School year symmetry

Tomorrow is May 1, the first day of the last month of school.  It's incomprehensible to me that eight months have disappeared in what feels like the span of just a few weeks.  As I took my evening walk and thought about what lies ahead during this final month I thought back to what occurs in the first month of school...and came up with a list of ways the two months mirror each other.  I have to believe there's some "verse" word that applies to this stuff - inverse, converse, reverse - but I'm not smart enough to figure it out.  Anyway.....

....as we finish the first month of school students are settling into classroom routines and procedures.  Life is good.  As we begin the final month of school students can do routines and procedures in their sleep.....but suddenly it's the final month of school so all bets are off.

.....as we finish the first month of school leaves are changing colors and the crisp air of fall invigorates us.  As we begin the final month of school leaves are beginning to emerge and any hint of crisp air is met with cries of disdain at the winter that won't let go and the possibility of another indoor recess.

.....in the first month of school kids are running cross country races on golf courses; in the final month kids are running around tracks because the golf courses are being used by, well, the golf team.  In September girls are playing tennis, in May it's the boys' turn to use the courts.  In the fall there's a girls' team hitting a volleyball, in the spring there's a girls' team hitting a softball.  The football cleats of fall are exchanged for the baseball cleats of spring.  Good grief, we have a lot of sports.

....in early September we begin testing kids to find out how depressed we should act at the nosedive their scores took since last spring while secretly hoping for really low scores so our students have a better chance at showing growth.  In May we test kids one final time and desperately hope for enough growth to satisfy Big Brother.

.....school begins right after Labor Day, the holiday widely known to be the end of summer.  School ends right after Memorial Day, the holiday widely known to be responsible for destroying any hope of instruction on the school days that follow.

.....in September we remind kids there's this thing called the alphabet that, to them, should be treated as the Holy Grail of reading success.  In May we use the Holy Grail to sip our elixir of sanity in the form of an alphabet countdown which keeps the kids somewhat excited about school and keeps teachers from constantly having to ask "HOW many days did you say we have left??!?"

......as the school year begins teachers and students show up in their back-to-school clothes looking prim and proper.  As the school year ends clothing and bathing both feel more like a "none of the above" option.

.....as the first month of school winds down teachers are hitting their stride for the year, feeling strong, ready to change the world one student at a time.  As the final month of the school year begins teachers are searching the employment section of the want ads.

Hang in there, teachers and students - this month, too, will be gone before you know it!

Life springs forth

Traveled north to the family farm for the final half of the weekend with hopes of one final ice fishing trip, maybe some tree planting, and for sure some time out and about on the land I call home.  Two out of three will have to do......

** It's been nice to see Mother Earth has decided to make an appearance again after nearly six solid months of being buried under snow.  It was mid-October when I was last here without snow on the ground.  As much as I enjoy the winter months, as much as I like having some snow for hunting season, and as much as I dread the coming heat and bugs of summer....there's something kind of, ummm, spiritual(?) about seeing land instead of snow.  No, not spiritual.  Cleansing, maybe?  I don't know what the word should be - I just know that walking and riding through the fields and seeing grass, even dead grass, stirred thoughts of potential, of what lies ahead, where before there were only thoughts of "When is this snow ever gonna melt?"

** So the fishing didn't go so well.  My dad and a buddy were on the ice on Wednesday, but by today the strong April sun and thawing temps had rotted the ice to an unsafe thickness.....or thinness.  Naturally we had to walk out on the ice to make sure we shouldn't be on it, but once we determined we were flirting with death we tiptoed back to shore and officially ended the hard water season.  And what a lousy season it was. Started with bitter cold temps and mediocre fishing at Christmas time with only two weekends of fishing since, both of which stunk.  Falling through the ice and drowning today would have been a fitting end, so take that ice fishing gods - you failed in your quest to ruin me completely!

** Instead of drowning we went to the sugar bush to collect maple sap one final time.  The extended cold up here really put a damper on the sap run this spring - my folks collected less than half the sap they usually get.  Today's plan was to pull the taps since A) very little sap has been running and B) the sudden, but very tardy, warmth has triggered bud development on trees, and as everyone knows when buds form the sap turns cloudy.  However, we were surprised to find a number of trees still producing clear sap, and more than expected to boot!  So we pulled two-thirds of the taps from poor producers or budded trees and left about 15 jugs hanging with the hopes of another day or two of clear sap.

** And then I planted trees.  I love planting trees.  It's kind of monotonous and hard on the back, but planting a tree is like planting a piece of the present as a gift to the future from the past - now that's spiritual.  Planting lots of trees at a time is a way to shape the land, create habitat, and enhance the already abundant natural beauty of this place I love so much.  Usually we put 500 trees in the ground each spring, purchased from the DNR, but this spring we're doing something a little different.  We're transplanting trees that we're stealing from the county.  The county road my parents live on is lined with small spruce saplings that will eventually be mowed or trimmed for roadside cleaning.  So I'm harvesting those trees and moving them to our fields.  Did sixty today, maybe try to get another sixty done tomorrow.  Go ahead, tell on me.

A month late, spring has taken hold of the north country.  Flocks of robins, pairs of sandhill cranes, and the most eager frogs were all making themselves heard and seen today.  The smoke rolled from the sugar shack sap boil as the warm south winds blew strong from dawn until, well, they're still howling out there.  Willow buds are cracking open, and lilac leaves won't be far behind.  With a little luck, and some rain, morel mushrooms will be pushing through the leaf litter the next time I'm here.  It's hard to say when next time will be; the visits here are brief and too far between, but to have a place like this, a place where I can be a front-row observer to seasonal changes, is something I will never take for granted.

Coaching by the numbers

Today it happened - the final coaching event of my 2017-18 school year was officially crossed off the calendar.  From a muggy August afternoon to a crisp, clear April morning I have been pulling on tennis shoes and hanging a whistle around my neck for a variety of games, practices, and sports.  And since stats have now come to dominate athletics like never before, here's a rundown of my journey number by number.  Or at least my best guess at these numbers.

8  •  months, from August 24th to today, April 28

3  •  age levels - 4th grade, 7th grade, varsity

2  •  genders and sports

5  •  teams: 4th grade volleyball and girls basketball, 7th grade volleyball and boys basketball, varsity volleyball

3  •. daughters coached

90-100  •  total athletes on those teams

62  •  games

11  •  cities visited

18  •  courts played on

90-100  •  practices

80ish  •  highest temperature on a practice or game day (August)

- 20ish  •  lowest temperature on a practice or game day (take your pick of most Saturdays December through February)

130  •  time-outs called....give or take

486  •  time-outs needed

4  •  parent "concerns", all of them minor, all of them easily solved

Dozens  •  parent thank you's, all of them sincere, all of them appreciated

25  •  total number of years now coached

And I am already looking forward to getting started on year number 26!  But first, some rest.

The intangibles

I'm a collector of quotes, quips, pithy proverbs, and deep thoughts, especially when the words within are spoken or written for coaches and/or athletes.  Two of my favorites that appeared in my Twitter feed this past week:

I'm not here to bash on parents, but the intangibles listed as the direct reflections of parenting are exactly what will lead to success in sports, so it follows that success, too, indicates parent quality.

It's easy to tell coaches what they shouldn't put up with, especially in high schools where cutting players out of programs can turn into a nightmare.  But the coaches who get this and don't put up with  the bad generally are surrounded by the good.

