Max: from 3 to 4

Happy birthday, Doodle!

A birthday that lived in infamy

Column originally published Dec. 6, 2011.

Seventy years ago today, my grandmother was a 12-year-old girl living in extremely rural Northwestern Illinois. It was the eve of her 13th birthday. An only child, she was almost half done with the seventh grade.

There are many aspects of my grandmother's childhood with which I have never been able to identify. While I feel a strong familial connection every time I am in or around Elizabeth, Ill., — which has not changed drastically to the untrained eye even in my three decades, let alone her eight — the ways in which her childhood differed from mine are endless. But the biggest has to be her birthday.

Grandma woke up a newly minted 13-year-old on Dec. 7, 1941. Even then, in that year and that sort of the country, becoming a teenager had to be something of a milestone. And though I'm not sure what time the news eventually reached her ears in Elizabeth, I can guarantee she went to bed thinking of the devastation of Pearl Harbor.

I learned this week, by reading the Chicago Tribune, that many Chicagoans first heard of the attack when a WGN radio announcer interrupted a broadcast of a Chicago Bears vs. Chicago Cardinals football game around 1:30 p.m. Central. Most sources report it took days for the full impact to be known across the country. The sinking of the USS Arizona was not reported until Dec. 13 and not confirmed by the Navy until Dec. 15.

Most people reading this today will draw connections between Pearl Harbor and the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and with good reason. In today's mass media culture, plenty of news stories zip around the globe. But none have placed a lockdown on America as did 9/11. Though it made perfect sense at the time, it's still hard to fathom the logistical implications of basically shutting down commercial aviation indefinitely.

If I were a better grandson, I'd have taken time at some point to ask my grandmother to share her memories of Dec. 7, 1941. And, for that matter, the birthdays following. World War II did not end until she was about to start her senior year of high school. As much as she loves history, certainly she had strong personal recollections of the day that lives in infamy and what it meant to be of an age where friends and relatives were being called to military service.

Continue reading "A birthday that lived in infamy"

Saying goodbye with a heavy heart

Column originally published Sept. 27, 2011.

Bill Kray died Wednesday.

I don't expect you to know who Bill is. The fact is, I didn't know him all that well, except he worked for the streets department in Monticello, Iowa, loved Westerns and his youngest son was my roommate for two and a half years of college.

And now, at 31 years old, one of my closest friends no longer has a father.

Bill lived to be 64; my dad will be 59 in November. If you told me today I had just five years left with my dad, I would feel cheated beyond belief. Yet Marc and his two older brothers already are walking down that lonely road. I cannot begin to imagine that emptiness.

The last time I saw Bill was at Marc's wedding in October 2003. As cheerful as ever and as kind to me as always, there was no sign of the Alzheimer's disease that eventually would rob the Kray family of a husband, father and grandfather even before his physical departure from the planet.

Dementia, as far too many of us have experienced, is a brutal attacker. It is capable of destroying relationships we thought would never die.

We all expect to see our loved ones slow down physically with age. We know one day there will be no more roughhousing with grandchildren, no more handyman projects, no more home-cooked meals. Aging is inevitable. What we do not expect, what we cannot plan for, is to stare at the face of someone who gave us all the love they had from the day we met and realize they no longer understand who we are or why we are there.

There are other ways to leave the Earth, of course. There are freak accidents, such as the one that took a college classmate on Memorial Day. There is suicide, such as the way I lost a beloved college professor last fall. There is murder. There is overindulgence. Reading this or any newspaper will reveal there is no shortage of tragedy. Death is a part of life —perhaps the most reliable. It will come for all of us one day.

Continue reading "Saying goodbye with a heavy heart."

Videos from Cedar Rapids

A supplement to the photo album linked to below:

Coe photos

I'm never quite sure how well these things work, but click here to see the Facebook album of photos from our recent trip to Coe for Homecoming and my 10th reunion.

Ten Years Gone

Ten years ago today — May 20, 2001 — I accepted my diploma from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Certain details of the ceremony are easy to recall because they were identical to the five other Coe graduations I attended for band and family obligations. As such, my memory of the actual event is more or less a composite of the other events, and I appreciate that for when graduation rolls around each spring, it's fairly easy to place myself back on the quad in the shoes of the graduates.

From Coe

The details of the entire weekend — everything but the ceremony itself — are far more clear. I saw parts of fourth-floor Stuart I hadn't yet seen because I was along for a tour with my Coe-grad aunt and uncle. At one point I got chocolate on a pair of nearly white shorts I'd planned on wearing the rest of the weekend. Kristie was in Fulton on Friday night and felt sick and could not make it back to Cedar Rapids in time for the Baccalaureate service. A different uncle proudly produced two boxes of personalized "Scott T. Holland Coe College Class of 2001" baseball caps, of few of which I still keep in pristine condition. Saturday dinner in the Amana Colonies. Watching my family meet Kristie's for pretty much the first time. Sunday lunch from KFC. Lots of hugs and photographs. A prevailing sense of not being quite ready to leave the Coe bubble.

