Lykeminded

Living a Life Less Public

2010-11-30T06:11:00.004-06:00

“I miss your Gazette blog.”

It's nice to hear, and I always thank the person for having been a reader. What I would really like to say in response is, “I don't.”

I actually hear from people who say they wish I still wrote my column in the Messenger, a forum that disappeared over two years ago. Most of these comments get relayed to me through my mother. Apparently, I was a hit with the conservative elderly set.

So why did I stop writing the blog? Was it really as I said in my final entry, or was there something more sinister afoot?

Speculation certainly ran rampant, especially when it was teamed with my stated desire to retire from stage productions and end the series of radio plays broadcast live from JPAC on WCLO. One rumor floating around the Gazette building was that I was moving to Minneapolis. We can thank Steve Knox's blog comparing me to Brett Favre for that one. (That was at the time when Favre was still better known for his repeated “unretirements” than for his text plan.)

Another comment circulating around town was that I had “gone off the deep end.” Well, one could argue that I had done that years ago, but wanting to refocus how I spend my free time was being viewed as a sign of instability? If you're someone who craves attention, I guess it would be. And admittedly, I used to crave it a little too much. A great week in the life of Jim Lyke used to be hitting the media trifecta: subbing for Stan Milam on WCLO, a column in the newspaper and a stage appearance. Ah, the life of a local celebrity (gag).

At some point, though, the thrill wears off. I love to write – obviously – but the Gazette blog had become a chore. It wasn't fun, and when something creative isn't fun, the ideas don't materialize. Weekly entries dwindled to monthly. There just wasn't much that interested me to write about. Basically, it was the wrong format for what I like to do. For one thing, it was much more time consuming than it should have been. Where many blogs take little more thought than the time it takes to put them in writing, I would revise and rewrite for a couple of days, over-analyzing every sentence, every word, like I was doing a manuscript rather than some piece of Internet fluff that would disappear from view in a day. Only once or twice did something flow so quickly and naturally that I declared it done and posted it. At some point, the time and trouble just wasn't worth it anymore.

I have been asked if I quit the blog because the anonymous comments got to me. They could be annoying, to be sure, but they weren't a factor in the decision. It was always somewhat amusing to picture these unidentified saps – I always had a vision of an unkempt guy hiding behind his user name in his basement studio apartment, illuminated only by the glow of his PC screen, surrounded by stacks of porn, Wonder Woman comics and animal feces, fist-pumping as he imparted his poorly-spelled wisdom in cyberspace.

People speculated that I would miss writing the blog, and honestly, I wondered that myself. After three months of freedom, though, I can truly say that not having it weighing on me all the time is a relief, one of the better difficult decisions I've made.

As for retiring from the stage, that is where Knox's comparison of me to Favre was valid. A single week after dramatically announcing on Facebook that I had retired from theater performances, I got contacted about doing a role in Theatre Unlimited's “Camelot.” The progression went from “no” to “I'll think about it” to “let me see the script” to “yes” in a couple of days. I'm glad I did the show, for many reasons.

First, it was a good show to go out on, the biggest role I had played in a while. My previous shows were two important but smaller parts in “West Side Story” and what amounted to an Act II cameo in “The Frogs.” Both were fun shows and characters that I really enjoyed. The role of Pellinore, however, was special. With the funniest lines in the show, it was a hoot to play. Being surrounded by a tremendous cast of young and not-so-young was a bonus. Tom Henson, who I had never worked with before, absolutely shone as Arthur. It was always funny to hear the procession of little old ladies greet Tom in the lobby and tell him how much he was like Richard Burton. It was also a chance to work with two of my favorite radio play actors, Dave Bitter and J. Peter Shaw. And to top it off, the backstage drama was at a minimum. Over all, a good final experience, like watching Michael Jordan nail the jumper to clinch the three-peat before walking away.

But it also reinforced to me the cons of doing a show. While my rehearsal schedule wasn't nearly as intense as that of the leads or those in the choreographed numbers, it was still more evenings away from home than I prefer. At some point, a guy just wants to come home from a long day of work, have dinner with the family and sit down in an easy chair with a Leinie's. Sometimes it's hard to find the energy to do a show after 9 hours of office stress.

Like Jordan, I don't anticipate my retirement lasting forever, though certainly longer than his did. But retirement is a good term to use if for no other reason than a mental commitment to take a break.

Then there is the matter of the radio plays. Unlike the more recent decisions about the blog and stage shows, it has always been in the plans to end this series. I had done all three of the Christmas radio plays I wanted to do, and “War of the Worlds” was the last script I wanted to take a stab at. Unfortunately, unlike “Camelot,” “War of the Worlds” did not comprise the satisfying ending I had hoped for.

Unlike all three of the Christmas radio plays, attendance wasn't affected by a snowstorm. Being that this is Wisconsin, however, it wouldn't have surprised me if it had. Instead, an incorrect starting time in that day's Janesville Gazette - as well as the previous week's Milton Courier - meant that several people showed up a half hour late and were unable to come into the auditorium during the live broadcast. Among those who missed the show were parents of some of the actors.

Then technical difficulties marred the actual radio broadcast. The WCLO mobile unit decided that this was a good time to get finicky. Three times, it cut out for periods of up to 30 seconds, and then the final two minutes were distorted to the point of being unlistenable. Like an engine that dies on your way to a job interview, sometimes it just happens. Fortunately, the 160 people who came to watch the broadcast in the auditorium were unaware of the problem and thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle.

Most disappointing, though, was the way the radio station's enthusiasm and support for the shows disappeared over the course of the four years, to the point where “War of the Worlds” was a non-event to everyone there except program director Tim Bremel and the three announcers who had roles in the show. It was a far cry from that heady first year, where the station proudly nominated “A Christmas Carol” for a state broadcasting award and took home the hardware for first place.

While these high profile pursuits are ending, I am refocusing primarily on projects that I can do on my own timetable. I have a major writing project coming up in 2011 that I am very excited about. And of course, there are the short films I am doing with Robert Jarzen. Those two things alone will more than satisfy my creative urges.

A Quarter-Century Without a Father

2010-10-27T20:44:00.004-05:00

Thursday, October 31, 1985. 1:20 p.m. A farmhouse in rural Janesville Township. A hospital bed set up in the middle of the living room.
Lying in the bed, gasping for breath, is my 61-year-old father, and he has just spoken the last words that will ever pass from his toothless mouth: “Last day.”
He is surrounded by his wife of 37 years, his four children, a pastor and a nurse. The pastor reads the twenty-third Psalm. The nurse checks vital signs and announces them like she’s in a televised medical drama. The family begs God to end the man’s suffering, some silently and some aloud.
Finally, in an undramatic, non-Hollywood fashion, his body stills. His chest doesn’t heave, his eyes and mouth do not close, his head doesn’t fall limply. He just gets still, eerily still. His six weeks in Hell have concluded. He is free.

When there was nothing more that medical science could do for him, he insisted on coming home to die. But he didn’t submit easily. He fought it to the end, refusing to sleep for three days, fearing that he would never wake. He fought so hard that even when death finally came, his eyes wouldn’t close.
My siblings and I kept a 24-hour watch with him. While the others slept, at least one of us sat with him, holding his hand, all day, all night, at all hours. He was never alone. We would not let him die alone.

We leave the living room and gather in the kitchen, not quite sure what to do now. My aunt and uncle show up to weep with us. The undertakers arrive. I try not to watch, and I wish later that I hadn’t. I have never been able to erase the image of my father’s naked body, emaciated, jaundiced, and covered with bedsores, being zipped into a bag.
I cannot sit in the house any longer. I go outside, call the dog – Dad’s dog, the beloved part-huskie he named Mush – and the two of us go for a walk out to the woods at the far end of our 141 acres.
Mush chases birds and enthusiastically runs around with the energy of a child who has just been released from the classroom for recess. I sit on a rock and watch the joyful canine, oblivious to the fate of her master, and wish I was that happily ignorant. Instead, I wonder, what now? I worry about my mother, the loyal, dependent farm wife who has never lived alone. What will she do? Who will she live with?

Twenty-five years later, I reflect on all that has happened since. I need not have worried about Mom. Instead of shriveling up, she dipped into a reserve of strength that we never knew she possessed. Independent, sure and assertive, she laughs in the face of fate, a quality that has gotten her through cancer surgery, a new hip, and a new knee.
She never remarried, never even dated, although she's had opportunities over the years. Dad was her one and only.
My niece, only ten at the time of Dad’s death, wrote a school paper about her deceased grandfather, referring to him as the brightest star in the sky. The rest of us embraced that thought and even now, I still think of him immediately when the first star shows up at dusk.
It's strange to think that I'm now to the point where I have spent more years on the planet without a living father than with one. Too often when I think of him, I selfishly feel sorry for myself. I regret that he didn’t see me evolve past the stage where I was an unfocused young man pondering what to do with his life. I regret that he didn’t see his grandchildren, that he didn't see me get involved in my community, that he wasn’t there to help me fix the plumbing, that we couldn’t continue our annual trek to see the Brewers play.
I am relieved, however, that he met his future daughter-in-law. Mom always says that Dad heartily approved of my spousal choice and declared that she was "good for me." At a time when I wasn’t always making great decisions, at least he knew I had gotten that one right.
Mom comes to almost everything the kids are involved in – band concerts, plays, school ceremonies. She loves being there and I think in some way, she feels that by being there, Dad is, too.
A few years after his death, “Field of Dreams” showed up at movie theaters. At the end of the film, Ray Kinsella, the builder of the baseball diamond carved from a cornfield, is reunited with his long-deceased father, and they play a game of catch. I’ve seen the film dozens of times, and I always cry when this final scene unfolds.
Twenty-five years ago. I miss you, Dad.

Small Town Boy in the Big City

2010-10-20T22:03:00.001-05:00

For someone like me who lives in a city of 5,000 and works in an office surrounded by woods and fields, a rare business trip into downtown Chicago is a big deal.

Since my meeting is walking distance from the downtown Metra commuter train station, I opt to relax and ride the train from suburban Crystal Lake, rather than navigate the insane city traffic and overpay for parking.

As the train fills, strangers end up sitting next to each other. The natural inclination would be to acknowledge and greet the person who just planted their posterior two inches away. But no one does. And so I don't, either, when a middle-aged woman ends up beside me. She's not in business attire; she might be an office worker, a store clerk, or possibly just going to visit someone. It feels unnatural to me not to speak to her. I see everyone else in their seats, staring straight ahead, oblivious to their neighbors. I am reminded of the scene from “Metropolis” where the shifts of workers change, a mass of humans silently plodding along. The woman next to me yawns, and I see my opening. “I know how you feel,” I offer. She smiles and starts a conversation; small talk about not getting enough sleep and relying on caffeine to get through the day. Before too long, we run out of things to say and return to our silence. But at least the ice was broken, the chill is gone, and I relax. When we reach our destination, she smiles and wishes me a good day and encourages me to stay awake.

It's been about five years since I last took the Metra into downtown Chicago on business. The experience is so different than what I am used to that in a strange way, it excites me. I laugh when I think that what to me is a tourist attraction is to everyone else another day of mindless tedium. The last time I commuted in on the train, my final destination was too long to walk to from the station, so I doubled my public transportation pleasure and hailed a cab. The cabbie, who I guessed to be Jamaican from his accent, was an affable fellow wearing a White Sox cap. We chatted about the South Siders' then-recent World Series triumph as we maneuvered through the stop-and-go traffic. A train, a cab, a downtown destination – I felt like one of those guys you see portrayed in the movies. Jim Lyke, big city business guy.

Or at least, I'd like to think I am that guy. In reality, there is something about downtown Chicago that brings out the bumpkin in me. I gawk at the tall buildings. I marvel at the technology that hoists a bridge into the air in order for a ship to pass through.

It seems like each individual block of every downtown street has a second “honorary” name and street sign. Near the Tribune Tower, Michigan Avenue is also Jack Brickhouse Way, a memorial to the legendary Cubs broadcaster. Some of those so honored have familiar names (Ben Gurion), some not so much (Newton Minow, Christ Demos). I look up Minow later and discover that he was the FCC chairman who described television as a “vast wasteland.” For that quote alone, he should have an entire country named in his honor, not just a street.

After my meeting is over, I walk over to the local office of the outdoor advertising company I work for. I'll be meeting people that to this point I've known only by their phone voice or e-mail address. Our Chicago office is located on the 22nd floor of a building on Michigan Avenue, the heart of downtown. It's great to put faces to the voices. I play the part of the small town boy to the hilt, telling my big city cohorts that you could stack the four tallest buildings in Janesville and it still wouldn't add up to 22 floors. I'm not sure whether this is true or not, but it amuses them. What is true is that when you look out their windows, you see the John Hancock Center and behind it, Lake Michigan. When you look out mine, you often see wild turkeys. One tom even attacked his own reflection in our front door until he bloodied himself. We all sell the same thing for the same company but our experiences are as alike as Cher and Chas Bono.

After lunch with my counterparts, I head back toward the station, guessing that I have more than enough time to catch the next train back to the suburbs. I get stopped on Michigan Avenue by a young woman named Maddie who is selling memberships in Greenpeace. She somehow spots me as someone who cares about the environment, either by intuition or pure luck. Maddie admits that most guys dressed like me don't give a rat's ass about her cause. She is passionate about her organization and she's good – very good. We talk, she goes for the close. I stop short of commitment. She tries again. I tell her that I'm not the kind of buyer who makes a decision emotionally on the spur of the moment; I need to check out the facts. Maddie gives me the Greenpeace web site address. I promise her I'll visit the site and that if I make a donation, I'll make sure she gets the credit. I tell her I manage salespeople and compliment her on her skills. She tells me it's her second day on the job. I would love to hire her. But she could never sell what I sell. She could never care as much about 20 x 60 signs on I-90 as she does about saving palm trees in Indonesia. What I do goes against everything she believes in.

The conversation with Maddie delays me enough that I pick up the pace a bit. Up and down the downtown streets, you hear the rhythmic jangle of the downtrodden, shaking paper cups full of change that sound like broken tambourines – a wordless plea for assistance. As I approach one of the beggars, he smiles politely and asks me for help, rather than just rattling his cup as the others do. I can't help but feel horrible when I rush by, depositing nothing. What makes me - hurrying to catch a train in my suit and tie - a better, more worthy, more fortunate human being than this poor soul reduced to begging for change on a city street? Why has God smiled upon me, and not on this polite young man? Is he a panhandling snake oil salesman, hiding his evil intentions behind a convincing smile? Or is he so down on his luck and desperate that this is the only thing he can think to do to feed himself and his loved ones, yet his circumstances haven't broken his spirit?

With mere minutes to spare, I make it to my train and start the trip back to my real life. But the images of the desperate and destitute stay with me. Can I save the poor? Or for that matter, the whales?

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

2010-09-18T09:50:00.001-05:00

(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?

2010-09-18T09:46:00.001-05:00

(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

2010-09-18T09:43:00.001-05:00

(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

2010-09-18T09:40:00.001-05:00

(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

2010-09-18T09:34:00.000-05:00

(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

2010-09-18T09:32:00.001-05:00

(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.

Vanity Does Not Pay

2010-08-21T16:13:00.000-05:00

Ever have one of those days when you look in the mirror and say to yourself, “Man, I’m a dork”?

Actually, with me, it’s pretty much a daily occurrence, but today, it was in all caps.

I. AM. A. DORK.

I was already kicking myself for ordering my son’s customized (and non-returnable) Brewers T-shirt in a youth medium size instead of an adult medium. But I took the utter stupidity to an entirely new level this morning.

In October, I will have a role in the Theatre Unlimited musical, “Camelot.” For the part, a beard is required, and a vacation up north last week seemed to be the perfect time to get it started.

Unfortunately, said beard gets whiter by the day. While I have very little grey in my hair, my beard is so white it adds about 10-15 years to my appearance. The dark/light combination makes me look like Pepe Le Pew. Steve Knox (no stranger to hair coloring issues) suggested that I might have a future as a Mall Santa.

After about 10 days of seeing this old man staring back at me in the mirror, I decided to take action. The play isn’t for two months, so a little Just for Men would make it tolerable until I really needed the beard to be grey for the performances. After all, if manly men like Walt “Clyde” Frazier and Keith Hernandez use it, it’s OK, right?

The instructions in the box tell you that the longer the junk sits on your beard before you shampoo it, the darker it makes your hair. They’re not kidding. I obviously took too much time because the color went from its supposed dark brown straight to black. The change wasn’t subtle, as I intended. It was ridiculous, like going from Gandalf to Bluto in minutes. I couldn’t go to work (or anywhere in public) looking like that, so off went the beard.

That’s when the true panic occurred. Once the beard was removed, I saw that the hair dye had stained my face. It looked like I was sporting a greasepaint beard. I looked like a clown, for Pete’s sake!

The initial washing with soap yielded no results. The panic ratcheted up to near-hyperventilation levels. What am I going to do??!!

My wife calmly suggested that a little scrubbing would probably remove the stain. As is usual, she was right, but it took a rough washcloth and about 10 minutes of scouring. Several hours later, my face is still sore from the massacre.

My only consolation is that I’m not alone in the area of home dying fiascos. One of my female friends accidentally made her hair a shade of bright orange once, prompting a frantic late-night call to the company’s toll-free help line.

I’ll have to start regrowing the facial hair soon. And it’s time I just accept the fact that it’s more salt than pepper.

So much salt, I could own stock in Morton.

You Have 48 Hours To Make A Film....Go!

2010-08-04T21:47:00.003-05:00

Two years ago, I wrote in the Janesville Messenger about the Madison 48 Hour Film Project, a crazy weekend in which local filmmakers compete to create the best short film from scratch, start to finish, in two days. It is an exercise in caffeine-fueled creativity gone wild.

I first became aware of this film festival when I was recruited at the last minute (actually, everything in these films is at the last minute) to play a role in Janesville filmmaker Stephen Pickering’s entry, "Kingdom of Ends." The entire experience was so rewarding that the following year, I expanded my involvement from just acting to forming my own creative team with good friend and filmmaker Robert Jarzen.

Our story begins on a recent Friday evening at the Electric Earth Café on West Washington Street. The ZenLyke Productions duo (Jarzen and Lyke...get it?) sits at a table, inspirational malted beverages in hand, waiting patiently to draw out of a hat (literally) to find out what type of film we are assigned to make. The festival has a pretty decent Milton/Janesville presence this year, with at least four teams (out of 23) coming from our area. In fact, Stephen Pickering’s team is the defending champion, having won the event last year with a sci-fi film called “Unknown Spectre.”

When it is our turn to draw, we get “Film Noir.” I am excited but Robert is not thrilled; that film style isn't his cup of tea. I immediately text-message my 18-year-old daughter Corinne, who is preparing to compose our soundtrack music, and ask if she knows what “film noir” is. She has no clue. Thanks to Wikipedia and my suggestion of listening to the Tom Waits song “Small Change,” she is able to get the idea.

After every team has their assigned film genre, the required elements are announced. Every film has to include a certain prop, a certain line, and a character with a specific name and occupation. This year, we have to have a tie, a courier named Patrick or Patricia Raynal, and the line, “I can’t hear you.” With that information in hand, the clock starts ticking and we all scatter to go out and create.

The next five hours are a whirlwind. Ideas fly around the interior of the car driving back to Milton. Lines of dialogue are scribbled down at McDonald's in Newville. A quick stop at home to grab a fedora and an old Royal typewriter to use as props. A run to the Janesville Little Theatre warehouse to pick up more 1940's-era props. A shopping trip to buy cigarettes and a shot glass. A call to our lead actor, Michael Chase, to tell him what to wear, where and when to show up Saturday, and when he'll see a script. For the story we're doing, we only need three other actors – Robert's wife Tracy, me, and my nephew William.

By 12:30 in the morning, we have a completed script to send to Michael. Corinne has a good start on the soundtrack music and is trying to get friends together to record the tune later in the day.

After a few hours of sleep, Robert sets up his basement for the shoot while I work at home to create an old-fashioned five-dollar bill and an authentic-looking Western Union telegram. I find exactly what I need online (including a font used on actual telegrams). We try to pay attention to the details to make sure the props we use look authentic to the 1940's – from the typewriter to the telephone to the money to the desk (purchased in 1948 by my parents) to the brand of cigarettes. Proving the indispensability of Google, I look up a glossary of film noir terms as well as tips on how to hold a cigarette properly.

By 9 a.m. Saturday, we're back at Robert's, shooting in his nice cool basement on what becomes a brutally hot day. We have to shoot the scene with my nephew William first, because he has to leave for the airport at 11 to fly to Poland with a group of college students. Tracy is only available until about 1, so the scenes with her are next.

Shooting goes very well, as we knew it would with two professional actors, Tracy and Michael, on board. We also luck out by having Robert's brother-in-law, a still photographer, help with lighting and his contributions are priceless. Principal photography is finished by about 2:30 in the afternoon – which gives us more than a full day to edit and do post-production.

I return home for a little rest and to see how Corinne is doing on the music. She hasn't had any success recruiting musicians so she resorts to recording all the parts herself. After I take a nap, Corinne presents me with four separate digital files – her playing bass, piano, trombone and finger-snaps. One problem – I don't have audio mixing software. I find a free program online and put the pieces together.

When I run the music over to Robert's to add it to the film, he already has completed most of the editing, but he is not a happy camper; much of the footage contains a loud hum from the lights we were using on the set. We were aware of it during shooting, but over the headphones it didn't sound like it was being picked up by the microphone. We were wrong.

We had a similar issue last year, but it was minor and the soundtrack music covered the problem. This year, the hum is far too loud to mask. Until 1 in the morning, we surf the Internet searching for solutions to the problem.

At around 9 a.m. Sunday, Robert reads through the help manual for his editing software while I scan more tutorial pages online. After an hour or so of trial and error, we finally seem to have found a way to eliminate most of the noise while preserving the dialogue. Six hours and one computer crash later, we are satisfied that our effort was worth it – the hum is almost entirely removed.

At about 6:15 p.m., we arrive at the Jade Monkey Lounge in Madison. We take pride in being the first ones to deliver our completed film for the second year in a row. When the producer of the competition sees us arrive, she exclaims, “You have got to be kidding me!”

Alas, three teams miss the 7:30 deadline – one by a mere three minutes. One of the late teams had their car break down on the Beltline on the way to deliver their entry; I can't imagine the frustration.

Four days later, all of the films are shown at a special screening at the Orpheum Theatre on State Street in Madison. I see several people there I know from Janesville – Stephen and his team, filmmaker Dave Haldiman, local actor Dave Bitter, former Charter Media employee Brian Alberth. When Stephen's film is shown, the cast is like a “Who's Who” of the local theater community: Dave Bitter, Pat Hall, Tom Hall, Mike Casey, Elsie Van Tassell.

Robert and I worry about how our film will look and sound in the Orpheum. Darker, black and white films like ours don't always fare the best on the screen there, and the sound system can be iffy at times. Our film is shown second, and we breathe a sigh of relief as neither problem surfaces.

We're amazed as we see the credits on the other films. Our credits are definitely among the shortest; our entire cast and crew totaled 7 people. Some films had more folks than that just involved in the writing.

