A movie recommendation: Go see "Marley & Me"

Any of us who has ever had a dog ... or even loves dogs needs to take a break and go see the movie "Marley & Me" this holiday season.

It is a fairly accurate portrayal of John Grogan's bestselling book of a few years ago about a family that adopts a dog that ... well ... gets into everything.

The slapstick humor you may have seen in the TV ads is only part of the story. Like the book, the movie is really about a family's up-and-down relationship with its pet ... and vice versa.

Dogs (and, to a lesser extent, cats) do nice things for us. They make us smile and make us grunt. They don't demand much -- just our promise to take care of them. In return, they will be fiercely loyal and will do as well as they can to bring cheer to our lives. It's a simple bargain. We don't do nearly as well with people when it comes to such things.

There is a touching scene near the end when Luke Wilson and Marley are sitting in the sun in a meadow. Wilson stares at the nice view and murmurs to Marley, "You'll let me know when the time is right, won't you, old boy?" The dog merely snuggles closer to Wilson. The bond is clear - both trust each other.

I understand there are people who don't like dogs for reasons that may well be legitimate. Still, I find it unfortunate for them this is the case. When I return home from work or play, the first sighting of Pete in the front window wagging his tail in anticipation always makes me feel good.

This movie, despite its sad ending (that rivals the book), did the same thing. And when is the last time you walked out of a theater with a smile on your face and a light heart?

A lovely holiday

The mad rush (for presents) is over. The mad rush (to enjoy the rest of the holiday season) is on.

As one gets older, one discovers there are several ways of enjoying holidays. In the end, it is one that suits your needs the best that is the only one that really matters.

One friend of mine told me he was taking three hours each morning this week and next and simply devoting it to himself. If he wanted to read a book, he would. If he wanted to sit with his dog on his lap and stare at the lake while listening to music, he would. No interruptions would be allowed. Things could wait until noon when he would be happy to interact with all interested parties.

Another went to Florida to spend 10 days with the family. This person likes her life in the Twin Cities and the job that goes with it. However, no matter how often one communicates with family on the phone and over the internet, there is a need for face-to-face contact. When this person returns to town next week, I suspect she will do so with a smile on her face, a relaxed heart and plenty of memories to keep her going until the next trip.

Another friend of mine is hurting this holiday season over the end of a longterm relationship and all the ugly ramifications and sideshows that go with it. No matter how often one goes through it (whether it happens to you or someone you care about), breakups sting. Each of us recover in our own way. Words of comfort that are well intended often fall on deaf ears because the person involved simply isn't ready to move on. So, the person in question here simply withdrew into a cocoon, choosing to spend the holiday alone. This may not sound like a great way to spend the season to many of us. But if it works for this person, so be it.

My holiday refuge came in a five year old movie "Love Actually." It is the story of several relationships at Christmastime in England. There are complications in all of them. Some end happily but some do not.

It's hard to believe but art occasionally does imitate life.

There is great music being played throughout and we get to see actors such as Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson and Laura Linney take a step away from the serious roles they are known for and give us things to laugh at (and a few moments that make you shake your head sadly as well.) I find I can watch this movie damn near every day and see something I didn't see before ... and smile at scenes that are as funny on the 100th viewing as they were on the first. The bonus this time was commentary on the DVD from the director and some of the actors on scenes in the movie. A second bonus is the inclusion of some scenes that didn't make the final print. This helps to explain things that puzzled me about the movie ... while tossing in some more laughs.

So, you see there are many ways to celebrate these two weeks ... without giving in to the needs of others.

It's not too late (is it?) to suggest you pick the way that suits your needs and, as a popular ad suggests, Simply Do it. There are 50 other weeks in the year in which we accede to the wishes of our bosses, SOs, kids and pets. Perhaps if we did type of relaxing and recreating more than once a year, we might not be a country that seems to be at each other's throats all the time.

Now there's a happy thought for the holidays.

A memorable Christmas ... 40 years ago

Tis the time of year for reflecting on Christmases past. Many of us can recall a favorite toy we got or the year the tree fell down or some such thing.

This week, I found myself thinking of Christmas in 1968. The irony is I can't tell you if I got a book, a baseball or even handkerchiefs. The gift I do remember was, as the saying goes in the commercials, priceless.

In early December of that year, Mom suffered some kind of seizure at work. I was just 15 and away at school at the time and was given only the necessary information. All I knew was Mom was very ill and she might not even get home for Christmas.

It was up to my brothers and myself to put the house in Holiday order. We went out and got a tree and decorated it. I don't remember much of the details but it was quite a feat for the four boys, age 15-21, to agree on ornament placement and to work together to turn the tree into a masterpiece.

As soon as we got the word that Mom's doctor was going to allow her to come home for Christmas, we promptly cleaned the house from the attic to the basement. It could have passed a white glove test and even the nuns at St. Francis could have bounced quarters on our beds successfully.

Not everything went perfectly. The first night the tree was up, the cat climbed up and sent it crashing to the floor. (We ended up tying it to a window sill.) Mom had originally bought the cat as a gift for me but she had a special fondness for him. The day she was supposed to come home, he was a muddy mess. I took him to the sink and gave him a bath. Even put a towel in the dryer for him to be warm. The cat took the bath without comment and seemed to love the warm towel. But when I turned my head for a second, he bit my earlobe so hard I bled like crazy. Nobody had ever told me how much some cats disliked water.

My brothers brought Mom home from the hospital with the warning she would be weak and we needed to be careful. When she got into the house, one of the first things she saw a cage with a huge bird in it. "Do you like it? We didn't have time to wrap your gift," said my brother Paul, who was known as the serious one in the family.

"Oh, no," she said, sitting weakly on the couch. "You didn't, did you?"

I'll never forget Mom's smile when she was told we were simply housesitting the bird for a friend of ours who had gone to Florida for the holidays. She knew she had been royally had ... and I suspect she liked the idea a lot.

Nothing was said but I think we all understood this could very well be our last Christmas with Mom. (It turned out to be the case. She passed away the following May.)

Mom had always made Christmas great for us and now we tried to do the same for her. As I recall, my older brothers Frank and John did most of the cooking. (My culinary contribution was mastering a new contraption in the house called a toaster oven.)

Paul, who was very good at these things, did a lot of the cleaning around the house. (There was one odd diversion: the bird, who was fairly quiet, would screech loudly when the vacuum was used. Although our house had a lot of animals in it from time to time, birds were never part of the equation. Now I know why.) I walked the dog without protest, cleaned up the cat's litter daily and attempted to be less than a pain-in-the-butt to my brothers than usual.

The literal memory stops there. I can't tell you a single physical gift I received. But what I can still recall is a general feeling of happiness around the house that year. Even Dad, who was having so many problems with depression he needed to be hospitalized to handle them, came home for Christmas Day dinner and was playful and cheerful.

This was Christmas 40 years ago and I can remember it like it was yesterday.

So this is my holiday wish this year: no matter what your form of celebration is this week (or next), may it be one where peace, harmony and a feeling of good feelings reign in your household. In these tough economic times, we may not be able to give as many physical gifts as usual. Sometimes, however, the best ones you give can't be measured with a pricetag. Best of all, nobody ever wants to return them.

Snow ... in the desert?

Okay, so we go to Laughlin, NV for a few days of vacation. The vacation is fine and we are headed back, a little poorer but somewhat refreshed to Las Vegas to fly home. It's raining when we leave but that's no big deal. Now we get to Searchlight, the small town that is the home of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, that is about halfway back.

And what do we see? A blinding snowstorm. In the desert, no less.

I kid ye not. Here is the proof:




It did not make me yearn for home.

Winter rules

Winter has finally arrived in St. Paul. It snowed an inch or two on Saturday and we had a flurry or two of activity yesterday as well.

Funny thing about this town. It changes in winter. In the summer, things are languid and slow moving. But when the first serious snow hits the ground, the old place seems to perk up. Despite the crappy economic news out of Detroit these days, people just seemed more upbeat and mobile the past few days. Even my invisible neighbor (a woman who has lived next door to me us for five years or so but never speaks to anybody) was cheerfully out shoveling yesterday.

Pete, the happy dog, was also on top of his game yesterday, making doggy angels in the middle of the street as we strolled through the hood. Later, he bounded to and fro in the backyard, barking cheerfully at squirrels instead of with his usual venom aimed at intruders to his private preserve.

I am never quite sure what to make of this euphoria. I suspect it is the general feeling we're all in this winter thing together here. So you might as well relax and make the best of it.

Whatever the reason, as crazy as this sounds, I think many Minnesotans like the start of winter better than the start of summer. Come mid-January, we'll probably be singing a different tune. For now, however, people seem upbeat. Wonder if that is true in Alaska as well?

When is enough ... enough?

Stanley Woodward was a well-known sports editor in New York in the 1950s and 1960s who once grumbled his writers were spending too much time "godding up the athletes" and not enough time doing actual reporting.

I found myself wondering what Woodward, Red Smith and the rest of the old gang would be saying today. The news out of New York is a fellow named Plaxico Burress, a very good wide receiver for the New York football Giants, is in a load of trouble. Seems the fellow, who was supposed to be nursing an injury, went to one of the city's nightclubs and somehow ended up shooting himself in the leg with a gun he had in his pocket. That would be bad enough but, since this fellow is a well-known athlete, a lot of people started running interference to keep the information from the police and everybody else.

The police, naturally, took a dim view of this. New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg sensed a media opening and poured through with a series of loud complaints that is making the local media giddy.