Both of these sayings sum up the power of attitude over talent.  The inferior importance of the things we can see versus the things we can't.

It's so dangerous for coaches, especially youth coaches in the elementary grades, to anoint stardom upon the shoulders of a fast kid, tall kid, strong kid, or smooth kid.  Many times the selections of young stars are done with superficial vision by coaches who don't see beyond the muscle tone to the inner strength, or lack thereof, of the individual.

Parents have a responsibility to raise kids who understand the definition of human decency and how to display it.  Coaches have a responsibility to raise the importance of that decency above strength and speed.  If neither adult group takes their responsibility seriously we produce nothing but strong, fast jerks.

My Friday night thoughts.  Take 'em or leave 'em.

A walk among the tombstones.

I will veer away from the sports theme that has dominated my posts this week, like this one, this one, and even this one.  I won't veer far, though, because tonight's topic is walking.  No, no, no - I don't mean the topic itself is walking.  That would be ridiculous.  I'm going to write about walking....far more exciting than sports.

Walking is my exercise of choice.  I bike in the summer and ski in the winter, but walking is my year round go-to activity when I need to shave some flabberdabbers (thank you, Child 3, for uniquely describing Dad's spare tire) from around my midsection.  I'm not planning to reinvent the wheel in this post with regards to the health benefits of walking or even explain why I do it so much.  No, this short post is an ode to the peaceful souls who share my walking path night after night.

My house sits in a nearly perfect location for an avid walker.  A half-block one way I can walk onto the bike lane that runs alongside the street perpendicular to mine, a lane that connects to a several mile paved bike and walking path.  A half-block the other direction is a fairly busy county road with wide shoulders, great for walking despite the traffic.  However, about a month ago I started using a new route for my almost daily walks - the varied roads and paths through the city cemetery.

I love a good cemetery; the organization of the graves, the peaceful somberness, the history that hangs in the air.  My community's destination for the dead is among the nicest I've been in.  Its location on the edge of town reduces traffic noise while increasing the natural feel of its surroundings.    The main road through the cemetery is lined with a mix of mature hardwoods and stately pines.  The graves have been carefully, thoughtfully plotted to allow for room between each while using the space efficiently.  In the center a flagpole, at the entrance a chapel, near the back edge a pond.  Uneven, rolling ground naturally divides the site into segments, regions even; rather than viewing a vast collection of residents but a small part of the whole can be seen at any one location.

While all of its aesthetic features are a delight to the senses, what keeps me walking back into this graveyard night after night are the people.  I'm not much for crowds, but I have to say I feel completely relaxed every time I find myself surrounded by the cemetery crew.  I never have to greet them, they aren't ever in my way, their filthy pets aren't annoying me, and they never, ever disrupt the train of thought I fall into while I walk.  No offense to the people in my life who reside above the terra firma, but the ghosts in the graveyard have become my new best friends.

So, dear readers, if you're looking for a low impact workout that's as good for the soul as it is for the body, I encourage you to take a hike through your local cemetery.  If nothing else, the more time you spend being active in the cemetery while you're alive, the less time you'll have to spend there when you're dead.  That almost sounds like words of wisdom.  Or a greeting card.

Deuce!

Went to a high school tennis....skirmish?....for the first time ever today.  Several of Daughter One's classmates compete on the tennis....collection?....so since it was a nice afternoon Daughter Three and I wandered up to the courts, met Daughter One, and watched for a short while until Daughter Two finished her track practice.  I came away with some thoughts:

** Tennis scoring is weird.  I knew this already from my days of watching Steffi Graf tear it up at Wimbledon.  My Steffi reference should make it pretty clear just how long it's been since I've watched any level of tennis so I was a little rusty today on how the scoring worked.  Then I tried explaining it to Daughter Two.  We both ended up with a headache.  If I understand the scoring correctly, scoring a point requires scoring four fake points before your opponent does, unless you both tie at three fake points, at which point you have to score two fake points in a row to win the real point.  And then you start over since a player needs six real points to win a portion of the skirmish.

** Tennis language is weird.  Players are always shouting about love and deuces.  It's like romance meets excretion.  Disturbing, really.

** Tennis is hard.  I've played tennis maybe twice in my life.  I think I hit the ball 'in' a total of once in those two outings.  Watching real players in person gave me a deeper appreciation of just how hard the game is.  Players never stop moving because the ball never stops moving yet the players hit that moving ball while on the move and consistently put it in the court.  All while shouting about love and deuces, mind you.

** Tennis players are honorable folks.  There are no officials for these high school tennis skirmishes, so players make their own calls on ins and outs and scores.  And they apparently believe each other.  And if they don't act honorably a coach will come storming across the court and award a free fake point to the opposing team because of his team's behavior.  It's all very impressive.  And really, really bizarre.

** The individual sports (tennis, track, swimming, etc.) of high school athletics are awesome.  The boys.....ahem, I mean young men I was watching play doubles were former basketball players of mine, one a former student, both really good friends of my daughter.  Really good humans.  Their parents sat in front of where I stood.  My daughters were there.  Several players' classmates were there.  All of us supporting these guys, and their teammates, with positive cheers and support.  Nobody was complaining about the officiating (see above) or the coaching.  There was no griping about mistakes or poor play.  Just encouragement, clapping, a couple of cheers, some laughter.  Very relaxed and fun.

** Kids grow up way too fast.  The group of high school juniors I was watching and surrounded by are a month away from becoming high school seniors.  For twenty years I've taught classes of kids and watched them grow up, but no group has been watched as closely as the class of 2019, my eldest offspring's class.  One of the guys playing in front of me tonight was a student of mine for both first and second grade; was it really ten years ago that he sat sobbing on my classroom floor on our last day of school together?  And now he's taller than me and dashing around a tennis court clobbering balls all over the place!  Well, not literally all over.  Usually.  The kids standing around me used to get rides from parents to my daughter's birthday parties and sleepovers - now they are all driving themselves to school, games, work.  Their aging hasn't gone unseen - I have many special memories of concerts and games and speeches and gatherings they took part in - but despite watching them mature for years it still now seems so sudden that they stand on the edge of adulthood.

I know for a lot of kids high school isn't a highlight, a great time.  But it was for me, and I know it is for my eldest daughter, and I could sense that it is for the kids who gathered at the school tennis courts tonight.  I'm glad I walked up there, took the time to see some kids in a new light before their time in the school and community has passed.  I hope they hold on to a day like this one and store it away as memory for when times aren't so carefree.  A memory of sunshine, friendship, competition, and laughter......and yes, love.  The tennis kind.

For the love of practice

For the first time since mid-August (save the two weeks around Christmas) I have no athletic practices in the coming week, or weeks, or months.  Not sure what I'm going to do with all that spare time....

Oh, how my attitude towards practices has changed over the years.  As a young athlete, I looked at practices as something to fill the days between games.  I tolerated them.  Always showed up and worked pretty hard, but never really poured myself into them.  I did the same as a young coach - threw together practice plans that more often than not were a collection of random drills that would bridge the gap between the beginning of practice and the end.  In these years games were my passion, the time to really let my skills shine while giving a maximum effort.

Twenty five years of coaching has taught me many things (such as the topic I wrote about yesterday), but none more important than the value of practice time.  In fact, I've done a complete paradigm shift with my feelings towards practices and games.  I now love going to practice and, many times, despise game days.  This mindset kind of began as a senior in high school - except for the games, 'cause I still loved those as a player - when I began to acquire a deeper understanding of how connected my practice performances were to my game performance.  After losing sight of that connection in my early years of coaching I have developed an appreciation for practice days that I wish I'd had as a player.  And, in turn, my practice appreciation has led to a stronger, even renewed, passion for coaching that I nearly lost not too long ago.

