Today Would Have Been My Father's 83rd Birthday!

June 6 is an important day in our history because 48 years ago today Robert Kennedy was taken from us all too soon. I often wonder what the world and our lives would be like had the 1960s been different on so many occasions.

The 1960s brought tremendous amount of change for me as a young boy moving from five different communities and learning to adapt to five very different environments. It was also a decade in which my relationship with my dad changed dramatically as I grew up under his tutelage.

I have written about his birthday on several occasions and other times I wrote how he affected me as my mentor, coach and friend. I was my father's shadow in many ways and as I grew older I came to realize just what a wonderful relationship we had.

There was an alternate side of my father I did not know much about until much later. I choose to focus on the positive side of our relationship. That is why I miss him tremendously since he has been gone almost ten years already. I have several pictures of him at various stages of his life on my Screensaver and see him for seven-second intervals every so often.

Attached is my first photograph of him playing with me and teaching me how to blow bubbles in 1957 when I was only two:

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Recently, I wrote a blog post that has become one of my most read ever about him coaching me in the summer of 1968 in Sibley, Iowa. After that summer, he accepted the track and cross country coaching job as well as a counselor position at Worthington State Junior College (WSJC) where he stayed for eight years until my family moved again where he took a similar job at Rochester Community College (RCC). He retired after seventeen years in Rochester. 

Several years ago, I was in Worthington in mid-September for the annual King Turkey Days celebration. I took some time and went to visit and give a brief speech for my long time friend Joel Krekelberg who was teaching a class entitled "Prevention and Care of Athletic Injuries." Krek as he is appropriately known in Worthington was teaching his students how to wrap ankles. Every time I get an opportunity to watch him deftly wrap an ankle is a treat because he is so good at!

After his class, I wanted to go over to the athletic building and see if any of my dad's track and cross country teams pictures were still there. We went over there and there were only a few photographs left. The athletic director was there and asked me if I wanted those photos because since track and cross country were eliminated from their sports options, eventually they would be thrown away when the football team pictures crowded them out. I gladly took them and want to share a couple with you now of my father's very successful track and cross country program in the eight years he ran the program that he took over when Bruce Traphagen turned over the program to Dad in the fall of 1968.

I am attaching a couple photographs and their yearly haul of trophies:

As always, click on the images to make them larger:

Some of you may recognize yourself or someone you know. One of the members of the track team, Jerry Schnyders, back row, second from right, I have known since we lived in Edgerton and played baseball together in the mid-1960s!

Roger Schipper who is on the far right in the second row lived with my family for a while when he first moved to Rochester to become the trainer at the Community College. Later, when he was finishing his student teaching, he stayed with Dave Bisbee and me in my first apartment in Minneapolis.

This is fun for me to look at old pictures of not only my dad but also friendships that have lasted many years. I wrote a lot about that in my book.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

My Uncle Ed

My Uncle Ed was laid to rest yesterday beside his loving wife, Mabel. Although, everyone called her Tabby. For as long as I can remember, most everyone called him Ralph or Ralphie. Ed was the sixth child of my maternal grandparents Joe and Erma Smith. Ed was born in 1945 and after graduating from White High School in tiny White, South Dakota he enlisted in the Army.
 
Four years later, he found himself in Vietnam where he had volunteered to be a door gunner. He flew eight missions in the most dangerous position one could have in combat. For those of you that do not know what a door gunner is, they were the guys on the doors of the helicopters firing machine guns into the jungle as the choppers came in to rescue the wounded and other soldiers after an encounter with the Viet Cong. Only 8% of door gunners came home!

We have all heard the phrase, “I’ve got your back.” Being a door gunner is the epitome of having your brothers in arms backs! Door gunners saved many lives and had an incredibly high mortality rate because the VC were aiming at them! The enemy knew if they could take out the door gunners, they had a much better chance of survival because no one would be firing back at them.