When we turned in our film Sunday night, the producer asked how we are able to finish without pulling all-nighters or coming right down to the wire. I think the key for us, which we discovered by accident and not by design, is to keep things simple. Almost all of the creative stuff was done by two people. We had a small cast. We shot in one location. All those factors added up to time savings. There are a lot of teams that probably think we're nuts to have so much responsibility resting on the shoulders of a few people. If you see the credits for the teams that win the national competitions, they generally have a list as long as a Hollywood studio release. But for us, our system works. We aren't going to win any huge awards, but we have fun and enjoy the process.

You can see the resulting film, “Written Off,” here on YouTube. Hope you enjoy it...

Fireworks, The Fourth, and Flying Tires

2010-07-11T08:22:00.001-05:00

With apologies to Garrison Keillor, it's been a quiet week in Milton, my hometown.

I always have high expectations for the Independence Day parade. With past parades featuring runaway tractors and the euthanizing of a horse, the bar is set high for something strange to happen. (Thankfully, we didn't have runaway horses, like what tragically happened in Iowa.)

Every year, the blankets, tarps and chairs appear earlier on the terrace along the parade route. This year, the streets were lined by 3 pm the day before the parade. I liked the new creative touch some folks used, utilizing yellow caution tape to make sure their spot wasn't pilfered.

The parade itself, as Steve Knox noted in his blog earlier this week, was a typical feel-good parade but it didn't live up to its predecessors in some ways. There were no Shriner cars, no guy on a high unicycle juggling, no woman being massaged on a float. The horses are now at the end of the parade so the stepping-in-poop factor was missing. There was, however, an antique hearse with glass sides – all the better to see the creepy skull and candles display inside. What that float was advertising, I have no idea.

With a metric ton of elections coming up this fall, I expected the parade to be crawling with candidates. But I counted only a lucky 13 working the parade route. I ended up with a Scott Walker brown bag, and dueling Russ Feingold and Brett Davis sports schedules. I found it interesting that the Brett Davis handout included NASCAR and hunting schedules, while Feingold's included an NPR schedule. (OK, I made that up about NPR.)

The celebration at Schilberg Park featured a surprise carnival. It had been announced earlier that due to a booking conflict, there would be no carnival this year. But when everyone showed up Sunday night for the fireworks, suddenly, there was a carnival. Apparently, the group from Rhythm and Booms in Madison saw an opportunity to earn an extra day's worth of revenue and made their way down in the middle of the night. It was an unexpected treat.

The carnival wasn't the only surprise at Schilberg. This year's fireworks were surprisingly brief, ten minutes at best. Milton has always prided itself as having one of the best fireworks displays in the area, but this one left people wondering, “Was that it?” It wasn't until the lights for the softball diamond started to reilluminate that folks knew for sure that it was really done. Despite the short show at Schilberg, there was no lack of fireworks around the city, particularly in our neighborhood. They continued on into Monday night, when a remnant from a rocket fell back to earth about ten feet from my kids as they walked down College Street.

Rockets weren't the only things airborne around the neighborhood this week. They were joined in flight by, of all things, tires.

My wife and I were walking down High Street, which was adorned this week with “Road Closed” barricades in preparation for a major reconstruction. Thus far, those signs have been mostly ignored by motorists. One such case was some yahoo in a beat-up old Jeep with writing all over his windows. This guy flew between the barricades at about 40 mph, then hit a dip which sent his rusty beater bouncing. This dislodged a spare tire (I assume it had been stored underneath the car) which went flying, took a gigantic bounce of its own and took out a mailbox not far behind where we were walking. The driver saw what happened, but never stopped.

Meanwhile, a block over on College Street, I witnessed two gigantic tires pressing down the white picket fence in front of a home. The day before, I had seen these same tires sitting across the street, on the lawn in front of Whitford Hall. I presume these tires are used for strength training at the new extreme fitness center located in Whitford. Since Whitford Hall sits on a hill overlooking the home (and the fence), I have to believe these tires went out for a roll.

Yes, one never tires of living in Milton....

Weird Western Wisconsin

2010-06-25T07:35:00.009-05:00

(From GazetteXtra.com, 6-23-2010)

Hoover: This is ridiculous. What are we going to do?

Otter & Boon: Road trip.

-“National Lampoon’s Animal House”

Earlier this week, I found myself in the car for seven hours, making a trip to Independence, Iowa and back. My GPS insisted that the quickest way to my destination began by taking I-90 up to Madison, and then US 151 southwest to Dubuque. But I opted to shorten the route by 21 miles and take Highway 11 west from Janesville instead. Am I glad I did; I expected a more scenic and interesting trip but was not prepared for the treasure trove of weirdness that I found between Monroe and the Iowa state line.

(By the way, when I don’t follow the path my GPS has mapped out for me, it gets very annoyed. It repeatedly implores me to turn around and go back to its preferred route. There’s something very satisfying about mentally telling a machine to stuff it, like Garry Kasparov defeating Big Blue in chess.)

The trip west was, at times, a pretty trip. Orange tiger lilies lined the highway through several areas. But the beautiful was often mixed with the odd.

First, we had Animal Odd – the real and the unreal, and sometimes both.

The real: a Holstein, lying dead at the end of a driveway, being picked apart by birds.

The unreal: a group of metal dinosaurs, set up in a random field.

The both: a dead deer lying on the shoulder of the road, while on a small hill overlooking the scene, a statue of a content lion sat proudly, giving one the impression that the lion killed the deer. I initially thought this might make for a humorous photo, but the deer carcass was just too grotesque.

There was Vehicle Odd. A standard farm tractor sat in a front yard, souped up with massive dual exhaust pipes protruding from the sides. On another front lawn, what looked like an older model blue Camaro Z28 sat with police lights affixed to the top. (Both times past, I reflexively hit the brakes.)

There was Sign Odd.

Like the new municipal hall in Hazel Green that has its name hyphenated in stone on the front (“Municipal-Hall”). Or the sign in Leadmine pointing the way to the “Primitive Methodist Church.” (I assumed it meant a historic chapel, but a Google search revealed that it’s actually a small denomination.) But the best by far was the sign in Benton advertising lawn mower races, to be held at the “Death Bowl.”

Then as I was driving through a rural area in Lafayette County, I saw this scene and immediately thought of Janesville:

These observations made the long trip much more interesting and often amusing, but it also made me wonder what travelers think when they pass through Milton or Rock County. What do visitors find amusing or odd about our area? I’m sure Bessie the Cow turns some heads, and Heaven knows I’ve heard enough comments about the three roundabouts in Milton.

I’m sure it’s all perspective. What is commonplace to us probably strikes others as weird, just as people in Lafayette County don’t find the “Primitive Methodist Church” sign the least bit interesting. But being on the lookout for the unusual made seven hours in the car go much faster for us.

Laughter (And Graduation) In The Rain

2010-06-15T15:01:00.007-05:00

(From GazetteXtra, 6-13-10)

As I sat in the bleachers at the Milton High School football field, awaiting my daughter's graduation ceremony, my brother-in-law asked me what I remembered about my own graduation at that same location 30 years before.

Not much, I told him. It was outdoors and it was windy. Other than that, it wasn't memorable.

The same cannot be said about my daughter's.
As I mentioned in a previous blog, a questionable weather forecast was the last bit of drama we had to deal with as Graduation Party Saturday and Commencement Sunday approached.

As it turned out, we had nothing to worry about Saturday. Instead of 90 and muggy, the day was comfortable and even cool at times. But if the weather forecasters had egg on their face about Saturday's predictions, they must be hiding in shame about Sunday's.

Throughout the morning, I switched back-and-forth between the weather service web site and GazetteXtra, alternately checking the weather radar and forecast while watching for a possible announcement that the event was being moved indoors. The only reason it mattered that much to me is that it made the difference between having ten family members attend or only four, due to the limited seating indoors. (All seniors received three tickets to the event if it was held indoors. I scored a fourth ticket thanks to a neighbor.)

As noon approached, the forecast still called for showers around 6 p.m., in plenty of time to have the 2 p.m. graduation outdoors. By the time we were leaving to get our seats at about 1 p.m., the forecast had changed. Showers were now expected around 3:30 or 4:00. The “future” radar on weather.com confirmed the timing of the rain's arrival. That was cutting it closer, but still not a problem.

My sister-in-law brought her umbrella to the ceremony as “insurance,” reasoning that if she brought it, some sort of karmic law would assure that she didn't need it. It turned out yesterday's karma was today's good planning.

There was a full program scheduled, with speeches from three students (including my daughter Corinne), two choir numbers, a band performance, the presentation of the class gift, and of course, the distribution of 230 or so diplomas.

As soon as the ceremony began, what seemed like it would be a routine overcast afternoon began to turn more ominous. During valedictorian Elizabeth Camenga's speech, the sky darkened and the wind began to whip around the MHS banner behind the podium. Nervous administrators on the stage consulted with each other.

When Elizabeth finished, Principal Jeremy Bilhorn took the microphone and spoke directly to Corinne in the front row. “I'm sorry, Corinne,” he said, “but we need to skip down the agenda and distribute the diplomas now. We'll get to your speech later if we can.”

And with that, what is in all likelihood the fastest distribution of diplomas in Milton High School history commenced. Corinne was fifth in line to receive hers, and as she made her way back to her seat, the sprinkles began. At first, it was just a light rain. Then the heavens absolutely opened and we had ourselves a gullywasher.

When the downpour began, chaos ensued. Spectators hurried from the metal bleachers, some mistaking the flash of cameras for lightning. The band grabbed their instruments and scrambled to find shelter. The public address system shorted out, turning the distribution of diplomas into a quick, anonymous receiving line. Water bottles distributed to the graduates ended up being used not for quenching of thirsts, but dousing of heads. Parents took photographs using abandoned music stands as umbrellas.

As for me, all I could do was watch this scene...and laugh. Within minutes I was soaked to my skin, but I was like Mary Tyler Moore at Chuckles The Clown's funeral, unable to stop inappropriately laughing. My wife was equally soaked, with white streaks all over her face and neck from the sunscreen she had optimistically applied earlier. Meanwhile, my sisters and Corinne's grandmothers were huddling under umbrellas, my mom sporting a clear plastic rain bonnet that only ladies from a certain generation still wear.

Bleachers that were once full now resembled the attendance at a Florida Marlins game. Among the diehards that were still in the stands was the mother of one of Corinne's friends who declared, “This is the best graduation ever!” Down below on the track, barefoot girls pranced in the puddles.

When the last drenched student received their diploma, the students filed out in a relatively orderly fashion. Corinne and her friends shed their shoes and ran toward the front of the school, intent on fulfilling their plan of taking pictures in front of the newly-painted, grammatically incorrect MHS rock.

Reactions to the situation varied. Facebook updates by Corinne's friends ranged from “What a CRAPPY graduation!!” to “This is officially THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!!!!” For the most part, though, the students seemed to find the same humor in the situation that I did. Just witnessing their sheer joy dancing in the wet grass around the rock was worth the price of admission.

The biggest shame was that we didn't get to witness the final performance of Bill Schrank, who would have been directing the choir for the last time before retiring to his fishing boat after 32 distinguished years as Milton's choral director.

I felt horrible for Principal Jeremy Bilhorn, who looked like he had just endured the longest day of his life. I hope people upset by Mother Nature's fury don't take it out on Mr. Bilhorn. An outdoor ceremony is always preferred, and with the forecast being inaccurate and ever-changing, he was in a no-win situation. If he had moved the ceremony indoors and it didn't rain, he would have been pummeled as well. I was watching the weather all morning, too, and he made the same call I would have made.

Mr. Bilhorn apologized profusely to Corinne for not being able to give her salutatorian speech, though she was not upset in the least. In fact, she was relieved. Nevertheless, he offered to have her give her speech on camera inside the school so that it could be added to the graduation DVD.

So our graduation day ended inside the Red Hawk Media room, where a small group of friends heard Corinne read her speech from a saturated page. Since her cap (and just about everyone else's) was destroyed in the rain, she wore one used by a friend's boyfriend at his commencement from Edgerton High. Her gown, the same one I wore 30 years ago, had regained its musty basement smell thanks to the sudden soaking.

It was a comical end to a wonderful four years.

Ho, Ho, Ho - A Word From The CEO

2009-07-10T06:25:00.000-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 7-5-09)

Dear Shareholder,

Those of you who are long time investors in Santa Claus Industries, Inc. know that I rarely find it necessary to send you a mid-year “Christmas in July” financial statement. However, these are extraordinary times, and due to the current state of the world economy, I feel that it is necessary to update you on unprecedented steps we are taking to remain a viable operation here at the North Pole.

Santa Claus Industries experienced a staggering decrease in revenue due to high unemployment and the eroding of disposable income, creating a budgetary shortfall that needed to be addressed swiftly. Difficult, but necessary, decisions needed to be made.

Early in the year, it was determined that we needed to consolidate toy-making operations and bring all manufacturing back to the main workshop here at the Pole. We were able to relocate about one-third of the affected elf workers to positions at the main workshop; unfortunately, it was necessary to give layoff notices to the rest. The layoffs were painful and unprecedented. The decisions on which elves to keep was based on seniority, which means that the original elves, the ones that built the Santa Claus brand into the solid marketing force that it is today, remain a part of the operation.

The elves that were brought on during our massive expansion of operations in the 20th Century are generally the ones that were affected by the layoffs. Our expectation is that, over time, we can bring these employees back into the operation as the economy recovers. I know that as shareholders, you are concerned that with nothing but manufacturing experience, current job prospects for many of the elves are limited. However, they are uniquely qualified for some specialty positions, and I am personally aware that a few have found employment in circuses and traveling entertainment shows featuring the characters of J.R.R. Tolkien and L. Frank Baum.

Also in the first half of this year, other personnel moves were deemed necessary to prevent financial losses:

· Of the elves still in our employ, each was required to take a one-week unpaid furlough during the second quarter.
· We determined that it was necessary to reduce reindeer headcount by two. This resulted in the delivery of layoff notices to Vixen and Cupid. Although Rudolph has less seniority, his departure would have put us in violation of FAA regulations that require the sleigh to be illuminated during flight.

These changes to our workforce will obviously result in a decrease of our toy output, as well as the speed of toy delivery on Christmas Eve. However, those factors will be balanced out by the fact that there has been a large increase in the number of poor children that will not be receiving Christmas presents this year.

These are indeed sad and unprecedented times for Santa Claus Industries. But the moves we have made were completely necessary to keep SCI in the black and operating in a manner that the public has come to expect. Let me personally assure you that everyone, including myself, has found it necessary to make sacrifices. I personally had to cut my post-Christmas 90-day Caribbean vacation short by three days.

Moving forward, we will be making changes in the distribution of coal on Christmas Eve during our worldwide run. Production of coal is down, and quite frankly, it is needed here at the Pole for warmth. We simply cannot spare coal for delivery to the stockings of those on the naughty list, even for those who greatly deserve it. However, one resource here at the Pole is plentiful and will serve as a “green” alternative to coal - reindeer manure. There is no lack of it to distribute to state and federal politicians and corporate managers.

Sincerely,

K. Kringle
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Santa Claus Industries, Inc.

Fairly Unbalanced News

2009-06-21T21:46:00.001-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 6-21-09)

On the editorial page of this newspaper last week, the Messenger gave its assessment of Keith Olbermann, ESPN SportsCenter anchor turned MSNBC political commentator. The editorial branded Olbermann as a “hate-monger” and called him “an affront to good journalism.”

I had two problems with the editorial. First of all, you could take every charge thrown at Olbermann and MSNBC and easily level them at someone like Bill O’Reilly on Fox News. In fact, if you changed the words “Olbermann,” “MSNBC” and “liberal” to “O’Reilly,” “Fox” and “conservative,” the editorial would have been just as valid.

But that’s totally subjective, depending on whose political viewpoints you prefer.

My bigger issue is in labeling Olbermann as a journalist. He, O’Reilly, and many of the other talking heads we see on television these days, are anything but.

If you look up “journalism” in the American Heritage Dictionary, you will find this definition: “The style of writing characteristic of material in newspapers and magazines, consisting of the direct presentation of facts or occurrences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation.”

Straight news reporting - the presentation of facts - isn’t dead but it certainly smells funny. I would like to think that the big three TV networks continue in that tradition but it’s been so long since I’ve watched a network newscast that I couldn’t tell you. Besides the articles by the still-respected Associated Press that run in The Janesville Gazette, I get most of my national and international news from CNN. Since both sides of the political aisle criticize CNN, they must be doing something right. However, I’m a little dismayed by the increasing amount of crud they program, like Nancy Grace’s show.

But the fact is that many Americans, and maybe even a majority of them, primarily receive their news in a form that is spun to a certain political viewpoint. It’s not just TV networks like Fox News and MSNBC, but websites, magazines, or the opinionated microphones of people like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham or Al Franken. Fox may try to label themselves as “Fair and Balanced” and O’Reilly’s show as a “No-Spin Zone,” but frankly, that’s as truthful as putting a “T-Bone Steak” label on a can of dog food.

I guess that’s the beauty of a free country. We now have the freedom to choose how we want our news presented to us. Whatever your political persuasion, you can find a “news” source that appeals to you. The problem is, when your primary source of national and world events is biased, you tend to automatically discount any other presentation of the facts. You are not receiving news from news people; these folks are not journalists. They are commentators. There is a distinct difference.

For example, Helen Thomas, the veteran White House reporter for United Press International who traditionally had a major role in presidential press conferences, left that wire service in 2000 and became a syndicated columnist and author. As a UPI reporter, she was loved and feared by every president from Kennedy to Clinton, who knew she was not afraid to ask the tough questions. Once free of her role as a news reporter, however, she let her opinions fly, most notably revealing her total disdain for President George W. Bush. Whatever you think about her, you have to admit that Helen had old-school journalistic integrity. She waited until she had her own forum – when she had made the transition from reporter to commentator - to make those opinions known in print.

But the line that separates journalist and commentator gets blurrier each day. Even my local weekly paper, The Milton Courier, sometimes colors straight news stories like City Council meetings with the reporter’s own viewpoints.

Perhaps the most frightening development, however, is the number of e-mails that I receive that contain some sort of shocking news that turns out to be complete fabrication. Apparently, besides being a nation that accepts as face value everything we see on television, we are now a nation that believes everything that it reads in the form of an e-mail. I am amazed at the intelligent people I know that pass these e-mails along without checking their validity.

I wish I had a better solution than the way I have learned to deal with things – which is by being cynical about nearly everything I’m presented with. I take it all with a grain of salt.

But please keep in mind – I am a commentator and these are strictly my opinions.

Holy Rollers With Guts

2009-06-21T21:40:00.001-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 6-7-09)

When I worked in downtown Janesville, I could almost set my watch by it.

Sitting in my second floor office in the late afternoon, I would suddenly hear the wheels rolling on the blacktop. I would look out the window and see the skateboarders build up speed through our parking lot and launch themselves into the parking lot next door, which sat a few feet lower than ours.

The constant whirring of their wheels was annoyingly noisy, a great deal louder than you would expect. Between the sound, the expectation of damage to our vehicles, and the potential for lawsuits if one of them got hurt, I generally went out to shoo them away or threaten to call the police. It was the first time in my life that I looked in the mirror and saw the cranky old neighbor who always yells at the kids to stay off his lawn.

So needless to say, I had a pretty negative opinion of skateboarders. But my “book-by-its-cover” thinking was rocked recently when I saw a presentation by a group of young men calling themselves “Skaters Of Christ.”

These five youths, ranging in age from 12 to 16, can do some pretty impressive skateboarding tricks. But they see their skateboarding as a vehicle for something much more important – bringing fellow skaters to Christianity.
15-year-old Nathaniel Muench says the group was inspired to “do something bigger and better for [God’s] glory. So we chose a skateboard ministry since it’s our talent from God.”
Nathaniel and the others – 13-year-olds Zachary Muench and Brandon Stewart, 16-year-old Daniel Belleau and 12-year-old David – go to skate parks in Whitewater, Jefferson, Delafield or “wherever God calls us to go.”

They strike up conversations with other skaters by asking if they know where they are going to go when they die, or by the more direct “Do you know Jesus Christ?”

As you can imagine, these inquiries are not always well received. On one particularly bad day in Whitewater, the group was cursed and threatened. “Even worse, they cursed at God,” said Brandon. “But we stayed strong and close to God.”

The Skaters of Christ are getting results. They are very proud that at a recent outing in Jefferson, some of the people to whom they preached accepted Jesus as their savior.

Word of their ministry is spreading. When the group went to Delafield for the first time, they were surprised to find that people there had already heard of them.

What is most impressive to me about these young men is that they willfully venture where many seasoned adults wouldn’t dare – straight into a lion’s den, knowing that they invite scorn and ridicule. The strength of their convictions – and the courage they display - is an amazing thing to behold. How many of us believe so strongly in something, that we would put ourselves in situations that could result in verbal or possibly, physical abuse, in hopes of making a difference? By comparison, when I was their age, the only thing I believed strongly was that CB radio was cool, and I was way too shy to even ask a girl to a movie.

The Skaters Of Christ have only been preaching for about a year, but they have big plans. They believe that God’s will for the short term is to share the Gospel while touring the United States and other countries, doing demonstrations and skating with people at parks. Their long-term goal: to become pastors.

If you want to find out more about this group, they have started a web site at www.SkatersofChrist.webs.com or they can be emailed at skatersofchrist@gmail.com.

Shakespeare wrote, “Screw your courage to a sticking place, and we’ll not fail.” These young men do it every day, and they are succeeding.

I Fought The Lawn, And The Lawn Won

2009-05-19T21:09:00.002-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 5-17-09)

A few years ago, I was given a book called "How To Mow The Lawn." The cover features a 1950’s-era photo of a trim, shirtless typical dad, pushing his motorized grass cutter over his perfect suburban lawn.

This is one of the things that we as men strive for – the perfect front lawn. We desire a weed-free, well-manicured carpet of green that shows neighbors and passersby that a real man lives there, a man who is cultured and classy, yet not afraid to get dirt on his hands. Or who can pay someone else to get dirt on their hands.

To many, a perfect front lawn is as much a status symbol as an Audi convertible. But when the car is parked in the garage, who’s going to see it? Your grass is front and center all the time, thumbing its nose at the dandelion-riddled lower class.

In my case, if a man is indeed judged by his lawn, then my level of respect ranks somewhere between Michael Vick and Rod Blagojevich. In a world where beautifully manicured lawns are spectacular welcome mats, my front lawn is the ratty bath mat at a cheap motel.

The inability to whip my lawn into shape has frustrated me for the 17 years I have lived at my current address. Oh, it’s not that I haven’t tried. I’ve spread so many granules and chemicals on my lawn over the years, I’m surprised I don’t have seven-legged rabbits hopping around my yard. But the more I try to fight, the stronger my weedy opponents seem to become. I even tried a lawn service one year, but they were as successful with my stubborn lawn as the obedience school was with Marley in “Marley & Me.”

My longest, most unsuccessful battle has been with ground ivy, a.k.a. Creeping Charlie. This stuff is tenacious. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in “The Terminator,” it just won’t die.

At one point, I thought I had found the solution to Charlie’s sinewy hold on my lawn. I was directed to a product that was described to me as the only weed killer on the market that would really knock Charlie out. It was strong and unpleasant stuff. To apply it to my lawn with a sprayer jar and hose, I outfitted myself with eye protection, a mask, a hat and overalls that immediately went into the washer post-application. I am thankful I do not live on a busy street, because I’m sure photos of me in my Hazmat suit would have shown up on the Internet.