Bloomberg may be grandstanding a bit when he complains about the Giants and the NFL working overtime to keep the issue quiet (what did he think they would do?) but his main point is a solid one: now that we know what the guy did, he shouldn't avoid paying the same penalty you and I would for such an infraction.

But that is not how we do things in this country. The Big Three automakers run their businesses into the ground and Congress gives them all the money they want to stay afloat. A celebrity gets into legal trouble and ends up on probation for something that would send you and I to the clink.

We spend so much time godding up athletes, movie stars and CEOs that we have forgotten a basic fact: take away their money, fame and good looks and they are no different than us. In fact, when the time comes to head to the next life, there is not a damn thing a Donald Trump can do about it. Eventually, he will end up looking like me.

Eventually, enough will be enough. Mr. Burress may be doing society a favor that is long overdue. He may provide the impetus needed for us to respect celebs and CEOs for their accomplishments while still treating them like anybody else. If so, his shot in the leg is a welcome shot in the arm at a time when this country needed one.

Plenty to be thankful for this year

A couple of years ago, my employer at the time told me he had no further use for my service, saying I was a "glass half-empty" sort of guy. (By that, I think he meant I simply refused to agree with him when he had some half-cocked plan that would make the company instant money but might not be good for the customer in the long run. If that is "glass half-empty", I plead guilty.)

I like to think of myself as just the opposite, a "glass half-full" person. Granted, I have been semi-employed for the past six weeks and my favorite pro football team has a chance to be the first squad ever to go 0-16 in a season. It's minor inconveniences in the big picture.

Life really is not so bad. I have a terrific wife who went through a surgical procedure and (it appears) came out fine. I have a terrific family, the type of people you are honored to be associated. We have a dog we like a lot and who (I think) likes us.

We have been doing a lot of work on our house this year. It has been a long process but the basement is taking shape and looking nice. We live in a nice neighborhood, an areas where folks notice when something is out of the norm and check in to make sure everything is okay.

Although there are times when it is appropriate to do so, it is just too damn easy to be cynical and downcast about life. There was a story this week about a blind woman who runs a convenience store in downtown St. Paul. Some grinch had stolen her laptop. Mark Dayton, a former US Senator here, heard about it and said he would buy her a new one (it cost $6,500).

Dayton certainly has the dough to do so but that's not the point. The point is he saw someone who was in need and helped the person, who was very thankful he did. (Judging by the comments on one of the local papers' website, it wasn't enough. Some people are never satisfied.)

As long as we have that type of spirit still around in this country, there is plenty to be thankful for this year. Along that line, here is my Thanksgiving wish: For one day (okay, two), can we stop focusing on those big car company CEOs who are making oodles of money and thumbing their noses at the American public? Can we quit carping about politicians from the other party? Instead, can we just take a second to look around and see what is right in our little world? Is that really a hard thing to do?

Happy birthday, Colleen!

My mother-in-law turned 80 years old today. Although she isn't the reason why many people have the day off, it is appropriate nonetheless.

You see, Colleen is the type of person we need to honor in this country. She is an original self-made woman.

Not self-made in the usual sense. Colleen was never a big-time salesperson who started her own company and made a gazillion dollars. Instead, she did something I would argue is more important. She worked at being a good mom and wife and worked hard at being there for her kids when they needed her ... even though they sometimes didn't know it.

She is a woman of terrific accomplishment, like being the valedictorian of her high school class when it was unusual for a woman to do so.

When her husband died several years ago, she quietly went out and acquired a driver's license. She didn't use it a lot. But it was there when she needed it. When she finally sold her car earlier this year, the dealer marveled at how clean it was ... and how good the parts were in it.

We have probably played 40 games of Scrabble together. The Detroit Lions and I have something in common here -- neither of us can claim a victory in our field of combat. The closest I got was a tie broken when she had the last word ... literally.

She has looked illness and heartbreak in the mouth and knocked it sideways. She did this with a matter-of-fact attitude so common in this area ... and to people of the greatest generation.

More importantly, she always did it smartly but with a light touch when needed.

When they say they don't make 'em like they used to, they are right. But there's a good reason for that. Class isn't easy to duplicate

This is a good thing

I just got back from my voting place. I figured 10:00 a.m. was a quiet, lowkey time to go do my civic duty. It was quiet but not lowkey. There was a line to get to the one of the 11 booths in our tiny precinct. They even offered up some space where a person could sit and fill out a clipboard.

No matter which side of the spectrum you fall on, this is comforting to see. Minnesotans love elections (we traditionally are among the leaders in the country in participation) and this year appears to be no different.

Despite the talkies' constant yammering and the negative ads that make us all crazy, we're still out there voting. As Martha Stewart would say, that is a good thing.

A sobering trip downtown

Once a month, my wife takes an hour and a half off to go serve meals at the Dorothy Day Center. It is located in downtown St. Paul, just a couple of blocks from the Xcel Energy Center. But it is as if you are in a different universe.

Going down there is not heroic. Indeed, it's a little gesture. But, as the saying for a commercial goes, the rewards are priceless.

Yesterday, my wife needed help because one of her regulars wasn't available. As was the case for most of my less-than-stellar athletic career, I came off the bench to join in. I had been there a couple of times before and knew the drill. This time, I had dessert duty, dispensing donuts and cookies.

It is an amazing, humbling experience. About 11:45 or so, the door opens and people of all shapes, sizes and ages come through. Some seemed my age of 55. Some seemed a lot older. Some looked half my age.

But they all had just one thing in mind -- to get a full, warm meal. The gaunt, tight looks on their faces stay with you for a long time. A few of them grumbled a bit as they went through line. But the good majority of them said thank you when they got to me, mostly because I was at the end of the serving table.

A few folks asked for a specific type of donut. Although this is something that is discouraged (mainly because it holds up the line), I tried to do as requested. In just about every case, I would slyly smile and say, "Don't tell anybody I did that. Our secret, okay?" In most cases, the person smiled back. I suspect they liked the idea of having a happy secret with a fellow they didn't know.

There would be occasional breaks in the action when the room was filled. A supervisor would then get on a loudspeaker and ask folks to move along when they were done with lunch so others could come in to eat. It may surprise people to know most did just that.

There were the many expected sights - folks with walkers, young mothers with kids in strollers. But there were some sights and sounds you might not have thought would occur.

One fellow walked through with a blue tooth, the latest and greatest in cellular phones, attached to his ear. Another guy came through in an overcoat that, from afar, looked off the rack from Macy's. Upon closer inspection, I saw the seams that had been sewed back together. It takes all kinds.

Another guy walked through in shabby clothing muttering anti-Obama rhetoric. Even at Dorothy Day, you couldn't escape the election.

Then, in roughly 80 minutes, it was over. The supervisor said the final meal had been served. He said 403 people had come through line. As we spoke, I saw other workers were quietly moving folks along, sending them back to the sunny, but chilly outdoors.

After all, dinner would be served in another four hours or so and the room needed to be cleaned.

And the beat goes on.

Oh, What a Night!

Went to see Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons last night. I don't go to many concerts but I must say Frankie Valli can still go pretty good ... at age 74. He sang all his old hits (He hasn't had a new one for 20 years or so) and a few songs I had never heard before.

The whole thing went rather quickly -- it lasted just over an hour and a half. But there was little down time and I have no problem admitting I was singing and bopping along with my wife and our good friend Steph Harris. That's not the easiest thing to do (and it was probably not a pretty sight) at the Orpheum Theatre, which is designed more for plays and more stately concerts than these guys. But it was still a lot of fun.

Two things struck me, though.

1) There was a woman behind us who seemed positively annoyed to be there. She hissed at us when we tried to snap a picture (without flash to be courteous). Later, when Valli encouraged the crowd to sing and clap along, she was as stationary and as unhappy looking as a Detroit Lion defensive back. The whole idea of going to see a guy like that is to sing, dance and clap along. I don't know what this woman was doing there. But she walked out glaring at the world.

2) When I go to one of these concerts, I always find myself wondering if today's singers will be able to draw crowds (the place was packed last night) and still perform their stuff 30 years from now. I don't claim to be an expert on, say, rap, but I find it hard to believe those fellows will be bopping like this to crowds like we saw last night in 2038.

I do think, however, that lady will still be scowling.

Another life lesson learned

A while back, I mentioned a friend of mine who is battling breast cancer. They threw a fundraiser for her yesterday. Originally, we had been told she didn't feel well enough to attend. But she did come and it was great to see her. Here was a woman who had every reason to feel sorry for herself. Yet she came with a big smile and a hug for everyone who was there.

It suddenly made things like getting downsized out of a job and seeing your favorite football team get beat seem small in comparison.

I'll get another job somewhere. The football team will win games at another time.

But seeing Mary there making jokes about her wig and throwing barbs at everyone was about the most uplifting thing I have experienced in a long time. And it was a reminder that having a glass "half-full" attitude helps more than just your disposition. It makes people around you feel better, too.

Mary has tough days ahead. I can only imagine how painful and downright chemotherapy is to endure. But days like yesterday are the ones that will pull her ... and those of us who are battling lesser problems ... through.

Good News! Something to celebrate

In case you haven't noticed, we have been having a bit of what the English call "a bad run" lately. The daily news has been downright depressing. So, when you get a chance to celebrate, you have to jump at it.

My sister-in-law bought a house the other day. At age 41, it's the first house she has ever owned. It's a major accomplishment for her. She has worked very hard to be successful in her career. She has battled hard to overcome what most of us run into at one time or another - obstacles in her personal life. Through it all, though, she has kept up the one constant I have always seen in her - a big heart. You want to see people like that get rewarded.

