The Trouble with Tourism

I'm yielding to the urge to reprint some columns from even earlier. This was one of the first I ever ran, and I'm much less grumpy now, thanks.

(News-Herald, June 1998) The trouble with tourism as an industry is that you have to put up with tourists.
I think those who tout tourism for our area sometimes forget this.
My family's roots are in the seacoast region of New Hampshire, an area that benefits financially from tourism, even though the major attraction is the Atlantic Ocean, a body of water that can only be comfortably entered during a two-hour span on a single Wednesday afternoon late in July.
The rest of the year it appeals only to small children, who will play in the waves for hours, then look up with big eyes and blue lips saying, "Wh-wh-what d-d-d-do you m-mean we're g-g-going home?"
Because the ocean is largely inhospitable, tourists in the area resort to the more common tourist activities: getting in the way, behaving rudely, and spending money. It is only their devotion to the latter that makes putting up with all the former at all palatable.
One of the benefits of quasi-rural life as we enjoy it here is that people basically leave each other alone.
Tourists extend no such respect; they consider your home their theme park. And if you are truly committed to having them return repeatedly with their uncles, cousins, boyfriends, and money, you smile sweetly and act as if you have no purpose in life but to make them feel at home.
So, having experienced Venango County's service industries for years, I have some doubts about our readiness for dealing with tourists. In the public interest, let me offer this little quiz. Take it and see if you are prepared to participate in the Oil Region Heritage Stuff Tourist Boom.

1) A customer enters your shop. You are busy with an important magazine article. You should:
A. Wait on him.
B. Ignore him for a while.
C. Ignore him until he goes away.

2) You work in a restaurant. A customer comments thaat his meal was not well-prepared. You should:
A. Apologize and offer to tear up the bill.
B. Give him a free mint.
C. Say, "Yeah, our chef really sucks, huh!"

3) You are trapped on Route 322 behind some elderly folks with out-of-state license plates. They slow down frequently for no apparent reason, turn their signals on and off raandomly, and generally gawk in an obstructive manner. You should:
A. Chuckle gratefully and feel proud of the beauty of Venango County.
B. Honk angrily and gesture expressively.
C. Run them off the road into a beautiful Venango County ditch.

4) One day a woman enters your place of business and offers to pay you half price for an item because it's really garbage and she's "having a terrible time because people in this hick town are so stupid." You should:
A. Smile sweetly and thank her.
B. Take the item in back to wrap up and never return.
C. Point out that you may be stupid, but at least you're not wearing a butt-ugly outfit like hers.

5) A complete stranger drives his car onto your lawn and has a family picnic. While his children play ball in your garden, he rips Aunt Ethel's memorial forsythia out of the ground, knocks on your door, and offers you five bucks for it. You should:
A. Offer to throw in an authentic oil-soaked country rag from your garage for another five.
B. Tell him about a great antique shop up the road and send him to your in-laws.
C. Shoot at him.


If you chose A's, you're ready to strike it rich. B's and you'll at least enjoy yourself. If you picked C's, perhaps it's time for you to write the county commissioners in favor of something less obtrusive than tourism, like a nuclear waste dump.

Reviving Thanksgiving

(News-Herald, November 22)There are plenty of signs that I am becoming an old fogey. There is plenty of new music that I feel signals, at the very least, a terrible loss of sense and good taste among the young and, at the very worst, the decline and fall of civilization as we know it. Even when I hear teenagers listening to music that sounds as good now as it did when I heard it thirty years ago, I want to accuse them of not listening to it properly.

I think My Space looks like a programmer ate too much fruit cake, drank too much punch, and threw up into a neon piñata. I don’t get the appeal of tattoos. I think pants should ride high enough to cover underwear (which in turn should be made out of something more substantial than colorful dental floss).

But while I may well be in a well-advanced state of fogeydon, I don’t think my feelings about The Holiday Season are fogey-related. I think the advanced decay and general ugly mess are real.

A Martian arriving in the US with no prior study might well conclude that The Holiday Season begins in October when Vampires, Licensed Action Heroes and Sexy Nurses travel door to door announcing the imminent arrival of the Baby Jesus, ushered into the area by Santa, who eats a last enormous meal in November to fortify himself for a month-long orgy of shopping in an attempt to mark the arrival of the baby by building a mountain of merchandise visible from space (the Baby Jesus Himself is needed only for a brief cameo).

Our celebration of these holidays is seriously out of whack. Yes, I know people have been complaining about this forever. But really. You’re reading this only because you managed to find a newspaper buried in the fifty pounds of advertising delivered to your door. And God bless the News-Derrick for organizing a campaign to collect and distribute food for Thanksgiving, because in most US media we have finally reached the point where more coverage is devoted to Friday’s shopping than the barely-recalled holiday on Thursday.

Black Friday used to be the day after Thanksgiving. Now it seems to be the main event; Thanksgiving is just the day that comes before it.

I do believe there’s an upside to this, however.

For a long, long time, Thanksgiving was an almost reflexive holiday, a set of traditions that anyone could observe without employing a single brain cell. One could go through the motions of Thanksgiving without a moment’s thought, appearing thankful without ever once considering what that meant.

Fifty years ago, going with the Thanksgiving flow meant sitting and talking and playing with the family long into the evening; now it means saying goodbyes early so that you can squeeze in some sleep before trying to beat the 3 AM rush at the outlet mall. These days, celebrating Thanksgiving requires a deliberate choice, a purposeful decision to observe what you believe the holiday asks of us.

We could do the lazy person’s version of the holiday and feel like we were living up to the spirit. But now in order to celebrate the spirit of the day, we have to make an effort to swim upstream, and that’s probably good.

Thanks and gratitude ought to be thoughtful. We need to think—really think—about what we have to be grateful for.

It is far too easy to take the blessings that we enjoy for granted. Worse yet, it is easy to take them as deserved, to imagine that the good things we enjoy are only what we’re entitled to.

There is nothing that shows less gratitude than to look at the friends or family or community or Creator who gives us a series of awesome gifts and say simply, “Well, of course, you’re giving me this. You should. And by the way, couldn’t you have put it in a nicer wrapper.”

We are among the wealthiest, healthiest, safest, most comfortable people who have ever lived on Earth. There is not a one of us who does not have something to be grateful for.

So I think the screwed up mess that our holiday has become is an opportunity for us to choose gratitude, to stop and deliberately take stock and mark, in whatever way suits us best, those things and people and circumstances and blessings in life that we enjoy. If we can plan a shopping trip and search out bargains, we can certainly plan a moment to search out our own grateful hearts. There has to be more to this season than simply trying to Get Stuff, and it has to be good for each of us to figure out what that something more is.

Further note:
See, here's the thing about writing a weekly column while living the rest of your life. Sometimes I can't quite get it to where I want it by deadline, and this was a particularly frustrating example. Busy week plus minor headlock kept me from tagging the point I ultimately wanted to make, which is this:

If your holiday season is a horrible mess of consumerism lacking the true spirit of the occasion, it's your own damn fault, and you should do something about it.

The 40 & 8

(News-Herald, August 2003) In my continuing research of bands in Venango County, I could not possibly have avoided the great American Legion Band of Oil City, a band that attained national stature in the forties and fifties. The 40 and 8 band won almost ten straight national championships in a row, taking Oil City’s fame across the country. Imagine that.

This was a band that drew enormous crowds locally and carried the fame of Oil City to every corner of the United States. Oil City returned the favor by twice creating a suitable performance spot to showcase the band: the Rickards Bandshell right near the library, and the stage in Hasson Park.

In the process of researching, I began to wonder what the significance of the 40 and 8 designation was, particularly when I encountered a news item that the Legion was considering censure or disbarment to rein in the 40 and 8, considered the rowdier branch of the Legion.

Once again, the internet came through. I learned the story of the 40 and 8, and it’s a story worth sharing.

The origin takes us back to Word War I. When the American forces arrived in France, they discovered that their transportation to the front would be by way of “Voiture” boxcars. These traveled on the French narrow-gauge railroad and were small compared to American boxcars. They were generally twenty and a half feet long by eight and a half feet wide, and on the outside there was often a plaque marking the capacity of the cars: 40 hommes et 8 chevaux. That’s forty men or eight horses.

The cars were rickety, drafty, unheated and often crowded, but in 1920 a special fraternity of veterans within the American Legion was formed: Le Societe des Quarante Hommes et Huit Chevaux in mock-fancy French, or the Forty and Eight in nice short American.

