The Sing-A-Long "Sound Off" Musical!

(First published on GazetteXtra, 3-31-2010)

"The Sing-A-Long Sound of Music" was a big hit at JPAC a couple of months ago, but now, in the spirit of "Local Matters," we have something just as good - The Sing-A-Long "Sound Off" Musical!

Just fire up the karaoke version of Petula Clark's 1960's hit "Downtown" (link to it by clicking here) and substitute the lyrics below. And voila! You have your very own tribute to those lovable anonymous phone callers whose insightful comments we get to read twice a week in the Gazette.

“Sound Off”
(to the tune of “Downtown” by Petula Clark)

If you’ve got gripes
And want to take a few swipes
Well, you can always call
Sound Off

It’s totally free
You have no identity
When you reach out and call
Sound Off

If you’ve got an opinion but don’t want to take the credit
You’d like to make a comment but afraid you will regret it
How can you lose?

The Gazette will print it for you
Despite the fact that you may be an ignorant fool
Calling Sound Off, no one will know it’s you
Sound Off – it don’t matter if it’s true
Sound Off – it’s Coward’s Corner for you

If you’re at home
And need to bitch and to moan
Well, you can always call
Sound Off

If you’re a taxpayer
Who wants to have a mayor
Just pick up the phone
Sound Off

There’s no accountability for anything you tell us
You’ll think that you’re so smart and cool, the rest of us are jealous
How can you lose?

You want your voice to be heard
You’ll stay completely unknown while you’re flipping the bird
If you Sound Off – it’s there in black and white
Sound Off – Sunday and Wednesday night
Sound Off – doesn’t care if you are right

[Instrumental break]

And you’ll find other people there that share all your opinions
Maybe they’ll be so impressed, they’ll want to be your minions
Maybe I’m one...

So maybe I'll join you there
We can let out our frustrations, spew out all our cares
When we Sound Off - Things'll be great when we
Sound Off – It’s off our chest when we
Sound Off - Readers are waiting for you
Sound Off, Sound Off, Sound Off, Sound Off.....

Goodbye, Consolidated?

(First published on GazetteXtra, 4-9-2010)

And I’m never going back
To my old school
- Steely Dan

As a resident of the Milton School District, I have been watching the current budget-balancing discussions with great interest. One item that strikes a particular chord with me is the potential closing of Consolidated Elementary School.

Growing up on a farm in Janesville Township, Consolidated is where I spent the first six years of my school life. At the time I attended, the majority of the student population was “farm kids,” and the appearance of subdivisions was a fairly recent development. If you’ve been in that area of the county lately, you know that the farm kids are a small minority now. The fields where I once spent summers baling hay are now paved over with streets and dotted with homes, and the house where I grew up is no longer surrounded by a barn, silos, corn cribs and sheds.

It’s hard to believe that this four-classroom, K-3 school once housed students through eighth grade. But it did until the current Milton High School was built in 1964 and the old high school building became a junior high. Because of the timing of that, my family has the odd coincidence that each of my siblings and I finished Consolidated in a different grade. My sister Nancy attended through eighth, my brother Tom through seventh, and my sister Jan through sixth. While I was attending, the district decided to end sixth grade there and ship those students to Milton West, so my Consolidated education concluded after Grade 5. That created another odd situation where I ended up going to three schools in three years and four schools in five years (Consolidated, West, Milton Jr. High, Milton High) without any kind of change in my residence.

As my first school, Consolidated was the site of many of my first “a-ha” learning moments. I can clearly remember the way our teacher demonstrated the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound. He sent one lucky kid to the far end of the playground to pound on a metal pole with a baseball bat. Witnessing the delay between seeing the bat strike and hearing the noise made quite an impression on me.

As bad as my memory can be these days, I can easily recall the name of every teacher I had at Consolidated four decades ago – Mrs. Bottomley, Mrs. Huschka, Mrs. Wentzel, Mrs. Erdman, Mrs. Arndt and Mr. Socwell – along with many of the lessons I learned there.

So one would guess, with all of these fond memories, that I would be sad or upset that Consolidated sits on the chopping block. Well…yes and no. I can see both sides of the issue.

If there will really be the equivalent of four empty elementary classrooms in Milton while Consolidated’s four classrooms remain open, well, that’s something the school board needs to seriously look at while trying to close the budget gap. I understand the financial reality that may make it necessary to shutter the place, at least for now. The district’s other outlying elementary school, Harmony, was closed for a while but ended up reopening after massive growth by the city of Janesville into that area of the school district. It wouldn’t surprise me to see a similar situation down the road with Consolidated.