A friend of mine found out the other day she is getting named to her college's athletic Hall of Fame. She was a terrific tennis player for them a decade or so ago. She stayed in athletics after graduation, eventually going back to a college job - one that she has become very good at. Like my sister-in-law, she has had her share of personal and professional heartaches but has remained stalwart and steady.

I mention the above because we just don't celebrate good tidings as much as we should. When good things happen to good people, we need to forget about our sagging 401Ks for a minute and simply go have a good time.

Instead, we seemed to have become a country where success is envied instead of being appreciated. Instead of applauding someone's achievement, we mutter to ourselves about bad luck. I don't know exactly when this started or whose fault that is. But I swear it is true.

A former employer of mine once told me he thought I was a "glass half-empty" sort of guy. I think he was actually talking about himself and his bosses. But, unless I have totally misread and misheard much of what is being said and printed these days, he is describing the mood of much of the country these days.

There may be good reasons for such pessimism. But that seems to me all the more reason why, when something good happens to somebody you really like, you need to schedule a celebration as soon as possible.

Gotta go now. I don't want some naysayer complaining this column is too long.

Highway robbery

Being an old official, I tend to cut them the benefit of several doubts at the various sporting events I work at or attend. Today I make an exception to that: the guys who worked the Detroit Lions game against the Vikings at the Metrodome absolutely, positively stole the game today. As bad as the Lions are, they played as well as they could today and deserved the win.

There was a pass interference penalty against Minnesota that was ignored that even the Vikings fans around me admitted was awful. This was followed by a questionable fumble call that wiped out a long gain and then a horrific pass interference penalty that led to the winning field goal.

Judgment calls are part of the game. You live with them. And when you haven't won a game, you know going in you are not likely to get any breaks. But this crew, led by referee Tony Corrente, apparently decided they needed to do all they could to give Minnesota chances to win. Eventually, the Vikings did so, 12-10. They were a disgrace to officials everywhere. If I didn't know better, I would say they had visited my favorite decadent western town earlier in the week. Since the spread was 13-13 1/2 points, their utter incompetency didn't change that part of the game. It wasn't for lack of effort.

When the election really hits home

The presidential election is still 26 days away. That's an eternity in politics ... and it means we have thousands of political ads still to digest.

But, for people like me, all the ads in the world don't mean much when you can't get answers to questions regarding personal issues.

John McCain said the other day he thinks health care is not a right in this country. He is not alone in this view. That may be fine for folks with money but if you are somebody like a friend of mine who is battling breast cancer, has a husband who can't work and a son in high school, it's a different issue. This person works in a business that pays on commissions and doesn't offer health care. So, if you work, you can pay for insurance. But if you can't work due to illness, that's a problem. Although he may not have meant it that way, McCain's answer made it sound like this: tough luck.

My friend isn't looking for a handout - just a helping hand until she can get back working. Government, after all, is supposed to be for the people. A civilized society is supposed to offer assistance when necessary.

But what you hear from a lot of folks these days is it is every man for themselves, a sort of survival of the fittest.

This morning, I filled out all the necessary information to apply for unemployment benefits. It isn't a lot of money and there is a limit to what I am eligible for. And I hope I don't get to that limit. I want to get back to work.

But the money that is out there will help us get through at the moment. And it is money that I put into the pool at one time or another. So I will accept it and try to put it to as good of use as I can. You won't be seeing me buying dinner at Manny's.

The presidential candidate who assures me he understands that government is NOT supposed to be about ideologies is the candidate who will get my vote. I don't thimk I alone in that view.

That's why I think anything about any candidate's past associations with a person he no longer deals with isn't too important. Barack Obama isn't calling William Ayers for political advice and John McCain isn't calling Charles Keating for financial advice. I want my candidate to to tell me how my economic future will be ... and whether my family will be safe in the streets. The pundits can argue about the rest of it until they're blue in the face.

But I suspect my friend isn't thinking about Ayers or Keating when discussing mammograms and chemotherapy. And I know I don't think about them when filling out a job application. It's all about priorities.

Downsized

My reporter's nose doesn't get used that much any more. But it still works ... sometimes too well.

Last week, I sensed something was wrong in our tiny little office. The boss was unusually quiet and even had a closed-door meeting with someone, a very unusual occurrence.

On Thursday, I found out why. The boss stopped into my office and told me to stop what I was working on. Seemed he had been talking with his consultant and that person said he needed to downsize his office. Since there was only one other fulltime person (another person works four days a week), I could see where this was headed.

Downsized.

In a sense, I was a victim of the current economic crisis. The boss said it was simply a matter of his consultant (whoever that is) telling him he had to cut a corner somewhere. Not as much money as needed was coming in (via advertising). And getting a loan for more money is, for a small company, a lot more difficult now than it might have been, say, a month ago.

The timing could have been better. My wife is going to have an operation in a week that is going to keep her out of work for at least two weeks (and more likely, four).

But bosses can't worry about that anymore.

I am sure we'll do fine. But when you hear talk of Congress getting billions of money to save companies who pay their CEOs millions a year ... and you realize you are being downsized to say a salary of ... er ... quite a bit less than millions a year, well, it is frustrating.

C'est la vie.

Economic lessons needed

I didn't take a lot of Economics classes in high school and college. There are times where I have to do some squeezing to get the checkbook right.

So I need some help here understanding just what is going on here with our economy. On the very day the Stock Market takes a 400-point hit, Target announces a $125 million naming rights deal for the new Twins' ballpark in downtown Minneapolis.

Now the one item doesn't necessarily relate to the other. But it makes a fellow wonder.

Target apparently feels the economy is going to be okay enough so that folks around here will pay more money (not New York money but still an increase in ticket prices from the Metrodome) to go to 81 baseball games. Target apparently feels this will be $125 million well spent in advertising.

But when you see the list of foreclosures in the newspaper and realize how many people -- some of them baseball fans -- you wonder just who is going to attend these games. And just who is going to pay $800- $1500 per seat to go to games at the new Yankee Stadium next year? It isn't anybody in my tax bracket.

This morning, I watched the Treasury Secretary give a bleak picture of the days ahead. Two major financial corporations needed the government to save their butt last week and there may be more of this ahead. Times are obviously tight for a lot of folks.

So what does Target know that we don't?

What is this man thinking?

Each day I go to work in downtown Minneapolis, I walk through the skyway system. It's an interesting stroll. You see young 'uns hustling to work, tying their tie and walking briskly at the same time. (Try that. It isn't easy.)

There are the folks busy chatting on their cell phones, also moving at a quick pace.

There are the business types who have already been in for an hour or so, in line at Starbucks or Caribou Coffee, looking very much like they need a stiff jolt of something.

Then there is The Tall Man.

If you didn't know better, you would think he is Kevin Garnett's older brother. He is about 6-8 or 6-9, bald, and has the same lanky build. On the few occasions I have seen him move, he appears to have an athlete's gait. My guess is he is about 40 years old.

Most of the time, however, I see him just staring out at the street, watching the world go by. He wears shabby (but not torn) clothes and is the unhappiest person I have ever seen.

Two or three times a week, I pass him by in the morning. Occasionally, he lounges in a chair in the Government Center. Most of the time, though, he is just leaning on a railing, starting intently at Third and Sixth Avenues.

I wonder what his story is. What kind of childhood did he have? Did he go to college? Did he ever has any ambition to be a basketball player, a fireman, a doctor, or even a repairman? Why does he always look so sad? What is he thinking about as he watches the world go by?

The other day, I heard him talking to himself. I wanted to get closer to hear what he was saying but backed off. After all, it was a private conversation and it struck me that talking to himself was about the only thing left he had. Whatever else may have happened to the guy - he deserves this last shred of dignity.

I also wonder this: how many more guys like this fellow are really out there? These are the invisible members of society - many of them don't vote and, if they do work, it usually isn't fulltime. They just exist. Until we find a way to help more of those people, we will have failed as a society.

And that's a disturbing thought.

Maybe the conspiracy experts are onto something

Having worked there for one summer, I have a weakness for the Tampa Bay Rays. They are having a surprisingly good season and, as of this writing, have the best record in the American League. I hope they make it to the playoffs. On Tuesday, they defeated the Angels for the second night in a row but not before suffering one of the worst calls ever in major league history. The link is here.

Now I am generally not a conspiracy guy but this call leaves one to wonder. Tampa Bay is hardly a premier market. Despite having the best record in baseball, they have not been on national television all season. If they make the playoffs, Fox will have no choice but to televise them. And you know they would much rather have games in New York, Boston or Chicago.

The umpire -- Gerry Meals and his crew chief Gary Darling -- insisted after the game that B.J. Upton turned towards second and the right call was made. After viewing the call again, I can only conclude one of two things.

1) These two guys are the most imcompetent boobs ever to work a professional sporting event.

OR

2) Maybe the NBA ref who said the league wanted certain teams to win was right after all. He just had the wrong league ... and the wrong sport.

I hate to think the latter but look at the link above and decide for yourself.

The modern family has changed

I hate to ever publicize the "competition." But there are exceptions to every rule. My friend Nick Nash has a wonderful piece on his blog that should be must reading for everyone. The link is here

The piece is about going to a recent family reunion. The computer age has brought us a lot of good things but some bad ones as well. Instead of writing letters, making phone calls or getting off our butts to go see relatives, we simply send them an email. (A friend of mine recently was told by her longtime boyfriend their relationship was over via email. I've also head of couples breaking up via text messages. It's dreadfully modern but rather impersonal.)