During World War II, the French again used 40 and 8’s to transport troops to the front, and in 1945, these old cars brought many US soldiers, including POW’s, back from Germany to be shipped home. For many soldiers it was a memorable experience as they spent long winter days traveling across France in the rickety cars (reportedly they sometimes built fires in the cars to help ward off the cold).

So with a new generation of veterans, the 40 and 8 grew. But that’s not the end of the story.

Some of you will remember columnist Drew Pearson. In 1947, Pearson made a pitch for food and clothing to help the people of France, whose country was still a thoroughly shambalized mess. This led to a $40 million relief mission that sent the 700-car American Friendship Train to Europe. Tons of relief items were sent from the people of the US to the people of Europe.

But that’s not the end of the story, either.

In France, Andre Picard was a railroad worker who had served in WWI. He suggested that the French send a boxcar of gifts back to America as a form of thank-you. So many thousands of French citizens chipped in that one boxcar wouldn’t do it. The French War Veterans Association joined in and the decision was made to send fifty cars to the US—one for each state with the fiftieth to be shared by Washington DC and the US territory of Hawaii.

52,000 gifts were collected. The list defies description—children’s drawings, a Louis XVI carriage, toys, trinkets, household items, and even tree seedlings. The gifts were packed into Forty and Eight type boxcars painted with the coats of arms of all the French provinces. The Gratitude (“Merci” in French) Train sailed into New York harbor in February of 1949 on a ship draped with a giant “Thank You, America” sign.

Longshoremen brought the boxcars ashore for free and Congress waived all duty. The narrow-gauge cars had to be delivered by flatcar to the various state capitals, where they were accepted with various displays of pomp and circumstance, their contents dispersed through charity auctions and donations to worthy institutions.

The majority of the boxcars are still on display (thirty-nine, according to one website, are still accounted for). Pennsylvania’s boxcar is reported to be at the Fort Indiantown Gap National Guard post at Annville, PA, near I-81. The last known location for the Ohio boxcar was near Port Clinton, Ohio.

Few visit the boxcars and few look after them these days. For most of us, they’re a forgotten chapter from a time when France and the US actually got along. Imagine that.

Heroes '08

(News-Herald, November 15) Every year at this time, I write about honoring the heroes in our lives. I work from basically three premises:

1) When we openly honor the qualities that we most value, we help those qualities flourish, and we make the world a little bit better.

2) If we wait to find those qualities in a perfect, flawless human being, we will wait forever.

3) If we wait that long, we will regret it. The time to talk about what we admired in people is not after time, tide, or mortality have separated us from them.

It’s a mistake to withhold praise for virtue because we are afraid it might excuse a human flaw. It’s a mistake not to praise one person because we can think of a hundred others who are also deserving. And it’s a mistake not to praise a hero because we don’t have time to get the whole city to throw a parade. Honoring our personal heroes is important.

My heroes include people who put some of their heart and soul into their communities. It is easy to sit back and let someone else do it, to not concern yourself with anything but what you are getting out of the place where you live. It’s also easy to focus your attention and aspirations on the Big Stuff.

But what keeps a community running smoothly is all the people who carefully mind one piece of the puzzle or another.

My list of heroes includes guys like Roland Davis. If the City of Franklin had an AV Club, Roland would be the president. He’s made it possible for hundreds of people who don’t know a PA system from the PA turnpike to be heard. And he’s been there helping out when the help was needed, and not just when it was convenient for him to do it.

And that’s above and beyond the gazillion hours he has devoted to his church and the decades that he has spent being part of the glue that holds the Franklin Silver Cornet Band together. You don’t find Roland in the spotlight, but he’s often the reason there’s a spotlight there in the first place.

My list of heroes also includes people like Helen Ray and Sylvia Coast. It is incredibly easy for a community’s history to slip away, to be lost. It takes someone to step up and do the work of actively preserving it so that resources are available for people who want to search for family and events buried in the past.

When I first became interested in local history decades ago, I turned to the PA room at the library where Helen watched over a great collection of local resources. She should have thrown me out, or at the very least pointed out that I was a clueless historical duffer, but she helped me get started. Years later, Sylvia picked up that mantle (Helen’s helpful historian, not my clueless duffer).

There are more people like them at the Historical Society and the Oil City Library’s Heritage Room. How many thousands of people have found a connection with the story of their family and their community because of all these people willing to sit in a room watching over a bunch of old books and microfilm.

Every community is made up of thousands of little pieces. Some of those pieces survive on their own, but most of them survive because of some steward who watches over them and keeps functioning. Those stewards are heroes of mine.

I am sure that you have heroes as well. Here’s what I ask you to do every year in this stretch between Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving—do something about it.

You don’t have to buy your heroes a car or put their faces on a billboard. Just let them know that they are appreciated.

No phonecalls or e-mails. It should be a note. Something they can physically keep will be a powerful reminder of someone’s appreciation that can last for years.

No hedging. You can wait for another time to point out that although he is a noble person, sometimes he can be so annoying you want to slap him with a large herring. You can pick a later date to remind her that you have never forgiven her for the cranberry juice stain on your sofa. For this one moment, stick to the parts that you admire.

Just a simple note. You can start with “You are a hero of mine because…” For the price of a stamp, you can make the world just a little bit better.

Dear Mr. Brimmeier...

Joe Brimmeier, CEO of the PA Turnpike Commission, recently took out full-page ads in many local newspapers to print a letter rehashing the PTC talking points regarding the tolling of I-80. I've spent too many newspaper columns addressing this issue already, but I couldn't resist doing a little special edition here in blogland to answer his letter. I'll feel better and I think both my readers will probably forgive me.

Joe's letter asserts "we at the PA Turnpike Commission welcome an open, public discussion based on the facts." It's a nice thought, though the continued insistence that Act 44 is law and Harrisburg intends to pursue implementation aggressively suggests that this will be discussion with no hope of affecting any portion of the outcome. Joe then goes on to provide some critical Act 44 facts.

*Not one dime of I-80 toll money will go to public transit anywhere in Pennsylvania.

Joe, you must realize that nobody believes this oft-repeated statement is anything more than hair-splitting. Tolling I-80 is part of a larger financial plan that includes propping up the flailing transit systems in the 'burgh and Philly. I-80 toll money may not, technically, pay for mass transit, but it will free up other dollars to do so.

*All toll revenue collected on I-80 will be reinvested in Pennsylvania's roads and bridges.

One would hope so.

*Act 44 will generate nearly 2.3 billion annually, on average, to fix and maintain the state's entire transportation network

That would take us back to our first point. If you want us not to catch on to how this works, you should probably keep these two talking points further away from each other.
Tolling I-80 will no more generate revenue than my extension cord generates electricity. What tolling will do is take revenue away from travelers and provide an indirect tax on goods and services to be collected by businesses and paid by customers. Investments generate revenue; tolls are simply taxes, methods to take money away from citizens and give it to government.

*The turnpike will invest 2 billion in I-80 improvements over the next decade, transforming it into our next superhighway...

Which begs the question-- what is it now? The assertion that an improved infrastructure is important to PA economic growth is a sensible one. PA's reputation as a northwestern pothole capitol did not enhance its standing.

But turning it into a state where east-west traffic much either pay a hefty chunk of change or ramble about on non-super roadways is not going to be a major coup, either. I don't think it helps to make the new commonwealth motto "Pay up or else." Nor do I think dragging I-80 down to the level of the turnpike will help (if I were extraordinarily cynical I would wonder if this weren't the PTC's way of putting the kibosh on its cross-state competition).

I can assure you that the public will be heard, and involved, throughout this process.

It's a nice assurance, but really-- can you name any details of this plan that you're not going to make a decision about until you've heard from the public. Is there any portion of the plan that you're looking at and thinking, "Hmm, we'd better wait and see how the public feels about that before we go ahead." Because the impression out here in the cheap seats is that such is not the case.

In fact, beyond the spectre of economic ruin, I think what many people find unattractive about this plan is the manner in which it was adopted-- quickly, quietly, without any public input, and basically as part of hostage demands for the release of the commonwealth budget.

That, in and of itself, creates an impression that nobody involved in this is at all concerned about what may happen to people for whom I-80 is a critical economic lifeline. Fancy and meetings and full-page ads are not nearly enough to change that impression.

