Oh Great Pumpkin, where are you?!

Today I carry on a ritual that I began when ten years ago. I’m sometimes known, not as "the Art teacher," but as "the teacher who shows Peanuts videos." Today, of course, is the day to see "It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," in Mr. Mallory’s classes.

Call it my contribution to stemming the tide of darkness, violence, anger, and over commercialization of Halloween. Occasionally over the years people have asked me how I, being someone so deeply religious can celebrate Halloween. I tell them if Charles Schultz could do it, that’s good enough for me.

Schultz has been important to me since I was a tot. You know how there’s always that project in 4H where the kids have to show off a collection they’ve accumulated? Well, mine was for Cub Scouts and it was my collection of 1950’s and 60’s Peanuts books. That collection might have been what led me to want to become a cartoonist and to become an art teacher.

Like lots of little kids, I liked to feel sorry for myself, I’d get picked last for teams, I couldn’t kick a football to save my life. So it made perfect sense that I found comfort in Peanuts. When Lucy first pulled the football on TV in "It’s the Great Pumpkin," in 1965, millions of little kids who felt sorry for themselves identified with poor Charlie Brown.

The more I read about Peanuts creator Charles Schultz, the more I admired him. You may have heard much of the trivia about him since the 50th anniversary of Peanuts and his death early in 2001. He’s originally from St. Paul, Minnesota. His father was a barber, just like Charlie Brown’s. He had a beagle puppy named Sparky who’d eat anything. Schultz’s first published drawing was of Sparky eating razor blades; he sent it in to Ripley’s Believe it or Not.

Schultz thought about becoming a pastor, he was active in his church. He fell in love with a red-haired girl, like Charlie Brown, but lost her to a friend because he was too shy to speak up in time. After serving in WWII he sent in one of those "draw Tippy the turtle" Art tests for Art Instruction Schools. Eventually he worked for them as an Art teacher while he tried to get his cartoons published in magazines and newspapers.

In 1950 United Features Syndicate started selling his comic strip "little folks" and renamed it "Peanuts." In 1965 CBS took a chance on his half-hour special "A Charlie Brown Christmas." It broke the rules, it didn’t have a hyper active fast pace, it didn’t have a laugh track, it included a score performed by a jazz trio. Real children performed all the voices of the children. Little Cathy Steinberg, who played the voice of Sally, Charlie Brown’s little sister couldn’t even read yet! They had to read her lines to her and have her repeat them into the microphone. And most daring of all, it had an overt Christian message. They read from the Bible itself on national television.

The very next year, in 1966 came the Great Pumpkin. Both specials were perennial favorites on CBS for more than thirty years. Now Disney’s ABC owns the rights, but generations continue to enjoy Schultz’s masterpieces.

The Great Pumpkin has a lot to say about life. Linus is the Quixotic prophet, desperately trying to convince people to believe in the Great Pumpkin, but like Jesus called the unbelievers of His day, the other kids in the neighborhood remained "ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving (Isaiah 6:9 & Mark 4:12)."

But, like most of us Linus is a bit of a hypocrite. Lets face it, was it really about having the most sincere pumpkin patch, or was it about getting the big prize of all the candy and toys showered on you as the Great Pumpkin flies through the air. It’s about faith as opposed to works.

It’s also about greed and misplaced faith. Sally could have just trusted her big brother and get candy just by asking for it, but instead she follows the false prophet Linus and squanders her entire night sitting in a pumpkin patch, hoping for a for a bigger pay off than any of the other kids. "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened (Luke 11:8-10)."

Halloween was once All Saint’s Day Eve, a Church holiday, and then it became about superstition and fear. For a while in America, Halloween was about little kids, neighborhoods, hospitality, generosity, candy and costumes. In recent years it seems to have become more and more about big kids and adults, parties, pranks, blood and gore, demons and witchcraft, vampires and serial killers.

I say, take it back. Claim it for decency, civility and little kids. Make it about faith and mystery, surprises and silliness, not about meanness, anger, revenge and evil. Read the comics, rent "It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," and buy good candy, not just candy corns either, but something chocolate. But please, please, remember poor Charlie Brown and don’t give any little kids rocks.

I was a teenage werewolf

"How did you ever end up coaching Cheerleading?"

Boy, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that one. Speaking as a Journalism teacher, if I wasn’t the male Cheer Coach, I’d probably encourage my students to interview him. I’d think there’s a story there, it certainly is a novelty.

When I attended the Iowa Cheer Coaches Association conference in Ames a couple of years ago, I was one of only two male coaches, and the other guy was coach at a junior college.

There has really only been one time, to my knowledge, that someone gave me a hard time about it. It was in L.A. An Athletic Director at another Christian school approached me, assuming I was one of the football coaches, to let me know something about that days game. When I explained to him that I wasn’t the football coach, I was the cheer coach, he laughed and made a homophobic joke and sympathetically asked me how I "got stuck" with cheerleading.

When I told him that I didn’t feel like I had been "stuck" with it and that I actually enjoyed it, he didn’t quite know what to do with me. He awkwardly back-stepped out of the conversation and made his way to the "real" coaches.

