Heat-Moon revisited

Surprisingly, John and I haven't written much about William Least Heat-Moon on this blog. He is a favorite writer of both of us, and I think it's fair to say Heat-Moon has shaped my writing style, and maybe even my career, to some extent.

I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Heat-Moon in 2008 for the Kansas City Kansan. Heat-Moon was in KC promoting his newest book, "Roads to Quoz," his fourth major travel book following "River-Horse," "PrairyErth" and the classic bestseller "Blue Highways."

I set up the interview through his publishing house (via Rainy Day Books) and was given an hour to speak with the man. I kidnapped him and his wife from their fancy Plaza hotel and took them to lunch at a truly Heat-Moon type of place, Rosedale Barbecue in KCK. We conducted the interview. I uncovered some of Heat-Moon's hidden KCK roots. And then we took a drive.

Three and a half hours later, I returned Heat-Moon and his wife to their hotel.

The story I wrote contained very little of the original, one-hour interview. Most of the piece was about the driving tour that followed.

As a journalist, that was one of the most rewarding days of my career.

Shortly after my interview with Heat-Moon, the newspaper went belly-up and I was laid off.

I bring all this up because I began a new (albeit temporary) job a while back. One day at the lunch table I noticed one of my co-workers reading a tattered copy of "PrairyErth." We struck up a conversation about William Least Heat-Moon, and it's been a common topic for us ever since.

The conversations reminded me that I'd been meaning to re-read Heat-Moon's classic, "Blue Highways."

So this week, I began to do exactly that.

I encourage any of our readers to pick up a copy and read it. You should be able to find it at any local library or bookstore.

I'll close today with this nugget of wisdom from "Blue Highways," a strong statement that sums up my own thoughts about the Christian missionary movement, particularly as it was used against the Native Americans:

Take the land, take the old ways, Christian soldiers, but please, goddamnit, leave me my soul.

--Matt Kelsey

Thoughts on KU loss, Jenee and Jason, sports, weddings and the responsibility of students to do good in the world with what they learn..

...
I'm afraid to write after Matt's surprising piece on trash day.

But, being a writer, write I must. Take this entry as a work in progress. Literally. I'll add to it later in the day. I do have a day job.

I'm still digesting the KU loss Saturday evening. I have to admit to feeling generally depressed after the final buzzer -- a freak snowstorm also contributes to my bleak view of the fairness of life. Here are several strangely related thoughts (I'll let you figure out if they are related and how):

1) I happened onto a Jeneé Osterheldt column from early March yesterday. Don't ask how -- it has to do with when and where I do the daily crossword. It was about a young college graduate who was lucky enough to land a job right out of school. She graduated in special education and was able immediately to put the skills a whole team of people labored hard for four or five years to give her to work in the community.

But that wasn't what Jenee was happy about. Jenee was happy this young suburban woman had decided mid-year to resign her position in special education to concentrate on planning her wedding and "working on her marriage."

Now, aside from the hard fact that her marriage stands less than a 50-50 chance of taking, what rankles is the resignation. What about the children? She just walked out on a group of children who need her. She walked out so she can tend to what amounts to a self-absorbed, overblown, celebration of ... her! Special ed kids need consistency more than any others. But wedding and marriage planning trumped her responsibility to the community.

Now, as a man, I know I do not understand weddings, despite having been through three of them -- only one of which took. I do understand girls grow up dreaming of weddings the way I grew up dreaming about standing on the pitching mound in a major league ball park. I get it.

But, I don't get walking out in the middle of the year on the kids. Even to play major league baseball. (Can't believe I wrote that...)

But read the article for yourself. Tell me it isn't all about me, right down to the Dave Ramsey prosperity religion stuff. She felt pressure in college (from her parents, I presume) to find a career and, since she chose education, apparently she wanted a career helping people learn. Now she wishes she had gone in graphic design.

One thing I think college students miss today is their responsibility. As teachers, we have studied 20,30, 50 years to learn what we have to pass onto them in four years. We show up every day, do our best to teach, agonize over how to present difficult ideas, agonize over grades, agonize over how to show them what it means to be a citizen in a community, registrars get them into the right classes and rooms, financial aid officers get them money, the cafeteria feeds them ... they have a responsibility to go out into the world and do good.