When I view coaching through the lens of my teacher-self, I look at practice time as classroom time, a time for teaching and learning, lessons and skills practice, experiments, trials, and errors.  Game days are like test days; when a classroom teacher hands out a test all teaching comes to a halt.  I feel the same about games - they are fun for the players, but as a coach, a teacher, games are more like an interruption in the teaching process.  A teacher gives a test to students to find out what they have learned and what still needs to be mastered.  When a team plays a game the team is being tested - the coach can find out how a group "measures up" to another group, what skills have been improved or mastered, and where the work still needs to be done.  Very little teaching gets done during a game - the action is too hard to interrupt, emotions are high, and the chance for reps on any one skill is nonexistent.  My biggest advancement as a coach has been my improved ability to use what I see in games to drive the following practices and increase the rate of improvement in my players and teams.

So while the philosophy of improving through game play commonly exists, I strive for player development a very different way - through practices developed using observational data collected in games.  Every minute of every practice is planned.  Every drill has a purpose, a featured skill.  Several skills practiced early will be featured together in a drill later.  "Game speed" is a common term.  Communication about the "why" of drills and the "how" of skills is nearly constant.  Opportunities to use practice skills in game-like scenarios are provided.

Am I a terrific coach?  Heavens, no.  Are my practice plans perfect?  Rarely.  Do my teams improve? Always.  As do I.  Not too many years ago I was ready to hang up my whistle, stop putting myself through the daily grind of two extra hours of teaching.  But as my passion for teaching in a classroom has dwindled my passion for teaching in a gymnasium has rekindled.  I went from coaching one team a year for two months to this year coaching five different teams in two different sports for eight months.  And loved every bit of it.  Eight months of planning practices gets a bit draining, but walking onto that practice court and finding ways to help players improve never ages.  Already looking forward to draping that whistle around my neck for the start of season 26.

The "W" word

First of all, I'm sick of the whole dictionary thing, ok?  If you are new to this blog and don't what the heck I'm talking about, take a quick look here.  I don't have to explain myself to anyone.

Second of all, I'm still exhausted from the volleyball marathon I coached yesterday.  As always, though, I spent a good part of today rehashing my performance as a coach, looking for what I did right and finding plenty I did wrong.  My biggest mistake of the day?  Saying the "W" word.

I rarely talk to my teams about winning.  Almost never, in fact.  It's one of the first things I explain to any new group of athletes I work with - we will focus on effort, we will focus on improvement, we will focus on finding ways to feel successful.....but we will not focus on winning or losing.  Everyone loves to win, and it's easy to talk about how much we want to win, but as soon as we start throwing that word - win - around, we pull attention away from what's most important in the development of an athlete: the process necessary to become a winner.  Not gonna write about that process tonight....exhaustion, remember.

As we competed (the word I use in place of win) yesterday and began to play better, and win more, I got swept up in the possibilities of winning even more.  I have a pretty strong competitive gene, and it was fully activated by mid-afternoon yesterday.  Enough so that I started mixing the "W" word into some timeouts and pregame plans.  In my self-analysis I now realize I spoke too much about winning before the first set of our championship game, a set we played poorly and lost.  In our second set I spoke about the challenge ahead of us, the need to move from one point to the next, the chance to prove that we could compete through tough situations.  I moved away from the "W" word.  And we won that set.  Me being me, weak of mind and prone to slow learning, I went back to the language of winning before we served up the first ball of our final set.  And once again my focus on winning took my players' focus off of playing.  We stunk.  We did win, however, and it felt great...but it also felt a little hollow, seeing as how we didn't really play our best volleyball of the day.

So there's the problem with speaking the "W" word to young competitors - creating a focus on winning leads to a sacrifice of focus elsewhere, and it's almost always a loss of focus on quality of play.  And I know this today, just like I knew it yesterday, because of how strongly I've known it for years.  But I still messed up and nearly cost my team a, ahem, win.  A good lesson learned in several different ways; keep the focus on the process, not the score.  Celebrate effort, not results.  And for me, never stop learning.  For a quarter century I've coached, but I still have so much room for improvement in pretty much everything I do as a coach.  I thought I had developed a better grasp on the use of the "W" word, but found out yesterday (by reflecting today) how crucial the right words at the right time are for team growth.

Third of all, I need to sleep......

Coach Dad, tourney day

If it were possible to take just one of life's days and bottle it up to savor forever, today might very well have been that day.

Two years ago I traveled to Hutchinson, MN, for an all-day volleyball tournament with Daughter 2, an event which led to one of the more thoughtful posts I've penned (if I do say so myself).   Today, for the first time since, I returned to that same city with all three of my daughters for another all-day tournament.  And I do mean all day - we backed out of our driveway at 5:30 a.m. and drove back in at 9:35 this evening.  Between the leaving and the returning was a lot of volleyball, a lot of music, and a lot of memory making.

The volleyball:  I am so proud of our team, so proud of my daughters.  It's been a rough winter and spring for us; team dissension and sparse attendance at too many practices turned what should be a fun activity into a challenging and stressful situation for my daughters, for their teammates, for me.  But we sat down at a practice in early March and communicated some hard truths to one another.....and started to learn about each other......and realized we could learn from each other....then we started to enjoy playing together......and today we finally got to enjoy winning together.

We are not a powerhouse team.  There are no state championships on the horizon for our volleyball program.  But on a court where this morning our six players began the day, our one team ended the day as champions.  Ok, so it was champions of the consolation bracket, the second-tier teams.  But try telling that to my daughters, or their teammates, who were quite pleased to end the day as winners.  Regardless of tiers or levels or records, we had to scratch and claw and fight for every point of our final game.  Twice our fate was being crushed in the jaws of defeat, and twice we forced those jaws open and climbed out with victory.  When the final whistle blew and the championship point was awarded to our team - OUR team! - to stand and watch my players share smiles and hugs with teammates who a couple of months ago wouldn't even return a smile let alone a hug, well.....chills.

The music: Mostly 80's with brief interruptions of today's phony garbage.  And a healthy dose of the soundtrack from The Greatest Showman....which has grown on me like a runaway fungus.  Terrible movie, killer soundtrack.  But honestly, this post isn't about music, I just threw it in that sentence up there because I needed a trio of "most of's" from the day.  So back to daughters and volleyball....

The memories:  We grabbed some burgers and fries for the road before leaving town.  We cranked up the music.  We ate, we laughed, we sang, we looked at pictures, we shared comments that seemed to all begin with "that one play" and "did you see when" and "I couldn't believe I".  In the midst of this completely relaxed jubilance I looked to my left to see the sun dipping below the horizon, much as I had done a little more than 12 hours earlier as it appeared in the opposite direction, and as it sank I knew I, we, had just shared a perfect day with each other.

Yes, perfect.  The weather was gorgeous.  The volleyball was fun.  The times between games was nothing but relaxed.  We won more than we lost.  We played better more often than we played poorly.  We left worries and cares and stresses home for the day.  Daughter 1 ended her high school spring volleyball career on as high a note as she could have hoped for, playing tough, determined volleyball and being the glue that held her team together while providing the power we needed to push opponents back on their heels.  Daughter 2, an eighth grader, stood with and against players two and three years her elder and played older than her years.  And Daughter 3 was right there by my side for all of it, charting hustle plays and grabbing water bottles and cheering for her sisters and their team.  Dang it, how lucky was I to have been given this day?  To have the chance to lead a group of players to something so special for them, with all three of my children right in the middle of it.  Like I said in the opening, if I could bottle one day......

