I didn’t want to be bothered everywhere I went, especially in the car. That was my uninterrupted quiet time to listen to music, relax and think. Then the company I worked for supplied me a cell phone, and I took to it like Barry Bonds to steroids.
Fast forward a few years. The latest of these improvements to daily living is called the Blackberry. For those of you not familiar with this device, the best way I can describe it is that it is your business connected to your hip. This handheld gadget is your cell phone, your address book, your calendar, your e-mail program, your Internet browser, your photo album and your alarm clock, all in one.
I didn’t want a “Crackberry,” as these addictive devices are derisively called. But once again, my workplace forced my evolution by providing me one. It is a blessing. And a curse.
The Blackberry is a blessing because everything you need is at your fingertips. Waiting for an important e-mail? No problem. Need to know some background on a prospect? Don’t have a client’s phone number in your address book? Heck, you want to know the score of the Brewers game? You have the Internet in your hands. It is the truth, it is the way. The Blackberry is a gift from God.
Or maybe it’s from Satan. For example, participating in a golf outing recently, the Blackberry would not let me escape my office. It used to be that if someone wanted you and you weren’t available, it waited until tomorrow. Not any more. My Blackberry was constantly buzzing. I need this information now, the e-mails said, and you can’t hide, I know you’re receiving this. So while my foursome was teeing off, I’m typing messages on the microscopic keyboard, handling whatever I was told couldn’t wait. Or negotiating on my cell phone because “the client wants to wrap this up now.” The only good thing was that it took my mind off my pathetic golf game.
I can’t put the Blackberry down. I have to constantly check my messages. At times, I try to resist. I want to throw it into the deepest part of the Rock River, but I know I can’t. Even if I did, it would probably re-emerge from the depths to find me, like Jason in “Friday the 13th.”
Then suddenly I see it: the key to my escape, the way to restore my sanity, my last hope of inner peace. What is this beast’s Achilles heel?
It’s the “off” button.
Once upon a time, we lived in a world where we used a telephone to communicate with our business clients, we met face-to-face to sign contracts, and if we were on the road, we found a pay phone to call our office. We sent typed or handwritten letters and thank you notes through the U.S. Mail. And when we were in the office, we actually spoke to our co-workers.
Then technology stepped in, bringing us the fax machine, the personal computer, e-mail and the cellular phone. Communication has now gotten so impersonal, we e-mail our co-workers from twenty feet away.
When cell phones first started taking hold, I resisted getting one. I didn’t want to be bothered everywhere I went, especially in the car. That was my uninterrupted quiet time to listen to music, relax and think. Then the company I worked for supplied me a cell phone, and I took to it like Barry Bonds to steroids.
Fast forward a few years. The latest of these improvements to daily living is called the Blackberry. For those of you not familiar with this device, the best way I can describe it is that it is your business connected to your hip. This handheld gadget is your cell phone, your address book, your calendar, your e-mail program, your Internet browser, your photo album and your alarm clock, all in one.
I didn’t want a “Crackberry,” as these addictive devices are derisively called. But once again, my workplace forced my evolution by providing me one. It is a blessing. And a curse.
The Blackberry is a blessing because everything you need is at your fingertips. Waiting for an important e-mail? No problem. Need to know some background on a prospect? Don’t have a client’s phone number in your address book? Heck, you want to know the score of the Brewers game? You have the Internet in your hands. It is the truth, it is the way. The Blackberry is a gift from God.
Or maybe it’s from Satan. For example, participating in a golf outing recently, the Blackberry would not let me escape my office. It used to be that if someone wanted you and you weren’t available, it waited until tomorrow. Not any more. My Blackberry was constantly buzzing. I need this information now, the e-mails said, and you can’t hide, I know you’re receiving this. So while my foursome was teeing off, I’m typing messages on the microscopic keyboard, handling whatever I was told couldn’t wait. Or negotiating on my cell phone because “the client wants to wrap this up now.” The only good thing was that it took my mind off my pathetic golf game.
I can’t put the Blackberry down. I have to constantly check my messages. At times, I try to resist. I want to throw it into the deepest part of the Rock River, but I know I can’t. Even if I did, it would probably re-emerge from the depths to find me, like Jason in “Friday the 13th.”
Then suddenly I see it: the key to my escape, the way to restore my sanity, my last hope of inner peace. What is this beast’s Achilles heel?
It’s the “off” button.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
The Reel History of Janesville
(From the Janesville Messenger, 5-6-07)
Even though I was a communications major in college, my favorite classes – the ones that stick with me today – were my two history electives. So entranced was I by those two learning experiences that I gave serious thought to changing my major to history and becoming a teacher of that subject. Obviously, I decided not to, but my love of all things historical continues to this day. So when the Rock County Historical Society presented me with the opportunity to add narrative to the 1940 “Janesville In Reelife” film, it was a thrill.
“Janesville In Reelife” was shot by a traveling movie-making company, Reelife Films, toward the end of 1940. They went from town to town offering to shoot footage documenting everyday life in the community. Once a financial sponsor was found – in this case, it was The Janesville Daily Gazette – the crew got to work shooting everything from teen dances to Lions Club luncheons. The big attraction was that they shot with full color film, still a novelty in 1940.
The crew shot their footage over the course of a week, took a day to edit it, and then premiered the finished product the following evening at the Jeffris Theatre downtown, which stood next to the Monterey Hotel. What happened to the film after that remains a mystery. It disappeared until several years ago an old reel turned up on a shelf somewhere and found its way into the hands of the Historical Society.
Representatives of the Society showed it to local videographer Dave Haldiman, who said the film was fairly worn with damaged guide holes, bad splices that fell apart and minor dirt and scratches. He recommended they send the film to a lab to clean it up and transfer it to video.
Once that was done, the film was shown to the public at the Helen Jeffris Wood museum. While it was fascinating footage, it was missing something: sound. Plus, there were several scenes that were in need of identification. What exactly were we watching?
When I was approached about working on “Janesville In Reelife,” my resume already included two local history research projects. One was the opening night play for the Janesville Performing Arts Center, “Janesville In Stages,” a history of the Janesville arts scene and the JPAC building. The other was a “Jeopardy” parody for the School District of Janesville featuring questions about the district’s history and using district historical figures as the contestants. So getting the job to research, write text and add narration to “Janesville In Reelife” was like the third chapter in my “Janesville History” trilogy. It’s not exactly George Lucas’ “Star Wars” trilogy, but hey, Darth Vader didn’t live in Janesville.
Fortunately, the Historical Society had copies of newspaper articles from the week of the filming that detailed all the places and events that were being shot each day. That was a perfect place to start. Many scenes were easily identified, particularly footage shot inside General Motors and Parker Pen. Long stretches of factory footage were easy to narrate as there is no lack of documentation about those two corporations.
However, there was also about three minutes of footage inside the Rock River Woolen Mills. Information about that company was frightfully scarce; it’s like the great lost corporation of Janesville. The Woolen Mills was a major employer, at one time the fourth largest in town, but you would never know it even existed here, in the building along the Rock River that was used for years by Panoramic and now houses Rhyme Business Products and Schuler’s Furniture. Ultimately, what information I was able to glean came from personal anecdotes of former workers there.
Personal stories also played a role in identifying footage inside the old Janesville Gazette and WCLO building that was torn down in the late 1960’s. Gazette publisher Skip Bliss, whose father and uncle appear in the film, arranged for me to show the film to employees who had worked there in the 1940’s.
Overall, the film is in tremendous shape. The color scenes, thanks to the work of both the film lab and Dave Haldiman, look crisp and bright. Although a professional outfit produced this, it definitely has a ‘home movie’ quality to it. There is a lot of smiling and mugging for the camera, and what appears to be an obviously staged scene where fire trucks emerge from the fire station and speed through the old Corn Exchange. There is also priceless footage of a Janesville High School play at what is now JPAC, and a live WCLO broadcast celebrating the 20th anniversary of commercial radio (WCLO itself had only been around for 10 years).
The most poignant scene, incredible now in light of what happened since, is of Janesville’s National Guard unit posing in front of the Armory a day before being shipped to Fort Knox for training. These young men, grinning from ear to ear for the camera, were stationed in the Philippines after the United States entered World War II and became the “Janesville 99” on the infamous Bataan Death March. Only 35 of the 99 returned home from captivity at the hands of the Japanese. I’ve watched this footage a thousand times now and it still doesn’t fail to move me.
There are some things we still don’t know. For example, the film had no titles or credits of any kind, and several of the scenes listed in the newspaper as being filmed are missing. It seems obvious that this footage was not the finished product. The speculation is that this is a reel of outtakes or perhaps specific scenes that were edited onto a different reel for unknown reasons. Also, some of the scenes were shot in black and white, begging the question of whether all of this film was really part of the color Reelife project. I believe it may have been, based on the fact that the black and white scenes were listed in the newspaper articles as events that were being filmed by the Reelife crew.
Where is the actual finished movie that was shown at the Jeffris in December 1940? We may never know. But at least we have this, and it was an honor to be asked to put the finishing touches on what I believe to be a pretty important piece of Janesville history.
(Click here to hear my WCLO interview about "Janesville In Reelife")
Even though I was a communications major in college, my favorite classes – the ones that stick with me today – were my two history electives. So entranced was I by those two learning experiences that I gave serious thought to changing my major to history and becoming a teacher of that subject. Obviously, I decided not to, but my love of all things historical continues to this day. So when the Rock County Historical Society presented me with the opportunity to add narrative to the 1940 “Janesville In Reelife” film, it was a thrill.
“Janesville In Reelife” was shot by a traveling movie-making company, Reelife Films, toward the end of 1940. They went from town to town offering to shoot footage documenting everyday life in the community. Once a financial sponsor was found – in this case, it was The Janesville Daily Gazette – the crew got to work shooting everything from teen dances to Lions Club luncheons. The big attraction was that they shot with full color film, still a novelty in 1940.
The crew shot their footage over the course of a week, took a day to edit it, and then premiered the finished product the following evening at the Jeffris Theatre downtown, which stood next to the Monterey Hotel. What happened to the film after that remains a mystery. It disappeared until several years ago an old reel turned up on a shelf somewhere and found its way into the hands of the Historical Society.
