Are sports failing our youth?

I'm headed to my HS alma mater, to watch some boys b-ball. Now why would I want to watch a team that is 0-16 play and probably get pounded, once again? Let me give you a hint: it's tied to the new book and I need some field research. BTW, I once played HS basketball and endured a 1-17 mark, my junior year, so I know a bit about what I'll be covering.

If any of my Maine readers have been following the brawl, last Saturday night, in Lawrence, between the Lawrence Bulldogs and Lewiston, here's a bit of info you didn't read in the paper. While I don't condone students brawling, nor fans entering the fray, I have it from a reliable source that a racial epithet was involved, directed at the Lewiston young man. Having spent some time combing the state's back roads, let me say that this doesn't surprise me. [Here is a newspaper account of the incident in the "hometown" paper of the Bulldogs. Don't forget to read the comments-JB]

I ran across this great contribution from a reader, who posted this at MBR.org, a site devoted to Maine HS basketball. I couldn't say it any better than this parent, from Calais. It ties well with last Saturday's ugly incident in Lawrence and other happening around the state, connected with this winter's battles on the hardwood.

Go Greyhounds!

Athletes and Punishment

What a year. A player arrested for OUI. A northern Maine team trashing a locker room. A fight during a game (the youtube video showed a much less drastic event than the posts described). A fight in the parking lot. A player contacting an official. And these are just the ones talked about here - how many athletes lost eligibility today with report cards coming out?

Someone much smarter than me once described rules or law as the miminum accepted behavior in a society or group. When did we decide high school athletes, coaches and programs only had to comply with the lowest accepted behavior?

When did we stop demanding and expecting more from them? Isn't that lesson inherent in making players dress up on game days; sign conduct codes beyond the regular student body; retiring numbers; posting records in lobbies and on the wall; hanging banners; etc... Aren't we supposed to be telling them that the more they give to their community the better they and the community will be? When a high school kid gets arrested for OUI is whether he/she plays anymore basketball the biggest problem in his/her life? When kids are yelling racial insults at each other, is their sports future the biggest worry for that town? When fans and parents rush the floor and a team needs an escort to safely leave a school, is the duration of suspensions the biggest safety worry for that school?

Why do we expect coaches, administrators, state agencies and similar organizations to fix this problem? I've got four kids playing sports - two on varsity, one in junior high and one just starting in rec ball. If their grades drop, if they drink, if they drink & drive, if they call someone "n", if they trash a lockerroom, the school and coach will have no decision to make. They will have a freshly laundered uniform to give to a replacement player and my kid will be working hard to make the team next year. I don't mean to imply that the parents of the players involved in these situations aren't doing the right thing - I have no idea about any specific situation or how any specific family is dealing with their child. I'm simply trying to raise the point that maybe we need to look inward to find the cause and solution to what seems to be a tough year. I'm in Washington County and I know nothing about the Teer kid or that situation beyond what is posted on this site. However, I have some admiration for two sets of parents (his and hers) and the coach if in fact they all discussed expected behavior at the start of the school year and then held that young man (and woman presumably) to their consequences when their behavior didn't comply with expectations. Isn't this young couples lives' more important then his basketball team's won/loss record?

This post is longer than I meant it to be when I started, anyone from Calais won't be surprised I talked too much. Any before everyone takes a knee jerk reaction to it, do me a favor, take the kid(s) you love and care for to a quiet spot and tell them they mean more to you than the outcome of the next competition. Remember, it is our job to raise them into good adults, it is not our job to raise them into good high school athletes.

Presidential field further contracts

Another horse pulled up lame and is now out of the race. With the departure of JohnEdwards, from the presidential race, the field of 16 has been winnowed down to six (with four having legitimate chances of gaining the crown)—two on the left side of the partisan fence and four on the right (although does Ron Paul really count?).

John Edwards ran a heroic race. It’s not everyday that a candidate, with a wife battling cancer, dons the weighty mantle of presidential candidate. His announcement, back in December of 2006, elicited whispers from many and had the tongues of America’s talk radio magpies clacking, questioning his motives and even his manhood, for having the audacity to run, when his wife was ill.

