Last Friday a lunchtime email to my wife, which still remains unopened as she was at home recuperating from eye surgery, contained the following:

             Please go spend some quality time with the white chickens.  I think they sense your mean-ness towards them and consequently are laying less.  This dog thing has me thinking all over the place.  No dog tonight, one dog tonight, two dogs tonight.  I can build arguments for all three.

Football coaches are sitting up late at their kitchen tables pouring over charts, parents are budgeting for new clothes and spiral notebooks all the while wild rice is ripening on the stalk a bit more each evening.

This is late August around here. I’m appreciative to all the 'ball players that kicked off their seasons by working in the heat last week. It seemed to be a necessary, ironic sacrifice the weather gods required before bestowing actual summer weather upon us.

This time of year regularly has me eager to get back to school and see students. I think that is actually the case with most teachers. Curricula ideas that incubated over the summer are ready to be put into action. Today a past lesson idea intersected with some thoughts about another referendum our school board is planning.

As a social studies and history teacher I know the importance of bringing multiple perspectives of a topic into lessons, it is one of the most basic functions of my job. But are there exceptions, when all possible views on a subject are not wanted? Yes.

For example, how in depth could a historical inquiry of the Holocaust get if the readings of a Holocaust denier are utilized? Surely when one looks at a historical topic as wide ranging as the Holocaust there is room for historical inquiry, questioning, even disagreement.

What role did German citizens play in perpetuating the events leading to and including the building of concentration camps?

What positions were the Protestant churches taking?

What did people in the U.S. know and when did they know it regarding the extent of the genocide taking place? Were foreign governments obligated to act to stop such actions?

Was race and ethnicity as large a driving force or did economics help drive prejudice?

All these questions have a range of possible answers, depending on the historical evidence one uses to construct their argument.

In a history class these are the sorts... [Read More]

A few minutes after 4:30 a.m. I determined I was awake. It was one of those unusually rare early morning rises where fighting off sleep is not needed. I was awake before my eyes opened, and when they did I was up. It was a Saturday to boot.

In less than three hours Grandma’s Marathon would commence. In an hour a shuttle that would take me from the UNM-Duluth dormitory to the start line near Two Harbors, Minn., would arrive. 

Shop talk with one of my roommates and fellow runner dominated that time. We unexpectedly compared notes on the delivery of Inherit the Wind and observations of fundamentalism in our own time and town.  The shop talk continued on the shuttle, until he noted that our conversation helped pass “the lengthy trip out of town.” It was.

Our destination was Canal Park in Duluth, some 26.2 miles away.  I spent a few hours down there the night before, carbo-loading.  

Grandma’s Restaurant hosts an all-u-can-eat pasta buffet that I took advantage of with the wife and kids when they dropped me off in town. The chicken mornay – a white, cream-based sauce with bathing chicken breasts – was used to drown two platefuls of whole wheat pasta. Breadsticks too.

“Fuel for tomorrow” I thought without a shred of guilt. The waitress had given me a wrist band to distinguish myself from other non-buffet eating patrons. This would prove a useful tool.

Transitioning to race preparation after a week-long vacation with the family in northern Minnesota was a bit tricky. On one hand, hanging out with the family on the waterfront, showing them the big shipping freighters and loading docks, taking in the cobblestone streets and event atmosphere was entirely appropriate. 

On the other hand, part of me just wanted to pick up my packet, shove a bunch of pasta in the gullet, and focus on the run. A middle ground was found and they shoved off in late afternoon wishing me well as they left me in the... [Read More]

April is approaching and for me that means a couple weekends of men’s league tourneys to wind down a winter season that, once again, was consumed with many hours at the rink.

As I type, still sore from this morning’s game, I’m analyzing the question “how much hockey is too much hockey?” I have an idea of the answer as it applies to me, but have little intention of sharing that quite yet. The question itself however is worthy of writing about today.

The question could be philosophical. Players, parents or coaches will decide this month if they continue to pursue being on spring select or all-star teams. If they do so, they are moving towards making this game a nine or even 12-month endeavor for them. 

Skill development is a nice by-product of such a choice. So is taking time and energy away from other seasonal activities such as baseball or fishing. More and more, this is the path to playing at a higher level than high school varsity. For a few, this path leads to burn-out toward the end of high school. One’s answer would then depend on what the long-term goals are.

The question could be pragmatic. As the coach of the Mite B team in town, I had the privilege of being the first coach to many new players (and often their parents). My short-term objectives were to give them a safe, fun environment to improve their skills and learn what it means to be on a team. As a high school coach, I also hold a long-term objective of seeing these players (and parents) come back next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and…

So, breaking the bank with hotel rooms and long road trips or dictating every winter weekend with a 35-game schedule was not the approach to take with the parents of these 5- to 8-year-olds.  One’s answer would then depend on household economics and other winter leisure pursuits.

The question could further be about money. Our local school board had considered a proposal about cutting the girls’ ... [Read More]

Author Michael Perry’s essays occupied much of my time on the bus ride into Siren today. The local team gave us quite a drubbing today, 7-0.

The tiny town has a feel much like Perry’s stomping grounds of New Auburn, which lies about 75 miles southish of Siren and a 125 miles southish of Rhinelander. Within the odd-shaped triangle of these three cities are dozens of small towns that reflect their own versions of the narratives contained in Off Main Street.

A sudden chorus of laughter from behind me confirms that most of the team is not too down about the game. If not laughter, it is their chorus of voices singing over the country diva on the radio that can be heard.

