In like a lion ... out like a lion.

Luckily, I happen to like lions.
Lambs too.



Goodbye March.
Hello April.

Just remember the Red River Valley...

I don't know about you, but I like seeing people fight back physically, by filling sandbags, making food and coffee, just coming together as a community and doing what they can to counter Nature and the newly fortified levies of Grand Forks upsteam.

Come what may in Fargo, that feeling of having something to do right now in preparing for the river's crest, no doubt is keeping some people going and maybe teaching young people life lessons about doing what you can, accepting what you can't do, and putting losses in perspective.

That's not such a bad thing really.

Belated congratulations to the Wisconsin Women Badgers Hockey Team, who took home the national championship, upping their total to three in the past 5 4 years.

Congratulations to Coach Mark Johnson, and his outstanding team of skaters, scorers, and defensemen. After all, it takes all types, to make a true team...

Lenten message

off a church sign that regularly makes me chuckle...
and think:


For All You Do
His Blood's for You.



Now we're not in the Bible Belt here by any means (nor the Bible snowcap really), but plenty of folks know Jesus. And you really gotta admire how they deliver that precious message in a uniquely Wisconsin way. For all you do ...

Make it a great Tuesday, people!

Quote for the week:

"People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead."

~ James A. Baldwin
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UPDATE: That's a positive quote to kick off the week.

Twas a wonderful craft...

she was rigged fore and aft;
and oh! how the wild winds drove her...

But in honor of the day,
let me share my favorite song:

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland,
then maybe at the closing of your day,
you will sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh,
or see the sun go down on Galway Bay.

Just to hear again the ripple of the trout stream,
the women in the meadows making hay...
Ah, to sit beside a turf fire in the cabin
and watch the barefoot gossoons at their play.

For the breezes blowing o'er the seas from Ireland,
are perfum'd by the heather as they blow;
And the women in the uplands diggin' praties,
speak a language that the strangers do not know.

For the strangers came and tried to teach us their ways;
They scorned us just for being what we are...
But they might as well go chasing after moonbeans
or light a penny candle from a star.

And if there's is goin' to be a life hereafter,
and somehow ... I am sure there's going to be.
Then I pray my God will let me make my heaven
in that dear land across the Irish sea.

Happy Spring!

Sifting and Winnowing...

Melting and Sweeping...

If you've been to Wisconsin, you might be familiar with the sifting and winnowing tradition.*

But today, walking back to work after lunch, I witnessed another glorious Wisconsin tradition as our noontime temps hit 60 degrees, a peak not reached since November: the melting rush of clean waters from snowbanks gushing into drains, and freshly swept curbside gutters after a streets worker had passed.

Ah, Wisconsin!
--------------------------

* "Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe the University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found."

Oh, I forgot...

Last Friday was such a beautiful day, driving toward Milwaukee, that I finally detoured at a place I've been meaning to visit for years ... Ten Chimneys. The summer/retirement home of Lunt and Fontanne, perhaps one of the earliest (and wisest) "two-fers" (career couples who work together).

Well, you don't need me recapping: read about them on the website.

Now some of you surely might view this as one of those earmarks, money given to up keep historical treasures like their estate in the kettles and moraines of south eastern Wisconsin. Sometimes, you just have to turn that off folks, and visit what's already been done, I suppose.

Anyway, the sign on the main gate says the place doesn't reopen until April (Come back again, darlings); the website says tours begin in May. Still, you got a taste of a beautiful landscape, even in early March, which helps to appreciate earlier people who appreciated the healthy good life.

"Love Is Like a Rock."

Greetings! Remember my "no news is good (g)news policy", when I haven't been online for a while here...

Let's see, picking up where we left off:
Rice Lake won their first game, holding off Verona, a Madison-area school with a much deeper bench. Still, the RL legs held strong, and they rode a one-goal lead into the final four. Meanwhile, Superior took out the other Madison-area representative in the first round (the schools are big, and plenty of funding, but you get the impression they are just not seeing the competition of some of the northern schools. Superior, for example, finished third in their conference, which includes the Minnesota/Duluth-area teams.)

