Weekend Photos

FRIDAY: The sunlight was a cool effect, even if it cut off Sasha and Christine's heads. The problem was that I had my ISO set at 400 for when it got darker, and I have them back-lit on top of it, but really, I think the over-exposed look gives it a bit of a retro feel. More importantly, I think it adds to the fleeting, moment-in-time feel too. And Cammey's laugh and smile are so joyful and infectious.

SATURDAY: Some use guns, I shoot things with a camera. Since I never managed to get a really good focus on the deer in any of the umpteen shots I took anyway- I really like how this one turned out because it has a depth of field and a patterns that are really neat. In some ways you have to work to see the deer, which is just how the deer want's it anyway.

SUNDAY: Nice nature walk. 7:30 AM. Yeah, I know I was supposed to be taking pictures of PEOPLE since it was a family reunion, but I figure as sleep-deprived and grouchy as I was starting to get, taking an hour to myself in the woods was a good idea. Exercise, prayer and meditation, and a wee bit of photography- does a soul good. I wound up being in a much better mood all day Sunday than I had been Saturday. Someday I'll actually capture one of these herons either up close or in flight. Sort of like the deer picture, you really have to look for this bird, which is as nature intended, no?

Email exchange

To Ted: "Steve King in a public meeting today said and 200 people at the meeting agreed:

'Health care is a privilege not a right.'~Rep. Steve King (R), Iowa

Do we let them die in the street. No i do not thinks so. What is Steve's answer to an elderly person with out health insurance die in the street. Do we let a young women with a problem pregnancy miscarriage because of lack of heath insurance."

Ted's Reply: "Isn't that the great irony? Protect the unborn from abortion, but once you're born you're on your own. Don't teach Darwin in our schools, but practice Social-Darwinism all day long."

Survival of the fittest, if you're not rich enough or smart enough or lucky enough to get good insurance, better to let you suffer, you must deserve it. How about if conservatives and liberals agree that we need to work together to make things better for everybody? Pre-born and post-born, young/and elderly, affluent and struggling. I wish that the folks who are so opposed to reform (often- ironically- who use and want to protect Medicare) would think back to what it was like in the 60's when Johnson was working on getting Medicare. Then Gubernatorial CANDIDATE Ronald Reagan tried to scare people into believing that Medicare was the first step toward SOCIALISM and it would be a slippery slope toward no longer being a free society.

Here's what I'd love to see- Steve King propose an alternative to the Demorcat's plans.
Teddy Roosevelt had a word for it, "Muckruckers." People who rake the muck, stir the shit, but don't shovel it- quick to criticize and condemn, but don't offer any other solutions.

Here's a proposal that Iowa Republicans King and Grassley are more than welcome to call their own and take credit for- put all Iowa public school teachers into the same insurance pool with other state employees. The more members of a plan, the less the risk and the lower the cost!

Offer me that and I'll back off of supporting a national plan with a public option because I'll be taken care of. Meanwhile the deductions to pay for Welmark are practically half my monthly paycheck yet my copays and precription costs are way higher than they were under Principal last year and Welmark won't cover as many things as Principal used to.

And there's my brother and sister-in-law. They never know when they might get laid off because their company just went bankrupt. My 7 year old nephew went to the doctor yesterday and might have pneumonia. And don't forget the threat of H1N1 this year.

How can anyone continue to defend Steve King when he says idiotic things tike this? Listen, ether he's a jerk or a fool. This isn't just his opinion or a different philosophy. A privilege not a right? Then we should revoke his privilege to Congressional benefits like Government health care. I'd like to revoke his privilege to a Congressional salary, but we can't seem to get anyone strong enough to run against him in the 5th District.

How can the same people that claim to believe in a "right to life" say that health care is not a right? So, potential death, suffering, and poor quality of life due to injury, illness, or other health conditions shouldn't be prevented? That's not a human right?

The Buzz

Herd Of Buffalo Crossing The Missouri On Ice
William Matthews

If dragonflies can mate atop the surface tension
of water, surely these tons of bison can mince
across the river, their fur peeling in strips like old

wallpaper, their huge eyes adjusting to how far
they can see when there's no big or little bluestem,
no Indian grass nor prairie cord grass to plod through.

Maybe because it's bright in the blown snow
and swirling grit, their vast heads are lowered
to the gray ice: nothing to eat, little to smell.

