JHC Jr.

March 22nd, 2008

When we were in high school, our friend Jim’s house made a suitable and comfortable hangout. It was our headquarters; all the better for Jim, who never had to search for friends – they all simply came right to him.

After a few years, we began call ourselves the JHC – the Jim’s House Crew.

Over a decade later, most of us find ourselves either married, with kids, or both.

In honor of today’s planned playdate, I’m turning Sierra Picture Day into Sierra and Friends Picture Day. This picture, taken at Jim’s current house, shows the next generation of JHC members – all born within three and a half months of each other, complete with honorary t-shirts.


Leave A Comment

Issues Considered: Baby Pics, Sierra

On growth, quickly.

March 21st, 2008

From silence to mindless, exciting babbling. From static stillness to constant movement. From rolling to sitting to standing to crawling.

From a hazy field of vision to a life of constant discovery, Sierra has muscled her way into our lives in a way I had never imagined. I knew I’d like her. I knew she’d be a handful, but a very fun handful. But I never once thought that her growth would be just as eye-opening to me as it is to her.

Each day is like a week, developmentally, yet each week seems like a day. The speed at which she grows increases exponentially. Today she’s conversing with herself. Tomorrow, who knows?

If you would have told me a year ago that I’d be this entertained and in love with a baby, I’d have nodded and agreed with a sliver of doubt.

But now? From each smile, each wave, each blind ambition to trust every movement and word and deed of her parents, I’d be crazy not to love her.

Go ahead. Throw the cliché at me. “They grow up so fast.”

I’ve already figured that out.


Leave A Comment

Issues Considered: On..., Sierra

To the 64th power

March 20th, 2008

There’s a 7.2 trillion to one chance that you’ll get every pick right.

Still, that hasn’t stopped anyone from pouring over the most mystical of sports traditions, the 64-team tournament bracket, a spider web of hope, branching out from the center like veins from the heart, pumping competition like blood and scanned for blind bets and sure things like a CT device.

For some, each match-up holds a myriad of possibilities. Selections are based on a compound interest from the past round’s picks, crossed out and scribbled upon as if the right combination might somehow unlock something magical, like the meaning of life or the answer to some long forgotten prayer.

Others treat the bracket as a once-a-year novelty; a Cadbury egg, a glass of eggnog, a scoop of cranberry sauce. To them, this is a chance to join the masses. To feign interest in sports. To throw a few bucks into the pool and see if the experts can be toppled.

There’s a 7.2 trillion to one chance that you’ll get every pick right. Yet, that hasn’t stopped anyone from trying. And even though every year we fail – every year we stupidly pick a 13 seed over a proven 4, believe in the magic of last year’s Cinderella or outthink the obvious – we forge into the bracket again and again.

We can’t help it. Because someday, one of us will be right. We’ll scoff at their luck. We’ll cry foul, searching for whatever cheating methods they used. Eventually, we’ll all begrudgingly congratulate them.

And then we’ll start again.


Leave A Comment

Issues Considered: Basketball, Sports

The path to a more perfect union…

March 18th, 2008

If there was any doubt before, I sure hope this squelches it.

From Obama’s speech regarding race in the United States:

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

I can’t remember the last time I felt so inspired, so confident that change can happen. Anyone who says words are just words, that they’re not powerful enough to move mountains, strong enough to patch a past filled with misdeeds and forge ahead into the future, isn’t grasping the hope that those words can instill.

The full text is at The Huffington Post. I urge you to read it.


Comments: 1

Issues Considered: Politics

A new School of Thought

March 18th, 2008

I usually ignore e-mails from strangers asking me to promote their blogs.

Today, though, I sidestep that unwritten rule. I received an e-mail last night from Fred Deutsch, a school councilperson in Watertown, regarding his blog, School of Thought.

It’s well written and unapologetic. Best of all, it champions technology and the importance of being a forward thinking, multi-platform educator. It points out the positives of blogging (see, Bob Costas?) and shows how it can be beneficial to a school district’s constituents.

Most of all, I reminds me of my past, of just a few years ago when issues of school importance weren’t just articles in the newspaper, but actual roadblocks in my career.

Allow me to get personal here. I was a teacher once, a failed venture that I probably don’t give myself enough credit for. I was once intimately knowledgeable of school issues; of the difficulty of implementing No Child Left Behind and the scary reality of declining budgets. I stood in front of 20 or more kids five times a day and attempted to make sense of the Krebs Cycle, DNA replication, basic physics and organic chemistry.

Often, I stood in front of 20 or more kids five times a day and handed out worksheets, pressed play on movies, read my book and played babysitter.

The average person changes his or her career five times. Counting my high school jobs, I’ve gone from retail to food service to maintenance (with several more stints of retail in between) to substitute teacher to call center manager to writer. That’s six. I’m due to stick with something for a while now, thanks.

But I’ll always remember teaching as my first grown-up job, my post-college, “You’re a big kid now” career. I had a title, an identity – Corey Vilhauer, Teacher. I commanded respect from parents based not on my abilities but on my position, seen as a professional, even if I was never quite paid like one.