That's what I said. They have a responsibility to go out into the world and do good.

No matter how much money they paid for their education, they owe us this.

I tried once to build this concept into the mission statement of the university where I teach but the phrase didn't make it out of committee. I know the idea that education is about doing good in the world flies against the consumer concept of education. The drive up window metaphor for education doesn't fit this idea. Imagine the kid at the drive up window telling you to remember you have a responsibility to eat that hamburger and get stronger from it so you can do good in the world because a cow gave its life and the staff inside prepared it lovingly for you. Sounds silly, I admit. But, dammit, higher education is not a drive up window and ideas are not hamburgers.

2) Jason Whitlock is the most inconsistent writer in big time journalism. Red Smith said it was impossible to write a column every day and not have a clinker once in a while. But Whitlock puts the great sports columnist's idea to the test. He writes well one day and terrible the next. This is more about the editor than the writer, in my opinion. His column today about the blame game in KU's loss is disorganized, unthoughtful, ragged and weak. It's really just a rough draft and apparently no one at the Star is deputized to tell him so.

First, he does exactly what he says he shouldn't. He hands out blame, though he waits until the last graph to do so. Then, inexplicably, he drops race into the picture -- arguing three teams were under-seeded in the tournament because they were predominantly white. I'm inferring this because he doesn't bother giving what could be an interesting idea more than quick jab. And, like the Missouri defense, he's all over the place. In basketball, this is good. In writing it is disrespectful to the reader.

3) The difference is amazing. While Kansas fans writhe over a defeat in the second round of the NCAA tournament, Missouri fans celebrate a defeat in the second round of the tournament. What does this mean? My guess is it speaks volumes about the media circus which surrounds college basketball these days.

I think one reason for KU's stunning loss of composure was the media. Here is a prime example. In the press conference after the first victory (If I were a college coach I'd only send the end of the bench boys out to meet the press for this exact reason...) Tyrel Reed was asked by a reporter if all he does now is look for the three-pointer. Reed, who appears to be basketball smart, was taken aback by this. No, he protested. Three's are what they've been giving me. I take what I can get.

The seed, however, was planted. Reed may have thought it denigrating to be seen as just a three-point shooter rather than a driver. He may also have thought if other teams think the three is all he has, they may overplay him outside and to survive he needs to drive once in a while. And, so, in the waning seconds of the crucial game with come-from-behind victory in his grasp, he turned down an open three and drove to the bucket where he was called for a charge. It was, by the way, the right call. You have to guess the reporter's question was squirming around somewhere in the back of his mind just before that ill-fated drive.

But, tears? Players collapsed on the floor? Comparisons to the emotions of losing a child? Fans too depressed to be civil at dinner? It was just sports. Right? It was just a game. Right?

-- Lofflin, too depressed to be civil at dinner...

Trash Day

-Photo via naturewalkboston.blogspot.com

Sometimes to hang on to sanity, you must seek out - or better yet, stumble upon - beauty in the little things.

Friday is our Trash Day. Usually I drag the barrel and the recycling bin to the curb Thursday night, because you never know what time the garbage crews will show up.

(Sometimes it's 6 a.m., sometimes the middle of the afternoon. But I am not criticizing garbage men and women. They have one of the worst jobs in the world. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. They say New York City garbage workers make six figures. They deserve it. But I digress...)

But I procrastinated this week and I took the trash out Friday morning before leaving for work. The sun was peeking over the horizon. The air was brisk but full of promise for the coming spring. I placed my barrel and my bin at the curb and glanced down the block.

House after house, from my block to the corner, the garbage receptacles were lined up in a perfect, arrow-straight row. Garbage can. Recycle bin. Garbage can. Recycle bin. Garbage can. Recycle bin. All the way to the intersection.

And in its own way, the symmetry of early-morning trash was beautiful.

Of course, when I arrived home, the barrels were strewn about the neighborhood, and all symmetry was lost to chaos. But for a brief glimmering moment Friday morning, the stars - and the cans - were aligned.