They have their own currents. You could watch a herd
of running pronghorn swerve like a river rounding
a meander and see better what I mean. But

bison are a deeper, deliberate water, and there will
never be enough water for any West but the one
into which we watch these bison carefully disappear.

Today was the most beautiful day of the year

This may be my favorite time of year. Temps in the 60's, glorious mostly sunny skies, soft breeze, just enough humidity. Granted, there are fewer and fewer flowers, but the ones that are left are even more precious. The trees smell wonderful. This is the fleeting moment before summer gives way to fall and everything is as beautiful as it will ever be.

Some of these images are beautiful, some are fun, others are a little disturbing. I hope they make you think of this precious time on the precipice between summer and fall and I especially hope they make you think about the amazing world which most of us miss most of the time.

Creation reflects God's love and His glory. May the lens of my camera and the meditation of our eyes be acceptable in Your sight, oh Lord our rock and our redeemer.

Lies (and the lying liars who tell them)

lies- canned lies - talking points - inflammatory lies - distortions - mischaracterizations - propaganda - genuflection to the base -more lies - horror stories -misrepresentations -towing the party line -little white lies - fear mongering -hyperbole -

Ya know, I used to kinda like Chuck Grassley. He's always been a sightly more reasonable than Congressman Steve King, but Geez- he's just gone off the rails with this one. Ya think maybe he's in the pocket of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies? A LITTLE.

No Govt. Insurance? Fine, try this-

Dear President Obama,

I understand you’re thinking of dumping your “public option” because of all the demagoguery by Sarah Palin and Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich and their crowd on right-wing radio and Fox. Fine. Good idea, in fact.

Instead, let’s make it simple. Please let us buy into Medicare.

It would be so easy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with this so-called “public option” that’s a whole new program from the ground up. Medicare already exists. It works. Some people will like it, others won’t – just like the Post Office versus FedEx analogy you’re so comfortable with.

Just pass a simple bill – it could probably be just a few lines, like when Medicare was expanded to include disabled people – that says that any American citizen can buy into the program at a rate to be set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which reflects the actual cost for us to buy into it.

So it’s revenue neutral!

To make it available to people of low income, raise the rates slightly for all currently non-eligible people (like me - under 65) to cover the cost of below-200%-of-poverty people. Revenue neutral again.

Most of us will do damn near anything to get out from under the thumbs of the multi-millionaire CEOs who are running our current insurance programs. Sign me up!

This lets you blow up all the rumors about death panels and grandma and everything else: everybody knows what Medicare is. Those who scorn it can go with Blue Cross. Those who like it can buy into it. Simplicity itself.

Of course, we’d like a few fixes, like letting Medicare negotiate drug prices and filling some of the holes Republicans and AARP and the big insurance lobbyists have drilled into Medicare so people have to buy “supplemental” insurance, but that can wait for the second round. Let’s get this done first.

Simple stuff. Medicare for anybody who wants it. Private health insurance for those who don’t. Easy message. Even Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley can understand it. Sarah Palin can buy into it, or ignore it. No death panels, no granny plugs, nothing. Just a few sentences.

Replace the “you must be disabled or 65” with “here’s what it’ll cost if you want to buy in, and here’s the sliding scale of subsidies we’ll give you if you’re poor, paid for by everybody else who’s buying in.” (You could roll back the Reagan tax cuts and make it all free, but that’s another rant.)

We elected you because we expected you to have the courage of your convictions. Here’s how. Not the “single payer Medicare for all” that many of us would prefer, but a simple, “Medicare for anybody who wants to buy in.”

Respectfully,

Thom Hartmann
See original website

Think; it's everyone's responsibility

"opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it."
- Jef Mallett

Up close

Hard at work

The "Government" issue; The use and abuse of a word

By Geoff Nunberg
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/government.html

In sickness and in health, Republicans have always been better than Democrats at singing from the same hymnal, and right now they're all turned to the page that's headed "government takeover." The charge makes supporters of the Democrats' healthcare plans apoplectic. There's nothing remotely like that in the plans, they say -- it's like equating the provision of public toilets with a takeover of the nation's bathrooms. Even so, the supporters would as soon leave the word government out of the conversation, which is why they describe the proposed federally run insurance program as the "public option." Public is the word we use when we want to talk about government approvingly, by focusing on its beneficiaries -– as in public schools, public servants, public lands, and public works.