The same is true for family that is spread out. In some ways, this is good. Instant contact ... for those who are computer inclined ... is a good thing. But not everybody is that savvy or even wants to have contact that way.

My immediate family is spread out hither and yon across the country. It is almost impossible to get folks in Denver, Virginia, Ohio and Minnesota together. So, email is not a bad thing. But, as I was reading Nick's post, I was reminded that, in the past 30 years or so, my brothers and myself have only been in the same place on five occasions. On two of those reunions, it was a brief get-together, lasting no more than a couple of hours.

(My wife, her sisters and her mother all live within 45 minutes of each other. While they probably don't get together as often as they would like, the fact is they can do it a lot easier than many of us. For that, I am envious.)

It is, I suppose, just the way it is. And I suppose I shouldn't be complaining because it is, after all, in our control to an extent. But we certainly don't have as much people contact as we used to. Earlier this year, I was sitting in a restaurant at lunch watching two people at a table, each busy texting somebody else. At least I think it was somebody else. Either way, they weren't talking to each other. Maybe that was the plan all along.

The modern jounalist

Don Boxmeyer, a wonderful writer and an even better human being, died this week. At his wake tonight, I found myself in line standing behind St. Paul's mayor, Chris Coleman. It took well over an hour to wind through to give my sympathies to his family. We should all be so lucky.

Gregg Wong, an old friend who retired years ago from the Pioneer Press, was in line with me. We regaled each other with Boxmeyer stories and then got into a discussion about the differences between today's journalists and the writers of Gregg's era.

"When we were done at work, we headed to the bar to talk over the night," he said. "Today, they go for a solo run after work."

Granted, one might be a healthier activity than the other.

But his next observation might not be.

Gregg noted that journalism changed the day reporters started sending in stories via computer. They didn't need to be in the office as much and they didn't need to have as much people contact. Consequently, the modern newspaper staff has little comraderey and doesn't work well together. This leads to other problems in the modern journalist, including the apparent need to to find something nasty to say in every article.

Boxmeyer was just the opposite kind of guy. He could be critical but it was never personal and it was always constructive. He was as competitive as the next guy but he wanted to make sure his paper had the big story. If he got to write it, great. If somebody else ended up writing the story -- and he could help -- he did.

There was no form of Can You Top This? in Don's writing. I miss Don and his writing already. More importantly, I miss what he stood for as a journalist.

A happy anniversary

Today is the 40th anniversary of the one of the happiest days I ever spent at an athletic event. On this day in 1968, I took a bus down to Tiger Stadium to watch the Tigers play the Red Sox a doubleheader. We got there in time for batting practice at 11:30 a.m. ... and left at 9:05 p.m. after the home team rallied for four runs in the bottom of the ninth for a 6-5 win.

The first game went 14 innings and saw Detroit rally to tie the game on a rare Don Wert triple in the eighth inning (It was his only one of the season) and then win it on a Gates Brown pinch-hit homer in the 14th. (Not that I am anal about such stuff but he hit it off Lee Stange into the lower deck in right.)

In the second, they trailed twice but rallied both times with Brown getting the winning hit in a wild rally.

I can remember it like it was yesterday. I think the only time I ever left my seat in the upper deck behind third base was to go to the bathroom.

My wife says that I explained it how this can happen one day. She asked me how it was I could remember such an event but forget to take out the trash. The explanation was simple: I don't have a passion for the trash.

Now I grant you I might have a hard time sitting at a ballpark now for 9 1/2 hours watching a baseball doubleheader. But the memory of this one on August 11, 1968 will stay with me until my final out. And it never ceases me to make me smile. Any memory that does that is worth every minute to get there ... all 575 of them.

It hurts to admit this truth

There are literally hundreds of folks around the country who serve as marriage counselors. Then there are the Dr. Phils of this world, the person who thinks (s)he can get into every person's soul and tell us if certain couples are compatible.

I am sure they are all fine people and some of them may even make sense. But here is a subject that never gets covered in these sessions. Mastering it can help a relationship immensely.

I speak, of course, of laundry.

There are a lot of potential land mines for couples doing things together. Wallpapering is a well known battle spot. Ever try painting together? (My neighbor had the best idea. She painted upstairs by herself while he went solo downstairs.)

Laundry? I am here to report that, with a few exceptions, it is best to let everybody do it on their own.

Currently, we are sans washer and dryer because we are redoing our basement. As a result, we have using the local laundromat the last couple of weeks. While it has gone better than anticipated, it is still an adventure.

You see, men compromise easily when it comes to laundry. (It becomes even easier to do this at $2 a load for the washer.) Women, for some reason, do not. For example, women don't think grays can be allowed to mingle with whites. Women also don't like to share the washer with their male counterparts when it comes to ... er ... unmentionables. A waste of two bucks perhaps. The again, what price do we put on for peace in the household?

Men shrug off potential landmines. A stain that didn't quite get eliminated doesn't bother us because we'll get it next time. And is there any real reason a shirt has to be totally wrinklefree? Men say no. Women tend to disagree. And so it goes.

It's not all bad there. I have learned to like the fact you can use several washers at once. Getting all the clothes done in less than two hours is a good thing. The laundromat we go to even has a Ms. PacMan machine. Revisiting your youth now and then is okay, too.

But here is something I never thought I would say and may get me demoted in the man union: I miss having a washer and a dryer at our immediate disposal. One can only wears the same pair of socks for so many days in a row.

Why Sean Hannity et al. is ruining journalism ... and other things

I am glad my old journalism teacher, Fr. Whalen, is not around to see what has happened to the profession these days. He wouldn't like what he saw. Thanks to verbal bombers like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, reasonable, thoughtful prose is geting pushed aside in favor of vile vitriol.

Don't misunderstand. There have always been a few wild-eyed political commentators. But they were the exception, not the norm. These days, you are either for us or against the country. There is no middle ground. And you have to be flamboyant in your support. None of this "Well, it could be ..." crap. Responses must start out like "Your guy is wrong on the issue and hates the country he lives in ..."

The latest flap is over the New York Times turning down a John McCain Op-ed a few days after running a Barack Obama piece. Hannity and his fellow rightwingers, who spend much of their time telling us what a lousy, biased newspaper the Times is, suddenly are mad the paper didn't run the McCain submission. Of course, they overlooked the fact this piece as nothing more than simple talkback to what Obama had said ... and, unless it is something like USA TODAY does on its editorial page (where it is set up in advance), papers just don't do it that way.

It doesn't seem to matter how many times you tell them the ad department and the editorial department are actually mortal enemies, the right wingers stil think they work together because the NYT once ran an ad criticizing Gen. Petraeus. It doesn't matter if the paper says nine nice things about a Republican. The fact they didn't do it 10 times is a conspiracy, according to the right wing talkie crowd.

There are times when it is truly a black and white world but the fact is most of the time it is gray. Many of our work decisions aren't crystal clear -- many circumstances cloud every issue.

So it is here. Hannity, Limbaugh and the rest of the right wing crowd refuse to admit there is ever a moment when decisions are not based on ideology. I am guessing that is because every decision they make is done so that way. That may work in the blurry world of talk radio/TV, which has a lot of time it needs to fill. But, with newspaper space at a premium already, hard decisions have to be made every day as to what runs and what doesn't. Reasonable people should be able to disagree aabout this and other subjects without getting yelled at for doing so.

When guys like Hannity railabout the conspiracy and bias of the media all the time, it may make for entertaining radio/TV. But it's lousy journalism because it isn't true. Even worse, it is turning us into a lousier society because this mistrust is now seeping into other aspects of life. We argue more now than we ever did on different topics, ranging from recipes to stop signs.

Damn them for doing that to us.

How to be humbled ... in four short lessons

I played golf this morning with three old friends. There was glorious sunshine and it was a very invigorating walk. In the process, I got another quick lesson in humility.

My goal is to break 100 for 18 holes. In this manner, I succeeded by rolling in a 10-foot putt on the last hole for a score of ... 99.

It might have been a lot better if I had remembered a couple of things.

Guys like me are streaky at best. We'll hit some good shots and then we'll snap off one that goes, say, 10 yards or so.

Today got off to a great start. I rescued a wandering tee shot on the first hole and made a par. On the second hole, I rolled in a decent length putt for another par. However, before visions of running out to Blaine to challenge the Seniors who are in town this week for a tournament could take hold, I recorded three triple bogeys and a solo bogey in a span of four holes. So, after six holes, I was 10 over, which is par for the course for me.

The rest of the day was spent with a good shot here and good one there mixed with two bad ones here and a horrendous one there. Somewhere after the first two holes, I forgot what I was doing and spent about six holes hating life.

What I had forgotten was golf is one of those games where you have to know your limits and measure yourself accordingly. I managed to do that a little better on the back side and enjoyed things a little more. I am just not consistently good at this sport and probably never will be. (It would help if I practiced a bit.) If I simply look at golf as a nice workout and time spent with friends, it will be just fine. If I look at it in any other way, I am an idiot because it won't be fun and I'll be wasting my (and other folks) time.

I didn't throw any clubs or utter any oaths today. So it wasn't all bad on my part. But it was a good reminder that we sometimes need to be reminded that we all have restrictions of some sort. It's something I have managed to do well at home ("Honey, I can't lift that dresser because of my bad back, remember?"). So why couldn't I remember it on the golf course?

Oh, to be young again

I am in Thunder Bay for work this weekend. When you go on the road, you never know what you are going to find. For example ... Tonight, I ran into a fellow named Ryan who is doing something many of us can only dream of doing.