-- Matt Kelsey

A modern-day literary gem

As I've expressed before on this blog, I normally don't read modern fiction. Most of the books on my shelf were published before my lifetime. I don't really understand it. I just enjoy old books more. The closest I can come to an explanation is an anecdote about my musical tastes. When I was a kid, I listened to nothing but country music, because that's what my parents listened to. I was enamored over George Strait and Clint Black and Reba McIntyre and all the rest. Then one day during my high school years, shortly after I got my license, I was driving around listening to the radio. And it just hit me. The nasally, modern "country" music flowing through the speakers sounded phony and terrible. Since that day I never actively listened to modern country music again.

But I love old country and bluegrass. Hank Williams (Senior, of course). Bill Monroe. Johnny Cash. Flatt and Scruggs. Willie Nelson.

Yeah, that's the stuff.

My tastes in fiction have largely gravitated the same direction: older is better. Steinbeck. Pearl S. Buck. Charles Portis. John D. MacDonald. I love it. And conversely, I would rather, I don't know, get a root canal than read a Tom Clancy book.

But every once in a while I stumble upon something written more recently that strikes a chord. One example would be "The Kite Runner," a fascinating and heartbreaking book by Khaled Hosseini. A riveting thriller called "The Straw Men" by Michael Marshall kept me engaged. A handful of others.

Recently I found another one. It's "The Corrections," by Jonathan Franzen. It was published in 2001. And it's simply marvelous. It's a big honking mother of a book, over 500 pages, and I've taken my time getting through it. But I'm nearing the end, and I can't wait to finish it.

(Although, this book about a dysfunctional Midwestern family sometimes strikes a little too close to home - even though my own family, by comparison, is startlingly functional.)

Franzen's next novel, "Freedom," will come out later this year. And for the first time in years, I may actually have to go to the bookstore and buy it the day it comes out, rather than waiting until it shows up in the discount racks.

Now if only I could find a modern country music artist to engage me.

But I'm not holding my breath.

--Matt Kelsey

Thinking basketball with the Big 12 Tourney full on...

Another image ...
...from that 1978 Kings and Sixers match at Kemper Arena. Richard Williams posterized, Scotty Wedman looking on, a bit of Sixer sky-walking in progress. You forget sometimes what basketball looks like from the floor, how big it is. Watching on television is a good way to experience basketball but not as visceral as sitting on the hardwood with a camera to your eye. Which, of course, is nothing compared to taking a charge in the lane.

What I like about these two images I found in my trunk is how the arena looks behind the players. You can really get the feel for the Christians and the lions here.

--Lofflin

The country game; the city game; roots of basketball are everywhere -- enjoy Kent Babbs' piece on Kansas hoops today and remember Lucius Allen

Don't miss the wonderful story by Kent Babb in the Star today about basketball in the state of Kansas. The writing is just as graceful as a rainbow three pointer from the corner and the subject a real surprise.

What makes basketball such an interesting sport is the way it comes from so many very different places. Its Kansas roots are well documented in this story. The way it fits the rhythm of farm life, the way barn walls seem right for basketball goals, the way kids who find freedom from drudgery in the game love the warm confines of the gym in winter, is important to the game's lineage.

But rural Kansas is not the only place basketball has been loved. I also remember a stirring sight from a window on The Southwest Chief somewhere in New Mexico. It was dusk and the scrub grass seemed to stretch forever. Right in the middle of nothing was a basketball goal and two American Indian kids shooting hoops nearly by moonlight.

And, of course, basketball is also a city game. In fact, if you love basketball you will also want to read "The City Game" by Pete Axthelm. It, too, is beautifully written. And its accounts of playground stars will make your head swim. The Helicopter who could take a quarter off the top of the backboard. Connie Hawkins doing play-by-play even as he played. The grit and the muscle of basketball on asphalt tells the same story from a different world.

When I was a kid, we didn't know anything about basketball until we met the gym in junior high. In grade school, when winter came and it snowed, we all showed up at the playground behind our school building with snow shovels, bats, gloves and baseballs covered with electrician's tape because the asphalt ate the hide off an unprotected baseball.