Representatives of the Society showed it to local videographer Dave Haldiman, who said the film was fairly worn with damaged guide holes, bad splices that fell apart and minor dirt and scratches. He recommended they send the film to a lab to clean it up and transfer it to video.
Once that was done, the film was shown to the public at the Helen Jeffris Wood museum. While it was fascinating footage, it was missing something: sound. Plus, there were several scenes that were in need of identification. What exactly were we watching?
When I was approached about working on “Janesville In Reelife,” my resume already included two local history research projects. One was the opening night play for the Janesville Performing Arts Center, “Janesville In Stages,” a history of the Janesville arts scene and the JPAC building. The other was a “Jeopardy” parody for the School District of Janesville featuring questions about the district’s history and using district historical figures as the contestants. So getting the job to research, write text and add narration to “Janesville In Reelife” was like the third chapter in my “Janesville History” trilogy. It’s not exactly George Lucas’ “Star Wars” trilogy, but hey, Darth Vader didn’t live in Janesville.
Fortunately, the Historical Society had copies of newspaper articles from the week of the filming that detailed all the places and events that were being shot each day. That was a perfect place to start. Many scenes were easily identified, particularly footage shot inside General Motors and Parker Pen. Long stretches of factory footage were easy to narrate as there is no lack of documentation about those two corporations.
However, there was also about three minutes of footage inside the Rock River Woolen Mills. Information about that company was frightfully scarce; it’s like the great lost corporation of Janesville. The Woolen Mills was a major employer, at one time the fourth largest in town, but you would never know it even existed here, in the building along the Rock River that was used for years by Panoramic and now houses Rhyme Business Products and Schuler’s Furniture. Ultimately, what information I was able to glean came from personal anecdotes of former workers there.
Personal stories also played a role in identifying footage inside the old Janesville Gazette and WCLO building that was torn down in the late 1960’s. Gazette publisher Skip Bliss, whose father and uncle appear in the film, arranged for me to show the film to employees who had worked there in the 1940’s.
Overall, the film is in tremendous shape. The color scenes, thanks to the work of both the film lab and Dave Haldiman, look crisp and bright. Although a professional outfit produced this, it definitely has a ‘home movie’ quality to it. There is a lot of smiling and mugging for the camera, and what appears to be an obviously staged scene where fire trucks emerge from the fire station and speed through the old Corn Exchange. There is also priceless footage of a Janesville High School play at what is now JPAC, and a live WCLO broadcast celebrating the 20th anniversary of commercial radio (WCLO itself had only been around for 10 years).
The most poignant scene, incredible now in light of what happened since, is of Janesville’s National Guard unit posing in front of the Armory a day before being shipped to Fort Knox for training. These young men, grinning from ear to ear for the camera, were stationed in the Philippines after the United States entered World War II and became the “Janesville 99” on the infamous Bataan Death March. Only 35 of the 99 returned home from captivity at the hands of the Japanese. I’ve watched this footage a thousand times now and it still doesn’t fail to move me.
There are some things we still don’t know. For example, the film had no titles or credits of any kind, and several of the scenes listed in the newspaper as being filmed are missing. It seems obvious that this footage was not the finished product. The speculation is that this is a reel of outtakes or perhaps specific scenes that were edited onto a different reel for unknown reasons. Also, some of the scenes were shot in black and white, begging the question of whether all of this film was really part of the color Reelife project. I believe it may have been, based on the fact that the black and white scenes were listed in the newspaper articles as events that were being filmed by the Reelife crew.
Where is the actual finished movie that was shown at the Jeffris in December 1940? We may never know. But at least we have this, and it was an honor to be asked to put the finishing touches on what I believe to be a pretty important piece of Janesville history.
(Click here to hear my WCLO interview about "Janesville In Reelife")
Saturday, May 5, 2007
The "Short Attention Span" Column
(From the Janesville Messenger, 4-29-07)
- Okay, I hate to admit this, but as a baseball fan, I’m truly hoping something (like an indictment for perjury or tax evasion) prevents Barry Bonds from breaking Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record. If he surpasses Hank, it will be the most tainted baseball record ever, far more deserving of an asterisk than Roger Maris. Perhaps Major League Baseball should consider officially designating Josh Gibson’s 962 Negro League home runs as the official record, or the 868 that Sadaharu Oh belted in Japan.
- I was married on April 19, 1986. Since that time, my anniversary day and week has become the Week From Hell as far as national tragedies go. April 19, 1993: The Waco standoff. April 19, 1995: The Oklahoma City bombing. April 20, 1999: The Columbine massacre. Now we have the Virginia Tech student shooting to add to the list.
- On the plus side, April 19, 1987 was the first television appearance of “The Simpsons.”
- In the wake of Don Imus’ firing, I encourage you to go online and read a column by Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star. Whitlock, an outspoken black journalist who was let go by ESPN after criticizing the network a few years ago, points out that Imus’ idiotic comments pale in comparison to hip-hop lyrics and he also takes on Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for using the incident for their own gain.
- An ESPN writer, Dr. Tom Boyd, disputes Whitlock and all “haters of hip-hop culture” and says comparisons between Imus’ comments and rap lyrics are an apples-and-oranges comparison. For one thing, he states, rap songs aren’t “real.” Boyd also praises hip-hop for making words like “diss” and “bling” a part of mainstream conversation. Hey, Tom, where do you think Imus got the word “ho”?
- At a church service I attended last weekend, the pastor was talking about how to get people to believe in Jesus Christ’s resurrection. I have the perfect solution. Just send the story of Christ in a mass unsolicited e-mail. It appears that people will believe anything they read in an e-mail and then forward it to everyone they know. I wonder how many people are still waiting for their $50 check from Microsoft or their free beer from Miller.
- Write this Web address down on a post-it note and stick it on your computer: http://www.snopes.com/. Whenever you receive a mass e-mail, look it up on that site and it will tell you whether it's truth, fiction or hoax. Since I’ve started doing this, I’d say 98% of the mass e-mails I’ve received have been revealed to be garbage.
- The Beloit Education Association has joined the AFL-CIO labor union. Other Wisconsin teachers unions are expected to follow. What I hope this means - that teachers will work hard to force Madison to fix the state’s broken public education funding system. What I hope this doesn’t mean - that I will be continue to be greeted by union t-shirts, buttons and rhetoric when I attend parent-teacher conferences; and that unions will continue painting their local school boards as the bad guys when the board is faced with the thankless task of trying to balance the budget when expenses are outpacing revenues. I know many wonderful, dedicated teachers, but teachers’ union tactics of late are not presenting the profession in a positive light.
- For an example of how unions and management can successfully work together, look no further than the General Motors plant in Janesville. Their partnership is probably the biggest reason that the plant avoided being shut down by Detroit.
- An informal non-scientific poll reveals that I am the only person I know that fills in his own income tax forms by hand. I believe the appropriate mathematical formula would be Old Dog ≠ New Tricks.
Election Reflections
(From the Janesville Messenger, 4-15-07)
Some reflections from the April 3 election:
- If there was ever an election that cried out for a “None of the Above” line on the ballot, it was the nasty, disgusting and disheartening Supreme Court Justice race won by Annette Ziegler over Linda Clifford. Just when you thought the bar couldn’t get any lower, this one journeyed to the center of the earth. It had it all - charges of ethics violations, one candidate hiring a private investigator to dig up dirt on the other, and boatloads of special interest money spawning negative ads galore.
I found an interesting website for a group called the Committee Against Mediocrity in Politics (CAMP). They are advocating an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would place the aforementioned “None of The Above” line on all federal ballots, eliminating the need to vote for the lesser of two evils. I like their style. The group’s website is www.votenoneoftheabove.us.
Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, which is the de facto state chamber of commerce, has recently taken a more public political slant to the right. They have begun spending oodles of money backing conservative candidates like Ziegler, and were responsible for many of the nasty ads we saw in that race. On top of that, their recent “Business Day” event at Monona Terrace in Madison featured disgraced former House speaker – and potential Republican presidential candidate - Newt Gingrich as its keynote speaker. With a Democratic governor and Senate in place, now isn’t the time to go ultra-partisan if WMC wishes to get any traction in Madison trying to further the interests of the business community. Why make enemies of those you need to work with? By comparison, Forward Janesville doesn’t endorse candidates or have a political action committee, and the organization has succeeded in forming alliances with politicians on both sides of the aisle.
It sounds like the three victors in the Janesville School Board race are united in their vision to push Madison on school funding reform. Hopefully, they will succeed, as the system has been broken for several years and both the State Legislature and Governor Jim Doyle have avoided the issue like a slug at a salt farm. New school board member Tim Cullen knows this all too well. Cullen was part of a blue ribbon task force appointed by Doyle in 2003 to make recommendations on improving the state’s educational delivery system. Doyle and legislators have largely ignored that group’s final report, which included ways to fix public education funding. Several good ideas have been floating around Madison for years, including one co-authored by former Janesville Rep. Wayne Wood. It’s time for Madison to have some serious discussion about this and prevent the type of blood-letting that Janesville and many other districts had to experience this past year.
If you think Doyle’s inaction on school funding reform is somewhat surprising, given his obvious affection for the state teachers union (WEAC), think again. Rather than taking the difficult road and fixing the problem, he opted for the easy way out, using his partial veto power (the “Frankenstein veto”) to rewrite portions of the state budget bill in 2005 and place millions of dollars more into public education. Since his Democratic allies in the Legislature recently killed a bill to eliminate the Frankenstein veto, don’t be surprised if he chooses that route again.
Will 'Flatlander' Proposal Flat-Line?
(From the Janesville Messenger, 4-1-07)
Are you ready to be a Flatlander?
That’s the question we will all face on the November 2007 ballot when we vote on a referendum that would allow Rock County to secede from Wisconsin and officially become part of the state of Illinois.
This ballot question hasn’t gained a lot of momentum yet as it awaits action by the Rock County Board of Supervisors. Rock County is just one of three counties being courted by Illinois, along with Walworth County and Kenosha County. In the case of Walworth County, the move is a no-brainer; Lake Geneva is practically a Chicago suburb now. If the measures are passed, it would represent the first significant change to state boundaries since West Virginia split from Virginia during the Civil War.