Interstate 80 Toll-- Bad for Pennsylvania

(News-Herald, November 8) I write these a few days ahead of time; as I type this it is Tuesday night. On my tomorrow, the commonwealth will have the first of its “informational” meetings about the genius-free plan to toll I-80. To you, that’s yesterday, and so I expect that somewhere in this newspaper is cogent, reasonable coverage by a real journalist. But some issues demand examination by someone who’s not balanced, fair or reasonable, and that’s when it’s time for me to step up to the plate.

I want to believe that these meetings will bring more information to the issue, but I’ve been following what the suits in Harrisburg have to say, and I’m not encouraged.

The turnpike commission has a website responding to Frequently Asked Questions about Act 44 (they always use language meant to remind us that this is a done deal, a passed law, and they’re doing us a favor by even pretending to discuss it with the public). The responses, which I suspect will become a familiar refrain, are not encouraging.

For instance, one question is “Why did you turkeys rush this through without actually talking to any of the Pennsylvanian citizens that it will affect?” (I’m paraphrasing a bit). The answer begins, “The Legislative process is an inherently public process. Bills are proposed and debated in both houses in public sessions; votes are cast in public and widely reported and documented….” And spends another paragraph not answering the question. The PTC is going to begin a “public outreach program.” “The impacts of tolling will be studied and presented to the public.” I believe it translates roughly into “We are hoping to have meetings until you give up and go away.”

There’s the continuing double-talk from the office of Joseph G. Brimmeier. I don’t know much about Brimmeier other than he seems to get testy about being challenged on this mess. His official biography boils down to a thirty-year career as a Commonwealth bureaucrat.

Brimmeier keeps insisting that all of the money made by tolling I-80 will go to I-80. I am not a professional bureaucrat, but as best I can piece it together, it would seem that this is kind of a fib. They’re going to borrow a lot of money to fix infrastructure everywhere across the state (that would include urban mass transit), pay that back with money from toll collection, and then once that’s done, every cent goes to I-80. Act 44 itself estimates that the debt should be paid down sufficiently by the 2024-2025 fiscal year. No, I didn’t make a typo there.

In other words, “Mom, I don’t want to borrow five dollars for a Whopper. I want it to pay back Billy. He lent me five dollars to buy a Whopper.”

Not that the use of toll money for the grossly mismanaged Philly and Burg transit systems is the most important reason to oppose the toll. That’s an argument we’re going to lose. I don’t know the numbers, but my guess is that the gas tax revenue generated by gazillions of urban drivers travel well beyond big-city borders.

When we argue that the worst thing about the toll is that it will hurt us rural NWPA folks, we’re being shortsighted. When the city folk agree with us (and suggest that’s a not-very-bad “worst thing”), they’re being stupid.

The PTC argues that toll costs will not be severe, that I-80 tolls will be right in line with the turnpike tolls, where a cross-state trip by car is “only” $25 or $100 by truck. This is the reasoning of people who don’t drive themselves on vacations. Worse, it’s the reasoning of people who never worked in an industry where even a five cent increase in the cost of a unit has a significant impact.

Tolling I-80 is bad for everybody, because it is one more nail in the PA border sign that says, “Businesses not welcome.” Toll is not good news for the PA economy, and jamming it through in an eleventh hour session with the state budget held hostage says something ugly about how we do things in the commonwealth.

Infrastructure A) matters and B) is not free. But this approach to the problem, generated by a governor pouting about being denied his Plan A, has been wrong every step of the way.

One more Fun Fact. On/off ramp toll booths are not planned for I-80; instead there will be every-so-often booths right on the highway. Placement of these will be critical, as that will mean that some areas will be able to make local trips with no toll cost. Other areas get local roads clogged with toll avoiders. Which means, if nothing else, the battle for the placement of those booths should generate even more political fireworks in Harrisburg.

County Commissioners ('03 Edition)

Just happened across this, which is what I had to say about the commissioners' race in 2003. I still agree with all of it, even though today's election involved a whole other batch of clowns...

(News-Herald, March 2003)Suddenly, everyone wants to be a county commissioner. It’s uncanny, particularly when you think of all those years we couldn’t give the job away.

Not that I’m complaining. The most common problem we have in local elections is lack of choice. It’s great to have a decision to make; the trick is to figure out how exactly to do it. I’m reminded of an old political saw: if twelve clowns are performing in the center ring, you can jump in and start reciting Shakespeare, but to the audience you’ll just be the thirteenth clown. Soon we voters will have to learn to tell these clowns apart.

It’s too early to endorse anyone by name, and I don’t think I know the whole list of candidates anyway. But I already know what I’m looking for.

First, remember what the commissioners can and can’t do. It’s a mistake to think that the commissioners can magically create thriving businesses out of thin air. County government has the ability to get in the way of many things, but not a lot of power to make things happen.

So insisting that more businesses would come here if the commissioners would just wave a magic wand and make a money tree spring from the ground is silly. Nor do I want to solve unemployment by making the government so large that everybody in the county works for it.

But future commissioners do need to have a plan for cooperative regional economics. If candidates don’t know their way around the Bosworth report, they’d better have some ideas of their own.

Second, I want a commissioner to be a clear-eyed cheerleader.

Clear-eyed because there are certainly challenges that we face as a county, and we won’t deal with them successfully by ignoring them.

Clear-eyed because we need, in all our local leaders, some vision. It is useless to define our challenges in terms of what’s gone. It will not help us to look at our present and talk about how it differs from our past. Past is past; it’s gone. What we need to look at is how our present is different from the future we want for ourselves, and how we can bridge that gap.

If we have a serious vision weakness locally, it is our preoccupation with the past. We used to have more jobs at Joy. We used to have oil industries. All that is true. It’s just that, in terms of keeping our county vital, it doesn’t mean jack.

It’s as if we’re a family on a long car trip and we get out the map and spend hours going over the roads that got us to where we are. Well, if we’re going to continue the trip, we don’t need to know where we’ve been. We need to know where we’re going.

And “we’ll keep doing the same old thing and try to cut corners while we do it,” is not a plan for the future. It’s a recipe for helplessness. Keep cutting corners, and pretty soon you have nothing left at all.

So the clear-eyed part is important, but so is the cheerleader part.

I don’t want a mindless cheerleader. I don’t want someone with a smile pasted across his face telling me that a broken water main is good because it’ll water the grass. I don’t want someone to come watch my house burn down and tell me how pretty it looks.

But I have no patience for civic and business leaders in our area whose basic pitch seems to be, “Hey, we’re in horrible economic trouble and the business climate is awful and our people are leaving in troop ships and the weather sucks and grass won’t grow here and the sun never shines and we don’t even have a Starbucks. Don’t you want to come here to live and work?”

I don’t want to be represented by someone who is ashamed to live here, who thinks all our young people should run away, who thinks that we are on the brink of disaster and there’s nothing we can do but curl up and try to bounce when we hit bottom.

We have considerable resources in this county, a multitude of tools with which to build a future. The county commissioner candidates that I vote for will be people who can see that and are prepared to invest in it.

The candidates that I vote for will be folks who see county government as a resource. They’ll be able to manage effectively because they’ll see our county employees as people who work to help maintain quality of life in the county, and not a barrel-load of flunkies who need to be slapped up and kept in line.

We have many resources in Venango County; they aren’t infinite, but numerous and rich nonetheless. If you want my vote, tell me about that. Otherwise, I’m afraid you’ll just be the thirteenth clown.

VENANGOLAND ELECTIONS 07

(News-Herald, November 1)Halloween’s over, so we can move on to something really scary—local elections.

It’s probably a good year to learn about “bullet voting.” Bullet voting depends on one simple fact—you don’t have to use every vote you have.

Imagine a race in which four people are running for two seats: Tom, Dick, Harry, and Some Guy. Three voters go into the booth, each with two votes to use and only one candidate they really like.

So Voter A, a Tom fan, votes for Tom and Some Guy. Voter B votes for Dick and Some Guy. Voter C votes for Harry and Some Guy. And in the end, Some Guy is the big winner while Tom, Dick and Harry tie for last place.

It may seem counter-intuitive to “waste” a vote, but if voters A, B, and C use one vote to vote only for the candidates they really like, Tom, Dick and Harry tie for the lead and Some Guy loses.

Even with four people running for four spots, rationing your vote can still affect the order they come in; in some elected groups, that matters.

It’s a fine year to remember all this, because—well, the school board elections present No Choice At All, and other elections feature those jobs that nobody understands, like County Comptrolling Clerk of Electoral Records Secretary. Then there’s the race for County Commissioner.