That's how freighted the g-word has become. People will readily defend particular government programs. But when you listen to the ambient noise -- the radio talk shows, the late-night monologues, the "how many bureacrats does it take to change a light bulb?" jokes -- it seems to be a truth universally acknowledged that government in the abstract is inefficient, self-serving, intrusive, and generally a terrible idea.

The political scientist Samuel Huntington once said that distrust of government is as American as apple pie. But the suspicion waxes and wanes. In other eras the word government could inspire admiration and even awe. You think back to the 1930's, when millions of kids joined "Junior G-man" clubs -- g as in "government" -- pledging to become "secret operators" in "law and order patrols," in emulation of J. Edgar Hoovers heroically intrusive federal agents.

Or recall the scene toward the end of John Ford's 1940 film adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath, with Henry Fonda. After their long and harrowing journey from Oklahoma to California, the Joad family finally arrives at a bright clean camp for migrants run by the Department of Agriculture, and an incredulous Tom Joad talks to the manager:

TOM: You aimin' to tell me the fellas that are runnin' the camp are jus' fellas that are campin' here?
CARETAKER: That's the way it is.
TOM: An' you say no cops?
CARETAKER: No cop can come in here without a warrant.
TOM: Why, I can't hardly believe it. Camp I was in before, they burned it out--the deputies an' some of them poolroom fellas.
CARETAKER: They don't get in here. Sometimes the boys patrol the fences, especially on dance nights.
TOM: You got dances, too?
CARETAKER: We have the best dances in the county every Saturday night.
TOM: Who runs this place?
CARETAKER: The Government.`
TOM: Well, why ain't they more like it?
CARETAKER: You find out, I can't.

Of course there were plenty of people back then who weren't quite so grateful for the government's expanded role. But they hedged their objections by granting that government was a useful check on the excesses of the private sector. When Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie coined the phrase "big government" in 1940, it was as a play on the words "big business," and he conceded that government intervention had been necessary to correct what he called "corporate tyranny." Over the next thirty years, Republicans from Taft to Eisenhower to Nixon never warned of the risks of big government without acknowledging the need to restrain big business as well. Even Barry Goldwater framed politics as a tradeoff between big government and big business, though he came down solidly on the side of the latter.

That rhetoric shifted abruptly in the 1970's, when public confidence in government dropped precipitously -- a phenomenon that people have blamed on everything from Vietnam and Watergate to declining party loyalty to negative campaigning and media sensationalism. That ushered in the modern age of misarchism (a nice word for hatred of government): by the 1976 election, Ford and Carter were vying to see who could denounce the bloated Federal bureaucracy more energetically.

But it was Ronald Reagan who decisively transformed the language of political debate. Earlier Republicans had opposed big government because it was big; Reagan opposed it because it was government. And he drove his views home with jaunty aphorisms. "A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth." "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." (Actually, the Democrat Ed Muskie was the first politician to use that line, but Reagan had a way of making these things his own.)

But Reagan's real contribution was to shrink the cast of characters to a simple opposition between government and “the people.” Big business was eliminated from the political landscape, absorbed into "the market," where everyone was free to shop around for the ripest tomatoes. You could no longer ask the question, "Whose side is government on?" -- government simply was the other side.

Within a decade, that had became the received picture, not just for the Gingrich Republicans, but for the New Democrats who were trying to neutalize the Republicans' rhetorical advantages, albeit with mixed success. In 1996 Bill Clinton famously proclaimed in his State of the Union speech that "the era of big government is over." The next day the conservative Weekly Standard ran its coverage of the speech under the headline, "We Win!"

You can hear the echoes of Reagan's voice when opponents of the health-care plans raise the specter of government bureacrats interfering with the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship, cropping the insurance companies out of the frame. That's no doubt what led President Obama a few weeks ago to start talking about "insurance reform" rather than "health-care" reform, by way of refocussing attention on the insurance companies and HMO's.
Nobody expects Americans to become as enthusiastic about government as they were in the New Deal era -- just as well, since that tends to go along with desperate times. But with the revival of populist rhetoric in the bailout era, people may return to talking about government with a resigned acceptance, the way Nelson Rockefeller did almost fifty years ago: "Let's face it," he said, "big government is here to stay, like big business. This is a big country, after all."

"A Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican" By Thom Hartman

My cousin in Livermore, CA sent this one to me. I'd read it before, Thomas Harman is a very good writer and incredibly smart.