When we discovered basketball, we made the winter switch immediately. We played on driveways where you could be 15 feet from the bucket on either end but just five feet away in the middle and we perfected shots where you had to leap off the retaining wall as part of the move. One of our best players had this kamikaze move where he would drive the middle then just lay out flat between the big guys and flip the ball up and off the metal backboard with no concern for what would happen when he lost air speed and crashed. What happened was simple. He went home with these big raw places on his elbows and knees -- and sometimes his chin .

When the weather got too bad, we moved inside. We loved the gym. The heat and light when snow and ice covered the ground felt like heaven. The wood floor was actually soft compared to the places we usually played. If the clock was turned on for games we were even happier. It was refuge for us when winters like this one seemed to stretch on forever.

The first great player I ever saw was Lucius Allen. Lou -- that's what we chanted from the stands -- honed his skill on the elementary school playground across from the high school. They say he was there everyday, all summer, getting his game together. I'll never forget how he could rise up from the middle right handed, hang in the air and move the ball to his left hand, then loft a soft teardrop into the nets as if he were tipping his cap to a lady. He went on to UCLA, where I watched on television as he and Mike Warren brought the ball up court for the great Alcindor to sky hook home. And, from there, to the NBA.

I rarely watch a basketball game that I don't think about the magic he possessed right there in the place I grew up. Made our asphalt seem special, it did.

--Lofflin

Lucius Allen vs. World B. Free, Kemper Arena circa 1978... /Lofflin

Virgil Trucks to Derek Trucks, fastballs and fast fingers bring it all back home

Ah... the stars align, sometimes.

Peter Gammons has a delightful piece on the MLB Web site today about two of my favorite performers, separated by more than 50 years of my life. (That is tough to write, dear readers...)

In 1957, my favorite baseball player was Virgil Trucks. Virgil Trucks pitched for the A's and I worshiped the A's. I was especially fond of pitchers, and even more worshipful of pitchers who threw hard. I've always had a thing for fastballs.

Virgil pitched in 48 games for the frustratingly bad A's in 1957, threw 116 innings, recorded seven saves and logged an earned run average just a tad over three runs per nine innings. As happened so often, his beautiful work was promptly rewarded by a trade to those damned World Series-bound Yankees in 1958. A 10-year-old heart was broken.

(This might help explain my life-long distrust of managers and administrators to do the right thing...)

Now I discover -- thanks to reporter / guitar player Gammons -- Derek Trucks, who may be the best guitar player in the world today, is Virgil Trucks' nephew's son. Gammons relates the story of Derek's surprise visit with Virgil two years ago when the old fire truck was 91. Virgil, by the way, is still kicking.

I love this quote Gammons captured. While admitting he didn't know much about Derek's music -- they don't play it much on the local radio station, he allowed -- Virgil told Gammons he was happy to "meet so fine a young man as Derek. I don't know where the musical part of the family came from, but I'm proud of him."

Derek's father is Butch Trucks, drummer and sometimes musical leader of the Allman Brothers Band. Butch often led the band into jazz in the Allmans' formative years. Fittingly, Derek's son is named Charlie, after Charlie Parker, who was born and raised within spitting distance of where my mother and father met and courted. The stars -- in the sky and in music and baseball -- couldn't be more aligned. Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket today.

Charlie Trucks, by the way, loves baseball. Of course.

If you haven't heard Derek Trucks, or his wife Susan Tedeschi, you should. They're important players in the evolution of the music I love. Here's a bit of a timeline. The territorial bands in Oklahoma and Texas in first years of the last century translated New Orleans and Delta music into a music known as swing, which took root in the Reno Club in Kansas City in the late 20s and the 30s. As swing and jazz blossomed, Big Joe Turner straddled all the music from the Delta to Chicago as the singing bartender in the 18th and Vine district only a short walk from where the Monarchs played ball. Joe Turner would have been Elvis Presley in a world without race. Rock 'n roll met jazz -- again -- in the Southern rock bands of the late 1960s and beyond, perfected by the Allman Brothers, and, today, kids like Derek Trucks are quietly returning the music to its roots. Derek was one of the guitar players recently collaborating with the great McCoy Tyner on his new album simply called "Guitars".