I don’t suppose you could get a more disorganized, tragically doomed race if you tied a bunch of squirrels’ feet together, shook them up in a sack, and dropped them at the top of a water slide to go after a couple of acorns strapped to the bottom of the pool. In a thunderstorm.

We have the water muddied with write-in candidates. I suspect that the write-innacy of Horn and Smith is less about ego and more about some Powers That Be looking at the primary results and choking. But a write-in is tough going in Venangoland, and if the electorate has already rejected you once, that’s a pretty clear predictor. I give Smith the edge here—she came close in the primary and her name is easy to type. But while the electorate may be fickle, I doubt that several hundred voters have changed their minds since spring.

That leaves the duly selected candidates, none of whom have ever held elected office. I understand that every politician has to start somewhere; I wish these folks weren’t starting out by running the whole county.

Vance Mays stands out by being a Libertarian, a party that I like in theory. But Mays’s position on economic development seems a bit disingenuous. He says we shouldn’t spend taxpayer dollars on a development agency; it can be done by volunteers. Furthermore, he himself can pick up the phone and have thirty CEO contacts lined up to develop the county. Except that he apparently hasn’t actually done that yet. So I guess his point is that we shouldn’t hire someone to do a job that can be handled by a volunteer, and he will volunteer to do that job as soon as we hire him as commissioner.

The rest of the field is the usual mish-mosh of Republicrats. I remain unimpressed by the assorted posturings re: Two Mile Run Park. At this point we know two things about the park—nobody has a good long-term plan for the place, and it is a miniscule portion of commissioner responsibilities. Electing a commissioner based on a park position is like electing a President based on his plans for the janitorial staff at the Statue of Liberty.

In May, Jan Beichner said that if county government had better communication “you wouldn’t see so many lawsuits.” I’m willing to accept that Beichner is an expert when it comes to lawsuits and the county.

Troy Wood has actually bothered to learn something about county finances. Stan Grzasko has some actual experience with a larger scale union organization. Timothy Brooks is well-educated, but largely invisible during this campaign.

If these were all people who were getting ready to interview for a job, I would guess it was a job they didn’t particularly want. Little campaign material (including no web presence), statements vague to the point of uselessness, and none who appear to have done their homework. Everyone who ever ran for office in this county declared themselves in favor of lower taxes and more well-paid jobs. Big deal. Do any of these people have a clue about how to actually accomplish any of their goals? If they do, perhaps they should share those clues in the next couple of days, because they’re not entitled to our votes just for showing up.

VENANGOLAND ARTS TREATS

(News-Herald, October 25)Here’s some Venangoland entertainment recommendationms.

* I recently picked up a cd by FHS grad Andy Martin, and it’s pretty good stuff. Andy’s tunes present a nice blend of folk and rock and pop (the cd reminded me most immediately of the Three Bens, particularly Kweller).

There’s a lot here about love and travel and on repeated listenings the cd suggests a young man wrestling with finding his place and making mistakes coming to terms with the woman who may or may not be of his dreams. The closing piece, “Piano Song,” finds him singing “take me where you go,” broken and healed, settled into the business of loving enough to give up complete control of his life. Nice that it’s the track that includes a violin contribution by the woman who is now his wife.

It’s a pretty mature album for such a young guy, which is not to suggest that it suffers from the Deadly Earnestness that often afflicts folky music. There’s a lot of fun here, and a nice range from the Dylanesque pieces (“Falling Off”) to solid rockers (“The Valley Waits”). His vocal styling is loose and relaxed; not always vocally precise, but always personal. The production on the cd matches that—solid, but not overly slick. Overall it’s a nice contrast to the plastic over-produced slickness of top 40 without requiring the listener to endure amateurish experiments in odd noisemaking.

I have listened to this cd over and over and would be happy to own it if I had never met Andy in my life. You can get yourself a copy by websurfing your way to www.andybobmartin.com.

* Last Saturday I headed to the Transit Building to catch Croyle Entertainment’s production of Wine, Cheese & Poe. Matt Croyle has created a theatrical setting for three Poe stories, a framework that helps establish an appropriate mood and provides a bit of Poe background for the uninitiated.

The evening is not particularly long, and the readings of the stories are nicely done. Matt actually makes “The Raven” make sense, and Rob Hoover is appropriately creepy as the narrator of “The Black Cat.” The producers even throw in some wine and cheese at intermission. The show will be presented again this Friday and Saturday night. It’s a fine way to kick off Halloween week, and support a fledgling local theater endeavor.

* Sunday afternoon at 3:00, the Venango Chamber Orchestra will celebrate its 15^th anniversary with a concert at the Barrow-Civic Theatre.

Many people tend to be scared of orchestra music. They shouldn’t be. Anyone who watches tv or movies knows how moving and visceral orchestra music can be. But the best movie sound system in the world cannot capture or recreate the sound of a live orchestra. When a full-bodied chorus of strings stretch out on a soft and solid bed of brass and woodwinds, it’s like stumbling upon a full-colored sunrise over the Grand Canyon—it’s impossible not to be moved, impossible not to want to turn to someone and say, “Wow, look at that!”

Every area should have a live orchestra; very few do. It’s just short of miraculous that we have one here in Venangoland, and a testament to the folks involved that it is still thriving after fifteen years. And they play well, too.

What my first three recommendations have in common is a taste of the unfamiliar. When it comes to the arts, many of us tend to fear the strange and new, and sometimes the strange and new require an audience that likes daring stuff out on the edge. But I promise you—none of these treats require you to be edgy and experimental and out on the edge. They’re all easily accessible and thoroughly enjoyable.

* Recommendation four isn’t so unfamiliar. On November 9, 7:30 at the Barrow, there will be a concert headlined by Frank Feroz, who will be backed up by Rae Hanna, Mark DeWalt, Neal Williams and Steve McMurray—as close to a Venangoland Superband as you’re likely to get. I am particularly excited about special guest John Sferra, who was one third of the classic rock trio Glass Harp.

Another third of Glass Harp was Phil Keaggy, probably the best guitarist of his generation. Phil left the mainstream to make some of the greatest Christian rock music ever; Crimson and Blue, arguably one of his best albums, features Sferra as drummer.

Also on the program are the Electracons, about which I know nothing at all, and the River Nymphs. I’ve never actually heard the Nymphs, but I’ve seen pictures and so can vouch for their babe-osity (which is good, because Hanna and McMurray—great musicians, but not so pretty). Advance tickets are $10, and worth every penny.

JAMES BORLAND

(News-Herald, October 2003) In these modern times, there’s a thriving world built around what are known as zines, magazines published, printed and distributed on a personal amateur level. Some of these are very slick and stylish, some very personal, some with exceptionally good content and writing. But zines are not new, exactly.

In the late 1870’s, amateur newspapers were in vogue. Anyone who lay hands on the basic printing equipment could create their own local newspaper. In 1878, seventeen-year-old James Borland and a few friends started The Evening News in Franklin. The first issue was four pages long: “An amateur daily paper published by three boys should be read by all. ‘Spicy and newsy’ is our motto.”

I picked up Borland’s memoir Fifty Years in the Newspaper Game, an interesting record of a man who was an integral part of life in Franklin for decades.

Borland’s father was a doctor; he contributed the occasional article and the boys created the newspaper in a back room of his offices. For James it was apparently the discovery of a passion. He worked on the paper before school, during lunch, and after school. The boys quickly ran out of money and only a timely loan from Joseph Sibley kept the paper afloat; it was the beginning of a lifelong bond between the two.

Borland’s path was still uncertain; a school teacher helped him decide. Stumped by algebra, Borland was confronted by Prof. John W. Cannon, who refused to explain the lessons to young James, instead advising him to give up the newspaper business and study lessons in the evening so he could get them without Cannon’s help. Borland decided that he was learning more from the newspaper business than from school, and quit school to pursue journalism.

Borland found himself a partner for years with General Miller; the picture that emerges in his book of that gentleman is less than flattering. In 1917, the two had a major falling out. Miller opposed Judge Criswell, an active Prohibition man in the county. The Judge had crossed Miller when Miller had attempted to divorce his wife, and Miller wanted the paper to oppose the Judge’s campaign. For Borland, it was a conflict between a wealthy man of power and a working class man of principle; the editor resigned and walked away from the business that he had created.

Borland immediately went to work for the Daily Herald, which two years later merged with his old paper to form the News-Herald. Borland was back at the helm again. In his account of events, Miller, never really interested in the newspaper business, wandered off to other pursuits.