The athletic competitor in me has sometimes found challenges with such a team personality when it comes to winning and losing games. Are they not concerned about the loss we just experienced? Some certainly are, but most are focused on this moment, the bus ride. They do serve as a shining example of what it is to value the laughter and company of friends. But I digress.

Perry is the sort of writer I’d like to emulate. His narratives about rural Wisconsin and contemporary American culture blend simple description and intelligent humor, with strong sociological commentary that doesn’t read like an unsigned web posting. His use of figurative language results in this aspiring writer dog-earing pages for future reference. The collection of triangle markers makes up some sort of future writing exercise list.

The thought of someone else book marking, or otherwise highlighting something I write provides an authentic, if also vain, aspiration of mine. However, the real value of writing something that is worthy of someone else highlighting it or otherwise being moved, is that they are the recipient of their own reflective, thinking processes, not mine.

That is what Perry’s writing does for those who have shared his material with me. He does it for me too. He holds mi... [Read More]

Low gas prices are not something to be thankful for this week. Yes, you read that right. I’m not thankful for them, nor should you be.

To be sure, my hypocritical self enjoys filling up the tank on my truck for less than $50. On a selfish, pragmatic level it feels much better than coughing over the $90 it took to fill the same tank four months ago. But are these low prices indicators or something else more unsettling going on in the economy? Will these low prices hinder us from growing a stronger economy?

Arriving at these questions has been a month long process that included a national stock market dive of historic proportions, massive government giveaways in response, and the completion of my first graduate course in the area of economics. Somewhere in there, we also had an election.

“The Roaring ’20s and the Great Depression” was offered as an online course from UW-Oshkosh. I read and wrote more in this one-credit course than in many previous three-credit courses.

One from Viterbo University in LaCrosse comes to mind. That course, titled “Assessment in the Classroom,” laid out a very specific set of rubrics for grading. After intentionally only meeting the requirements for a “C,” my report card listed “A” as the final grade. The instructor clearly was part of a larger racket going on supported by the Department of Public Instruction and some of our institutions of higher learning. At least I got a nice textbook for my $500. But, I digress…

“The Roaring ’20s and the Great Depression” was not about bootleggers and Oakies. It was about Federal monetary policy, boom and bust cycles, deficit spending, speculation, and the functions of money. For some, not the stuff of excitement or even day-to-day relevance. For me, with each new reading I became more engrossed. Economics wasn’t the dry statistical charts or mundane supply and demand curves from the economics courses I took as an 18 year-old.

The study of economics wasn’t somethi... [Read More]

There are four of us, all dads to players. Initially I thought this would be a case of too many chefs in the kitchen. After all, there are only 14 players on the squad and they are six and seven year olds. But I’ve found we all share similar coaching philosophies. Our delivery isn’t exactly alike, but that is good.

Now I don’t know if these guys have read The Hurried Child (I talk about this a lot in the last blog) and I doubt I’ll ever mention it to them, but they know it anyway. Our team is learning through play; we try to avoid having them stand in line too long, they giggle, they smile, and they are becoming better skaters by the week.

We practice twice a week. We have been for about a month. We played our first game a few Sundays ago against Lakeland, losing on the scoreboard 8-4. My daughter was excited because not only was this her first game, but her cousin played on the other team.

The puck went back and forth from end to end all game. All our kids played the same amount. The teams were evenly matched, but the final score was indicative of the fact that Lakeland’s most skilled player was significantly stronger than our most skilled player.

The kids shouted, they made lots of noise when we scored (if they were paying attention). They all looked like they had fun. Here and there we’d offer some feedback on skills stuff to individuals when they came off the ice, but mainly it was “Good job out there, ______” or “Way to go, ______” or something similar. 

I try to make a point of not talking a ton about hockey to my daughter. Generally, only if she brings it up. On two occasions she has stated that she wants to earn a hockey scholarship. “If I’m really good at something I can go to college for free, Dad,” she says.  I didn’t plant this idea; she got it from the plot of High School Musical 3 (which is not nearly as go... [Read More]

This past week has fully marked my annual return to coaching hockey. The high school season started this Monday.

Coaching has been the routine for most of my Novembers since returning to Northern Wisconsin, but this year I bring a higher level of appreciation. Not that other years have been bad, but this year has a new variable—I’m also coaching my daughter’s local youth team, and she’s allowing me to view the game through a slightly different lens and in the process reaffirming my support of USA Hockey.

A simple question she asked me today got me thinking about the game as we teach it.

USA Hockey is the official organization of ice hockey in America, founded in 1936.  Their mission is “to promote the growth of hockey in America and provide the best possible experience for all participants by encouraging, developing, advancing and administering the sport” (www.usahockey.com).

Membership is currently about 600,000. Among the services provided are coaching education programs and curriculums. They are the governing body of teams of six-year-olds on one end to the men’s and women’s Olympic teams on the other.

In 1998 I was living in River Falls and in one of my graduate classes I read a book called The Hurried Child. It made a strong impression on me.  It was a critique of how and why our modern culture dresses children up to look and act like little adults, pushing them through childhood faster and faster—all in an effort to acquire skills or status better, faster and more efficiently. This process applies to reading as well as the ability to make a cross ice pass.

I re-read the book this summer. Parts of it read like the pages out of a Bible Belt publication decrying rock-n-roll, while other parts read like a hippie commune’s prescription for removing all structure so a little one learns through self-discovery. The overall point of the book falls somewhere... [Read More]