Ed never talked about his experience in Vietnam, but talking to my other uncles, reading about the war, and talking to other people, I have learned more than I ever care to about war. You may have heard the famous General William Sherman’s statement to the Mayor and Councilmen of Atlanta before he burned the city to the ground, “War is hell!” If you have experienced battle, you know all too well what that statement means. If you have not experienced combat, ask someone who has and see what they tell you — if they are willing to talk about it. It will make you think twice about wanting to serve in a battle zone.

In May 1967, my grandma died very unexpectedly. Ed’s two older brothers who were active military at the time and had some high ranking connections, got Ed out of the Army on a hardship discharge to go home and help grandpa run the farm. There were still four younger siblings living at home and grandpa needed help. Fortunately, Bill and Bob were able to use their connections and get Ed out of his military obligation.

After several years of being out of the Army, Ed reenlisted and served sixteen more years to retire from the Army with twenty years of service. Between my mom’s seven brothers, they have a combined eighty-two years of military service in all four branches of our Armed Forces. I have always contended you cannot find many families that have made that much of a commitment to serve our country from one generation of young men in one family.

To a man, whenever I bring that up, none of my uncles think it is such a big deal and other families have done more. That may be true; but I believe eighty-two years from one family is pretty impressive!

Sometime in 1969, Ed was struggling with what today would be called survivor’s guilt and probably PTSD. He was in Marshall, Minnesota and called mom to tell her he was thinking about taking his own life because he felt he could have done more and he should not have left his buddies back in Vietnam.

Mom asked him if he had enough money to get a bus to Worthington. He said he did and he came to live with us for a year. That school year we had thirteen people living in our house! Besides my mom and dad, my four siblings, (Chad had not been born yet), two uncles, four renters in our apartment in the front half of our basement, and me we had a Baker’s dozen under one roof.

One of our renters was also a Vietnam vet who had combat experience with a K-9 unit in Vietnam. He would share some of his stories and kept us mesmerized for hours listening to his experiences with his dog in a combat zone. The four renters we had were all college student/athletes and my mother fed all of us that year. She charged them one dollar for lunch and a dollar and a half for dinner. We went through one hundred pounds of potatoes every two weeks, gallons and gallons of milk and more food than you can imagine. It was like living on Walton’s Mountain!

We had to eat in shifts because thirteen people would not fit around our dining room table. You just hoped if you got the second shift, there was still enough food left to fill your stomach.

Ed did several different jobs that year starting at Campbell’s Soup Company where he worked a number of jobs I do not want to describe. He did not have enough money to buy a car, so he rode my brother’s bicycle to work that fall. 

By winter, he was working in the Worthington Co-op gas station pumping gas, checking the oil and doing all the things full service gas station attendants did back in the day. He also worked in the shop doing car repair work. It was during that time he bought an old Studebaker for $50.00. I will never forget that Brown Studebaker with the bright red rims coming to pick me up from basketball practice to give me a ride home after he got off the shift from the co-op.

One day, Ed did 180° turn on the street in front of the playground while Chuck Peterson and I watched from inside the school door as we waited for our rides. When Ed drove up on the curb a little bit, rolled the window down, and yelled, “Come on Fat Cat, the hawk’s a bitin’!” 

Chuck looked at me and wanted to know who that was. I said, “Oh, that’s just my uncle Ralph!” 

For those of you that do not know what the euphemism, “the hawk is biting,” is all about, it refers to the wind is blowing and it is cold!

Ed’s younger brother, Terry, also lived with us that year and the next while he went to the junior college in Worthington. It was during those two years Terry became more like a big brother to me than my uncle. Before that, Terry, Dee and Tim who are the youngest three siblings in mom’s family were more like cousins then aunt and uncles. They still are.

After a year living with us, Ed enrolled in the vocational school in Pipestone, Minnesota and studied carpentry. I am not sure exactly which year he decided to go back into the Army, but at some point, he reenlisted and served his duration to retire after twenty years of service.