This particular weed killer worked and worked well. I did a victory dance when the Creeping Charlie browned and withered. It was a banner spring for the front lawn at Lyke Manor.

However, after a time it became apparent that I couldn’t stop Charlie; I could only hope to contain him. He reared his ugly head again and again, and over time, subsequent applications of the nasty solution seemed to have less and less effect.

My wife owns a book that lists ways to simplify your life. One idea it recommends is to quit worrying about your lawn. It specifically stated that there are benefits to letting the ground ivy thrive. For example, in a dry summer, Creeping Charlie is heartier than grass and stays green when the rest of your lawn goes brown. That short chapter was the final prompting I needed to raise the white flag and sign the surrender documents.

Not that I needed much prompting, however. With each passing year, I felt less and less comfortable contributing such powerful chemicals to the groundwater. I kept weighing the benefits versus the potential damage and didn’t like the way the scales were balancing.

So this year, I completely turned over a new leaf. No fertilizer, no weed killer. When some non-Charlie weeds showed up that were just too big and ugly to bear, I got on my hands and knees and dug them out. And because I didn’t fertilize, my grass is not overly thick, which means my nice, quiet, non-motorized push reel mower does a fine job on the grass, if you don’t mind pushing it over the same spot more than once.

Because I wish not to be judgmental – and because I have friends that own hardware stores - I don’t want to discourage you from purchasing whatever lawn care additives you wish to make your grass look the way you want; to each his own.
But if you’re tired of fighting the ground war, you’re not alone.

The Write Stuff

2009-05-06T06:00:00.000-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 5-3-09)

Two of my nephews are currently majoring in journalism in college. As a wannabe writer, I’m thrilled at the prospect of having real, college-educated writers in the family.
I was briefly a college journalism major myself, but my university years were not exactly devoted to studying or self-improvement. I can truly say that about the only thing I accomplished during that period of great immaturity was somehow stumbling onto a wonderful human being who has now been married to me for 23 years. They are busy etching her likeness in stained glass as we speak; her application for sainthood is approved.
One of my great regrets was that I didn’t spend those years developing my skills as a writer. I have great admiration for those who can turn a phrase, whether it’s the whimsical musings of Garrison Keillor or the gritty crime fiction of Elmore Leonard. I’m amazed by writers that can keep your attention page after page and be effortlessly prolific.
I can appreciate their work because writing is hard. Even trying to punch out 700 words twice a month for the Messenger isn’t an easy proposition. Many are the times I have stared at a blank screen like an empty chair, struggling for inspiration or an idea – any idea – as deadline approached.
Other times, however, it seems like I am constantly scribbling down thoughts that I could use for a later column or some other project. Nothing ebbs and flows quite like the creative juices.
I don’t read nearly enough as I would like to (or should), so when I do, I try to make sure it’s worth my while. One writer who always qualifies is P.J. O’Rourke. A former National Lampoon writer who later wrote about politics for Rolling Stone, he has authored several political books that feature his incredible intelligence and biting wit.
What Jon Stewart is to Comedy Central, P.J. is to conservative commentary. Unlike the Coulters, Limbaughs and Ingrahams of the world, whose approach I find distasteful and whose motives I question, P.J. is smart, factual and funny – very funny. It says something that even when I disagree with his viewpoints, I still appreciate that he is presenting them factually and intelligently, with perfectly inserted bits of humor. He is the type of political writer I love – he’s not blindly allegiant to his party’s platform nor does he write in that smug, I’m-much-smarter-than-you style, even though he is.
But no one inspires me to become a better writer like Wisconsin author Michael Perry.
Mike is an awe-inspiring wordsmith who has produced three autobiographical books about his life in northern Wisconsin – Population: 485, Truck and the newly released Coop. After reading his books, you feel like you know the man inside and out; he has laid his life bare for you. He is a regular guy who fixes his truck, fumbles with women, kills plants, hunts, and sets his hair on fire. Yet he also appreciates modern dance and went to nursing school. And every word is worth reading.
I had the opportunity to interview Mike once when I was sitting in for Stan Milam on WCLO Radio. It was probably the most natural conversation I’ve had on that show. The guy is easy to talk to, humble and engaging. Just when I thought I couldn’t be more impressed, he sent a “thank you” post card to me care of the station, telling me that he enjoyed the interview. The books didn’t lie. To borrow from Dennis Green, he was what I thought he was.
And even though Mike is successful, you get the feeling he’s not doing it to become rich or famous. He’s just doing it because he loves to write. And those are the kind of authors that I want to read.
It’s the dream of many of us to write “The Great American Novel” or something encased in hardcover and sitting on a bestseller list. I took my stab at it several years ago, when I published a book of short stories called Five Trips to the Edge. Although I sold enough to cover my costs, I now look back at it with embarrassment, not only because of its dark, creepy tone, but also by thinking how much better it could or should be. Several times I have resolved to rewrite large chunks of it and try again, but I can’t muster the enthusiasm to make it a priority.
For now, my main writing project is a play that, God willing, will be presented at the Janesville Performing Arts Center in October. Since time is running short to get a final draft complete, whether it actually happens or not remains to be seen. But after a solid month of inactivity and doubt, ideas are starting to surface again. Whether those ideas are any good is something I hope you will eventually have the opportunity to judge.

Whatever Suits Your Fancy

2009-04-20T21:13:00.002-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 4-19-09)

America has gone casual.

Maybe you’ve noticed it over the past decade. Where you used to see business people like bankers and sales representatives dressed to the nines in suits every day, now you’re just as likely to see them in polo shirts bearing the company logo.

In some cases – like my wife’s place of employment, the United Way of North Rock County, which just updated their dress code - blue jeans are even considered acceptable. I don’t know what it says about our society when we go from doing business dressed like Donald Trump to doing business dressed like a bowling team.

A good example of the transition is the group of Goodwill Ambassadors at Forward Janesville. In the 1980’s, the official Ambassador uniform was a maroon blazer and silver slacks. Yes, you read that right, and it looked just as bad as it sounds. It is some kind of federal law that Chamber of Commerce Ambassadors must dress in colors not found in nature.

In the 1990’s, the Ambassadors dropped their drawers – that is, decided to not mandate official slacks - and donned green suit jackets, making them all look like they had won the Masters golf tournament. But now, even that last nod of formality, the green jacket, is being shoved to the back of the closet in favor of green polo shirts.

For me personally, I have been going through this same reverse metamorphosis. Once upon a time, I used to wear a suit and tie every day. Being in sales, it was my professional attire. This started when I bought my first “real” suit after college in 1984, and continued unabated into the 21st Century. (Side note: I call it a “real” suit because I refuse to count the powder-blue leisure suit that pre-dated it. The 1970’s never happened.)

Then, like one of those Darwinian evolution charts, except at a much more rapid pace, the suit disappeared in favor of a shirt and tie with slacks, and then the tie went away, too. And then eventually, on days when I did not expect to see customers, I even wore jeans and work boots to my office. And frankly, I was fine with that. I liked being freed from the suit culture after all those years.

Ironically, it was Forward Janesville that reeled me back in from my relaxed state of garmentry. Since their annual dinner is a somewhat formal affair, I always like to wear a suit. Knowing I would not have time to change clothes between work and the event, I wore my formal attire to my office.

The reaction I received was amazing. It seemed like every one of my co-workers inquired about where I was going that day, what important customer I was seeing, or even whether I secretly had a job interview.
Third degree aside, it felt good being back in a suit again. I felt important. I felt virile. I decided that I was going to go back to wearing suits every day. And why not? They say clothes make the man, and I need all the help I can get.

If I thought I got questioned the first day, the second day was even more fun. I deliberately played coy, simply explaining that I was trying to “class up the joint.” This went on for several days, co-workers casting a suspicious eye at me when I walked in with the latest suit and tie combination.

Eventually, one of my co-workers started to follow suit. As he and I stood conversing the first day he was similarly attired, another co-worker walked in, gave us a puzzled look and asked, “Did I miss the memo?”

Now, after several weeks, co-workers are still trying to figure out exactly what I am up to with my parade of formal apparel. They don’t buy my explanation that I just feel like wearing suits, especially when I answer with a devilish look in my eye that seemingly confirms whatever they suspect.

There is something to be said for life’s simple pleasures.

Waiting For Justice

2009-04-11T11:47:00.001-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 4-5-09)

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial....”
- The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Unfortunately, the Sixth Amendment does not extend the right to a speedy trial to a crime victim’s family.
Nine months ago, I wrote in this space about my wife’s cousin, a 24-year-old Chicago artist who went by the name of SOLVE. On June 14, SOLVE was senselessly stabbed to death by someone with whom he had exchanged words at a party.
A suspect in the murder, 24-year-old Kirk Tobolski, was apprehended and charged with first-degree homicide the following day.
According to police reports, four witnesses identified Tobolski as the killer, and Tobolski himself made a statement to police that he had “slashed” SOLVE with a knife. Despite this, Tobolski has been free on bail since October 28. Incredibly, since February, Tobolski – who still faces the first-degree murder charges – has been allowed to leave Illinois unwatched to visit his pregnant girlfriend in Michigan. The only requirement is that he must appear back in court for his next hearing.
How would you feel, knowing that your child’s alleged murderer is allowed to roam freely, greatly increasing the chance that he will try to flee? SOLVE’s father says he feels like he’s “been imprisoned in a theater of the absurd, though without any comic relief.”
How did this happen? How did Cook County, Illinois – that bastion of justice and fair government – give someone indicted on two counts of murder such unlimited freedom?
Money, that’s how.
To the surprise of SOLVE’s family, on October 28, somebody came up with the $50,000 cash necessary to spring Tobolski from his jail cell. SOLVE’s father believes that Tobolski’s family sold their home in order to raise the cash.
Wherever the money came from, there is apparently a lot more available. Tobolski is now being represented by defense attorney Richard Beuke, a big shot who has been involved in several high-profile cases in Cook County. Currently, Beuke is also defending Jon Burge, a retired police commander facing federal charges related to police brutality and alleged torture of suspects. The Burge case is big news in Chicago; his court appearances routinely draw scores of demonstrators.
SOLVE’s father, who is an attorney himself, believes that Beuke, as long as he's being paid, will undoubtedly drag the case out as long as he can. He says that “if there is a trial, which is likely, it is unlikely it will start before late 2010, more than two years after [the murder].”
Although Tobolski is allowed to go to Michigan, his release on bail did contain other stipulations, including no contact with SOLVE’s family, with the witnesses or the witnesses’ friends and relatives. At the first status hearing after receiving permission to leave Chicago, Tobolski did appear, buying himself another four weeks of relative freedom. The next status hearing is scheduled for April.
“The way things go in the Cook County Criminal Court in proceedings involving serious crimes,” says SOLVE’s father, “the judge will for up to 3 years invariably grant a request for more time if either side makes such a request at a status hearing. Swift justice in serious crimes is not a hallmark of Cook County's criminal justice system.”
So SOLVE’s family waits, disgusted at what they see as a gross miscarriage of justice and common sense. Until SOLVE’s killer is behind bars, there can be no closure for this terrible, senseless tragedy.

Could GM Plant a Field of Dreams?

2009-03-30T05:18:00.002-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 3-29-09)

Play ball!

That’s what I hope local officials will do with the latest proposal for re-use of the vacant General Motors facility in Janesville.

A plan announced last week would convert the plant into a multi-purpose entertainment facility that includes an indoor stadium for the Beloit Snappers, an indoor hockey rink, and a new home for the Rock County Fairgrounds.

There is much to like about this proposal. The Snappers and the Rock County Fair have both been coveting a more convenient location. And while this isn’t right next to Interstate 90 as either might prefer, it is certainly accessible thanks to the construction of the Reuther Way access road a few years ago.

The proposed name for the stadium and grounds is General Motors Field. Rather than selling naming rights to the facility, it will carry the GM name because the corporation – admittedly eager to stop paying taxes on the property – is donating the entire parcel and all of its buildings to the city of Janesville. And frankly, it just seems right that a ballpark there would be named for GM.

For the Snappers, this could be a dream come true. The proposed General Motors Field would have plenty of parking space, and they would be getting a facility that guarantees baseball rain or shine. The current plan is for a permanent roofed stadium with artificial turf, much like the Metrodome in Minneapolis, home of the Snappers’ parent organization, the Minnesota Twins. In fact, with the Twins preparing to move to a new stadium of their own in 2010, cost savings will be realized by re-using materials salvaged from the Metrodome. General Motors Field could easily re-use the Metrodome’s turf, seats, inflatable dome and even the blue outfield walls. If enough funding could be secured, however, a retractable roof and real grass is not out of the question.

Of course, the move to Janesville would require some tinkering with the team name. One suggestion – the Suburban Snappers – would be a tip of the hat to both GM and the two-city support of the team, while retaining the Snapper name as a tribute to Beloit. It’s a similar concept used by the NBA’s New Orleans Jazz when they kept their team name after moving to Utah.

The indoor facility would also open up many more possibilities for the Rock County 4-H Fair. For one thing, never again would inclement weather spoil the musical entertainment. There would also be a lot more room available to house animals and exhibits.

Of course, you can’t have an entire county fair indoors – in Wisconsin, one must smell the dairy air – so an outdoor midway would be adjacent to the indoor music venue and barns. And of course, the biggest benefit would be finally moving the fair out of a residential neighborhood that relies on street parking.

This facility would also put to rest the debate about what to do with the Janesville Ice Arena. Refrigeration equipment and bleachers still sitting at the GM plant could be recycled and re-used to form a rink that would satisfy the needs of everyone from Junior A League players to figure skaters and curlers.

Though nothing concrete has been determined, the new General Motors Field could potentially be used for many other events – Rock County Gladiators football, Janesville high school graduation ceremonies, and the Forward Janesville Business and Marketing Expo are just a few. Don’t count out political rallies, either. What presidential candidate wouldn’t love the opportunity to make a statement by campaigning at General Motors Field?

General Motors Field will need the support of the government and the public to become a reality. I would highly recommend that you contact state and local officials to voice your opinion on this issue. Give them a call at 1-800-APRIL-FOOL.

When Mascots Go Bad

2009-03-15T18:23:00.005-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 3-15-09)

Later this week, the Wisconsin State Legislature is scheduled to hold a hearing on a bill that would lead to the removal of Indian mascots at public schools. This isn’t the first time that statewide action has been considered.

On a related note, I was recently invited to join an Internet group called “Proud To Be A Milton Redman.” I wanted to write back that I’d rather join the group, “Proud To Have A Life and Have Moved On.”

I am a 1980 graduate of Milton High School, when our team name was indeed the Redmen. If you lived in the north Rock County area a decade ago, you know the trouble and strife that was stirred up when the school board finally made the decision to retire the name and mascot in favor of “Red Hawks.”

Putting aside the debate about racial offensiveness for a moment, let’s first look at aesthetics. Our Redmen logo was nicknamed “Smokin’ Joe,” and he was quite possibly the most hideous mascot in Wisconsin high school history. Smokin’ Joe was a riled-up savage waving a tomahawk, with one angry eye and a disproportionately large nose the size of a three-car garage. Twenty-nine years removed from high school, that’s not something I want to declare to the world that I’m proud of. Not that I’m part of the politically correct set, but sometimes change just makes sense.

At any rate, with the passage of time I thought this was now a non-issue. It certainly is for the current students. But some parents are still honked about losing Smokin’ Joe and his honker.

For those who think “Red Hawks” is for the birds, at least it’s better than Marquette University’s new moniker, the Golden Eagles. What’s unfortunate about that change is that the school probably could have kept their former name, the Warriors, had they replaced their mascot’s headdress and tomahawk with a Roman helmet and a sword. For example, UW-Whitewater kept “Warhawks” and simply changed their mascot from an Indian to a hawk.

Although other area schools have avoided mascot controversies, that doesn’t mean that their team names shouldn’t come under review. While the Milton Red Hawk mascot is big, muscle-bound and tough - a fierce bird designed to strike fear in the hearts of our opponents - nobody shakes in their boots when they see the Whitewater High School Whippets and their cartoonish mascot of a meek little dog. If Whitewater wants to convey toughness, they should use the photo of the battle-scarred mutt on those child-scaring “Report Dogfighting” billboards. Or they could go the opposite direction, change the spelling to “Whip-Its” and have the cheerleaders wear Devo hats.

Now that a real live cougar was actually spotted in Rock County, the team names of both the Janesville Craig Cougars and Clinton Cougars seem to have new credibility. However, the term “cougar” is also slang for older women who go to bars to pick up younger men. Since it’s likely there are considerably more than one of those in Rock County, one wonders if the schools will change their mascot to a sleazily dressed 50-year-old woman with too much rouge.

Speaking of rouge, I’ve never quite been able to figure out the Edgerton “Crimson Tide.” I assume a “crimson tide” is supposed to be a big red wave of water. If you look it up, however, you’ll discover that it’s actually either a huge accumulation of harmful algae, or a vodka and juice cocktail. To me, however, the name conjures up a box of red detergent granules. The Crimson Tide – tough on stains, tough on opponents.

Regardless, I’d rather say my school name stood for clean laundry instead of an offensive caricature. It will be interesting to see if the current legislative bill has legs or not. If it actually does get signed into law, it might finally put the Indian mascot issue to rest in this state once and for all. Whether you agree with it or not, one has to think that there are much more important issues to waste time and effort worrying about.

Face to Facebook

2009-02-28T17:59:00.003-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 3-1-09)

“Jim Lyke is writing his Messenger column.”
- Facebook entry, February 23, 2009, 9:30 pm

Thanks to the latest craze on the Wonderful World Wide Web, anyone who is a member of the web site Facebook now knows exactly what I was doing (or trying to do) at that particular moment in time. And why would I want to inform the world of that? Um...good question.

I became aware of Facebook mainly because my high school-aged daughter spends approximately 27 hours a day on the site. And if you had told me as recently as two months ago that I would be wasting about half of my own waking hours on it, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Facebook is a social-networking website that was launched five years ago by a student at Harvard University. In that relatively short period of time, it has grown into an Internet juggernaut with over 175 million users worldwide.

Initially, the site was only for Harvard students, and then it expanded to include other colleges, and eventually, high schoolers. Now, however, anyone 13 or older with a valid e-mail address can join.

Just recently, I was surprised when several otherwise normal adults started telling me how much they enjoyed Facebook and encouraged me to join. I finally decided to see what all of the fuss was about.

The first order of business on Facebook is to create a profile page, which consists of the usual personal information - where you work, what you like, relationship status, etc. Everyone’s Facebook page has a profile picture, which becomes your personal identifier. Since the only halfway decent photo I have of myself sits at the top of this column – and it’s getting old – I chose a picture of John Belushi smeared with mustard in the “Animal House” toga party scene. It’s a reasonable facsimile of my appearance circa 1980. Beyond your profile, you can post other photos and videos as well.

Once that’s done, the next thing you have to do is find “friends.” You’re nothing on Facebook without friends. You can search for people you know and send them “friend requests.” The site helps you find potential “friends” by suggesting people who were in your high school class, work for your company, or are friends with your friends. Once someone confirms you as a friend, you can write messages to each other, chat online, send them virtual gifts, or just choose to “poke” them. More on that later.

When you log on to Facebook, you are asked, “What are you doing right now?” You fill in the blank, which alerts all of your friends about your status update, and they can then make comments in response. So on February 23, all of my friends knew I was starting to write this column, to which Forward Janesville’s Dan Cunningham responded, “Me, too!” The best status update I have seen so far is the simple but truthful, “Laura is updating her Facebook status.”

This site contains an incredible amount of ways to waste time. Besides messaging your friends, there are games, quizzes, surveys, fan clubs, etc. And whatever you do on the site is posted for all of your friends to see. Personally, I wouldn’t want the world to know that I took an actual Facebook quiz called “How Good Are You In Bed?” Especially since everyone would see the score.

I still haven’t figured out the “poke” thing yet, either. You poke someone. They poke you. The site then tells you that you’ve been poked. You are then offered a virtual cigarette. OK, I made that last part up. But as if that isn’t enough, I’ll sometimes get a message that “Jane Doe Has Been Super Pokin’!” Whatever that means, it just doesn’t sound right.

What’s been most interesting is reconnecting with people I hadn’t seen or heard from in a while. One of my first friend requests was from a high school classmate I hadn’t seen since graduation day. Even so, I honestly thought that I would get bored with Facebook after a week. But it’s strangely addicting.

I think I’ve figured out one reason Facebook is so popular: it’s the ultimate voyeurism. I know what you’re doing every day! I know who all your friends are! I know who’s been poking you! Instead of Facebook, it should be called Openbook, because that’s what your life becomes.

Maybe it’s coincidence, but since I’ve become a Facebook user, it doesn’t seem like my kids are on the site as much as they used to be. Will Facebook be another thing that parents ruin for their kids? That the teens flee from as soon as the adults embrace it?

Hmm...I’ll have to post that thought on my page.

Two For The Show (Choir)

2009-02-18T12:15:00.001-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 2-15-09)

January means one thing in the households of many high schoolers.

It’s Show Choir Season.

To the students, it means most Saturdays are spent on the bus to a Midwest high school to perform a show that has been carefully, meticulously choreographed and rehearsed. To the parents, it means most Saturdays are spent driving to said high schools to watch the performance.

I am always amazed when I see the talent the high schoolers demonstrate in these shows. It’s a lot of hard work; I know because I’ve been in musical theater and what these kids do is much more difficult than anything I’ve personally witnessed. The show is about 20 minutes of choral singing, choreographed dance movements, emotive facial expressions and rapid costume changes. I don’t know how these young people do it; when I was that age, I was so dorky and uncoordinated I could barely walk without my oversized feet tripping me up.

Show choir is a relatively recent phenomenon. When I was at Milton High School in the late 1970’s, our first show choir (then called “swing choir”) was formed under the direction of music teacher Bill Schrank. Over 30 years later, Mr. Schrank is still at MHS directing the show choir, and my daughter Corinne now plays trombone in the show choir band.

Every year, I’m amazed at what old hard rock or heavy metal songs make their way into the show choir world. For example, Van Halen’s “Panama” is part of the Janesville Craig Spotlighters show this year. Imagine Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth in 1984, laying this track down in a haze-filled studio and thinking to themselves, “I hope someday this is sung by a show choir.” Though if Van Halen songs are ripe for show choirs now, I’m still guessing that “Hot For Teacher” won’t make the cut.

One of the shows I caught recently was at Monona Grove High School. I only watched one performance other than Milton’s, and while the high school from western Wisconsin that I witnessed had extremely talented kids, its program selections left something to be desired. Actually, from an unintentional humor standpoint, I hit the jackpot. In a classic case of “What Were They Thinking???,” this particular high school pulled off the Show Choir Trifecta of Wretchedness.

1) Their opening song was "MacArthur Park.” As you may know, “MacArthur Park” is often cited as the worst song of the last 50 years, particularly in its overdramatic 1968 Richard Harris version. The lyrical metaphor that gets everyone laughing is the immortal, “Someone left the cake out in the rain/And I don’t think that I can take it/’Cause it took so long to bake it/And I’ll never have that recipe agaaaaaaain!” It was amazingly surreal to see these kids dramatically singing this song with serious looks on their faces. Frankly, teaching this song to teenagers should be considered felony child abuse.