It’s a smart move on the part of Illinois, as people = tax revenue and the three counties above would certainly provide that for the state. And there are certainly advantages for us to consider changing sides.
For one, it opens the door to extending Metra commuter rail service from Harvard to Janesville. For another, we’ll be escaping from a state that has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation. And we can proudly claim Abraham Lincoln as our native son.
If your driving ability is below average, you’ll fit right in as an Illinoisan. And won’t it be nice to be part of a state whose inhabitants aren’t viewed by the rest of the nation as beer-bellied sots wearing foam cheese wedges for hats?
Of course, there are downsides. We would probably see a tollbooth spring up on I-90 near Edgerton. And we would inherit the Bears and the Cubs (though unlike the Brewers, the Cubs have an occasional winning season). And we would inherit a Governor whose name is so unpronounceable that they just refer to him as Governor Rod.
We’ll have a learning curve for a lot of things, not just our new Governor’s name. For example, at what point in Illinois does it become “downstate”? Where do you go to purchase an I-Pass? How far in each direction does “Chicagoland” go? How fast can I cut across three lanes of traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway?
It’s a big decision, changing states. Unfortunately, I worry that the referendum will fail due to voters fretting over minute details like changing zip codes and area codes, or paying for new license plates. Though Governor Rod has floated an idea in the Illinois State Legislature that he would waive our first-year vehicle registration fees as an incentive for us to vote yes.
Of course, if the County Board doesn’t vote to put this referendum on the ballot, then this discussion is a moot point. I suggest you call your Rock County Board representative and let him or her know how you feel. And their response to you will probably be: “April Fool.”
Are you ready to be a Flatlander?
That’s the question we will all face on the November 2007 ballot when we vote on a referendum that would allow Rock County to secede from Wisconsin and officially become part of the state of Illinois.
This ballot question hasn’t gained a lot of momentum yet as it awaits action by the Rock County Board of Supervisors. Rock County is just one of three counties being courted by Illinois, along with Walworth County and Kenosha County. In the case of Walworth County, the move is a no-brainer; Lake Geneva is practically a Chicago suburb now. If the measures are passed, it would represent the first significant change to state boundaries since West Virginia split from Virginia during the Civil War.
It’s a smart move on the part of Illinois, as people = tax revenue and the three counties above would certainly provide that for the state. And there are certainly advantages for us to consider changing sides.
For one, it opens the door to extending Metra commuter rail service from Harvard to Janesville. For another, we’ll be escaping from a state that has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation. And we can proudly claim Abraham Lincoln as our native son.
If your driving ability is below average, you’ll fit right in as an Illinoisan. And won’t it be nice to be part of a state whose inhabitants aren’t viewed by the rest of the nation as beer-bellied sots wearing foam cheese wedges for hats?
Of course, there are downsides. We would probably see a tollbooth spring up on I-90 near Edgerton. And we would inherit the Bears and the Cubs (though unlike the Brewers, the Cubs have an occasional winning season). And we would inherit a Governor whose name is so unpronounceable that they just refer to him as Governor Rod.
We’ll have a learning curve for a lot of things, not just our new Governor’s name. For example, at what point in Illinois does it become “downstate”? Where do you go to purchase an I-Pass? How far in each direction does “Chicagoland” go? How fast can I cut across three lanes of traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway?
It’s a big decision, changing states. Unfortunately, I worry that the referendum will fail due to voters fretting over minute details like changing zip codes and area codes, or paying for new license plates. Though Governor Rod has floated an idea in the Illinois State Legislature that he would waive our first-year vehicle registration fees as an incentive for us to vote yes.
Of course, if the County Board doesn’t vote to put this referendum on the ballot, then this discussion is a moot point. I suggest you call your Rock County Board representative and let him or her know how you feel. And their response to you will probably be: “April Fool.”
Other Cities Can Learn From Beloit
(From the Janesville Messenger, 3-4-07)
I have a confession to make.
In the seven-plus years that I was a member of the Forward Janesville staff, I never attended the Greater Beloit Chamber of Commerce annual dinner.
Your first response to this revelation might very well be, “So what?” In retrospect, so everything. As the world of business and economic development adapts, it becomes more and more important that Janesville and its next-door neighbor work together for the benefit of Rock County as a whole.
In some ways, that is already the case. The Rock County Development Alliance, a cooperative effort of economic development professionals, primarily from Janesville and Beloit, jointly markets the area to businesses searching for space. Forward Janesville and the Greater Beloit Chamber of Commerce jointly took on fundraising efforts to build an engineering laboratory at UW-Rock County. That project, incidentally, was a tremendous success, with the new facility scheduled to open in the fall of this year.
The dinner was held in the center court of the Beloit Mall. Some may have thought that venue to be an odd choice, but upon arriving you were immediately convinced otherwise.
The last time I had been inside the Beloit Mall, it was an empty shell, almost like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie with its abandoned stores. Last Tuesday, it was a vibrant, classy, rejuvenated space where 600 people gathered to celebrate a community that has taken bold strides to reinvent itself.
Beloit’s pride was showing. The event went off without a hitch. Besides a keynote speech from John Ratzenberger, best known as Cliff from the classic television comedy “Cheers,” the Chamber presented awards to outstanding volunteers and businesses.
One of those honored was former board chair Dale Hjerpe of Alcoa Wheel Systems, who along with ABC Supply Company’s Carla Swain deserves a lot of the credit for taking a risk and committing to the UW-Rock County fundraising effort. That big step, acknowledged during in his acceptance speech, has likely set the stage for more cooperative efforts with Janesville.
To the surprise of almost no one in the room, the Large Business of the Year Award went to ABC Supply Company. Accepting the award was its CEO, Ken Hendricks, who added one more trophy to what must be a roomful of such accolades. Despite that, and the fact that Inc. Magazine recently honored him with a cover story as its Entrepreneur of the Year, Ken appeared sincerely moved by this particular award. And the crowd responded with adoration for a man responsible for much of Beloit’s rebirth.
It was exhilarating to see a community that has taken major steps forward and appears well on its way to new successes. People not only from Janesville but from other communities would do well to study Beloit’s example and to see a business community that is genuinely excited about its progress.
I have a confession to make.
In the seven-plus years that I was a member of the Forward Janesville staff, I never attended the Greater Beloit Chamber of Commerce annual dinner.
Your first response to this revelation might very well be, “So what?” In retrospect, so everything. As the world of business and economic development adapts, it becomes more and more important that Janesville and its next-door neighbor work together for the benefit of Rock County as a whole.
In some ways, that is already the case. The Rock County Development Alliance, a cooperative effort of economic development professionals, primarily from Janesville and Beloit, jointly markets the area to businesses searching for space. Forward Janesville and the Greater Beloit Chamber of Commerce jointly took on fundraising efforts to build an engineering laboratory at UW-Rock County. That project, incidentally, was a tremendous success, with the new facility scheduled to open in the fall of this year.
The dinner was held in the center court of the Beloit Mall. Some may have thought that venue to be an odd choice, but upon arriving you were immediately convinced otherwise.
The last time I had been inside the Beloit Mall, it was an empty shell, almost like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie with its abandoned stores. Last Tuesday, it was a vibrant, classy, rejuvenated space where 600 people gathered to celebrate a community that has taken bold strides to reinvent itself.
Beloit’s pride was showing. The event went off without a hitch. Besides a keynote speech from John Ratzenberger, best known as Cliff from the classic television comedy “Cheers,” the Chamber presented awards to outstanding volunteers and businesses.
One of those honored was former board chair Dale Hjerpe of Alcoa Wheel Systems, who along with ABC Supply Company’s Carla Swain deserves a lot of the credit for taking a risk and committing to the UW-Rock County fundraising effort. That big step, acknowledged during in his acceptance speech, has likely set the stage for more cooperative efforts with Janesville.
To the surprise of almost no one in the room, the Large Business of the Year Award went to ABC Supply Company. Accepting the award was its CEO, Ken Hendricks, who added one more trophy to what must be a roomful of such accolades. Despite that, and the fact that Inc. Magazine recently honored him with a cover story as its Entrepreneur of the Year, Ken appeared sincerely moved by this particular award. And the crowd responded with adoration for a man responsible for much of Beloit’s rebirth.
It was exhilarating to see a community that has taken major steps forward and appears well on its way to new successes. People not only from Janesville but from other communities would do well to study Beloit’s example and to see a business community that is genuinely excited about its progress.
Separation of Church and State - A Two-Way Street
(From the Janesville Messenger, 2-18-07)
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” – First Amendment of United States Constitution, 1789
"Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state'...is absolutely essential in a free society." - Thomas Jefferson, 1808
Recent local events have gotten me to thinking about the concept known as “the separation of church and state.”
It is clear the Founding Fathers did not want the USA to be like England, with a national church that held governmental power. Unfortunately, the wording of the amendment – and Jefferson’s later explanation of it - has led to two unintended consequences. First, that public officials – particularly schools – now run and hide from anything even remotely smelling of religious significance because of fear of lawsuits. Second, that conservative religious groups decry even the reasonable intentions of the measure and declare that America is becoming a godless, atheistic society.
Two recent school-related decisions bear out the first point. After the tragic murder of Janesville Parker High School student Nicole Lentz, it was suggested that the high school choir – in which Nicole participated – should perform at the funeral. The school said no. A prepared statement by Principal Dale Carlson stated, "The district believes it is not appropriate for a school choir to perform at a funeral service that includes a religious focus and is held in a church.” Fortunately, more than 50 individual choir members stepped forward and volunteered to sing. But it’s still sad that a sweet, touching gesture at a tragic time was initially refused.
Ironically, Jefferson himself regularly attended Sunday religious services held in the House of Representatives. Jefferson believed the services did not violate the Constitution because they were ecumenical and voluntary. In Parker’s case, the school could have offered choir members the option of declining participation. But still, what heartless slug would have sued the school?