It was in the Army he met and married Tabby. They have one daughter, Amanda, who is married and lives in Mifflintown with her husband, Guy Bowman.

I know this is turning into a long post, but I want to share one more story about my relationship with Ed.

In 1995 I started a youth oriented business in White I called Prairie Woods. The whole idea of Prairie Woods was to recycle old or waste wood and make unique products out of the material. We also got a job taking down roughly three hundred ash trees and sold them as firewood. I hired Ed to come back from Mifflintown and help me run the business in the lumberyard in White. I was going to turn an empty lumberyard into a source for local farmers to buy used wood from barns we had torn down, products we were building like feed bunks and storage sheds. I wanted to give the young people experience and responsibility in product design, manufacturing, marketing and various aspects of running a business.


Here is a picture of part of my crew sitting in some of the Adirondack chairs we had made from a kit I got from a friend who was doing a youth project here in Minneapolis.

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How is that for a motley looking crew? There is not a lot of diversity in White, South Dakota. These boys and the rest of my crew knew how to work. I would like to think I helped them in some way to develop into productive and responsible young men and women.

Prairie Woods failed due to a number of reasons. Ed went back to Mifflintown to be with his wife and daughter. Even though that business venture failed, I had a lot of fun teaching those young people new skills and being around a project that was the right thing to do. Plus, I love the smell of wood!

I could go on and on telling you stories about my uncle Ed, but I think you get my point. I will miss him and appreciate the fact I got to talk to him about two weeks ago for a while one Sunday afternoon. Little did I know that would be the last time I got to talk to him?

Life is like that. We never know when it will be our time.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Young People And Change

Most Fridays I try to spend an hour on a conference call with the group called "The Good Men Project." It runs from 12 noon till 1 PM Eastern time. Today we had an interesting discussion on change and changing cultural norms towards how society views men and what men are doing to try and change some preconceived notions.

Whenever I get a chance to listen in, and the topic is appropriate, I have to make some comments based on my experiences. We were discussing the way men procede down their own road to discovery and how our experiences affect our journeys.

I believe everyone has a journey they travel which affects their perception and their outlook on not only their situations but the people they deal with. One man talked about his struggle with chemical abuse. He is now more than ten years chemically free and doing very well, thank you.

My comments regarding each one of our own life path or journey was one of reflection on my own "recovery" if you will of my spinal cord injury. Now more than forty-two years later, I still find myself dealing with issues that go way back on an ongoing basis.

The interesting thing that came out of the conversation was how our journeys began at a fairly young age. Several people mentioned times when they needed mentors and may not have had one when they began their particular behavior that led them down a self-induced destructive path.

I believe as we all travel our journeys we need mentors and teachers to guide us in a positive direction. Some of us are fortunate to have positive role models to teach us starting at an early age. Others are not so lucky. They may not have grown up in a functional two-parent family, or a dysfunctional two-parent family. They may not have grown up with a functional adult role model at all.

In our ever-changing world when young people do not grow up with positive role models, they often learn behaviors from peers who may not have their best interest in mind. Another example is when the adult role models boys and girls grow up around our dysfunctional themselves and teach negative behaviors to impressionable young minds.

The discussion will often take off in many directions as it did today. The good thing about that is those discussions often lead to more interesting topics than what was on the original agenda. I like that flexibility when learning takes place you were not expecting.

The discussions are always interesting and open to anyone interested in becoming involved. If you have any interest I encourage you to go to their website by clicking on the address in the first paragraph, and checking out The Good Men Project!

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Seventy-two Years Ago Today

Seventy-two years ago today, America was waking up to the news of the worst attack on American soil in the history of our nation. Pearl Harbor had been bombed by Japanese pilots in a raid that murdered thousands of Americans stationed on that tiny island of Oahu in the South Pacific Ocean.

The mission was simple: destroy the American fleet in the South Pacific and gain military dominance to control that entire section of the world.