2) They did a stripper number. Well, maybe not a stripper number per se, but a routine where all the guys are ogling a female dancer using suggestive moves that were...not unlike those of a stripper. In fact, the audience member next to me said, "All she needs is a pole.” I felt like I was watching the talent show competition from "Little Miss Sunshine," except with a postpubescent girl.

3) The guy's costumes for the final numbers were hip-hop style - complete with baseball caps cocked to the side and flashing those funky hand motions first popularized by Run-DMC and imitated by every rapper since. Keep in mind that this was a predominantly white teenage show choir from western Wisconsin. If you want to get urban teenagers to change their style of dress, show them this routine. They will run screaming from the auditorium and drive to the nearest K-Mart for a makeover, only to emerge from the store looking like Urkel from “Family Matters.”

Fortunately, shows like that are the exception, not the rule. Although I’m hardly unbiased, I have to say that I think both Milton’s and Craig’s programs are exceptionally strong this year. If you enjoy watching talented young people perform, you would enjoy their shows.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to work on the walking thing.

How To Pick A Super Bowl Favorite

2009-01-31T07:00:00.001-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 2-1-09)

Super Bowl weekend is upon us. And among all the hype about the parties, this year’s commercials or the halftime Bruce Springsteen show, yes, there is a football game stuck in there, too.

Naturally, you want to pick a team to cheer for in the big game, but neither the AFC champion Pittsburgh Steelers nor the NFC champion Arizona Cardinals really evoke any feelings one way or the other. So how to choose?

To help in this life-or-death decision, I’ve identified several factors and given each equal weight in determining the verdict. My final conclusion will be based on my personal analysis; your mileage may vary.

HISTORY FACTOR: The Steelers have had a great deal of success over the last 35 years, winning five Super Bowls, including a victory three years ago over the Seattle Seahawks.
The oldest NFL team, the nomadic Cardinals (Chicago to St. Louis to Phoenix) have been simply awful for most of their history. Their sole championship was in 1947. To put that in perspective, that was 11 presidents ago (Harry Truman), when the NFL championship wasn’t even televised yet. Advantage: Cardinals.

OWNERSHIP FACTOR: Both teams have had family ownership since the 1930’s, the Rooneys in Pittsburgh and the Bidwills with the Cardinals.
In 1988, Bill Bidwill gave St. Louis the old “give me a new stadium or I’ll leave” routine and he left. I can’t stand that. Advantage: Steelers.

UNIFORM FACTOR: Except for the rounded numbers they adopted about a decade ago, the Steelers’ uniforms are the same tough-looking black-and-gold they have worn for years, right down to the Steel logo that has always resided on only one side of their helmets.
Meanwhile, the Cardinals are trying to make the bird on their helmet look fierce. Advantage: Steelers.

MASCOT FACTOR: The Cardinals’ mascot is Big Red, and he is indeed a big red cardinal. The Steelers’ mascot is Steely McBeam, an unshaven steel worker complete with construction helmet, checked work shirt, and bib overalls. In a 2007 Steelers fan poll, Steely’s approval rating was a paltry 10%. Yes, his own fans hate him. Advantage: Cardinals.

HAIR FACTOR: You see a lot of hair flying out the back of the helmets belonging to Arizona’s Larry Fitzgerald and Pittsburgh’s Troy Polamalu. When the helmets are off, though, Polamalu’s mop could conquer the world. Or at least smother it. Advantage: Steelers.

FACIAL FRACTURE FACTOR: Both teams have a star player that suffered major multiple facial fractures. Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s came as the result of a motorcycle accident in 2006. Arizona’s Anquan Boldin got his from a vicious helmet-to-helmet hit during a game in September. Despite needing 7 plates and over 40 screws to fix the fractures, Boldin only missed two games and continued to play at a high level. That’s guts. Advantage: Cardinals.

NO ‘I’ IN TEAM FACTOR: As the rest of his team was celebrating their NFC championship two weeks ago, Boldin was arguing with his coach over playing time and skipping the post-game revelry. Advantage: Steelers.

RODNEY DANGERFIELD FACTOR: It’s hard to find an NFL superstar who has gotten less respect over the years than Kurt Warner. After being cut by the Packers as a rookie, no other NFL team came calling. So Warner stocked groceries and played in the Arena League for a few years before finally getting an opportunity with the St. Louis Rams. All he did was lead the team to two Super Bowls while picking up two Most Valuable Player awards. However, his play declined and the Rams gave up on him a mere two years after the second Super Bowl. The New York Giants dumped him after one season. He then joined the Cardinals, where he was destined to be the backup. But a funny thing happened on the way to the scrap heap. Warner found his zone and played himself back into a starting job. Warner has been spectacular this year, and he’s a nice guy to boot. Advantage: Cardinals.

SWEET REVENGE FACTOR: Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt was a Pittsburgh assistant until 2006. He departed for Arizona after the Steelers passed him over for their head coaching job. Advantage: Cardinals.

CONFERENCE FACTOR: Let’s face it – this is NFC country. Wisconsin is right in the middle of the Black-and-Blue Division, the NFC North. It feels right to back the Packers’ conference in the Super Bowl – except when the Bears, Vikings or Cowboys are involved. Or Terrell Owens. Advantage: Cardinals.

FANTASY FOOTBALL FACTOR: Only one player from either team was on my fantasy league team - Arizona’s Larry Fitzgerald, and he carried me to my first-ever league championship. Advantage: Cardinals.

UNDERDOG FACTOR: As of this writing, the Steelers are a 7-point favorite. Who doesn’t love an underdog? Advantage: Cardinals.

So there it is – I’m a Cardinals fan for a day. If only it were this easy to decide who to vote for on Election Day.

Shoveling The Sidewalk to Nowhere

2009-01-31T06:59:00.000-06:00

(From the Milton Courier, 1-29-09)

Editor, the Courier:

As many Milton residents know, I am the proud owner of the infamous “Sidewalk to Nowhere,” a patch of concrete that exists only in front of my house on Columbus Street.
The sidewalk earned its name because it has no connection on either end, not even a clear path on which to continue your stroll. If you continue northward and fight your way through the lilac bush, you’ll find a sloped lawn where navigation on foot is impossible. To the south, you’ll run straight into a fence and a row of hedges.
Its 40 feet of uselessness was magnified several years ago when the city installed a more complete sidewalk on the opposite side of our street along College Green Park.
Because of my sidewalk’s lack of purpose, and mindful of the city’s policy not to enforce the shoveling ordinance except in the case of a complaint, I haven’t bothered to shovel it over the 17 winters I have spent here. Well, except once, several years ago, when someone complained.
But now, I will have to do it a second time, because again, the city received a complaint.
Why would someone do this, especially in a year when the snow has been plentiful? I can only think of three reasons:
1) I have an enemy.
2) I have a friend that is capable of playing a cruel practical joke.
3) I am the victim of someone who doesn’t like shoveling his or her sidewalk and/or is a firm believer in a black-and-white “what’s fair for one is fair for another” policy, even in cases where common sense trumps a one-size-fits-all city ordinance.
I can’t blame the city for enforcing this, because making exceptions to an ordinance is bad precedent. And I suppose I set myself up for this by drawing attention to the sidewalk in a letter to the editor a few years ago.
But a funny thing happened after that letter to the editor appeared. I was absolutely amazed by how many people drove by the sidewalk just to look at it. Some even came over and walked on it just to say that they had. The Sidewalk to Nowhere became a tourist attraction.
And maybe that is the point of the person who called the city to complain. By keeping the sidewalk covered with snow all winter, I am depriving my community of the opportunity to view a valuable asset, a landmark of interest to visitors and residents alike. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am certain that was the intent of the complainant.
So thank you, fellow citizen. Thank you for opening my eyes to the horrible disservice I was doing to Milton. I have learned my lesson and vow to do a better job of making my tourist attraction accessible to all, at least until December 2009.

Through The Fire and the Flames, We Carry On

2009-01-17T07:39:00.002-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 1-18-09)

As music stores go, Rockhaus Guitars and Drums in Milwaukee was never the biggest or the fanciest.
But for a musician or a music lover, it was the most fascinating and certainly, the most real.
I use the term “was” because in the early morning hours of Sunday, January 11, Rockhaus was transformed from Milwaukee’s coolest music store into a cordoned-off disaster area. An electrical fire turned Rockhaus into a near-total loss. Between fire, smoke and water damage, over $100,000 of merchandise and equipment were destroyed.
As tragic as this news would be to any Milwaukee-area music lover, it’s 100 times worse for our family because the store owner is my brother-in-law, Rusty Olson.
Besides owning Rockhaus, Rusty plays drums for several Milwaukee bands, including the Peder Hedman Quartet. But his most notable drum seat is with Couch Flambeau, a legendary local trio that has lost none of its edge, wit, energy or musicianship after 27 years of performing. If you went to college in Madison or Milwaukee during the 1980’s, it’s likely that at some point, you heard their music.
But even if I didn’t know Rusty from Adam, I would have loved his store. When you walked into Rockhaus, there were no glitzy displays, just stuff - lots of stuff. Stacks of amplifiers. Truckloads of drums. CDs from area bands. Guitars of every size, shape, color and variety hanging on the wall, even one made of aluminum. Odd, vintage and collectible instruments like a theremin, the electronic gadget most famous for its appearance in old science fiction movies and the Beach Boys’ classic “Good Vibrations.” You could spend hours just looking over the various pop culture items Rusty had on the walls or behind the counter.
Despite being literally a corner shop, musicians of local, national and even international renown have walked through Rockhaus’ doors.
Times have been tough lately for small businesses, and Rockhaus was no exception. Repairs and Internet sales were instrumental in helping the store weather the struggles of the current economy.
But all that changed in the middle of the night last week, when a falling ceiling tile tripped the burglar alarm at the store, and Rusty arrived minutes later to find the store in flames.
For three days, Rusty has been able to look at, but not touch, what’s left of his business. He sees a $2,000 guitar sitting in a puddle of water, but cannot rescue it from further damage. Rusty is not allowed to move anything until inspectors from his and his landlord's insurance companies examine the wall where the fire started.
He refers to the three days following the fire as a “strange parade of new faces and business cards.” Even though the waiting is maddening, he says that “it has given me the opportunity to look things over and begin to get a game plan together, so it has been helpful.”
The game plan is to rebuild.
Anyone in Rusty’s shoes would have every right to be angry or depressed. And I’m sure he has already experienced both of those feelings. But he remains optimistic.
“There are some contractors ready to go, dumpsters set for delivery and things are falling into place day by day,” he said. “The landlord and (I) are both wanting very much to get things back to normal life as soon as we can. Everybody is playing nice and being productive. What more can you ask for, really?”
And that reinforces a lesson I learned when an inattentive driver totaled the coolest car I ever owned last year. Things can be replaced, but people can’t. No one was hurt in the Rockhaus blaze, and for that, we can be thankful. Rockhaus may be gone, but like a phoenix, it will rise from the ashes.

When Norm Was The Norm

2009-01-07T22:25:00.002-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 1-4-09)

My daughter Corinne is going to Boston next spring with her high school band. When she received her itinerary, one of the items listed was “Dinner at Cheers.”
“What is ‘Cheers’?” she asked.
Oh, my.
I looked it up and discovered that the final episode of “Cheers” aired almost 16 years ago (16 years ago!) when my daughter was a year old. No wonder she knew nothing of Sam, Diane, Woody, Norm and Cliff. Finding out that Frasier was on a show before “Frasier” was like finding out that John Lennon was in a band before he wrote “Imagine.”
Besides making me feel old, it reminded me of how television used to be the Great Uniter. At the time “Cheers” was on the air, practically everyone I knew watched it. And that’s how it was with a lot of shows.
If you needed a topic to start a conversation, all you had to do was ask, “Did you see ‘Saturday Night Live’ last weekend?” From “M*A*S*H” to “Happy Days” to “The Cosby Show,” there were dozens of shows that provided a common bond for discussion at school or at the office – “watercooler shows,” to borrow a phrase from “Seinfeld.”
Of course, those were the days when you only had three network programs to choose from. With the advent of cable television and its explosion of networks, viewership has greatly fragmented. Then came home video, followed by the Internet and video games, and now it’s hard to find two televisions on the same street tuned to the same thing (except on Packer Sundays).
My personal television viewing habits have changed radically over the last decade or so. Where I once watched as much TV as anyone, now I rarely view a program that doesn’t include a football. The only two current shows that seem to have any kind of “watercooler” status are “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” – and I have never watched an episode of either. That’s not an exaggeration; I mean never, as in “not once.”
Other popular shows I have never seen: “The Sopranos,” any incarnation of “CSI,” “E.R.,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Sex and the City.” The list would fill a few pages.
Only once did I watch a “Seinfeld” episode in first run. I saw “Friends” once. I saw part of one episode of the first “Survivor” series but after watching the contestants eat a rat, I never returned.
That doesn’t mean I am now some sort of snobby TV hater or Luddite. There are, in fact, a few series I really like, including “The Office,” “Lost,” “Psych” and “Monk.” However, I watch 99% of their episodes not in their scheduled network slot, but on DVDs checked out from the public library or on the TV networks’ web sites.
On the rare occasion where I do watch a show on network TV, the commercial interruptions drive me nuts. We caught one of my daughter’s favorite movies, “Miracle,” on ABC recently, and sitting through the long breaks was torturous, particularly when you’re no longer used to doing that.
About the only universally shared TV experience left is the Super Bowl, a show where, ironically, the commercials are part of the entertainment. I’ve always imagined that the only people not watching the Super Bowl are 80-year-old ladies sitting quietly at home tuned to Lawrence Welk or American Movie Classics (sorry, Mom). But amazingly enough, each of the past two years, I have had to miss the big game. It completely pained me that last year, while one of the greatest games in the history of the Super Bowl was playing out, I was driving back from central Iowa in a snowstorm, forced to search the AM radio dial for the game. And to make matters worse, when my wife took the wheel for the last part of the trip, I actually fell asleep and missed the Giants’ winning touchdown drive. You know you’re getting old when the formula “Passenger Seat + Darkness = ZZZ” automatically applies to you.
This year, however, I should be able to watch the Super Bowl again, and as long as the Minnesota Vikings aren’t playing, it will be a good thing. Maybe I’ll even go to a Super Bowl party.
Because sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.
And they're always glad you came...

A Wonderful "Wonderful Life"

2009-01-07T22:23:00.001-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 12-21-08)

Another year, another Christmas radio play.

What started as a random idea – thanks to an infamous brainstorming session with former JPAC director Laurel Canan - is now close to becoming classified as a local tradition.

In 2007, about 300 people braved 4 inches of snow to witness Charles Dickens’ classic story “A Christmas Carol” come to life on the stage of the Janesville Performing Arts Center, and hundreds more heard it broadcast live on WCLO. This year, after another nasty winter storm forced a postponement, about 350 showed up on December 10 to watch our group – now known as “The JPAC Radio Players” – perform “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

When WCLO agreed to broadcast the play last year and this whole idea began taking shape, I had no idea how things would evolve. I viewed it as a small, fun event that wouldn’t take a lot of time. I didn’t know how wrong I would be.

Since I know a lot of people in the local acting community, I had some good ideas about who would be right for certain roles. I knew, for example, the incredibly gifted Michael Chase would make a perfect Scrooge. Once I started asking people to be a part of the show, however, word spread, and before I knew it, I was being bombarded with phone calls by people wanting to take part.

By the time Mike Casey, a veteran of the local stage and “Christmas Carol” junkie, called to ask about a role, I had filled all the speaking parts. When I offered the sole responsibility I had left - creating the sound effects - Mike dove into it. What originally seemed like a consolation job led to Mike becoming the star of the stage show. Armed with books describing how certain sounds were produced during the days of radio drama, Mike was determined to do the sound effects the right way, live and unaided by taped noises. The audience was captivated.

I was also fortunate to enlist the help of Sarah Lima, a teacher and accomplished musician, to be our accompanist. She came up with the musical ideas, making my job easy and proving once again that it pays to surround yourself with talented people.

Celebrating in the lobby after last year’s show was complete, the common question was, “What are we going to do next year?” I already had the answer. I had researched “It’s A Wonderful Life” and knew that radio scripts existed.

The original radio script I read aired in 1947 with Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed and other original actors from the popular movie version. While I liked the idea of doing that particular script, it was only 55 minutes long and greatly abridged from the movie version, which runs over 2 hours. I felt that much of our audience would be very familiar with the film and would be disappointed that certain scenes were left out. So I searched out another version and found one that was supposed to run about 90 minutes and was much more faithful to the movie.

After last year’s play, I had scores of people come to me and ask how they could be a part of the next performance. I decided that this year, I was going to need to do auditions.

I did, however, pre-cast two of the lead roles. I’ve debated whether that was the right thing to do, but as I read the script, every time I came to one of George Bailey’s lines, I could hear the voice of Dave Bitter, who had played Bob Cratchit in “Christmas Carol.” I decided to offer him the part and get it on his schedule before one of his many other acting opportunities came calling. Ditto for Michael Chase, who not only handled the villainous Mr. Potter, but ended up taking on George’s brother Harry and the Italian restauranteur Mr. Martini. In the final scene, in fact, Harry and Martini talk to each other, which had to be amusing for the audience to watch.

In a marathon evening at JPAC, Laurel Canan and I auditioned nearly 60 people for the 12 roles I had left. The decision-making process was gut-wrenching. There were a number of people that could have done a fine job but I simply couldn’t fit them in. In several cases, there were two or three people that read the same role really well, and it became a matter of how to break the tie. As it was, I ended up casting three more people than I intended.

Thankfully, not all of the choices were difficult. J. Peter Shaw of Evansville had barely uttered a full sentence when I knew he was the perfect choice to play Clarence, the angel that earns his wings by helping George. I glanced over at Laurel and the look on her face confirmed that she was thinking the same thing. WCLO radio personality Rose Stricker, who wasn’t even on our radar prior to auditions, came in and turned out to be an ideal choice as George’s wife Mary.

Mike Casey and Sarah Lima returned in their respective roles, guaranteeing that sound effects and music would again be top-notch. In fact, the sound effects evolved to the point that we needed three people dedicated to performing them – including Laurel herself, who also had a one-line cameo.

Once we got deeper into rehearsals, I realized that the show was running long. I had to cut about 15 minutes out of the script to get us to my goal of 90 minutes.

Until the night of the broadcast, we never performed the complete show start to finish. We intended to have one final rehearsal where we ran it straight through but thanks to poor winter road conditions, it never happened. So we were, in fact, winging it the night of the show.

If you weren’t there in person or heard the performance live on WCLO, you still have the opportunity. The show will be rebroadcast on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – check wclo.com for air times. A recording of the show is also posted on the WCLO web site; you can find it by typing “wclo.com/podcasts/wclo-special-broadcasts/”.

When “It’s A Wonderful Life” was chosen a year ago, no one had a clue that bank failures and mass job losses would be a reality in America 2008. While the appeal of this story is timeless, it takes on special meaning this year because of the circumstances this country currently faces.

I hope that this holiday season, whatever your situation may be, that like George Bailey we take time to reflect on the positive effect our lives have had – or can have - on others.

25 Years After "The Day After"

2009-01-07T22:21:00.001-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 12-7-08)

No marigolds in the promised land
There's a hole in the ground
Where they used to grow
Any man left on the Rio Grande
Is the king of the world
As far as I know
- Steely Dan, “King of The World”

I had never really listened to the lyrics to that song before, but after hearing it again recently, I realized that it was about being alive after a nuclear holocaust.
Immediately, I began thinking about the controversial TV movie “The Day After,” which contained the first graphic depiction of a nuclear strike on the USA that had ever aired on American television. I hadn’t thought about that film, or the threat of nuclear war, in years.
In a case of bizarre karma, later that evening a friend of mine sent me an e-mail entitled, “This aired 25 years ago today.” It contained links to video clips of “The Day After.”
It was hard to believe that it was only 25 years ago that the specter of nuclear war hung over us. These days, it almost seems like a dream.
US-Soviet relations were perhaps at an all-time low in 1983. President Reagan referred to the Soviets as “The Evil Empire.” The Soviets walked out of arms talks in Geneva, Switzerland over NATO plans to deploy Pershing II missiles in Europe. President Reagan announced his “Star Wars” defense initiative, which the Soviets believed to be offensive, not defensive. The Soviets shot down a Korean passenger jet that accidentally flew over their airspace, killing all 269 people aboard. The US invaded Grenada to overthrow a fledgling Communist government. And then, “The Day After” spooked the 100 million of us who watched.
If those events made us jittery, imagine if we had known that during that same general time frame, the fall of 1983, World War III nearly began – twice. First, in September, a Soviet early warning satellite incorrectly reported that five nuclear missiles had been launched toward the USSR. The Soviet strategy in such a case was an immediate nuclear counterattack. But the commander on duty, Stanislav Petrov, correctly guessed that it was a false alarm, based on his training that a US attack would likely involve hundreds of missiles. His hunch and deviation from Soviet doctrine, unknown to the outside world until 1998, saved the planet.
Then in November, a NATO military exercise in Europe called Operation Able Archer had the increasingly paranoid Soviets convinced that it was a front for a surprise nuclear attack. The Soviets were so sure this was the case that they had their military on full alert. Only when the exercise was over did the Soviets calm down, and did the US and NATO discover – thanks to a spy - how close to war they had come.
But even if we didn’t know now about those two near-catastrophes, just thinking back to what we did know gives me a shudder. The possibility of Armageddon was always looming in the background. Even watching MTV, which I was doing a lot in 1983, one could see mushroom clouds in videos ranging from David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” to Nena’s “99 Luftballons.”
“The Day After” wasn’t even the scariest movie about nuclear war that came out of that era. In 1984, a British film called “Threads” was released, which was very similar in plot to “The Day After,” but about an attack on Sheffield, England rather than Lawrence, Kansas. “Threads” was twice as frightening, probably because it was much more graphic than “The Day After,” and depicted a considerably bleaker post-nuclear future. Frankly, I don’t remember nearly as much about “The Day After” as I do about “Threads.” To this day, recalling the scenes of the latter film creeps me out.
The world has changed. My kids can’t even begin to imagine growing up in a world where you feared that nuclear war could become a reality. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were terrifying to them, but the threat of having your entire world vaporized in a minute can’t begin to compare. It’s impossible for them to relate to.
But for those of us that remember, it makes the current state of the economy seem like a trifle.