And Virgil? ...Well Virgil's career wasn't bad either. He pitched in 517 games, struck out 1,534 batters , posted a career 3.39 ERA, and won 177 games against 135 loses for less than stellar teams. In fact, he won just five games against 19 loses one year for the Detroit Tigers. But get this: two of those five wins were no-hitters and the third was a one-hitter, a single by the lead-off batter in the first inning.

-- Lofflin, delighted and begging for a spring day.

Virgil Trucks' autographed baseball card from the wonderful Web resource Baseball Almanac.

Doug Glanville has a great piece in the Times -- spring training is what we desire but it is the end of desire for ballplayers

Just finished a wonderful read. Doug Glanville writes about baseball and life for the New York Times and his latest is an absolute delight.

Glanville writes about what spring training means to the emotional life of a ballplayer. If you think about it, the event we desire all winter means, to some extent, the end of desire for ballplayers, at least for a while. Every year of their baseball lives they have to pull up stakes in early February and pack themselves off to Florida or Arizona.

What happens to those left behind? How do they cope? As Glanville asks, does the heart grow fonder or is the relationship out of sight, out of mind?

When you think about the extraordinary amount of money ballplayers take home, remember they have no real home from February through October, if they are lucky. There's a line about this in a Hank Williams Jr. song: "I've always had everything I wanted / except a home." Life on the road is the price you pay.

I know a guy who went to spring training once as a young man and received a minor league contract. The contract would have paid him a small fraction of what he made at the plant back home. Living in his Florida motel room while he was out chasing his spring training dream, were his wife and two of his children. He really had no choice, did he? He turned it down.

Professional baseball is cruel that way. It demands all of you, every bit of you, for nine months. A lot of us have said we'd give up everything for one at-bat in the major leagues... or San Angelo Texas, for that matter. Maybe we would, but probably we wouldn't. And, genetics aside, the reason we would never even be confronted with the choice is the same. Major league ballplayers not only give up everything else they could love for nine months every year of their careers, they gave up everything else to get there.

Henry Wiggen was pretty lucky. He was able to balance his life away from his wife and family in Perkinsville and baseball in New York City with only an occasional hitch. But as the books went on, it was easy for a reader to feel the pull of other loves against the aging southpaw. Mark Harris was wise to know this. And, the Glanville piece in today's Times, is a wise account of it.

--Lofflin

Photo: Rick Piling -- Getty Images

The A-Team

This actually doesn't look too bad.

In recent years, Hollywood has butchered some of my childhood fascinations (Transformers, GI Joe, The Bad News Bears). And this is probably a hatchet job, too.

But from the trailer, it looks okay. And anything with Liam Neeson is bound to be good.

I'm optimistic.

- Matt Kelsey

Russell vs. Chamberlain: It must be Sunday and the snow must be falling -- and all I've got is 74 channels of nuthin'!

It is Sunday afternoon in late February and it is snowing outside this window. We have had snow on the ground since Christmas Eve.

Suddenly, in the depths of despair and boredom, I am transported back nearly fifty years. It is Sunday afternoon in my tiny boyhood home and it is snowing hard outside the front window.

I have made a bowl of popcorn on the stove in a heavy steel pot which I shook back and forth over the flame on the burner. It is, of course, loaded with butter. Well... oleo. And nicely salted. I have a mug of root beer at my elbow, or, maybe peppery Vess Cola. The big old television sits on top of the wooden sewing table across the room in front of the window, both the window and the television bordered by lace curtains.

The television receives only three channels through the rabbit ears on top and we never think to wish for more. Right now I am perfectly happy with what I will have. Happy as I can be in winter, anyway. The only thing that could spoil this sweet moment would be a disruption of the picture by a failing tube or a glitch at the broadcast tower.

Or my mother with a job that needs to be done.

On the screen I have two giants in battle. Russell and Chamberlain. It is Sunday afternoon in February so it must be the Celtics and the Warriors or the Sixers, and if it is the Celtics and it is Sunday then it is big Bill Russell vs. even bigger Wilt "the Stilt" Chamberlain.

And it will be war. It will always be war.

It will be Russell's snaky left arm darting out of nowhere to snare a rebound or block a shot and it will be The Big Dipper fading lightly across the lane like an impossible ballerina to sky hook the ball -- so tiny in his palm -- into the nets. Never mind Cousy and Havlicek, Cunningham and the magnificent K. C. Jones. The war will be fought in the paint. Brute strength and delicate acrobatics, sweat and teeth rattling growls.