Then there is Milton High School’s recent cancellation of an assembly featuring “The Power Team.” Rather than being lectured about making good life choices by guys in suits, the Power Team gets its message across to students with feats of strength, like ripping license plates in half. Schools in which they have appeared rave about the effectiveness of their program. However, this group also appears in churches and has a ministry that goes beyond their basic message of good choices and brings young people to God. Even though the Power Team’s web site clearly states that their school assemblies make no mention of religion, Milton’s lawyers told them not to take their chances. There went another missed opportunity for young people who need to hear positive messages.
When these things happen, you of course hear the backlash that the United States is going to Hell because we have eschewed our Christian beginnings. But have we? Witness this statement from 1797’s Treaty of Tripoli, approved by President John Adams and ratified unanimously by the Senate: "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..."
Recently, I received an e-mail from the American Center for Law and Justice, a group of lawyers that lobby for religious rights in government. They were frothing because one of the sections of a lobbying reform bill in Congress would force churches and religious organizations to register as lobbyists if they spend at least $50,000 per quarter (!) to influence legislation. Of course, this group was ranting that such a law would silence Christians and muzzle free speech. Have you ever heard of a lobbyist being silenced?
The ACLJ even stated that the new law would have “stopped Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from gathering support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” (If you want to legitimize your cause, always invoke the name of God or Martin Luther King.) To which one commentator astutely responded, King endured beatings and imprisonment in his civil rights crusade - do you think registering as a lobbyist and filing quarterly reports would have bothered him in the least?
Regardless, the ACLJ’s efforts succeeded in the U.S. Senate, where the provision was removed from the bill. But religious groups have long complained about being unjustly shut out of government, and politicians have not been amused. Witness this quote from Thomas Jefferson in 1800: “The clergy...believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes.”
We need to recognize that “freedom of religion” and “separation of church and state” are a two-way street. Going to either extreme doesn’t advance the cause of the nation, the church, or its people. My personal hope is that extremism recedes and reason wins the day.
Then maybe someday, a school choir will be allowed to sing at the funeral of a classmate.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” – First Amendment of United States Constitution, 1789
"Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state'...is absolutely essential in a free society." - Thomas Jefferson, 1808
Recent local events have gotten me to thinking about the concept known as “the separation of church and state.”
It is clear the Founding Fathers did not want the USA to be like England, with a national church that held governmental power. Unfortunately, the wording of the amendment – and Jefferson’s later explanation of it - has led to two unintended consequences. First, that public officials – particularly schools – now run and hide from anything even remotely smelling of religious significance because of fear of lawsuits. Second, that conservative religious groups decry even the reasonable intentions of the measure and declare that America is becoming a godless, atheistic society.
Two recent school-related decisions bear out the first point. After the tragic murder of Janesville Parker High School student Nicole Lentz, it was suggested that the high school choir – in which Nicole participated – should perform at the funeral. The school said no. A prepared statement by Principal Dale Carlson stated, "The district believes it is not appropriate for a school choir to perform at a funeral service that includes a religious focus and is held in a church.” Fortunately, more than 50 individual choir members stepped forward and volunteered to sing. But it’s still sad that a sweet, touching gesture at a tragic time was initially refused.
Ironically, Jefferson himself regularly attended Sunday religious services held in the House of Representatives. Jefferson believed the services did not violate the Constitution because they were ecumenical and voluntary. In Parker’s case, the school could have offered choir members the option of declining participation. But still, what heartless slug would have sued the school?
Then there is Milton High School’s recent cancellation of an assembly featuring “The Power Team.” Rather than being lectured about making good life choices by guys in suits, the Power Team gets its message across to students with feats of strength, like ripping license plates in half. Schools in which they have appeared rave about the effectiveness of their program. However, this group also appears in churches and has a ministry that goes beyond their basic message of good choices and brings young people to God. Even though the Power Team’s web site clearly states that their school assemblies make no mention of religion, Milton’s lawyers told them not to take their chances. There went another missed opportunity for young people who need to hear positive messages.
When these things happen, you of course hear the backlash that the United States is going to Hell because we have eschewed our Christian beginnings. But have we? Witness this statement from 1797’s Treaty of Tripoli, approved by President John Adams and ratified unanimously by the Senate: "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..."
Recently, I received an e-mail from the American Center for Law and Justice, a group of lawyers that lobby for religious rights in government. They were frothing because one of the sections of a lobbying reform bill in Congress would force churches and religious organizations to register as lobbyists if they spend at least $50,000 per quarter (!) to influence legislation. Of course, this group was ranting that such a law would silence Christians and muzzle free speech. Have you ever heard of a lobbyist being silenced?
The ACLJ even stated that the new law would have “stopped Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from gathering support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” (If you want to legitimize your cause, always invoke the name of God or Martin Luther King.) To which one commentator astutely responded, King endured beatings and imprisonment in his civil rights crusade - do you think registering as a lobbyist and filing quarterly reports would have bothered him in the least?
Regardless, the ACLJ’s efforts succeeded in the U.S. Senate, where the provision was removed from the bill. But religious groups have long complained about being unjustly shut out of government, and politicians have not been amused. Witness this quote from Thomas Jefferson in 1800: “The clergy...believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes.”
We need to recognize that “freedom of religion” and “separation of church and state” are a two-way street. Going to either extreme doesn’t advance the cause of the nation, the church, or its people. My personal hope is that extremism recedes and reason wins the day.
Then maybe someday, a school choir will be allowed to sing at the funeral of a classmate.
An Un-Bear-able Super Bowl
(From the Janesville Messenger, 2-4-07)
This weekend, of course, is the Super Bowl, which means that if you’re a Green Bay Packers fan, you’re prepared for the possibility of having Chicago Bears fans rub it in your face for a year.
What was surprising to me was that on January 26, the ten-year anniversary of the Packers’ Super Bowl victory passed with little fanfare in these parts. It was easy for me for remember. That victory, something I often wondered if I would ever see in my lifetime, occurred on my birthday. Talk about a once-in-a-lifetime gift.
My wife, who cares for football about as much as she cares for having her fingers slammed in a car door, simply cannot figure out why I’m drawn to this sport like a moth to a porch light. When the Wisconsin Badgers were playing in the first of their three Rose Bowls in 1994, we had a one-week-old son and a 23-month-old daughter. But I was absolutely useless as a parent for four hours, as I was insanely bouncing all over the living room watching this game on TV. I was like a congregant at a Catholic mass– I’d sit, then I’d stand, then I’d kneel, then I’d pray, then I’d....well, I guess they don’t curse at mass.
As time was running out, Wisconsin was clinging to a five-point lead but UCLA was driving down the field for the potential winning score. I was a wreck. My disgusted wife finally shouted at me, “Why is this game so important to you?” I recall responding, “Just once, I want them to win something that matters!” I don’t think that really answered her question. It probably also frustrates her that I can clearly remember details of these games, but can’t remember that she asked me to pick up milk at the grocery store on my way home.
The Packers’ Super Bowl victory remains my peak experience as a sports fan, and a recent viewing of that game’s highlight film was one of those satisfying father-son moments. For good measure, I even went back a generation and showed him my game film of the 1967 Ice Bowl, so that he could appreciate one of his grandfather’s Packer experiences.
So I can identify with Bears fans who – despite their poor taste in football allegiances – are justifiably excited about their team’s first championship opportunity in a generation. At one time, the very thought of a Bears Super Bowl championship would have repulsed me and put me in a bad mood for months. But now, I have to admit that it won’t really bother me if they win. If nothing else, it will make my 92-year-old uncle - a Bears season ticket holder since 1939 - a happy man.
I just thank God it’s not the Minnesota Vikings.
This weekend, of course, is the Super Bowl, which means that if you’re a Green Bay Packers fan, you’re prepared for the possibility of having Chicago Bears fans rub it in your face for a year.
What was surprising to me was that on January 26, the ten-year anniversary of the Packers’ Super Bowl victory passed with little fanfare in these parts. It was easy for me for remember. That victory, something I often wondered if I would ever see in my lifetime, occurred on my birthday. Talk about a once-in-a-lifetime gift.
My wife, who cares for football about as much as she cares for having her fingers slammed in a car door, simply cannot figure out why I’m drawn to this sport like a moth to a porch light. When the Wisconsin Badgers were playing in the first of their three Rose Bowls in 1994, we had a one-week-old son and a 23-month-old daughter. But I was absolutely useless as a parent for four hours, as I was insanely bouncing all over the living room watching this game on TV. I was like a congregant at a Catholic mass– I’d sit, then I’d stand, then I’d kneel, then I’d pray, then I’d....well, I guess they don’t curse at mass.
As time was running out, Wisconsin was clinging to a five-point lead but UCLA was driving down the field for the potential winning score. I was a wreck. My disgusted wife finally shouted at me, “Why is this game so important to you?” I recall responding, “Just once, I want them to win something that matters!” I don’t think that really answered her question. It probably also frustrates her that I can clearly remember details of these games, but can’t remember that she asked me to pick up milk at the grocery store on my way home.
The Packers’ Super Bowl victory remains my peak experience as a sports fan, and a recent viewing of that game’s highlight film was one of those satisfying father-son moments. For good measure, I even went back a generation and showed him my game film of the 1967 Ice Bowl, so that he could appreciate one of his grandfather’s Packer experiences.
So I can identify with Bears fans who – despite their poor taste in football allegiances – are justifiably excited about their team’s first championship opportunity in a generation. At one time, the very thought of a Bears Super Bowl championship would have repulsed me and put me in a bad mood for months. But now, I have to admit that it won’t really bother me if they win. If nothing else, it will make my 92-year-old uncle - a Bears season ticket holder since 1939 - a happy man.
I just thank God it’s not the Minnesota Vikings.
Stuck In The Middle of Life
(From the Janesville Messenger, 1-21-07)
Maybe it was the bifocals that triggered it. Or perhaps the upcoming birthday placing me solidly in Mid-Forties Land. Or the fact that I no longer recognize a single musical act listed in Billboard’s Top 10. But whatever started it, my name is Jim and I’m having a mid-life crisis.
I’m exhibiting two outward symptoms of the disease. One is that my hair has gotten distinctly longer, resembling the length and style I wore during my senior year of college. Still, that’s preferable to the ’do from my earlier years of college, when I sported a permed afro that would have made Billy Preston proud.
I’m not growing it out for purposes of a bad comb-over; fortunately, I’m showing no signs of hair loss. Unfortunately, the longer strands make my increasing number of gray hairs more obvious.