Then, Arrowhead beat Superior to advance to the finals on Saturday, and Rice Lake dropped to a stronger Fond du Lac team. The name of the tournament was ... Brian Berger, a junior at Arrowhead (Milwaukee area school) who scored (count em) 4 goals in the 5-1 championship game (8 for the tournament) over Fond du Lac.

I found this bit interesting in a story about the champion Warhawks:

I have found out that they have a secret weapon, and he doesn’t even wear skates.

Meet Dr. Don Hundt. He has worked with world-class athletes like Olympic gold medal speedskaters Casey FitzRandolph and Chris Witty, gold medal figure skater Scott Hamilton, World Champion figure skater Kurt Browning…well, you get the picture. The man has worked with lots of people that have done very well for themselves.

And if that’s not enough, the following folks have been patients of his: Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, Sting (of The Police fame), Roger Daltrey of The Who, Neil Diamond, and Bob Seger.

The man has street cred, that is for sure. But what has he actually done for these individuals?

This was the fourth year he worked with the Arrowhead hockey team.

“Everything starts with an awesome group of hard-working, highly-skilled boys, team leadership, enthusiasm and great coaching,” stated Hundt. “I have observed that a lot of the coaching goes way beyond hockey–to teaching life skills that all the boys will use the rest of their lives to be successful.”

Why do players often fail?

“Many youth athletes and parents spend an inordinate amount of time and money seeking all the best in camps, coaching, trainers, equipment, et cetera,” Hundt said. “The reality is, few will ever reach their potential because they miss out on taking care of the foundation of their physical and mental performance.”

Dr. Hundt’s work is based on going beyond the “ordinary,” and the performance of the Arrowhead hockey team and the 2008 Arrowhead state champion girls’ swim team is testament enough.

“The Arrowhead (hockey) team gets maximum growth from every workout,” Hundt said. “They recover quicker, injuries are prevented, thier mental performance is enhanced, their confidence goes up and they get to play at their best possible level.

“Put that together with high-end sports nutrition, post-game yoga recovery, hydration, rest, awesome skills, hard work, great parents and coaches,” stated Hundt. “And the defintion where luck is when preparation meets opportunity really makes a lot of sense.”

Well played! Myself, I caught the Thursday evening games after a coincidental meeting that brought me to Madison for the day, but skipped the Friday/Saturday rounds as I was down visiting my sister's family. Have I mentioned how much I love spending time with those children, who continually team up to make me laugh ... and amaze at their brains and courage?

So all in all, an excellent weekend, even given that I drove back through Sunday's winter storm. It was rain and snow until Tomah, and miraculously, a sunny clear day once you started north on 53.

I'm just waiting for this winter to end ... it's the price we pay for living in God's country of fresh waters come summer and autumn. And my books are getting a good workout; that's one way of dusting the shelves, no? Personally, if you haven't already read it and are looking for a timely read, try Bernard Shaw. They just don't write like that anymore, and even if you're not convinced by his p.o.v. (remember, it's a 1928 first edition) surely you'll learn something and enjoy fine writing?

Take care, have a great weekend, and keep your chins up out there. Remember: anybody can take hold of the rudder when the seas are calm ... it's the stormy times that call out the best in us.

When it's warm enough to wash your car on the lunch hour ...

it's warm enough!





Happy Hump Day, y'all.

My favorite Carl Hiaasen book is a thin, non-fiction one. (Never could get into his satire fiction -- something in me that rejects ... "silly", and even played as satire, Hiaasen's fictions to me just seem ... silly.)

I have "Kick Ass" on my shelves as well, and prefer his newspaper columns about Florida follies. Like this one:

It wasn't surprising that President Barack Obama came to Florida to push his economic stimulus package, because no place in the United States has fallen so hard, so fast.