Despite his conflicts with Miller, Borland’s loyalty to Joe Sibley remained undaunted over the years. His book includes numerous accounts of Sibley’s generosity and warmth. Sibley had his share of controversy in his career—an election scandal, charges that he was a tool of Standard Oil, a flap over campaign spending (imagine—people were outraged that he had allegedly spent forty grand on an election campaign). But no criticism of Sibley appears in Borland’s book unless it is accompanied by an exoneration.

Borland saw a lot of history: everything from national conventions featuring the era’s famous names to the beginnings of Conneaut Lake Park. In days when you only saw it if you were there in the flesh, Borland saw a lot.

And yet much of his best writing was in the two decades he wrote a column in the paper that most often focused on birds and wildlife and the sweet pleasure of life out along French Creek. And the biggest events in his life were the ones he helped stage here, most notably the series of Old Home Weeks at the opening of the last century. It is abundantly clear in his book that he took pride in those gatherings of folks to the old home town of which he was such a proud booster.

Old Home Week fans honored Borland for his dedication. Near the sidewalk in front of the county courthouse stands a small birdbath and a bench, nestled in a semi-circle of shrubs. Not as big as the fountain or as majestic as the war monument, but a nice reminder nevertheless of a man who managed to create something lasting out of his love and dedication. For Borland, serve was the operative word:

“The fascination of newspaper publishing is beyond compare. It is life itself—changing, moody, exhilarating, all-conquering, submissive, impulsive, wonderfully interesting. Such experiences are the only reward the true newspaper man receives. Few achieve riches, a handful achieve fame, but the great multitude of newspaper men serve—and serve—and serve!”

A bit hokey, perhaps, but a nice sentiment none the less.

ACTIVITIES FOR THE YOUNG

(News-Herald, October 18)It’s a tough job to steer one’s child through the world of activities. Sports programs, music programs, dance studios, general activity programs—we’re loaded with them in Venangoland, both in and out of schools. The challenge as a parent is to figure out which provide good use of time and money.

Part depends on the goal of involvement. Some people with a talent seek ways to enrich and develop it. Some people simply want to have their wonderfulness confirmed.

Confirmation is easy. Give the young persons constant praise. Always tell them (and their parents) how wonderful they are; never critique or criticize them. Of course, feedback that would interrupt this unending praise is also feedback that would allow them to grow and develop their talents.

There are often perks. There will be a super-special trip to the East Podunk Arts Festival as featured performers, or a spot in the line-up of the Outer Bogwomp Intraleague Playoffs. But all these “exclusive” events require of participants is the ability to write a check that won’t bounce.

These types of programs can be fine. They create some great childhood memories and as an adult, the young person can reminisce about the talent that he never really developed.

For those who do want to grow, there’s another type of balance to strike, and that’s the balance between the needs of the student and the needs of the program.

Drift too far to either end of the scale and things get ugly. There are parents who think, for instance, that schools sports exist only to provide a platform for their Little Johnny to take his next step toward Awesome Sports Success. Other players, the teams, the school, even Little Johnny’s own education—all of that is inconsequential next to Little Johnny’s need to Be the Biggest Star.

This approach is not particularly character-building, and Little Johnny either grows up to be a colossal self-centered jerk, or he finally gets fed up and tells his hard-driving parents to take a flying leap off the top of the Oil City sign.

Neither leads to great success. And the number of great sports legends to come from Venangoland is not something you need a lot of extra hands to count. You can try to get everything possible for your sports prodigy, but if your child doesn’t come out of the program with some character, the rest is meaningless.

An important part of character is the ability to devote time and effort to something larger than yourself. But on the other ugly end of the scale we find coaches and directors who believe that students exist only as fodder for The Program.

There’s no question that in the arts and sports, you ask students to make sacrifices now to pay off down the road. You practice till it hurts because later you’ll be better. You take one for the team because that’s part of being a member of a team.

But if you are always taking one for the team, and the team never takes one for you, something’s wrong. It’s like being a renter instead of an owner—you pay and pay and pay and still the result never belongs to you, but is always the property of the real owner. His band, his team, his show. His pride and success.

Parents whose child is charting this world need to watch out for the best interests of that child, and they have a right, and perhaps an obligation, to walk away from a leader who does not have the best interests of the student in mind.

Yes, these sorts of endeavors require time and effort and sacrifice. But if the student is being asked to give up a sizeable chunk of his life, and the return on that investment is supposed to be the satisfaction of making his Glorious Leader successful, something is out of whack.

No fair answering, “But Janey loves practicing her accordion sixty hours a week” if you’ve taught her since birth that she has to love it or you will be Very Disappointed. If you’ve created an atmosphere at home where your child can’t tell you the truth, you have another problem.

Because in the end, your child is your guide. The average shmoe can tell the team’s winning and still not be sure whether it’s any good. Audiences can take in a performance and not know whether it required virtuoso skills or was so easy that trained chimps could have managed it. They have to take someone’s word for it. But the final measure of the worth of a program is whether it enriches your child’s life, or makes it miserable; whether it helps her grow up or merely makes her wish she could be old enough to quit on her own.

FITNESS, OR SOMETHING LIKE IT

(News-Herald, March 2003) I finally broke down and joined the YMCA this winter. I had the vague notion that it might be helpful for getting in shape. Membership immediately improved my health; now I can’t afford to eat out so often.

Those of you who have known me for years will appreciate how surprised I am to find myself in a gym, working out and getting sweat all over myself. My athleticism is legendary, in the same way that leprechauns are legendary, except that you can probably find more people who will claim to have seen leprechauns than have seen me actively pursue any sport-like activities.

I had one season in my youth as a pitcher in playground league softball. I played for the Franklin Heights playground, where we practiced without benefit of anything remotely resembling a softball field. Third Street had a giant field, Eleventh Street a decent one, and at Fifteenth Street whacking the ball into the cemetery was good for a home run. Third Ward playground, home of the notoriously rough and tough players, didn’t have a field either, but they could use Miller-Sibley where the Cadillacs of fields were available.

At the Heights, we had a sliver of a field. Instead of power, we learned control, because a hit to anywhere except right field put you in the woods or in someone’s kitchen. Smart teams would not have bothered to put anyone out against us except a right fielder.

Though, as I recall, we did have a secret weapon. Somebody on the team knew Bernie Walz, who would occasionally come to play for us. At the plate, even at that relatively tender age, Bernie looked pretty much like a mountain wielding a toothpick. Bernie moved slowly; it looked like it took a half-hour for that toothpick to amble around. But then it would meet the ball—after that the small sphere would whimper, then sizzle, then head off to parts unknown. It would not surprise me to find some of Bernie’s hits embedded in low orbit satellites.

I pitched for the team. The position only required me to have good control of one limb at a time (as opposed to, say, running and throwing simultaneously), though I early learned to duck quickly. There’s nothing quite like the sight of a softball, flattened into a pancake by centrifical force, spinning toward your head like an angry white buzzsaw.

My gift for pitching was spotty. At one point, I led the league in both strikeouts and walks. The next summer I was too old to play playground league; oddly enough, no recruiting bids from other leagues appeared.

My athletic career has been rather limited ever since. I learned racquetball in college (liberal arts education) and was well on my way to being almost above average. Later I impressed my future in-laws at a family picnic by disassembling my entire knee during a game of kickball.

All of which goes to show that I am as mystified as anyone to find me in a gym working out. I don’t know what exactly prompted my entry into the world of exertion in these last few years. It may well be as simple as the belated discovery that running and biking and kayaking and yes, even grunting at oddly shaped machinery is fun, even relaxing.

If I could go back and deliver a message or two to my younger self, I would—well, come to think of it, that’s rather a list. But one item would definitely be to assure him that awkward or not, swift and strong or not, there is enjoyment to be had in putting one’s physical self to work, just as surely as it’s fun to sit down with a good book.

I wish I had known that sooner. But you can sit and read a book and there’s nothing to tell you that you are reading it slower or with less understanding than other smarter, faster readers. Way too much of the world of physical activity seemed geared for competition. Heck, even at the Y there are a zillion opportunities to swim competitively, but swimming just for recreation seems to be an alien art form.