A Man In A Boy's Body

2008-11-30T09:08:00.002-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 11-30-08)

Physically, T.J. is a boy of 13.
Mentally, T.J. is a man.
T.J. has grown up quickly, placed in a role that each of us hope we never have to fill.
T.J. is his father’s caregiver.
Perhaps that label is overstating the severity of the situation. T.J.’s father, Thomas, is not incapacitated. Thomas can drive and get around, but he’s lost a lot of weight, he can’t work, and his body is riddled with disease. And worst of all, his doctors have told him he will not get better.
And that has placed T.J. in a position of doing a lot of things that a boy normally wouldn’t have to do.
But to T.J., they are second nature. One thing that stands out in the mind of his father is one day when T.J. was eight, when Thomas was struggling to bend down and tie his work boots. Without a word, T.J. came over and did it for him. After that, T.J. made sure he was up before 5 a.m. every day to take care of that simple task for his dad.
“He’s been like a war hero,” Thomas says. “Or an angel. It’s like he can read my mind.”
Thomas can pinpoint when things started to go awry with his body. In 2003, a piece of heavy equipment fell on his abdomen. The accident led to a damaged and infected pancreas along with kidney problems. When he was finally well enough to go back to work, he discovered a strange change to his body. The upper part of his body would no longer perspire, even when doing hard physical work in 90-degree weather.
Other odd physical ailments followed. One day behind the wheel of a work truck, Thomas drove over a bump and the jolt knocked out his vision. His passenger had to take the wheel and guide the truck to the shoulder. Thomas’ sight eventually returned.
Thomas wears a thick, bushy beard these days, an appearance he doesn’t like and apologizes for. But that and the thick layers of clothes he wears are a necessity, as he is always cold, even in mid-summer.
A parade of doctors examined Thomas and could not determine what was wrong with him. He was told it could be anything from multiple sclerosis to Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Through it all, T.J. has been there by his side. “He always has a positive attitude,” according to Thomas. “We’re a team. There is no ‘I,’ just ‘we’ or ‘us.’
“He’ll say to me, ‘Dad, there’s nothing you can’t tell me.’ But I tell him, ‘You’re only 13 years old!”
Thomas hates that it has to be this way. “I feel like I’ve taken his childhood away from him,” he says, “because of everything that’s happened.”
But T.J. has never complained. His only question is why it had to happen to Thomas. And that’s a question Thomas doesn’t know how to answer.
As Thomas’ lack of energy increased, his ability to work decreased, finally ceasing altogether in 2006. He has been able to live off his life savings, the result of a successful career.
Since then, his primary responsibility has been to be a father. And he isn’t done yet.
“I want to teach (T.J.) everything I know,” Thomas says. That includes how to frame houses, build furniture, finish drywall, and pour driveways, as well as every detail worth knowing about fishing.
Thomas has a daughter, too, but she doesn’t live with him. He worries that his close bond with his son might make her think he doesn’t love her just as much. But one of his stated goals is to still be able to someday “walk her down the aisle.”
Thomas now knows the cause of his problems. Tests showed that his body was loaded with chemicals, including arsenic from treated lumber, apparently from working in construction. This appears to be the cause of the cancer that now inhabits his body. He has been told that there is nothing more that can be done for him.
“You never know what your life holds for you,” Thomas says. But he isn’t looking for sympathy. Thomas simply wants his son to know that he appreciates the devotion, strength, love and affection that T.J. has shown him. And to let others know that his modest, unassuming son is truly an adult in a child’s body, in many ways more mature at 13 than some of us are decades later.

Change We Could All Believe In

2008-11-17T22:53:00.003-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 11-16-08)

My regular readers tell me that they least like the columns in which I comment on politics. I have heard that statement from enough people that I have purposely avoided that topic during the course of this year’s elections. If you are one of those readers, my apologies for this column.

After a campaign year that got even more nasty and divisive than I thought possible, I was pleasantly surprised on Election Night to hear statements from John McCain and Barack Obama that gave me hope for the future.

In his extremely gracious concession speech, McCain lauded Obama and urged his supporters “to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.”

“Whatever our differences,” McCain said, “we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.”

Obama, in return, also extended an olive branch and echoed the same theme of working together.

“Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long,” Obama said. “And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too.”

It would be easy to dismiss such talk as the usual public relations statements that are supposed to be recited after an election. Call me naïve, but in the case of both Obama and McCain, I believe they meant them.

What surprised me most about McCain’s concession speech was how early in the evening it arrived. I expected to go to bed not knowing the results of the election. I couldn’t help thinking, watching McCain speak, that the guy seemed relieved. Not just relieved that the election was over, but relieved that he wasn’t the one inheriting what a friend described as a convulsing economy, a fractured political landscape, two nagging wars, and a financial crisis that only ten people really understand.

That doesn’t mean that I think he wanted to lose. But I think he saw that it was not the end of the world to return to the Senate and be the solution-seeking politician he used to be before the forces of the GOP coerced him to change.

McCain is an honorable man. It surely horrified him that several of his appearances, including his concession speech, were marred by angry constituents that even booed him when he dared utter something nice about Sen. Obama. His rebukes of those misguided supporters and defense of Obama were incredibly admirable. How must one feel to stand at a podium and think, these are my people?

Unfortunately, “party first” thinking is not limited to hardcore people at political rallies. Now that their legislative branch domination of the GOP is complete, both on the national and state level, I envision Democratic legislators drunk with power, ready to push their agenda forward like a runaway bulldozer. That would be the last thing we need right now.

I sincerely hope that President Obama and Governor Doyle do not allow that to happen. Based on my past experience working with state legislators, I must admit I have more confidence at this point in the President-elect.

However, as I write this, Rep. Mike Sheridan from Janesville is considered the front-runner to be elected speaker of the state assembly. He would be a good choice; Sheridan knows the value of compromise. He reached out to management at General Motors and his efforts certainly resulted in the local plant remaining open a good five years more than it might have. Elevated to a leadership position, he would now be free of party pressure to set the example and work toward advancing the people’s business.

The one thing missing from our state and national legislators in the past few decades has been the spirit of compromise in the name of the big picture. Anything less than a complete victory is seen by hard-core party members as weakness. Had our founding fathers taken such an approach at their Constitutional Convention, this great nation would have never been formed.

Obama’s message was “Change.” McCain’s was “Country First.” I do not see those ideas as mutually exclusive of one another. At this time of crisis, we have to quit focusing on whether we are Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, and just focus on being Americans.

That, my friends, would be a change we could all believe in.

A Hairy Situation

2008-11-06T06:15:00.000-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 11-2-08)

The photo that runs next to this column doesn’t look like me.

In fact, except for a month or so during the summer, it hasn’t looked like me for a while. The clean-shaven appearance depicted here has been replaced with facial hair, in the form of a horseshoe moustache.

You are probably wondering what a horseshoe moustache is. Basically, it’s a moustache that extends from the corners of the lips down to the chin. It is so-named because it resembles an upside-down horseshoe. Most people mistakenly call it a Fu Manchu. I have also had people refer to it as a handlebar. I didn’t know which was correct, so I had to look it up to find out.

To prevent you from potential future embarrassment – after all, what could be a bigger social faux pas than wrongly identifying a moustache - both a Fu Manchu and a handlebar are moustaches where the ends are grown out long; the ends of the Fu droop down and the ends of the handlebar point up, like Rollie Fingers with his waxed tips.

Though it is not a common sight on me, facial hair hasn’t been a rarity, either. My driver’s license has a 2003 photo in which I look like a goateed criminal from a Quentin Tarantino film. At one time or another, I’ve had just about every facial hair combo imaginable, including a collegiate attempt at a Civil War general look with the moustache and sideburns connected.

What is rare – these days anyway - is when I grow it for my personal satisfaction. Generally, it means I have a part in a local theater production. Earlier this year, to play the role of George Bernard Shaw in the Janesville Performing Arts Center’s production of “The Frogs,” I had to sport a full beard. When my current shrubbery first appeared, several people assumed I was doing another play.

Truth be told, there really isn’t a reason. I came back from a summer backpacking trip in New Mexico with two weeks of growth and just decided to see how it looked if I shaved it this way.

You don’t see this style of moustache much these days, though my favorite baseball player, Robin Yount, still sports one. So did Joe Namath when he was the toast of New York, and John Lennon during the “Sgt. Pepper” era. Even though it’s not unusual, it’s still a bit on the edge.

Reactions to my new look have been pretty comical. Many people didn’t say a word when they first saw it – which I generally interpret as disapproval. Others have accused me of trying to look like a biker, or of being inspired by the cowboys I saw in New Mexico. A couple of my co-workers think it makes me look Mexican, and have nicknamed me “Carlos.”

The general consensus of my teenagers’ friends is “thumbs up.” However, I don’t score well among the demographic that consists of adult females with the last name of Lyke.

Not long after I returned from New Mexico, I did a presentation at my mother’s church. When my mother saw me walk in, she had this horrified look on her face. She immediately put her fingers in front of her face to draw a moustache. I knew exactly what she was telling me.

Of course, the superdelegate in this opinion poll is my wife. If she could hold me down and shave it off herself, she probably would. In fact, I’m surprised she hasn’t already tried it while I’m asleep. Maybe I shouldn’t be giving her ideas.

Now that the horseshoe has passed the two-month mark, she’s realized that this look – which she has dubbed “a hick from the ‘60s” - isn’t necessarily a passing fancy. We’ve had to come to an understanding that she’ll just have to accept my moustache, and I’ll just have to accept the fact that she won’t grow her hair to her waist. Not that I didn’t try striking that bargain, mind you.

If my new look survives into 2009 – and trust me, there is great pressure for it not to - it will probably be time to replace the photo that adorns this column. Until then, I recommend drawing on the moustache with a black Sharpie marker. If you do that, however...please don’t add horns.

Adventures In Customer Service

2008-10-31T18:17:00.002-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 10-19-08)

There is an old joke about service after the sale. The joke goes that a recently deceased soul is given a tour of both Heaven and Hell before deciding where he would like to spend eternity.

When he visits Hell, it looks like a big fun party, much more exciting than the sedate and boring Heaven. He chooses Hell, but when he goes back there, it’s no party at all; it’s eternal suffering. When he protests to Satan and asks why it was different in his previous visit, Satan replies, “Before, you were a prospect. Now, you’re a customer.”

That’s the way I feel right now about several of my experiences with home improvement.

Exhibit number one is Eon, a Canadian company that made the material we used to build our back deck and stairs. Eon makes an interesting polymer product for decks that is advertised as an alternative to wood or composites that resists cracking or splitting. Their product is also backed by a 25-year warranty, and I always feel good about putting 25 years between home improvement projects.

All went well until about two and a half years after the deck was built. We discovered a crack in one of the posts, as well as a couple of decorative parts. Relatively minor stuff, but worth replacing. So I followed the instructions on Eon’s web site and made a claim, which involved sending them digital photos of the damage and a copy of my receipt.

A customer service rep told us that “shortly,” we would be receiving a letter in the mail regarding the status of our claim. Apparently, in Canadian English, “shortly” means “never.” Finally, four months later, I re-contacted Eon to find out the status of my claim. At that point, they sent me a letter denying my claim – not because my claim was without merit but because they are having some sort of dispute with the Big Home Improvement Company that sold me the product.

The letter, a grammatical wonder, refers to their “Warranty Police” (policy?) that states, “This warranty does not cover product that have (sic) not been paid for in full. As (Big Home Improvement Company) has not paid us for this merchandise, we accordingly are not honouring the warranty, as the warranty specifically excludes such coverage.”

As copouts go, this might be one of the better ones. I guess I am supposed to march into the office of Big Home Improvement Company’s CEO and demand that they settle their dispute with Eon. Good plan, Eon; I’m right on it. And I hope the customer service rep is proud that she saved her multimillion-dollar company about $60 worth of replacement parts.

Meaningless warranties seem to be a pattern in the home improvement industry. Not long after I purchased my house, it was re-roofed with a shingle that had one of those 25-year guarantees I like so well. By the time the roof was on its ninth year, the shingles had already deteriorated badly, curling, cracking, and loading up our gutters with muck.

Our roofer told us that the shingle company had stopped manufacturing this particular type of asphalt shingle because they had been failing relatively quickly. This looked like a clear case for exercising our warranty and getting our shingles replaced.

The company’s first response was to offer us about two hundred dollars worth of coupons for new shingles. Having paid almost $10,000 for a roof, this really wasn’t what I had in mind. The offers didn’t get much better from there. From our experience, as well as other stories I read online, it appeared that the company’s tactic was to stall and make lowball offers and hope you gave up. We ended up doing something we hoped we would never have to do – hire a lawyer and threaten to sue.

Getting an attorney woke them up, and we ended up settling the case. Still, it meant having to re-roof for the second time in a decade, and the settlement didn’t even cover half of our cost. In case you are wondering, the only reason the manufacturer’s name is not listed in this article is because it might violate the final settlement we signed. But if you Google the term “shingle failure,” you might be able to figure it out.

Alas, poor customer service in the home improvement industry is not limited to great big faceless companies. The same year that our deck was built, a local contractor poured a new driveway for us. The driveway looked sterling for about six months, until a crack the size of a California fault line developed. When we complained to the contractor, he told us that that was “normal,” but promised that he would come out and take a look at it. Nearly three years later, we still await his visit. If he ever does come by, he’ll see that, besides the cracks, the concrete he poured now has more chinks and pock marks than a teenager’s face – and a teenager would be a decade older than my driveway.

As frustrating as those situations have been, it heightens my appreciation for the folks who do it right. I highly recommend a book by Hal Becker called “Lip Service,” where he chronicles his own personal experiences with really bad – and really good – customer service.

(p.s. After this column appeared, I received a response from Eon apologizing for causing me "distress" and alerting me that the parts were on the way. And they, indeed, have now arrived.)

A Dose of Unreality

2008-10-11T12:33:00.004-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 10-5-08)

When one topic just won’t do, it’s time for another “Short Attention Span” column.

ELVES AND GOBLINS DO LOOK SIMILAR: Halloween may be at the end of this month, but Kohl’s in the Janesville Mall already has a Christmas display in the store. In fact, their display was up in September. I’m assuming there are other stores doing the same. Now that’s scary.

THEY CAME FROM JANESVILLE: You don’t need to rent a scary movie for some good Halloween fright. Just pick a random story on the Janesville Gazette web site, Gazettextra.com, and peruse the reader comments section. Yes, these people are among us...

POLL-TERGEIST: Is it an accident that Election Day is so close to Halloween? This year has already been one big “Trick or Treat.” We were all treated with “Economic Stimulus” checks, but too many of us were tricked by having our house plastered with foreclosure notices.

I’LL HAVE IT ON THE ROCKS: If you are looking for a good place to park your car in Milton, I don’t recommend the rock wall near the Milton College campus. That is, unless you really enjoy hearing the sound of the underside of your car scraping against rock as the tow truck tries to remove it.

GOOD THING IT’S WALKING DISTANCE: Ironically, this car was parked about 50 yards from CESA #2’s Driver Education fleet.

IT PAYS TO GET THE LEAD OUT: Speaking of autos, it’s been difficult, but high gas prices have forced me to change my leadfoot ways. Since I’ve started slowing down to drive the actual speed limit (ahem), the fuel economy in my car has increased by 1.5 miles per gallon.

UNREALITY SHOW: The National Football League, either by accident or by design, has hit upon the greatest consumer loyalty scheme in the world. It is fantasy football, where sports fans like me have their own “teams” of real players that accumulate points based on their actual game performances and use those points to compete in a league against other teams. Now, instead of just watching the Packers every Sunday, I end up watching several games, even if it’s just to cheer for individual players. Nationwide, fantasy football has become so popular that the TV networks have even tailored their game reporting to include fantasy stats. And speaking of which....

DISTRACTION JACKSON: DeSean Jackson is in my doghouse. Jackson, a wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, is personally responsible for my lone Fantasy Football League defeat.
Three weeks ago, Jackson caught a touchdown pass – he thought. He started celebrating his score before he actually crossed the goal line, dropping the ball at the 1-yard line and nullifying the score. This resulted in my fantasy team losing six sure points in a matchup that I ended up losing by two. Yes, it’s three weeks later and I’m still mad about this.

THE LADIES ARE REVOLTING: In a related development, a new website gaining popularity is called “Women Against Fantasy Sports.” (This is not a joke – womenagainstfantasysports.com.)

RECESSION OBSESSION: Throughout the year, the big debate has raged on: is our economy in a “recession”? Instead of focusing on the word “recession” and its technical definition, can’t we just pick a term we can all agree on, like “Big Flippin’ Mess”?

HAPPY NUDE EAR: Want to get rich? Invent a cream that permanently kills ear hair. Middle-aged men would line up for it.

“KAZAKHSTAN” RHYMES WITH “KICK STAND”: Cyclist Lance Armstrong is coming out of retirement to once again compete in the Tour de France – for a team from Kazakhstan. Lance must have really liked “Borat.”

THIS IS NO WAY TO RAZOR SON: Want to annoy your mother? Grow a horseshoe moustache. I can tell you from experience, it works.

Days of Big Hair and Legwarmers

2008-10-11T12:27:00.001-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 9-21-08)

When one topic just won’t do, it’s time for another “Short Attention Span” column.
ISN’T IT IRON-IC: Earlier this month, the Ironman Wisconsin competition was held in Madison, a grueling one-day endurance event that includes a full marathon, a 2.4-mile swim, and a 112-mile bike ride. A few days after the competition, an apparently serious letter to the Wisconsin State Journal suggested that the event be renamed “Ironmen and Womyn” (note the politically correct spelling), or simply, "Ironperson."
I say, why stop there? Let’s also rename the recent Robert Downey Jr. superhero movie “Iron Person.” After all, his metal suit has no, um, gender-revealing features.
And of course, you would have to rename and rewrite “Iron Man,” the iconic 1970 Ozzy Osbourne/Black Sabbath heavy metal song. In fact, here is a sample of the new lyrics: “I am Iron Person/I am gender-free in this new version/I am Iron Person/Politically correct when I’m rehearsin’/I am Iron Person/These rhymes are pretty bad but they will worsen.”
THERE’S NO CYAN IN BASEBALL: In "Field of Dreams," when James Earl Jones gives his speech equating baseball with all that is good about America, I'm all in. When it comes to baseball, I’m a purist. You should wear white at home, gray on the road, and stirrups over your socks. Unfortunately, ugly baseball uniforms are like a bad virus that just won't go away. We’re being revisited by the hideous ghosts of 35 years ago as teams are wearing bright solid-colored jerseys. The worst offenders are the eye-watering red shirts occasionally sported by the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves, and the blue-and-red pajama tops worn by the Chicago Cubs. Those shirts look like they stepped out of Napoleon Dynamite’s closet.
DE-COMPOSING: At the risk of sounding like my parents circa 1978, here in a nutshell is why I am not a fan of much of today's "new" music. I'm in a store, and Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" comes on. But when the lyrics start, it's not Zevon singing and it's not his lyrics. The song then goes on to use part of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama," with lyrics that sound like a rewrite of Bob Seger's "Night Moves.” It turns out this song is called "All Summer Long" by Kid Rock and it's the biggest hit of 2008. I don’t mind remakes, but sampling parts of other songs and calling it your own original song? What a rip-off. Songwriting is indeed becoming a lost art.
CHANGING OF THE GUARD: Kid Rock also has the distinction of doing that crappy new National Guard song that they play at movie theaters before the feature film. The previous song done for the Guard by the group 3 Doors Down was terrific; I don't know why they felt the need to change it so quickly.
MAKE UP YOUR MINDSET: Every year, Beloit College comes out with their "Mindset List," which is intended to give those of us with a few years under our belts a snapshot of incoming college freshmen; in this case, those born in 1990. According to the authors, it is not deliberately designed to make the readers feel old, though that is usually the primary result. The list is always pretty good, but this year, I think the college reached a bit. For example, one item is "They never tasted Benefit Cereal with psyllium." Say what? Another is "The Royal New Zealand Navy has never been permitted a daily ration of rum.” Both of those left me scratching my head. Some suggested replacements: "They never traveled from Beloit to Milwaukee on Highway 15" and "Michael Jackson has always resembled a white female."
SHE WOULD PALIN COMPARISON: Since Sarah Palin was nominated for Vice President, my e-mail inbox has received three different photos of the Alaska Governor with her face Photoshopped over a model’s body in various stages of undress. I don’t recall that happening with Geraldine Ferraro.
HERE, PULL MY FINGER: You may have read in this column about my two-week mountain backpacking trek. I didn't know this until I returned, but I spent the entire trip with a broken middle finger. The break occurred before I left on the trip, as I was performing the death-defying feat of playing Frisbee in a park. A month and a half later, my finger is still shaped like a ketchup bottle. At least it gets people’s attention when their driving annoys me.
DAYS OF BIG HAIR AND LEGWARMERS: This month marked the 25-year anniversary of the first date I had with my wife, back when we were students at UW-Whitewater. Some of our favorite old haunts in Whitewater are long gone (RIP Salamone's Pizza) but it's still fun to hang around the town and reminisce. Since I worked weekends as a radio DJ at that time, I looked up the number one hit song in the nation the week we started dating. It was "Maniac," from the movie "Flashdance.” Hmm...maybe Kid Rock isn't so bad.

12 Days in The Mountains

2008-09-07T00:01:00.009-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 8-31-08 and 9-7-08)

If you took a vacation this summer, chances are it included hot cooked meals, a comfortable bed and indoor plumbing. It likely did not include having to hoist bags of food 20 feet in the air, checking your toilet for spiders, or eating food covered in dirt...unless you were my 14-year-old son and I.

Rob and I took two weeks of our summer to participate in the Boy Scout High Adventure at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. For two weeks, seven of us from Milton hiked and camped in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, taking only what we could carry on our backs - packs as heavy as 60 pounds.

We have been planning to take this trip for two years since we first heard about it from other Scouts. The opportunity to do something special and challenging with Rob was too good to pass up – an ultimate father-son experience.

It was no picnic, however. We would be hiking at least 70 miles on rugged mountain trails, braving the elements and forsaking comforts and conveniences that we take for granted. Our sustenance would consist of dehydrated food – add hot water and serve. If the weather didn’t cooperate – and it often didn’t – our only shelter would be our tents or a convenient tree.

It was also the ultimate way of getting away from it all. No watch, no Blackberry, no contact lenses, no hot showers, no phone, no light, no motorcar, not a single luxury. I often didn’t know what day it was, and had no idea what was going on in the “real” world – nor did I care. The last significant piece of news we heard during our trip west was that Brett Favre had been traded to the New York Jets. This was good information for us to know while we were on the trail, running into crews from other parts of the country. When they found out we were from Wisconsin, their first question was always “What’s happening with Favre?” Their surprised looks were priceless – particularly from the New York crew that was convinced we were kidding them.

Philmont is a lovely place with just the right amount of danger that requires rigorous adherence to safety procedures. For one thing, parts of the trails – even on the easiest treks – are treacherous. Imagine having about six inches on which to step, where a misstep potentially means sliding 40 feet down the slope of a hill. If Philmont were a Wisconsin state park, guardrails would be everywhere.

Also, there is wildlife in the form of bears, mountain lions and rattlesnakes. The biggest issue is the bears, whose keen noses follow the scents of anything from food to camera film. Earlier in the year, one boy who left a packet of Gatorade mix in his tent learned his lesson the hard way – the boy was bitten and the hungry bear had to be shot.

So keeping the bears away from your campsite is Job 1. Every night, anything classified as “smellable” has to be bagged up and hoisted by ropes over a special bear cable that is strung between two trees 15-20 feet above the ground. The cables are part of a “Bear-muda Triangle” that is formed at each campsite, with the other two corners of the area being your fire pit and your sump (which is essentially a drain sticking out of the ground, used to dispose of your dishwashing water). For maximum safety, you are instructed to set up your tents 50-100 feet away from the triangle.

But the bear procedures don’t stop there. You have one set of clothes that you keep separate and only wear for bedtime – our ranger referred to these as “prison pajamas.” This prevents you from going to bed wearing clothes on which you may have spilled food. When it comes to food, you have to eliminate all traces of it. If you open a package of food, the entire contents have to be eaten – no exceptions. The rule of thumb, especially for our pickier eaters, was that if you weren’t sure you were going to like one of our culinary delights, you tried it from someone else’s open packet first. And if you should drop any food on the ground, no matter how small, it still has to be eaten. Personally, I ingested more dirt on this trip than during my entire childhood.

