Braham Minnesota is a little town of 1300, fifty miles north of the Twin Cities. They call themselves the Homemade Pie Capitol of Minnesota. Their high school basketball team has won forty some games in a row and are the reigning class 2A champs. They’ve come down and whipped the big urban schools and played a team from Compton California and beaten them too. They have three players who will play D1 basketball and three more who will play college ball at some level. Sounds like Hoosiers, only I don’t think these guys are ever going to be underdogs.

Meanwhile, it’s reported that Minnesota Girl’s high school hockey is far and away the best in the nation and that this years senior class is the best ever. South St. Paul has the metro player of the year and her linemates are all on the All Metro first team. One of them will break the all time scoring record for the state, they don’t know which one yet. They’ve played varsity together since eigth grade. They’re all seniors and they’re going to Minnesota State Mankato. Look for the Mustangs to challenge the Gophers for dominance of women’s hockey.

Do friends tell friends that they really need to do something about their ear hair?

I finally saw the mystery neighbor.

Yes, we have a mystery neighbor. Last summer our long time neighbors to the east, with three teenage boys found themselves expecting a fourth child. They decided to sell the house, which they had just finished remodeling. I’m pretty sure the main reason was that they couldn’t put up with my lax lawn care standards, but that’s another story.

So they sold the house in the late fall and moved out. I have not seen a human being over there since. I see an occasional light on. The driveway gets shoveled. I’ve seen cars parked on it, but rarely. Last weekend I saw a bedraggled English sheep dog in the yard. When the old neighbor told me about the sale, she described a couple with high end jobs, one was a patent attorney, I think, which surprised me because folks like that usually live on the other side of 169 in Plymouth. Which is where they were moving from. However recent local scuttlebutt says that it’s a single mom. Putting two and two together, or one and one apart, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a divorce situation.

Yesterday, I was home at noon for my usual lunch and twenty minute nap, which was interrupted when Quinn came home from school, having ditched the pep fest in favor of shopping. She was sitting at the counter eating lunch and I was in the kitchen trying to strike up a conversation before I went back to the office. She suddenly blurted, “Oh my god, there’s someone on the deck.” Call me paranoid, but I thought she meant that there was an intruder on our deck, about to crash through the sliding door and murder us. But when I looked out the glass doors I saw a woman on the deck next door, smoking a cigarette. For some reason, I thought I would be invisible to her, behind that glass on a sunny day. But our eyes met and rather than acknowledge her, I stepped back out of her line of sight. Great way to start things out with the new neighbor, if that’s what she was. I’m sure she’s already thinking of me as that nosey old bastard next door. Or maybe she’s thinking, “Wow, I moved in next to an incredibly sexy man!”

Whoa. That was truly ugly. It was as if lisazaren went to a Dylan concert and he had laryngitis.

The Gopher Women got their asses handed to them by Michigan State. At the Barn no less. When I left with about two minutes remaining the were down by thirty and were 0 for 17 from the arc. Liz Podominek was in street clothes, but that shouldn’t have made that much difference. Weaknesses were exposed. Like outside shooting for instance. It’s real hard to beat a zone if you can’t hit from the perimeter. This pretty much blows their chances for the Big 10 title. And will hurt their seeding in both the conference tournament and the NCAAs.

I thought the woman who sits next to me was going to cry.

My friend Charlie, a college classmate who I hadn’t seen for years has a thoughtful blog in which he writes philosophically about politics and culture today. He’s a lefty like me, but the main drift of the blog is reaching across the divide and trying to understand and bring together our country that seems like it’s never been more polarized.

The latest entry talks more about what the left can do to re-energize. He talks about tapping into the energy of the extremes, the “crazy” fringes, to stir up the passion for the hard fight ahead.

I’ve been artistically floundering lately (or maybe for 50 years) and his blog got me thinking that maybe what I need to juice me up is to go political with my art. I have some strong left wing feelings but I’ve been hesitant to voice them, mostly because I’m not politically saavy and I get my ass kicked when I try to argue a point. I’ll take a stand on aeshetics or basketball strategy, but I’m just not that well grounded on politics. Plus I’m lazy. Yup, I’m one of those wishy washy liberals.

Plus I have had a pretty pronounced lean to the right over the years. I’ve always been kind of a free-market guy, even though I went to the same college as Thorstein Veblen and where Paul Wellstone taught. I actually might have crossed over to the right if it weren’t for the fact that they seem to have this unholy alliance with homophobes, biggots, anti-intellectuals, and the holier than thou Christian Right. Not to mention the corporate robber barons.

So if I can draw farting termites, I should be able to save the world. Right?

Show me some love! Pass it on!

• Facebook
• X
• Tumblr
• Pocket
• Reddit
• LinkedIn

It’s the little things.

It’s Shannon Schoenrock slipping a pick. The biggest girl from the Iowa team came out to the free throw line to set a pick. Shoney (that’s what the fans call her, I think Rocky would be better) was gaurding lightning quick Crystal Smith on the left side of the key. Crystal took off, her mission was to beat Shannon to her team mates far hip, leaving the defender stuck like a carp at a bridge abuttment, and either going to the hoop herself or if Podominek left the picker to stop her, just dishing to the big girl, who was, as the game is played, rolling to the hoop unguarded. I didn’t think Shannon had a chance, she had no angle, she had to get around the big girl and the attacker had a straight line. She made an incredible lateral stride, leap in fact, that got her through, momentarily sandwiched between a much taller person and the bonie shoulder of another in her sternum. But letting an opponent get the ball in the paint is a sin in the eyes of High Priestess Pam.

