A life in murals

I've been working on a few Flash-related projects lately. I'm not particularly proficient at Flash, although I'm better than I was last year and better than the year before that. By the time, I retire, I'm hoping to warm up to average.

I did one for MPR the other day on a Cooperstown exhibit, and I finished one today about a gentleman out in Moorhead (on the North Dakota border), who spent much of his life painting murals at Concordia College.

He died in May at a young age and left a legacy behind. Not bad. Of course, you'll need Flash installed to see it. Also you will not see it if you're using Firefox. Use Internet Explorer; just this once.

What I did on Thanksgiving

I made this for a piece that ran this morning on MPR. You'll need at least Flash 8 to see it. Click on the image. Baseball season is coming. Indians tickets went on sale this morning. BTW, I bought a brick at the new Heritage Park.

There was a game back in 2001 in which the Tribe was trailing 12-0 after just a few innings. Carolie and I went to bed and Patrick, being a real fan, stayed up. After couple of minutes he popped into the bedroom announcing the Indians had scored a run. "That's nice," we'd say, and roll over and put a pillow over our heads.

Patrick kept coming, only he got more excited. "Now they're only down by 6!," he'd shout. That's nice.

This went on for some time until he came in announcing, "they're only down by 1 and Lofton just hit a triple with nobody out."

We got up to watch the end of a game the Indians would win over Seattle 15-14.

So the brick will say,

"'Dad, now they're only
down by 6!'
8/1/05 CLE 15 SEA 14
Patrick Collins kept the faith."

We'll be traveling to Jacob's Field next year to find our brick.

Turkey echoes

OK, so it's Thanksgiving and the Collins family is getting a taste of its own medicine. We won't have the whole family for dinner today. Bummer.

Patrick had a ride-along last night with the ambulance folks in Arden Hills, and he's working at his regular gig today since he's not exactly senior in command. (He works for Allina Health Care's transportation folks, taking people to and from the hospital. I guess they need an EMT for that sort of thing).

Sean is coming over later, but we don't know when. You may recall last summer at Patrick's party, we invited the Carter sons over for Thanksgiving since their parents were moving back to Boston. But Carolie hasn't been able to get ahold of them all week. So we presume the sound of a full house is going to be replaced today by the sound of an empty nest. This, of course, takes some getting used to.

A few years ago -- well, many years ago now, I guess -- we vowed one year (even with a full house), to get out of here for Thanksgiving, and the next year I took everyone to DisneyWorld, which was great fun since we stayed in one of the nice on-park hotels (Boardwalk).

Carolie and I, in our youth, always worked Thanksgiving. It wasn't until we moved out here, I think, that I pretty much stopped. It was a little easier to take when I worked at the RKO Network since it was located at 1440 Broadway and there was some sort of parade going right by the building.

At the station where Carolie and I first met -- WBEC in Pittsfield, Ma. -- there was a man who lived in the house across the street who always used to make a full Thanksgiving dinner for the announcers and newscasters who had to work each year.

We've had varying amounts of success every year in trying to get more people to our Thanksgivings. When we lived in Belmont, Ma., Carolie invited a woman she worked with to our home for dinner. And after she cooked, we waited and waited and waited and she never showed up. A day or so later, at work, she admitted to Carolie that being African-American, she felt uncomfortable coming the mostly-white Belmont. Right. And using a telephone's a real stretch too, right?

We had a friend who lived nearby who we called to see if he wanted to come over for dinner. In fact, he got several such last-minute phone calls; a testament to our inability to pull in a crowd.

I wish he lived nearby now.

On funerals

I've been to two funerals in the last week. I go to more funerals now than I do weddings or baptisms. Such is life... and death.

Yesterday, Carolie, Patrick, and I went to the funeral for former Rep. Jeff Hansen, whose son, Adam, has been a friend of Pat's since kindergarten days. Adam is one of the Twins batboys and graduated from Woodbury High School in June, as did Patrick. And he's a darned nice kid.

Eighteen is too young an age to be burying your father and it was hard watching Adams watching his father for the last time.

I find funerals, however, fascinating. The religious part of it, of course, is always worthy of thought and consideration but I also feel at times that funerals are the last great act of theater. I can't go to a funeral anymore without leaving thinking the person must've been the greatest person that ever walked the face of the earth; and perhaps they are. If they were as described, they were and are all better people than I'll ever be; not that I set the bar particularly high for that sort of thing.