After you have your evening meal near the fire pit, you need to lick your bowl clean, as well as the serving spoon. With the cooking pot, a volunteer has to scrape the sides clean, fill it with water, and drink the whole thing. This was referred to as “human sumping.” The strict rules even apply to brushing your teeth; you swallow the toothpaste lather and suck your brush dry – no rinsing allowed. So they were indeed serious about keeping the bears away.

A typical day for our group started at 5 a.m. We broke camp, repacked our backpacks and ate breakfast, in hopes of hitting the trail by 7 a.m. and reaching our next campsite by early afternoon. We tried to get an early start every day because thunderstorms tended to form in early or mid-afternoon. The pattern soon became predictable - thunder would sound in ominous warnings before the wind would suddenly kick up and you could feel the temperature plummet. One dreadful afternoon, a gigantic storm drowned our campsite in three inches of rain, immediately followed by a long period of hail that covered the ground in ice, some of which remained unmelted the following morning.

We were told to expect temperatures in the 90s during the day and the 30s at night. It never came close to 90 – maybe not even 80 - but the nighttime predictions were accurate. Fortunately, we all had warm sleeping bags, which were often our only refuge when the temperatures plunged. It was hard for us to fathom that New Mexico could be much colder in August than Wisconsin.

When the skies were clear, however, the sights were amazing to behold. One early morning before the sun rose, I stood in a meadow and marveled at a sky full of more stars than I had ever seen before, all bright and twinkling. During the clear days, the sky was a shade of blue much deeper than the washed-out color we see here. It was a Georgia O’Keeffe painting made real, in life-sized high definition.

On a wilderness trip like this, modesty also takes a vacation. Your restroom is the great wide open. For number one, you find a rock and aim for it. For number two, you either dig a hole or use one of Philmont’s wonderful open-air wooden latrines, strategically located in full view of your campsite, a nearby trail, or both. These marvels of waste collection come in three styles – pilot to co-pilot (two seats next to each other), pilot to bombardier (two seats back-to-back) or the rare and luxurious “Red Roof Inn” (It has walls! And a roof!). One wonders about the dual-customer nature of each of these, because two men NEVER use them at the same time.

Think of the worst gas station restroom you’ve ever been in, imagine it being twice as bad and without walls, and that’s about what these are like. You do not simply seat yourself to do your business. Prior to seating, you must take a stick and run it along the underside of the seat, in order to knock down the potentially poisonous spiders that like to reside there. Apparently, many campers have had to end their trek early due to an unfortunate bite on their derriere (which, the rangers informed us, generates a big laugh on the camp radio). We were warned to be quick about our business because angry arachnids tend to climb back to the top after being knocked down.

Besides your trail food, your most valuable trail resource is your allotment of TP, known by the nickname, “white gold.” You don’t want to waste any, even if you drop a roll and it rolls 30 feet down the slope of a hill, causing you to chase after it while holding up your pants with one hand. I write that last sentence from experience.

So why would anyone go halfway across the country just to expose themselves to the elements, eat dehydrated food, use primitive potties, observe strict wildlife procedures, and perform the excruciating physical task of carrying a heavy backpack over 73 miles of mountainous – and sometimes dangerous - terrain for 12 days?

On Day 3 of the journey, we awoke at our usual 5 a.m. Before he left us that morning to continue the trek on our own, our ranger had us start the day by climbing to the top of Urraca Mesa, to a place he called Inspiration Point. The eight of us sat in silence and watched the sun rise over the miles and miles of New Mexico visible from our vantage point. It was so beautiful, I wept.

That is the best answer I can give you.

Making a Film in 48 Hours

2008-08-23T07:55:00.002-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 8-17-08)

I am not, by nature, a patient person.

When I am in the middle of something, whether it’s doing a project, reading a book, or even writing this column, I won’t rest until it’s completed and I can move on to something else. This trait has become even more pronounced since my life has gotten busier. Having a project linger drives me crazy; I obsess about finishing it. For me, instant gratification isn’t quick enough.

If I were a filmmaker, I would absolutely love the International 48 Hour Film Project. Filmmakers in several cities around the world enter into a competition to make the best short film completely from scratch in two full days.

On Friday evening, the filmmakers all draw a film style out of a hat (comedy, romance, sci-fi, etc.) and at that point, the clock is ticking. They have to come up with an idea, script it, shoot it, edit it, add music and special effects, and deliver a finished 7-minute product by Sunday evening. If you turn in your entry even a second past the 48 hour mark, your entry will not qualify for consideration.

Recently, the competition took place in Madison. I was not aware of this fact until about 9:30 pm Friday, when I got a call from the set designer of a play in which I had recently appeared at the Janesville Performing Arts Center. He told me about the project and said that his son-in-law and daughter were hard at work on a detective drama. Would I be available the next day to play the detective? As usual, I had things going on that Saturday, but I was so intrigued by what they were doing, I found a way to work around them and participate in the film.

To complete a project like this in 48 hours, you don’t have much – if any – time for sleep. The first draft of the script was e-mailed to me at about 3 a.m. By the time I arrived at producer/director Stephen Pickering’s home at 8:30, it had gone through a few more revisions.

There were only two actors, myself and a fellow named Tom Hall. Stephen’s directions to us were very clear in the e-mail he sent us prior to filming. “Tom, you are ‘Buddy Kant,’ the calm, collected, meticulous and self-justified serial killer/philosophy professor who bases his life on his own definition of reason and morality. Jim, you are the honest but obsessive detective who has finally caught the murderer he has been searching after for more than 10 years. He has given up a life, family, and marriage in order to dedicate his life to Kant’s capture.”

If the character name “Buddy Kant” doesn’t impress you, there was a reason for it. Besides the time limit, every film submitted for the contest was required to include a philosophy professor by that name, as well as a greeting card for a prop, and the spoken line, “I’d chalk it up to dumb luck.”

On Saturday morning, Stephen and his team found a location to shoot the film and we spent the morning doing test shots in what amounted to a rehearsal for the real thing later that evening.
The actual filming took place from about 6 p.m. until 12:30 in the morning. Scenes were shot several times from different camera angles and different approaches were tried. Different mixtures of syrup and cornstarch were used to simulate blood. I had to figure out how to convincingly throw Tom against a wall without hurting him.

Stephen and his wife Cameron assembled a top-notch team to put this together. Different crewmembers had different responsibilities, from music to editing to computer effects. In the interest of conserving time, while Stephen was in one room shooting a scene, Cameron would be in the other room editing what we had previously shot.

While my work as an actor was done at 12:30 a.m. Sunday, theirs was just beginning. They had 19 hours left to assemble all of the pieces into a finished film, which they decided to title “Kingdom of Ends.” They turned in their entry with about a half-hour to spare.

Four days later, on Wednesday night, all 15 submitted films were shown on the big screen at the Orpheum Theatre on State Street in Madison. I have to admit, it is quite a trip to sit in a movie theater and watch a film that you participated in, especially when the film is as good as this one is.

Stephen and company did a tremendous job. I’m still amazed they came up with the plot and concept within a couple of hours of being assigned their film style. Add their obvious technical skill, dedication, and sheer love of the art, and the end result is something they should all be proud of.

As for the acting, my castmate Tom is a tremendously nice guy who somehow found it within himself to play a very convincing creep. It would not surprise me if his performance took the Best Actor award for the Madison competition. One of my friends said he was so spooked by Tom’s character that he now sees him around every dark corner.

By the time you read this, the judges will have decided the winner of the Madison competition and determined whether “Kingdom of Ends” will move on to national or even international competition. In the meantime, you can watch the film on the Internet by going to YouTube.com and doing a search for “Kingdom of Ends” (be sure to put the title in quotation marks or you’ll never find it).

Maybe Dr. Buddy Kant will haunt your dreams, too.

(Follow-up 8-20-08: "Kingdom of Ends" won three awards - Best Special Effects, Best Use of Character, and Best Actor for Tom Hall. We didn't win Best Film, unfortunately, but it was really hard to argue with the film that did - a short called "To Be Okay" that you can also find on YouTube. While you're at it, check out the audience favorite, "Stools?")

An Interview With Bessie, Janesville's Cow

2008-08-23T07:52:00.001-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 8-3-08)

Bessie, Janesville’s famous cow, stood in the parking lot of the Oasis Restaurant and Shops for over 40 years, until the property was sold and razed to build a new Menards Home Improvement Superstore and Del Taco Mexican Restaurant. After being temporarily moved to an auto repair shop and refurbished, Bessie has returned to the property, now residing in the parking lot next to Del Taco.
This exclusive interview is her first since settling in her new home.

Q: Are you happy to be back on Milton Avenue?

A: Is the Pope Catholic? Does a newborn calf have wobbly legs? (Laughs) Of course! I missed the fresh air outdoors. And I missed my fans.

Q: Was the experience of being away from home traumatic?

A: Was it ever! Cows don’t like change. We like our daily routine. We get milked in the morning, go out to pasture, come back to the barn in the evening when it’s time to get milked again. Anything different throws us off.

Q: How did you cope with the stress?

A: Normally, I would have jumped a fence, but unfortunately I was rooted to the spot. All I could do was to try to relax and find my center. You know, you can’t stop progress. Like when my cousin down in Harvard got moved from the middle of the intersection onto the sidewalk. There’s not much you can do except roll with it.

Q: And your cousin even has an annual festival [Harvard Milk Days] that features her.

A: I know! I was feeling pretty jealous and neglected for a while, until this whole thing came along with the move and whatnot, and I realized just how much Janesville really cares about me.

Q: You were able to go for a ride for the first time in over 40 years. How was that?

A: Being transported while I was lying on my side was a horrible experience. The kids think cow tipping is a big joke, but there’s a reason cows hate it; it messes up our organs. But it was worth it; I got a heck of a makeover. I don’t think I’ve ever looked this good.

Q: Instead of the Oasis, you’re next to Del Taco now.

A: I wish they didn’t serve beef, but that’s just me.

Q: What did you think about the recent controversy regarding the Mexican veil that was draped over your horns?

A: As a cow, I prefer to go au naturel, but once in a while, I don’t mind getting all gussied up for a special occasion.

Q: On a local newspaper discussion site, there was quite a debate about whether a Wisconsin cow should be advertising for a Mexican restaurant.

A: You’re kidding me, right? I’m a big fiberglass cow, people. Get a grip. And I don’t mean on my udders.

Q: Is it strange looking around and seeing the Oasis and the Ramada Inn gone?

A: And don’t forget, the Red Barn was out here, too, way back when, which made me feel right at home obviously. It’s that whole change thing again. Don’t like it, never have. But I’m getting used to it. I’ll tell you one change I’m glad about, though. With the pond filled in, all those dang geese are finally gone. Made it hard for a body to stay clean, if you catch my drift. I’d have to wait for a good gullywasher to come along and make me dainty again.

Q: Anything else you don’t miss?

A: I don’t miss the bar at the Hoffman House, either. I was sick of drunks using my hooves as a restroom in the middle of the night.

Q: Doesn’t being next to a home improvement center instead of a cheese shop deprive you of some of your charm?

A: What? Cows are naturally charming! (Laughs) Seriously, I thought I would stick out like a sore hoof, but it seems to work just fine. Glad I have my back to that roundabout thingy though. I’d probably get dizzy watching it all day.

Q: Any other thoughts you’d like to share with your public?

A: Yeah. I just want to thank all the fans who stop here to have their picture taken with me. That rocks. Way better than a milking machine.

Katrina Redux: The Work's Not Over

2008-07-20T10:49:00.001-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 7-20-08)

In the spring of 2006, nine months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, I went with a group of other volunteers from our church to do clean-up work in Chalmette, Louisiana.
Chalmette is in St. Bernard Parish, a county that was almost completely wiped out by Katrina.

Out of 27,000 homes located in the parish, all but two were declared uninhabitable after the hurricane and flood. Though New Orleans’ poor Lower Ninth Ward got most of the media attention, St. Bernard Parish was as annihilated as any place.

At the time I was in Chalmette, I was amazed that even though it was nine months after the storm, it looked like it might have happened the week before. Debris was everywhere. Abandoned houses sat open, their fronts spray-painted with red X’s that stood out like scarlet letters announcing the sins Mother Nature had committed. Lawns were dead. Entire neighborhoods were dead. The number of FEMA trailers were relatively few, as residents who had fled had not returned.

But we were there to do our part, and that we did. We worked hard all week, reducing several homes to empty shells, the first step in making the structures habitable again. We did our job, felt good about it, and returned to the safety and comfort of our homes in Wisconsin.

Although the experience had a profound effect on me, some of those thoughts and lessons inevitably start to fade with time. And so I had not given a lot of thought to Chalmette until a recent newspaper article found its way into my hands.

It is now almost three years after Katrina, yet some of the photos accompanying the article looked no different than what I had witnessed 26 months ago. My heart sank. Though there has been progress since I was there, Chalmette has not returned to any type of normalcy.

Some people have moved back, but the parish still has less than half of its pre-storm population. Many abandoned houses with red X’s still stand. Empty, boarded-up strip malls still dot the landscape. Broken streets remain. In some cases, concrete slabs where houses once stood are the nicest part of the landscape.

The residents are poorer, the parish government is cash-strapped, and crime has gotten worse. While there are pockets of relatively normal life in the parish, much of the area is far from healed.

In retrospect, I don’t know why I thought it should be any different. I saw with my own eyes how bad things were, how far they would have to rebound. What kind of Pollyanna would think that one week of volunteering would magically result in the dramatic rebirth of an entire county?
It speaks to the magnitude of the destruction that even after thousands and thousands of volunteers have poured into Chalmette to help, the area is still a mess. Frankly, it boggles the mind.

After digesting all of this, I began to think about the specific houses my group worked on. Are they finished? Are they now inhabited? Had 80-year-old Benny moved back in to his house, or had he followed his family out of town? Have Cody and his mom been able to leave their trailer? What happened to Tom, the 76-year-old bicyclist shopping for salvageable items in the debris?

It was suggested to me that Samaritan’s Purse, the organization through which we volunteered, could tell me the status of the homes that our group worked on. I nearly made that call to find out. But then I thought, no, that’s selfish. It’s not about me or my group or a self-serving detective mission to verify that what we did made a difference. It’s about the people in St. Bernard Parish, and their continuing struggle.

While I am glad that I made the trip to help, reading about the current state of the area makes me feel like I could have and should have done more. It’s like the difference between having eggs or sausage for breakfast: the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.

In the case of Chalmette, I was the chicken. But one thing is certain. Whether it’s Chalmette or some other situation, it’s time for me – and maybe for all of us - to be the pig.

Bewatched

2008-07-20T10:35:00.002-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 7-6-08)

Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
If so, I can’t imagine why....
- Jazz/rock group Chicago

Chicago’s sentiments from the idealistic 1960’s seem quaint now. We all care about the time, because time makes us care about it. After our alarm clock wakes us up, our kitchen calendar tells us where we have to be and when, our Microsoft Outlook pops up a window to remind us when it’s time to go, and our Blackberry buzzes or rings for the same reason.

Thanks to the schedule functions on cell phones, iPods and PDAs, more people are starting to view wristwatches as fashion accessories rather than timekeepers. But to those of us who still rely on our wristwatch, it is much more than both of those; it is an appendage.

For example, recently my beloved Mickey Mouse watch broke. When it comes to entertainment, I’ll take Bugs Bunny over Mickey any day, but where timepieces are concerned, the mouse wins, watch hands down. This was my second Mickey watch, a unique one that had Mickey looking left instead of right and wearing a look of either surprise or anger - I could never tell which. Since I primarily wore it at work, either could have been appropriate.

I went to my backup, an old CBS-TV Olympics watch I had won as part of a sales contest over a decade ago. I had no intention of making that watch my permanent appurtenance, but it would do for the time being. Within a few days, however, I remembered why I had stopped wearing it in the first place. It had a flaw, a sharp point where the watch connected to the band, and the result was a pair of snagged dress shirts. Trying to fix the watch just made it look bad, so like a Tibetan protester, I boycotted the Olympics.

My final emergency watch was a pocket watch I used to wear at a time when I wore suits every day to work. I’ve always liked pocket watches but without the additional pockets a suit jacket gives you to carry your stuff, it became impractical, losing the fight for pocket space to car keys, change and breath mints.

It never really got a chance for a rematch. As I was trying to put the watch back into service, I managed to break off the piece of metal that holds the watch battery in place. Three clock strikes and you’re out.

The result was that I spent a week without a watch. It was amazing how such a small change can throw you off. It felt strange. I felt naked.

I looked like an idiot when, out of habit, I would end up staring at my empty wrist three or four times a day. To try and shake the habit, I transferred my cancer bracelet from my right wrist to my left wrist. It didn’t help; I looked even weirder trying to tell the time by looking at a bracelet.
As bad as my watchlessness was for me, it would probably be worse for my wife. At least I take mine off. She wears hers to bed at night, because her uncorrected vision isn’t good enough to see the alarm clock on her nightstand.

Fianlly, I made what will most likely be my purchase highlight of 2008 - a new vintage-style Mickey Mouse watch. Bewatched again, I feel much better, like a caffeine addict who has gotten his 150 milligram fix in his morning latte.

As is my custom, I have set the new watch five minutes ahead, in a futile attempt to not be late for appointments. Though I think all that has done over the years is to condition me to the fact that my watch is fast.

Maybe if I set Mickey ahead ten minutes…

Too Young To Die

2008-07-01T06:40:00.003-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 6-29-08)

Twenty-four years old is too young to die.

You hear about the murders of young people, and you think that it could never happen within your family, not even within your extended family.

But that’s what happened. The son of my wife’s cousin – technically, her first cousin, once removed – was stabbed in the heart after a “verbal altercation” at a party in Chicago. A suspect has been arrested, a guy with an alleged reputation for cutting himself and others with knives, if the blog entries I read about the case are to be believed. Other hearsay suggests that the murder suspect held a grudge from an earlier incident where he crashed the cousin’s party and got so intoxicated that he went on a window-breaking spree that resulted in his arrest.

Regardless of the details, the only important fact is that a young man just starting to make his way in the world was brutally and senselessly robbed of his life.

Although we see his parents and grandmother occasionally at family events, I couldn’t tell you the last time we had seen him. I mainly remember him as a little tow-headed kid running around at family reunions. I recall at one such reunion, he and his sisters were a little bored and I entertained them by playing softball with them.

From what I gathered at the memorial service in his hometown of Madison, it sounded like he had gone through a bit of a “wild” period when he was younger but had found his niche and was a very happy young man.

He had graduated recently from the Illinois Institute of Art and was working as a graphic artist at a marketing firm. After his death, his family was surprised to learn that he was a celebrity in Chicago’s “street art” community, going by the moniker of “SOLVE.”

How is “street art” different than graffiti? Some people would say there is no difference. I would say that the main difference is that graffitists aim to deface public property, where street artists aim to beautify it or at the very least, make it more interesting. SOLVE would take an ugly rusty electric box and turn it into a green and pink polka-dotted wonder. Or, in one stunt that got plenty of attention, he adorned the seat of an el train with a real TV set that had “We are experiencing legal difficulties” on its screen. He employed stickers, stencils and a variety of other methods and materials. No matter what you thought of the concept, you had to admit the kid was both talented and clever. This was no gang-banger with spray paint. Although as one friend said at the funeral, “I would tell him, ‘It’s still illegal even if you don’t think it should be.’”

I had never been to the funeral of a murder victim before. The reverend who presided was a friend of the family, and his message was the right one – that anger toward SOLVE’s assailant would not bring him back.

He was eulogized by speakers representing the various parts of his life – his family, his Madison neighbors, his Chicago friends. The funeral home took down their art to allow his work to be displayed on their walls. A large number of his friends from Chicago made the trek to Madison, many of them wearing t-shirts or temporary tattoos displaying the SOLVE logo and some of his other oft-used icons. The leader of the band in which SOLVE played drums performed a couple of songs. The place was so packed that there wasn’t enough room for everyone.

His family made it clear that they intended the day to be a celebration of his life, not a mourning of his death. But the truth was still inescapable, and it was hard for me not to walk away thinking this was the saddest funeral I had ever attended.

There was a meal after the funeral, at a place called the Wil-Mar Neighborhood Center. It calls itself “A Place for all People” and hosts a variety of inclusive programs and events. As I approached the door of the center, I noticed that the outside of the building was covered with a huge, beautiful mural.

I couldn’t help thinking that SOLVE would have approved.

A Tale of Two Cities - And Their Fake Cows

2008-06-15T06:29:00.003-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 6-15-08)

Pop quiz: What separates Janesville from Milton?

Some would say the most correct answer is one mile along Highway 26. But I think a better answer is each city’s attitude toward fake cows.

This weekend, Janesville celebrated “Bessie The Cow Day.” Bessie, a 16-foot-tall, one-ton fiberglass cow, was rededicated at her new home next to the Del Taco restaurant on Milton Avenue. The site is near the spot where Bessie stood for over 40 years in the parking lot of the old Oasis restaurant and shops.

Janesville loves Bessie. When it was announced that the Oasis and the Ramada Inn would be leveled to make way for a new Menards store, the first concern on everyone’s mind was, “What will happen to the cow?” The developers, mindful that they owned a local landmark and tourist attraction, decided to have her refurbished during the construction with the intention of returning her to her home after it was completed. This was a major newsworthy event in Janesville because, after all, Bessie The Cow is quite possibly Janesville’s best-known image. There is no shame in this – it is not uncommon in Midwestern dairy country. For instance, if you go to the web site of the Harvard, IL Chamber of Commerce, the first image you will see is their landmark cow statue.

Since Milton is a much smaller community than Janesville, it only follows that Milton’s cow is much smaller, too. She sits on the lawn of the Leuca Guild, a gallery featuring art, tea, jewelry, clothing and a variety of creative and earth-friendly products, events and services. The Leuca Guild is in one of Milton’s historic buildings, the 1867 Goodrich House, the one-time residence of Ezra Goodrich, son of Joseph Goodrich, who fathered both Ezra and the city. The Goodrich House sits across the street from another long-standing building - Milton’s best-known image, the Milton House National Historic Landmark.

While seemingly everyone in Janesville enjoys that city’s fake cow, not everyone in Milton embraced this happy Holstein. One person wrote a letter to the city objecting to the cow’s appearance in the presence of such historic buildings. In a city the size of Milton, all it takes is a letter from one person to shake up City Hall, so the city sprang into action. A meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission was hastily called to discuss the fate of the offending cud-chewer and determine if bovine intervention was necessary.

Why the Historic Preservation Commission? Apparently it was their charge to determine whether having a heifer on the premises udderly defiled the historic nature of the Goodrich House or its neighbor across the street.

The prosecution claimed that cows were not a part of Milton’s history; rather, they were introduced in the mid-20^th century and thus had no place in front of a historic building. OK, I made that up, but it makes about as much sense as any other argument.

Actually, had that been the argument, an interesting counterargument could have been made. Two doors down from the Goodrich House sits the Milton Seventh Day Baptist Church. During a dispute with the church in the 1860’s, Ezra Goodrich claimed that the church sat on his property. In a case of teat-for-tat, he erected a fence around the church and pastured farm animals in the churchyard. So a cow standing in proximity to the Goodrich House may not have been an unusual sight at one time.