I soured on the job pretty quickly, losing heart and all desire in a matter of months. Substitute teaching can tear you apart if you’re not made of the right stuff. I wasn’t. And while I respect educators more than any other profession, I understand that I was never able to earn that respect within myself.

In the meantime, I’ve found a local outlet to stay abreast of what’s going on in our state’s schools. With Sierra just four years away from public schooling, I’d better read up before it’s too late.

So yeah, that’s a really long, introspective and egotistical way of saying “check out School of Thought.”


Comments: 1

Issues Considered: Blogging, Education, Politics

Broken bikes

March 14th, 2008

The last thing I want to do is criticize the local media.

…

Okay. I’m over it. A recent news note from KELO TV’s Web site. (For the record, KELO is our local “the sky is falling” news channel, featuring the same lock-your-doors don’t-eat-fish cancer-is-in-everything stories that you’d expect from sensationalistic, tabloid style journalism.

03/14/2008
Sioux Falls Boy Injured In Bicycle Incident

A Sioux Falls boy was hospitalized after a bicycle accident on North Minnesota Avenue.

The boy was riding on the sidewalk down the big hill at the 600 block of North Minnesota. He hit something and flew over his handlebars headfirst and slid about 30 feet on his face.

Police officers say he was treated for road rash on his face and arms.

That’s news.

I don’t want to downplay the experience for that kid – that’s a pretty scary accident to have. But it’s not really news. I mean, it’s news in the same way that a kid falling off of a trampoline and breaking his or her arm is news.

Here’s the thing. Over twelve years ago, I did the same thing. Nearly the exact same thing. While riding down a hill on a walkway on the Augustana Campus, I lifted my front wheel in a mock-wheelie. My tire wasn’t attached properly (I had just put it back on before that ride) and it kept going. My front fork planted into the cement and I was launched over the front of my bike.

I slid about 17 feet on my face. It could have been 30. It was long enough to leave me stunned. And dripping with blood.

I was only half a block from home. I rushed home, ran in the door and said “Dad, I need to go to the hospital.” My Dad’s famous words: “Why the hell do you have to… * turns around * …oh my God, get in the truck!”

I was a mess. I had road rash all along the side of my face – horrible, ghastly road rash. My tooth had bitten through my lip and my chin was in rough shape. I went to the hospital, got stitched up, learned that a Novocaine shot through the lip hurts more than a million face plants, and prepared to convalesce. I looked like Hell for a few weeks, yet still managed to sing punk rock music a few days after the accident.

I still have the scars to this day.

No police were involved.

And I didn’t make the f’n paper.

That’s all.


Comments: 8

Issues Considered: Journalism, Vilhauer

Outgrowing the uselessness

March 14th, 2008

Today, Kerrie pulled a whet stone out of our silverware drawer.

The wet stone – a two-gritted stone used for sharpening expensive knives – has sat in the silverware drawer for several years, cluttering up the forks and spoons, taking room away from the corkscrew and Guinness spoon. I was purchased by Kerrie in Minneapolis as a special gift to herself, meant to accompany her recently purchased Global chef’s knife and complete the cookery pair.

Jokingly, I asked her if it had even been taken out of the box. “Sure,” she said, sliding the wet stone out. Of course, she was right – sort of. The stone had come out of the box several times, but it certainly hadn’t been used: it was still covered in the plastic it was shipped in.

This isn’t a solitary event for our family. I have a bike attachment that turns my common bicycle into an exercise bike. I used it for two months until summer rendered it useless. It hasn’t been out of the closet since.

I have books that I have really wanted to read at one point, yet I now can’t bring myself to open them. Foods we wanted to try. CDs I listened to once. You know the drill – you have some of these things in your home.

It struck me that sometimes we collect things based on the exact moment in time that said things become available. Our likes and dislikes, and therefore our attentions, wax and wane from one item to the next, like children set loose in a toy store with a twenty dollar bill. We’re totally in love with Micro Machines, but we’re driven elsewhere by our friend’s new GI Joe.

In a week, the GI Joe will be out of our mind.

This has nothing to do with commercialism or consumerism or the buy buy buy culture. That’s not what I’m so intrigued by. I’m intrigued by the idea that our hobbies and passions rise and fall like songs on a pop chart, gaining and losing airplay throughout our lives. Some things hit a peak and then barrel off, never to be seen again. Others stay steady, sometimes rising into the top ten, sometimes dropping nearly out of site, but always staying on the charts.

With so many things competing for our time, it’s no wonder we lose track of the things we’d really rather be doing. The real solution? That’s easy, and just as improbable: do what you want to do. And forget about everything that isn’t necessary.

All of those things you thought you’d love, but found yourself without the time to love them? Give them another chance. You might find yourself much happier.


Leave A Comment

Issues Considered: On..., Vilhauer

« Older Entries

Newer Entries »