Tell the truth, though. Do you ever sit at a funeral and think, "I wonder how many people will come to mine?" Or, "what will they say about me?" I kind of think I'd rather have a eulogy that says something like, "he really tried to be good at what he did, but what made him such a schmuck?"

Also yesterday, they had the funeral for Ed Bradley in New York and, as expected, it was a jazz funeral. Bradley, apparently, really was as good as they say he was and the funeral appeared to be a party, which is what funerals should be.

At Jeff's funeral yesterday, I half expected "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" to be on the list of hymns since he was such a big baseball fan, but no.... it was pretty standard stuff.

It better be at mine. How cool would it be to have a huge pipe organ in a church belting out Take Me Out to the Ballgame?

The only other request I have just for the record -- is for a small band of some sort that can play decent Greatful Dead music to play "Ripple."

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
Would you hear my voice come through the music
Would you hold it near as it were your own?

It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they're better left unsung
I don't know, don't really care
Let there be songs to fill the air

(Chorus)

Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow

Reach out your hand if your cup be empty
If your cup is full may it be again
Let it be known there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men

There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone

(Chorus)

You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone
If you should stand then who's to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home

Here, listen to it. (RealAudio required)

If funerals are a celebration, why don't we actually celebrate?

The picket fence syndrome

As I remember it, my mother came into my room on the day -- or pretty near the day -- I turned 16. Since I was a teen, I was sleeping late. She said it was time for me to get a job, or paint the white picket fence that surrounded our house. I chose the picket fence. About 20 pickets later, I was working at McDonald's, and with a few minor exceptions, I've been working every day since.

Looking back, I'm going to guess that the announcement of my employment future that morning came after severe parental projection. Parental projection occurs late at night when you sit and try to figure out where your kids are heading. You project the future and then you try your darndest to prevent it. Oddly enough, I find most parents project the worst-case scenario, which is odd considering you start out projecting them as future presidents. When they get their first hit in T-ball, you suddenly see scholarship opportunities. Sometime between then and, say, 16, it all goes south.

I'm very bad at this. I spend considerable time trying to figure out where my kids are going to end up. I'm not any better at it this week because Sean told me over lunch the other day that he's down to one class at school while working fulltime. "Are you going to take classes next semester," I asked. "Probably not," he said. In my house "probably not" translates as "no."

He doesn't feel he's learning anything at school and he's probably right. Sean is pretty much a genius and he needs a real challenging class -- or classes -- that will help him get "his certs," which I think has something to do with what computer geeks need to have a comfortable life with, umm, computers.

I tried to explain that he has to look at things "long term," and that at 21, working at MPR -- even as an intern -- with some tremendously talented people who can teach him, and the possibility of a full-time gig someday -- maybe -- is a good place to be, especially since he likes it so much.

"Keep your options open," I tell him, trying to get the message through that continuing studies is a long-term solution, not a short-term one. But I don't think it's going to work out that way and I hope he knows what he's doing, and doesn't end up selling pencils on the street.

But kids don't look long-term sometimes. They look at what they're making now and what the quick payoff could be. I have a hard time relating to that because I got in the radio business working 6 days a week for $105 a week because it's the price I had to pay in the business. Survive for a few years, and things start opening up.

And things did. The folks that didn't want to make $105 a week dropped out of the business and, suddenly, paths started opening and I've done, well, OK. Nonetheless, I think about how I'm going to stay employed, until I retire 12 years, 6 months, and 13 days from now.

Smart, eh? Long-term thinking. Except that from time to time I remember that from the day I started painting a picket fence to right now, I've gone to work in the radio or news business each day, and I often think if I were to do it again, I'd go be a bush pilot in Alaska when I got out of school ... or work with Special Olympics... or build Habitat for Humanity houses ... or fly LifeFlight helicopters for next-to-nothing, and worry about the future... later.

I don't regret what I've done, but I also recognize what I didn't do.

Tonight, my oldest son, is sleeping on a sidewalk outside of the Best Buy in Oakdale, because tomorrow on Friday morning they'll sell Playstation Wii'ss to the first 20 people in line for a couple hundred dollars and he knows he can immediately turn it into $2,000 on E*Bay.

I hope he uses the money for classes, but maybe he'll buy some flight lessons and a ticket to Alaska instead.

