Happy Birthday, Jingle Bells

It’s a good things I stay alert for random factoids, or we would have missed an important anniversary this year. In 2007, the song “Jingle Bells” celebrated its 150^th birthday.

The song was written by James Lord Pierpont. He was the son of a Boston minister and somehow ended up being related to J. P Morgan. Sources differ on how, exactly, just as there seems to be some pretty heated disagreement about where precisely James wrote his musical contribution to the ages. It’s often reported that the song was written for a Sunday School program in the early 1850’s; some authorities seem to think that it was for a Thanksgiving celebration, but since Thanksgiving languished largely uncelebrated until the Lincoln Presidency, I have my doubts about that little tidbit.

Sources agree that he was thirty-ish and serving as an organist at a Unitarian church in Savannah, Georgia by the mid-1850’s. He made a trip back to Medford, Mass to (depending on whose version you believe) either compose or get an early reaction to his cute little song, entitled “A One-Horse Open Sleigh.” No fewer than four places claim to be the “home” of the song, with Savannah and Medford both sporting nifty “Birthplace of “Jingle Bells” plaques. At any rate, in September of 1857, he copyrighted the song.

James was an adventurous young man. He had run away to sea at age 14 and later headed west to the Gold Rush. He first married in Troy, New York, and left wife #1 in Medford with his father when he made the move to Savannah. She died there of tuberculosis, and he went on to marry the daughter of Savannah’s mayor.

James took the Southern side during the War Between the States, and composed several pro-South songs such as “Strike for the South” and “We Conquer or Die” which included the lines “The war drum is beating, prepare for the fight!/The stern, bigot Northman exults in his might.” He apparently got himself in some hot water during Reconstruction when he signed on for a plan to bring Scottish itinerant farmers in to work empty Southern farms.

James passed away in 1893 at the age of 71, having realized little fame or fortune from his venerable classic, though it had been popular from day one.

The original tune is a bit different from the one we know today—the chorus is a bit more formal. To my ear it actually bears more than a passing resemblance to the tune of “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas” (a song that authorities list as “traditional” and “origin unknown”).

The lyrics have come down basically unchanged, four full verses in all. It’s the third verse that tends to get left out—in that verse, our hero is blown off the road and laughed at by a faster rig. The only real lyrical oddity is that Jingle Bell scholars believe that the title is an imperative—in other words, we’re giving instructions, not identifying a type. It’s “hey, you bells, get jingly” and not “here we have some jingle type bells.”

Mostly the lyrics point to the big unanswered question, which is this—why exactly is “Jingle Bells” a Christmas song anyway?

It’s not even remotely about Christmas. In the first verse, we extol the fun of ramping around in an open sleigh. In the second, we add a girl (“Fannie Bright” not “Brice,” who didn’t some along until much later) and the get stuck in a snow bank where we become “upsot,” which is 1850’s slang for either turning upside down or becoming drunk.

The final verse is even more direct. “Now the ground is white/ go get it while you’re young/ Take the girls tonight/ and sing this sleighing song.” It also advises that you get a horse with “two forty for his speed,” a reference to a horse that covers a mile in two minutes, forty seconds.

In other words, “Jingle Bells” is nothing less than a 150-year-old celebration of the joys of a woman and a fast vehicle. How such a thing ever became associated with the baby Jesus is quite beyond me, but clearly there’s no reason we couldn’t keep enjoying it throughout the rest of the snow-covered winter season.

Not that all news for the venerable birthday song is good. A recent poll by Edison Media Research tested 579 Christmas recordings. Placing dead last was a song that was a big hit in 1955, created by a Danish sound engineer by the slow painful process of working with hundreds of collected recordings of animal sounds. Yes, “Jingle Bells” as rendered by the Barking Dogs has been judged the least favorite Christmas record of all. Happy birthday, indeed.

Christmas with the Family

(News-Herald, December 20) Plenty of pressure comes with the Christmas holiday. Selecting presents, eating food, shopping crowds, bad music—but for many people the greatest challenge is the dreaded family gathering.

I have reached that stage of life where my house is otherwise empty until people come home to it. I find that prospect pretty exciting, and I likewise look forward to the three of us heading off to my parents’ home for a massed clan onslaught. But I know that not everyone finds these sorts of prospects appealing.