Say "hello" to a team (and a coach) who can't quite believe what they've just done.

2018 Hutchinson 17U Consolation Champs!

The spring seasons will roll on.  Players will change.  Daughter 1's tourneys are over, Daughter 3's tourneys are still ahead.  There will be days when things on the court go right, and days when pretty much everything looks horrid.  But there will always, always be this day.  I don't need a bottle or the pictures or this blog.  This day went straight to my heart.  I don't intend to ever let it leave.

Coach Dad

Well it finally happened.  I opened to the 'S' section of my dictionary, and the very first word I looked at was instantly the word I wanted to use in today's writing.  I've lost track of what numbered day this is of #The100DayProject, but out of however many days there have been I'm pretty darn sure this is the first time finding my word of the day has been so efficiently perfect at being perfectly efficient.  Aaannnnddd I've just forgotten it.  Hang on.........

In a few short hours my daughters and I will be on the road, heading to our second and final tournament of the spring volleyball season.  Well, the final tourney for my oldest daughters' team; Child 3 has one more Saturday playdate before her season comes to an end.  What a spring this has been - for the first time in the history of my parenting I've had the pleasure of coaching all three of my daughters, and at the same time no less!  I am the lead coach for my youngest daughter's 4th grade volleyball team, a group that consists of 44 players and four other coaches.  My two oldest daughters, a junior and an 8th grader, both play on our varsity level team along with nine other upperclass-women.   Two to three practices a week, playdates on Saturdays, tournaments on Sundays....a volleyball-free day has been rare since February.  But this weekend is the first time they all play, and our schedule goes a little something like this:  varsity practice Friday night, elementary playdate Saturday, varsity tourney Sunday, elementary practice Monday night.

People ask about my weekend plans.  I share that schedule.  People look at me with sympathy.  I don't need it.  I have embraced the opportunity I've been given to work so closely with my daughters and their teammates at an activity they love.  And while I gladly accepted the coaching roles with the intention of helping the kids, in helping the kids I've found myself reaping rewards I didn't expect.  Coaching can be stressful and exhausting, but coaching my kids has been nothing but a salubrious* activity for me.  We've spent more time together.  We always have a shared topic to visit about.  We can learn from each other.  We have experienced each other in a whole new way; coach and players, a few times a week, takes the place of dad and daughters.  And, most importantly, we've had a lot of fun together.

And tomorrow it ends.  As does this entry for tonight since tomorrow begins at about 4:30 a.m.  Consider tonight part one......tomorrow will conclude this entry with a report on how the tournament goes.

*salubrious - health-giving; healthy

Weak effort.

This is nothing more than a token effort to keep #The100DayProject moving forward.  I've stared at this blank screen for too long, twisted ideas in my brain for even longer, and still have nothing that feels like it needs to be written tonight.  I thought writing an entry every day would stir creative juices and give me more ideas than I could keep up with.  Instead I seem to have retrogressed (word of the day, BTW) to the writer I've been the past year or so.  Unmotivated, tired, empty.

Of course it's also the Friday night before a crazy weekend of volleyball.....including a practice tonight.  Not to mention a Friday night following a full week of school that included standardized testing, early morning meetings, and a double fire drill.  So forgive me, readers, for the putrid effort tonight.  Fingers crossed for better results tomorrow.

Deer drive

I took my eldest daughter on a deer watching drive through the country tonight.  She wasn't impressed.  I thought maybe I stood a chance at creating some of the memories I shared in an entry about the country roads of my childhood.  Didn't happen.  We saw a scrawny raccoon, some trumpeter swans, but no deer.  The oldest carrier of my genes somehow missed the nature-loving genetic trait her mother and I both possess - we probably could have been swept away by a deer stampede and she still would have given only a "meh".

Today nature officially left behind the quiescent days of winter.  Temps near sixty degrees and bright sunshine burned away much of the snow pack.....leaving behind much more of the snow pack, but it was a start.  Birdsong, which until now has quavered with shivers, seemed stronger and more cheerful today.  The melting snow began the day as trickling currents, but those trickles soon became streams which soon became rivers.  The walking paths around town were busy (darn it) with sufferers of cabin fever who were starting to walk away their layer of winter....insulation.  Four days ago in the midst of a 30 hour snowfall it seemed I was living in a white apocalypse with little to no activity from nature or man.

Naturally, pun intended, the drive back to my home without my daughter was far more eventful than the original deer drive.  Deer everywhere.  Apparently the deer around here are on a very strict time schedule for feeding; on a similar drive home two nights ago there were deer in every field shortly after 8:00.  Tonight my daughter was with me until about 7:55.  When I  passed the seventh or eighth quaternate group of whitetails I looked at the clock to discover I was now driving after 8:00.  How come I can pattern deer in April while driving a car but can't do it in November while hunting?

Ok, so this wasn't much of an entry......but I squeezed in three 'q' words!  Deserves a little lovin' for that fact alone, does it not?

A glimpse into the abyss

My daughters have been very pestiferous this past week.  If I leave it at that you, or they, will scurry to the googly dictionary and have to wonder what I'm talking about - are they sick or annoying?  Wweeelllllll........sick.  They've had the same illness for the past 9-10 days.  Child 1 had it first, passed it on to Child 3, who now has shared it with Child 2, who announced her turn with a morning text that informed me "I don't feel good."  Now, had they all been feeling fine (a rarity, it seems) for a week and I called them pestiferous....they occasionally earn that adjective, too.

How in the world do we ever master the English language?  An old question, an unanswerable question, but the question on my mind tonight and most days when I work with kids who are struggling to learn reading.  Pestiferous is but a drop in the ocean of backwards spellings, phonetic rules that only sometimes apply, multiple meaning words, homophones/homographs/homonyms, silent letters.  Again I ask, how is it possible to learn, to teach, this stuff efficiently and effectively?

I've stood in classrooms for ten hours over the last three school days, watching third through sixth grade students take the yearly MCA tests on reading.  All students in each grade take these tests so Big Brother can decide whether or not the students are being educated.  It's a horrible, wasteful, pointless process.  Any teacher that works with these kids day after day can tell in an instant what the test will tell after making the kids sit and stare at a screen for hours.  Kids with a talent for language will excel, kids with language and reading difficulties have no chance.  Not only do we put them through the test instead of using that time to help them improve, we spend the weeks leading up to the test prepping them for it.  Not teaching, prepping.

America's education system is nothing more than a flaming vessel with a broken rudder spinning circles in the middle of an ocean, too flawed for progress, not taking on water fast enough to ever completely sink.

Geez, this entry took a dark turn in a hurry, didn't it?  If you've read this blog long enough you'll notice I don't write much about education anymore, despite the title.  It's tough to stay positive towards such a dysfunctional mess, so I now try to stay quiet.  What happened above is what always happens anymore if I try to talk or write about education - I turn ugly.  The way our education system fails its clients, and has for decades, is a travesty.  There's nothing more to say.

Rivers of thought

Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on.

River songs.  Haunting and deep.  One generation writes, the next covers.  Changing little, saying much.  Rivers.

We're all carried along by the river of dreams.