Accentuate the negative

I've been working on covering the campaign of 2006 since January of 2005. I'm glad it's over. It's taken a lot of work, 7 days a week at ridiculous hours of the day and what do I have to show for it? A bunch of other people got new high-paying gigs and get to drive shiny black Escalades. Well, good for them.

Sen.-elect Amy Klobuchar was in yesterday so I introduced myself. "Oh, you're Polinaut," she said. Nice. I introduced her to Sean who noted that he worked backstage Sunday night at the MPR Senate debate, and then -- being my son -- he told her he thought she was better at the State Fair debate. The two then engaged in a wonderful exchange of tactical analysis of the campaign, and the one thing I noticed is that Sen. Klobuchar kept focused on Sean and what he was saying, where a lot of politicians would've blown him off and focused on some, oh I don't know... blog writer. That was cool. And it told me a lot.

I like covering politics, it's people who like politics that drive me crazy. By the end of the campaign, the rabid element of the electorate is foaming at the mouth, ready to kill anything, not for the sport of it, but because their brains are sparking from the wrong neurons.

We had a Democratic wave in our corner of the universe too, with the exception of our congressional race, which was won by a woman who is far right wing, and goes to church on Sunday and apparently listens to God, but not the 44% of the voters who don't like her.

Her opponents said she was a crazy, out-of-control rabid, God squadding, gay hating, Pope killing monster. "Just listen to her," they said. They're pretty upset with the media because the media didn't report every day "Crazy, out-of-control rabid, God squadding, gay hating, Pope killing monster still in race for Congress." Neither did her opponent. "It's not the opponent's job," they said,showing a fairly sizeable ignorance of the democratic process.

So the morning after Election Day, one of the calm, well-reasoned, logicians sent me an email, "Fuck you, Collins. Good riddance." I'm guessing he doesn't get the concept of irony.

I wrote my last post on Polinaut Tuesday night and by Wednesday morning, several had admonished me for being cynical and negative, although -- as near as I could tell -- they didn't explain why Polinaut's readers had made it the most read page on the MPR Web site in just a few months.

What the detractors have done is what a lot of us do during the political season. They assume that democracy hinges on people doing things their way. They insist that there is one right belief, and it is theirs.

This is the true source of their irritation, since there are now 300 million people in America and at any given time, 4 of them will need months to come up with a proper date for a picnic.

This "negative" thing on the other hand, is one that has dogged me for some time. I happen to like being known as "the idealistic cynic" (that should've been the name of the blog), for while the people who call other people "cynical," mean it in the negative, it betrays their ignorance of who the cynics were... and are. They believed that perfection was possible and, if nothing else, one should strive for it.

That's a difficult concept for Minnesotans to understand, for they will gladly forfeit perfection -- or the drive for it -- in exchange for the perception of warm civility.

It's called passive aggressive. In Minnesota, a person might smile and say to someone else, "have a nice day," when they really mean, "you should die."

The other person will say "thank-you," and then walk away, and both will think "what did he mean by that?" They will then substitute reality for the answer to that question.

In a world where you only have so much time and energy to expend, far too much of it here is spent trying to figure out what the words that are used really mean. Communication in the upper Midwest is an entirely fraudulent exercise, something that frustrates just about everyone who has ever moved here, especially those from the East, which has become the mover-and-shaker capital of the world because the time not spent trying to figure out what someone else really meant is used to move and shake.

It is not everyday I quote Harvard professors. But Phillip Greenspun has a tremendous treatise on "the negative people" today. Many Minnesotans won't understand it, but maybe some will:

The true pessimists are those who never complain.

And they are the ones who can make a difference

Dimwits and lightbulbs

For a large part of my adult life, I have offered wondered where people get the time to do the things that people do. You know, stuff aside from raising kids and schlepping off to work everyday etc.

Occasionally a few folks will pass through the newsroom on their way to the studio to do a talk show on their recent four-month expedition to the Arctic Circle. Who can get four months off from work?

I've often thought that maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just not willing enough to not know where the next paycheck is coming from, to take that many risks. Heck, I can remember a time when I decided not to go into politics because there's no job security. Looking back, I realize that, sure, you might lose an election, but between lobbying and patronage, those folks are never out of work.

Stupid me.