Ten years ago today I was engaged (for all of three weeks) to the love of my life. Now we have three sons. Ten years from today one of them will be legally old enough to drive and staring down his last year of high school.

Ten years ago today three of my grandparents were still alive, and two of them attended the ceremony. Today, only my dad's mother (herself a Kohawk) remains.

Ten years ago today my Aunt Lynne (Coe 1978) was celebrating graduation with me and the rest of the family. She was taken from us more than two years ago, but the pain of her loss remains.

Ten years ago today my Cousin Charlotte was not quite five years old. Now she is a high school freshman, and her mother has been gone for nearly five full years.

Ten years ago today I'd been to Independence, Iowa, once for a job interview and never even heard of Ottawa, Ill. I since have lived and worked in both places and left good friends behind in each.

Ten years ago today Clinton, Iowa, was just a place we drove through to get to the Workman compound in Fulton, and perhaps doubled back to for shopping. I never imagined it would be where I'd find myself professionally and personally, welcome my first son into the world and fall in love with a tiny, red-brick bungalow that will always somehow feel like home.

Ten years ago today some mangy farm cat was nearly done being pregnant with a litter of two. Today those cats I'd never considered owning live in my basement laundry room, confined because they opt not to use the litter box consistently and because my second son is wildly allergic. I must find them a new home.

Ten years ago today I was driving a gun-metal gray 1988 Chevrolet Caprice Classic that survived a blizzard-fueled encounter with a guardrail on U.S. 30 on my way home for spring break. Today I drive a white (with significant patches of rust and exposed metal) 1998 Buick Century with more than 165,000 miles and no signs of stopping, save for the deplorable cosmetic condition. Still, I used it to drive my first two sons home from the hospital, and for that it will always be a special car to me. That said, heaven help all of us if it's still in the family ten years from today.

Ten years ago today I was a few weeks from starting my newspaper career as managing editor of the Independence Bulletin-Journal (even though the guy who hired me hadn't bothered to tell me I wouldn't be using that title in print right away). Today I only do the journalism thing part time and my regular gig is with Holland Safety Equipment, a family business that's younger than the cats I just mentioned (but older than the first-grader who might be driving in a decade).

Ten years ago today the Chicago Cubs had been to the playoffs three times in my life. Today they can count three more appearances, but still have been no closer than five outs away from reaching the World Series.

From Coe

Ten years ago today my siblings (and soon to be sister-in-law) were finishing their sophomore years of high school, drug (probably against their will) to watch me cross the stage. Today all three are college graduates (including one Kohawk among them who married yet another Kohawk) pursuing their own way in life, doing things far differently from the path Kristie and I followed yet making us all proud in their own regard.

Ten years ago today I was probably a lot different in many ways than I am right now, but I can't say I feel there's been a significant evolution. I'd already chosen a life partner, and here we are, making a life together. I'd chosen a career and stuck with it for nearly eight full years, and it still fuels an internal fire — a back-burner type flame, for sure, but it's never going out. I valued greatly the presence of family that day and now, as a parent myself, have a deeper understanding of the significance of these relationships.

I might not have predicted the exact details of my life on May 20, 2011, but I certainly would not have things any other way than to be exactly where I am. I hope to be as content on May 20, 2016, and again in 2021 and so on, but I also realize I have only so much control over how certain things play out.

And as much as I have a reputation for being resistant to change, nostalgic (perhaps to a fault) and a possessing a penchant for clinging to material things I somehow think will freeze time, I also see the future and the potential for wonderful surprises as reasons to be excited about life and what is in store. Looking back to where I was a decade ago and seeing all the unexpected joy that's entered my life reminds me there is a chance for wondrous things to happen in the next ten years.

Of course sorrow, too, has clouded the skies since that sunny spring day in Cedar Rapids, and certainly the next half-score will not pass without tears of pain and loss. I will rise to meet those challenges as well, for I know I'm working from a firm foundation that has prepared me to accept life as it happens, for better or for worse.

As I go to sleep tonight, I have my wife and our three boys. They are gifts to me and I do not deserve them, but I do what I can to let them all know I would not be me without them — and I like to think the same is true for them, too. Ten years ago today I was neither a husband nor a father, though I wanted very much to be both. God has blessed me with them and us with each other. College graduation was just a day in my life — a special day, to be sure, but marking that passage of the end of one life phase and the beginning of another was a brief moment in my time on Earth. What matters most are the things I can do today in pursuit of a better tomorrow.

Happy ten years gone day to my fellow Kohawks. I wish you well in your life, and thank you for being part of mine.

Cheering for Coe

With Coe once again qualifying for a trip to the Division III playoffs — and a first-round date with Wheaton College, about an hour south of Gurnee — I decided to pack up Max and head to the game Saturday.