A couple of years ago, I grew a goatee only to discover that the hairs on my chinny chin chin were white. Coupled with my black moustache, I was the facial equivalent of a skunk. I combated that situation with a weekly application of Just For Men. When that routine got old, I opted for a more practical solution – a razor. At any rate, I’m now getting more comfortable with my lightening mane. There’s a part of me that thinks looking like Mark Twain in 20 years wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
The other symptom is my latest car. For 11 years, I have driven a 1995 Geo Prizm. It’s a little humbling driving a car whose make - not just the model, but the entire nameplate - went extinct a decade ago. It must be how AMC drivers felt in the 1990’s. Don’t get me wrong; the Prizm has been a great car - practical and reliable, paid-for and trouble-free. But when I spied a beautiful black Audi A4 Quattro at a used car lot at a price I could afford, I was smitten.
My wife, the sane half of the family, questioned the logic of exchanging a paid-off, reliable set of wheels for this toy packed with more options than a college football game. However, I was ready; I had done my research on everything about the A4, including gas mileage, reliability, recall history, and insurance costs. When my rational arguments didn’t immediately close the deal, I resorted to my desperation pitch: “I’m at the age where guys either get a sporty car or a young mistress. Let me have the car.” It may have been the biggest humor misfire since John Kerry’s botched joke last fall. When the dust settled, however, I still somehow managed to win her extremely tentative consent.
So you may see me drive by this spring with the moon roof open and my hair flying in the wind. Meanwhile, a barber and an unsold Prizm wait for my senses to return.
Maybe it was the bifocals that triggered it. Or perhaps the upcoming birthday placing me solidly in Mid-Forties Land. Or the fact that I no longer recognize a single musical act listed in Billboard’s Top 10. But whatever started it, my name is Jim and I’m having a mid-life crisis.
I’m exhibiting two outward symptoms of the disease. One is that my hair has gotten distinctly longer, resembling the length and style I wore during my senior year of college. Still, that’s preferable to the ’do from my earlier years of college, when I sported a permed afro that would have made Billy Preston proud.
I’m not growing it out for purposes of a bad comb-over; fortunately, I’m showing no signs of hair loss. Unfortunately, the longer strands make my increasing number of gray hairs more obvious.
A couple of years ago, I grew a goatee only to discover that the hairs on my chinny chin chin were white. Coupled with my black moustache, I was the facial equivalent of a skunk. I combated that situation with a weekly application of Just For Men. When that routine got old, I opted for a more practical solution – a razor. At any rate, I’m now getting more comfortable with my lightening mane. There’s a part of me that thinks looking like Mark Twain in 20 years wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
The other symptom is my latest car. For 11 years, I have driven a 1995 Geo Prizm. It’s a little humbling driving a car whose make - not just the model, but the entire nameplate - went extinct a decade ago. It must be how AMC drivers felt in the 1990’s. Don’t get me wrong; the Prizm has been a great car - practical and reliable, paid-for and trouble-free. But when I spied a beautiful black Audi A4 Quattro at a used car lot at a price I could afford, I was smitten.
My wife, the sane half of the family, questioned the logic of exchanging a paid-off, reliable set of wheels for this toy packed with more options than a college football game. However, I was ready; I had done my research on everything about the A4, including gas mileage, reliability, recall history, and insurance costs. When my rational arguments didn’t immediately close the deal, I resorted to my desperation pitch: “I’m at the age where guys either get a sporty car or a young mistress. Let me have the car.” It may have been the biggest humor misfire since John Kerry’s botched joke last fall. When the dust settled, however, I still somehow managed to win her extremely tentative consent.
So you may see me drive by this spring with the moon roof open and my hair flying in the wind. Meanwhile, a barber and an unsold Prizm wait for my senses to return.
Ghost of a College
(From the Janesville Messenger, 1-7-07)
When I walk out of my home each day, I see a ghost.
I live next to the remnants of Milton College, the oldest institution of higher learning in Wisconsin until ongoing financial problems sent it to academic afterlife in 1982.
It’s appropriate that I live where I do; I love history, and was thrilled that one of my Christmas gifts this year was a 1924-25 Milton College yearbook. This fascinating relic retrieved from an antique store offers a unique glimpse into the life of this small college.
Surprising was the number of female students, by my rough estimate nearly half of the student body. Remember, this was less than five years removed from women receiving the right to vote.
Women sported the shorter hairstyle of the day, some with “flapper” headbands and dresses. The vision-challenged men and women all share the same round, horn-rimmed spectacles.
Of course, all of the student activities are chronicled - everything from the school play (“Romeo and Juliet”) to athletics to clubs. The debate team took on weighty subjects like the new concept of unemployment insurance, whether the U.S. should join the League of Nations, and whether the “ultra-conservative” Supreme Court had too much power.
Participants in the oratorical contest didn’t shy from controversy, either. One delivered “A Plea for an Unbiased Opinion on Evolution.” But the speaker topics that are incomprehensibly shocking by today’s standards were “Negro – Menace or Problem” and “What of the Indians’ Musical Soul?”
For lighter reading, you can page over to the student-penned humor section, containing such gems as “Tis’ sweet to love/But oh! How bitter/to love a girl/and then not gitter.”
The original owner of this book had it signed by scores of her friends and fellow students. Reading the dedications is like peeking into her diary. Some smell of mischief - “Remember one nite on Taylor’s Point? Ah yes!” – while others are more heartfelt: “How I envy your artistic ability!”
Naturally, someone had to pay to publish the yearbook, so the later pages teem with dozens of advertisements. Of those sponsoring businesses, only a handful survive today, and only one - The Cozy Inn in downtown Janesville - is located in the same building.
It’s been a quarter-century since Milton College breathed its last, and with each passing year, the memories of the fine institution it had been get hazier, and the ghost I see gets fainter. But at its height, it was proud and strong with lofty goals, put in writing by President Alfred Whitford: “Milton College has for its ideal, sending out graduates who are not only clear thinkers capable of doing their part in the world’s work, but also men and women of character who put moral principles above mere intellectual achievements.”
Rest in peace, Milton College.
When I walk out of my home each day, I see a ghost.
I live next to the remnants of Milton College, the oldest institution of higher learning in Wisconsin until ongoing financial problems sent it to academic afterlife in 1982.
It’s appropriate that I live where I do; I love history, and was thrilled that one of my Christmas gifts this year was a 1924-25 Milton College yearbook. This fascinating relic retrieved from an antique store offers a unique glimpse into the life of this small college.
Surprising was the number of female students, by my rough estimate nearly half of the student body. Remember, this was less than five years removed from women receiving the right to vote.
Women sported the shorter hairstyle of the day, some with “flapper” headbands and dresses. The vision-challenged men and women all share the same round, horn-rimmed spectacles.
Of course, all of the student activities are chronicled - everything from the school play (“Romeo and Juliet”) to athletics to clubs. The debate team took on weighty subjects like the new concept of unemployment insurance, whether the U.S. should join the League of Nations, and whether the “ultra-conservative” Supreme Court had too much power.
Participants in the oratorical contest didn’t shy from controversy, either. One delivered “A Plea for an Unbiased Opinion on Evolution.” But the speaker topics that are incomprehensibly shocking by today’s standards were “Negro – Menace or Problem” and “What of the Indians’ Musical Soul?”
For lighter reading, you can page over to the student-penned humor section, containing such gems as “Tis’ sweet to love/But oh! How bitter/to love a girl/and then not gitter.”
The original owner of this book had it signed by scores of her friends and fellow students. Reading the dedications is like peeking into her diary. Some smell of mischief - “Remember one nite on Taylor’s Point? Ah yes!” – while others are more heartfelt: “How I envy your artistic ability!”
Naturally, someone had to pay to publish the yearbook, so the later pages teem with dozens of advertisements. Of those sponsoring businesses, only a handful survive today, and only one - The Cozy Inn in downtown Janesville - is located in the same building.
It’s been a quarter-century since Milton College breathed its last, and with each passing year, the memories of the fine institution it had been get hazier, and the ghost I see gets fainter. But at its height, it was proud and strong with lofty goals, put in writing by President Alfred Whitford: “Milton College has for its ideal, sending out graduates who are not only clear thinkers capable of doing their part in the world’s work, but also men and women of character who put moral principles above mere intellectual achievements.”
Rest in peace, Milton College.
The Best Christmas Gift: Memories
(From the Janesville Messenger, 12-17-06)
Some snapshots from days of Christmas passed....
LaPrairie Township, circa 1932: Robert Lyke Jr. happily opens his presents from Santa Claus on Christmas morning. Unbeknownst to him, his parents are on the verge of losing their farm and are too broke to buy Christmas gifts. His sister’s husband Floyd, employed at Fisher Body in Janesville, finds out about the situation and saves the day by buying toys for his young brother-in-law.
Janesville Township, circa 1968: A half-awake Jimmy Lyke is absolutely convinced he sees Santa Claus, complete with a bag slung over his shoulder, walk down the hallway past his bedroom door.
Since the Lyke household has no chimney or fireplace, Jimmy is told by his older brother Tom that Santa has a “skeleton key” that he uses to enter the homes of the chimney-challenged.
Gifts are not opened in the Lyke household on Christmas morning until after Robert Lyke Jr., the patriarch of the house, finishes his morning milking of the cows and comes into the house to eat his breakfast. Young Jimmy impatiently waits as his father eats very slowly.
Janesville Township, circa 1970: The Santa Claus theory begins to crumble for Jimmy Lyke when he awakes early Christmas morning and discovers his mother bringing a Carrom game “from Santa” into the living room. Jimmy also notices K-Mart price tags on the game packaging.
Janesville Township, 1973: Christmas Day is somewhat somber at the Lyke household, coming off the previous day’s burial of Jimmy’s uncle Amberg, whose middle name, ironically, was Emmanuel.
Janesville Township, 1984: Jim Lyke’s parents open a gift from their son and his girlfriend Linda. Beneath the wrapping is a framed engagement picture. This is how they announce their upcoming marriage to his family.
Woodstock, Illinois, 1991: Jim Lyke presents his wife Linda with the gift of a rocking chair. The chair will be used to rock the baby that’s due to be born in a month and a half.