I know parents are concerned about losing their neighborhood school and subjecting their kids to long bus rides. I can relate. When my schooling shifted from Consolidated to Milton, I ended up spending two hours a day on the bus instead of five minutes. For a while, I was the first one picked up by the bus in the morning and the last one to be dropped off at night. I saw nearly every inch of the school district’s western half. I can tell you from experience that North River Road near the Four Mile Bridge is a long way from Milton.

In the end, I hope it’s possible to keep Consolidated open, but I would understand if the school board doesn’t feel that they can for 2010-11. Seeing it empty would be strange and somewhat sad, but no stranger than the major changes that have already occurred in the neighborhood.

Raw Milk and Pink Slime

(First published on GazetteXtra, 4-23-2010)

“Pink slime” doesn't sound very appetizing, does it?

Yet many of you reading this eat it every day when you have a hamburger.

I first heard about pink slime while listening to National Public Radio. “Pink slime” is the industry nickname for fatty slaughterhouse trimmings that at one time were not considered fit for human consumption. They were instead relegated to pet food and cooking oil.

For one thing, these trimmings were susceptible to contamination. But a few years ago, the beef industry came up with a wonderful idea. They could kill E.coli and salmonella by injecting the pink slime with ammonia. And gee, they could also make a few more pennies by salvaging this undesirable stuff. So over the last few years, more and more of the ground beef we eat – whether it's from a fast food restaurant, a grocery store or a school lunch service – has contained this ammonia-cleansed beef-like substance. Mmm, mmm, good!

I actually saw this ammonia treatment in action in a frightening documentary called “Food, Inc.” that aired on public television this week. The film is a must-see for anyone interested in knowing what really is going on with the food that we place on our table every night. Watching it gave me a new appreciation for my wife's insistence that we eat organic or locally grown as often as possible.

It also reminded me of how different things were at the dinner table when I was growing up on our farm. Much of what we ate was grown or raised.

We had no lack of red meat in the house. It was the result of a magical transformation. Whichever cow kicked Dad the most was sent away in the back of a truck, only to return to our chest freezer as a pile of white packages.

I've been asked, “Didn't you name your cows?” Trust me, my dad had a lot of names for the cows. If I printed any of them here, this blog would be gone faster than cheese puffs at Oprah's house.

At least I didn't get to see what actually happened to the cows when they went away to become dinner. Chickens were another matter.

I got to witness the entire process. First, Dad would hold the chicken down on a cement block and – boom – off went its head with a hatchet. It was a Midwestern farm version of the French Revolution. As a kid growing up with this reality, I didn't find that part of it gross. What I did find gross was when our dog Tippy would chew the severed heads.

I also learned at an early age about the saying,“running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” They really do. And it was a bizarre and comical sight to behold, especially when you're six years old.

It wasn't just meat that found its way from our farm to our table. We had a decent-sized garden, too. Mom grew everything from peas, beans and carrots to potatoes, tomatoes and sweet corn.

And of course, being dairy farmers, we drank the product we sold. It's funny that just this week the state legislature approved a bill to allow the sale of raw milk. Raw milk was what I grew up on. I even have a memory of when I was very little, my dad squeezing a cow's teat and shooting the milk directly into my mouth from a few feet away.

I'm sure the thought of drinking raw milk straight from the cow is turning a few stomachs out there. Eventually, we stopped drinking it raw and bought a home pasteurizer, a metal contraption that basically boiled the milk to a high temperature for a certain length of time. When the thing eventually broke, however, we didn't rush to replace it.

It's been a long time since I've drank whole milk – these days, I'm strictly a skim or 2% guy – and I imagine if I had the real stuff now, it would make skim taste like water by comparison. Growing up, I regularly added Hershey's Syrup and drank chocolate milk. Our milk had cream in it, and when you made chocolate milk, the cream wouldn't take on the chocolate color. So you had white stuff floating in your brown milk, which gave your drink the appearance of having dandruff. Being a finicky kid, I decided I didn't like that, so my solution was to drink the milk through a handkerchief that would filter out the cream. When that succeeded in doing little more than making a mess, I opted for a straw.

Some may argue that drinking raw milk was more dangerous than eating ammonia-cleansed near-beef. Given the choice today, I'd go with raw milk every time.

And soon, in Wisconsin, I may be able to legally buy it.

Rockin' With The Kids

(First published on GazetteXtra, 5-13-2010)

I went to a rock concert with my 18-year-old daughter last weekend.

I love the fact that she and I like a lot of the same music, but for her to actually ask me if I wanted to go to a show with her was, I thought, pretty darned cool.

It would have never happened when I was 18. I loved my parents dearly, but there was no way Mom or Dad was going to go see Styx or Kansas or Frank Zappa with me. Or any way on earth I would have ever asked them to.