We arrived shortly after kickoff (I took Jack to bowling Saturday morning — one strike, two spares) and the second we stepped out of the van Max asked for a hot dog. I don't recall telling him there would be hot dogs, perhaps he smelled them.

Anyway, armed with a giant hot dog, we walked around the end zone and found a patch of grass where we could mostly see the game (Coe was moving toward our end zone) and enjoy the hot dog. He ate the whole thing and about two-thirds of the bun.



Almost immediately after we got inside the stadium, I began thinking of the big, warm Coe blanket Aunt Kelly gave us for Christmas many years ago ... and how it was neatly folded inside the boys' bedroom closet, and not under my butt and wrapped around me to help us deal with the 40-degree, blustery weather.

After the hot dog, we made our way up to the bleachers. Max liked the part where all the fans stomped to encourage the defense. And he ate a bag of fruit snacks, despite having to take his gloves off to do so. And then he asked, pretty much every five seconds, if we could go back to the van. He was very polite and very persistent and very, very cold.



So at halftime, with Coe up 7-6, we began our departure. On the way to the bathroom we stopped to speak with Jean Johnson from the Coe alumni office. Then we went over to the bathroom (for me, not Max) and enjoyed the fact it was heated. By the time we were done in there, the second half was ready to start. It took us long enough to get to our car that we saw a Wheaton field goal and then Coe scored again to go up 14-9. And before we were out of radio range, Coe had run the score to 21-9. Sadly, Wheaton then kicked into high gear and prevailed 31-21.

But by that time, Max was fast asleep in the back of the fan, having (mostly) enjoyed his first experience at a football game. Next year I think we'll try for a summer Friday night or Saturday afternoon and make sure a marching band is involved. He's always been captivated by marching bands, live or on TV — especially the drumline. That's our Doodle.

Click here to see my Facebook photos of the trip.

My thoughts

Well, as many of you know, by reading Scott's post below, a professor that was very dear to us died recently. I've been trying to organize my thoughts on this one, but it's difficult. This is a man who I saw EVERY DAY the entire time I was in college. Each professor in the music department brought a certain energy to the building. Hoff's energy was intense. He was a fabulous teacher. There are countless things about him that made me into the teacher I was (am). He demanded excellence and hard work from his students and demonstrated that by demanding hard work and excellence from himself. He didn't expect anyone to work any harder than he did. And once you demonstrated that you were willing to work hard, he was willing to give you responsibility within his ensembles that made you feel special. He also cared. He would call if you missed rehearsal or class. He took note if you missed classes and rehearsals that weren't even ones he taught. He wanted to make sure you excelled in music, but most of all, he wanted to make sure you were going to be a responsible adult, someone who could be counted on. He always told us that if you were going to be a teacher, you had to give 100% because the kids deserved no less than your 100%. And he's completely right. He let me conduct Collage, he let me do sound mixes for Collage, he yelled at me when I screwed up, he left me "love notes" on the music bulletin board, he read my husband's book about our kids and raved about it in a letter to him, he critiqued my conducting and gave me confidence to do it better, he made me sing alone in front of other people (a major dislike of mine), and during all of this, I was getting prepped for all the crazy things I would do in front of a room of 70 middle school kids, 25 kindergartners or 60 high school kids. He helped me realize that I can look crazy or silly in front of a room full of people and it's ok as long as they are learning. I think of all the conducting videos, the "dear Hoff" letters, the blue book tests (ugh), the time spent behind the sound board, the time spent in his office, the way I could tell he was in the audience during my senior recital (a distinctive clap and voice!), the way he made me feel when he thought I did a good job. It makes me so sad that more students will not get the chance to learn from him the way I did and feel the way he made me feel.

It makes me want to write a letter to every single teacher who touched my life and let them know what they did and how fabulous they are and how appreciated they are. (Of course, with two children and one on the way, finding the time to write a carefully drafted letter is a little challenging, but I would like to.) Until I get the time to do that properly, thank you to Mr. M, Maggie, Anton, Kathy, Dr. Carson, Dr. Owen, Sharon Kay Stang, Hoff and many others. All of you have touched me and helped make me who I am today.

In memory

Coe College lost a legend today as beloved music professor Richard Hoffman died at his home. There will be many tributes in the days and weeks to come. While I haven't yet fully organized all my thoughts, I did want to share something I already have in writing.

I don't remember all the circumstances, but in the fall of 2002, the first year Kristie and I were both graduates, there was one final winter Collage concert with Hoff as director. We were asked to submit items and memories for a scrapbook and make it out for the last show. Living only 90 minutes away and still childless, the choice to attend was easy. I also wanted to write something, which I offer here as my first attempt at remembering Hoff.