Are we?  How long?  The dream is a young fool's fuel.  Dream current flows fast when life is new, narrow.  Every river's path ends.

Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?

Worse.  No?  A lie is disappointment, hurt, mistrust.  It's over.  A dream that don't come true haunts.  Lingers.  Gnaws.

Too many times we stand aside and let the waters slip away.

Dreams float on, float away, and where lies the blame?  The water?  The course?  Dreams pass and waves cease, what's left on the surface - but the face of the dreamer.

But now we call against the tide, those distant days are passing by.

Passing - present tense, unfinished.  Still time.  The river that isn't dry carries hope.  Hope carries life.  Life carries on.

I will walk alone by the black muddy river and listen to the ripples as they moan.

The river - Nile, Thames, Oyapock - matters not.  The pace, the terrain, mean little.  It's mouth can remain unknown.  Stay the course.

Sharp memories

As the April Blizzard of '18 raged around me this weekend my thoughts drifted towards summertime.  That may seem logical, but I don't often daydream about summer.  Summer activities will cross my mind, but just a general longing for summer isn't an ordinary occurrence for me.  My drifting thoughts of the weekend included open lakes, gardening plans, bike rides, food plots, trail cameras...trail cameras!  Hadn't checked my favorite foremost outfitter's website lately for trail camera deals.  I'll be darned if there wasn't a really good camera on sale for an outstanding price, with free shipping to boot!  An entered gift card and some credit card points later, one shiny new trail camera was on its way to my doorstep, free of charge.

It doesn't take much to get my mind hooked on hunting thoughts.  A new trail cam (actually, a second new camera....I found an even better deal on one at Christmastime) means a new strategy on where to place all my cameras (7) and when and how early and what should we put in our food plots this year and I need to get that stand moved and that stand repaired.  Pretty soon the blood pressure has risen enough that some relaxation breathing is in order.

Hunting used to be so much simpler; in early November dig out the orange clothes, wipe the dust off the rifle, sharpen the knife, go kill something.  Oddly enough, it's that knife sharpening I remember the most about my early hunting days.  When I was a kid my family had a "deer camp" consisting of my grandpa, my uncles, my dad, and eventually me.  The night before opener we'd pile into my grandparents' house and share food and stories and plans......and someone was always sharpening a knife.  Back then if you wanted a sharp knife you sat and put an edge on the blade using a round piece of novaculite (a hard, dense, fine-grained siliceous rock resembling chert, often used for whetstones.....duh).  The stone was usually passed around the table, the holder of the stone excusing himself from the conversation so as to focus on honing a razor edge without lopping off a thumb in the process.  I knew I'd become an official member of the hunting party when the stone, after years of passing me by, was finally passed to me.  Calling on memory as my guide from the dozens of times I'd watched this very process I carefully swirled the blade of my knife across the smooth, gritty surface of the whetstone, first one side of the blade, then the other.  The real men of the camp tested the edge of the blade on the hair of their arm, noting how smoothly they could shave a strand or two.  My mostly hairless arms meant I ended up with a mostly dull knife that probably wouldn't have sliced through unset jello, but nobody needed to know that.  With no blood shed I passed on the stone and sat a little higher as the tales of hunting days gone by drifted on into the night.

And those are the thoughts produced when a snowy day in April meets up with a terrific online deal.

And that's the abrupt ending you get when a tired writer sits on the wrong side of 10:00 after a long, long Monday.

Preserved

This methodical march through the dictionary in search of a word-of-the-day seemed like a good idea on the first day of #The100DayProject.  Now it's just a pain in the rear.  (Good grief, it's snowing hard again.  Just when I think we'll top out at 85 inches of new snow the skies reopen.)  Today is the 'M' section, and in following my already-adjusted procedure I opened to a page full of boring, readily known words.  The best entry I could find was modesty panel: a board so placed as to conceal the legs of a person seated behind a desk.  Really.  You realize what this means, don't you?  That we have such a part on desks, with the word "modesty" in its title, indicates the necessity of this object.  That there became a need to block the rest of the world from seeing what was on display beneath desks.  That sometime in history an office staff took casual day a bit too far too often.  Anyway, when the most unique word on a page is "modesty panel" it's a clear sign that A) I need to rethink the procedure for finding words, and 2) I need a better dictionary.  I guess these odd thoughts jive pretty well with yesterday's post about the pig-brain drug.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

What better way to spend a snowy weekend than making this -

- cute little stack of containers.  Took me most of Saturday.  Not sure how long it would have taken without my advanced education degree.

No, no, no.  It's strawberry jam....arranged in a cute little stack.  Strawberry freezer jam, to be more precise.  Last July I had more berries than containers so I pureed (Why does that look so weird?  Maybe that should have been my word-of-the-day!) enough berries to fill a couple of quart containers and froze them.  Along with several gallons of whole berries.  I love berries.

Actually, what I love is processing and preserving fresh foods.  It was a little odd to make jam while the snow was falling outside; ordinarily, jam making is a hot, sweaty ordeal....which sounds just disgusting enough to keep most readers from wanting to sample my wares.  And while turning frozen berries into jam doesn't really have the same feel as the picking-cleaning-crushing-cooking process, not to mention the same fresh flavor, going through the motions to end with a tasty end result was still pretty fun.  And a really good reminder that I'd wanted to write this post for months.

Strawberry time (late June/early July) is usually the beginning of the food processing season, for me anyway.  If my parents' berry patch has even an average year of production there are enough berries for me to make freezer jam, canned jam, strawberry/rhubarb jam, and freeze some gallons of whole berries to use throughout the year.  Making jam really isn't that hard, not as hard as so many people seem to think it is.  Like any other cooking, making jam takes time and requires trial and error to find just the flavor you're looking for.  And it's messy.  And hot.  And the preparation of containers and ingredients and utensils is tedious.  Hang on, I've changed my mind - it IS hard!  But worth it.

Green beans are next (late July-ish) and can be either frozen or canned.  I usually can 6-10 quarts every other year; we don't eat the canned variety quite as often as frozen....and canning is a bit more work.  This year was a freeze-only year.  Freezing beans is pretty quick and simple, and to be honest the canning process isn't that bad.  It's picking beans that is pure torture.  Not sure why, but bean picking is absolutely devastating to the lower back and hamstrings of this picker.

Eleven quarts of beans, ready for the freezer.

In early August my favorite gathering/processing activity begins with the ripening of the chokecherries.  Chokecherry picking is one of my favorite pastimes, and if I haven't blogged about why yet you can bet I will someday.  (Ok, now the snow is falling sideways from the west after falling sideways from the east for the last 24 hours.  Does that mean it's all coming back?!?)  The chokecherry berry is pretty much worthless as a food for humans - in fact, it'll kill you if you eat too many; their pits have a compound similar to cyanide.  It's the juice from these berries that I treasure, juice that makes a flavorful purple syrup that has been called "liquid gold" by those lucky enough to taste it.  On a good year the wild blueberries are ripening at the same time as the chokecherries; I have developed a recipe for a blueberry/chokecherry sauce that might be the most flavorful concoction on the planet.

20 quarts of chokecherries waiting to be cooked down.

Liquid gold!!