Janesville/Milton, 1993: On a bitterly cold Christmas Day with temperatures below zero, Jim and Linda Lyke leave Mercy Hospital, taking home their one-day-old son Robert for the first time. Rob’s older sister Corinne is not told that it is Christmas Day; for her, Santa will come one day late when the entire family is home together.
Milton, 2004: Rather than opening gifts placed under the Christmas tree, Rob and Corinne Lyke are led on a treasure hunt around the house, using clues provided by Linda to go room to room until they find the ultimate present they had requested for years: airline tickets and reservations for Walt Disney World.
These are some of my Christmas memories. May this Christmas be special for each of you, and may you someday look back on it fondly with your own special memories.
Some snapshots from days of Christmas passed....
LaPrairie Township, circa 1932: Robert Lyke Jr. happily opens his presents from Santa Claus on Christmas morning. Unbeknownst to him, his parents are on the verge of losing their farm and are too broke to buy Christmas gifts. His sister’s husband Floyd, employed at Fisher Body in Janesville, finds out about the situation and saves the day by buying toys for his young brother-in-law.
Janesville Township, circa 1968: A half-awake Jimmy Lyke is absolutely convinced he sees Santa Claus, complete with a bag slung over his shoulder, walk down the hallway past his bedroom door.
Since the Lyke household has no chimney or fireplace, Jimmy is told by his older brother Tom that Santa has a “skeleton key” that he uses to enter the homes of the chimney-challenged.
Gifts are not opened in the Lyke household on Christmas morning until after Robert Lyke Jr., the patriarch of the house, finishes his morning milking of the cows and comes into the house to eat his breakfast. Young Jimmy impatiently waits as his father eats very slowly.
Janesville Township, circa 1970: The Santa Claus theory begins to crumble for Jimmy Lyke when he awakes early Christmas morning and discovers his mother bringing a Carrom game “from Santa” into the living room. Jimmy also notices K-Mart price tags on the game packaging.
Janesville Township, 1973: Christmas Day is somewhat somber at the Lyke household, coming off the previous day’s burial of Jimmy’s uncle Amberg, whose middle name, ironically, was Emmanuel.
Janesville Township, 1984: Jim Lyke’s parents open a gift from their son and his girlfriend Linda. Beneath the wrapping is a framed engagement picture. This is how they announce their upcoming marriage to his family.
Woodstock, Illinois, 1991: Jim Lyke presents his wife Linda with the gift of a rocking chair. The chair will be used to rock the baby that’s due to be born in a month and a half.
Janesville/Milton, 1993: On a bitterly cold Christmas Day with temperatures below zero, Jim and Linda Lyke leave Mercy Hospital, taking home their one-day-old son Robert for the first time. Rob’s older sister Corinne is not told that it is Christmas Day; for her, Santa will come one day late when the entire family is home together.
Milton, 2004: Rather than opening gifts placed under the Christmas tree, Rob and Corinne Lyke are led on a treasure hunt around the house, using clues provided by Linda to go room to room until they find the ultimate present they had requested for years: airline tickets and reservations for Walt Disney World.
These are some of my Christmas memories. May this Christmas be special for each of you, and may you someday look back on it fondly with your own special memories.
To Wii Or Not To Wii
(From the Janesville Messenger, 12-3-06)
For the past several months, all we’ve been hearing about in our household is the incredible new Nintendo Wii video game system that was coming out before Christmas.
My son couldn’t wait. He was caught up in the “I-have-to-have-it-as-soon-as-it’s-released” hysteria. Since there was no way I was going to stand in line outside a store for days or even hours, we signed up on the shopping web site Amazon.com to get e-mail notification of when it would be available for sale there. Every day for a month, I was asked the question, “Has Amazon e-mailed us yet?”
Finally, on November 16, the e-mail came. The Wii would be released for purchase on Amazon on the morning of November 19, Pacific Standard Time. There was no actual time on the notice, but I, like many others, assumed they meant midnight PST, or 2 a.m. Central time. The e-mail warned that for every unit they would have available, they had sent 100 notifications. So in effect, you had a one percent chance of getting one when they went on sale.
I had no intention of trying my luck. But when I was still awake late that night, I made the last-minute decision to stay up and see if I could give my son a giant surprise the next morning.
At 2 a.m., I sat in front of my computer screen, hitting the “refresh” button every minute like the people in the hatch on “Lost.” I was not alone. People from all over the world (literally) were posting messages on the site. “Has anyone got one yet?” “Are they for sure releasing it at midnight?” The only change to the screen was some opportunistic joker who bought one at a store and put his up for sale for triple the price.
I waited. And waited. The posted messages started to turn angry. People called Amazon’s customer service line and posted the conflicting answers they were given. “They said it will be any minute now.” “They don’t know when it will be.” “It won’t be available today.” There were accusations of strategically-posted lies to get others to leave the site and increase their chances.
A half hour passed, then an hour. The angry postings were mixed with amusing ones. My contribution was in the form of a haiku:
Was here at midnight
But Nintendo Wii was not
Curse you, Amazon
At 3:15 a.m., I gave up and went to bed. Four hours later when I awoke, they still weren’t for sale.
Finally at 10 a.m., Amazon released it and the available quantity sold out within a minute. I was not one of the lucky ones.
So we are Wii-less, for now. But I did score some points with my son. And that’s better than anything I could have purchased.
(Follow-up Note: We finally got one in late January.)
For the past several months, all we’ve been hearing about in our household is the incredible new Nintendo Wii video game system that was coming out before Christmas.
My son couldn’t wait. He was caught up in the “I-have-to-have-it-as-soon-as-it’s-released” hysteria. Since there was no way I was going to stand in line outside a store for days or even hours, we signed up on the shopping web site Amazon.com to get e-mail notification of when it would be available for sale there. Every day for a month, I was asked the question, “Has Amazon e-mailed us yet?”
Finally, on November 16, the e-mail came. The Wii would be released for purchase on Amazon on the morning of November 19, Pacific Standard Time. There was no actual time on the notice, but I, like many others, assumed they meant midnight PST, or 2 a.m. Central time. The e-mail warned that for every unit they would have available, they had sent 100 notifications. So in effect, you had a one percent chance of getting one when they went on sale.
I had no intention of trying my luck. But when I was still awake late that night, I made the last-minute decision to stay up and see if I could give my son a giant surprise the next morning.
At 2 a.m., I sat in front of my computer screen, hitting the “refresh” button every minute like the people in the hatch on “Lost.” I was not alone. People from all over the world (literally) were posting messages on the site. “Has anyone got one yet?” “Are they for sure releasing it at midnight?” The only change to the screen was some opportunistic joker who bought one at a store and put his up for sale for triple the price.
I waited. And waited. The posted messages started to turn angry. People called Amazon’s customer service line and posted the conflicting answers they were given. “They said it will be any minute now.” “They don’t know when it will be.” “It won’t be available today.” There were accusations of strategically-posted lies to get others to leave the site and increase their chances.
A half hour passed, then an hour. The angry postings were mixed with amusing ones. My contribution was in the form of a haiku:
Was here at midnight
But Nintendo Wii was not
Curse you, Amazon
At 3:15 a.m., I gave up and went to bed. Four hours later when I awoke, they still weren’t for sale.
Finally at 10 a.m., Amazon released it and the available quantity sold out within a minute. I was not one of the lucky ones.
So we are Wii-less, for now. But I did score some points with my son. And that’s better than anything I could have purchased.
(Follow-up Note: We finally got one in late January.)
The Joy of YouTube
(From the Janesville Messenger, 11-19-06)
(Please forgive me for being too lazy to create hyperlinks to the clips listed in the article.)
A great thing about America is that we can never find enough ways to enjoyably waste time. I now find myself completely hooked on the latest, an Internet site called YouTube.com.
For the uninitiated, YouTube is a site devoted to video sharing. You or I can post our homemade films on the site for the entire world to see, in hopes of garnering 15 minutes of fame.
Sounds like a simple idea, right? That simple idea has exploded in popularity, attracting millions every day to view the over 100 million videos on the site. And its two young creators recently sold that simple idea to Google for $1.65 billion. Not a bad return on investment, considering that the site was launched last year.
Its popularity is partly due to the fact that what started as a way for people to share their home videos has turned into a warehouse of pop culture.
For example, YouTube is a bonanza for music lovers. People have posted all the classic music videos I loved from the early days of MTV but hadn’t seen in 20 years. My kids now know who Huey Lewis and the News, Devo, the Talking Heads and the B-52’s are. They’ve also become big fans of Weird Al Yankovic’s parodies. Like classic jazz instead of the ‘80s? Here’s a video clip of Miles Davis and John Coltrane performing together in 1958.
But it’s not just about music. Betty Boop’s very first cartoon from 1930, when she was drawn with dog ears? It’s there. A clip of Brett Favre’s playoff-winning touchdown pass to Sterling Sharpe in 1994? Ditto. YouTube is also the place to see the infamous Bill Clinton interview with Chris Wallace, or Stephen Colbert’s hysterical roast of President Bush.
Many of the homemade videos are worth watching as well. Their quality ranges from someone pointing a camcorder at himself to professional-looking studio productions, like a hilarious re-cutting of the trailer to the Jack Nicholson movie, “The Shining,” making this horror classic appear to be a warm family drama. Another creative clip features TV broadcast audio from the Boston Red Sox’s infamous loss to the New York Mets in the 1986 World Series, while the accompanying video is a reenactment of the action on a vintage 1980’s Nintendo video baseball game.
YouTube is also the place where I first saw what happens when you drop a roll of Mentos into a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke. Try this at home, kids....outside.
Alas, many of the videos I enjoyed watching were posted in violation of copyright laws. Since the sale to Google, scores of these have been removed.
But while I still can, I’ll celebrate Thanksgiving by watching the classic “Turkey Drop” episode from “WKRP In Cincinnati.” I love this site.
(Please forgive me for being too lazy to create hyperlinks to the clips listed in the article.)
A great thing about America is that we can never find enough ways to enjoyably waste time. I now find myself completely hooked on the latest, an Internet site called YouTube.com.