Ryan, who looks like he is his late 20s, is biking across Canada. He started in his hometown of Calgary and says he will finish in Halifax. He is going at his own pace and his trip sounds like a Canadian version of John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley."

How many of us have yearned just to go see the country? This guy said he worked like crazy for three years and saved as much as he could. He is a tekkie and says he has three job offers "waiting" for him in Calgary. In the meantime, he is biking with friends and occasionally hooking up with various people as he moves across the land.

I haven't decided if I envy him or hate him. But it was a fun time talking to Ryan and I was happy to buy him a beer. I do know this, though: He looked like the happiest guy I have seen in a long time.

A thought for the future

To me, Garrison Keillor frequently comes off as a bit of stuckup blowhard, a limousine liberal of sorts. But he intersperses those moments with common sense thoughts. So it is with this item from his current column. He was somewhere in Massachusetts and stopped in to watch a little league game. As luck would have it, he ended up sitting up to a fellow whose 10-year old daughter was playing in the game.

It led to this observation:

"I'm 65 and have a good life and can't claim that the Current Occupant has done me much harm at all. It's when I think about 10-year-old girls I start to get hot under the collar. This clueless man has dug a deep hole for them and doesn't seem vaguely aware of it. He has spent us deep in a hole, gotten us into a disastrous war, blithely ignored the long-term best interests of the country, and when you think of the 4,000 kids who now lie in cemeteries, and for what? -- you start to grind your teeth. For the sake of the girl with the beautiful swing, I hope we get a better president than the disgusting incompetent we've wasted eight years of our national life on. Think twice about who you put your arm around, Sen. McCain."

There, in a nutshell, you have one of the big problems in this country. For every Limousine Liberal (and there are a lot of them), you can find twice as many people who are simply struggling to get along. There are a lot of us thousandairres who are making do in whatever way we can. We are scrimping when needed, running all the errands at the same time and looking for bargains at the store.

The expensive suits in the right wing crowd don't worry about this sort of thing. Recently, Norm Coleman, the senior senator from our state, tried to tell us he is not a wealthy man because he "only" has $500,000 in total investments and bank stuff. Sen. Coleman says that, when he is in Washington, DC, he lives in a basement where he pays $600 a month. And he gives you the impression he is doing it this way because he has to. That is, of course, nonsense but it does give you an idea how he got $500,000 in the bank. And it gives him the chance to give us dire warnings about an economy that he had a big hand in forming.

The senators and representatives who are telling us that everything is going to be alright are correct ... for them. They don't worry about gas because they don't drive (they have drivers) and it is all paid for. The expensive talking heads don't worry about this because they are making hundreds of thousands (if not millions) to give the opinion that everything is going to be okay. That may be true for them. But all I know is damn near every day I read about some company laying off more employees. Sooner or later, we are going to run out of potential taxpayers. At that point, we will become like France in World War I and will have a true missing generation.

We're busy people, aren't we?

I needed to get some stamps at the lunch hour today. So, I took the two block walk to the post office on a beautiful, sunny afternoon. In that short time period, I made the following notes:

People talking on cell phone: 7

People listening to Ipods: 2

People reading blackberrys or doing some sort of text messaging: 2

People reading blackberrys and listening to Ipods: 1

People on cell phone, listening to Ipod while smoking a cigarette (at the same time): 1

We're a very busy society, aren't we?

Sometimes you just need to laugh

My wife and I went off to see the movie "Get Smart" last night. After getting over the sticker shock of paying $10 per ticket and $11 for mediocre popcorn and a diet coke, we settled into our seats. As it turned out, it was worth the trip.

"Get Smart" is no "Casalanca" but it doesn't try to be. If you remember the old TV series, you can take a pretty good guess what the movie is all about. It is simple, amusing fare. Steve Carell reminds you of Don Adams and Anne Hathaway is a worthy, gorgeous replica of Barbara Feldon as Agent 99. The surprise is Alan Arkin, who is best known as a serious actor but is very funny in the Ed Platt role of the Chief.

Sometimes you just need to sit back and laugh mindlessly. For two hours, we did just that. In a world full of $4 a gallon gas, a stock market that has slipped south all week and endless political brickbats, it was a wonderful break. I highly recommend it for that reason alone.

Man vs. Machine , part III

Well, I am presuming Aaron's adage (see previous post) that owning a Mac is going to my life easier is true. True to form, however, the transition isn't moving along swimmingly.

The first problem developed when I tried to access my msn email. I could get to msn.com but that was it. I ran into an odd message that I still haven't figured out. What it told me was I needed to download such and such because ... it was there.

Then, I tried to access into a ballgame via mlb.com. (It's a subscription service that you register for. Works fine at work and on the old computer.) No dice. I needed to download a bunch of things. I managed to download what was needed but installing them is another matter. It's not listed in my help manual. Neither is a phone number for computer-come-lately guys like me to call to get an answer. You see, Apple wants you to either go online to handle such problems.

My long-suffering wife, after hearing a few too many expletive deleteds uttered from the bowels of the basement, brightly suggested I head back to the Apple store where I bought the thing for advice. It's a sound idea but, being a stubborn male, I will try other methods first.

Getting used to a new system requires patience and, when it comes to computers, I don't have much. But I have matured. After last night's battle, I merely sighed, counted to 1000, shut the computer off and did not throw it against the wall.

Progress takes many forms.

Man loses to machine (again) ... and pays a price

I went down to my office in the basement the other day and clocked on my computer. Instead of the usual welcome, I got this blaring note: "YOUR COMPUTER HAS BEEN INFECTED. PLEASE BUY .... "

I don't want to name the product because if I do, I would have to identify it the way Red Sox fans remember Bucky Dent. Suffice it to say the new product was of little help (except to the company, which got $49.95 out of me) and I will be buying a new laptop this week.

My sister-in-law Shari's guy pal, Aaron, is a tekkie who was sympathetic to my frantic, profane calls. But there was little he could do except suggest I buy a Mac. "There hasn't been a virus made I know of that infects them," he said.

When you are spending your time and money on redoing your basement and turning your backyard from a jungle into a livable environment, spending a grand or so on a new laptop doesn't excite you much. And the macs I looked at yesterday are such thin little buggers you might swear Twiggy made them.

But, unless you are David McCullough pounding out 700-page novels on a typewriter, you have little choice in the matter.

So, something will have to be excised from the weekly budget to pay for the bleeping thing that Aaron tells me has an average lifespan of 3-4 years.

When times get tough, one grits their teeth and sacrifices. My first instinct is a painful one. Several years ago, I was introduced to Grand Marnier, a wonderful after-dinner drink. Unfortunately, they can be a bit pricey at the neighborhood saloon. So I am now wondering how much a shot of Boone's Farm cost these days.

Au revoir, mon chat

Polar Bear, the car, ran out of chances today. I feel bad about this but it happens to all of our animals. Today, Lynne and I decided he had to be put to sleep.

You don't make this decision easily. In fact, just yesterday we were discussing this with a friend of ours who had put their cat to sleep last week. She was noting that it was almost overwhelming to discover you had the power between life and death ... even for an animal.

But the fact is Polar Bear wasn't well. Although it wasn't on a regular basis, he had occasionally been peeing and pooping on a new rug we had bought for the basement. This morning, I had just cleaned his litter. He had been nearby and whining a bit so I placed him in it. He jumped out of it, wandered a bit and then peed on the carpet. Maybe he had a cat version of Alzheimer's. Maybe it was an "up yours" moment that cats are known for. Either way, we can't have it.

Cats bring out different reactions than dogs. Dogs are protectors. Dogs follow a sense of order and fairly predictable. Cats are comforters. They are iconic and hard to understand at times. They like being mysterious.

I can't count how many times I came home to find Polar Bear staring at the wall. What was he looking at? Did he see something I couldn't? He never let you know his true feelings. Pete, the dog, is just the opposite. His feelings are always transparent. When he is happy, you can tell. The tail is wagging a mile a minute. When he in unhappy (or scared), his head is down and he is in his crate tightly.

I feel bad about this decision because Polar Bear has been in the house almost from the day we bought the place in 2000. But his weight had dropped in half in the last year and the poor guy did little but sleep and meow a bit.

Although it was a terrible, heart-rendering experience, I discovered animals have an innate instinct to adjust to any situation. I suspect Polar Bear knew something was wrong when he didn't raise a ruckus as we drove to the clinic. He was very quiet when the vet's assistant put in the tiny catheter and hardly moved when Dr. Troy came in to do what needed to be done. In the end, I think (okay, maybe it's hope) he trusted us that we were doing the right thing by him.

It was our turn to be the comforter.

Happy Father's Day, Tom

I never knew my dad very well. He was very ill when I was a kid and, even though I was 21 when he passed away, he never did get better and spent most of the time I knew him in various hospitals.

But I was lucky enough to have somebody involve me in the Big Brother program. I don't remember much about the first BB I had (his name was Tony and I have a picture of him but that's about it) but the second one I was hooked up with, a man named Tom Boyle, affected me greatly.

Tom doesn't need me to do this -- he has his own kids -- but he deserves this shoutout anyway: Happy Father's Day.

Tom never tried to take the role my dad would have had in my life but he was a father figure nonetheless. My wife once asked me what we did when we got together. I recall doing the things guys did together in the 1960s -- going to baseball games at Tiger Stadium, hockey games at the Olympia and U of D basketball games at Calihan Hall. I think we went to a few movies. I remember going to his house for dinner a couple of times and I have a memory of going bowling once.