"So, how did you come to coach something like cheerleading?" I hear you ask. Alright, I’ll tell you.

I wasn’t ever particularly good at sports as a kid. Freshman year of college, I happened to be in the student union when some of the girls on the cheer squad came looking for guys to be "yell leaders." There were only four of them and they needed more to help them build pyramids.

I was full of school spirit and figured it was a great way to meet girls, so "what the heck." That was just one season, freshman year. My wife Bethany, on the other hand, didn’t cheer in college, but she did for years in high school.

The first year that we taught at Los Angeles Lutheran Jr/Sr High School, Bethany was expected to coach both junior high and varsity cheer. It didn’t take long for us to see that it was unreasonable to expect a rookie teacher to be expected to coach two sports simultaneously. When we approached our principal with the dilemma, he was more resourceful than we had anticipated. He had remembered from my file that I had cheered in college.

At first I was very reluctant, but we reasoned that Bethany and her high school cheerleaders could help me train my junior high cheerleaders. Besides we welcomed the additional stipend, meager as it was.

I have to tell you, if teaching is both one of the most difficult and yet most rewarding professions, coaching is even more so. You can’t get to know a student very well once a day during a fifty minute period alongside twenty or more other students, you can get to know them fairly well when you have just six or eight of them for a couple hours every single day. My hope and prayer is that by coaching, I can make a greater difference in the lives of a few young people.

I coached junior high cheer for about five years. After two or three, Bethany got out of coaching and took on other responsibilities as L. A. Lutheran’s Spiritual Life Director. No doubt, a step toward becoming a counselor, like she is today. During that time they went through several different Varsity coaches. I’d like to think that for a while, some of my junior high squads performed better than their high school counterparts. Eventually, they asked me if I would take over the varsity squad and assigned the junior high to a new rookie teacher.

I coached two more years in LA and I considered it a ministry, not just an after school activity. We prayed before and after games and once a week we had a meeting/Bible study kind of the way I imagine a Fellowship of Christian Athletes "huddle" might have at a public school. I wanted to be a "coach," and not merely a "sponsor," so I made every effort to work hard every practice and improve as much as we could. Our squads attended camps and attended workshops and combed through magazines and videos for ideas.

I’m honored to say that the cheer coach at Lutheran High in L. A. today cheered for me as a junior high student and for both Bethany and I as a high school student. It’s a kick to exchange email with her about what our squads are doing.

This is my third year coaching cheer at Boyer Valley and my ninth year coaching altogether. There are ups and downs, and anytime you’re dealing with teenagers, let alone teenage girls there are days when you feel like you’re going crazy. But it’s still a lot of fun, and as rewarding as ever. I may not be the best coach that’s ever been around the sport, and my squads may never get on ESPN, but I like what I do.

School spirit is important. Supporting the other teams, coaches, and athletes at our schools is important, and I’d like to think that being a positive adult male influence for young women is too.

A little Shop-Talk

October 6-12 was National Newspaper Week. I bet ya didn’t even notice, did ya? I noticed, but then I don’t just teach Art, I teach Newspaper and Yearbook.

You might have noticed that a couple of weeks ago that many newspapers, CNN and Good Morning America ran a rather peculiar story. Most of them cited the World Health Organization as reporting that within a couple of hundred years, there would be no more natural blondes.

According to Bill Hoffmann’s story in the New York Post, a German research laboratory believed that the gene for naturally blonde hair would become extinct by the year 2202. Supposedly two things were bringing about the demise of the blonde gene. For one, it’s a recessive gene anyway, and for another, men are supposedly more attracted to fake blondes than real ones so they’re not reproducing as much as they used to.

Well, the word over the wire services is that the World Health Organization never issued such a report, never did such research and doesn’t know where the story came from.

According to Lawrence Altman at the New York Times, CNN got it from Good Morning America, ABC anchors heard it from an ABC producer in London, who saw it in a British newspaper.

These guys obviously forgot three basic rules of journalism.

First; "Get it first, but first get it right"

Second, which is one way you make sure you get it right; "Confirm information with at least three independent sources."

Third; "Use reliable sources"

In this day and age of 24 hour news, the internet, cable and satellite TV, too many reporters are quoting each other instead of returning to the original source of the information. Or maybe Charles Gibson just wanted to know whether or not Diane Sawyer dyes her hair.

I bring it up because I don’t think we appreciate our small, local newspapers enough. It’s not easy to put one of these things together every week and get things done right and get them done on time.

Sure, a few weird people like me thing it’s fun, but a lot of really hard working farmers think that planting and bailing and harvesting is fun, that doesn’t make it easy. Those folks who’s names are in that box on the bottom left corner of page two go through a lot of stress for ten or twelve hours every Monday and Tuesday. From writing, checking, rechecking, pasting up and correcting to folding and stuffing, labeling and delivering they’re working hard to put it together. And they’re not becoming millionaires doing it.