But there we were, my daughter and I, at Turner Hall in downtown Milwaukee, enjoying the punk-pop of The Smoking Popes. And this wasn't my first invitation from her. We were originally planning to see OK Go in Chicago, but when I found out their appearance was part of an all-day music event, I backed out. I haven't done an all-day concert since 1983, when I went to old Comiskey Park in Chicago to see a lineup that included The Police, Joan Jett, A Flock of Seagulls, The Fixx, and Ministry.

I'm really not that much into current popular music. I look at the top 10 songs in the Kicks section and often don't recognize a single song title. Some folks at work were talking about going to see Daughtry perform, and I thought they meant Roger Daltrey, the retirement-aged lead singer for The Who. Friends of mine are surprised that I have never watched “American Idol,” the launchpad for today's music stars. So pop culture is flying past me faster than a Lamborghini with Illinois plates.

A significant bridge was built across the generation gap by, of all things, Guitar Hero III. That particular game introduced me to newer music that I was unfamiliar with, while exposing my kids, particularly my 16-year-old son, to everything from ZZ Top to the Sex Pistols. We both liked a lot of our discoveries.

It's interesting that rock staples from 30-35 years ago are still popular. It's not unusual to hear my son playing what sounds like a “best rock licks of the '70s” medley on his electric guitar. I am amazed that “Don't Stop Believin'” by Journey – a song first released when I was in college 29 years ago - is a huge hit with teens. To put that in perspective, 29 years before “Don't Stop Believin'” was released, rock and roll music did not yet exist. This fact might explain why my parents and I had no musical common ground, while my kids and I do. My parents' musical points of reference were Nat King Cole or Les Paul and Mary Ford.

I love all sorts of music, but I can't play a note. I tried to learn piano once, but when we got to the part where I had to use both hands at the same time, I was toast. I would look at the notes and know what my hands were supposed to do, but there was a definite disconnect between my brain and my hands. I feel incredibly blessed that my kids not only share my love of music, but can play it and play it well. Even though I can't play along with them, at least we can enjoy listening together.

And that's why I felt very proud while I was getting my ears blasted in a concert hall in Milwaukee last week.

---

P.S.:

The band we went to see, The Smoking Popes, is from Chicago, but they do a song called “Welcome to Janesville.” It's a terrific song, but if you're from Janesville, you might find the lyrics none too flattering: “No matter how many ways you try/To kiss this place goodbye/It lives in you till the day you die/Say the words with a tear in your eye/Welcome to Janesville.” Hear the song here.

I wondered why they would do a song about Janesville. Had they read about the city's recent struggles or did one of the band members have a connection to the city?

As it turned out, right after the show was over, I spotted Popes lead singer/songwriter Josh Caterer headed toward the merchandise table. I intercepted him to ask about the origins of “Welcome to Janesville.”

Because my ears were still ringing, the room was loud, and he had a mouth full of cookie, I admittedly didn't hear all of his answer. But what I did understand was that the song wasn't about Janesville specifically. One of the factors they considered was that they liked the name of the city because “it has a girl's name in it.” I didn't have the heart to tell him it was named for Henry Janes.

So how did they even know Janesville existed? “One of our very first gigs was in Janesville, at the Pizza Pit.”

Must have made quite an impression.

Dreams For Sale

(First published on GazetteXtra, 5-16-2010)

How much does it cost to buy a dream?

The answer is $5.4 million.

That's how much the Lansings, the owners of the farm where “Field of Dreams” was filmed in Dyersville, Iowa, are asking for their property.

I have to admit that the potential sale of the field bums me out a little. “Field of Dreams” is my favorite movie. I love everything about this film – from the wonderfully cast actors (Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, Amy Madigan, Ray Liotta) to the dialogue to the soundtrack to how blue the sky looks in the shots. Burt Lancaster in particular, as Doc Graham, is the kind of gentle, grandfatherly figure that you wish was a real person that you knew. And dammit, I always cry at the end when Costner, as Ray Kinsella, asks his father's ghost if he'd like to “have a catch.”

I know it's not a perfect film. For one thing, Shoeless Joe Jackson wasn't right-handed, as portrayed by Liotta. For another, the script gets criticized for being corny (no pun intended) and in spots, it probably is. I don't care.

This movie strikes a chord with a lot of folks, myself included. As James Earl Jones' character tells us, it reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.

And it has always seemed right to me that a rural Iowa family owned the farm and continued to live there, even after a huge chunk of their cornfield was turned into a baseball field. A family whose name is on the rural road where the farm and the field sits. A family who never bothered to charge admission to visit.