Tom was a journalist and a public relations man by trade so he was in a position to teach me things in a profession I enjoyed (and later went into). He worked with me on the importance of good grammer and good writing. I suspect I got my joy of reading from him, too. But where we went -- and what we did together -- wasn't as important as something else. Tom simply listened to a young boy when he wanted to talk. It didn't matter what he talked about. Sometimes you just needed to know there was somebody to talk to. It was appreciated at the time and, four decades later, I still remember those talks fondly.

It would surprise a lot of people to know, thanks to Tom's gentle prodding, my handwriting is a lot better now than it used to be (I had a teacher once note it was the worst she had ever seen.) I became a better speller because he told me I needed to do so if I was ever going to get a job as a reporter. Not every encouragement worked. Despite years of going to old-fashioned Catholic Masses (and taking two classes in it), I am still lousy in Latin. Can't win 'em all.

A few years ago, I decided to track him down and, thanks to a nice man named Brad Simmons at Ford, I did so, finding him in Atlanta. We still correspond occasionally. He has his life and I have mine. But I know he is still there for me if I need him --and that thought is still comforting.

Sunday is his day. I am sure his wonderful wife, kids and grandkids will take good care of him. And that is as it should be.

But I wanted to say to Tom and to all the folks who serve as father figures for kids -- whether they be Big Brothers, teachers or simply a friendly neighbor, their work is appreciated. Have a great day.

Another politician goes goofy

There. Got your attention, didn't I? If you are looking for a diatribe or a tale about John McCain or Barack Obama, gotcha. No, this tale is about a guy whose name I don't know but who has a very common political ailment: he speaks loudly without thinking.

In a nutshell, here is what happened:

I was one of four public address voices at the Minnesota prep softball tournament last week in Mankato. The first day is a long one. The first game was scheduled to start at 9 a.m. and the last one was supposed to start at 7 p.m. Despite dark skies, we got off to a decent start and finished all the first-round games when the trouble began.

Although it was sunny in the morning, the forecast had been rotten all day. About 3 p.m., the predicters finally for it right. Rain and wind pelted the fields so fast they were a soggy mess in minutes. We watched this for a while from the dry comfort of the press box before going down to see what we could do to help. The answer, of course, was nothing. A half hour later, the director canceled games for the day.

She huddled with the umpire-in-chief and came up a plan to get everything finished the next day as scheduled. All games would be played except two Consolation Championship Games. (Those are teams that lose their first game but win their second.) They decide to award duplicate trophies for the prestigious 5th place finish.

The director made up new schedules for all of us. The starting times of the championship games were actually close to starting at the originally scheduled times.

Apparently that wasn't good enough for one fellow. I was told he was a school board member in some small area. I came across him outside the tournament headquarters as he was giving the director and her assistant an earful (in a voice that could have been heard in St. Peter, 10 miles away) on what a rotten job they were doing, how they were hurting the kids, how they were unfair to the parents, etc.

I strongly dislike people who speak in CAPITAL LETTERS to begin with. And I really dislike folks who do so while performing for other folks. (He had an admiring posse nearby cheering him on.)

Here's the point. The decision made can be reasonably debated. (Most can.) But decisions to shorten state tournaments are never made easily and are usually done for good reasons. In this case, there was the threat of more rain plus the fact there weren't enough officials who could stay a second day and work the games. If Mr. School Board Member had stopped for a second, he might have learned this fact. But, like many politicians, he was concentrating on style over substance. I have no doubt he went home and told the locals, "I told the director off. That's the last time they mess with me."

It's a general problem these days. We always presume we know more than the person in charge of an event, sporting or otherwise. We shoot first and ask questions later and never, ever admit we are wrong about something. And then we wonder why kids are so stubborn these days.

If that fellow has kids, I pity them. They may follow the old Harry Chapin and grow up like the old man. Just what the world needs -- more bullies who don't what they are talking about. In other words, a born politician.

R.I.P. to a broadcast professional ... and a compassionate human being

There have been a long of wonderful tributes paid to Jim McKay, the longtime voice of the Olympics, who died the other day at age 86. He was a journalist first and foremost, a fellow who didn't mind taking on unusual stories. I suspect he did this because he knew that even offbeat guys like Evil Knieval had a tale to tell.

I think of today's sports journalists and try to imagine someone like, say, Chris Berman, handling the sad story of the 1972 Olympics. The modern sports guy is taught that style triumphs over substance. The story isn't the important thing anymore. Guys like McKay must have hated this. But he, like many TV reporters of that era, had started his career as a print guy. He was a writer first and foremost and knew the facts must come first. The game or the athlete was the most important thing.

I remember a broadcast that displayed McKay's humanity, a trait not often seen in today's media. Although he wasn't much of a baseball play-by-play guy, he used to handle the call of the championship game of the Little League World Series on ABC. At that time, the title game was the only game shown and they didn't go into as uch detail as is done now.

In 1971, Taiwan was playing a team of inner city kids from Gary, Indiana in the title game. At that time, the Taiwanese kids were a lot better than most of the American kids. (They won five of six titles in that time period.)

On this afternoon, however, Gary (which had future major league Lloyd McClendon on their team) gave them a stiff test, taking the game into extra innings. But it all fell apart in the ninth as the Taiwanese team scored nine runs. As the Taiwanese kids pounded hit after hit, it became obvious how was going to win. McKay mumbled into his microphone something that has probably been felt by by every parent who has ever seen their kid be on the wrong end of such a rockslide. "You kind of wish they could stop and go home about now, don't you?," he said.

It is that kind of humanity we need more of in journalism, whether it be sports or politics, these days.

Jim McKay provided it every time he stepped behind a microphone. We need more of his type in our business.

Good friends are hard to find ... and harder to keep

I just had a birthday recently. These are always reflective times. My first thought was it feels weird to turn an age that is a speed limit on some highways (55). My second thought was then about some of my friends.

I am at an age where you start to lose some of your old comrades for various reasons. Some die. Some move away. Some are so wrapped up in their careers or their families that they just don't have the time needed to cultivate a good friendship. You remain on good terms with those people but they eventually become more like acquaintances.

Good friends -- whether they be a family member or somebody else -- are really hard to find. These are the people you can tell right away when you are hurting and vice versa. They are the ones you call just to say hello. You have your disagreements with them but you always find a way to patch things up because you value their friendship more than any ideological point you might have wanted to make.

Finding relationships with that kind of depth takes time, a commodity a lot of us simply don't have.

There are a lot of people whose opinion I listen to and consider carefully. But I am surprised to discover there are really only a handful (maybe two handfuls) of people whose opinion on such and such subject really matters to me. Losing access to any of those people would be as painful as having your arm cut off.

I came across this discovery by accident. During by time working in pro baseball, I thought I had many friends who were involved in different aspects of the business. But I discovered that after I left the game (not on my terms), these folks disappeared as quick as possible. They couldn't afford to be in contact with me because it might affect their job status. Although I didn't think so at the time, those people did me a big favor. After thinking about it some more, I realized I don't miss most of those people at all.

It gave me more time to cultivate and learn more about the people who really mattered in my life -- a birthday gift to myself that has no price.

Godspeed, good neighbor

It's sad day in our little part of the world. Our neighbors across the street are moving tomorrow. Shane and Lori are a wonderful young couple with two terrific boys aged six and four. They don't have a new place yet but Shane wants to get a place with a lot of room for the boys to roam and for him to tinker with stuff.

When they decided to sell and look for a new place, they had a wonderful discussion about what to look for.

"When the boys get to be our age, what do you think they'll remember most?" Shane asked his wife one day. "That they had a lot of room to move around or that they had three bathrooms in their house?"

There is no right answer to that one, of course. It is simply a matter of personal preference.

We'll miss them because they are truly nice people. We had little in common with each other but we still chatted about a lot of things. More importantly, we always saw them smiling and the boys were busy ... being little boys.

You always say you will keep in touch when neighbors (or friends) move away but it is hard to do. So, perhaps the best thing to do is simply wish them well in their new adventure and hope they'll remember us as fondly as we will them.

Good luck, guys. Thanks for being good neighbors ... and even better human beings.

Yes, we can be a mean country

I happen to catch a little of one of Fox's stalwart shows last night -- Hannity & Colmes. If you have seen it, you know the drill. Hannity, the right winger, brings on people like Oliver North, who not only broke the law but flaunted it on ideological grounds, and they play a game of "You're right about that." Then he brings on some type of lefty, most of which cower under his bully questioning.

Colmes, the lefty, spends most of his time looking and talking like Mr. Peepers. (Ask somebody from the 1950s about him. Wally Cox played him on TV.)

The discussion du jour was about a comment made yesterday by Michelle Obama about "meanness" in America. Hannity, naturally, got on his high horse and talked about what a giving country this is, etc. The left wing guest, a professor from some California college, said that was off the point. She politely noted out that, in a recent primary in West Virginia, some people actually said they would never vote for Barack Obama because he was black. The professor suggested that showed meannness.

When one of the right wing guests pointed out these are Democrats talking, she quickly acknowledged that was true and said it didn't matter. Wrong is wrong.

There are a lot of very nice people who do a lot of good things in this country. But there are a lot of mean-spirited, nasty, bigoted people who are only interested in themselves and are happy to trample on somebody else's rights to do it. Included in that group are people like Hannity, who firmly believe that his point of view is the only one that should be allowed in this country. People like him have a mean streak, too. They try to hide it behind ideology but it's meanness.

What's worse is they inspire people to try to one-up them in that department. So, we get eggs (and worse) thrown at people who disagree politically. The instigators then throw their hands up and say this wasn't what they had in mind. Too late. They started

Rodney King said it best a few years ago when he asked, "Can't we all get along?" The answer is we could but a lot of people don't want to.

