Wildcat Update

Wow, have I dropped the ball.

See, here's what happens: Your friend starts a blog, then you head over to check out his first few posts. You add a link on your site, then you check back every other day or so. Then, the posts start to dwindle (I know, somewhere the pot is calling me black) so you don't visit as often.

Then, one random August afternoon, you find yourself with some free time, click on your friend's link and... BAM!... remember that his wife was pregnant and learn that she gave birth about five weeks ago. D'oh!

Anyhow...

Audrey Evelyn Hjerpe was born at 5:15pm on Saturday, July 8th. She weighs 6lbs 4oz, is 19.5" long, and is perfect in every way. Mom is doing well and amazingly went through labor with no medications--despite the fact that things went a little wacky (and slow) since Audrey was "sunny side up" and had a cord twisted around her neck.

So there you have it. See all the photographic evidence (well, not all of it) here.

Wise Words

Sorry, White Sox fans, but...

Seriously, I can't wait for the Tigers in the playoffs. How can you love sports and NOT be excited about this? So many subplots, great fans, everything you could ask for.

--ESPN.com's The Sports Guy, Bill Simmons, in this breakdown of American League teams with six weeks to go in the season.

Things you didn't know

I like this title better than Wise Words, at least when it references random facts I come across. Anyhow...

Parking -- not the kind you did as a teenager -- is now a $500 billion industry worldwide. That sum is larger than the United States' defense budget, and represented about two percent of the global GDP in 2004. This means the world now spends on parking roughly what it spends on environmental protection, and considerably more than it spends on all books and libraries combined.

Thanks to the inimitable Tuesday Morning Quarterback for the tip.

Kohawk update

Wondering how Freddy Jackson is doing in his attempt to make an NFL roster? Well, wonder no more...

Running back Fred Jackson was carted off the field after hurting his right knee on one of the final plays of practice Tuesday.

Coach Dick Jauron didn't have an immediate update on the status of Jackson, an undrafted rookie from Coe College. Coe is the alma mater of Buffalo's general manager, Marv Levy.

Jackson was hurt when his right foot appeared to get caught in the turf shortly after taking a handoff. He limped off the field and trainers immediately began applying ice just above his kneecap.

Jackson, competing for a reserve role, had three carries for 12 yards in Buffalo's 14-13 preseason-opening loss to Carolina on Saturday.

Read more, courtesy of an AP feed through the San Jose Mercury News, here.

Famous people from Libertyville

Raise your hand if you've heard of novelist Julia Cameron.

Keep it up if you knew she was married to Martin Scorcese and is the mother of one of his daughters.

Continue holding your hand up if you knew she grew up in Libertyville.

Yeah, me neither.

Want more?

Click here for a column from a Washington Post writer who was affected by Cameron's book "The Artist's Way" and uses that as a starting point for a review of Cameron's "Floor Sample: A Creative Memoir."

Also, see this March 7, 1976, interview with Scorcese, while he was freshly married to Cameron.

Dream a little dream with me

Column originally published Aug. 9, 2006

Do you have dreams?

Not the giving a speech in your underwear, monsters chasing you through the cemetery, fueled by a late night taco binge dreams — real dreams. Dreams about things you might one day see, own, accomplish, taste. Dreams that represent a sort of mythical benchmark in your life.

That’s where dreams differ from goals. Goals are meant to be attainable, to motivate. Goals are things like “I want to run a marathon” or “I want to never buy pants with a 40-inch waist.”

Dreams also differ from fantasies. Fantasies are meant to be unattainable, to distract. Fantasies are things like “I’d like to live on the moon” or “I want to see the Cubs win the World Series.”

But dreams are in the middle. Dreams are a nice combination of the two, because they represent the attainable and the unattainable. They can motivate and distract simultaneously. They give us things to reach for. They are fantastic goals — the places we hope to reach and know we can with hard work and a good deal of the chips falling our way.

Hopefully you do have dreams, because they put you in that nice place between having your feet on the ground and reaching for the stars. If you lean to far to either side, it’s easy to get off balance.

Continue reading "Dream a little dream with me."

Evan's Link of the Week

This clip of a Japanese game show, in which men who fail to successfully pronounce a tongue-twister get a shot in the gonads, pretty much sums up the kind of stuff Evan looks for when e-mailing me links of weird stuff. Excellent footage. Domo arigato, Mr. Animato.

Father and son moments

I tried to get the pictures side by side, but I'm not sure how. So we'll put the text in the middle. The above picture is from 2005, on Jack's first boat trip on the Mississippi River. He had an absolute blast (I think I wrote about that before, but I'm not sure). Below is me and him crossing the bridge at my grandparents' farm in Elizabeth, Ill., because Jack wanted an up close look at the cows.