The crazy thing about childhood is you don't realize these moments are perishable. You don't think to take a good mental picture of them because they won't be around forever. You never imagine you will out-live them.

I've got 74 channels on my television this afternoon but absolutely nothing anywhere like Russell and Chamberlain inside the paint.

--Lofflin

Spring brings hope to baseball fans... uh... well... maybe not in Kansas City

...
Whew! This is not good.

In the spring everybody thinks they have a chance. Everybody finds something to be optimistic about. This is our year. This is our time.

It has something to do with the season. And baseball, more than any sport, is organic. It has seasons. It lives in seasons. Hope spring eternal and springs brings eternal hope. Everybody has a shot at the World Series -- or at least a 50-50 finish -- in spring training.

So spring training has just begun, pitchers and catchers are just now limbering up and... guess what.

No hope. No hope at all.

Fans got a peek this week at the Kansas City Royals' potential batting order. Well... it had all the pizazz, all the hope, of the sound of a bat held together with screws and electrician's tape against a waterlogged baseball.

Splat.

And, to top it off, the brain trust -- as usual -- wants to move a guy who put together a darn good defensive season in left, who had just agreeably made the transition from center, to right field for 2010. Shades of Mark Teahan. It's a good guess the White Sox won't be shifting positions on Teahan every six weeks. David DeJesus? Well... you probably better start breaking in that first base mitt, buddy.

--Lofflin, wishing for hope... really ...

Shaun White on pure sport... It's not the points; it's the thrill

...
Shaun White did what snowboarders -- and skateboarders -- do, last night. He was in first place, top of the heap, nothing left to prove. Does he play it safe? he asks his coach. "Just slide down the middle?"

The answer? Something like... count this.

He drops in, does the winning routine even higher and better and ends with the 1260 double McTwist that nearly tore his jaw off a couple of weeks ago. And he sticks that sucker.

Champions do such things.

Then he said an interesting thing when he was interviewed. He said I want people to know -- you had the feeling he was talking to snowboarding kids here -- this isn't all there is to snowboarding. This is just the by-product. Snowboarding is the riding we do with our buddies. This is just us showing off some of what we've learned, of what the possibilities are.

Translated: It ain't about the points, man. It's about the thrill. It's about the innovation.

Watch the men's figure skating long programs tonight. In my humble opinion you'll see the quad speak its mind. The men who attempt the quad are going for the gold. The men who don't are just praying they'll win a medal. They'll just be adding up the points. The problem with stick and carrot motivation couldn't be more clear.

Codes of points, whether they're used to judge figure skaters, snowboarders, automobile designers or teachers, don't encourage excellence or innovation. People play down to codes of points. If you want people to rise to their own greatness, you have to give them freedom, you have to love their mistakes, give them fistbumps for the risks they take, celebrate their strengths and otherwise ... get the hell out of the way.

-- Lofflin

Watch an excellent analysis of White's artistry here on the the NY Times Web Site.

In the Olympic tradition, reducing our lives to a code of points: The Likertization of modern times

"It was a great run, but if you look there at the seventh mogul you'll see... right here in slow motion... right there... that's it... right there you'll see where his knees came apart just a bit. We'll see deductions for that... No question... twenty-five percent of the final score is form... the judges won't miss that..."

I thoroughly enjoy the Winter Olympics but the "judged" events remind me too much of other parts of modern life I'm growing to dislike.

You watch what you think is a great skate. It had passion. The skater captured the music perfectly. The salchow looked magnificent, the skater soared above the boards like a human corkscrew, the footwork was delicate and precise.

Then a problem with an edge is discovered and a slight under rotation, and did you miss the skate traveling on the ice just a wee bit during the sit spin? The degree of difficult was off a bit. If only the triple-triple had been in the second half of the long program where it would have meant double points.

Suddenly you discover the skate you thought inspirational just didn't stand up to the code of points.

Code of points. I love the phrase. Love it because it so perfectly describes why I hate it.