I should say Hoff was about much more than Collage, and I perhaps got to know him better in my role as work study student for the music building than I did in my two and a half years as the Collage percussionist. But today it is the Collage family I feel most connected to, that we're all sharing a tremendous sense of loss and sadness while we remember the wonderful impact one man had on so many lives. Please take the time, somewhere, somehow, to pay tribute to Hoff yourself, either by sharing your own memories or getting in touch with one special teacher/mentor and letting them know they made a difference in your life.

Collage and the Hollands...
Nov. 24, 2002

While we are certainly not the first two kids to come out of Collage and get married, we may have the distinction of being the last. Of course, not being around the group for its last semester in its current incarnation, we have no idea what kind of partner-swapping is going on.

In fact, Collage was always known to kids of our era (the late ’90s, the new Millennium) as the setting for several soap opera dramatic moments. But based on what our friendly alumni always told us in the lobby after a show or while we were crashing on their couch on one of Hoff’s many tours, things haven’t changed that much over the years.

One of the best things about Collage is the legacy. While Hoff was there for damn near everything, the students always had stories to tell from days gone by. And so when it was time to hop on the tour bus, we began to feel that even if we hadn’t taken that trip to Chicago or New York, we’d still hear enough about it to feel as if we'd been there.

Kristie and I took two different approaches to Collage. Kristie was dedicated — a real hard worker. Perhaps that’s because Hoff had prime control over whether or not she got through the Music Ed. Program. I, on the other hand, took my cue from the likes of Joe Lilly, Forrest Green and Ryan Nelson. For the most part, I knew my music and could cover my butt if I was called on it. But the main point of rehearsal was to make the singers crack up, share jokes with the drummer and get under Hoff’s skin. Some of my favorite times were when the old guy couldn’t decide whether to throw me out of rehearsal or laugh at whatever wise-ass remark I just made.

I was proud to be a part of Collage’s best true “concept” year, when we were the Outcasts direly in need of help from a Greater Power — especially when Hoff took us to a local junkyard for our press photo.

From Coe

That tour was somewhat memorable, perhaps because it was my first. We had Amanda Erdmann just about break her foot off loading the truck, we had Shawn Anton put me & Scott Shoemaker in a home stay with some other kid named Scott (while there, the people’s wiener dog puppy kept trying to hump my arm). When we got back to Coe to give our home finale, there was a tremendous thunderstorm during the end of act two and I was shedding parts of my costume to keep the percussion instruments dry since the wonderful Sinclair roof was leaking.

I have far fewer fond memories of my next tour, the first two nights of which included sleeping at Coe. Then we did six cities in two days. A daylong trek to the Twin Cities, then the next day we drove back through Iowa, right past Coe, stopping at the first rest stop past CR, then putting on a great gig in the Quad Cities. It was then that Hoff perfected his routine of returning to campus the night before registration, but too late for us to enjoy any of the festivities. Thanks a lot!

Then, of course, was the tour that shall inspire generations. Heck, it even spawned a six-hour documentary video (the highlight of which is monkeys abusing themselves and doing other unspeakable things). We get through one stinkin’ show, Hoff gets rushed to the emergency room, and all of the sudden Kristie is conducting the show. Fortunately, my wise ass paid attention to all of Hoff’s goofy between-song speeches so I could BS my way through emceeing the show. By the last night in St. Louis, we had a pianist throwing up, a synth player trying to learn the piano parts, me struggling with the worst constipation of my life, a large-scale electrical storm threatening to electrocute us all and a radio station coming through Cyndi Phelps' microphone, not to mention the fact that most of the singers had little to no voice left and began trading off solos in the middle of the show. And Hoff listened to the entire thing on Kati Schaffhausen’s cell phone, held up by First Lady Linnie Phifer.

So here’s to Collage; to pre-show shots, to going commando for the last show, to playing word games in the coatroom at the Country Club (and making Stuart Mobley blush at the same time) before we performed for the trustees and proceeded to break down in tears after the gig, to playing Frisbee for hours in front of Fulton High School while the singers set up the sound system and did "Rent" karaoke-style, to planning to play at Ben Work’s high school until the blizzard hit, to working harder on the Unofficial Tour Book than the actual show, to wacky tambourine players that know the choreography to Everybody Rejoice, to sitting around for nine hours at the Five for a four minute performance during the Campaign For Coe, to closing down hotel bars, to pretty boys singing for high school girls, to white Iowa kids trying to sing "Ragtime" and Motown in the same show, to fake snow at the holiday concert, to Phifer (or Travis!) as Santa Claus, to parties in The Quad... to everything that is Collage, we say thanks for the memories.

But most importantly, we thank Hoff, because we know that without Hoff, we would not have had Collage and all of the other memories that came with it. Can Collage go on without you? Well, it certainly better. Was it always the best time of our lives? Hell no. Kristie and I bonded plenty over complaining about whatever happened at the last rehearsal or how crappy the show was going to be (never as bad as we thought). But would we trade it away? Not for anything.