So why do I bring this up today? This is why:



Yep, it's a lightbulb, and yes, that's an image from this site, which
provides a live Web camera of the light bulb. This isn't just any lightbulb, however. This is one that has burned for more than 100 years in some fire station in Colorado.

OK, so who has time to periodically look at a stinkin' light bulb in Colorado on a daily basis?

Unfortunately it's, ummmmm, me.

The toolbox

My son, Sean, turned 21 a few days ago. I don't know how it happened, but it happened and it beats the alternative of not happenning, which happened -- or didn't -- to my best friend's son a year ago, when he was killed in a one-car crash while driving home early on Sunday morning in Providence, Rhode Island.

I haven't heard from my best friend since and there has never been -- nor will there ever be -- something I can say to ease my friend's pain, even if I were able to make contact. The only thing that bonds fathers... are sons and daughters.

The utter frustration of life is fathers and sons cannot understand each other until it is too late -- or nearly so. My son loves me and I love him and both of us have known it forever, but that didn't stop us from often behaving like, well, fathers and sons.

As he is not yet a father -- thank God -- I thought long and hard about what to give him on the occasion of his 21st birthday. And then his brother, Patrick, called and said he needed to change the light bulbs in his car and didn't know how to do it. "Oh, and all of the lights except for one are burned out, it's night, and I have to drive home," he added. So I gathered some tools, and headed into St. Paul to change his light bulbs. It was there in a dark garage with nowhere near enough tools to do the job that I realized the gift I'd give.




The next night, I went to Sears, bought a toolbox and then -- and you have to understand I want my ashes spread in the hardware department when I die -- raced around to fill it with the right tools to start.

Then I came home and wrote him this letter to put inside:

Dear Sean:

Many years ago -- probably about 16 -- I was trying to get at some water pipe that was frozen below the kitchen at our house in Sheffield. I didn't have the right tools so I just took a hammer and whacked at the cabinet floor covering the pipe. "Mom, Dad's breaking the house," a young child said. That was you, with an early -- yet precise -- assessment of my handyman skills; this, on top of my historical lack of success with tools (See attached).

I don't know when it was that I started getting interested in tools; perhaps it's a "guy thing" that develops sometime, you just don't know when. I was a late bloomer. And since you are like me, this gift will probably mean nothing to you. But someday it will. And just as your grandfather (Papa) gave me my first toolbox, I give this to you, including a few to get you going. Rest assured: you'll need more.

I think tools are a metaphor for life in general. You start out with barely enough to get by and when you try to use what you've got, well, sometimes you end up breaking the house. But you keep at it and you just keep adding more tools. You add more tools first because you might need them someday, and then just because tools are cool.

I give you this with these few words of advice, metaphorical or not:

1) Don't buy cheap, crappy tools. No matter what kind of deal it seems like, no matter how much -- or how little -- you spend, when you get home and open the package, you've got cheap crap. Buy good tools.

2) Don't throw away tools. Find a good home for them instead.

3) Build something someday. It doesn't have to be anything big. It could be an airplane, it could be a birdhouse. Just build it as well as you can and it'll serve as a reminder to all that you were here.

4) Don't be afraid to break the house.

5) If you have a son -- or daughter -- someday, give 'em a toolbox when they turn 21. And then someday later, give him your tools. One at a time, so that when you're gone, they're still building things that remind people that you were here.

That way, when your kid uses a tool you gave him, he'll be reminded that his Dad loved him like there was no tomorrow.

As I love you.


Dad

Lucky 21

My oldest son, Sean, turned 21 today. So today I celebrate his ascension to adulthood and mourn the loss of a damned good tax break.

I wish I had a really great picture to post here, but alas, Sean is one of those people who doesn't like to have his picture taken (pssst.... there's one back in one of the entries in July).

Sean has always been in a hurry. Always. He was born a month early and has been go-go ever since. We lived in White Plains, New York at the time and when my wife said it was "time," off we raced to the hospital. Only it wasn't time, it was too early. So the docs -- we had two great obstetricians -- did what they could to delay his delivery because they weren't sure he'd be fully developed.

So Carolie had to put up with contractions for something like three days. It was a, ummm, interesting time.

I remember the Cardinals and Dodgers were playing in the National League Divisional Series, so Carolie would sleep between contractions and I'd watch the game. But they had a fetal monitor going and it would also show a number that seemed to indicate a contraction was coming.