Shortly thereafter, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared war on the Japanese and brought us into World War II.

It had only been a little more than twenty-three years since the Great War had ended on November 11, 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles that ended the "War to end all wars." After what is now known as World War I ended and the United States became the greatest isolationist country in the world, we were thrust back into war that would take us to Asia, Europe and North Africa.

We fought against three dictators and allied ourselves with one. In very short time, the American fighting forces have become the largest and best-equipped military in the history of the world.

Notice in my description I used extreme terms like worst, greatest, largest and best. I did that for a reason. Granted, today marks the anniversary of what President Roosevelt called, "A day that will live in infamy."

It was only sixty years later when we had a new greatest attack on our country when more Americans were killed on September 11, 2001.

The problem I have with all these hyperboles is they are overused in our everyday speech and writing. How many times have you heard someone say something like, "This is the worst cup of coffee I have ever had."?

Another one is when a reporter is describing a story and he or she will say, "This is a parent's worst nightmare." Another one is when someone is describing a problem and they say, "This is the biggest problem I have ever had to deal with."

With our ever-changing technology and people writing and saying things that can go all over the world instantly, I believe we need to take a look at just what it is we are saying. I want to attach I hand out I have often used in workshops I call "50 Words I Never Use":

Click on the image to make it larger:

You may notice some discrepancies in my list. Please note this list is done purely with my tongue lodged in my cheek. I am positive there are many more words that could go on this list; I just thought fifty was a nice round number.

My whole point in writing this post is to get people to think about the words they use and how they use them. You may or may not agree with me; however, I believe our words are very important and we need to think about how we use them before we say or write them down. Was that really the best hamburger you ever had? Does everyone have a cell phone? Is that the stupidest thing you have ever heard? Is she really the smartest person in the room?

I promise to never post something like this again.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Football And Sportsmanship

There has been a lot said and written lately about all of the negative aspects of playing football. Everyone from the Pop Warner Leagues to the NFL and its former players are mounting a growing concern over all of the injuries associated with the game. Rightly so on many levels.

When NFL Hall of Famer, Tony Dorsett has announced he is suffering from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease at an early age, Brett Favre has stated he does not remember one whole year of his daughter's soccer season, the Minnesota Vikings were not able to field a full roster for their last game because of injuries and current NFL teams injury lists look more like MASH reports, there is an epidemic of injuries amongst all levels of football.

60 Minutes did a report last Sunday on how the numbers of young boys playing football at an early age is steadily dwindling and ESPN is doing special reports on injuries amongst that age group, you know something is drastically wrong. The question is, what can be done about it? I have some suggestions as do many experts, but like any subject that debate cannot be solved in a simple blog post.

I am living proof football is, and always has been; a violent game and can result in serious injuries. I did a paper for my Prevention and Care of Athletic Injuries class in college on Neck Injuries In Football. In doing my research, I learned the neck musculature is the last muscle mass in the body to develop. And yet, we see young boys and girls wearing heavy helmets with giant facemasks trying to support their heads and faces with necks that are not fully developed.

That is why eighty percent of all spinal cord injuries occur to young males between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. When one counts all the spinal cord injuries that occur in the United States every year, football related injuries only occur about twelve times annually. That is not very many when one considers the number of automobile, gunshot, motorcycle, diving and other active activities accidents. 

But that is not what this post is all about. Once again, I have strayed from my original intent. Of course, my longtime readers know that is how I write.

I titled this post "Football And Sportsmanship" because of a wonderful gesture on the part of the Olivet Middle School Eagles in Olivet, Michigan help one of their own score a touchdown.