This piece came to mind recently when so many people at the town halls have been saying how they don't want big government meddling with their health care- but in the same breath say that we'd better not touch their Medicare.

Do people not realize how ironic they're being when they say stuff like that?

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should loose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time.

Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican’s would still be sitting in the dark)

He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.
He turns on a radio talk show, the host’s keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, "We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have".

Papa Bear;The places you'll go

Just this week I saw on facebook I saw how one of my former cheerleaders was a Las Vegas attorney taking a business trip to Chicago. That doesn't reflect on me in the least. This same week I bumped into another former cheerleader who had dropped out of high school and was working as a carny at county fairs. Maybe it goes to show you that all kinds of people cheer in high school. Maybe it shows what a diverse bunch of young people I've run across over the last twenty years.

Part of me thinks that it proves that the universe is unjust. That carnival barker was one of the sweetest, most gentle, picked on and made-fun-of, nerdy kids in school. The lawyer was the epitome of the "popular" kid, beautiful, successful, and generally unconcerned with the consequences of her attitudes and action.

Of course those are just my perceptions of them and my perceptions don't by any means represent all there is to know about either of them. That previous paragraph is obviously heavy with judgment and sympathy which is probably grossly misplaced. In fact I think that I was unfair to both of them.

The nerd tended to get on people's nerves and made decisions that weren't always healthy. I watched the popular girl treat underclassmen with patience and kindness and help them learn a great deal.

I'd like to think that both individuals gained something from cheerleading. Both have to be comfortable dealing with people Whether you're trying to convince someone on the midway to play your game or trying to convince a judge or client to follow your advice, a certain amount of confidence, presence, leadership, and poise are needed.

Cheerleading may not ensure that all of your dreams will come true or that your life will always be merry. But sixteen years of encouraging girls to stand in front of a crowd and encourage it to encourage their team's athletes has shown me that it definitely contributes to a person's character.

I have no idea wheter the cheerleader that became a lawyer still parties, or acts like the most important thing in the world are her looks. I don't really know her at all. I don't know the cheerleader who works for the traveling amusements company either. But I do know that she was upbeat, unashamed, effervescent, friendly and warm the whole time she was visiting with me. That made my day.

Life isn't always easy. Maybe she LOVES being a carny and I'm falling victim to society's stereotypes by worrying for her. I don't know. I DO know that it's a wonderful thing to make someone's day by being congenial and just giving the appearance of optimism. What a great thing it would be to be able to do that for even just one person everyday.

Cheerleaders aren't bubble-headed Pollyannas who are terminally cheerful. Some are remarkably intelligent, some struggle. Some are naturally effervescent and bubble, others wrestle with being melancholy, even clinically depressed. Cheerleading itself is supposed to be positive, confident, energetic, and fun.

It's my opinion that while cheerleading doesn't magically turn kids into happy, well adjusted perfect or successful people, it can be like a stake next to a sapling tree, or a wire cage around a winding tomato vine. It equips young people with the skills and attitudes which can help them cope, adjust, thrive and survive.

Another example of the politics of fear

NEW scare tactic- Telling Seniors that the Obama health bill will require euthanasia or assisted suicide.

Fred Thompson interviewed James Dau of the AARP. Dau clarified that no one will never be required to consult with doctors about end-of life decisions, living wills and power of attorney. Rather, it allows Medicare to pay for appointments specifically to discuss such issues with your doctor or nurse practitioner.

I found him to be pretty combative with Mr. Dau.

I don't know about you, but I don't want the government to force me to stay on life support anymore than I'd want them to tell me I can't receive care. Besides, private profit making insurance companies already pressure people toward making the cheapest measures, not the best measures. Right?

Thompson says that Seniors should be talking about this stuff with their lawyers, not some nurse or doctor's assistant. Hello? First of all- WWWWwhat!!? Second of all, not everybody is rich enough to have a law firm on retainer, Fred.

But try convincing the church ladies around here that this is just another Republican scare tactic.

I could write a column on it for the Mapleton PRESS, but I'd probably get somebody like Joann Seufurt writing in again about how I shouldn't be teaching our children.

I could post about it on facebook, but sure as day I'll get dozens of right-wingers commenting on my post about how I'm not concerned enough about the sanctity of life.