Obviously, John and Elizabeth Edwards had numerous conversations about this and I have no doubt that it was ultimately Elizabeth that convinced him to take the bold step of running. I also am sure that they talked about what would end up being said about him and her, for their decision. You can’t be married 30 years and do otherwise.

In 2004, when he was forced to be the well-coifed and telegenic waterboy, toting around the message baggage for John Kerry, Edwards was a loyal vice-presidential sidepiece, for the senior senator. He served Kerry ably, paying his dues, but anyone that saw Edwards in person, out on the stump, knew that one day, he’d be out on his own, his own front man, with his own message.

It had to be major blow to Edwards when, on January 10th, two days after enduring another third place finish, this time in New Hampshire, Kerry came out for Edwards’ rival, Barack Obama. It was a blow that Edwards ultimately wouldn’t recover from. I’m sure it was also a deeply personal disappointment to him.

It is always enlightening to see what message a candidate builds their candidacy around. For Edwards, it was a brand of old-fashioned, economic populism. While there were some who questioned his sincerity, after the $400 haircut flap, but I think the message was part and parcel of who John Edwards is and where he comes from.

Edwards epitomizes the Horatio Alger myth. A small town boy, from Robbins, South Carolina, with a father that worked in the local textile factory and a mother that was a postal carrier, he became the first one in his family that went to college. Growing up in a small, close-knit community made an impression on young Edwards. He saw firsthand the struggles of working class people and it deeply affected him. While Edwards has the good looks and social graces to hobnob in the world of John Kerry, I don’t think he was ever entirely comfortable in that world. The John Edwards of 2008, railing against corporate malfeasance and what it has been visiting on the people that he grew up with and many others like them, was a man at home with his message.

When you craft a message for a campaign, there is some calculation involved. In today’s world of sound bite journalism and remote-control channel-surfing, the tendency is towards slickness, simplicity and even, vacuity. Edwards ultimate choice for his campaign theme was an interesting one.

Over the course of nearly 14 months of campaigning, hammering away on the stump, you become your message—at least if you have any measure of sincerity in you. Edwards became a populist preacher, even more fiery and impassioned at the end, than I think he was in the beginning.

During the time he was out on the campaign trail, he was representing the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the people of Robbins and even those of South Carolina with him. Once more, like Kerry’s failure to endorse him, being abandoned by the people of his home state had to be another body blow to him, this one especially personal. He finished third in his home state to a man with no substance behind his message and his other opponent, the Lady MacBeth of 2008, altering her message and inflection of speech to whatever area that she was campaigning in.

Economic populism doesn’t play well anymore. Its truisms are still relevant for today. Just like in the days of Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette and his Progressive contemporaries, corporations ruled the land. Back then, a candidate preaching a populist message got a hearing and certainly got coverage from the newspapers of the day. All too often, Edwards’ message got lost on reporters who lacked historical context, or economic understanding of that message.

For many Americans, they know that something’s not right and economically off-kilter. They are seeing gas prices topping $3/gallon, bread and milk prices going up weekly and their paychecks staying the same. Houses nearby are vacant and the grass is not mowed, meaning another home has been seized by foreclosure. Many others have seen firsthand what the global economy looks like, when they got their pink slip after finding out their firm was moving where they could find cheap labor. A $300 tax rebate check won’t help them.

All of these things are real and Edwards stayed on message, trying to pull the working class over to his side. Sadly, many of these folks, about to be run over by the corporate bus, opted for one of the two candidates that represent the interests driving the bus. Like the consumer that philosophically supports the local hardware store, but drive past it on the way to Wal-Mart, to get that length of kitchen pipe he needs to fix the sink, voters bypassed the one candidate in John Edwards, that cared about their plight.

I admire John Edwards. Visibly fatigued and clad in blue jeans, he stood with Elizabeth and his children on Wednesday and said he was dropping out of the race. I was pleased that he withheld endorsing any candidate, before he spoke with them. My hope is that he’ll forego an endorsement, but he’s earned the right to endorse whoever he sees fit.