And when the mega-recession finally ends, Florida will be one of the last places in the country to turn itself around. That's because other states have actual industry, while our employment base depends fatally on double-digit population growth and, to a lesser extent, tourism.

Everything was going gang-busters when a thousand people a day were moving here, but now the stampede is over, and the jig's up. Without fresh meat for the housing market, Florida basically hasn't got an economy.

Developers have controlled state and county governments for so long that no Plan B exists. Lost and clueless, lawmakers desperately hack away at public budgets while clinging to the hope that boom times will return.

For good reason, Florida has become the poster child for America's fiscal disintegration. We stand at the top of the leaderboard in rising unemployment, foreclosures and, of course, mortgage fraud.

Where else could a man step out of prison and straight into a job peddling adjustable-rate home loans to buyers with virtually no credit?

As The Miami Herald has documented, more than 10,000 convicted felons were welcomed into the mortgage business under the unwatchful eye of the state's Office of Financial Regulation. Believe it or not, many of those felons went on to perpetrate dishonest deeds and victimize gullible citizens.

The banks grabbed their piece of the action, too. Every major institution now standing in line for a taxpayer handout was an eager player in Florida's real-estate frenzy, throwing money at just about anybody who asked for a loan. If you had a pulse and a checking account, you could find a mortgage.

For a while it seemed like everyone caught the fever. Couples who could barely afford one house rushed out and bought two or three more, planning to flip the properties for a quick windfall. Rabid speculation warped the market and, by 2005, the price of most homes bore no credible relation to their true value.

A few experts voiced alarm, but nobody listened. The history of Florida is that of greed run amok, and old habits die hard.
...
For a state with 18 million residents, there are relatively few large factories or assembly plants, and not much high-tech enterprise. Agriculture -- the one major sector that's not tied to population growth -- has been waning for years, as vast tracts of groves and farm fields have been bought up by developers.

Yet besides orange juice, veggies and cattle, we don't produce much of anything that the rest of the country wants. The state never made an effort to diversify because it didn't have to.

As long as people kept pouring in, nobody worried. For the most part, those who migrated here wound up with jobs that directly or indirectly depended on more people coming.

It was, in fact, a Ponzi scheme of phenomenal proportions.

Now, lacking that daily fix of a thousand new warm bodies, Florida's in deep trouble. This is inevitable when the mechanism of your economy is modeled on that of a cancer cell.

If you love the state, as native Hiaasen obviously does, maybe you look at this current crisis as a potential opportunity: afterall, they say, until a loved one hits rock bottom, they never open their eyes to the big picture of what got them there.

Tossing big bucks Florida's way won't end their intrinsic economic problems, anymore than bailing out AIG for a third fourth time will help the patient live. There's something to be said for a dignified death, after all, and looking toward the survivors to pick up the flag and further the cause. Pumping fresh life into dead ideas that can't subsist on their own -- both Floridians in it for the long haul, and AIG shareholders who value the freedom of the market should acknowledge for their own long-term health that the sun also sets.

Rice Lake .... going to State!

In our annual prep hockey roundup, we here at Subsumed bring you the results of this weekend's playoff games.

Rice Lake boys hockey is making the trip to Madison, where they'll face off against Verona at 7pm on Thursday. If you've never been, try a night of exciting hockey at this level in the Dane County Coliseum/Alliant Energy Center.

Rice Lake knocked off Eau Claire Memorial, last year's champs, in OT Saturday night. Verona beat Madison Edgewood to earn their trip to State. Superior knocked off Hudson 8-1 to earn their annual berth in the tournament, and Stevens Point and Fond du Lac have also earned return trips, and will face off at 5pm Thursday night.

In the Madison area, Stoughton advanced this year beating Janesville, and will see action Thursday afternoon against Superior. In the first game at 11am, Onalaska and Arrowhead will face off, having beat respectively Wisconsin Rapids and University School Milwaukee, to advance.

So there you have it. Onalaska/Arrowhead; Stoughton/Superior; Stevens Point/Fond du Lac; and finally, Rice Lake/Verona. March madness indeed.