Like many parts of Christmas, this tradition carries a high stress level because we expect that it will be acted out with all the polished treacly perfection of a Hallmark television special. Real live non-televised humans are considerably messier than the Hallmark kind.

When some people gather with family, they bring more issues than the simple desire for perfection. There are some other habits of mind that foster discontent during seasonal hearth gathering.

What have you done for me lately? There are people whose relationships ride the roller coaster of recent events. I’m not talking about major news, like discovering that someone you trusted has stolen your life’s savings. I’m talking about the person who was your buddy last week when you were shopping together, but yesterday she snubbed you at a party, so now you hate her.

When I close the book on a professional or amateur career, I would hate to have that whole span judged based on the last few chapters, particularly because our last chapters do not always find us at our best. We forget that, though, so there we are thinking that we don’t care if Uncle Duddly saved our lives years ago—right now he’s irritating and loud and he smells funny.

The eternal grudge. This is an absolute family pitfall, because families have a mountain of history. It’s almost certain that some time in the last fifty years everyone has done something unpleasant and painful to everyone else.

It doesn’t matter if it was the time Madge insulted your dress or the time your sister hit on your new boyfriend or the time Uncle Duddly hinted that your son is not very bright. You can select the wound and pick at the scab forever.

Grudge-holding is an absolute killer at Christmastime because everyone is supposed to be warm and happy. So the offender can make a show of being regretful and sad that he did a Bad Thing, thereby being a spirit-killing party pooper. Or he can get in the appropriate happy spirit, giving you the cue to quietly seethe—how dare he act as if he doesn’t care how rotten he was to you.

Sitting judgment. How is it that we can look at strangers and acquaintances and say, “Well, everybody’s entitled to make their own choices,” but when it comes to family, we feel the need to correct Errors in Judgment.

Cousin Ethel has adopted a diet that won’t oppress green leafy vegetables, and since we think that’s Horribly Wrong, we’ll make sure that we don’t do anything that might suggest we in any way approve. This makes use of that great old rationalization: “It’s not rudeness if I’m really right and she’s really wrong.”

Alpha battles. Christmas brings together many people who are used to being royalty in their own castles. It’s not always easy for them to spend time around someone else’s throne. Wrestling for the crown can involve anything from subtle discomfort to open combat.

Sometimes it’s not just you. Sometimes there’s a family member who really is a jerk. Really.

How can you cope with the extra drama of extra family togetherness? Well, you can focus on everything you ever loved about the ones you find difficult. It’s not really any harder to fixate on something you loved than on something that bugged you.

You can focus your attention on a relative that you particularly love, someone you would give the greatest gift in the world if you could just afford it. Your gift to that person can be a peaceful, stress-reduced Christmas gathering.

Or you can just imagine that your family members are dead. Yes, that’s an awful thought, but stay with me.

Where’s the one place that bygones are bygones and the family is loving and supportive without hesitation? The funeral home. When do we let go of the worst of someone and grab onto the best with unconditional love? When they’re dead.

Well, if you can do it then, you can do it now. So before you walk up that snow covered walk to the house, remember how much you would miss the folks inside if they were gone. Put love first. Have a Merry Christmas.

Harold Pixley Remembered

Hard to believe that it has only been seven years since Harold Pixley died. This is the column that ran in December of 2000. Like many of the old columns about people, I run this to give him a little bit of presence on the web. Who knows who might be looking for some little cyber-trace of him.

Harold Pixley died this week. I know I'm not the only person in Franklin who will miss him.

Pix came to Franklin in the summer of 1943 when the school district was looking to fill the gap left by the departure of Richard Stocker. Pix came originally from Centralia, Illinois. He graduated from Oberlin College and had played first chair clarinet with the New Philadelphia Ohio Symphony Orchestra. The school district selected him from a field of ten applicants; he was thirty-one years old.

Those of us who come to teaching with even a small amount of idealism dream of becoming the kind of teacher that Pix was. His influence in Venango County is beyond measuring.

He built up the Franklin High School Stage Band. This may not seem like a particularly radical notion, but it was the forties and a teacher who tried to bring swing music into the schools was viewed about as a teacher who wanted to start a school rap ensemble. That's they were called "stage" bands-- "swing" was too naughty.

With both the stage band and the full bands at Franklin, Pix was a master at selecting music that audiences would enjoy. Pix was not the kind of musician who believed in "pure" music, music that musicians and academics would love but which would give average audiences headaches. Pix never played the national anthem too slowly. One standard Pix saying was, "Give the audience a treat, not a treatment."