The gym—excuse me, “Fitness Center”—at the Y is pleasantly non-competitive. I have a sense that the folks on the free weight end are a bit more aggressive, but I think you have to be because that part of the gym has the wall-sized mirrors so you can check your form. I don’t know what I look like when I’m exerting myself, but I’m fairly certain that it’s not pretty, and I’d rather leave it a mystery. My end of the gym has a nice picture window overlooking French Creek and a couple of tv’s. People are friendly but focused on what they’re doing. Nobody wears the kind of workout outfits that scream “I Am Way Too Serious About This.” I have not seen anyone kick sand in someone’s face yet.

So I’m not only surprised to be there, but enjoying it as well. All I need now is a barely mediocre racquetball partner.

NCLB & TESTING

(News-Herald, October 11)No Child Left Behind has been lurching toward reauthorization. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has been parading it like a stuffed dog yanked along on a tight leash. Periodically the poor dead thing tips over, and Spellings praises it for rolling over.

Spellings has been touting test results as proof that NCLB works. Not everyone is convinced. The internet is loaded with scholarly statistic wonk articles accusing Spellings of cooking the books and cherry-picking data. The good numbers reportedly depend on techniques like counting figures from before the actual implementation of NCLB.

But I’m not even going to argue that point. For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that test scores really have improved.

The rhetoric that has surrounded NCLB since its spawning has been masterful. Every child should be educated in a culture or excellence and high expectations. Every child should receive the best education possible. America’s workforce should be well-educated. Who can disagree with any of these?

And I’ll go one further—who can disagree with the idea of accountability for school systems. In the ed biz, we feed at the public trough, and we owe the taxpayers a good accounting of what we’re doing with the system they pay for and entrust us with. The days are gone when schools can get away with saying, “Look, we’re your schools. Just trust us and don’t ask questions.”

Those days should be gone. Today there’s no reason for a school not to operate with a high level of transparency. Folks should be able to get some idea of how well we’re doing our job.

Every one of those goals listed above—every single one—is reasonable and appropriate and worth achieving. But the mystery remains—why would anyone seriously think that the way to pursue and measure any of those goals is by giving a single multiple choice test?

Certainly not actual teachers. Since the seventies, research into best practices has steered teachers away from multiple choice tests because they are such a lousy measure of pretty much anything. What’s required for a multiple choice test is a combination of regurgitation untainted by any actual thinking, plus a small amount of dumb luck.

Even the couple of essay-ish questions inserted as a sop to old-fashioned curmudgeons like me are multiple-choice dumb—if it asks for two reasons, the test scorer is only to count the number of reasons offered, and not to evaluate their quality.

The tests are not completely worthless. They’re like a canary in a coal mine—if nobody in your school is passing, something is terribly wrong. But if the canary is alive and well, that doesn’t mean you’re mining lots of coal. And if half of your crew is busy with the care, feeding and maintenance of the canary, then they’re not busy mining coal, and you’re falling behind.

NCLB could be merely obnoxious, or perhaps a curious hybrid (where else do we find the conservative desire to spank unions so perfectly wedded to the liberal desire to have the federal government take over everything). But the omnipresent testing makes NCLB a giant bloodsucking leech on the body of education. Testing and practice testing and bizarrely obsolete tests that we give just because we always have (yes, MAT, I’m talking to you) have steadily shortened the school year.

So we put the squeeze on history and art and music and just plain using your brain for something other than a sponge. Not to mention NCLB’s disrespect for blue collar jobs—the PSSA does not include questions about welding or carburetors, but it does hit calculus.

And now some batch of geniuses in Harrisburg think that a good next move would be—more tests!! I would love to meet these guys face to face, but I don’t think I can get transportation to whatever planet they live on. I can only assume they’re related to the same folks who think if you keep looking in your wallet, eventually you’ll find more money there. Fine if you’re rich, but if you’re checking your wallet instead of doing your job, it will only get emptier.

Try a simple exercise. Imagine that you are going to select an employee, a nurse for your aging parent, even a spouse. Could you design a multiple choice test that would tell you everything you wanted to know about them? Despite all the political verbiage about raising expectations, NCLB has lowered the bar while making it twice as hard to strive for anything better.

Several business coalitions have announced their support for NCLB, saying they have a real need for the educated workers it will produce. I can only assume that they expect a big wave of openings for multiple choice test takers.

APPLEFEST SURVIVAL TIPS

(News-Herald, October 4)There’s only one thing I could be writing about this week. So now, before the Applefestering begins, let me offer some Applefestifying survival tips.

As always, parking will be an issue. You may want to park somewhere convenient, like a side street in the lower end of town, or the handy outlying shuttle-serviced parking lots, or Cleveland.

The quest for parking is an odd one. Why an able-bodied person would spend an hour driving around in order to avoid a fifteen minute walk is a mystery to me. Of course, I’m not inclined to buy a giant herb-encrusted hand-carved tree trunk; I suppose factoring in cargo transport makes a difference in parking considerations.

But if you’re not planning on heavy shopping, consider some other alternatives. You could take the bike trail into town from Oil City or Fisherman’s Cove or even Emlenton. You get a little exercise, a peaceful ride through nature, and when you get back to the car you’ll be able to grab a bite to eat without waiting in line. (You’ll need a chain to secure your bike to some large object, like a bridge, or one of those people who stops in the middle of the sidewalk and just stays there).

Granted, that means you’ll miss some of the Complete Applefest Experience. But for some folks, the CAE is a bit of sensory overload. For those folks, I’ll also offer the reminder that Riverfront Park (at the bottom of Ninth Street, for you out-of-towners) is just a few blocks away from ground zero and offers benches and green and a lovely, peaceful view of both the river and the creek. It can be a handy place to catch your breath or dangle feet in the water.

Speaking of natural splendor, remember that the predicted warm weather and giant park full o’food will make a big day for yellowjackets. That means women should plan to make do without hair spray. I used to travel with the FHS marching band back in the eighties, the days when young women wore hair so large that it could be viewed from space, said viewing made easier because the five pounds of hairspray per individual hairdo opened holes in the ozone. On a warm evening, the Knightettes, Majorettes and Silks collective hair products would draw a swarm of yellowjackets large enough to carry away a small elephant.

At any rate, skip the hair product. Just wear a hat or a babushka. If you forget, you can always buy one of those crocheted toilet paper roll covers, which look rather like small hats anyway. And don’t forget to keep a thumb over the top of your pop can or bottle.

Of course, food is part of the very essence of Applefestosity. I recommend that you eat nothing at all today to give yourself maximum capacity for the weekend.

I am also happy to announce the newest rule for the Any Excuse Will Do Diet Program. Previously, Applefest diners had to depend on the old rules that both food eaten while standing up and food torn into smaller pieces have fewer calories. But a recent decision ruled that all food eaten at big noisy festivals does not count at all.

In addition to all the booths, I recommend eating at any of Franklin’s fine sit down restaurants because, let’s face it, at some point any excuse to sit down will be welcome. The trick is to head to these restaurants between normal meal times. At least, that was the trick until I just told everyone. It's still worth it to stop in-- you get a chance to check out the new Oskie's menu and, of course, when you can eat at Leonardo's on a Sunday, that's almost as good as Christmas.

The most important survival advice for Applefestery is to give yourself time. Clear your calendar. Leave your watch at home.

Then you can simply relax and enjoy the day. Have fun cheering on the race. Stroll through some booths. Eat something yummy. Swing past the performance spots every so often to check out which special flavor of music is being served. Eat something else. Rinse and repeat.

With a good weather year, I’d guess we’ll have another record-breaking year for the car show on Sunday, so that may make for a day’s worth of browsing all by itself.

But the most important reason for allowing lots of time only applies to locals. Applefest is Franklin’s homecoming, an event that brings home people of every age and station that ever lived here. You will see people that you haven’t seen in ages, and in spite of the sprawling splendid carnivalous varied vast adventure that is Applefest, there isn’t anything better than that.

THE BIG DAMN GAME

(News-Herald, September 27) So it’s time once again for The Big Game. I don’t usually get very worked up about the Great Oil City – Franklin sports rivalry, but if I’m going to watch one of these games, here are things I don’t want to see:

Fake School Spirit: There’s the fair-weather fan, the person who only shows up when the home team is wining. And then there’s the person who doesn’t care about the sport at all—they just like an excuse to start a fight.

Friday night there will be students trolling the stadium and parking lot, completely oblivious to the game while they hunt for an excuse to fight with someone from the opposing school.