Not long after the film came out, my wife and I were spending a weekend in Galena, Illinois, about 45 minutes east of Dyersville. While she spent a morning shopping, I hopped in the car and drove west.

The field wasn't a huge tourist attraction yet. At the time, there was only one tiny souvenir stand behind home plate. Down the left field line was a homemade wooden sign on which plastic-covered snapshots of the film shoot were mounted. There were also little plastic vials with hand-typed labels containing dirt dug up from left field, where Shoeless Joe roamed. The dirt was free, but donations were encouraged. I grabbed a vial and threw some cash in the box. That vial has resided in my office for 20 years.

I was the only one there that first time I visited. So there was no playing catch, no swinging the bat. I simply roamed around, looking at this place I had only seen before on a movie screen. I wandered the field, kicked at the dirt, stood at home plate imagining.

I sat in the bleachers and saw where Costner had carved “Ray Loves Annie” in the wood. And I stared out at the cornfield, dreaming. Wondering whether, if I dreamed hard enough, the ghost of my own deceased father would wander out of the corn and want to play catch.

I've only been back to the Field of Dreams once. A larger, newly built souvenir store had replaced the quaint displays that were there on my first visit. Other than that, not much else had changed. This time, however, I didn't visit alone. My son, about 10 at the time, was with me. As we got out of the car on a windy, unseasonably chilly Sunday morning, he delivered his line perfectly without prodding.

“Dad...you wanna have a catch?”

Did I ever. And we braved those cold winds on that field to do just that.

In a move that was either incredibly coincidental or brilliantly planned, the real estate agent chosen to list the Field of Dreams property is former Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Ken Sanders, who led the AL in saves in 1971. If the field has to be sold, it seems right that a former major leaguer is the guy to do it.

I just hope that whoever ends up with the field continues to keep everyone's dreams alive.

Senior Skip Day

(First published on GazetteXtra, 5/25/10)

I know when Milton's Senior Skip Day is.

I would like to say that I found this out through my brilliant investigative skills and fatherly intuition.

But actually, I simply asked my daughter. And she also told me that all that was needed for her to participate was a signed absence note.

Say what? Senior Skip Day is no big secret anymore? And it's parent-approved?

Where is the fun in that? A parent-approved Senior Skip Day is like getting permission from a cop to break the speed limit. It takes away the thrill of getting away with something, where you planned and executed this covert action and your enjoyment could not be complete because of the worry about being caught.

They took Senior Skip Day seriously when I was in school. The planning was all very hush-hush. When the administration caught wind of the day it was supposed to happen, stern warnings went out over the high school PA system. There were even threats about holding back diplomas.

Now, the word is out, and no one seems to care. Yawn.

It must be a generational thing. Once, rock and roll was the music of youthful rebellion; now we go to rock concerts with our kids. Once, we pulled a fast one on teachers and parents; now the parents are in on the deal.

I didn't participate in the big Senior Skip Day at Milton High School in 1980 – in fact, I'm not even sure now that there was one - but my friends and I made one of our own that spring.

It was totally spontaneous. A group of us were talking in the cafeteria before school, and the main topic of conversation was how much we didn't want to be there. That's not much different than what I'm hearing from my daughter right now. Her AP tests are over and she really wants school to be done.

As my friends and I were comparing notes about our class schedules that particular day, we came to the conclusion that there was nothing transpiring that we couldn't miss. So in an incredibly bold and amazingly stupid move, we walked back out to the parking lot, jumped in a car and listened to the bell ring as we left the school grounds.

We ended up spending the day in Madison, a bunch of 18-year-olds enjoying the wonders of State Street. Our big plan was to time our return so that we got back to the high school right when the school day was ending.

And you know what? It worked. We actually got away with it. My group made it to the parking lot right as the final bell rang, and we each went home “from school” at our normal time.

In those days, an absence did not need to be reported with a phone call from home, and as 18-year-olds, we could sign our own excuse notes. We all did that the following day, and our parents were none the wiser about The Day We Skipped School.

Not that anybody ever read the excuse notes anyway. On another occasion when I missed school due to Actual Illness, I decided to pocket my authentic absence note signed by Mom and instead turn in a note I wrote myself, explaining that I had been in Vatican City to visit Pope Paul. The secretary never looked at the note; she just stamped it and threw it in a box with the rest while issuing my “Excused Absence” pass.

Speaking of my mother, she has never heard about any of this, and she doesn't own a computer, so please don't tell her. She could still kick my butt, even with a fake hip and knee.

And that sense of danger and the threat of a good butt-kicking was all part of the excitement. An openly-revealed, mom-and-dad-sanctioned Senior Skip Day?

How boring.