Someday I think I’d like to write a feature story on the history of Lyon Publishing. A small town, small business that’s stayed in the family and been recognized throughout the state for it’s contributions to journalism and their communities. It started with the Schleswig LEADER, added the Mapleton PRESS , added the Ute Independent and then consolidated it with the Charter Oak TIMES. Again, not making millions, doing it 1) for the love of the work, a lot like why farmers farm and 2) to serve us, the community.

And don’t think that having a Mapleton company own the Charter Oak & Ute paper is anything like the Chicago Tribune Company owning the Scottsdale, Arizona. It’s not even comparable to the Omaha World Herald buying out the Council Bluffs Nonpareil. The Herald is owned by the Ganett Corporation, by the way, who publish USA Today. Mapleton are our neighbors, part of rural western Iowa.

One of the best things about the small, local press is that you get to be part of it. You send in your story ideas, you hold us accountable when we get a fact wrong or a name misspelled (miss-spelled?) (sic).

Heck, you can actually write the stories or take the pictures! I for one have really appreciated the things that people like Lynn Hoffman, JoAnne Seufert, Ken Lally and Mary Ellen Keating contribute. And if you enjoy this column at all, don’t just tell me, tell Mike & Barb Lyon. Better yet, tell your friends and relatives and try to convince them to buy a copy or even better, subscribe.

But you know what we’d really appreciate? Letters to the editor. It’s easy to mail it, or give it to Jackie, or email it. My email address is under my byline, or you could send it straight to the office at mpress@pionet.net.

The more you contribute and participate, (not to mention the more people who subscribe) the better the NEWSpaper will be. It will be more personal, more unique to us, and you’ll make it more likely that we’ll be able to continue to have our own local newspaper on into the future.

Plant Dirt, Harvest Mud

Let me get this straight- a Senatorial candidate held a private strategy meeting where he and his supporters were venomous, angry, and full of malice toward his opponent. It’s a shame that hatred would be what motivates you to run for office, but big deal, we’d expect a candidate to be full of venom and malice toward their opponent, I suppose.

Someone secretly tape-recorded this meeting. That’s not cool. Remember all the trouble tape recorders got Richard Nixon into? Oh, and lemme see if I remember this right… some how or other a transcript of this tape recording was got into the hands of this candidate’s opponent (the incumbent Senator). Wow.

On top of all this, someone from the incumbent’s camp leaked a copy of this transcript to the press. Big surprise there. Were they hoping that the public would be outraged and offended by the things that were said at the meeting? It seems like instead focus is on how unscrupulous it was to leak the transcript and how suspicious it is that the incumbent received a copy to begin with.

At first it was thought that the person who did the recording was an invited guest, later it was suggested that the recorder was a long time friend of the incumbent.

Sound like a bad episode of NBC’s "The West Wing?" Don’t I wish. This is what’s happening right here in Iowa, between candidate Greg Ganske and Senator Tom Harkin.

Now at the risk of losing the respect of many of you I’ll admit something to you….My name is Ted Mallory, and I’m a registered Democrat. I didn’t have to say it as if I were at a twelve step meeting before George Bush Sr. made it into a dirty word back in his run for President in 1988, you know, "the L-Word."

The reason I tell you this is to lend credence to this next confession- I’ve never been a big Harkin fan. I can’t put my finger on it, there’s just something about him that doesn’t set right. Not a good reason, my fellow Democrats will probably say, but what can I say? I try to weigh information heavier than intuition when I vote, but it’s still there, and it nags at my gut.

Mind you, I in no way see Ganske as a hero or a victim in this scenario. Politics, like war, is Hell, I guess. And, like in war, both combatants are equally covered in the mud, blood, and filth. Only for one of the first times since I first cast a ballot, I don’t have a side to root for.

The gubernatorial race isn’t much better. My Republican friends had pretty well convinced me that Governor Vilsack was too urban, too influenced by partisan politics on the National level, and bad for education. Then their candidate came on TV with negative campaign commercials. What can I say about them? They’re gross. They grossly oversimplify the issues. Gross, gross, gross.

Okay, you’re right, it’s not fair to make fun of a guys name. But my point is this; We know who you’re against, but what are you for? I would have thought that of any state in the Union, Iowa would be a place where political candidates would be practical, plain spoken and positive. I consider what we’re going through a leadership drought. The field isn’t producing a decent crop of leaders. All we have are reporters dishing up dirt and candidates slinging mud.

I don’t know anything about Democratic Congressional candidate Paul Shomshor. What I know about Republican candidate Steve King is that some Republicans I respect thought of him as their second or third choice in their Primaries. It’s hard to jump ship when the gruel’s just as tepid in the other crew’s galley.

Back in June I interviewed Crawford County Democratic Party Chairman Les Lewis for a story about the Primary elections. He had high praise for our neighbor Clarence Hoffman, he said Clarence was "more of a rural representative than a Republican representative."

There’s what we need, bi-partisanship, post-partisanship, and concern for and focus on your constituents, rather than on winning at all costs. Stop the attacks and dirty tricks. Stop the negative ads. Start telling us what you plan on doing for us.