Jesus raised people from the dead, but first century doctors didn't have feeding tubes and heart monitors to keep people alive when they themselves would just assume fall asleep and not wake up, especially when their in constant, excruciating pain or are terminally ill anyway.

So... the poor, unemployed and underemployed should be denied health care coverage because right-wing radio-heads are trying to convince Senior citizens that Obama is a youth NAZI who wants to eliminate all the old people because their inconvenient?

Help us, Jesus, PLEASE!

Papa Bear; Not what I expected

As a freshman in high school, I thought I had cheerleaders pegged. I believed everything I'd seen on TV and in movies. They were the hot, popular girls who looked down their noses at the rest of us and who were as far as I was concerned "fake."

When I was a sophomore working on the school newspaper there were even two girls who affectionately called themselves "Fake One" and "Fake Two." They were popular, they were gorgeous, they were both blond, and they were both named Jennifer. I'm not sure if the "fake" nicknames referred to the amount of time, make-up and hair spray that went into their appearance (this was the 80's), to the facade of professionalism they could each almost immediately put on when they had to deal with advertising clients or school officials, or to the fact that they seemed to have an aura of confidence and enthusiasm on the outside but struggled with the same pressures, anxieties and self-doubt that the rest of us do.

Wherever the nicknames came from they were both anything but fake. They were the real deal. One was a cheerleader and another was on pom squad. Both squads practiced everyday on concrete after school in the brutal Phoenix, Arizona sun. Both Jennifers may have looked like every high school boy's dream, but I doubt either of them had time for boyfriends because they were each involved in a variety of clubs, church and civic organizations, student publications and student government and STILL managed to maintain stellar grades.

That's when I first gained respect for cheerleaders. Shadow Mountain High School had around 2,600 students. For either of them to even get on their Varsity squads was an enormous achievement. Unlike the popularity contest or audition for senior cheerleaders that we see on TV and in the movies, competing for a handful of spots with dozens of other candidates for a panel of coaches and judges at a AAAA school is a huge ordeal. But one Jennifer also went on to become Managing Editor of our school paper (ranked in the top 10% of scholastic newspapers nationnally by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association) and the other Jennifer became our Student Body President and had to make a number of presentations and appeals to the school board on controversial issues.

So I for one had no misconceptions about cheerleaders being dumb blondes, sluts, or petty debutantes. No, they were forced to be reckoned with. Be that as it may, I never imagined myself ever being one, let alone coaching them some day.

It's Shadow Mountain, It's Shadow Mountain

The pride of every Matador

Sing of our honor, sing of our glory

It's Shadow Mountain now we're for.

Now and forever, always endeavor
To battle on to victory
For we will never stop 'til we're on top,
So fight on, Shadow Mountain, FIGHT

Ah the 80's, the most perfect time there ever was. Big hair and huge "brick" cell phones.

Back then they had Cheer, Pom, and Drill and you couldn't tell the difference because they all wore cheer uniforms. But I just sat in the stands and watched.

SMHS had great baseball teams, average basketball & volleyball, lousy football, but a pretty good band.

Papa Bear; Don't Look Down

It’s a hard lesson to learn, but cheerleaders learn it every year, usually in the searing heat and glare of the late summer sun at camp, long before the school year and the football season begin. The lesson is, Don’t look down. Put another way, attitude determines altitude.

Pilots know this. If you raise the aircraft’s nose up, the plane flies up. Cheerleaders have to learn this too; where your eyes go, your body tends to follow. If you look straight ahead at the crowd, you’ll keep your balance, look down, even for an instant, and your body will begin to lean.

Cheer is not the only sport in which this principle applies. A basketball shooter doesn’t watch the ball, to make a basket, they have to focus on the hoop. Golfers can try to follow their ball after they swing, but at that instant they follow through, they’d better be concentrating on where they want the ball to go if they want to avoid a wicked slice.

A few weeks ago PBS host Allan Alda talked to University of Arizona scientists about this on his show, Scientific American. It seems that whether it’s a tennis serve or a volleyball serve or a hunter after a pheasant, the principal is the same- where you look, there you go. Don’t look at the ball, look at where you want it to go, don’t look at the bird, aim at where you expect it to be the moment your shell reaches the same point in space.