Watch this video and see if you do not agree with me. To view the video, click here. If the video does not show up, click on this URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8_RpyfyNs4 

Keith Orr will never forget his touchdown thanks to his buddies who decided to do something for the young man. Steve Hartman gets to do some amazing stories, but not many have brought him to tears like this one did. I like his weekly story on the Friday Night CBS News. He has introduced us to many wonderful people and their incredible stories.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Later,

Mike

Alexandria's Aces

Alexandria, Minnesota has a very successful mentoring program going on in their middle school, and it all revolves around basketball. Larry Novotny is mentoring, teaching and coaching a group of young student/athletes through basketball.

Most of my friends know basketball is my favorite sport, and I have been around it my entire life in one way or another.

From the 1977-'78 season through the 1979-'80 basketball season, I was an assistant coach for the new general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Flip Saunders, at his first coaching job at tiny Golden Valley Lutheran College (GVLC) in Golden Valley, Minnesota. We had the youngest coaching staff in the country with Saunders, Mike Cervony and me at only twenty-two years of age. Our third assistant, Dan Kozmoski, was only twenty-one. We had a player who had been in the military and he was twenty-three!

All four of us coaches were still in college. When Saunders played at the University of Minnesota the previous four years, he had been recruited by Bill Musselman as a point guard. Musselman had a pregame show that involved a lot of ball-handling drills, fancy passing, and synchronized activities that electrified home crowds. People would arrive hours in advance to make sure they got a good seat to see the pregame show. If you were ever in Williams Arena during the Musselman Era, I am sure you remember what a show they put on!

Bill Musselman taught a walk-on player by the name of George Schauer to do elaborate ball-handling tricks including spinning multiple basketballs at once. "Crazy George" as he is known today, is still performing his basketball wizardry all over the world.

Saunders liked that pregame show so much he brought it to his first coaching job at GVLC. That is where this post really begins. Larry Novotny wanted to be on our basketball team and Saunders gave him a chance if he could learn to do what George Schauer was doing.

Larry took the challenge and was the star of our pregame warm-up drills. I believe the most balls he had spinning at one time was seven! He would sit down and place a pencil in each shoelace whereupon he put a spinning basketball on each pencil, he had a strap on each knee that held another ball on a pencil, he devised a brace for his chin that held one more ball and lastly, he spun a ball on the fingertip on each hand. That tiny gym was a fun place to be!

Besides our pregame show, we had a pretty good team. We went three years without losing a game at home. We had two Junior College All-Americans, a 63–11 record; won our conference all three years I was there and placed second in the state tournament the first and last year I coached. Saunders stayed there for two more years before going back to the University as a graduate assistant.

That brings us to what Larry Novotny has been doing with his middle school students at halftime shows throughout the country for the last twenty-four years! There is a wonderful article about Alexandria's Aces at this link. Just click here.

Look at the joy in Larry's eyes as he is addressing this year's group of young students who are trying out for the Aces. Does it look like he is having fun? After all, basketball should be fun for anybody that plays and loves the game. When I was the age of the students, I was in the gym all the time. My dad was a high school coach and I spent many hours learning from him and the older student/athletes I so admired. These young student/athletes are also getting that wonderful feeling of enjoyment playing basketball. I think this is a wonderful program Larry Novotny is doing, and I applaud him for his dedication and commitment to these young people.

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Think of the trips and experiences these young people are getting as they travel around the country performing in front of as many as 20,000 people. They are learning teamwork, cooperation, coordination, self-esteem and who knows, maybe even a scholarship somewhere to carry on the "Crazy George" Larry Novotny ball-handling tradition!

This was how Larry got his start on our team picture for the Golden Valley Lutheran College Runnin' Royals in the fall of 1978. Larry is seated on the floor front and center right in front of head coach Flip Saunders:

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As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

No Child Left Behind Needs To Go!

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is very frustrating for teachers, administrators and people involved in our schools.

If you read my last post regarding dumbing down our young people, you know I addressed some issues pertaining to what I see happening to the education of our children in our schools today. Between comments I received on my blog and Facebook, people who work in schools are very frustrated with the effects of NCLB and its requirements.