I thought it was a cool machine, and so a couple of times I'd notice the number on the machine going up, so I'd whack Carolie awake and say, "it says you're having a contraction." I only did that twice.

Eventually Sean was born at 4:36 (or was it 5:36 Eastern Time?). He was colicky and didn't like sleeping much and didn't like us sleeping much either, apparently. Then he had to go back to the hospital for jaundice. Tons of fun, and we thought we were -- as most new parents do -- the first people on the planet ever to have a baby.

We had lunch together today and tonight his friends are taking him out and I'm guessing they'll do some bar hopping because isn't that what you're supposed to do on your 21st birthday?

Alas, I don't want to know. He's an adult now. And I'm not supposed to worry.

Right.

What time is it?

This is my mother, you met her some months ago -- July 4th, to be exact -- a day she considers the last day of summer. She's sitting, I think, on a beach in the Parker River Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island (Newburyport, Mass.) looking at... well, I don't know what she's looking at. Probably nothing.

If I were there, I'd be doing the same thing. Staring at nothing but the water rolling in and rolling back out. Over and over and over again.

Fire is the same way. Light a fire at campsite and you'll sit and look at it burning, doing nothing.

Why? It's hypnosis? Why? Where does it take us when it whisks us from the land of S'mores and boogeyboards?

My mother's favorite time of the day at the beach is around 4 or 5, when people leave it. She's sitting at a beach in October. She thinks summer ends on July 4th.

Wherever we go when we consider fire and water, there's no calendar or clock there.

Life in the wind

This is one of those fall days in Minnesota where you begin to realize what a man feels when taking his dying breath. The sun is warm, the trees are golden, the baseball game is on TV and the air has the faint aroma of fallen leaves spiced with everything good that happened to you when you were young.

Breathe deep and savor it; tomorrow we die. Winter's out there somewhere, moving this way.

And so I raked my suburban lawn today and then knelt into the pile of leaves to gather them into a trash bag...small handfuls at a time, like a man looking for something lost.

For me it's 1967. I was 13 years old with time on my hands. The Red Sox -- the Impossible Dream team -- were playing the Minnesota Twins on the last weekend of the regular season, with a chance -- a poor chance when you think about it, but a chance just the same -- of winning the American League pennant back when it meant something; back when there were 10 teams and no divisions.

I spent much of that last weekend with a glove, a tennis ball, and a radio... listening to the Red Sox game and throwing the ball when Ken Coleman said, "Lonborg winds and throws..." Thump. The ball bounced back and I, now Rico Petrocelli, would field it to end the inning against the dastardly Twins, who were also playing for the pennant.

For the next inning, I moved to the side of the barn just up the street, because it had a tall roof and if you throw the ball just so, it would bounce at the end of the slate roof, and fly back.... back.... back to the five- or six-foot-high stone wall of Mr. Murray's house; the one that protected his prize gladiolas.

It played well the part of Fenway Park's left field wall. And I was now Carl Yastrzemski. Except that Yastrzemski never had to deal with pieces of slate falling from the sky.

And so it went, until the game ended, or the Murrays chased me away from the gladiolas, until finally the Sox beat the Twins, and the team captured the American League pennant.

Eventually the Sox went to the World Series and fell in 7 games to the St. Louis Cardinals and -- though I was a bigger Cleveland Indians fan than a Red Sox fan -- joined the ranks of New Englanders who'd gone before, heartbroken in the fall by a team they followed.

It was many years later -- 2004 to be exact -- when the Red Sox finally won their World Series. "It'll be the worst thing that ever happened to those people, " I said to a friend. "They don't realize that their joy is born from their heartbreak." Take a Red Sox fan's heartbreak away, and you've taken away their soul.

But like fall, Sox heartbreak returns every year. And the true New Englander learns to savor both.

Breathe deep. And find your youth.

The days I always wanted

When my kids were growing up, I didn't really dream of them becoming president of the United States, or changing the world with Nobel prize-winning research (although I've always believed -- and still do -- that either one of these kids could change the world.).

My dream? Having my kids call me in my older years and say, "let's go to a ballgame."

How tough would that be? Every dream can be dashed and I have to admit at times I thought this one would be too. My oldest son had an illness that kept him out of school in the last few years and at times I wondered if he'd be able to survive on his own. The youngest son always seemed to be ready to snap the leash and never look back.