This past summer I was able to, for the first time, make plum syrup from wild plums.  My parents' yard (Yes, I'd starve if I couldn't go back home to my parents' farm to gather all this stuff.) is full of, and surrounded by, thickets of wild plum bushes.  Last summer was a banner year for plums and I happened to be there when they started to ripen in mid-August.  The full bucket you see below could have been three or four more had I been able to get back the following week.  I thought picking plums would be similar to picking chokecherries and faster, since they'd fill a bucket quicker.  I discovered, though, that the ripest, sweetest plums weren't on the bush - they were on the ground.  So after crawling in circles around each bush I would gently shake the trunk to remove any last ripe ones....and then crawl around the bush again.  All the crawling, and that bucket, resulted in four small jars of syrup that tastes decent, but not great, although its tart taste seems to have mellowed a bit over the winter.  The syrup man is always learning......

Tomato season rolls around in late August or early September, depending on how the growing season has been, just in time for me to have almost no time to do anything with them.  I've never been a fan of eating a tomato as just a tomato.  A slice on a sandwich or burger is fine, but I could live without it.  But as a varied processing food it can't be beat!  Raw salsa, cooked salsa, pizza sauce, pasta sauce, diced tomatoes for the freezer.....I've done a lot with tomatoes.  This year I turned most of the tomatoes I could get into salsa and pasta sauce, though I did manage to freeze a couple of quarts of diced tomatoes for making chili during the cold months.....that never end. (Yup, still snowing.)  The one negative of processing tomatoes is the amount of work involved - holy cow, the work.  Everything I make with tomatoes involves slicing and dicing and cutting and mixing.  The results are worth it, but geez, the work.

Black bean and corn salsa...with a zucchini for no reason.

Pasta sauce that is not from the store - I reuse store jars which works just fine.

The work of tomato season is just a warm-up for apple season in late September.  My apple producers  (who are NOT my parents, believe it or not) usually have a bumper crop to give away every other year, and last fall was the year.  So I made applesauce.  Usually I try to freeze some sliced apples to use for baking, but a lack of time kept me from making one more trip to my source, so applesauce was it.  And it was enough.  Apples, like tomatoes, are ready when I'm not, so to process them into anything means lots of late evenings.  Thankfully I now have an apple corer, pictured below, which has been a huge time saver compared to peeling and slicing dozens of apples by hand.

I like to can some pints of unsweetened, unflavored applesauce to use as an oil substitute in some baking recipes.  But most of my apples become quarts of sweet, cinnamony applesauce.  I'll add a dash of nutmeg to some batches, but usually just brown sugar and cinnamon.  The great thing about applesauce is there isn't really a recipe to follow; just cook the apples, mash 'em up, and dump stuff in until it tastes good.  In fact, it was applesauce that got me started in the food processing biz.  Tried making it, turned out decent, figured if I could do it with apples I could do it with anything.  Turns out I was right.

Plain in the front, flavored in the back.

As I watch the snow continue to fall - and for cryin' out loud I'm pretty sure it's falling UP now! - and think about all the tasks I've written about here I feel excited - no, wait, I don't get excited....I feel cautiously enthused about the coming summer months and what they might provide for my cupboards and freezers.  Will this late start to spring push back the timing of my favorite garden and natural foods?  Will a late frost wipe out the blossoms of fruit crops?  Will the 32 feet of snow we've had this winter translate into a wet and generous growing season, or will we have to perform rain dances come mid-July?  I look forward to answering those questions in this blog in the coming months, rather than one long, rambling entry on a snowy April day next spring.

You gonna eat that?

Spent some time reading from the 'L' section of the dictionary this afternoon.  Is that not normal behavior for a snowy Saturday?  Discovered the word "lypressin", then discovered it's used to treat diabetes and/or high blood pressure.  Also learned it comes from the pituitary gland of a pig.  Wait - what?!?  How does a discovery like this occur?  At what point in history did a hormone researcher throw her hands in the air and exclaim "I give up!  It's not working.  Why don't we look for the key ingredient...in.....I don't know......how about we start with that pig?"

I wonder about food discoveries a lot, as in how we decided to eat what we eat.  Which poor schlup lost a bet and was made to watch a chicken until something fell out of its butt, and then had to be the first one to eat it?  Or milk - if some other critter other than a cow had a large udder might we run to the store for a gallon of, say, rhino milk.  And, much like the chicken example, who was the first to look at a cow and have the sudden thought "If there's liquid in that pink bouncy sack hanging not far from Bessie's rear, I'm gonna drink it."

Speaking of milk, I found a word in the 'K' section yesterday that was some kind of alcoholic drink made from fermented camel's milk.  Really?  So not only did someone decide to drink from a camel, someone else decided to wait until the camel juice rotted before drinking it.  Hard to say how many carcasses litter the earth from taste adventurers whose "let it rot before you drink it" method didn't work out so well.

Plenty of other examples in our wide, weird world I'm sure, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment.  More like stuck on an image - giving wistful thanks to the farmer who made his brown Jersey heifer run circles around the outside of the barn in the dead of winter before milking time, providing us all with the gift of chocolate shakes.  Ba-dum-bum-crash!  I'm here all night folks.....

Friday Night Enlights

So here's a fun word: kundalini.

Late on a Friday I decide to write a quick entry to keep my streak of blog posts active for #The100DayProject I'm trying to accomplish.  I find a word that seems harmless enough with a fairly straightforward definition.  I start to research the word a bit to make sure I fully understand it.  An hour later my head is spinning from terms such as "karmic", "yogic", "enlightenment", "awakening", and a bunch of words that resemble gibberish but until I know what language they're from I'm not printing them here.

Apparently Kundalini refers to a coiled life energy that exists at the base of our spine.  Been there since before birth.  Was the initial stage of our creation, in fact.  Lies in wait, in each one of us, until we trigger it's arousal.  We can awaken our Kundalini purposely through yogic exercise or meditation, or it can be stirred by unexpected life occurrences, such as trauma or illness.  Once awake, it travels our spine, with our help, until it reaches the brain and releases true enlightenment upon the host.

So, and correct me if I'm wrong here, we all have a parasitic energy force living right above our butt. If we wake it up it's gonna travel to our brain and transform us into a whole new person.  Logically, the best defense against such a parasitic travesty is to keep our butts firmly planted in place, allowing the life force to peacefully slumber.

It's the weekend.  I can handle that.

Strider

Not putting much effort into this entry....it's late on a Thursday with a blizzard on the way pulling scheduling nightmares along with it.  April snowstorm is not unheard of, but not something one expects to deal with when one sits down in January to construct April schedules.

It's track season.  Nearly a year ago I became a lover of track and field while watching my two eldest daughters compete in a variety of events.  They are jumping over stuff, throwing things, and running around once again this spring, and once again loving it.  Unfortunately our weather has prevented the start of outdoor track season.  Fortunately our school completed construction on a sparkling new athletic field house last month, so our track team has been able to practice, and host meets, on our indoor track.  Tonight was our third home meet of the spring.

Only one daughter competed tonight, and her jumping events were quite delayed by participants being in other events or by races on the track taking precedence over long jumpers using the track for their approaches to the pit.  So I had plenty of idle time to watch lots of kids I don't know run in circles around the track.

The human body is fascinating.  We are all constructed from the same basic blueprint, yet the way that basic plan functions is so wildly varied.  Ten kids running the same race have at least five different strides.  The leaders' gaits are smooth, effortless, like they have marshmallows on their feet the way each foot softly bounces off the track from stride to stride.  The runners in the middle of the pack are more forced with their movements, as if each successful step results from a concentrated effort to not screw up.  The final runners are painful to watch, with limbs flailing and bodies jouncing as they struggle to not only keep pace with the kids ahead but to even stay in their own lane.