Upon further review ...

As it turns out, cats really do have nine lives. Or, at least they have more than one. We were all prepared to sadly say so long to Polar Bear when the vet called the other day. Dr. Troy said she didn't want to talk us into anything we didn't want to do but she suggested a medicine that might call him down.

We had given him this medicine last summer when Polar Bear started having anxiety problems due to a cat that was running through the neighborhood. We stopped it because ... well ... it was expensive. But if you want to say you have tried everything, then you have to try ... everything.

We now have the only cat in Como Park (and, I suspect, Minnesota) that is on Prozac. Oh, it has another name, a long, drawn out thing that I could only pronounce if I have consumed a half dozen Grand Marniers. Trust me, it is Prozac.

So far, so good. Polar Bear seems to have remembered where his box is and we have not found any droplets of liquid in places that would cause the lady of the house to have a conniption. (That's a good thing, by the way. Conniptions are not pleasant sights.)

PB lives on for now. My wife is considered so liberal that my brother Johnny once remarked "There is nobody to the left of Lynne." (To her credit, she replied, "Thank you.")

However, even liberals have their moments. Dr. Troy wrote a prescription for two months worth of medicine for Polar Bear. When Lynne brought it to the pharmacist, she ordered only a one-month dose. Even for a diehard left winger, there is a time and place to be conservative.

Doing the Right Thing is sometimes hard

I remember my Mother once telling me that doing the right thing wasn't that hard if you thought about it long enough.

Most of the time, this is true. Today is an exception.

I have written before (and his picture is at the bottom of the page) about Pete, the happy dog. When he arrived, we already had a four-legged resident -- Polar Bear, a cat we had rescued. He was about 5 when we got him. He performed the usual cat functions -- wandering the house, sitting in the window staring at the world, sitting on your lap asking to be petted. He never played with toys much and would make quite a racket asking to be fed in the morning.

But he was a good cat who went in his litter and he got along very well with Pete.

However, as I recently noted, he had been having some problems lately. When he peed on a new capret a couple of weeks ago, it was very bad sign. We tried some more solutions -- another test for kidney functions and a light in a room where he spends a lot of time.

But the simple fact is that when a cat begins to pee in places other than his litter box (which has been fine for him for the past eight years), there is a real problem. The final straw came this morning when Lynne got up to make his breakfast in the kitchen. While waiting for that, Polar Bear peed on the floor. He has never done that before.

Thus, the decision was made. We called the vet and asked them to take him for the weekend. We'll talk to his vet when she comes in on Monday but I am fairly sure what the decision will be.

Lynne took him outside and let him run around in the backyard for a bit. Then, we crated him up and took him away.

I feel bad about this but I can honestly say we did all we could. It just didn't seem to pay for more test when we know he is having slow kidney failure. Unlike when my sister-in-law had to put her cat down a few months ago, Polar Bear doesn't appear to be in pain. But if he doesn't know the difference between his litter and the kitchen floor (or doesn't care), then I can't see there is much choice to be made here.

Cats are different pets than dogs. We tend to bond more with dogs because we take them on walks and play with them in the front yard. By their nature, cats are frequently more aloof and mysterious. They keep their feelings to themselves and make it harder for you to love them. To me, that is one of their allures.

On Monday, I suspect we will be in agreement that Polar Bear needs to be put down. And I admit it will create a void in the household. Doing the right thing is sometimes painful. In this case, it isn't easy. But it's still the right thing to do.

I can feel Al Franken's pain

Much is being made today about the fact that Al Franken, who is running to be the Democratic Party's nominee to challenge Norm Coleman in Minnesota's Senate race this fall, recently discovered he owes $70,000 in 17 states.

I can relate: this can be an honest mistake.

In 1994, I was serving as the St. Paul Saints' radio announcer. We opened the season in Winnipeg and then went to Sioux City for a series. In between, we had a rare day off on the road. In Iowa, most of the casinos are on boats. So it was here -- there was a casino on a boat basically across the street from our hotel.

There isn't a lot to do in Sioux City on a day off. So I went over to the boat and played around a bit. I ran across a game called Caribbean Stud Poker. On my second hand, I was dealt a straight flush (3-4-5-6-7 of diamonds). That earns you 10 per cent of whatever the total pot is. In this case, that meant I had won $5,300. (I would have won another $500 if the dealer had A-K or better. But who wants to be greedy?)

When this happens, the casino and the state take its cut immediately. So, after taxes, the final amount of the check was something like $3,500.

I never thought anything more of it until I was doing my taxes the next spring and my tax man told me that I had to file an Iowa state tax return. Seemed I had been overcharged and I was eligible for a $75 state refund from Iowa. Coincidentally, my tax man (my ex-tax man now) charged me $75 to fill out the form.

If Franken was really letting his accountant do the work -- and the guy was incompetent or simply lazy -- it is very possible he really didn't know he owed New Jersey $53 and Arizona $67.

It's a little late but Mr. Franken has learned a valuable lesson. The people who pay you for speeches or appearances probably aren't as thorough as casinos.

And what does that say about business in general?

Life on Double Secret Probation is risky business

Anybody who is a pet owner (I mean a real pet here -- not something that lives in a fishbowl or a small wire cage) knows there is the chance the animal will get into mischief.

For the most part, we accept this as part of the deal. When Pete, the happy dog, decided to rip up half the kitchen floor as a form of protest for being penned in there, we took it as a hint he would like to have the run of the house. And, yes, it also meant we needed a new kitchen floor. My wife was annoyed but understanding when, in his puppy days, Pete ripped up one of her bathing suits and later did a number on a pair of her flipflops.

Polar Bear, a big white cat whose residency predates Pete, recently committed crimes that are being considered differently. For many years, he was reasonably well-behaved. With a rare exception when he first arrived, he went in his litter. In his dotage, he has been having some kidney issues and started the nasty habit of barfing in various spots. It's annoying but he is an elderly and this can be cleaned up. It has been a little puzzling to discover we might have the first known case of bulimia in a cat after watching him devour breakfast and then bring it back up minutes later. But some Petromalt and another syrupy type drug has proved helpful.

There have been other medications, including a trip to the kitty dentist that ran into the several hundred dollars.

We don't exactly know Polar Bear's age but the vet thinks he is around 15. After his actions yesterday, he will be very lucky to see 16.

Last Friday, we had new carpet installed in the basement. It is part of a lengthy project and everything seemed to go quite well. Two days later, we were down admiring our carpet when Polar Bear wandered in, did some sniffing around and dropped off a liquid deposit. At that point, I showed speed I hadn't used in years, grabbing by the scruff of his neck and escorting him to his litter box. He jumped out quickly only to be returned with vigor. We were hoping he would get the idea this was not acceptable behavior. This morning, we awoke to discover he had upchucked on the carpet.

Suffice it to say that Polar Bear is now on Double Secret Probation.

A quick phone call to the vet wasn't very helpful. Oh, we could have his urine tested (again). But even the vet didn't sound like he was expecting to learn much.

Simply put, the cat is getting old, his kidneys aren't what they used to be and he is probably ticked off there is a carpet over what used to be a floor he could walk on. For all I know, he is also annoyed over the Twins getting hammered by the Rangers, 10-0, the other day and is sick of all the political coverage on TV.

The reasons don't matter. When you have spent nearly two grand on new carpet, you are generally not in the mood to be understanding when it is soiled. In this regard, I am in total agreement with the Lady Of the House. (I know. How Republican of us. Sorry.)

Thus an edict has been issued to Polar Bear: He needs to clean up his act pronto or he will be returned to sender. I'm not very happy about this solution but I can live with it.

If it was me doing the same acts, I suspect I would be on my way, too.

Thoughts on an Iowa highway

As I was fighting my way through the rain from Des Moines to beautiful Cedar Rapids, I found myself thinking about the presidential candidates.

Just how do they do it?

I don't mean the daily speeches and interviews. That is what they are trained for and they can do those in their sleep. (Some of the time it looks that way, too.)

No, my question: how do they manage to get comfortable when night after night they are packing and moving from hotel to hotel?

This morning, I finished up some work for the website, had a good breakfast and started packing for the two hour drive to Cedar Rapids. I thought I had done a good job putting dirty stuff in one bag and clean (and semiclean) stuff in the other.

I moved them to the care and came back to make a last-second check of the room. All I had missed was two shirts on hangars, a T-shirt and two pair of shorts I had left on top of the TV.

When you go to seven cities in five days and spend five nights in different hotels, you can start to go goofy. Try as they might, hotel beds aren't as nice as your own. As amenable as most front desk people are, you still end up looking for something that isn't where you thought it was. You almost have to call down to the desk with a question about the TV or how to hook up to the internet. No two shower handles operate the same way. Want to sit and take a hot bath? Not in the bathrooms on my budget?

Then there is the matter of following directions (kudos here for Mapquest. With one small exception, the directions around this state this week have been superb.), dodging in and out of traffic on Iowa's various highways. (One really odd thing that doesn't happen in Minnesota. The state highways will lower the speed limit from 70 to 65 for brief stretches for no apparent reason except the road might dip at one point. Generally speaking, us out of staters slow down. Guys in Iowa plates just keep on trucking.)

All in all, this traveling thinh is one tiring gig. And I am only doing this for five days, not the two years that most of the remaining campaigners have been doing.