Kids are like that and the moment you realize that they're not going to grow up to be president, you begin to think it'll be a great thing if they just stay out of prison.

Give a parent a brain, an imagination, and the ability to project the future, and they'll screw it up every time. Ask me how I know.

My oldest son moved out and onto his "own" more than a year ago and I spent a few late nights looking to the southwest (he moved to Richfield) sending my "Dad messages" by telepathy. My youngest son moved out not long after graduating high school earlier this year. And just like that, I had myself an empty nest and a telephone that didn't ring, and a bucketload of guilt that when I moved out of my house after high school (and off to college), I didn't go back home or call more often. When you're 18, 40 miles seems like a long way away.

But a funny thing happened, son #1 enrolled himself in community college; him with his 145 I.Q., to get his various computer and networking certifications. And when an internship opened up in the information technology department of Minnesota Public Radio, he applied for it and -- on his own -- got it. I work at MPR, but I had nothing to do with it. And I told him that mentioning my name around MPR is as likely to get a door closed in your face as it is to open one up.

My best day in 30 years in the radio business. The day my son called me from his cubicle and whispered, "I feel like an adult." And in the months since, from what I can tell, he's become a valuable member of MPR. I hope they hire him fulltime sometime.

He stops by the newsroom once or twice a day and I think, "how good is my life?

I also begin to realize why my Dad, a successful insurance agent, tried to get me to take over his business as he neared retirement. For a time I did work with him and I was OK at it, but fathers-and-sons often don't mix well and radio came calling. I'll bet the day I started in his business was one of the best in his career. I'll bet the day I left was not. Kids.

Son #2, currently the youngest EMT and first responder in Minnesota, is also in community college (by the way, community college is simply the best bargain in higher education as near as I can tell) to get higher certifications and become a paramedic and whatever comes after that.

This week, he started with the Allina Health System, operating a unit that transports people to and from hospitals. He stopped by MPR yesterday, in his EMT uniform, parking his unit at the front door and like my other son, looking every bit the young man I dreamed he'd be.

I showed him around the new MPR digs and eventually he and his brother connected and then his brother started showing him around the MPR digs, paying particular attention to the technology that's all around the buidling that he can explain, but which sounds like another language to me.

In minutes the two of them were hopping from place to place as I began to fall back, and watch my two boys in my workplace, one being proud of who he's become, the other becoming prouder. And occasionally I'd stop to introduce son #2 to an MPR exec with the words I love more than any other -- for either boy: "this is my son."

Later, as they left to go grab something to eat together, it was hard for me to remember that these were the same two kids that occasionally tried to kill each other.

Last night the phone rang. It was son #2 asking me if I wanted to have dinner at Mickey's, a famous diner in downtown St. Paul (you may remember it from The Mighty Ducks), that neither one of us has ever been to.

So today, after I finish the newscast on the Current, he'll swing by, we'll grab son #1 and my boys and I will go to dinner.

"At Mickey's," I said to my wife this morning, noting that it's not exactly Kincade's.

"These are the days you always wanted," she said.

Yeah.

Explain this to me

I can't really say I'm a big fan of organized religion anymore. I haven't been to church in a few years, pretty much since my wife left her job as church secretary and started saving the world one by one. But that's not to say I don't believe in God; I just don't think you need a middleman and I see too many churches getting built and too few hungry people being fed. I don't think God gives a rip whether I actually go to church; I think that's something blared by, oddly enough, churches. Go figure.

I don't need someone to help me talk to God. So pardon me for just a second while I hold a side conversation here.

God, what the hell are you doing?

I get the whole "mysterious ways" thing, which -- between you and me -- is code for "beats the heck out of me." I understand the concept of free will. I even understand the George Burns concept when he said in Oh, God!, "I don't worry about the little stuff, kid."

You know what I don't get? I don't get how some creep walks into a school -- and not just a school, God, an Amish school -- and lines young girls up against the blackboard and executes them.

I may be wrong, God, but that's not a "little thing." Where were you?

I watch NASCAR every now and again, God, and I see Jimmy Billy Bob hop out of his souped up car after winning and thanking you for winning the race, so I figure you had something to do with it. So why NASCAR and not little girls?