Every part of our Coe lives can be directly tied to what was happening in Collage at the time. I don’t think we miss the rehearsals or the madness, but I know it will be a special experience that replaces how good we felt when the curtain came up, because we always knew we had the best show in town.

This isn’t just thanks for the memories. It’s thanks for a lifetime of good lessons learned.

***

I am going to miss that man, and I will not be alone. As we sang, under his baton, in the alumni choir for a Coe reunion in 2001,

"The Lord bless you and keep you,
The Lord lift His countenance upon you,
And give you peace, and give you peace,
The Lord make His face to shine upon you,
And be gracious unto you, be gracious,
The Lord be gracious, gracious unto you.
Amen.

Until we meet again...

Minor league ball: For the love of the game

Column originally published July 27, 2010.

After reading last week's column about the difference between Wrigley Field (which hosts a highly-paid, poorly performing team that routinely draws more than 35,000 fans)and Camden Yards (home to a bunch of also-rans and never-will-bes who don't make a ton of money and can't dry flies), Times reader Rita Morey suggested I try attending a Peoria Chiefs minor league baseball game.

She laid out her points succinctly: Much cheaper, more fun, lots for kids to do, contests between innings, easier parking, no parking fee. And on the whole, it's tough to argue. If you simply must support the team you love, then spend the money and make the pilgrimage to the big league stadium. But if you want to see the game played by talented people, you'll never find a better bang for your buck than minor league ball.

What I neglected to mention in last week's column is that I have a long love affair with minor league baseball. My grandparents helped start me on that path by taking me to games in Rockford, Peoria and Davenport, Iowa. My family made at least one trip to see the Kane County Cougars shortly after that franchise arrived in Geneva.

On a family vacation in Toledo, Ohio, we made sure to check out the Mud Hens. As memory serves, ex-Cub Jamie Moyer was one of the day's starting pitchers. This would have been about 15 years ago, a few years after his first big league stint ended. I have to imagine he's the only player I saw that day still on a major league roster — and he'll be 48 years old in November.

When I went to college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, I made sure to take advantage of Coe Night at the Kernels, a free-ticket bonanza that helped populate the grandstand at old Veterans Memorial Stadium. And then, during my junior year of college, the wheels began to turn.

Continue reading "Minor league ball: For the love of the game."

Happy 30th Birthday, Kristie

When I met Kristie Lynn Workman on Aug. 28, 1998, she was new to the Coe College campus. It was the Saturday of freshman orientation week, and many of the returning members of Lambda Chi Alpha, myself included, brokered an early return to campus in exchange for the offer to help with the poorly named Coe Country Fair. Our job was to help run the giant outdoor rental games.

While we were glad to help, we had three main goals:

1. Move in early, because it's always easier to get back in the dorms between freshman move-in day (Wednesday, as pictured above) and the weekend, when all returning students are allowed back.

2. Get a jump start on the new member recruitment process (rush) by meeting freshman before they could be corrupted by the sales pitches of the three other fraternities.

3. Meet chicks.

A prized possession this time of year is the "new faces" book included in the freshman orientation package. It's essentially a yearbook for all the incoming students, who are allowed to submit a picture of their choice (I recall one guy opting to use a photo of him with his horse). The idea is that it helps the incoming class, roughly 300 students, associate names with faces as they navigate the uncharted waters of college.

What is it really for? Upperclassmen guys try as hard as possible to secure a copy and use it as a scouting guide for cute girls. Frankly, the school could make a little money by selling copies in the bookstore — even more so if you could buy one that was just pictures of freshman girls. Heck, the University of Iowa could market a guide to its incoming class at Coe and make some decent change.

Remember, this was 1998 when the Internet was young. We did not have Facebook and MySpace. Many students, myself included, did not even have an e-mail address until Coe assigned one. The computer my parents bought me for my freshman year is about as relevant today as the Sonny & Cher variety show.

As you might imagine, I met a lot of new people in those last days of August. Many of them are still my friends today, some among my best friends, even if we don't connect in person all that often. I have seen many such people at their best and their worst, but none of them has meant as much to me as the girl who would become my wife. She'd been 18 since June, I'd turned 19 a few weeks earlier. And while I certainly was smitten on our first encounter, I don't think I could have predicted where life would lead us.

Kristie and I had our first date at the end of September 1998, a somewhat awkward evening during which I at least accomplished my goal of communicating my romantic interest, and convincing her to at least grant me a second encounter. We we already seeing each other twice a week during concert band rehearsals, and I had six hours of work study in the music building, where she spent most of her waking hours, so there were other random encounters (some truly random, others plotted quite intentionally by a boy who wanted to know more about a girl).