Sadly for me and any other voter who cares about the issues that Edwards campaigned vigorously on, we no longer have a candidate that we can wholeheartedly support.

Be all you can be

War is hell—at least what I’m told, in books and Hollywood films. I’m one of the lucky ones in that I’ve never had to face combat. While I’ve offered my opinions about war and how I’m personally opposed to all the horrors that accompany it, once again, I’ve viewed them from safety.

Most of the men I’ve known who’ve faced battle, whether during WWII, Korea, Vietnam and now, Gulf Wars I & II, are reticent to talk about it. It’s something that they did and most prefer to leave it at that. I can respect that.

This morning, while readying to head out the door to go to work, I caught a strange story on NPR’s Morning Edition. Ari Shapiro’s feature highlighted the Army’s attempts at preventing disabled American veterans from receiving help from the Department of Veterans Affairs, with their disability paperwork. I thought, why would the U.S. Army not want to make sure that men that wore the uniform and were injured in battle, receive the proper follow-up for their injuries?

It was sad to hear a former soldier say that his treatment made him feel like “a worn-out pair of boots.” Disabled from injuries received serving his country and honoring its flag, this ex-GI was forced to speak on the condition of anonymity, because he “feared retaliation.” You can read the full story here.

I’m glad I’ve never had to serve my country, as there’s no telling what I might be going through, if like the men in this story, I had suffered serious injuries and needed my country to take care of me.

So, if you wonder why I'm a bit tired of all the flag-waving and chest-thumping about our troops, this story will clue you in. If you really want to support the troops, support the fair treatment of them after they've been shot at, blown up by roadside bombs and left to wonder where all the crowds that saw them off to battle, went.

4 hours difference

[Mike's City Diner-Boston-]
[-The famous Citgo sign-]
[-Madison, Maine and the Madison Mill in the background-]
[-Madison's Carnegie Library-]

I had an interesting week and travelled to Boston, Wednesday, to celebrate my birthday.

I was able to spend the day with Mr. Everyday Yeah and we checked out some of The Hub's varied sites, including a classic diner, special screening of the new Rambo movie and Kenmore Square.

On Thursday, I was in Madison, Maine, where I had a tour of an intriguing indoor greenhouse, owned by Backyard Farms.

I didn't have a chance to visit the library in Madison, but it's on my list of things to do, should I make it back, in the near future.

Additional thoughts; BTK

I just wanted to tie up a few thoughts I have related to Billy the Kid, the documentary I saw on Saturday night.

I’ve been doing some reading and research about how Jennifer Venditti came to make the movie and how she “discovered” Billy Page, the star of the movie. Interestingly, there has been some criticism of Venditti, for supposedly “staging” aspects of the filming. She alluded to his on Saturday night, during her Q & A session.

As a filmmaker, it’s easy to arrive on location and film something that isn’t true to the culture of the place. As I’ve stated before, you can have all your facts straight and still miss the story, because you miss the culture of the place. That seems to be a common theme when urban journalists and other chroniclers of events, arrive in rural parts of the country and try to tell a story that they don’t really understand.

To Venditti’s credit, she was very respectful, in my opinion, of the local culture. Since the filming took place in Lisbon Falls, I was paying particularly attention to how she represented the people she was filming. I think she was sympathetic, both as a fellow human being and as a filmmaker, to Billy and his family.

I found a few comments on Venditti’s blog about her being exploitive of her subject, Billy, in order to promote the film.

That’s always going to be a dilemma for documentary filmmakers, doing films like this one. You get close to your subject and how do you make the process as “natural” as possible? When does the camera “go away,” or does it at all?

I’m not a filmmaker, so I really appreciated having Venditti at the screening in Brunswick to talk to us about the process.

This film is special on so many levels and Billy is truly a unique and compelling figure and Venditti, to her credit, allowed him to have a voice for the first time in his life, as well as an audience to speak to.

Thank you, Jennifer.