Pix could push students without insulting them. And he was not the stereotypical band director who required his students to make him proud, to make him look good. He wasn't all warm and mooshy and fuzzy, but he was always a gentleman. "Practice at home" was another standard Pix saying.

Pix set the regular format for the annual Musical Broadcast, the FHS variety/talent show. Pix's Broadcasts were legendary for their length-- Pix gave every performer an encore, whether they deserved it or not. And even in the last years of his teaching career, Pix never became hidebond and set in his ways. He really didn't get rock music, but he knew "the kids" did and that was okay.

Pix's influence went beyond the high school. He was the first director of the Franklin Silver Cornet Band to have actual formal musical training. In the years when the band nearly died for lack of members, Pix helped bring high school students into the fold, including students who broke the great gender barrier (women in town band---gasp!!)

Pix was for years the music director at the First United Methodist Church. It was Pix who conned Steve Anderson and me into singing in the youth choir there, with absolutely no reason to suspect that either one of us had a hint of vocal skill before he recruited us (and precious little afterwards, either), but it was Pix's way to keep building. "He may not be good for the band," he once said about a student. "But the band will be good for him."

It was Pix who handed over the reins at church to a new young guy, just back in the area, so that John McConnell could begin his many productive years of making that church into a musical leader in the community. And it was Pix who recruited Ed Frye for town band, where he began the longest tenure in band history as director. Pix was not one to jealously guard his turf.

I've never seen anybody who could work so hard and look so relaxed at the same time. I never saw Pix look harried or stressed or under the gun. I can remember him sitting next to me in board meetings for town band, hard of hearing and not quite catching what was said. He'd just smile and turn to me and say, "What's he talking about, Pietro?"

And I can remember the long hard years of his wife's illness, the medical prognoses that gave her a few months to live. Those months stretched to years, and caring for her became a full-time difficult task; we didn't see him out and about often.

He told me once in that time that he supposed he could put her in a home, but he didn't think that was right. She was his wife, and he had made a promise that he would always take care of her, and so he did, although he was not a young man. I wouldn't have thought any less of him if he had felt trapped, or regretted giving up so much of his own life to care for her, but he explained it all in the same simple way that a man explains why he eats and breathes.

I will always admire Pix. He was kind, gentle, dedicated, and quietly strong. He was a man who found a place for himself and filled that place without flinching or complaining. He made thousands of friends who always loved him, and touched thousands of lives for the better. All of us will miss him.

Information Vacuums

(News-Herald, December 13)Nature abhors an information vacuum. Where information is missing, nature always finds way to pick up the slack. This is a simple principle, easy to grasp, but often forgotten. People, particularly when occupying sensitive positions of power or bureaucracy, seem to have an overwhelming urge to “manage” people by withholding information.

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them” is the operating principle, and it’s true, as far as it goes. But the oft-forgotten rest of the saying is “but it will surely come back to bite you in the butt.”

On some level, we all know this. It’s a principle that has been celebrated endlessly on television. If the first part of an episode involves a husband deciding that he will avoid trouble by keeping some piece of information from his wife, every tv viewer over the age of six knows that hilarity will ensue as his secrecy breeds disaster.

The problem with an artificial information vacuum is not just that it’s hard to control. The problem is that when you refuse to tell people things they want to know, they will invariably just start making stuff up. Nobody ever EVER walked away from a situation like that saying, “Well, they aren’t talking, so I guess we’ll just never know.”

All of the great wrangles in these parts have featured this principle at work. From the Hospital Merger Fiasco to the endless Two Mile Run Drama, confusion and mess have been sown by folks who figured they could keep a lid on things and avoid further squawking.

In the murky uncertainty of the merger of the Oil City and Franklin hospitals, a thousand imagined outcomes were conjured up. The Oil City Hospital is going to be closed. The Franklin Hospital will be closed. A thousand nurses will be laid off. The Oil City building will be encased in concrete, then blown up. Patients will be dragged to the Franklin facility and then forced to live within the Franklin City limits.

It’s not that the complete truth is always greeted with a warm fuzzy hug. Had the merger plans been laid out in detail from day one, there still would have been plenty of people hopping mad. But by trying to avoid that scenario, honchos managed to still get all of that anger PLUS a bunch more anger about things that weren’t even going to happen.