At any rate, the Historic Preservation Commission wisely and unanimously (albeit with one abstention) decided that the cow did not have to hoof it to another location. After all, how could you be nasty to a cow – even a fake one – during June Dairy Month?

In Janesville, a celebration. In Milton, a reprieve. Gandhi, a man who considered cows sacred, once said “you can judge a society by the way it treats its animals.” In the wake of this month’s events, Gandhi looks down at Rock County and smiles.

Uninvited Advice to Graduates

2008-06-03T21:41:00.001-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 6-1-08)

June is here, and with it, high school graduation. Another crop of young adults are completing their secondary education and are about to spring onto college campuses or into (gulp) “the real world.”

This is an exciting time for these young people. Their whole future is ahead of them. Decisions they make now could potentially impact the rest of their lives.

Unfortunately, not everyone is thrilled to see another group of teenagers move into adulthood. Too often, the news we hear is about the bad kids, not the good ones. People who think the current generation of high schoolers are unsupervised, immoral slackers on the road to Loserville need to look beyond the headlines. The vast majority of teens I run into are very impressive individuals. Seeing these kids in action, whether it’s at events at Milton High School, through Janesville’s DECA programs and Academy of International Studies, or participating in groups like SpotLight on Kids, I have seen enough to give me plenty of high hopes and expectations for these budding contributors to American society.

Graduates, you’ll hear a lot of words at your commencement ceremonies. Please indulge me to add a few more.

At this point in your lives, many of you are brimming with hope and idealistic intentions. Whatever you do, don’t lose that. Don’t let the crud you see on CNN or Fox News get you down. You live in a great country, but yes, it does have its flaws. Yes, you’re inheriting a huge national debt, a war we can’t seem to get out of, and a populace that seems more ideologically divided than ever. We are on one side or the other, and for far too many of us, compromise is out of the question. A lot of folks have given up, believing that true change for the better cannot happen. We’ve been let down too many times, whether it’s by our leaders, by our employers, or by our fellow human beings in general. Too many of us have lost the energy to challenge, to fight for what’s right, to try to make a difference.

And that’s our bad. You deserve better. But now you’re approaching a time when you don’t have to accept the status quo. For you, the future is now. You have the opportunities. In fact, your schools have given you more opportunities than my generation ever had, and many of you have taken advantage of it. Continue to build on that. We need your fresh ideas, your creativity, your energy, your enthusiasm. You can change the world. Honestly, you may need to. Peace and prosperity isn’t just an ideal; it can be a reality. Make it happen.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to make it sound like the adult generation is totally out to lunch or doesn’t care. There are a lot of wonderful people out there doing wonderful things. When you meet these people, embrace them, emulate them, follow their example. To steal from the United Way’s current marketing campaign, advocate and volunteer.

This year, you’ll be eligible to vote in your first elections. Whatever you do, vote. Even if you aren’t thrilled with the candidates, vote. Your voice counts. If you don’t like the major party candidates, then vote for a third party. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not a wasted vote; it makes a statement. If you don’t believe me, ask former vice president Al Gore. His inability to convince people to vote for him instead of Ralph Nader in 2000 cost him the presidential election.

If you have already declared yourself a Democrat or Republican, renounce that affiliation immediately. Too many in my generation are blindly allegiant to a political party, and only see things in black and white. When you look at an issue, think of it in terms of “what’s good for the country/state/people,” not “what’s good for the party/lobby/union.” Look at each issue individually, get informed, study both sides, and then make your decision.

Talk shows and blogs are bursting with people who have lots of complaints, but few solutions. Ignore them. Anyone can whine. Use the skills and knowledge you’ve accumulated to offer solutions, build partnerships, create opportunities.

And if you make a mistake, admit it, make amends, and move on. Too few public figures know how to do that. Use the mistake as a learning experience.

All right, I’ve prattled on enough, beginning to sound like an old man on a park bench. So I will end here with one last sound piece of advice from another prattling old man, Polonius, from Shakespeare’s "Hamlet”: This above all: To thine own self be true.

The Joy of Low Expectations

2008-05-18T21:04:00.002-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 5-18-08)

“I expect so little...and boy, do I get it.” - Scott Adams, “Dilbert”

Are low expectations the key to happiness?

Think about it. How many times have you gone to a lightly regarded movie but were pleasantly surprised that it was better than you thought it would be? Or maybe as a student you expected to flunk a test, but were thrilled to come out of it with a passing grade of C.

Some say that low expectations lead to a culture of mediocrity. If you’re talking about your child’s education, for example, that is a valid point.

If you’re talking about your favorite sports team, however, the key to your sanity is to think modestly. Take the Milwaukee Brewers...please.

For a period of about 15 years, the Brewers had been – how do I put this kindly? – a pathetic excuse for a professional baseball team. But at least you knew it, and adjusted your attitude accordingly. When a stiff like Glendon Rusch actually pitched a scoreless inning, it was a wonderful and pleasant surprise. When an automatic out like Henry Blanco managed to stroke a base hit, you were unexpectedly elated. Instead of worrying about the World Series, your hopes were that the Brewers would win as many as they lost. Unfortunately, for 15 years, the team couldn’t even do that.

Now, however, the worm has turned. The Brewers suddenly became a contender in 2007, and even held first place by a commanding margin until a spectacular late season collapse. In the end, they barely escaped with a winning record, their first since 1992.

Watching the Brewers’ big lead fade was painful for their fans. But I contend that the team could have finished with exactly the same record and made their fans ecstatic. How? By starting the season lousy and then putting on a furious and exciting rush at the end. That would have been much more satisfying than the disappointment of seeing a sure postseason appearance – which hasn’t happened in 26 years - slip from their grasp.

So now, fresh off last season’s success, the expectations for the Brewers have changed. You actually watch a game thinking they should win it. Unfortunately, as of this writing, that’s not been happening as often as it should. Even though their record is better than many past Brewers clubs, there have been plenty of disappointments, and it’s led to a widespread outbreak of “angryfanitis.” Mention the name “Eric Gagne,” for example, and your typical Brewer fan will start speaking in a second language – profanity.

But I am pleased to say that I have found a cure. I announced to my son that we were renouncing the Brewers. Instead, we pledged our allegiance to the Washington Nationals, the crummiest baseball team I could think of. The antidote worked immediately. The Nationals, buoyed by our sudden and unexpected support, promptly made us feel great by winning four in a row. And when they went back to losing...well, big deal, they’re supposed to!

With that monkey off our backs, I did a little research to see if others shared my theory on low expectations leading to happiness. And it turns out that it’s not just me that thinks this; it’s the entire country of Denmark.

According to the International Herald Tribune, over the last 30 years, the citizens of Denmark have scored higher than any other Western country on measures of life satisfaction, and scientists have concluded that the country's secret is a culture of low expectations.

"If you're a big guy, you expect to be on the top all the time and you're disappointed when things don't go well," Danish researcher Kaare Christensen said. "But when you're down at the bottom like us, you hang on, you don't expect much, and once in a while you win, and it's that much better."

On surveys, Danes continually report lower expectations for the year to come, compared with most other nations. And "year after year, they are pleasantly surprised to find that not everything is getting more rotten in the state of Denmark," Christensen concludes.

Logically, that leads me to conclude that Danish fans of the Washington Nationals must be the happiest people on earth.

When Job Seekers Go Bad

2008-05-04T12:38:00.001-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 5-4-08)

When your job includes hiring people, you get an interesting insight into what people will and won’t do to get a job.

Whenever I have a job opening to fill, I’m amazed at some of the résumés or job applications that I receive. Once, I received a résumé that was handwritten in red ink with all capital letters. It looked like a letter from Son of Sam. I didn’t know whether to save it or give it to the police.

At one time, a lot of people received professional assistance in preparing a résumé. Now that everyone owns a personal computer, people think they can do their own. And this results in a definite mixed bag. Still, with software templates and a multitude of Internet resources at your fingertips, there is just no excuse for submitting a lousy résumé.

If someone submits a poorly done, error-plagued, or unresearched résumé or cover letter, I won’t give that person the time of day. In sales, first impressions and the ability to present yourself professionally are critical. If someone can’t do it decently in the job search process, I’m not confident he will do it in front of customers.

For a recent job opening, I received one résumé from someone that looked promising enough to interview. When I went to call her, I discovered that she had totally neglected to put her contact information anywhere in the résumé or cover letter. No phone number, no address, nothing. I’ll bet she wonders why no one responds to her job inquiries.

Another was an obvious form letter. Worse, the guy forgot to fill in the names on the form: “Dear {HIRING MANAGER}, I would be a positive addition to the {COMPANY NAME} team.” I didn’t check to see if he claimed “mail merge” as a computer skill.

But the ultimate résumé I received was one that should have been subtitled “Based on Actual Events.”

This particular guy called to get an interview, and his pitch on the phone was pretty impressive. He had extensive experience in the market where we were hiring, and he held an MBA. His résumé arrived via e-mail the day before the interview. Among other things, it revealed he had worked at the same company, at the same time, as a friend of mine. So I gave her a call to ask what she could tell me about her former co-worker. The response: “I’ve never heard of the guy.”

She asked what territory he had covered for her company and I told her Rockford. She said, “That was my territory. I’d have known him.”

Now the red flag was flying. So I dug a little deeper into his résumé. It turned out that the work experience most relevant to our position was also greatly embellished. But that was nothing compared to his education.

He earned his MBA from Columbia State University in Metairie, LA. Five minutes on Google revealed that the college and the degree were as phony as a three-dollar bill. The “campus” was nothing more than a post office box in Metairie. You paid a few thousand dollars, mailed them a six-page book report, and voilà! In less than a month, you had your MBA. The owner of the “university,” after making millions on the scam, served jail time for fraud.

It was too late to cancel his interview, so I decided to see how he handled some specific questions. I asked him about his university and mentioned that I had been through Metairie when I was in New Orleans on a Hurricane Katrina rebuilding mission. How had his school fared? Well, he said he personally hadn’t been back since he went to school there (!) but their transcript office had been located right next to Lake Pontchartrain (which he couldn’t pronounce). Because of that, all the records were destroyed by the flood, which explained why he didn’t have any official school transcripts, just copies of copies (!).

I asked him about the territory he covered for the company that also employed my friend. He confirmed that Rockford was a part of it, though the rest of the communities he mentioned were totally different than the list on his résumé. Did he know my friend, who also covered Rockford then? No, he didn’t. “She must not have spent much time working in Rockford,” he said. I couldn’t wait to pass that tidbit along.

I never let on that I knew the guy was a bald-faced liar. One thing he said that was truthful was that he had done business with our company at one time. We looked up his name and company in our records and sure enough, there he was. He failed to mention that he never paid his bill and we wrote him off as “bad debt.”

It gave me great pleasure to e-mail him later that week to let him know we were hiring another candidate. His smug response was priceless. “You must be very
confident in the new guy’s sales record, contacts and connections! Good luck!” I wanted badly to reply that I was also confident in the integrity of the “new guy’s” résumé, but I resisted.

Maybe I’ll just drape some burning pants on the phone line in front of his house.

The World's Worst Audition

2008-04-27T21:52:00.002-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 4-27-08)

About ten years ago, at an age where most people start to grow up, I found my inner child. I finally let loose the stage actor that was buried within me and let him come out to play.
Oh, I had done some goofy cable TV commercials before, but what I really wanted to do was Shakespeare. I would practice lines for no reason other than the sheer joy of doing it.
A chance meeting with Edie Baran, then the director of SpotLight on Kids, turned that dream into reality. She told me her adult troupe was going to do "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Rotary Gardens, and encouraged me to audition. I jumped at the chance and ended up getting cast.
I loved every moment of that first stage experience. Making your stage debut with live Shakespeare at Rotary Gardens was like hitting a hole-in-one on your very first golf swing. (In fact, if you're listening, Rotary Gardens...how about bringing it back?)
After that experience, I was hooked. Since then, I've been fortunate enough to play roles like the Cowardly Lion in "The Wizard of Oz" and Cogsworth in "Disney’s Beauty and the Beast," as well as another "Midsummer Night's Dream," this time as Bottom, the bad actor turned into an ass.
The only downside to doing community theatre is the time commitment. It means I'm rarely home in the evenings and even on weekends. Lately, as both my family and I have gotten busier, it's been increasingly difficult to find the time to do a show. In fact, I haven't done a play since January 2006 and I'm getting very itchy to take the stage again.
So when JPAC announced they were doing a Nathan Lane comedy called "The Frogs" this summer, I jumped at the chance to audition.
There was only one problem with this plan; the play was a musical, which means singing and dancing. I like to think I'm a decent actor, but that's about the extent of what I can capably do. Alas, when it comes to my vocal abilities, the notes are often as flat as Old Milwaukee Beer. Pair that with the fact that I am as coordinated as a cow on stilts, and that does not exactly make me ‘musical material.’
However, despite those limitations, I had managed to make my way through "Wizard Of Oz," though choreographer Donna Berg may still be having nightmares about my learning curve on the “Jitterbug" number.
So I went to the audition for "The Frogs," confident I would somehow fit in on a show that sounded like it had the potential to be a lot of fun. During the audition, we were required to sing a song from a Broadway musical. I chose a hilarious, politically incorrect song called "If You Were Gay," from the Sesame Street parody "Avenue Q."
As I rehearsed the song in the days prior to the audition, I discovered that I really couldn't sing it very well. But I was pumped to do the song, so I decided to just affect a character voice and fake my way through it, the way I had as the Lion and Cogsworth.
I did the song as best I could, which wasn't good. Before I left the stage, the vocal director asked me to sing some scales so he could find my vocal range. He might have had better luck finding D.B. Cooper. I tried, but I have no idea if anything I sang was in the general vicinity of where it was supposed to be. When it comes to my own voice, I have more of a tin ear than the woodman in "The Wizard of Oz."
That was probably the point where I should have admitted I was in over my head and made my exit, stage left. But unfortunately, I didn't.
I and the other hopefuls were called back to the stage to attempt to learn a dance number. Panic gripped me. What the choreographer wanted us to do was eons more difficult than anything I had been asked to do before. I must have looked as lost as Rush Limbaugh at a Greenpeace meeting. Fearing that it would look unprofessional, but unwilling to further embarrass myself, I opted out.
Amazingly, I still was cast - in the only non-singing, non-dancing role in the show. Next time, before I go through the stress of an audition, I will keep my strengths and weaknesses in mind. Because as Jack Handey once said, “If you think a weakness can be turned into a strength...I hate to tell you, but that's another weakness.”

Getting Steamed On Your Birthday

2008-04-09T22:45:00.003-05:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 4-6-08)

Birthdays are interesting in the Lyke family. For one thing, several of them coincide with holidays. My brother was born on New Year’s Day, my sister on Veteran’s Day. My son arrived on Christmas Eve. My mother was born on February 22, which was Washington’s Birthday before the powers-that-be robbed that day of holiday status in favor of the Presidents Day three-day weekend. My father set the tone for the family by being born on April Fool’s Day.
The majority of our birthdays fall in the winter months, particularly January. A lifelong farmer, my dad explained that fact by declaring that “spring is planting season.”
These days, I don’t get much excited about my birthday on January 26. Once I passed the midpoint between the ages of 18 and 70, I decided that the only thing worth looking forward to is the key lime pie that passes as my birthday cake.
Even though I don’t consider my birthday anything special, my wife still enjoys celebrating her annual orbit around the sun, so I act appropriately.
With each year, however, it gets tougher to figure out a new and exciting gift for her. We’ve been together for 25 years, married for 22. Some guys can get away with giving flowers, chocolates, or gift cards. Unfortunately, the bar is set a little higher for me. Deserved or not, I have a reputation for creativity. So she expects that I will come up with something better than the old standbys. And frankly, I expect that of myself as well.
As March 29 approached, I was totally bankrupt for ideas. Write her a poem or a song? Gone to that well a few times already. Special music collection? Been there, done that. Gift certificate for a massage? Did that recently, too. Make her dinner? Sure, that’s such a rarity in my house that it’s still considered a treat.
Right up to the big day, I was still scrambling for gift ideas. Desperate, I logged onto the Internet, typing the term “creative gift ideas” into search engines to see what came up. Finally, a shadow of an idea formed. She’s really into healthy eating; maybe something connected with that? I stumbled upon a site that talked about food steamers that cooked rice, fish and vegetables. It seemed to fit the bill, but....
I had heard horror stories of near-divorces brought on by giving a kitchen appliance as a gift. Would this be viewed as an appliance, or a thoughtful creative gift acknowledging something important to her? An informal survey (with an unscientifically small sampling) indicated that I would be all right, so I went for it.
A scant few hours before her birthday dinner, I was carefully selecting a steamer that wouldn’t steam her. Then it was the equally important birthday card. I generally alternate years between funny and sweet cards. If I can’t remember which year it is, I hedge my bets and go for sweet. As luck would have it, near the card display was a group of books perfect for gifts, and one of them was perfect for her. Done and done.
The woman who rang up my purchases looked at the card and the book and said, “Oh, that’s so sweet. You’re going to make somebody cry.” I didn’t know if my wife would cry, but at that moment, my 14-year-old son looked like he was going to puke. As far as the cashier’s assessment, well, she must not have realized the steamer was a gift, too. Or maybe she did.
Dinner came out just fine, with the exception of not making the wild rice properly. Yes, it’s possible to screw up rice if you’re as culinary-challenged as I am. Maybe I should have used the new steamer.
Finally the big moment arrives, the presenting of the gifts. The card and book were well received. So far, so good. Steamer? I immediately started explaining why I thought this was a good gift for her. Important tip for the future: if you feel like you have to explain your thought process behind a gift, you probably shouldn’t have gotten it.
It took three days, but she finally broke it to me that she didn’t think she would use the steamer, but she appreciated the thought.
As it turned out, she would have loved another gift certificate for a massage. I guess I don’t have to worry about an idea for next year.

Don't Walk in Janesville

2008-03-30T07:11:00.001-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 3-30-08)

You need a permit to do practically everything now. Including, if you live in Janesville, walking down the street.

With Tuesday’s Janesville City Council election almost upon us, it’s been disappointing that one of the more controversial issues being discussed by the city has been virtually ignored by the council candidates.

I’m talking about a proposal to require pedestrians to apply for pedestrian licenses.
These are not unlike driver’s licenses, but they could potentially be required for those who frequent the city’s sidewalks in high-traffic areas like Milton Avenue or Milwaukee Street.

The problem is, quite simply, driver distractions. Distracted drivers are a safety hazard, and one of the things diverting their attention from the road is the appearance of pedestrians along their routes. This is especially a problem in the warm weather months, when personal comfort requires less clothing.

Fortunately, the city has come up with a plan. They would like to regulate the appearance of pedestrians along with the actual amount of time that a pedestrian can be viewed by a driver.
When a pedestrian applies for their license, he or she will be evaluated according to standards developed by the city based on community values and aesthetics. Basically, what it means is that you can’t be too beautiful – or for that matter, too ugly – to distract drivers. You have to be judged “average” both in terms of body mass index and on the Clooney/Berry Scale. The Clooney/Berry Scale is a 1-to-100 point system of beauty where George Clooney and Halle Berry are considered 100 and everyone else is rated according to that standard. If your score falls above or below the “average” range, you may still be allowed a conditional permit if you follow certain clothing requirements that cover up your natural attributes or failings.

Beside the actual appearance of pedestrians, the city is also concerned about the amount of time that you are potentially exposed to them. There are no real studies on the subject, but the city has estimated that a driver is exposed to the average pedestrian for about 10 seconds. Since our natural tendency as drivers is to look over and see if we know the person, the city has judged this amount to be too long. However, if a pedestrian is walking more slowly, the driver will pass them by more quickly and not have the opportunity to stare at them.

So the city has decided that the maximum average allowable exposure is 6 seconds. Thus, citizens with a pedestrian license will also have to follow a speed limit, with fines or a loss of license for repeat offenders. Joggers, you’re out of luck unless you stick to lightly-traveled side streets or the city trail.

The amount of regulation involved, as well as the amount of time the city planning department has devoted to this, is mind-boggling. I, for one, would certainly like to know how the city council candidates in this week’s election feel about it.

If you would like more information on pedestrian permits and licenses, please call the “Let Us Walk” hotline at 608-APRIL-FOOL.

Knowing the Meaningless

2008-03-23T07:17:00.004-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 3-16-08)

I can remember a lot of useless information.
For example, I can tell you that William the Conqueror and the Normans defeated the Saxons in 1066 in the Battle of Hastings, an event captured on the Bayeux Tapestry.
I cannot tell you what I had for lunch yesterday.
I can remember that Packers coach Dan Devine broke his leg during his first game with the team, a 42-40 loss to the Giants in 1971. I can’t remember why I just went down to the basement.
I can’t remember why I just went down to the basement.
It seems a ridiculous dichotomy, being able to remember trivial details but unable to recall what a co-worker said to you ten minutes ago. When I’m in a particularly paranoid mood, I wonder whether it’s the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s Disease. When I’m not, I theorize that I just have a lot more on my mind these days than I used to. Perhaps my brain is full, and like Professor Dumbledore in the "Harry Potter" series, I need my own pensieve - an external storage receptacle for memories – so I can unclutter my mind.
Regardless, it is this pseudo-Rain Man quality that led to my participation in the Janesville Literacy Council’s recent trivia contest fundraiser. I was asked to join the Lab Safety Supply team, led by their human resources director Tim Markus. (Tim and I share a guilty pleasure for really, really bad songs from the 1970’s, but that’s a topic for another column. In the meantime, don’t get us started on the merits of the group Paper Lace.)
Being asked to join their team was an honor, since last year they had taken second place in this event, losing out to a scholarly group from Blackhawk Technical College. The mission this year...revenge.
Twenty teams participated in this year’s trivia contest. Some wore matching clothing or, in the case of a team from Sanford Business-to-Business, gigantic hats. Many had cute team names. Our highly original name? Team LSS. Hey, we’re serious about our trivia.
The format of the contest consists of three rounds. In each of the first two, you are given a sheet with 100 questions and a time limit in which to complete it. After the first two rounds, the top two scoring teams go head-to-head in a game-show-style format to determine the champion.
For the first two rounds, our team saved time by doing the sheets assembly-line style, dividing the questions among the four of us so we were each working on 25 simultaneously. When we were all finished, we checked answers, discussed and put a final hand-in sheet together before time was up.
Coming in to a team with such a formidable group of trivia players, my main goal was to contribute. As it turned out, we were a pretty well-matched team. Several times, only one of us knew the answer to a question that stumped the other three.
The first round questions ranged from ones I considered pretty easy (“Who painted the ‘Mona Lisa’”?) to the interesting (“Quien es el rey de Espana?”) to the challenging (“In what biological genus would you find the Yorkshire Terrier, the Silverbacked Jackal and the Grey Wolf?”). Besides the type of questions you might find in Trivial Pursuit, there were several Wisconsin history questions and even some Janesville questions (“In what profession was Janesville’s Henry Tallman trained?”).
We ended the first round with 85 correct, putting us in third place behind our arch nemesis BTC (87) and another bunch of academics from UW-Rock County (88). We kicked ourselves a little because there were a couple of questions we clunked that we thought we should have known.
But still, we felt confident going into round two, where the questions were more difficult and the points for each correct answer doubled. Confidence, alas, was not enough.
Though our 76 correct in round two was enough to pass BTC, UW-Rock County bagged a jaw-dropping 91 out of 100 questions. We were denied a spot in the top two when a group from Mercy Clinic South leaped ahead of us with an impressive 86. So we had to be content to take our third-place finish and watch Mercy and UW-Rock County duke it out on stage.
In retrospect, it turned out to be a good thing we didn’t have to go up there. UW-Rock County spanked the team from Mercy. The match was never close, and I shudder to think how we might have fared against the mighty educators. To use an overused idiom, UW-Rock County was a well-oiled machine, firing on all cylinders and obliterating anything in its path.
So our challenge is clear. We will need to start a rugged training regimen of lifting books and taking HBH (human brain hormones). And as Chicago Cubs managers have been saying for the past 100 years, “Wait ‘til next year.”