She agreed to let me take her to the homecoming dance (pictured above). When the fall Coe bands tour swing through her hometown — and when all the Coe students would be spending the night with Fulton residents — we all somehow convinced Dr. Carson it would be a good idea for me and a male friend to crash in the Workman basement, which allowed me to meet her family. Kristie met my parents and siblings in February as they came out for Jazz Summit. Our meal that night was pizza at Zoey's in Marion.

(Strange note: I was on a Coe show choir tour that stopped in Fulton in the spring of 1998. The FHS band/choir director is a fellow Coe alum. Kristie was at that concert, her first outing after a lengthy illness. I don't think we spoke that night, but I was wearing such a ridiculous outfit, it would have been hard to miss me. Of course, we all wore ridiculous outfits for that gig... sadly, that's me in the vest.)

Parting at the end of the 1998-1999 school year was hard. I remember talking with Pops on the way back from Cedar Rapids and him asking me, round about the time we pulled into the Mobil station west of Marengo, how serious I thought our relationship was. I don't know if I told him the truth, but I certainly knew the answer.

We both had summer jobs (I was an umpire, she logged several hours at the country club) and Fulton and Libertyville are about three hours apart by car. But her birthday is in early June, and that gave me a good reason to borrow my dad's red Toyota Tercel hatchback for the weekend and drive out to see her.

I recall enjoying a Clinton Symphony Orchestra concert at the Riverview Park bandshell and not much else from that weekend, although I certainly felt like a pretty mature guy driving across the state to see his college girlfriend. Likewise when she came to Libertyville later that summer and got to meet some of my extended family.

Kristie turns 30 June 5. I've known her for nearly 12 years, and on June 8 we celebrate our eighth wedding anniversary. In some ways, 12 years seems like an incredibly long period, and in other ways, I feel as if we've been connected forever. Perhaps the four and a half years we lived in Fulton and Clinton helped connect me to her youth — maybe the fact we now live near my hometown does the same for her. However you shake it, we are two halves of one whole in the best sense of that image, and I feel like the luckiest man in the world.

Many of Kristie's other birthdays in our years together are easy to track. In 2000, it was the day after we returned from the two-week Coe band tour to the Pacific Northwest. In 2001 (see photo), it was my second day as a real newspaper editor, and I got home way later than I expected because I had no idea how long it took to finish the paper, drive the pages to Oelwein and return to Cedar Rapids.

In 2002 we celebrated her 22nd birthday just a few days before our wedding. In 2003 we were freshly moved in to our first home. In 2004 our son Jack turned 6 weeks old. In 2007 we celebrated our fifth anniversary at the same time as Kristie's birthday, unaware we were less than nine months away from welcoming Max to the world. In 2009 we took a new member class at First Presbyterian Church in Libertyville… and also shopped for Aunt Kelly's bachelorette weekend later that month.

This year we're celebrating about two weeks before Kelly and Kevin's wedding. When I turned 30, I decided to buy a Wii for the family (I actually wanted to buy it for me, but guess who uses it most?). For Kristie's 30th we're getting her a laptop (and Internet at home) so when I turn 31 she can write a similar story about me… or at least blog about the cute things the boys do this summer before she forgets to tell me what they said/did/ate/threw/spilled/broke/hugged/kissed.

I could go on (really, this is just scratching the surface), but let's leave it at this: I love my wife. She's absolutely my best friend, and if that weren't enough, she's the kind of mother I'd always hoped I'd be able to share parenthood with. Sucking up the courage to ask her to go to Confetti's with me in September 1998 was the smartest thing I ever did. Every day of my life has been better because she said yes.

Happy birthday, Kristie. It's been a great ride so far, but we've got a lot of living left to do.

Coach Doodle

Don't know why it took so long, but I have been meaning for more than a month to post this picture of Max borrowing my hat to do his impression of an angry, 70-year-old football coach.

From Hollands at Home

Choosing the right school a matter of faith

Column originally published Jan. 26, 2010.

If there's one thing I remember about being a teenager, it's that there's always one great crisis in life — and as soon as you solve it, it's replaced by another.

High school kids are the undisputed world champions of exaggerating, so even things like who gets what part in the school play take on DEFCON proportions. But when you're making choices about what to do with the rest of your life — as we start asking kids soon after they're licensed to drive — the petty problems are replaced with issues bound to have lasting, perhaps lifelong impact.

I cite as an example my cousin Laura. I last wrote about her in September, 2008, when she was 16 and trying to decide what to study in college. Not knowing what to study, of course, makes choosing a college to attend even more difficult since so many schools specialize in so many different things.

Now, at 17 and starting her final semester of high school, she has narrowed her college search to three schools — a private college in Minneapolis and two University of Minneapolis campuses about three hours away from the Holland compound in Apple Valley, Minn.

Laura's father, my uncle Roger, traded e-mails with me last week and said Laura has one favorite so far, but the size of the town (a hair more than 5,000) is proving to be a stumbling block before she gives her final answer.