For the uninitiated, YouTube is a site devoted to video sharing. You or I can post our homemade films on the site for the entire world to see, in hopes of garnering 15 minutes of fame.
Sounds like a simple idea, right? That simple idea has exploded in popularity, attracting millions every day to view the over 100 million videos on the site. And its two young creators recently sold that simple idea to Google for $1.65 billion. Not a bad return on investment, considering that the site was launched last year.
Its popularity is partly due to the fact that what started as a way for people to share their home videos has turned into a warehouse of pop culture.
For example, YouTube is a bonanza for music lovers. People have posted all the classic music videos I loved from the early days of MTV but hadn’t seen in 20 years. My kids now know who Huey Lewis and the News, Devo, the Talking Heads and the B-52’s are. They’ve also become big fans of Weird Al Yankovic’s parodies. Like classic jazz instead of the ‘80s? Here’s a video clip of Miles Davis and John Coltrane performing together in 1958.
But it’s not just about music. Betty Boop’s very first cartoon from 1930, when she was drawn with dog ears? It’s there. A clip of Brett Favre’s playoff-winning touchdown pass to Sterling Sharpe in 1994? Ditto. YouTube is also the place to see the infamous Bill Clinton interview with Chris Wallace, or Stephen Colbert’s hysterical roast of President Bush.
Many of the homemade videos are worth watching as well. Their quality ranges from someone pointing a camcorder at himself to professional-looking studio productions, like a hilarious re-cutting of the trailer to the Jack Nicholson movie, “The Shining,” making this horror classic appear to be a warm family drama. Another creative clip features TV broadcast audio from the Boston Red Sox’s infamous loss to the New York Mets in the 1986 World Series, while the accompanying video is a reenactment of the action on a vintage 1980’s Nintendo video baseball game.
YouTube is also the place where I first saw what happens when you drop a roll of Mentos into a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke. Try this at home, kids....outside.
Alas, many of the videos I enjoyed watching were posted in violation of copyright laws. Since the sale to Google, scores of these have been removed.
But while I still can, I’ll celebrate Thanksgiving by watching the classic “Turkey Drop” episode from “WKRP In Cincinnati.” I love this site.
Great Ideas DO Happen - The Edgerton Book Festival
(From the Janesville Messenger, 11-5-06)
(Click here to hear my interview with author Michael Perry on WCLO)
It’s nice to see great ideas meet with success. And the Edgerton Book Festival was both a great idea and a big success.
The festival coincided with the 100th anniversary of Sterling North’s birth. North, of course, put Edgerton on the literary map with the classic Rascal, and this event kicked off by paying tribute to his memory and his family, many of whom were in attendance.
An hour before the festivities were scheduled to begin at the Edgerton Performing Arts Center, a line had already formed at the door to hear Helen Thomas, the famed White House correspondent.
The perfect opening speaker for this event, Ms. Thomas was full of anecdotes and opinions gleaned from 60 years of reporting. Presidents have loved, loathed and feared her. Gerald Ford once famously remarked, “If God created the Earth in six days, He couldn't have rested on the seventh - He would have had to explain it to Helen Thomas.”
In person, she is surprisingly small of stature; she always seemed bigger than life at presidential press conferences. Now a columnist, Ms. Thomas is free to express her thoughts, which included harsh criticism of the current crop of Washington journalists that she believes refuse to ask the tough questions.
If I make it to 86 years old, I can only pray that I will be as sharp as Helen Thomas is at that age. Heck, I wish I were that sharp NOW. She needed a little assistance hearing questions from the audience, but that seemed to be her only concession to age. Besides a sharp brain – and tongue – she still obviously had her stamina, continuing to sign autographs in the lobby for what seemed to be an endless line of admirers two hours after completing her speech.
Besides Ms. Thomas, the day was a bonanza for book lovers as award-winning authors like David Maraniss and Kevin Henkes spoke. Local authors also had a chance to meet the public and show their wares.
Fortunately, my schedule allowed me to hear a presentation by one of my current personal favorites, Michael Perry. Perry is the author of the highly-recommended Population 485, a book about his personal experiences re-connecting with his home town as a volunteer firefighter. Though he admitted he would rather be home alone than doing public speaking, Perry was a very funny and engaging speaker. The passages he read from his books undoubtedly contributed to the brisk sales of his work in the lobby.
As much as I enjoyed the talks by Thomas and Perry, my favorite quote of the weekend may have come from festival organizer Norm Fjelstad, who said that he wanted to prove you could have a successful event in Wisconsin without alcohol. I hope the organizers of the Tallman Arts Festival are listening.
(Click here to hear my interview with author Michael Perry on WCLO)
It’s nice to see great ideas meet with success. And the Edgerton Book Festival was both a great idea and a big success.
The festival coincided with the 100th anniversary of Sterling North’s birth. North, of course, put Edgerton on the literary map with the classic Rascal, and this event kicked off by paying tribute to his memory and his family, many of whom were in attendance.
An hour before the festivities were scheduled to begin at the Edgerton Performing Arts Center, a line had already formed at the door to hear Helen Thomas, the famed White House correspondent.
The perfect opening speaker for this event, Ms. Thomas was full of anecdotes and opinions gleaned from 60 years of reporting. Presidents have loved, loathed and feared her. Gerald Ford once famously remarked, “If God created the Earth in six days, He couldn't have rested on the seventh - He would have had to explain it to Helen Thomas.”
In person, she is surprisingly small of stature; she always seemed bigger than life at presidential press conferences. Now a columnist, Ms. Thomas is free to express her thoughts, which included harsh criticism of the current crop of Washington journalists that she believes refuse to ask the tough questions.
If I make it to 86 years old, I can only pray that I will be as sharp as Helen Thomas is at that age. Heck, I wish I were that sharp NOW. She needed a little assistance hearing questions from the audience, but that seemed to be her only concession to age. Besides a sharp brain – and tongue – she still obviously had her stamina, continuing to sign autographs in the lobby for what seemed to be an endless line of admirers two hours after completing her speech.
Besides Ms. Thomas, the day was a bonanza for book lovers as award-winning authors like David Maraniss and Kevin Henkes spoke. Local authors also had a chance to meet the public and show their wares.
Fortunately, my schedule allowed me to hear a presentation by one of my current personal favorites, Michael Perry. Perry is the author of the highly-recommended Population 485, a book about his personal experiences re-connecting with his home town as a volunteer firefighter. Though he admitted he would rather be home alone than doing public speaking, Perry was a very funny and engaging speaker. The passages he read from his books undoubtedly contributed to the brisk sales of his work in the lobby.
As much as I enjoyed the talks by Thomas and Perry, my favorite quote of the weekend may have come from festival organizer Norm Fjelstad, who said that he wanted to prove you could have a successful event in Wisconsin without alcohol. I hope the organizers of the Tallman Arts Festival are listening.
Three Good Ideas That Won't Happen
(From the Janesville Messenger, 10-15-06)
“Good ideas are common - what's uncommon are people who'll work hard enough to bring them about.” – Ashleigh Brilliant
Here are three good ideas I would love to see come to fruition:
3) The Wisconsin Health Plan. With apologies to Mark Twain, health insurance costs are like the weather; everybody complains about it but nobody does anything about it. This bold bipartisan plan does. It would assure every Wisconsin resident of health care coverage, financed by assessing employers 3 – 12 percent of their payrolls (the sliding scale based on total wages) and employees a flat 2 percent. The assessments would also fund family Medicaid and BadgerCare, eliminating $1 billion from the state budget. The budget savings would be used to eliminate the personal property tax paid by businesses, double the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income workers, and eventually phase out the corporate income tax. (Before you cry foul on that last point, do some research about how doing just that completely turned Ireland’s economy around.)
Sound Utopian? Well, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau in Madison ran the numbers and says the plan will work.
This plan will be introduced as a bill after the new Legislature is seated in January. Unfortunately, several other legislators have introduced their own plans to fix health care so it may be a struggle finding enough support for one solution to the problem.
2) A New County Fairgrounds and Snappers Stadium on I-90. Two major location problems would be solved at once with this plan. Having the fairgrounds in the middle of a residential area is bad enough, but the Snappers’ need is even more pressing. Their low yearly attendance – less than half of their counterparts in Appleton and a half million fans less than their league’s leader – could eventually force the team to leave Rock County.
1) School Funding Reform. A few years ago, a very good plan for shifting school funding from property tax to the state sales tax was put forth by Rep. Wayne Wood (D) of Janesville and Rep. Mickey Lehman (R) of Hartford. The idea went about as far as a patent application for a folding waterbed.
Doubly disappointing is that in 2003, amid great fanfare, Governor Jim Doyle appointed a blue ribbon task force on educational excellence to study improvements to the system. That group came to the same conclusion: move school funding from the property tax to the sales tax. Their proposal would have lowered school taxes 43 percent by increasing the sales tax from 5 to 6 percent. This wasn’t what the Governor wanted to hear, so that group’s exhaustively researched document now collects dust somewhere in the state capitol.
In the meantime, badly-needed improvements to Janesville’s high schools hinge on whether residents believe they can afford the additional property taxes on their homes.
And how is that a good idea?
“Good ideas are common - what's uncommon are people who'll work hard enough to bring them about.” – Ashleigh Brilliant
Here are three good ideas I would love to see come to fruition:
3) The Wisconsin Health Plan. With apologies to Mark Twain, health insurance costs are like the weather; everybody complains about it but nobody does anything about it. This bold bipartisan plan does. It would assure every Wisconsin resident of health care coverage, financed by assessing employers 3 – 12 percent of their payrolls (the sliding scale based on total wages) and employees a flat 2 percent. The assessments would also fund family Medicaid and BadgerCare, eliminating $1 billion from the state budget. The budget savings would be used to eliminate the personal property tax paid by businesses, double the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income workers, and eventually phase out the corporate income tax. (Before you cry foul on that last point, do some research about how doing just that completely turned Ireland’s economy around.)
Sound Utopian? Well, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau in Madison ran the numbers and says the plan will work.
This plan will be introduced as a bill after the new Legislature is seated in January. Unfortunately, several other legislators have introduced their own plans to fix health care so it may be a struggle finding enough support for one solution to the problem.