One person posted this cartoon about NCLB and all students having to pass the same standardized test:

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If indeed, a standardized test given to every student with varying abilities in the fifth grade is supposed to judge a school by its test scores with no regard for the school's demographics, part of the country, inner-city, suburban or rural school, how can every school compete on the same plane? I, for one, contend they cannot. That is why I believe, along with many others, NCLB needs to go the way of the dinosaur.

Personally, it has affected me because many schools do not want to give up that extra day in class they could get with their students to prepare them for the test rather than go hear a motivational speaker in the gymnasium or auditorium. 

I often get the excuse, "The last speaker we had was not very good."  Therefore, I get judged by the last guy and not on what I might be able to do for the students in that school. It is very difficult to convince a principal, other school administrator or teacher their students might benefit in taking the tests by listening to what I have to say.

What often happens at the end of the day is the person in charge will come up to me and say something like, "You were right, you could hold their attention for ninety minutes and give them something useful to take back to their classrooms." 

You can imagine what I am thinking about that time. I want to say, "I told you so," but that is not the appropriate time nor place to gloat. I want them to refer me to another administrator so I bite my tongue, smile and say, "Thank you, would you help me get into other schools by spreading the word with your contemporaries who might also like to bring me in?"

Going back to the cartoon, the rest of the comment was: "I started working in the Roseville School District in 2001, and have seen a steady decline in basic learning skills. In many cases, I see teacher spending more time doing the paperwork required by NCLB then teaching. NCLB has done more to harm our educational system than anything else in our history. I wrote a lot of papers on this subject when I was in school."

That is not exactly a ringing endorsement for No Child Left Behind!

I do not have all the answers, and I'm not sure anyone else does either. I do believe something needs to be done and done in a hurry because our children are falling farther and farther behind the rest of the developed world in national rankings and numbers of high quality, well-educated people ready for the workforce.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Later,

Mike

The Book is here! The Book is here!

Okay, I know I told you I would only post about once a week, but I am busting at the seams to share my good news. 

I received my first paperback copies of I Still Believe in Tomorrow today and they are ready to ship! If you want your own book you can hold in your hand, you can order it from all the major booksellers, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., but please order them from me because I get a bigger royalty.

For example: I only get about $3.00 if you order from Amazon! Let's just say, I get a little more if you order from me. Eventually, I'm going to set-up a unique website for the book complete with a page for comments, it's own blog and the ability to pay with PayPal and credit cards. Until that happens, please send your checks to:

Patrick Communications, Inc.

619 Lafayette Road North, #304

St. Paul, MN 55130-4444

The price is $14.95 per book plus $5.00 for shipping for up to ten books. I'll give you a quote on shipping if you want more. I'll send your books once your check clears.

I'm going to be moving in mid-August, and my new address will be:

Patrick Communications, Inc.

10100 Lyndale Avenue South, #104

Bloomington, MN 55420

Please contact me with any questions and/or concerns. By all means, please share this post and help me spread the word! FYI: I quote several of you and your comments to my previous blog posts.

A very heartfelt thank you in advance to everyone who buys "I Still Believe in Tomorrow."

Remember, it makes a great gift!

Later,

Mike

Summer Break

Much of the country is suffering through record-setting heat, we are getting flooding in places that rarely flood, other parts are literally burning to the ground! It is proving to be a very unique summer.

Many students are home from school for the summer, adults are working in unbearable conditions outside and those working indoors are frustrated because the power grid cannot handle all the air conditioning needs, so they have to work in hot environments.

Come with me, take a break and do a little lesson to take your mind off your summer woes for a few minutes. You students can put your computer game down briefly or stay out of the pool for a bit and exercise your brain.

I am a firm believer in lifelong learning and know once you learn something, you cannot unlearn it. Once you see the problem, you cannot look at it and not see it! It will never look the same again.