"We try to tell her that her friends and things on campus will likely keep her so busy that she really won't have much of a need to go elsewhere," Roger wrote. "But since that town doesn't have a mall or a Kohl's or a section of town with big box stores — I think she thinks she's missing something."

Continue reading "Choosing the right school a matter of faith."

Aunt Kelly at work

I was unable to embed this video, but click here for a YouTube clip of Aunt Kelly conducting the Muscatine High School Jazz Band at the Coe College Jazz Summit earlier this year.

Kristie and I spent many long hours involved in Jazz Summit, though always as students. To see Kelly return there as a professional teacher (and by "see," I mean "follow up on it 10 months later thanks to a Google News Alert") is pretty neat.

Treasures from the past

Last Saturday, we went through a box of piano music at my parents' house, looking for things to play on the new piano at our house. While unearthing treasures left and right, we came across "Music for Sight Singing," which Kristie and I instantly recognized as the standard-issue text for music theory class at Coe College.

I took one semester of theory, so I assumed it was my book. I think Kristie's college music stuff is all at our house. So I opened the front cover to find not my name, but that of Angie Fullarton.

What a treat, I thought. I hadn't recalled buying the book used, but I must have, and I got it from a good friend, to boot. Angie was two years ahead of me at Coe, and I took this class the fall of my junior year, when she was off earning her fame and fortune. Quality timing, too, as this weekend is Coe's homecoming and ANgie's 10-year reunion weekend.

But that wasn't the only treat. Angie is a prolific blogger like myself (find her blog here) and a phenomenal observer of her young son (also named Max). So it came as no surprise that we have another thing in common — making notes of funny things professors say during class.

There on the inside cover of the sight singing book were five quotes, all ascribed to Dr. Jerry Owen, all from April 1997 (must have been Theory IV for Angie). The quotes, as Angie wrote them, are as follows:

4/9/97: "It makes you almost want to be an automobile mechanic." (regarding a chord progression he played).

4/15/97: "I wonder if we could just quit this!? Stop it!" (re: Trish & Miriam bickering. "Quit" was said in a high pitch).

4/15/97: "This ain't no sexy walk, it's a solemn walk."

4/17/97: "Tough toenails — it's a sign of good health."

4/24/97: "She thinks she's so cute with her pencil stuck in her bun." (re: Trulie)

Sadly, it is just these five quotes. But it was a pleasant trip down memory lane. And if I can ever find my freshman psychology notebook — or even better, the notes from my government class senior year of high school — then I'll have to hope Wendy Dunn and Amy Holtsford never find this blog...

1st day of kindergarten is no time for mourning

Column originally published Sept. 1, 2009.

As a weekly columnist who tends to focus too much on my family, and with this column running on the same day I send my oldest child to all-day kindergarten for the first time, it would seem natural for me to have at the ready an 800-word dissertation on the associated emotions and opinions on the life-altering benchmark that is The First Day Of School.

But even though today is Jack's first day, I can't work myself into enough of a lather to wax poetic, even if everything you ever really need to know is learned in kindergarten.

For one thing, I'll be at work a few hours before the big yellow bus stops in front of our house and my wife and Jack's 18-month-old brother wave goodbye, then retreat inside to an unusually calm and quiet house. Neve overly prone to sentimentality, Kristie's first act probably will be to deconstruct Jack's "tent" by putting the couch cushions back where they belong.

For another thing, this whole "going to school" business is getting to be old hat. Jack's first day at an honest-to-goodness big school way back in October 2007 when we enrolled him in preschool in the Ottawa Elementary School District. He was about 3 1/2 years old and, while he wasn't yet riding the bus, he was going on class trips to the fire station, learning songs and stories we'd never heard and, unfortunately, getting well acquainted with the "thinking chair."

The Lincoln staff helped Jack grow from a child who rarely spoke in complete sentences and rejected authority figures at day care to a little boy who, in February 2008, went through an entire bag of Valentine's cards and read me the name of the classmate who sent each one. We're still working on that authority figure thing, and I know for a fact he won't let his teachers in on how much he actually enjoys school, but progress is progress, and having Jack in a structured school system has taught both of us an awful lot over the last few years.

Kids grow up. It's inevitable. We knew when he showed up in April 2004 that kindergarten would come calling in about five years. Just like first grade will in 2010 and, God willing, his high school graduation in 2022.

Continue reading "1st day of kindergarten is no time for mourning."

Kohawk update

Should have gotten to this earlier, but I think it got lost in the craziness of last Tuesday.

In case you haven't heard, allow me to inform you the Coe softball team last week finished second in the D-III national tournament, the best-ever finish for a Coe team in any sport.

Here is a blog entry from C.R. Gazette sports columnist Mike Hlas about the team's return to campus Tuesday.

As long as...