And if that isn’t messy enough, an information vacuum provides opportunity for deliberate abuse. Hypothetically, a physician who was worried about having his golden applecart upset by the merger would have been free to fill the vacuum with whatever tale he chose to spin in order to stir up people for his own purposes.

Two Mile has often offered more of the same. We could go back through the years, but let’s just set the wayback machine to last summer.

All the park authority ever needed to do was issue a simple sentence beginning with the words, “It’s necessary to close the park for the season because…” and finish it in fifteen words or fewer. Instead, we got gobbledygook that was, perhaps, intended to soothe the savages. It didn’t—it just left everyone in the county free to invent their own reason for closing the park.

So many stories have been made up about the park that the average shmoe doesn’t have a hope of figuring out what the heck really went on. That’s how it is with an information vacuum; before you know it, you’re trying to prove that forty-seven different things didn’t happen and answering questions like “When did you stop beating your wife?”

That’s why it’s worth it to tell people you don’t have an answer—if you tell them nothing, they’ll guess that you’re keeping the truth hostage for nefarious purposes. That’s why it actually makes sense for news outlets to keep reporting “Nothing new has happened at this time.” The truth may be boring, but it still fills the information vacuum.

Sometimes information has to be held back. It would have been nice to have regular updates on the saga of the Crook Who Stole Venango County’s Money, but the feds asked our local authorities to keep a lid on it and that seems like a hard-to-ignore request. Troop movements, contract negotiations and medical tests are better handled without widespread public scrutiny, balanced by the knowledge that the results will ultimately be revealed.

It should also be noted that it is not an information vacuum when the information is right there for all the to see, but people are just too lazy or cantankerous or attached to what they’ve already decided is the truth. If you insist on remaining unbothered by the facts, the only vacuum is between your ears.

Gifts of Time and Money

(News-Herald, December 6) One of the thorny issues of the Christmas season is the business of gifting, the large-scale dispersal and redistribution of whatever we have that passes for wealth. It’s a pretty shaky proposition to start with the birth of the baby Jesus, the Creator of All manifest in frail human form, and then draw a line from there to a mad dash to buy home appliances, jewelry, toys, and the latest dvd’s.

The conventional answer is to enshrine gift-giving as a tradition begun by the magi bringing their gifts to the manger. It’s a nice thought, even if it does give short shrift to the shepherd who showed up with full hearts but empty hands.

I’m not lobbying against gift-giving. It’s an honorable tradition, and it gives us the opportunity to reflect on something at the core of honorable, devout and ethical behavior. And that’s the simple matter of acting on what we believe.

People, whether as individuals, or as parts of organizations or governments, usually have their stated priorities and their real priorities, and they don’t always match. To find out the real priorities, simply watch how someone spends two resources—time and money.

Time and money are the resources that matter because they are absolutely limited. You only get so much of both, and that in turn means that every expenditure of time or money is a choice. The hour I spend talking to you is an hour I don’t spend doing something else; the dollar I spend on a chocolate cupcake can’t be spent on fresh twinkies.

People try to identify priorities with talk, but talk is cheap. It costs you nothing. One common trait of the presidencies of Slick Willie and George Junior is grasping that if they said what people wanted to hear, many folks will not pay any attention to what actually happened.

Most working folks have experienced the Pep Talk. This talk (apparently taught in Manager School) involves some boss standing in front of a room full of widget twiddlers. “Widget twiddlers,” he says earnestly, “are the heart and soul of this organization. What you do is so very important, and we just couldn’t function without you.”

Managers, here’s a clue. If you can’t right now think of ten real, substantive things that you’ve done in the last year that could be used as evidence of your commitment to widget twiddling, you should just shut up, because nobody in the room will believe your motivational words. On the other hand, if you can name ten things, you probably don’t need to talk about your commitment, because your people already know.

Here’s your management lesson for the day. If the only way people will know what you value is that you tell them, don’t bother. A) Nobody will believe you because B) it isn’t true.

If you are telling folks you’re all about your home life, but you’re rarely at home, you’re not very believable. If you tell your kids they come first, but you spend all your money on Beanie Babies, while the kids make do with one pair of jeans and a t-shirt each, your kids likely suspect that they aren’t number one.

What we say we “can’t afford” is always a clear marker of our real priorities. We can always find money for the things that Really Matter; we can always find reasons not to pay for what doesn’t.