The faux school spirit strikes in surprising places some times. Years ago, there was some spectacular breaking, entering and vandalism committed on OCHS by a student who was more or less from Franklin. This was a student who, on any other day, had to be dragged into school with a block and tackle attached to a team of clydesdales. If on football night, you usually just stay home not caring, don’t change your tradition just for The Big Game.

Civic Vandalism: If your child asked to go next door and paint “You stink!” all over the neighbor’s house, I’m guessing most parents would say no. But late tonight, carloads of teenagers will make the trip up and down river to leave their mark on the other’s city. Which is doubly silly considering that most of the students in the two schools live in neither Franklin nor Oil City.

Freakish Loss of Perspective: Look. If you’re in the stands at a high school football game screaming and ranting and busting a blood vessel as if the fate of Western Civilization were riding on that pigskin, you need to take a serious look at your life.

For decades, the two teams have been coached by men from That Other Town. Teachers, staff, parents, alumni and various other bystanders live in one town and work in the other. Graduates of the two schools have been known to meet, date and even marry each other!

These days, the city’s fates are linked more closely than ever; it just seems silly to pretend that some massive point of civic pride rests on this game. A rivalry depends on some long history of offense and grudge, but our history is too intertwined.

Remember the time that one player from Franklin—oh, wait—he married an Oil City girl and works in Cranberry. Well, how about that one Oil City coach—no, wait—his kids grew up playing for Franklin teams.

You can’t have family feuds when there’s only one family. If we need to nurse a grudge, may I suggest Every Team from Erie.

Classless Behavior: Too many years the classiest behavior in the whole stadium is that of the young men on the field, while too many people in the stands (some of them old enough to know better) act like classless jerks.

Class doesn’t mean a lack of pride. There’s plenty of class in saying, “We are proud of who we are, and we will fight harder and longer and stronger than anyone else to uphold our pride.”

There’s no class in saying “You stink and we hate you and we hope you get hurt and die.” It was hokey when your kindergarten teacher told you, but it’s still true—you can’t build yourself up by tearing other people down. And it’s silly—I feel certain that Oil City and Franklin folks smell about the same.

The majority of fans young and old are great, and the sense of occasion that surrounds The Big Game can be kind of exciting. And I do put a lot of stock in school spirit—I think at the very least it’s a way to learn about devoting heart to something bigger than yourself. I’m proud of the school where I teach, the people I teach with, and the students past and present who have come through that building. I hope our team plays with guts and heart and strength and class, and I hope they win.

I guess that’s why I always hope that the Big Game won’t be wrapped up in too much foolishness. It’s ironic, I guess—on the field, no one can appreciate the hard work and blood and sweat and heart and guts that a team devotes to the game better than the other team. And in Franklin and Oil City, we’ll never find a town more like our own than our neighbors at the other end of Route 8.

So go to the game, cheer with noise and pride for our teams, and walk out of the stadium afterwards remembering who and where we are.

VOLUNTEERS

(News-Herald, September 20)I’m a big fan of volunteerism. I think the world is vastly improved when we all give time and effort to things that we value.

In an area like ours, volunteers are essential. The gold standard for Venangoland volunteerism is set by the volunteer fire departments. In a world where churches have to beg, plead, and arm-twist just to get someone to teach a one-hour Sunday school class, here are folks who volunteer to have their lives interrupted at any moment so that they can run off and risk themselves to protect other folks’ life and property.

It’s not that easy to find firefighters who will make those kind of sacrifices for pay; it’s nothing short of miraculous that so many of our small townships can put together full groups of people who do the work as volunteers.

It’s tricky to manage volunteers, particularly (and ironically) in non-fire department situations where the stakes are so much lower. But part of the trick to managing volunteers is remembering one simple principle: everyone, even a volunteer, gets paid. The key to working with volunteers is understanding who pays them, and how.

Now, I’m not talking about money. Volunteers work for all sorts of things—recognition, fellowship, a sense of power, a chance to meet hot chicks, feeling good about serving. None of these things are monetary, but they’re all mighty important to people who want them.

Managers who don’t understand this often shoot themselves in the foot by giving volunteers unintended pay cuts.

If Aunt Ethel always volunteers to knit the silver doilies for the church bazaar because it makes her feel proud to be the keeper of the silver doily tradition—well, that’s her pay, and even if you give her what is, on paper, a promotion to the frozen linguini concession stand, to her it’s a cut in pay, and she will probably not be happy about it.

Maybe Cousin Bruce likes to pain the sign for the annual firehall grilled pig jowls dinner. His pay is having his kids point and say, “Look, Daddy’s sign! How do you paint a pig’s nose like that, Daddy?” Having a professional sign painter work on the sign to “fix it up” cuts Bruce’s pay to zero.

These are obvious examples, but we are surrounded by less obvious ones. Many people who are paid workers on a job also do volunteer work at the same place. Eunice is paid to be an administrative assistant in Accounts Receivable, but she manages the coffee fund as a purely volunteer job. Her payment is a tiny bit more power over her co-workers and a little extra status.

These mixed jobs can create a dangerous situation for both workers and management. The volunteer worker faces the danger of an instant pay cut. At any point, management could grab a job that has been volunteer work and assign it to a paid employee. “The coffee fund should be handled by the accounting secretary,” declares The Boss, and now Eunice has lost her extra pay and her job.

And unlike the usual victim of a firing, Eunice remains there in the office. Not always great for the atmosphere.

Some workplaces depend far too much on volunteers. These are workplaces that would be in deep trouble if all their employees ever started doing only what they’re actually paid to do.

If you’re a manager, the other danger in using too much volunteer labor is that volunteers often do not really work for you.

Say that Chuck Gruntmuscle has been hired by the First United Church of Suburban Scrubgrass to coach their junior woodchuck ragball team. Chuck does it because he loves to see the team members get excited about the game, he enjoys winning, and he even enjoys the regard of the players’ parents.

Even though the church has hired him, Chuck is not paid by them. So in a very real sense, Chuck does not work for them, which is something they may discover when they decide they want Chuck to coach in a particular way and realize they have no leverage over him except to fire him completely.

That’s why so many mostly-volunteer jobs come with a small stipend. The pay scale may work out to something like one-point-oh-two cents an hour, but that’s not the point. The payment formalizes the employer-employee relationship, clarifying for whom the volunteer works.

That’s another part of the beauty of volunteer fire departments. They receive their pay from the communities they serve; it is the perfect relationship, as long as folks in the community don’t try to stiff their firefighters by skimping on support and recognition. It’s easy to take them for granted, but anybody doing valuable work deserves to be paid—in whatever currency they value.

BEARING WITNESS

(News-Herald, September 13) For all the complicated theological concepts that people of faith wrestle with, I think it’s the simple matter of witnessing that makes so many stumble.

The simple approach is that you bear witness to your faith by talking about it. I can remember what seem like hundreds of hours spent in meetings and gatherings and worship marathons with people standing up to tell their story. “This is what God means to me” or “This is why I love Jesus” or “This is how Divine Love changed my life.’

But talking about one’s faith is undoubtedly the least effective witness that any believer can offer.

I suppose I see more of this because I work with so many people who are relatively young in their faith. Students will write about how important faith is, or write about how religion changed their lives. Sometimes students will even talk about it in front of their peers. Then those same students will turn around and mock other students for being fat or wearing the wrong clothes or just being uncool.

Nothing bears witness to your beliefs (religious or otherwise) like the way you treat other people. Some people believe their faith gives them an obligation to treat other human beings well. Some people believe their faith gives them permission to treat other human beings poorly.

If you spend a lot of time in church circles, you’re probably familiar with a type. I call them Softball Christians, because the first place I encountered them was in college in church softball leagues.

In church or group meetings, they speak of God’s abiding love and heavenly grace, often with great warmth and sincerity. But put them on a softball field, and they will pursue secular victory in an earthly game with more hard-bitten ruthlessness than any Godless heathen. The same person who was earlier pointing at the world and saying “We must Save them” will now point at the other team and declare, “No mercy! We must obliterate them.”

Their competitiveness, their willingness to pursue victory even in something as trivial as a game—this is a mighty strong witness to the world.

There are those people of faith whose witness is that God has certified them as being special. And by “special,” they mean “better than the rest of you.”

They know better than to say the words, “I’m perfect.” The witness that comes out of their mouths is, “I’m imperfect, like every other human.” But the witness that comes out of their lives is, “I’m right. My understanding of God is perfect, and my understanding of His rules is perfect, so you had better do as I say. I don’t need to do any searching; I just need to straighten you out.”