It’s coach Borton pulling Jamie Broback from the game after she made two steals and rumbled the length of the court for layups. She’s a six-three maybe two-twenty power forward who can play guard. The first time she was alone with two defenders back and a full head of steam. by the time she hit the top of the key, you knew she decided that there was no way these girls would take a charge from her. They would have gone flying off the end of the Barn’s sadistically elevated court. They tried. She went between them, scattering them like tenpins. She hit the layup and got the spare.

The next time down the court she makes another steal another coast to coast drive that culminated in a missed shot and a foul. Borton yanks her. Later in the game she makes the same steal, picking a pass off in the backcourt. Pam sits her down immediately. Now, conventional wisdom says you ride the hot hand, keep her in the game, she’s on the verge of taking over. So, why? Doubted her conditioning? Seen her too many times loose control and pick up bad fouls when she’s on a run like that? Pam Borton does nothing without a reason.

April Calhoun gave up a scholarship to leave Iowa, Where she started every game at point guard two years ago. People speculate about why, boyfriend, the opportunity to go to the Carlson School of Business (she’s a top student) the opportunity to play in her hometown and at Williams. I think part of it was that there was talk of her losing minutes to Crystal Smith. I think there’s not a lot of love lost there. Maybe they’re best friends, but certainly there’s an on court rivalry. April has moved to the off guard position but often plays point when Shannon is resting. In the second half Borton sat Shannon for a longer period than usual and rotated the red head to the point. The game was already pretty much in hand and I think Pam just wanted to give those two the chance to go head to head. And that they did. April moved the ball down the floor against heavy pressure from Smith by taking the ball behind her back three times in six dribbles. It was a great show, you could just see how fierce they were.

There’s more of course, but I’m sure no one is reading by now. So Adios!

Fans scramble for foul balls at baseball games, cheerleaders throw t-shirts and mini balls and what have you into the stands for fans to scramble for. I have been going to sporting events for fifty years and have never gotten that treasured souvineer. Until tonight. Our seats at the Williams are in the first row of the balcony. Very few people can throw a t-shirt or a mini-ball up there. Janel McCarville is one of them. I couldn’t tell you who threw the ball up there tonight. I didn’t even see it coming right at my face until it was about three feet away. My reactions and hand to eye are still very good. I got my hands on it but bobbled it. The woman next to me got her hands on it and bobbled it. I managed to control it enough to catch it against my body.

I’ve always told myself that if I ever got a ball I would give it to the closest kid. I handed it to the teenage girl next to me.

We can’t scan these, the barcodes can’t be read because they’re reduced from tabloid to letter. Why are you sending us these reduced documents?

Our printer won’t print tabloid, those documents must be scanned, they are time sensitive. You are printing them the wrong size.

No, the size is automatically determined. There’s something wrong with your printer. You need to get it fixed.

This is time sensitive you must scan these.

We cannot scan them. It’s not our responsibility to maintain that printer. You need to get it fixed.

The printer company says it’s not the printer and the software guys say it’s not the software.

Have you checked the paper trays?

This has been going on for more than a week, no one wants to pick up the ball and figure it out and no one in the office where it’s occurring can figure out the problem.

Yes, of course, there’s paper in all the trays.

The problem get’s escalated up one side and down the other and an expert is dispatched to the remote office to investigate.

We will modify our process and put in a cumbersome workaround to ensure your time sensitive work gets handled.

The problem has been solved. Someone reconfigured the tabloid paper tray to fit letter size.

As we say in Minnesota, “Uff da!”

The natural law of human spacing was violated today in the whirlpool. I mentioned previously that the back corner of the pool, away from the steps, was the preferred spot. I was the second person in, the guy before me had not taken the best spot, but the one in the middle of the back wall. The next one down from the prime corner.

Now normally, when you’re the second guy in, you, out of courtesy, take the opposite corner, allowing your nieghbor the most possible space. But I elected to take the outside corner opposite the steps, the next best spot because of the crossing jets in the corner. Somethng primal would not allow me to take the ideal spot right next to the only other occupant. The third person arrives and takes the other outside corner. Two more gents arrive and things got really interesting. How would they space themselves when there was no obvious choice to keep the spacing as even as possible. They both sat on the inside wall on the other side of the first guy, the one in the middle. No words have been spoken. The prime spot is still empty.

Earlier as I was just coming into the locker room, listening to Hendrix on the iPod, in an endorphin daze, walking fast and too close to the lockers. A young guy comes barrelling out from one of the rows of lockers on a dead collision course with me. I stop in my tracks and he does a quick course adjustment the causes us to miss by about an inch. His quick feet and balance had to have come from lots of practice slipping picks, just like my ability to stop on a dime. I may not have the legs anymore, but I’ve still got reactions.

On another note. Let’s hear it for the people of Iraq, turning out to vote in huge numbers in spite of threats of violence. That gives me hope.

Another club story.

Last night I was doing a tennis drill with a woman instructor and only one other player, also a woman.

Everytime I tried to run I was farting uncontrollably.

There was a haze hanging in the bubble by the time we were done.