Same goes for jumpers, high jumpers in particular.  Each jumper takes essentially the same approach to the bar with the same number of steps and arches their body in the same shape......yet some leave the ground as if gravity has them in a choke hold while others simply float as high as needed to clear the bar.

I begrudge no athlete their natural ability, nor am I poking fun at those who have yet to master control of their own body.  I am simply amazed at how differently the humans function in an event they are all doing as one.  Or something like that.  More than anything I needed to find a way to use the word "jounce".

And #The100DayProject rolls on......

Wandering thoughts

I'm cheating a little bit today - rather than creating a blog entry from the word-of-the-day I found a word that fits what I want to write about.  Not total cheating, though; the word I'm using was on the page I randomly opened to....but I knew what I wanted to write about before consulting the dictionary.  Aaannnnndd today's word isn't unfamiliar to me, so I'm not creating any new vocabulary for myself.  In a nutshell - who cares?  Today's word is incongruous, an adjective which means not in harmony or keeping with the surroundings or other aspects of something.

Went for a walk this evening as a light, sprinkling rain fell.  A perfect spring rain.  Never mind the predictions of 13 feet of snow headed our way in the next couple of days - tonight's walk felt like, for the first time this season, a springtime walk.  The air was mild, the robins were singing, and the rain wasn't icy or freezing on contact.  Spring has always been my least favorite season, but the feel of spring in the air tonight was very soothing for some reason.

The highlight of my jaunt around the neighborhood was sighting a great blue heron.  Looking completely incongruous against the white ground and solidly frozen lakes, the regal fellow was wading along the edge of the one open pond in the area.  While watching him, and afterwards as I continued my walk, I couldn't imagine how he would possibly survive the coming days, possibly weeks, of non-spring conditions we still have around here.  Herons are shore birds, waders, and right now 99% of the shores in the entire state are solidly frozen.

An extended spring is tough on wild creatures, especially the birds which return from their migratory hiatus and find a vast, frozen wasteland they wanted nothing to do with last fall.  The robins sound so cheerful every morning, but I have to believe their songs, if translated to English, are dripping with obscenities and sarcasm as they awaken to day after day of snow-blanketed Earth.  I used the word "regal" for that heron I saw - how funny would it be to hear him muttering curses towards Mother Nature?  What won't be funny are the frozen carcasses of these birds that will litter our yards and roadways if we don't get a break in this cold, snowy pattern soon.

I wondered about that heron, what chance he had for survival when the only open water he could find is void of fish and frogs.  I wasn't sure what else he might eat.  I knew he (or she, I suppose....sorry ladies) is a meat eater but wondered if he would turn to eating seeds in desperation....become a vegaheron.  So I did some research - turns out herons will eat rodents and, ahem, other birds.  So, Mr. Robin Redbreast, as you go bob-bob-bobbin' along tomorrow you might want to keep an eye peeled for a viciously hungry blue heron!  Which now makes me a little more concerned for the robins - if the cold and snow doesn't kill 'em, the returning blue herons will.

It sure is nice to be human sometimes.  The other humans will get angry, or complain, or annoy, or find some other way to become a nuisance - but at least they, more often than not, don't attempt to eat me.

All these thoughts from a simple walk in the springtime rain.......

Of staring at holes in ice

I flipped to the 'H' section of the dictionary, in search of my word for this eighth day of #The100DayProject, and promptly discovered I have a strong passion for halieutic activities.  Especially in the winter.  And seeing as how this current winter ain't ever gonna end, I'll be enjoying my frozen halieutic pastime for at least a few more weeks.  Honestly people, if I have to point out today's word and/or define it I'm going to have to ask you to move along to a different blog.

Like most winters, I wasn't able to fish on the ice nearly as often as desired.  And, like most winters, my first icy excursions happened around the Christmas holidays.  Holy smokes, were they icy - the warmest day I fished was -8!  Which is why I love my little portable fish house so much:

Crawled inside that little beauty on Secret Lake #4, turned on the heater, and the bitter cold just disappeared.  More importantly, so did the rest of the world.  One of the things I love most about ice fishing is the isolation and solitude of being inside that house.  Sure, you can still hear the annoying augers and snowmobiles that the humans insist on using to ruin the peacefulness.  But somehow being inside that house makes those sounds less annoying.  Fishing from a boat can be peaceful (though much less effective in late December) but in a boat you're always exposed, out there for the world to see.  In that house the rest of the world doesn't exist.  It's fabulous.

My second favorite item of importance is my fish finding, depth finding sonar unit:

I spent years being stubborn, refusing to bend to the lure of technology and insisting that I could catch just as many fish without a Vexilar as with it.  Know what?  I think I was right.  Take a look at the next picture, the one with the pretty lights.  See that band of light to the right of the number 10?  That's a fish.  Why did I take a picture of a picture of a fish instead of the fish?  Because that fish wouldn't bite.  I used to sit over a hole in the ice with my line in the water and wonder if there were fish down below not biting.  Now I don't have to wonder anymore, because yes, yes there are fish down there and no, they usually don't bite!  So all the fish I didn't catch without a sonar unit are still the fish I don't catch while staring at green, orange, and red lights.  But, as they say, it's called a fish finder, not a fish catcher.

Even when the fish won't bite (which is often) having the Vexilar allows me to see whether or not there is the potential for a bite.  Sometimes that potential is as exciting as the bite...although I've yet to find a recipe for a really delicious serving of fried potential.

So, set up the house, turn on the Vexilar, see the fish......start fishing.  On this day of fishing I was jigging for perch and walleyes, and my favorite lure for those species is a Swedish Pimple tipped with a minnow.  The Pimple in this picture is a small, fluorescent variety that I used early in the day for perch.  I love a lure with any flash of red - the red sticker and red flipper combo with the fluorescent body looked deadly to me......so I took a swipe at it.  You didn't think the back half of the minnow just fell off by itself, did you?  When the fish aren't biting yet and the tummy starts rumbling, well....minnow tails are tastier than you might think they'd be.

Since using two lines is legal when fishing through the ice I will always have a second line down while I jig my primary line.  I've been known to have a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth line down, too, since anything is legal as long as you don't get caught.  I don't fish on "secret" lakes for no reason, you know.  Wait, this took a wrong turn in that last sentence.  Where was I...oh yes, the legal second line.  It's pretty tough to effectively jig two lines at once so I almost always use a deadstick in my second hole.  A deadstick is simply live bait suspended under a bobber, like this picture shows:

Fishing pros coined the term "deadstick" because you don't really do anything with this rig other than let it sit.  The minnow swims, the fish come and eat it.  Sounds boring.....because it is.  I use the term "deadstick" because once I put the bait in the water and set the rod down I rarely ever touch it again.  Ever.  Because the bobber never moves.  Because the fish missed the memo about the available food hanging under my house, apparently.  In theory, using a deadstick while jigging madly near said stick is an extremely effective way to catch fish - the jigging draws them in, the minnow that can't swim away catches them.  Dumbest theory ever.