... we're dragging old stuff out of my e-mail folder, how about this reminder of the flood of 2008, complete with this picture:



Yes, that is underwear. Lots of it, washed out from somewhere out into the open. Thanks to Coe grad/blogger Laura Floyd for digging up the picture, which she credits to Coe PR maven Lonnie Zingula.

Easy for me to chuckle, though, from so many miles away. Lots of downtown CR is still a mess, and there's several blocks that may just be gone forever. If you want to keep up on such things, click here for the Gazette's Flood Recovery center, which I will add as a permalink on the right-hand side of the blog.

Wildcat connection

Max won't sleep today, despite only sleeping from about midnight to 6:45 a.m. last night, so I'm going through my e-mail folders.

Not sure how many people will be interested to read about the problems Coe is having since Alliant Energy decided it doesn't want to rebuild its flood-ravaged steam electricity facility that powers Coe and St. Luke Hospital, among other things. So instead, I give you this link to a Reality TV Soup blog post about the new cast of the Bravo series "Make Me A Supermodel," which includes a 22-year-old Libertyville High grad named Chris. He comes up pretty early in this video (which may or may not post properly):

Kohawk update

I didn't get much of a chance to watch Coe grad Fred Jackson this year (although I did see him gain at least 20 yards on one play twice during the season), but followed him by having him on both of my fantasy football teams. I also read a lot about him via my Google alerts for Coe. Here's a typical piece of glowing praise:

Bills fans should be thankful for Jackson before being sad for season
By Anthony Bialy

Naturally and as usual, the New England Patriots toyed with the Buffalo Bills on their way to forcing a suitably frustrating conclusion to an embarrassing year for the latter. But there is obviously plenty of time for fans of the eternally sub-mediocre Bills to dissect the train wreck of a plane crash the 2008 NFL season became. So why not enjoy one happy event from one meaningless finale?

A game that was thankfully over by 10 minutes to 4 featured a single aspect the Bills can celebrate, namely the futile yet still valiant effort of running back Fred Jackson to get his team to .500 on his own. His carries served as the last fun moments for backers to appreciate, so Buffalo may as well briefly cherish his toils before offseason misery sets in for good.

When the Bills gained a yard in Sunday's 13-0 loss, there was almost a 50/50 chance it was Jackson doing the gaining: He picked up 136 of Buffalo’s 276 net yards on his 27 carries. What the box score should also feature is the highest wind gust of the day. Conditions made the game take on the character of one played during a very chilly hurricane, and only those who sat through the overwhelming drafts will remember them as the forgettable game’s defining characteristic even a few months from now.

Those who saw it will also know that the rusher didn’t exactly sneak his way to some cheap pickups. The Patriots deployed the sort of defense that would be typically be used to counter a freeze option, stuffing the box with every player available as if they were facing Oklahoma in 1970. New England’s first- and third-highest unassisted tacklers on the day were safeties James Sanders and Brandon Meriweather, respectively, and the shutout the Pats pitched reflects the way their deep secondary didn’t play deep at all but rather hung close to the line to slow the otherwise relentless Jackson.

The fact Trent Edwards threw 25 times was only a byproduct of late desperation to get at least some points; in retrospect, this offense would have been better off snapping straight to Jackson and replacing the quarterback with a tight end, eligible tackle or other non-throwing, all-blocking option. Call it the "Wildcat," but the Bills should have just called it practical.

Jackson's 12 rushes for 40 yards over the first quarter’s course into the extraordinary gusts equals the hardest-earned three and one-third yards per carry imaginable; the only thing more impressive is that he averaged over 5 yards per rush by day’s end. Facing 11 single-minded defenders, the Texas native still got to 103 yards by halftime, including a career-long jaunt of 32 on the play after the two-minute warning. The way the offense consequently engaged in time management that makes W. Axl Rose look punctual by comparison on the rest of the drive is an unavoidable reality, but, with the season sunk, it’s best to remember happy times on the road to ruin.

More remarkable than the fantastically large amount of ground Jackson gained is how little he lost: The Coe College man ended up with only a single attempt that went backward. That one 2-yard loss to go along with three no-gain carries meant that, even with New England’s linebackers, safeties and sometimes cornerbacks ready to pulverize him, he still largely refused to hit the turf without first making a forward struggle.

Jackson’s one-game performance ranks with linebacker Kawika Mitchell’s unassisted effort to stop the San Diego Chargers in the team’s sixth matchup as the best game by a Bill this season. And the rusher of course exerted dominance over a long period of snaps: Instead of a handful of spectacular plays, Jackson’s consistent effort in the face of a cyclone of opposition led to a cumulatively spectacular afternoon.

The Patriots knew what the running back was going to try to do, and he did it most of the time anyway, even if he couldn’t single-handedly will his team to points. Feel despondent about the Bills’ 2008 tomorrow and appreciate the work of the league’s best backup in Jackson today.

See the post in its original home here.