Studies show students take a good deal of what they learn in school and lose it over their summer break. Knowing that, my challenge to you is to read this exercise: take the rest of your summer break and learn at least one new thing each day. That is one of my goals. I want to learn at least one new thing each and every day. I talk about it my new ebook I Still Believe in Tomorrow.

I issue this challenge to my adult readers: study this exercise, see if you get it; then share it with your co-workers, spouses, roommates and/or children. Then, share it again with someone else.

Here is the problem:

Click on the image to make it larger:

Good luck! I have to admit, I did not get it.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Learning Can Happen At Any Time

I was watching the Tigers and Rangers baseball game tonight when this Volkswagen Passat commericial came on:

You can view it by clicking here.

The reason I like it so much is it shows us how we are all lifelong learners. We never know when it is we can learn something new and we never know what we are going to learn. That is the fun part. This commercial shows us we can learn a new language in a road trip, albeit maybe a bit of a stretch to go 795 miles non-stop on a road trip. The commercial stands out as my new favorite commercial. Mikey and the Life cereal was my favorite one.

I always tell my audiences one of my goals is to learn at least one new thing every day. I have already achieved that goal for today. I was talking with my nurse as she changed my dressings today and I asked her where she got her nursing degree? She told me she only has an Associates Degree in Nursing, but she has a Bachelor's Degree in Biology. 

She told me her three favorite areas of biologic studies were ornithology, ichthyology and mammalogy. I know what ornithology and mammalogy are, but I had never heard the term ichthyology. She told me what it was and I learned a new word before I had even gotten out of bed. I love it!

I know Ruona knows what all three words mean, but I am challenging the rest of my readers to be the first to give me the definition. The contest starts now! There is no material prize, just learners and winners.

To my Facebook friends, please click on my blog and give your answer in the Comments section at the end of the post. Simply click on this URL:

http://iamnotdoneyet.blogspot.com

While you are there, please subscribe in the upper, right corner, follow the directions, and reply to the Feedburner Subscription email. I am trying to build up my blog subscription numbers so we can keep the word spreading about the book. As I write this, it is being formatted into the appropriate ebook format for publication soon. The cover is being designed and it is getting exciting!

My editor is here now and this two-day post must come to an end.

I look forward to your answers.

Later,

Mike

Creativity In Education

I do not go looking for these stories; they just keep falling in my lap! I have another cool school story to share with you. In my June 19th post, I told you about a great school doing wonderful things in the Nation's largest school district, New York City. Let's travel across the country to the second largest district and see what creative project the Los Angeles Unified School District is doing in ninety of their school campuses.

I happened to be at my mom's house today in the middle of the afternoon and she was watching CNN. In between stories on the BP Oil gusher in the Gulf and the Elena Kagan hearings, they ran this wonderful story on the greening of ninety campuses in the LAUSD.

To view the video, click here.

Check it out and tell me if you do not agree they are doing a wonderful thing. Besides the free solar energy they are utilizing, taking their schools off the energy grid, saving the District a lot of money, and providing organic vegetables for local restaurants, they are teaching low-income, racially-diverse, young students some valuable lessons. I could make a long list of positive lessons these students are learning, but after watching the video, I think you get the idea.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Later,

Mike

I'm Not A Green Bay Packer Fan, But ...

This story takes place in Green Bay, Wisconsin and has nothing to do with the Packers. I've just always wanted to write those seven words.

I was talking to my mother tonight and she told me about young Kennedy Corpus who skipped school on the last day of fourth grade to go to an event with her father, John.

I hadn't heard of the story, so I decided to see just what happened. It turns out, she got a note for her teacher that was a once-in-a-lifetime event for ten-year-old Kennedy.

Since I rarely watch the main stream media any more, I get most of my news from the Internet and discussions with friends and family. Yes, Google is my friend. This is a precious video and story from the Green Bay Press-Gazette on June 11th. To read the story and watch the video, click here.

I'm guessing young Kennedy had a hard time sleeping that night.

I welcome your comments.

Later,

Mike