Actually that's not true - I've had some really good luck on a deadstick.  But not this year.  The walleyes I caught during the bitter cold Christmas week were all hooked on my jigged Swedish Pimple.  Not the Pimple I showed you above - my walleye Pimple, which shall remain secret.  For whatever reason the walleyes were not interested in live, swimming bait.  Last year it was the opposite; very few fish would hit my jig, but the bobber was going down pretty often.  And that is the joy of fishing - figuring out what works and what doesn't so at some point this happens:

That, my friends, is what they don't call a whopper.  It's a pretty small walleye...but it was the first walleye of the ice season and big enough to peel a couple of fillets from, so into the bucket it went.  There were two more walleyes caught that night, both bigger (and both legal, I might add) along with a few decent sized perch.  A perfect amount of fish for a tasty meal.  A perfect way to start the ice fishing season.

It's now nearing mid-April.  I have plans to get back on the ice - on Secret Lake #3 - on April 28.  Most years such plans would be foolish, impossible even.  Not this winter.  As of April 1 (no foolin') there were two feet of ice on SL #3, and with below-zero temps since then I'm guessing new ice has been added.  As much as I love fishing early ice for walleyes and perch, I will defy death to fish for big bluegills on late ice.  While the rest of Minnesota moans about the delayed spring thaw I am secretly thankful for every one of these cold days.  I hope to share more tales of this same activity, done in an entirely different way, in a few weeks.  Until then, keep jiggin'!

Practice makes less awful

Just got home from coaching yet another sports practice.  Tonight it was 4th grade volleyball, the team my youngest daughter plays on.  Tomorrow it's varsity volleyball, the team my two oldest daughters play on.  In sum, I've coached five different teams in two different sports this school year.  I think tonight was the 483rd practice I've run since August....give or take.

Fourth graders and volleyball - a combination so deadly it's been outlawed in 14 states and at least two continents.  "Line up on the red line," we call, they run to the blue.  We say "Toss the ball high!", they toss to a partner's ankles.  They never stop talking during drill work, then won't say a word to call a ball on the court during game play.  Serving practice is like an explosion in a fireworks factory with projectiles flying every which way but in the court.  Honestly, there are at least three times in every practice when I'd rather be dangling from a gibbet than standing in the middle of the vomit of volleyballs.  However....

I love coaching.  For every ounce of frustration there's a pound of pride when athletes leap forward in their skill development.  I've got an entry, a much longer entry, just itching to be written for this blog on the joys of coaching vs. the drudgery of teaching.  But not tonight.  For tonight I simply want to wrap this entry up, start thinking ahead to tomorrow's practice, and enjoy the solitude of a structure that has no bouncing balls anywhere near it.  As well as allow you the time to find out what a "gibbet" is.

Until tomorrow.......

The Gamers

I Tweeted this last evening.....

......and stand by my thoughts today, even though one of the first news articles I read this morning briefly made me feel like eating my words.

Our society is obsessed with sports to the point of absurdity.  I am not above the nuttiness.  A huge part of my life is spent coaching sports, thinking about sports, watching sports, and reading about sports...though I will proudly proclaim that the watching portion has become minimal, especially televised sports.  I grew up playing basketball, am a long-time huge fan of the Minnesota Twins, have developed a passion for coaching - I don't see a time in my past or future when athletics won't be central to who I am.

Central to sports, of course, are the athletes.  And the coaches; in retrospect I wish I'd have added "coaches" to my Tweet.  I draw great inspiration from athletes and their coaches.  The passion for what they do, the intense focus on achieving greatness, the unwavering philosophies towards methods they use, and the complete acceptance of "we before me".  It's that selflessness which leads to so many feel good and inspiring stories like the one I Tweeted about last night (side note: The "Broncos" are a hockey team that was involved in a bus crash over the weekend, where 15 members of the team died, including the head coach and team captain).  Not only did those professional athletes give up their own name in honor of an amateur team most had never seen, or maybe even heard of, they did this once they got on the ice - 

- a scene repeated in hockey arenas at all levels across two countries last night.  Think you'd ever see a group of Democrats and Republicans do this?

The article I linked in my opening sentence is a harsh reminder that humans are humans, that despite so many powerfully positive role models the world of sports is not immune to flagitious individuals.  But what other institution of our popular culture so overwhelmingly provides us common folk with tales of selfless concern for others or inspiring examples of overcoming hardship?  The world of politics?  Please.  We would all do well to completely ignore the selfish actions of the spineless lifeforms that pretend to represent our interests.  The entertainment industry?  Maybe, but so much of entertainment revolves around individual talents temporarily contributing to a whole (an actor working on a movie, a singer working with a band, etc.). The media?  See my thoughts on politicians - and drop down a notch for the media.  Religion?  Don't get me started, 'cause you won't like what you hear.

Two opposing teams uniting as one to honor a tragedy.  A professional quarterback playing catch with Special Olympians and refusing to leave the field until every one of them has caught a ball.  Eighty hand-written thank you notes from a division I football team to a guest speaker who bravely shared her story about sexual abuse.  The golfer who today aced a hole at the Master's golf tournament and followed it up by autographing the ball before handing it to a young boy in the crowd.  These are the stories we don't hear often enough, yet these examples are less than three days old.  Our role models are out there, their actions are making the world a better place.  If you've been scanning the universe for inspiration or a reason to believe in the goodness of humanity I suggest you steer towards the world of sports.

Today's word was:  flagitious - grossly wicked

A day in the life...

Answer me this:  At what point in life do weekends become more wearing than weekdays?  If I didn't have such an effete mind and body this evening I'd put some thought into creating a mathematical formula to determine that point.  I'm pretty sure it's some combination of age, number of children, children's ages, children's activities, and children's daily caloric intake needs.  Squeeze some mathy operations between those variables, throw in a cosine or two just to be safe, and I'm reasonably sure I'd have a formula that would at least get me in the discussion for a major award.

Children.  Those wonderful, stressful, delightful, needy, loving, exhausting children of mine.  They are the effulgence of my life, but some days feel more like the shovelers of my grave.  On this Saturday we were up and on the go to a gymnasium by 8:00 for a morning of volleyball.  Breakfast beforehand, lunch on the heels of.  Wash dishes.  Prep for supper.  Listen to homework complaints.  Make supper.  Make dessert.  More dishes.  I remember my childhood and teenage years, marveling at my mom and how much she loved to spend time in the kitchen.  She never left - ever!  And now I understand why.  I'm sorry Mom!

But what would life be without children?  This morning I had the privilege of coaching Child Three while Child Two kept the scoreboard moving every time Child One, the referee, signaled a point.  What a thrill for this dad, to be surrounded by all three of my kids participating in an activity we all love!  And, full disclosure, lunch was of the fend-for-yourself variety while we bantered about the morning's quality of play.  Making dessert was my choice....I'd been looking for an excuse to make one of my favorite bars for a long time.  And supper was chili, another favorite of mine which is fairly easy to make and allows for dishes to be washed while it simmers.  Looking back at my comments about this "busy" day gives me the urge to delete it all.  Busy yes, but worth every effort.

In a year Child One will be nearing her high school graduation.  Child Three has begun her transformation from little girl to pre-teen as Child Two, a full-fledged teen, spends more time alone in her room than with the rest of us.  These busy weekend days do have an end, and it's closer on the horizon than I want it to be.  I will fall into bed and hit not the alarm button, but the repeat button, for the cycle of eat, dishes, prep, eat will commence shortly after dawn on Sunday in pretty much the same fashion it did on this Saturday.  And that's ok by me.  I love my kids, and I love being a dad.  Even though there are times I think it's killing me.

This was a two-for-one post with new vocabulary.  Was set on using "effulgence" and then noticed "effete".  Liked 'em both, used 'em both.  Hey, it's my #project....I can bend the rules any way I want.