Granted, Hillary, Barack and John have people who take care of things like luggage and the hotel bill. Still, you need clean clothes every day when you move from town to town. I have been watching Mrs. Clinton closely and I swear the woman never wears the same suit two days in a row ... or even in the same week. How in the hell does she travel with all those clothes to say nothing of the other stuff women bring with them on the road? The fashion police are everywhere these days and I suspect there are people assigned to check on this very issue.

In that one area, us men get off easier than women. You can wear the same shirt and pants two days in a row. This is particularlt true when you are driving from one town where nobody knows your name to another.

I also found myself wondering what these guys do for fun at night. When my duty is over at the arena or the ballpark, I wil head towards my room but usually stop at a bistro/slaoon on the way or, if I am lucky, at the hotel bar. (Comfort Inns, by the way, are very nice. They would be even nicer if they had a small bar in the lobby instead of a coffee machine.) Like John Steinbeck used to do in "Travels with Charley", I find myself thinking about where I had just been and what I liked or disliked about the arena/stadium. But what do Hilary, Barack and John do when they report to their hotel room? Check the next speech? Find out who the mayor is of the towns they are visiting the next day? Instead of watching ESPN, do they watch CNN or Fox instead? And what do they do when the local newspaper doesn't carry the comic strip you are used to reading every day at home? Do they go on line (as I did) to see what they missed?

These are the thoughts that rumble through a fellow's head as he drives by himself on an Iowa highway.

While I have been gone this week, new carpet and light fixtures were installed in the basement of our house. Will I even recognize the place? At least I can remember how to get there. I wonder if any of the current presidential candidates could tell you the nearest side street to their house.

One more night. One more ballpark. I'm anxious to see my wife, the dog, the carpet and light fixtures and even the cat who spends most of his time asleep but wakes up occasionally to barf on the floor. I'm ready to return to my favorite pub to have a drink with people I know.

Home, sweet home never sounded so good.

Iowa sojourn part 2

So I am driving down Iowa 61 this morning and it is raining like crazy.In the distance I see a figure on the right. Can this really be? It is, indeed, a hitchhiker - a desolate figure looking to go god knows where. When I was young, I hitchhiked to work often. But I hadn't seen one for years. I didn't stop and pick him up. One hears stories, you know. Still, I wonder where he was going and how he ended up on a rainy highway in Iowa. Kinda creepy.

Whatever happened to AM radio?

So the boss sends me to Iowa for a funfilled week of ballparks and arenas. First stop: Dubuque. It's a 5-hour journey but no problem -- I have a good car radio.

One problem: You can't find an AM station south of Rochester that comes in without a fistful of static. Oh, there were plenty of FMers, full of country twanging and gospel music. But AMers? Few and far between. At least my radio couldn't find them. Granted, there are some back roads in this fine state but still, you would have thought I could have found something.

Whatever happened to AM radio anyway?

If this isn't a recession, then what is it?

Forepaughs and the Parkview Cafe are two of my favorite St. Paul restaurants even though they are about as different as can be.

Lynne and I got married at Forepaughs, which is a converted Victorian house in a nice area of St. Paul. It is a very nice restaurant where dinner and a couple of drinks will run you about $100. But the food is always good and the service impeccable. It is the kind of place where you always feel respected and respectable at the same time.

The owner, Ed Christy, is a terrific fellow who can make the routine of days seem special. In the case of the wedding, it could not have gone off better if we had spent $10,000 for a wedding planner. With the price tag being what it is, we only visit a couple of times a year. But it is always worth trip.

Now Ed is selling the place. The new owners haven't said what they are going to do do with it but they did say they are going to change the menu. Why does somebody sell a place like that? Because the market won't bear it.

The Parkview was located in the neighborhood where my wife grew up. It wasn't fancy but it had been there for five decades. The food was always prepared the way you like it and you never came out of there hungry. (It had a special place in my stomach because you could get a bottle of Vernors Ginger Ale -- nectar of the gods -- there.)The Parkview was a simple place. It closed at 2 p.m. every day. But it was usually busy and the people who worked there always smiled. The owners lost their lease and are said to be looking elsewhere. There is probably more we don't know but the bottom line is this: another neighborhood place is out of business.

We keep hearing from high-priced fellows in Washington we are not in a recession. Perhaps. But all I know is this: our choices for just about everything (gas stations, theaters, restaurants) are diminishing almost daily. And new ones aren't popping up.

So, if this isn't a recession we are in, what the hell do we call it?

Why I feel bad about Denny McLain

Denny McLain is in trouble again. He was arrested yesterday, posted bail and is out until he has to appear in court. Much against my better judgment, I find myself sad about this.

40 years ago, McLain was the toast of all of baseball. He had a season pitchers only dream of, winning 31 and helping the Tigers to their first AL title in 23 years. In the World Series, he won one game as Detroit rallied from a 3-1 deficit for a thrilling win. I was 15 at the time and can remember every game I saw in person that year.

After that season, McLain had one more good year before falling flat on his face. His misdeeds are too many to recount here. Let's just say he fell out of grace damn near as fast as he rose to the limelight. Eventually, he screwed up enough to earn a couple of prison sentences and now weighs almostr twice as much as he did in his heyday.

From all reports, it was all his fault. He made bad choices, was way too impressed with himself and got what he deserved.

So why do I feel bad about all this? McLain had a great skill. Not only was he a terrific pitcher for 3-4 years and he seemed to respect his opponents, too. He was also a good showman. On days when he was not the starting pitcher, he used to hit fungoes to outfielders before the game. A couple of these flies would always end up in the lower deck in left field where us kids would scramble over each other to try to get a ball. (Eventually, he did this so much the cheap Tigers used to charge him for each ball that went into the stands. McLain said he was happy to pay the bill, probably a buck or two oer ball. We loved him even more for that but of insurgency.)

McLain was like a very good performer who didn't take his work seriously. No matter what your field is, your ornate skill will start to fail you. At that point, it is how you adjust to the situation that will make the difference if you stay employed. And it doesn't matter what field you're in. If you don't adjust, you'll eventually get left behind. And that's what happened to McLain.

But it didn't have to be. McLain could have adjusted and had a long career. He could have been Frank Tanana -- a bullet thrower who hurt his arm and resurrected his career as a junkball artist, finishing with 240 career wins. (McLain ended with 131.)

The local, modern version of this, by the way, is Livan Hernandez. There are high school kids who throw harder than him. But Hernandez spots his pitches well, stays out of danger zones and is now 3-0 for the Twins.

At the time when he should have been remembered fondly, most people just shake their head sadly when McLain's name is mentioned.

In my private memory bank, McLain will always be the slim guy with the great arm who once caught a Boog Powell line drive and turned it into a triple play. In that bank, he will be the guy served up the memorable home run to Mickey Mantle on his last at-bat at Tiger Stadium. (But only after his team had a 6-1 lead. He wasn't that philanthropic. Sentiment has its limits) There are several other entries as well.

However, those joyous remembrances are offset by the sad reality of what McLain became. Guys with that kind of skill who are now 64 years old should be celebrated, not bemoaned. Damn him for wasting that talent.

The joy of the Cup

The Stanley Cup playoffs started last night. Here, the local Wild lost a helluva game, 3-2 in sudden death overtime to Colorado.

Minnesota came out flying in front of a big home crowd but the Colorado goalie held tough. As the game went on, the Avs got their feet straightened out and took a 2-0 lead after two periods. Then, Minnesota had a quick outburst, scored twice and the joint was alive.

With the game tied 2-2 late, a Minnesota guy fell on the puck in the crease. That's a penalty shot, the rarest of plays at most times. It's almost unheard of to see one with two minutes to go in a tie game.

A penalty shot is the simplest of plays -- it's one guy against the goalie on a breakaway. In theory, this should favor the shooter but the stats say just the opposite. 19,000 people held their breath and didn't exhale until the Minnesota goalie made the save.

There is something about overtime in the Stanley Cup that is absolutely riveting. In basketball, you can have a 5-0 run and still lose the game by a large margin in an overtime period. But in the Stanley Cup, one mistake and you're toast. That's why they call it sudden death.

As this game went into overtime, you would have thought Minnesota would have the momentum. But it didn't look that way. The Wild had one good scoring chance but the Avs had many more and eventually scored 11 minutes into the game. When Joe Sakic scored the goal, the silence was deafening. People simply sighed to themselves and went home.

It was riveting television and great fun to watch ... unless you had an attachment to one of the teams playing.

There's only two months to go. Can't wait for the next game.

Why do we stay here?

It was one of the meanest April Fool's jokes here. I woke up this morning and looked outside to a white hell. The only intelligent thought a fellow could have is: How much is a flight to San Diego today?

It started yesterday morning with light flakes dancing off a wide street. Since the temps were in the mid 30s, it seemed like no big deal. But as the day wore on, it got colder and the flakes began to get bigger. By the time I got home last night, there was enough to shovel. We went out and did a few things, running into the sight of squall you expect to see in Bemidji in January. By the time we got home, there was more shoveling what we like to call around here "heart attack snow."

As a rule, the local weathercasters are an incredibly inaccurate bunch whose batting average is below the Nick Punto line. (Ask a Twins fan. They'll explain.) This time, they managed to get it right. As they told us it would, we ended up with a lot of snow on the ground and it sure as hell doesn't look like April today.

So do we stay here? Is it really for that good week of weather we'll get in late June? Is it because the pace of life is really that good? Are our neighbors really that nice? Or is it because we are too damn lazy to move?

Fact is, this was one of the most miserable mornings in the history of the state. On the day after the baseball home opener, we had six inches of snow on the ground. Never mind that it won't last long. This weather stinks.