The fact I'm mad at you at all, it seems to me, ought to be enough to show I believe in you. If I didn't think you existed, I'd just be railing against some jag-off in Pennsylvania. Besides, I watched "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" last night and saw a bunch of volunteers build a house in 56 hours for a a woman with 6 kids in Michigan, who lost her husband last year... although -- now that I think of it -- what's the deal with taking a young man -- a firefighter no less -- on Christmas Eve?

I know you exist, because otherwise it's all just random acts of ... whatever. And coincidence isn't powerful enough to account for me and my wife, not to mention the two kids involved.

But, girls in an Amish school. What was that all about? To make a point? You used to make it with tablets and burning bushes, now it's guns in a school and little girls?

I've seen all the Albert Brooks movies, God, so I know that when I die -- and by the way, I'm staying out of Amish country for awhile -- I have to "defend my life."

But you know what? You've got some 'splaining to do too.

It's enough to make me want to go build someone a house, and stop watching NASCAR.

Wait 'til you see the action figures!

A week or so ago, Minnesota Public Radio hired a fine photographer to snap some "publicity" photos of people who are on the air. Since I'm occasionally on the air, I was on the list.

Now keep in mind, I still have almost all of the business cards MPR gave me 10 years ago, so I don't exactly rip through the outside world, handing out cards and photos. But since they went to the trouble of putting on make-up, well...

Anyway, he took three. One I really liked, but nobody else did. I won't tell you which. You'll just have to vote. The winner replaces that one over on the left there.

But, you know, I look at these and think: I should run for something.

Any openings that you know of?

Here we go:

Space cowboy

I've always been interested in the space program. When I was a kid, my folks gave me a Panasonic reel-to-reel recorder and I'd stay home (maybe I was faking, I forget) and watch Frank McGee on NBC or Walter Cronkite on CBS broadcast the various Gemini missions and I'd turn down the sound and talk into the thing. I figured I'd end up being an astronaut. I ended up instead being the guy who "talks into the thing." Go figure.

Anyway, here's a story I wrote about an aquaintance of mine, who has built the same kind of plane that I'm building. If you've been following the current Atlantis flight, maybe you've seen him on the TV. His name is Paul Dye. He's the lead flight director for the shuttle.

Now, this picture below is really cool. It was taken from France and, yeah, that's the sun. But check out the spots (click the image for a larger view). Unbelievable.

That's the shuttle on the left, after undocking with the space station on the right.



My mother had a beauty shop in our basement and, of course, it had a sink she'd wash customers' hair in and it had a chair that would lean back. It was a good place to play "spaceshot." So I'd take my brothers football helmet, put Saran wrap around the front and that was my space helmet. Then I'd wear a big heavy red parka and that was my spaceshuit. I'd get in the chair and that was my capsule.

I built a flimsy cardboard "control panel" of a capsule that had a bunch of paper switches that did nothing but light the stick of dynamite I was sitting on. And I'd turn on the tape recorder, on which I'd taped mission control. And then I'd "lift off."

It's a wonder I didn't suffocate.

Just wondering

How many churches do Islamists have to firebomb in order to make their point that the Pope was wrong to have quoted 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus who said everything the criticism of the Prophet Mohammad brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached"?

OK, so may be not everything. Is that the point?

It could be worse; you could've been born on February 29th

Today was my wife's birthday. She needs a break; bad things tend to happen on her birthday. In 1986, my grandmother died on her birthday. Then in 2001, well, you know. It wasn't a very good time.

We had a nice dinner at the Afton House, but earlier in the day, son Patrick left a frantic message that he pulled into a gas station on his motorcyle last night, took his backpack off and filled up with gas. But when he went in to pay, he forgot to take his backpack with him and when he returned it was gone.

It included all his text books, his homework, his cellphone, his PS2 and a key... an important key; an important master key to one of the facilities where he works part-time.

Things have always gone well for Patrick, so this has given him a punch in the gut and he really doesn't nkow where to start. It's one of those things where you can only take one thing at a time. But he hasn't calmed down enough to start. Maybe tomorrow.

My oldest son Sean, Carolie says, talked to her today and assured her that he and roomate Nick -- who we consider our son too -- will take care of roomate Patrick and "he'll be fine."

Good kids.

Happy birthday, Carolie.

Waiting to exhale

I come from a long line of worriers. Or maybe it's a short line. And maybe it's not "worrying," per se. Maybe it's just the inability to exhale.