This Game Rocks, Dude

2008-03-07T19:46:00.002-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 3-2-08)

The generation gap can be bridged...with a plastic guitar.

Because my usual behavior doesn’t often match my age, one might question whether a generation gap actually exists in my household between my two teenage children and me. Actually, the fact that I’m using the term “generation gap” may be all the proof that’s needed.

But my teenagers and I have found a way to connect...through music.

Finding musical common ground between generations is not always that easy to do. After all, the music of my parents’ era was Frank Sinatra and Glenn Miller. It’s hard to believe that in terms of years, we are now as far removed from the Kiss song “Rock And Roll All Nite” as that song was from “In The Mood.” A lot of the music of the 1970s and ‘80s simply doesn’t seem that old. Even the current musical flavor du jour, hip hop, came to the fore at that time and doesn’t sound much different today. (Just for the record, I didn’t care for it then, either.)

Still, it’s shocking to me that songs that were once considered loud or decadent or edgy are now being used for school pom pom routines and show choir performances. In fact, it was the show choir experience that started to put my kids and I on the same musical map.

But it was when we purchased the video game “Guitar Hero” that our musical worlds really collided.

For the uninitiated, “Guitar Hero” features a guitar-shaped controller that allows players to simulate the playing of rock music. It’s easier than actually playing a guitar but the concept is the same. Your left hand is on the frets – though in this case, it’s pushbuttons – and your right hand uses a strum bar to “play” the notes. Basically, as a song plays, you see the notes you are supposed to play scrolling toward you on the video screen. At the right time, you simultaneously press the correct buttons and the strum bar. When you’re done with the song, you get a score based on the percentage of notes you played correctly. This game has obviously struck a chord with the public, as sales have now topped the $1 billion mark.

Beside the fact that it gives a musical no-talent like myself the feeling of actually being able to play a song, the 73 songs included in the game represent each of the past four decades, a veritable rock music history lesson.

Some of the game-maker’s song choices are inspired. Among the selections are 40-year old chestnuts by The Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper, Santana and Cream. It has certainly helped my kids’ musical education. Prior to this, they were not the least bit familiar with The Who or ZZ Top.

But at the same time, the selections show how much music has changed in the last 30 years. When I was in high school, The Dead Kennedys were a hardcore punk band on the lunatic fringe of rock music. Radio stations wouldn’t touch them. But they are now considered acceptable for the most popular video game in the world. Likewise with The Sex Pistols. At the time, they were incredibly controversial and just one more reason why my parents thought the end of the world was near. Yet, my son and I now gleefully play along with their song advocating anarchy in the United Kingdom.

As they are being introduced to songs from my era, I am finally getting exposed to more recent songs I had never heard by groups like Weezer and The Strokes.

I like so much of what I’m hearing that I purchased a bunch of it. My co-workers are used to hearing music waft out of my office, but not from the likes of Tenacious D, singing/screaming about the virtues of heavy metal music.

Maybe people think I’m a silly old coot going through a second childhood. And maybe I am. But I’ve got to tell you...this game rocks, dude.

Stimulating An Economy....China's

2008-02-24T08:57:00.001-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 2-17-08)

Now that Congress has passed the “economic stimulus package,” how are you planning to spend your federal rebate check and “stimulate the economy”? An HDTV, perhaps? Maybe a vacation?
In my case, it’s simply going to pay bills. Because unlike our federal government, I don’t like to be in debt.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be grateful to see the cash. It will help pay off the new trombone my daughter needs, as well as a new washer and dryer to replace the ones that have gone kaput after 16 years.
But officially mark me down as someone who is skeptical that this is less an economic fix than it is an election-year ploy. It will be interesting by year’s end to see how this “stimulus” actually shakes out.
We Wisconsinites have been down this rebate road before. Back in 1999, Gov. Tommy Thompson decided to play the role of benevolent king and sent us all “sales tax rebate checks.” Of course, legislators from both parties went along with the plan because, hey, who was going to vote against giving money back to the electorate? Unfortunately, the result is that the state budget has been a mess ever since. Not long after that, Tommy took off for George W. Bush’s cabinet and left unprepared Lt. Gov. Scott McCallum holding the bag. McCallum ended up losing the governorship to Jim Doyle, who has technically balanced the budget via all sorts of accounting tricks. However, if generally accepted accounting principles are used – as they are in private business – the state is over $2 billion in the hole. According to the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, we’re one of only three states with a deficit and the one with the biggest per capita.
At least when Tommy sent out checks, the state had the money. The federal government right now is creating them out of thin air.
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Menomonee Falls was one of the few brave Congressmen to vote against the stimulus package, saying that if the government really wanted to stimulate the economy right now, it could immediately stop federal tax withholding for a few months instead of mailing a check in June. Recently-deceased and much-beloved Gov. Lee Dreyfus did just that in Wisconsin in 1979.
Regardless of the method, the fact remains that by adding $168 billion to the deficit, we’re nearly doubling it. Including the stimulus package, the President’s budget calls for a $400 billion deficit. It’s like being maxed out on your credit card, but having your credit card company suddenly double your credit limit.
So how can we afford to keep spending what we don’t have? We borrow. And we borrow from interesting sources; like China, for example.
The Chinese government is a huge investor in US Treasury bills. In fact, foreign investment in our Treasury bills is in the trillions of dollars (yes, trillions with a “tr”). Is this cause for concern? Not as long as we keep buying products made in China. If we keep stimulating their economy, then they can keep supporting our spendthrift habits.
It’s hard to believe that less than a decade ago, the federal government had a budget surplus. Of course, you can probably pin a lot of the blame for the deficit on the funding of the Iraq War, which was not on our radar in 2000. Still, if I suddenly had catastrophic medical bills that I needed to pay, I wouldn’t be allowed to continue spending like a drunken sailor on other things. There would need to be sacrifice. Ask people who lived through World War II about sacrifices such as rationing.
If you really want to stimulate the economy with your rebate check, instead of spending it, perhaps you should invest it. Author Gregg Easterbrook writes that “It's impossible to be sure, but a rough guess might be that every dollar added to the deficit today represents two dollars subtracted from future economic growth -- which in turn means two dollars taken from the pockets of tomorrow's American adults. This is a cynical exercise, robbing future Americans in order to please voters today.”
He’s right. At some point, the bills are going to come due, and right now, it looks like we’re passing them to our children.

Not-The-Academy-Awards

2008-02-05T06:27:00.000-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 2-3-08)

When one topic just won’t do, it’s time for another “Short Attention Span” column. But this time, in honor of the upcoming Academy Awards, we’ll do it Oscar-style.

SIGMUND FREUD AWARD FOR UNCHECKED ID

To the people who misuse the “reader comments” section on the local daily newspaper’s web site. Under the veil of anonymity, some of the comments have gotten so vile and nasty that the paper had to put a list of rules on the site, including - this is not a joke - “Don’t threaten to harm or kill anyone.”
It’s also not a great section to visit if misspellings and poor grammar irritate you.

ANDY WARHOL AWARD FOR BRIEF FAME

To my 80-year-old mother who appeared on national television news, even if it was only for about 15 seconds and her name was spelled wrong. Mom was seen in a brief interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” where she gave a glowing review of her newspaper carriers, who have been on the job for 54 years. A friend of mine commented that if the clip lands on YouTube, I’ll have the distinction of having my mother appear on YouTube before me. If I can get the clip, I’ll guarantee that’s the case.

THE ARCHIE BUNKER SEXIST PIG AWARD

This one apparently goes to me. It all sprang out of a conversation with my teenage son, who told me about his lame gym class in which they did...yoga. Yoga? I asked what other units he had in gym class this year. Wrestling? Nope. Football? Nope. Bomberball? Nope. Then it hit me. Are all your classes co-ed? Yep.
Apparently, I was the last person on the planet to realize that single-sex physical education was a thing of the past. I was shocked. I have great memories of my gym classes from junior high and high school, not to mention the tough-as-nails gym teachers we respected and admired. And mind you, as an athlete I was no better than average on my best days.
The consensus of my wife, my closest friend (who is female) and all of their female friends is that I am a sexist pig. Maybe I wouldn’t be one if I had been exposed to co-ed yoga at a young age.
Edith, get me a beer.

THE NOSTRADAMUS AWARD FOR PROGNOSTIFICATION

To football announcer and former player Cris Collinsworth. Prior to the Green Bay Packers-New York Giants NFC Championship game, several football experts were asked to rank Brett Favre among the all-time great quarterbacks. Most had him firmly entrenched in the top five, some as high as number two. But Collinsworth ranked Favre as number 10, saying "I've seen him make mistakes in big games."
One errant pass in overtime later...

THE THOMAS-JEFFERSON-LEFT-OF-GEORGE-WASHINGTON AWARD FOR WORK THAT DOESN’T LAST

To the concrete contractor who put in my driveway and fixed my front steps two years ago.
If you haven’t been to Mount Rushmore, you may not know that Thomas Jefferson’s face was originally sculpted to the left of George Washington. Unfortunately, the rock was unstable and cracked. So they literally blasted Jefferson’s face off the mountain and started over on the right side of George.
Within six months of my new driveway being poured, a long, huge crack developed, and it has been followed by an incredible number of divots. When we complained, the response was, “Too bad.” Now the front steps are disintegrating to the point of needing to be repaired this year. Apparently the term “Satisfaction Guaranteed” in his ad refers to him, not us.

THE THOMAS-JEFFERSON-RIGHT-OF-GEORGE-WASHINGTON “SOLID AS A ROCK” AWARD

To the other concrete contractor we used two years ago, who put in our back patio and back sidewalk. That cement is still perfect. He also correctly predicted that the work the first contractor did to our front steps wouldn’t last.

And finally...

THE MARCIA CLARK AWARD FOR BEST LOSING ARGUMENT

This one also goes to me. On February 17, 2009, all television broadcasting will be converted to a digital signal. If you don’t own a television set with a digital tuner, you’ll either have to buy one or buy a converter box, if your cable or satellite provider doesn’t already provide one.
My television is not digital. In fact, it was purchased on January 8, 1994. I know this because the first show I watched on it was a Packers playoff victory over the Detroit Lions when Favre lofted the winning pass to Sterling Sharpe with less than a minute left.
My wife doesn’t agree that we need a new TV. She doesn’t like to replace things just because they are old and out-of-date.
Which, I guess, explains why I’m still around.

Good Intentions and Red Tape

2008-01-23T18:42:00.000-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 1-20-08)

When you walk into Dave Warren’s Ace Hardware store in Milton, you see a lot of red. It’s in the Ace logo, and it’s the color of the shirts worn by all of Dave’s helpful staff.
But lately, Dave has been seeing a lot more red than he would prefer.
Specifically, it’s in the form of red tape. And it all began because of his self-described fanaticism about customer service.
How serious is Dave about customer service? He’s written a 50-page manual on the subject. He makes sure his employees are thoroughly schooled on providing it. And his efforts have been noticed, even meriting a cover story on a national trade publication titled “Wow! Service that exceeds expectations!”
In that spirit, Dave decided to add a cappuccino machine for his customers. Dave had always offered free coffee, but now cappuccino, hot chocolate and spiced cider were also provided free. Even better, any donations you made for enjoying your hot drink were turned over to the Milton Food Pantry.
Enter the Rock County Health Department, who decreed that Dave couldn’t provide these warm fuzzies without something called a three-compartment sink.
Apparently, you need one part of the sink for washing, one for rinsing, and one for sanitizing. That sounds fine for commercial applications like restaurants, but for providing free cups of cappuccino? Well, Dave discovered in a hurry that when it comes to government, resistance is futile. So rather than spend $1000 to remodel the store for a three-compartment sink, the cappuccino maker was history.
A year later, the Health Department struck again, this time at Dave’s other Ace Hardware store in Evansville. Apparently disappointed that a cappuccino maker didn’t turn up on the premises, the inspector instead focused on the air pots used to serve the free hot coffee. The pots couldn’t be used unless the store had a three-compartment sink. Residents of Evansville, say goodbye to your free hot coffee.
Apparently, these three-compartment sinks are the answer to the world’s problems. Maybe if we sent one to Iraq, the Sunnis and Shiites would sit down over a cup o’ joe and agree to live together in peace and harmony. Indeed, I feel very fortunate to be alive, having drank coffee for the past 20 years in a filthy, disease-ridden, one- or two-compartment world.
Not content with a mere spanking at the hands of the authorities, Dave decided to incur yet more governmental wrath. This time, his crime wasn’t customer service; it was environmentalism.
A few months ago, Dave placed an automatic aluminum can recycling center in his parking lot. It’s a pretty slick device. You insert your empty cans, and the machine weighs them and pays you cash on the spot. It’s kind of like a big vending machine, only in reverse.
There was only one problem. It wasn’t that there was a city ordinance prohibiting such a machine. There was no city ordinance at all. Basically, nothing in the city’s code says what to do about a red-and-white mini-silo that rewards your recycling efforts. So until it is addressed, the recycling center sits idle, a quiet monument to the greatness of America, the country with the world’s cleanest, most sanitary coffee makers (Caution: Hot!).
I sit on the Milton Plan Commission, charged with the task of figuring out how to let Dave run his recycling center. For two months, everything from this center’s placement on the property to its treatment in other cities to its visual appeal - or lack thereof – has been debated. If we continue along the current path of amending the city ordinance to allow Dave’s machine as a conditional use, it could take another two months. I’m a member of this government body, and I’m frustrated. I can’t imagine how Dave feels.
He probably feels a lot like his brother Mark. Mark also owns a Milton business, American Awards and Promotions. The front of Mark’s store had a swell awning with the company logo on it, until a nasty wind gust came along last year and shredded it.
No problem, right? Just put up a new one. Uh, not so fast, Sparky. Since the previous awning installation, the city sign ordinance had changed. Before Mark could replace his awning, he had to clear more hurdles than an Olympic athlete.
By the time it was over and his new awning was up, four months had passed. An ordinance intended to ensure a more pleasing appearance for city businesses had instead done just the opposite, subjecting Milton residents to a season of viewing the hideous skeletal frame of an awning. Personally, I have yet to recover.
But maybe a nice cappuccino would do the trick.

Ken Hendricks' Death Leaves a Huge Hole in Community

2008-01-19T04:48:00.000-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 1-6-08)

Sometimes a person is so much larger than life that it seems unfathomable that he could suddenly not be there.

The person I’m speaking of, of course, is Ken Hendricks. The reaction to his sudden and tragic passing was unlike anything I can recall in the Rock County area. This was no wealthy, miserly Scrooge who in Christmas Future saw no one moved at all by his passing. This was someone who used his hard-earned gains to better the people and community that he loved so much.

I knew Ken, though not well. We had crossed paths several times, mainly through our association with Forward Janesville. I found him to be exactly as every other writer has described him in the last couple of weeks. Driven, unpretentious, visionary, down-to-earth, remarkable.

Ken once told me that if I ever ran for political office, he would contribute to my campaign. To this day, that comment floors me. I suspect that Ken may not have been so eager to back my candidacy if he was aware of some of my political opinions. Still, to even have him think that of me was an incredibly high compliment.

In the end, I wish circumstances had allowed me to know Ken better. When you’re around people like him, it inspires you to do more, be more. And Ken was an incredibly inspiring individual. He encouraged people with his example, claiming that if he could do it, anyone could. Despite his enormous success, he never forgot who he was and where he came from. Instead, he reveled in it. How many billionaires do you see at the local Friday fish fry?

Ken’s success could not be stopped, as Janesville’s business community found out. Early in his career ascent, some local business leaders didn’t like this young non-Country Club upstart muscling in on their territory and tried to thwart his budding success. Beloit, on the other hand, welcomed him with open arms. It was one of the best decisions that community ever made, leading to a grateful Ken paying Beloit back a thousand fold with his various economic development projects and acts of philanthropy. Eventually, Janesville reached out to Ken and massaged the wounds of the past, after missing out on 20 years of what might have been.

There is a saying that states, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Ken used his power to create jobs, revitalize buildings, and help people make their way up. But he didn’t do it because he had to; he did it because he wanted to.

Last year, I was at the Greater Beloit Chamber of Commerce dinner when Ken received an honor from the chamber. Here’s a guy who has a room full of accolades, including Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year. To a lot of folks, a little chamber honor would be meaningless compared to all of the other honors he had received. But not Ken. Not only was he there, but he also seemed genuinely touched by the award.

After the event, I had my last real conversation with him. As I sometimes do with people I greatly respect, I addressed him as “Mr. Hendricks,” which he put the kibosh to in a hurry. The gist of our talk was that I thanked him for everything he had done for the community. Not surprisingly, he was extremely humble in accepting the compliment.

If there is one lesson we can take from the life of Ken Hendricks, it’s that we should use what we have to make things better. Ken was able to do much because he had the financial resources. But Ken didn’t just throw money at a problem; he got personally involved.

Even if we never achieve the financial success that Ken did, we can still find ways to help others in our community. Sometimes, all we can afford is our time. Sometimes, that’s enough.

The Year in Advance

2008-01-04T04:52:00.000-06:00

(From the Janesville Messenger, 12-30-07)

A preview of 2008 highlights.....

January:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Mike Huckabee win the Iowa Caucuses. Immediately after the results are announced, all the other candidates drop out of the race and throw their support to the victors, rendering all of the remaining presidential primaries moot.

Fox Television announces a new game show called “Are You Smarter Than Kellie Pickler?”

February:

The Green Bay Packers upset the New England Patriots 37-31 to win Super Bowl XLII. A tearful Brett Favre announces his retirement on the field during the trophy ceremony.

Descendants of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln sue the federal government for merging their ancestors’ birthdays into one holiday. Attorneys for the plaintiffs demand a return to separate commemorations and punitive damages retroactive to 1732.

March:

March 20 marks the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the United States. The US forgets the anniversary, hurting Iraq’s feelings and leading to very awkward dinner conversation. The next day, the United States sends flowers to Iraq’s office with a sincere note of apology.

Major League Baseball Opening Day at Wrigley Field is marred by a new version of the Mitchell Report detailing former announcer Harry Caray’s use of Budweiser laced with Human Growth Hormone. Caray’s descendants claim that the HGH did not enhance his on-air performance, it simply led to progressively larger spectacles.

April:

In a major upset, a write-in campaign results in Janesville’s famed Oasis Cow winning a seat on the Janesville City Council. Representatives for the Cow state that their candidate does not intend to milk the public for more taxes. The losing candidates react with udder contempt. Later, the Council adopts an ordinance prohibiting fiberglass bovines from running for elective office.

Brett Favre refuses to comment on speculation that he is not really retiring, but is in fact returning to the Green Bay Packers for his 18th NFL season.

May:

A young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Santa Claus arrives at center court in the Janesville Mall.

June:

Frustrated about the lack of progress in labor negotiations, the Janesville Education Association announces that its teachers will not report to their schools for the next two months.

The longest day of the year occurs when a public hearing on sidewalk projects tops the Janesville City Council agenda.

July:

As the Green Bay Packers report to training camp, Brett Favre announces that “any day now,” he will make a decision about returning to the team for one more season.

The grand champion swine at the Rock County 4-H Fair is spared from his fate at the butcher’s shop when his pen is adorned by a mysterious spider web in which the words “Some Pig” seem to be woven.

August:

7-year-old Tommy Tebbertson is found alive and unharmed after being lost for two days in the unmowed grass of Janesville’s Lustig Park.

Retailers report flat sales during the first three months of the Christmas shopping season, but express confidence that the remaining four months will result in record profits.

September:

In order to accommodate political advertising for the November elections, 10 p.m. newscasts are trimmed to 11 minutes.

The public is urged not to panic when it is announced that scientists now believe the Avian Bird Flu can be transmitted to humans by Africanized Killer Bees.

October:

In their final televised debate before the presidential election, Mike Huckabee wins a narrow victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton by invoking the name of Ronald Reagan 47 times, compared to Mrs. Clinton’s 44 uses of “Bill.”

The latest holiday decorating fad: jack o’lanterns wearing Santa hats.

November:

The next president of the United States will be determined by the Supreme Court after a shocking and unprecedented first-place tie between Libertarian Party candidate Ron Paul and Green Party candidate Al Gore.

Americans take the fourth Thursday of the month off to overeat and watch football, but nobody can quite remember why.

December:

Brett Favre announces that he will make a decision “soon” about returning to the Packers for the remaining three games of the 2008 season.

An official proclamation in the Wisconsin State Legislature renames the large evergreen tree in the capitol rotunda the “December Multi-Cultural Religious and Non-religious Celebrations Tree.”

A columnist for the Janesville Messenger fails in an attempt to write a humorous piece predicting events of the coming year.

Oops. A year early on that last one.

Gift-giving During The Other 364 Days

2007-12-16T16:17:00.000-06:00

(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.

Living in Santa Nation

2007-12-16T16:15:00.000-06:00

(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.

JPAC's Christmas Gift

2007-11-21T04:56:00.001-06:00

(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.

Whatever Happened To Class?

2007-11-05T04:29:00.001-06:00

(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.

I Was A Teenage Rock Painter

2007-10-25T06:21:00.000-05:00

(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.

Don't Believe Everything You Read

2007-10-07T11:03:00.000-05:00

(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.

Return of the "Short Attention Span" Column

2007-09-19T22:10:00.000-05:00

(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.

Now I Know How Crash Test Dummies Feel

2007-09-03T07:08:00.000-05:00

(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.

Rocky Mountain High

2007-08-18T17:45:00.000-05:00

(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.

Does Every Relationship Have Defining Moments?

2007-07-15T21:28:00.000-05:00

(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.

A Tribute To A Dad

2007-06-16T10:12:00.000-05:00

(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.

When Your Favorite Songs Are Safe Enough For Show Choir

2007-06-06T22:40:00.000-05:00

(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.

Curse of the Crackberry

2007-05-20T13:14:00.000-05:00

(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.

The Reel History of Janesville

2007-05-06T07:59:00.000-05:00

(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")

The "Short Attention Span" Column

2007-05-05T23:20:00.000-05:00

(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

2007-05-05T23:19:00.000-05:00

(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?

2007-05-05T23:17:00.000-05:00

(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.”

Other Cities Can Learn From Beloit

2007-05-05T23:15:00.000-05:00

(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.

Separation of Church and State - A Two-Way Street

2007-05-05T23:12:00.000-05:00

(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.

An Un-Bear-able Super Bowl

2007-05-05T23:10:00.000-05:00

(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.

Stuck In The Middle of Life

2007-05-05T23:05:00.000-05:00

(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.

Ghost of a College

2007-05-05T23:04:00.000-05:00

(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.

The Best Christmas Gift: Memories

2007-05-05T23:01:00.000-05:00

(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.