Sometimes priorities are real. There are people in this world who really can’t afford cable tv because they really need to buy food instead. And there are people who have to sacrifice most of the hours in their week to make that money. But most of us are neither that poor nor that busy. We just make a lot of choices in a hurry, without thinking much about what we’re choosing.

But every year as Christmas rolls around, we become deliberate gifters. We choose who to give to, how much, and how carefully to choose. And that’s a part of the holiday we can learn from.

If we consider keeping local workers and businesses worth supporting, we can choose to spend our money here at home. If there are people and organizations and events that matter to us, we can choose to spend our time on them.

And it doesn’t stop on December 26. Every day we trade away bits of money. Every day we give away twenty-four of our precious hours. We can toss them away impulsively and support priorities that we don’t even realize we’ve chosen, or we can choose to give them in ways that we truly value, like carefully selected seasonal gifts. That would be Christmas every day.

Remembering Grassy

(News-Herald, September 1998) For a quick lesson in how people took care of each other once upon a time in this country, there is no better subject than Alonzo Nichols.

Lonnie was born in 1865 in Williamstown, New York, and moved to Franklin when still young. At a fairly early age he became a bootblack, the profession he stayed with for most of his life.

It's doubtful that Lonnie was ever in school. Accounts from print and oral tradition indicate that he was at best, slow, and at most, what we used to call "retarded."

But newspaper accounts of the day never apply so much as "simple" to his name. In 1901, the Evening News said, "he developed an elastic imagination that has been constantly stretched until today its extension is unlimited..."

Early on in life, he developed his own dance, which he called the grasshopper; consequently, he was known through most of his life as "Grassy."

He knew everyone in town, and proclaimed himself at various times the mayor, police chief, and fire chief. He attached himself closely to the Franklin Band; his only residence for much of his life was the band room in City Hall. That address is duly noted in several town directories.

Grassy was not a perfectly picturesque town character; he was not sentimental Hollywood cute. He was pushy about asserting his "rank," frequently insisting on delivering speeches at public events, and often made life a bit difficult for others. Band lore includes tales of various times that Grassy had to be moved out so that the band room could be fumigated; hygiene was not one of his virtues.

At one point, irritated city fathers gave him the option of going to Erie to live with relatives or undergoing evaluation for a room at the institute in North Warren. Grassy did go to Erie occasionally, but his heart never left Franklin.

His loyalty was legendary. When the band left on a trip to Buffalo without him, he was seen doggedly trudging up the railroad tracks after them.

He was devoted to the Elks and their minstrel show, and was often featured as a "character comedian" or as "Blondin, King of the Tightrope."

Grassy's father died in the poorhouse; his mother in Erie did not seem interested in him. The city of Franklin was his family.

There is no hint that any of his public appearances were greeted with mockery, or that he was ever viewed as an object of ridicule. The band included him in at least one group photo. The newspaper regularly published accounts of events in the life of "the Chief."

When he became upset over the state of his resting place in the band room, the mayor and police chief bought him a new cot. The Elks let him carry the purple banner for them in an important parade in Erie, with no apparent fear that he might somehow embarrass them.

In 1910, the city sent out postcards to invite folks back for Old Home Week. The cards featured drawings of favorite landmarks such as the courthouse. One featured a picture of Grassy wielding a gigantic key to the city and inviting folks home.

Nor did the city treat him as incompetent. Newspaper accounts suggest that folks did keep an eye on his comings and goings and even his bank balance. When he would leave town for a "vacation" and end up arrested for vagrancy (while claiming to be the mayor of Franklin), someone would go fetch him back. But it appears that no one ever tried to control his activities or finances, or steer him to an "appropriate" life.

There was never an attempt to take away any of his freedom, not even "for his own good."

Eighty years ago, in September of 1918, Grassy hopped onto the running board of a fire truck headed for the Third Ward. On the way, the solid rubber tire broke and struck Grassy and one of the firemen. Shortly thereafter he died.

The Mayor and City Controller agreed that Grassy should have a first class funeral at the city's expense. Hundreds called to pay final tribute; the funeral procession, led by the mayor's car and including the Elks and the Franklin Band, was viewed by hundreds who stood in the rain to pay their respects. Grassy' pallbearers included Elks, city councilmen, and the fire and police chiefs.