I assyme before too long he'll be old enough to think these pictures are hokey and may even stop walking next to me to prevent Kristie from sneaking up from behind with a camera. But for me, for now, they're treasures. Enjoy.

...in Cedar Rapids

Yes, I know I should have flip-flopped the titles of these two posts. So sue me.

Anyhow, as ridiculous as "Sling-a-de-ink" and "puash-a-de-pen" sound now, imaging how goofy they'll seem to a generation that was playing with cell phones while still in diapers.

At old Coe College...

Look, I'm not saying Jack will ever attend Coe, or even visit after his aunt graduates in May. But should he decided to become a Kohawk (making him a fourth-generation Coe student in the Holland family), then won't pictures like this be priceless? That's what I thought.

Readers' ideas for a better Clinton

Column originally published Aug. 2, 2006

I asked, and many of you responded.

Two weeks ago in this space, I asked Clinton residents to come up with 28 ideas for a better Clinton (one idea for every 1,000 people). Here were the ground rules:

What are your ideas for Clinton? What are 28 things that ought to happen? Don’t be fluid (“More frank discussion from our public officials”); be concrete (“Monthly meetings with my councilmen and a school board representative”). Don’t be wishy-washy (I wish we had better roads”); be demanding (“Every residential street should have curb and gutter no matter the cost”).

I got more responses than I needed to come up with a list of 28, which thrills me for three reasons. One, it helps me write this column a lot faster. Two, it proves people read this space once in a while. And three, it means people really have constructive ideas about the future of Clinton.

But enough about me — I’m sure you all want to hear what everyone else has to say. So what follows are responses (edited for grammar and style) to see if they spark any further discussion. At present, I’ll reserve my comments and let you make yours, either through letters to the editor or comments on our Web site or, preferably, both.

Continue reading "Readers' ideas for a better Clinton."

Newspapers are easy targets

Column originally published July 26, 2006

Let’s walk though the steps of an all-too typical scenario for people who work in community newspapers.

1. Local government body passes a law.

2. Citizens react negatively when law impacts their way of life.

3. Local government body backpedals at high rate of speed, then fails to lay out plan for moving forward.

4. Newspaper editorial or individual columnist comes down hard on local government body for making avoidable mistakes.

5. Members of local government body choose to get mad at newspaper or columnist, not the law or the people who passed it.

Obviously I’m a bit biased in this case. But it’s only because I’ve seen steps one through five in practice many, many times in the past six years, including the recent squabble over Clinton’s large vehicle parking ordinance.

Continue reading "Newspapers are easy targets."

Time Killer

If you're looking for a quick laugh today, you won't do much better than The Worst Family Feud Answers as compiled by some anonymous guy (who might not be unknown if I actually looked through the rest of his site, but...)

Anyhow, here's a sample:

Question: Name something you need to play Scrabble.
#1 Answer: Letters
Worst Answer: Dice
...
Question: Name something packrats have a hard time throwing out.
#1 Answer: Photos
Worst Answer: Corn

And so on and so forth. Enjoy!

Soliciting ideas for a better Clinton

Column originally published July 19, 2006

One of the sheer joys of my job (note: sarcasm) is the opportunity to wade through literally hundreds of e-mailed press releases from attention-seeking politicians and political candidates.

Many of them deal with things that do not greatly concern our readers — federal grant allocations to the University of Northern Iowa, Patti Blagojevich's July selections for the Illinois Children's Reading Club and, my personal favorite, Bruce Braley's campaign manager firing a response to allegations made by Mike Whalen's campaign manager.

Once in a while the e-mails actually contain something relevant that develops into a story. Even more rare, though, is the political e-mail that catches my attention long enough to be placed in my "Misc. Old" Outlook Express folder for later review and consideration as column fodder.

So today, dear readers, I bring you Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle and his June 9 release "Jim Nussle Unveils 99 Ideas to Energize Iowa’s Future."

Continue reading "Soliciting ideas for a better Clinton."

Field of Dreams

A lot of people who are longtime Cubs fans (at least those who, like me, grew up in or around the city) don't really, really remember their first trip to Wrigley.

Rare is the chance to come across a die-hard, adult fan who has not viewed the stadium in person. But today is your lucky day, as John Hill, a correspondent for The Cub Reporter (and a Brit), turns in a fantastic account of his experiences at Saturday's game.

Here's just the beginning:

Undescribable. That is the only word that does any justice to the view that met me at the top of those steps. Regardless, I’ll try to describe it anyway, justice be damned. It was, of course, the field that first caught my eye. After visiting Ireland in the spring, I’d never again thought the grass would be greener. It wasn’t, but for a fraction of a second it maybe just seemed that way, the colours of the infield dirt and the blue blue sky jumping out at me too.

This is mandatory reading for all Cubs fans. I swear. See it all here.

Why do they call it the Windy City?