If you don’t want to fall, don’t look down. Principles are things that can usually be applied in other areas of life. That’s why sports are good for kids, they learn valuable life lessons without even realizing it- a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Seems there have even been studies that suggest that while you’re walking down the street, if you tend to constantly be looking at the ground, your mood sours, whereas if you look up more, you’ll naturally become more upbeat, less tense, even happy. One theory is that when you look ahead or up, more light can make it into your eyes. In the fall and winter when days get short and clouds hide the sun or people stay inside all day, some people begin to suffer symptoms of what doctors call seasonal affective disorder (SAD). So looking up can literally, physiologically keep you “up.”

Let’s use our “don’t look down” principle as an analogy for other things.

Take people. If we expect the worse, they probably won’t disappoint us. If we’re critical of them or defensive toward them, they’ll treat us as we’ve treated them. If we look for even one good thing in them and appreciate it, we may even bring out the best in them.

Take politics. If a candidate focuses only on what’s wrong about his opponent, he or she only turns off the voter. America is fundamentally an optimistic place, voters want to know what the candidate’s hope and plans and qualifications are. Ever notice how when one person is looking up, everyone else starts looking up? We want to see what they see. “What is that? What are they looking at?” It’s compulsive. That’s leadership.

Take work. If you focus on how hard it is or how unpleasant, it only makes it more unpleasant. Time drags on when you watch the clock. If you focus on a goal or your accomplishments, it’s much easier.

Take business. If you focus on your obstacles, expenses or irate customers, you’re dooming yourself. If you focus on trying to build relationships, and on trying to provide your customers with what they want and need, you’re bound to succeed.

Take religion. There’s Law and Gospel, right? The Law shows us that this world is messed up because people are basically selfish and short sighted. What does that get us? It’s meant to humble us and make us realize that we need God. Great, but if we never stop focusing on how bad we are and how bad everybody is, we’ll never get on with living. The Gospel is the good news that God loves us even though we’re selfish and short-sighted. It shows us that He wants to have a relationship with us and He wants to help us be selfless and broaden our vision.

Take any problem we have or all of life for that matter. Take society in general. If we insist on always being critical or negative, where does that get us. Nowhere, stuck, stagnant, digging downward. But if we look forward or look up, guess what- we’ll at least stand firm and tall, at best, we’ll start moving forward.

Many a cheerleader who has the bruises to prove that “don’t look down” is one of the most important lessons anyone can ever learn.

Papa Bear; How did YOU ever become a cheerleading coach

How a nonathletic, middle-aged, heterosexual male became a middle school/high school cheerleading coach and the lessons it taught him about life, teamwork, confidence and fatherhood.

Once upon a time I thought about using a blog as a jumping off point for eventually writing a book about being a male cheer coach. Never have seemed to find the time or the self-discipline. But at least one journalist told me that they thought I'd make a good feature story because there are so few male cheer coaches and that maybe I should consider writing a book about it someday. Not much to it yet, but here's a start.

"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.

Papa Bear; Forward & Dedication

Dedication

Dedicated to my girls.
First to my love Bethany and our three beautiful daughters.
Second to the spiritual daughters and sisters I’ve been blest with by embarking on this crazy ride. Thank you all for what you’ve taught me, I hope I’ve returned the favor.

Forward

Coaching Cheerleading is a trip. Usually it’s a lot of fun. Occasionally it can be pretty traumatic. One thing for sure is that it is never dull. People often say something to me along the lines of “I bet you have some stories to tell!” Every time that happens first I think to myself, “Oh, you have NO idea...” Then I sometimes tell them “I could write a book.” Then it occurred to me, maybe I really could. Heck, maybe I should.

It first dawned on me that I had an unusual story when I attended the Iowa Cheerleading Coach’s Association conference one spring. There was a conspicuous absence of men. There were a few male college cheerleaders and a couple of guys who ran either cheer, dance and gymnastics gyms or professional cheerleading camp and clinic associations who, no doubt had cheered in college themselves. These of course were all pretty impressive athletes. But there was only one other male who coached at a school in the entire state of Iowa, and he was coaching at a junior college.

It occurred to me that in my seven years teaching and coaching in Southern California, I had never encountered another guy coaching cheerleading.

I write a weekly column for the small-town newspaper that I try to work for during the summer. At least one reader tries to encourage me to write a book almost every time he sees me.
I have a friend who’s the reporter for the same newspaper (and two others run by the same publisher). She used to work for the Sioux City Journal and continues to freelance. She has commented numerous times that I’d make an interesting feature story.