I was at a get-together in Minneapolis last night for Minnesota bloggers and was talking to Gary Miller, who is one of the writers at the Kennedy vs. the Machine blog when the subject turned to kids -- my kids, of course -- and when I mentioned that both of my kids are now out of the house, Gary said "it must be nice to sit back and relax and say "yeah, we did a good job" ?

Yes, it must be. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

I wouldn't know and, frankly, I'd be scared to find out. "Exhaling" is destined to invoke karma. I've done that exhaling thing a couple of times and the results are not pretty. Back in 1986, I remember sitting on the couch in Belmont thinking, "living in Boston, working in radio, there's food in the 'fridge and money in the bank. Ahh, this is living."

A couple of months later, WHDH ran into budget problems and I was on the street. No more of that, even if it gets me a reputation at my current employer of being a pessimist, since they're unable to distinguish the difference between a pessimist and someone who knows disaster is just around the corner. It doesn't mean I think it'll come. It means I don't think it can't. One must not, I figure, tempt the gods with the awesome power of contentment.

In one tortured paradox, I realized the other night that while I always hope the kids will stay in touch, when the phone actually rings and the caller ID indicates it's either Sean or Patrick calling, Carolie and I always have the same reaction. We say "oh,no" out loud.

Carolie and I were both going to go to the pub last night for the bloggers' event, but at the last minute Patrick called and invited her to dinner with him and his ex (I guess) girlfriend, Pam. He called in the afternoon looking for her, too (she was in St. Cloud trying to get the Department of Human Services to get its bureacratic head out of its bureacratic ass), and it sure sounded important that they have dinner together and fast!

This is not normal, I thought. A kid who a few months ago started every sentence with "I'm 18 now..." desperately trying to have dinner with his mother. I could only reach one conclusion: someone's pregnant. But, no, it was just dinner.

Life is good. I guess.

A good walk not wasted

Click for a larger image.

Patrick and I played what is probably our last golf game of the summer. And perhaps one of the reasons why I'm not particularly good -- which is a kind way of saying I really stink -- at this game is that it was only our second game together this summer; the last being in June when Carolie's dad joined us for 9 holes.

A really great guy by the name of Bob Krupski of Sheffield (Mass.) took me out for my first game back when I lived in the Berkshires. Now, it takes a lot of patience to show someone how to play golf, but Bob was great at it and I really enjoyed the game even though I was pretty much the same golfer then that I am today.

We played, perhaps, a dozen rounds together and I never did break 100. So when we moved to Minnesota, my last words to Bob were, "I'll send you the scorecard when I break 100." Let's just say whatever mail Krup is hauling in from the mailbox, isn't weighted down by a single scorecard from Minnesota.

For some reasons, I prefer the physicians' approach to golf. "Game, heal thyself." I figure that even though I've never taken a lesson, and even though I only play a few times a year, my game will get better. Bulletin: it hasn't.

Patrick and I played up at Keller Golf Course in Maplewood, a fantastic county course that used to host PGA tournaments. Beautiful course. Damn tough course.

But I left the house today thinking, "I shot a 45 over 9 a few weeks ago, I'm putting well, my slice is manageable and this is the day." Golf can do that to you; rip you apart through overconfidence. But the big question is: how on earth can a guy who hasn't broke 100 in 17 years be overconfident?

Well, of course, the problem wasn't overconfidence, underconfidence or somewhereinbetweenconfidence. The problem is I've got no game; none, zip, nada.

Bottom line? Sixty on the front nine. Sixty-five on the back nine for a total of 125 and I might've forgotten a couple of strokes in the process.

I do love being out with my boys, though. Golf's a great game.

The national pasttime

One of Carolie and my favorite pasttimes is taking pictures of people who might not be in their most -- shall we say -- positive light. One of these days, I'll dig out the picture of the "pickle man" from the Fort Worth zoo and post it here.

The technique is when we see someone, I'll stand nearby and Carolie will pretend to be taking a picture of me, but then she zooms in on the other person. Juvenile? Oh, hell, yeah.

We went to the State Fair yesterday and found this guy...



Wish she'd zoomed out just a bit because the effect would've been better, especially since the spouse -- at least I think it was the spouse -- was also fairly passed out. They were at the Leinenkugel's area. The chairs are all oversized and so was this guy. But it doesn't show up well close in.

Update: One of my pals at work -- Julia Schrenkler -- has sent me a little online tool that transforms images. Here it is. It's a good time-waster.