Well, not particularly in figure skating. I'm not that passionate about figure skating, though I do enjoy watching the performances. I understand why it was instituted in the wake of judging scandals. But I also understand the argument many fans make that the code of points has stolen the art from the sport.

And, I might add, "judging" has stolen some of the joy of watching other Olympic sports as they are sometimes robbed of their emotional and artistic content. Judging is particularly damaging to passion and art when it entails deconstructing the performance to elements so cold and fine they have nothing to do with the outcome of the particular jump or skate or run. The whole, and its authentic value, are lost to calculus of the parts.

Judging, it seems to me, is an artifact of our times. In an effort, as in figure skating, to take the potential for human error -- or bias -- out of the equation, we have ceded more and more of our daily lives to numbers. Codes of points. The arts in our lives have suffered greatly for this bit of faux certainty.

We hire in committees hamstrung by codes of points and make decisions on who to retain governed by Likert Scales. Then we fire based on codes of points, or employ codes of points to fire those we disagree with. We suffer from the Likertization of our lives. Codes of points govern our self-worth and the worth granted to us by others.

Art has been stolen from the teaching profession by codes of points, for example. As teachers, our careers have devolved into three choices -- exceeds expectations, meets expectations, doesn't meet expectations -- reducing our value as teachers to a silly trilogy of points. Not any brilliant analogy we improvised on our feet in the classroom to bring home a difficult point to students who were so confused they were ready to give up. Not the artful way we pulled together ideas from several disciplines to design a new course. Not the outreach work we assigned ourselves just because we like giving something we know to those who can make use of it. Just, exceeds-meets-doesn't. The Trinity of modern administration.

For teachers in higher education, the code of points doesn't stop there. You get a certain number of points if you attend a conference, more if you participate in a roundtable, more if you make a presentation. Doesn't matter in the least WHAT you presented. The worst drivel gets the same points. Oh, what does matter is if you were invited to present. That's how the code of points is designed to separate the drivel from the gems, I suppose. If somebody asked or somebody chose, we know what you presented must be "better." How many did they reject? the coy administrator asks at evaluation time.

Of course, your uninvited presentation might have been risky. Might have broken calcified ground. Might have been the inspiration for a dozen teachers to go back to their classrooms and redesign their courses. "You left the ice on the wrong edge, mister, and you under-rotated that triple." Code of points will get you every time.

If this rant sounds bitter, it isn't because the academic code of points has bitten me in the ass. Not so far, anyway. But I've watched it take bites out of others and I've watched how single-minded devotion to it has squeezed the art from a once passionate, risk-loving, profession.

As Olympic fans, let's just hope that doesn't happen in the snowboarder's cathedral, the half pipe. Let's hope those kids continue to thumb their red noses at the code of points. Their response so far has been inspirational to an aging rebel with too many causes. "Oh, you've got points, eh?" snowboarders say with a wink. "Well, count this." And off the pipe they soar, turning once, twice, ducking under, turning again, landing ... or not ... And in the end, they seem only interested in the risks they took and the risks the others took, in the art of the tricks, the passion. They love to win, but they also seem to genuinely love to see another competitor break the code, sail off into something completely new, even if that something new can't be landed. Yet.

Here's a little secret I probably shouldn't say too loud. I'd do what I do if the code of points in academia never existed. And I know a lot of my colleagues who would do the same. They do what they do because they love it and because it is good for others. If they win points, fine, if they don't, fine. Can you imagine Shaun White never riding a half pipe again if they stopped naming winners? Neither can I.

-- Lofflin

Shaun White image by Bob Martin, Sports Illustrated

Television news is killing us; time to make a revolution

...
Comes a time to man the barricades.

To start a revolution.

Comes a time…

It's time to mount a major insurrection on television news. In particular, the time has come to do something about television news interviewing.

I tuned into television news this morning. What I saw was awful. A television journalist was interviewing a White House flak. She asked a question. The flak “answered” by artlessly saying he didn’t intend to revisit the past. Then he launched unimpeded into his list of talking points about what his agency wants to do for middle class Americans. And, also artlessly, she went on to the next subject.

He got away with murder. She should have made him take out an ad.