Wrote the News: "While the going of Grassy was greatly regretted, all of the circumstances of his death and burial seemed fitting. He met his death in what he considered his line of duty, and the show on the occasion of his burial was in keeping with his whole career."

What, one wonders, would happen to Grassy today? Perhaps we would all turn our backs on him, secure in the knowledge that professionals would take care of him. He would be their problem, not ours. Social services would find him an "appropriate job" and train him to "properly" handle his money.

Perhaps with the aid of people who could help him find his "proper place" in (or out of the way and to one side of) society, he would even have a life today more satisfying and fulfilling than the one he enjoyed so long ago, but somehow I doubt it.

The summer after this column ran, the Franklin Silver Cornet Band corrected a longstanding oversight and placed a marker on Grassy's grave.

Diet Screts

(News-Herald, November 29)We are told, with increasing frequency, that we are a nation of fatties.

Like many folks, I see plenty of anecdotal evidence to support that. And this is a time of year that increases our awareness. Holiday shopping allows us to see the many examples of folks carrying a heavy helping of heft, and holiday eating gives us plenty of chance to join them.

So what are we to do? To read the articles, watch the tv shows, or listen to people talk, one would think that weight loss requires some sort of scientific breakthrough more elusive than brain transplantation, curing cancer, or the unified field theory. It’s a deep and difficult secret.

Of course, before you can hear the secret, you have to be mentally prepared for it.

You can’t hear the secret if you are still in denial. If you’re still claiming that you are merely big-boned, fluffy, glandular, or a victim of a peculiar optical illusion created by poor clothing choices, you aren’t ready. If you think having your child carry an extra fifty pounds to match the extra two hundred you’ve got is a personal matter with no consequences for the people who love you, you’re not ready.

Nor do you get off the hook by acting as if the only other option is to become a walking q-tip. Being seriously underweight is not a desirable option.

You can get off the hook by being honest about your size and being okay with it. The media ideal for build is bizarrely wispy. Women seem to seriously over-estimate the sexiness of visible bone structure. Go pop in a Marilyn Monroe movie. There’s fairly widespread agreement that she was a fairly attractive woman, and she was no waif-like frail flower. Plenty of us are carrying what current health charts would call a few extra pounds. And not just a few as in “a few people ran for county commissioner” but “a few people went deer hunting.” Some of us are fine with that.

But perhaps you have found your physique more aggressively ample than you care for, and you’re ready to shed a few ounces. What’s the secret to weight loss, the mystery that millions pursue through infomercials and the Enquirer?

Burn more calories than you take in.

Too simple? Move around more, and eat less.

There’s a reason that so many diet supplements have fine print about following an eating plan—it’s the eating plan that makes the difference.

Not that it makes the difference they show you. Those nifty before and after pictures? Here’s how that works, according to some of my internet sources.

Find an athlete who’s about to have some serious surgery that will lay him up for a few months. After he’s been stuck in bed a while, take a “before” picture of his newly pudgy self. Then, once he’s up and around, he can resume his usual athletic level of activity. After his body bounces back to its original trim and muscular shape, take your “after” shot. Oh, and don’t forget to sign him to a contract that requires his secrecy on the matter.

So the bad news is that your physical awesomeness will always be limited by your genes and history. No amount of exercise can turn Wally Cox into Arnold Schwarzenegger. Your body makes the rules about what it will and won’t put up with.

But most diet plans will work, for a while, because they make you think about (and therefore limit) the food you eat. I could go on the Vowel Diet: Mondays I only eat three foods with the letter A, then on Tuesday only three with letter E, and so on. I would lose weight, because I would stop throwing any sort of food within reach in the general direction of my big, open mouth.

The real trick is to pick something you can live with. I once jump-started weight loss with the clinical depression diet—I do not recommend it as a long term approach. But I have picked up a few healthier tricks.

When choosing diet versions of food, pick versions that you don’t usually eat. If you don’t love Thousand Island dressing, the diet version’s taste won’t be a let-down.

I also discovered that I can do nothing while sweating on exercise machinery as easily as I can do nothing while sitting on a couch.

And dieting is the perfect time for positive procrastination. There are foods that I can’t give up forever, but I can put off just about anything for the next twenty-four hours.

Eat less, exercise more. There are worse problems than not liking your weight, but not many that are easier to fix. Love yourself. Take care of yourself.

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.