We tend to make fun of our Puritan forebears—their funny hats, their dour banning of dance and music, their all-day church services. But give the Puritans their due—to a large degree, they walked the talk, and even a mute Puritan bore witness to his beliefs.

Modern witnesses often run into a consistency problem. Little Janie goes to church on Sunday morning and bears tearful witness to how Jesus has changed her and fills every single moment of her life and being. Then she goes home and logs on to Myspace to brag about how she drank everybody else under the table at Saturday’s party, including that stupid wench Ethel, who she hopes will get an awful disease and die soon. Exactly what sort of witness does she imagine that presents?

Understand, I do not agree with the school of thought that declares that since people of faith turn out to be merely human, that somehow proves that their faith is a crock. It’s seems fairly clear to me that being human means being flawed and limited, which in turn means that human understanding and practice of faith will always be imperfect.

But I have limited patience for the Magic Incantation school of religion, the idea that as long as I say the words, it doesn’t matter what I do or how I live.

It is human to be a mess on contradictory impulses, thoughts and actions. The search for meaning and direction in our lives is a search for something that can help us bring that big tangled mess into line. But the lazy man’s shortcut is finding something that provides an excuse for just indulging himself in whatever he already wanted anyway.

Religion and faith can be used either way, to provide direction or excuses. Most folks can tell which one they’re looking at, whether it’s the witness we intended to provide or not.

Today's post is strictly for showing off. The following link will take you to a piece about female motorcyclists, featuring my Aunt Betsi.

LIES IN ALL THEIR FLAVORS

(News-Herald, September 2003) You can tell a lot about a person from his lies. Not the question of if he lies—I’m not sure anyone can lay claim to a lie-free life—but the question of when he lies. It’s the line we all cross, even though it’s the line we almost all agree shouldn’t be crossed. When we’ll lie says something about what we value more than staying on the right side of that line.

Some folks lie to avoid trouble, the basic traditional Cover Your Butt lie. “Why no, I didn’t eat the last plum. It must have been stolen by fairies.” “I have no idea how that baseball came through the window. The boys and I were all in back discussing international monetary theory and French cuisine.” This kind of lie is easy to understand; there are times when avoiding a big hassle seems more valuable than a small truth.

Its first cousin is the Lie To Save Someone’s Feelings. 99 times out of a hundred this is just the Cover Your Butt lie dressed up in a rented tux to make it look nobler. Yes, there are people who really do want to spare other people’s feelings. But usually the purpose of this lie is to keep you from being upset—because I don’t want to have to deal with you when you’re agitated.

People who will tell these kinds of lies are dangerous. These are the folk who will say, “Sure, I dropped off that rent check just like you asked” without batting an eye. They may not even try to remember if they dropped off the check or not, because they know which answer will keep them from getting in trouble. These are the same people who won’t tell you that they’ve left you for someone new, so that you spend months publicly humiliating yourself by staying in a dead relationship when you could be humiliating yourself by trying to search for a new relationship instead.

Then there’s the Lookin’ Smart lie. Sometimes these lies are tiny; sometimes they’re enormous. But the purpose is simple—I would rather pull a statistic out of the troposphere than say that dreaded phrase, “I don’t know.” And if for some reason you actually know that the Ecuadorian annual rainfall figures that I just spouted are wrong, I’ll make up a source to go with my made-up number.

This type of liar is particularly annoying to work with because he would rather be right than solve the problem. He would rather watch the widget vat blow up so he can say, “I knew that would happen” than avert a disaster by taking someone else’s advice. His own sense of importance is more valuable than the truth.

Also appearing regularly at your place of business is the Manipulating Liar. This is the guy who tells you, “Yeah, bring that up at the next meeting. I’ll back you up.” Then he sits in the meeting and blows holes in your presentation.

This type of liar is particularly problematic because he’s usually your boss, and he’s lying to maintain control. He values power more than the truth. When someone doesn’t have the ability to manage by competence or the integrity to lead by principle, he can always keep people off balance and in line by saying whatever will smooth the waters right now—even if he plans to say or do the opposite an hour from now.

Special note to lying bosses: You aren’t fooling anyone. Your employees know you’re a liar. They don’t say anything to you because you’re the boss, but everything you say to them is filtered through the knowledge that you can’t be trusted. The irony is that you lie to gain power, but by lying you lose it.

Perhaps the most entertaining liar is the No Good Reason liar. This person tells lies that are so transparent or pointless that people are simply dumbfounded. His fiancé throws his ring at him in front of thirty witnesses and he tells everyone that he had to dump her because she was too possessive. She interrupts a conversation to announce that her recovery time from the operation under discussion was the longest on record, despite the fact that the operation in question is a vasectomy.

And in many ways this type is the saddest, because No Good Reason liars often turn out to be Look At Me Please liars, but their constant lying leads people to ignore them. They may change settings (school, workplace, neighborhood) many times, but their behavior always catches up with them.

We give up the truth when we think we can trade it for something more valuable, but we almost always underestimate the real price. We can learn a lot about ourselves by looking in the mirror and asking what it is that we think is worth that enormous price. But we rarely ask the question, either because we value the truth so little, or because we know we wouldn’t like the answer.

PARENTS & SCHOOL GOALS

(News-Herald, September 6)The relationship of parents with their offsprings’ schools is just one of those many parts of parenting most clearly seen in the rear-view mirror. My children are now post-teens, off to school; now that my nest is empty, I have a full wish list of parental do-overs.

You could focus on a whole long list of specific rules to follow when your child is in school, but I think it’s easier to focus on the broad principles. And I think the most important broad principle is to remember the end product.

For instance, most parents would agree that their child should emerge from school more or less ready to function as an independent-ish near-adult. But it’s easy to forget this long-term goal while addressing short-term issues.

The term in the ed biz is “helicopter parent,” the parents who hover over their children at every step. They check over every homework assignment, provide personal individual coaching at every sports event, oversee every aspect of Junior’s school life.

Some of this is the natural parental protectiveness. Childhood is rough; the teen years are particularly brutal. It’s the most natural impulse in the world to step in and protect your child from hurt. Some helicoptering comes from parents who believe that if they can control every aspect of their child’s life, that child out will turn out to be exactly as the parents wish.

Both views are mistakes. Lifting weights hurts, but if Mom lifts your weights for you, you don’t get any stronger. And anyone who thinks that they can engineer a young person to grow to order is doomed to disappointment (and a child who one day announces that they’re getting twelve piercings and moving in with someone named “Barf”).

Both views often feed the short-term approach, which is a mistake.

The school years are filled with things that simply won’t matter in the long run, and many of them are mighty seductive.

It’s easy to pursue grades. Cutting corners is easier than ever, with the cooperation of both your fellow students and the ever-reproductive internet. Parents can get sucked into the grade chase as well; more than a few of my students have turned in writing that included extra parental assistance.

But once students arrive at college or tech school or their job, their high school grades won’t mean a thing. What will matter is what they know and what they can do; school is their chance to load up on those things.

We make it easy to focus on the omnipresent PSSA testing. We do our darndest to convince students that the PSSA test scores are critical to the fate of Civilization As We Know It. But years from now, after they’ve picked up their high school diploma, their PSSA scores won’t mean a thing.

Parents of athletes want their children to win every contest, start every game, never sit the bench. But way too often the pursuit of winning sacrifices the very character that sports are supposed to build. Every record falls sooner or later, but a person’s character lasts a lifetime.

Even the social games of the school years are not forever. Most of us should know better—is there anyone who doesn’t know the story of a Most Popular High Schooler who grew up into a life of disaster and failure, or the social outcast who grew up to a solid life of success and achievement?

We don’t want our children to be left out, not to get invited to parties with the cool kids. When they have a falling out with old friends, we’d love to fix it. We want to see them have the kind of friendships with The Right People seen in every fantasy-filled movie about high school. Though we know there are more important things than the popularity game, we hate to see our children lose at it.

But the shiniest trophies of school are the some of the most empty and worthless. It’s the learning, the growth, the relationships based on something deeper than coolness and convenience that have the life long value.

Parents should absolutely be involved. They should stand up to the schools for their children, and they should stand up to their children for education.

But through all of that, take the long view. Worry a little less about how you hope your child feels this afternoon, and focus a bit more on that day, some years away, when they are high school graduates and you’re about to send them out into the world. When that day comes, you’ll want to know that even without you, they can handle the world; you won’t want to be wishing you could go with them because you’re afraid they can’t.