Conservatives consider this particular journalist detestably liberal. And the flak was, of course, a member of the detestably liberal White House. This problem knows neither ideology nor party persuasion.

It is simply a dangerous artifact of journalism in our times. As one of the folks I spoke to this morning said, “I fear we are dangerously close to a tipping point.”

And, we are.

Here’s the movement I want to start. Every time you see a television journalist ask a question and the flak (or the senator or the president) not respond directly to the question but instead launch into the talking points of his agenda, and every time the television reporter doesn’t follow up on the original question, doesn't hold his or her feet to the fire – click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

I don’t know how to make a revolution from this. I don’t know how to spread the word. But I would love to see this click-to-the-next-channel revolution take hold. Because if we don’t do something quickly, the forces of silliness are certainly going to win.

-- Lofflin

Henry Wiggen: Action Hero?

All due respect to the title character of this blog, my favorite fictional character of all time is Travis McGee.

McGee is the hero of a series of 21 novels written by author John D. McDonald from the 1960s all the way through to the '80s. McDonald was appreciated for his literary fiction (terrific books like Condominium and The Executioners, the title of which was later changed to match its big-screen adaptation - Cape Fear), but he was most well-known for Travis McGee.

The McGee books - which all had colors in their titles, like Nightmare in Pink and A Deadly Shade of Gold and The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper - were usually published as pulp-fiction mysteries. But the writing was anything but pulp. McDonald, who died in 1986, was a masterful writer.

A little background - Travis McGee is a beach bum who lives on a 52-foot houseboat called the Busted Flush (he won it in a card game). The boat is tied up at Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. To make money he is, in his own words, a "salvage consultant." Basically, he finds lost items. If somebody takes something of value from you, McGee will get it back and keep half its value as his fee. Because getting half of your lost fortune back is a whole lot better than nothing. McGee takes his retirement in installments between jobs.

I first became interested in Travis McGee when my dad gave me a stack of recommended books. Some I liked and some I didn't, but among the pile was a book called "Cinnamon Skin." It's the next-to-last book in the series. I read it in record time and absolutely loved it. I raided his libraries for more McGee books and found others at used book stores until I had about 13 in all. A few years later for Christmas, my wife bought me the remaining books in the series to complete my collection.

A couple weeks ago I picked up my dusty copy of "The Deep Blue Good-By," the first book in the McGee series, because it's written in first person. My own novel-in-progress is also in first-person, and I wanted to see how McDonald used the technique to his advantage. Before long I was pulled into the story and decided to read it through.

On Page 74, something caught my attention. McGee is trying to work his way next to a rich businessman, whom he hopes will help lead him to a lost fortune. But the beach bum looks somewhat unusual in a business suit. This is what he says:

I checked myself in a full-length mirror. I smiled at Mr. Travis McGee. A very deep tan is a tricky thing. If the clothing is the least bit too sharp, you look like an out-of-season ballplayer selling twenty pay life."

Woah.

Fans of this blog know Henry "Author" Wiggen is a ballplayer who, in the off season, sells life insurance.

I chalked this up to an unusual coincidence and kept reading. Then I came across this passage on Page 85. McGee is on an airplane, and being flirted with by a large-boned stewardess "styled for abundant lactation." Then McDonald drops this bomb:

...I had the curious feeling I had met her somewhere before, and then I remembered where - in that valuable book by Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly, the stewardess that Author runs into when he is on his way out to Mayo's.

Holy crap.

Travis McGee was a Henry Wiggen fan!

Astounded over this discovery, I realized McGee and Wiggen aren't so different. McGee was a professional athlete, too, a tight end for the Detroit Lions. Wiggen and McGee both have an interesting perspective on life, one that becomes jaded as their perspective novel series continue. Both are ladykillers, although Henry settles down with Holly while McGee remains a confirmed bachelor. Both have well tuned bodies, Author a brilliant pitcher, McGee with reflexes so quick he has never once needed a flyswatter. In "A Ticket for a Seamstitch," Henry shows kindness toward a tender fallen bird of a woman; McGee makes a practice of this throughout the series.

In another life, could Henry Wiggen have been an action hero instead of a baseball star?

I like to think McGee and Wiggen were cut from the same cloth.

--Matt Kelsey