To borrow a phrase from Christina Aguilera's episode of "MTV Diaries" ... "you think you know, but you have no idea."

Get the full scoop, the real story that debunks even what insiders thought was the real story, here.

Blatant disregard for 1st Amendment, Flag Code

Column originally published July 12, 2006

I had the good fortune to be in our nation’s capital over the July 4 weekend, and what better place to celebrate the 230th anniversary of America’s birth while simultaneously choking on my own tongue given the current mindset of a majority of elected officials on Capitol Hill.

I was in Washington, D.C., with another adult and 14 teenage students from the youth group at Second Reformed Church in Fulton, Ill., attending the DCLA summit (I’ll give you one guess where the companion event takes place). The fact I survived the journey is remarkable, given three factors.

1. One of the women who’d volunteered to drive us to O’Hare at 3 a.m. June 30 locked two sets of keys in her new car before we left Fulton. The car was so new that Onstar, while available, had not yet been activated.

2. According to my pedometer, I walked about 40 miles over the six-day journey, including two 10-mile days, totally obliterating my previous record of just less than 16 miles.

3. Six boys thought it’d be a good idea to duct tape me into my bed on the last night. Fortunately for me, they snuck in at the same decibel as a pack of feral wiener dogs so I was wide awake to laugh at them when they ran out of tape.

But this is not a tale about why an otherwise reasonable person such as myself would immerse himself in the high school subculture for a week-long road trip, it’s about how poorly our senators and representatives seem to understand the Bill of Rights and how quick they are to turn a blind eye to that which is not politically profitable.

Continue reading "Blatant disregard for 1st Amendment, Flag Code."

Evan's link of the week

In case anyone's wondering -- and I know you are -- my Brazilian soccer name is Claudio Hollinho. What's yours?

Family matters

Are you, like me, wondering how my brother is doing on his tour of Europe with the Drake Jazz Ensemble? Well, wonder no more thanks to this e-mail update, sent at 6:46 a.m. CDT:

Hi everyone!

So...I'm in my hotel room looking out the balcony with a gorgeous view of Lake
Geneva. No, not the fake one in Illinois, the real one in Switzerland.

I have so uch to say and not a lot of time to say it, because the Swiss like to take all my Francs in exchange for limited internet access.

Before I get into the good stuff, I may or may not write/call for the rest of the trip, but if I do, it will be either Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, at any time of the day. I know, real specific, right?

So, the in-flight movie didn't work on the way over, so when we got off the plane, attendants handed us vouchers for, among other things, 10 euros to spend in the airport.

We had just eaten a below average breakfast on the flight, so I wasn't hungry. And I wasn't about to leave the airport without using the money, so what did we do?

Heinekens, at 10 a.m. local time. Big ones.

After the novelty of that wore off (or is that called a buzz?) we were on a bus on the way to Lucerne/Luzern/Luzerne/justpickaspellingplease.

Waiting for me as I stepped off was a very welcome sight, miss Jennifer Westervelt who I had not seen in 3 months, and who I had not seen while I was in good health in 5 months. Needless to say, while we were supposed to be receiving instructions regarding meeting times and places, all I did was give her a long overdue bearhug.

We didn't play in Lucerne, and the next morning we traveled to Brienz.

If I had a day to tell you about this town, I would not be able to do it justice.

So, the highlights:

Lake Brienz, surrounded by the Swiss Alps, the water a perfect shade of jade green, playing an intimate indoor set on Saturday and a *loud* exciting se on Sunday, waterfalls everywhere, rowing to and napping under one of said waterfalls with said Jennifer. I have to stop so I have time to finish.

On Sunday morning, we went to Montreux, which is where I am right now. Another list:

Playing jazz for a veritable pot luck of nationalities, all of whom loved our show, most of whom yelled "Encore! 2 more!!!" when we were finished, and all of whom booed the sound men when they told us we didn't even have time for one encore. Experiencing a world cup final in Europe in a bar, amidst a divided audience, yelling and screaming every time one of the players so much as looked at the ball. Witnessing the strange British trsdition of throwing the birthday girl into the air as many times as years old she is. Running through the streets with crazy football fans waving (sorry Jen) Italian flags. Meeting Herbie Hancock at a bar and shaking his hand.

So after maybe the most eventful night of my life, I woke up, and toured a castle on the coast of Lake Geneva. And then I came back to write to you about it.

Tomorrow is Vienne (France, not Austria), then Lyon, Paris, and Amsterdam. Like I said, I may contact from Paris because I've already been there, or Amsterdam because we have three days there.

Until next time,
Matt

Wise Words

Add this quote to the list of reasons why I respect U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.:

"Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts. You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it."

Obama made the comments in a much-discussed speech on the role of faith in politics. The speech is analyzed (and the quote teken from) this piece on Slate.com.