2) A New County Fairgrounds and Snappers Stadium on I-90. Two major location problems would be solved at once with this plan. Having the fairgrounds in the middle of a residential area is bad enough, but the Snappers’ need is even more pressing. Their low yearly attendance – less than half of their counterparts in Appleton and a half million fans less than their league’s leader – could eventually force the team to leave Rock County.
1) School Funding Reform. A few years ago, a very good plan for shifting school funding from property tax to the state sales tax was put forth by Rep. Wayne Wood (D) of Janesville and Rep. Mickey Lehman (R) of Hartford. The idea went about as far as a patent application for a folding waterbed.
Doubly disappointing is that in 2003, amid great fanfare, Governor Jim Doyle appointed a blue ribbon task force on educational excellence to study improvements to the system. That group came to the same conclusion: move school funding from the property tax to the sales tax. Their proposal would have lowered school taxes 43 percent by increasing the sales tax from 5 to 6 percent. This wasn’t what the Governor wanted to hear, so that group’s exhaustively researched document now collects dust somewhere in the state capitol.
In the meantime, badly-needed improvements to Janesville’s high schools hinge on whether residents believe they can afford the additional property taxes on their homes.
And how is that a good idea?
A Week In The Katrina Aftermath
(From the Milton Courier, May 2006)
With apologies to Charles Dickens, it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.
There may be no better way to describe my experience as one of a team of 15 from Milton Seventh Day Baptist Church that traveled to suburban New Orleans as part of a disaster relief effort doing cleanup from Hurricane Katrina.
The week we spent in Chalmette, Louisiana was truly dichotomous in terms of the highs and lows we felt, the good and bad we saw. It was people who lost everything; it was people who gained perspective by helping. It was hard physical labor; it was less stress than a typical workweek. It was government in action; it was government inaction. It was intense happiness from bonding within the team; it was intense sadness and empathy for the residents. It was horrible devastation; it was hope for the future.
Eight months after Katrina struck, the New Orleans area is still a mess. It looks more like war-torn Baghdad than America. Entire residential neighborhoods sit abandoned, save for some trailers provided by FEMA that serve as temporary residences. Katrina didn’t discriminate; the smallest homes and the ritziest all bore the spray-painted marks of inspection teams searching their devastated interiors for bodies. Most businesses in Chalmette were still closed as well. Only a handful had re-opened, the majority of those within the last month.
When we entered the city in our van, we must have looked comical to passersby as we first witnessed the devastation in person, eyes as wide as silver dollars and mouths agape. It was Election Day in New Orleans, which made for some strange juxtaposition. At intersections where the stoplights still were not functional, residents handed out campaign literature amidst an ocean of campaign signs as thick as the debris piles that lined the streets.
We had one day to get acclimated prior to beginning our work. We spent that day touring the city. As one member of our group astutely put it, the first day we were shocked by the devastation; the second day, we were shocked by its magnitude. We drove for miles and miles, and the sights never changed. The same abandoned homes, boarded up businesses, decimated lawns. Very little besides the French Quarter, with a jazz and blues festival in full swing, seemed truly alive and unscathed by Katrina’s wrath.
There are about 27,000 homes in St. Bernard Parish, the county in which Chalmette sits. Of that number, only three were habitable after Katrina. The parish was under water for two weeks, in some cases up to 28 feet. About 85% of these people did not have flood insurance -- most were told they didn’t need it -- and so their homes continue to sit waterlogged, moldy and caked with mud.
Our group spent the week working on some of these houses, turning their insides into skeletal shells. Basically, our job was to remove everything inside – furniture, possessions, appliances, carpeting, mud, etc. – and then remove the drywall and ceilings, exposing all of the studs so that they could be treated for mold.
The physical work was a big adjustment for a group not used to heat and humidity and whose regular employment is generally non-manual labor. It could also be very emotional, tossing someone’s personal possessions onto a debris pile in front of their house. My personal low point was throwing out a destroyed school assignment called “The Day My Puppy Died” written by a little boy.
The week was full of little moments, snapshots that will stay in our collective memories. The hole in the roof of the first house we gutted, where the resident and his son – trapped in the attic by the flood – had to break out to be rescued. The house ripped intact from its foundation and deposited in the street four blocks away. The strangers who stopped to thank us for coming to help. The people we met from the other groups at our camp, volunteers from all over the nation, all with a similar purpose. Cody, the little boy living in a trailer next door, who visited us during our breaks and became our buddy, helping us cool off with freezer pops. The chicken that kept us company in the yard of the second house we worked on. The dead alligator in the debris pile next door to our work site. The neighbor Buddy, a true character who quoted lines from the movie “Blazing Saddles” and was kind enough to let us use the shade of his carport and his functioning restroom. Benny, the 80-year-old who received $4,100 from the insurance company to cover $65,000 worth of losses, but found some comfort in discovering one of his school yearbooks undamaged. Tom, a 76-year-old on a salvaged bicycle, who found his current predicament preferable to being “naked and crying” at birth. The laughs we shared. The tears we shared. The sense of accomplishment we shared.
In the end, the experience was extremely fulfilling. We left knowing that we had helped people who desperately needed help. And a true bond formed among the fifteen of us. It was very special, even though it took place in some of the worst circumstances imaginable in this country.
The question now is: what do we do with this experience? Our group discussed finding ways to bring relief to those affected by local “hurricanes,” minor in scope to Katrina but just as devastating to the people involved. We have already begun to put that resolve into action.
But the idea needs to go far beyond our group or our church. Even though we look at it as “showing God’s love in a practical way,” it’s not just a Baptist thing or a Christian thing. It’s something we all need to embrace -- volunteering your time, talents and efforts to help those around us suffering from their own disasters.
It’s about taking the worst of times, and transforming them into the best of times, for the betterment of all of us.
With apologies to Charles Dickens, it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.
There may be no better way to describe my experience as one of a team of 15 from Milton Seventh Day Baptist Church that traveled to suburban New Orleans as part of a disaster relief effort doing cleanup from Hurricane Katrina.
The week we spent in Chalmette, Louisiana was truly dichotomous in terms of the highs and lows we felt, the good and bad we saw. It was people who lost everything; it was people who gained perspective by helping. It was hard physical labor; it was less stress than a typical workweek. It was government in action; it was government inaction. It was intense happiness from bonding within the team; it was intense sadness and empathy for the residents. It was horrible devastation; it was hope for the future.
Eight months after Katrina struck, the New Orleans area is still a mess. It looks more like war-torn Baghdad than America. Entire residential neighborhoods sit abandoned, save for some trailers provided by FEMA that serve as temporary residences. Katrina didn’t discriminate; the smallest homes and the ritziest all bore the spray-painted marks of inspection teams searching their devastated interiors for bodies. Most businesses in Chalmette were still closed as well. Only a handful had re-opened, the majority of those within the last month.
When we entered the city in our van, we must have looked comical to passersby as we first witnessed the devastation in person, eyes as wide as silver dollars and mouths agape. It was Election Day in New Orleans, which made for some strange juxtaposition. At intersections where the stoplights still were not functional, residents handed out campaign literature amidst an ocean of campaign signs as thick as the debris piles that lined the streets.
We had one day to get acclimated prior to beginning our work. We spent that day touring the city. As one member of our group astutely put it, the first day we were shocked by the devastation; the second day, we were shocked by its magnitude. We drove for miles and miles, and the sights never changed. The same abandoned homes, boarded up businesses, decimated lawns. Very little besides the French Quarter, with a jazz and blues festival in full swing, seemed truly alive and unscathed by Katrina’s wrath.
There are about 27,000 homes in St. Bernard Parish, the county in which Chalmette sits. Of that number, only three were habitable after Katrina. The parish was under water for two weeks, in some cases up to 28 feet. About 85% of these people did not have flood insurance -- most were told they didn’t need it -- and so their homes continue to sit waterlogged, moldy and caked with mud.
Our group spent the week working on some of these houses, turning their insides into skeletal shells. Basically, our job was to remove everything inside – furniture, possessions, appliances, carpeting, mud, etc. – and then remove the drywall and ceilings, exposing all of the studs so that they could be treated for mold.
The physical work was a big adjustment for a group not used to heat and humidity and whose regular employment is generally non-manual labor. It could also be very emotional, tossing someone’s personal possessions onto a debris pile in front of their house. My personal low point was throwing out a destroyed school assignment called “The Day My Puppy Died” written by a little boy.
The week was full of little moments, snapshots that will stay in our collective memories. The hole in the roof of the first house we gutted, where the resident and his son – trapped in the attic by the flood – had to break out to be rescued. The house ripped intact from its foundation and deposited in the street four blocks away. The strangers who stopped to thank us for coming to help. The people we met from the other groups at our camp, volunteers from all over the nation, all with a similar purpose. Cody, the little boy living in a trailer next door, who visited us during our breaks and became our buddy, helping us cool off with freezer pops. The chicken that kept us company in the yard of the second house we worked on. The dead alligator in the debris pile next door to our work site. The neighbor Buddy, a true character who quoted lines from the movie “Blazing Saddles” and was kind enough to let us use the shade of his carport and his functioning restroom. Benny, the 80-year-old who received $4,100 from the insurance company to cover $65,000 worth of losses, but found some comfort in discovering one of his school yearbooks undamaged. Tom, a 76-year-old on a salvaged bicycle, who found his current predicament preferable to being “naked and crying” at birth. The laughs we shared. The tears we shared. The sense of accomplishment we shared.
In the end, the experience was extremely fulfilling. We left knowing that we had helped people who desperately needed help. And a true bond formed among the fifteen of us. It was very special, even though it took place in some of the worst circumstances imaginable in this country.
The question now is: what do we do with this experience? Our group discussed finding ways to bring relief to those affected by local “hurricanes,” minor in scope to Katrina but just as devastating to the people involved. We have already begun to put that resolve into action.
But the idea needs to go far beyond our group or our church. Even though we look at it as “showing God’s love in a practical way,” it’s not just a Baptist thing or a Christian thing. It’s something we all need to embrace -- volunteering your time, talents and efforts to help those around us suffering from their own disasters.
It’s about taking the worst of times, and transforming them into the best of times, for the betterment of all of us.
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