So, at the risk of being too full of myself, I decided that maybe I ought to try to tell some of my stories myself. After all they’re not really my stories. They are the stories of the kids on the squads I’ve coached. Really, they’re the stories of kids everywhere because as powerful, funny or traumatic as I think any of them are; these are the kinds of things that all kids go through every day.

We adults don’t always look beneath the surface to really get to know the teenagers we encounter. If we did we would probably be floored. We’d probably be shocked by some of their struggles and their strength. Hopefully, we’d also be impressed what they’re capable of and by their awesome potential.

I also think that Cheerleading has been underestimated and shortchanged by our society. We satirize it and stereotype it but we overlook its incredible potential in our schools and in kids’ lives. We make a lot out of how “American” Baseball, Basketball and Football are, but cheerleading is an American invention too. Unlike the traditional “ball” sports however, cheerleading wasn’t born of conflict or even competition. Cheerleading was originally about community and coming together to supporting others. Ideally it encourages pride and promotes sportsmanship while providing a sense of belonging and purpose.

I hope that this book helps to show what cheerleading can and should be even when it honestly admits to some of the problems and pitfalls of this popular pastime.

It should probably go without saying that what follows are my versions of these kids’ stories. My memories and recollections and I own the opinions and the impressions that I share. Kids and their parents may have had different points of view, different details and certainly different opinions. Because of that and to protect peoples’ privacy I have change many of the names. As they say on TV, “to protect the identities of the innocent.” I promise that I’m not sensationalizing anything or making it up from whole cloth, but I’m not perfect and neither is my memory. I’m also shamelessly subjective and opinionated.

This is probably also a good time to say that the views expressed here and the provided resources here are not necessarily those of the school where I have been a student, cheered, taught or coached, their administrators or boards. The opinions included in this book are the sole responsibility of the author, however please don't be mad at me about them because I really hate having people mad at me.

There may not be anything world changing or all that impressive about an average guy who does an hopefully adequate job of coaching kids at small schools in a small town in the middle of the Midwest, but you’ve got to admit there is some novelty to an un-athletic, middle aged guy coaching a predominantly female sport like cheerleading. If nothing else, I hope you’ll find my perspective out of the ordinary.

If nothing else, it ought to be good for a few laughs at my expense.

Papa Bear; Introduction

Here's another attempt to use my blog here to help me develop my discipline as a writer. I had big hopes for my "Hometown News" section. I figured I'd fictionalize all of the amusing and/or unbelievable aspects of living in a small town and eventually I'd have enough stories for a book. Needless to say, I wrote two or three times but haven't come back to it in months.

Once upon a time I thought about using another one of my blogs, http://cheercoach.blogspot.com as a jumping off point for eventually writing a book about being a male cheer coach. Never have seemed to find the time or the self-discipline.

Once upon a time I thought about using cheercoach.blogspot as a personal journal about the trials and tribulations of being a junior high and high school cheer coach. But it seems like too many cheerleaders and occasionally parents actually read it and once in a while I'd strike a nerve or otherwise just say something that someone would take issue with. So, in the interest of good PR, I tried to totally back off of that.

Which left that blog kind of a fun photo album/scrap book for my cheer squad and a (hopefully) a means of communicating to both those cheerleaders and their parents. I'd like to hope that it is also a way for my former cheerleaders and mascots to get a glimpse of what we're going now and hopefully get back in touch with me or each other. But technology carries on and Facebook gets used a lot more for the things that blogs used to be.

At any rate, I really would like to be more disciplined as a writer and reflect on all the things I've learned and the kids I've known as a cheer coach- so here we are. I'm going to write at least once a week about my experiences as a cheerleader and coach.

I coach Varsity & JrHi Cheerleading at Boyer Valley MS/HS in Dunlap, Iowa.
I used to coach at Los Angeles Lutheran Jr/Sr High in Sylmar, California.

I never expected that I'd ever end up coaching at all, let alone cheerleading. I certainly never expected to be coaching for so long. But I also never expected how much it would mean to me or how much it would change who I am and how I perceive things.

Whoever you are (if there's actually anybody out there reading this), I hope you like it.

Headed to Des Moines

The Charter Oak Achievers 4H Club (formerly the "Merry Maidens") are going to the Iowa State Fair with their 'Bake a Cake' skit that celebrates their 60th anniversary! Congratulations girls!